Monday, September 27, 2010

"Look at the people. Watch them pass but don't follow them..."

I hate myself right now. I feel like Bukowski only I can't drink, so I'm unable to write poetry or get seduced by multiple women in their twenties even though I am bulging and aging, too.

Why can't I write poetry because I'm not drinking? My friend (and ex-lover or whatever) is a performance poet. He told me he quit drinking for six months once and he couldn't write even one poem. Then he said, Screw sobriety. This is pointless! And I think I agree with him.

What is the point of following all of the ragged rules of boredom and convention? I quit bartending and now I file endless reams of paperwork. Also, I have all of these stupid health problems, I weigh oodles more, I'm constantly fighting with my natural sleep cycle and I'm not getting lotsa loving. Everyone wants to fool around with the bartender/poet but nobody wants to bother with the fucking Program Coordinator. Another friend (and ex-lover or whatever) is a farmer and says this is Mother Nature messing with me so either I learn precise organization (whether or not I value it) or else I'll drown in the next flood or get strangled by red tape.

When I used to be a young hippie punk mama only using herbal remedies, I was raising my son on bar tips and spending our free time mountain climbing or soaking in the springs. Now I'm a paper file organizer, an excel budget designer, a weight gainer, decreasing in health and memory but caring for people with severe anal missle retentions and more importantly, those suffering from hearing the voices and oddly linked thoughts which doctors try to treat with pharmaceuticals. And our studies are being funded by the pharma companies, of course.

Way back in the day (1000 years ago) people like our patients might have been respected as the shaman of the tribe and although they might live in solitude a mile away from the rest of their people and although their predictions may or may not have been true, at least they valued and trusted themselves and were respected by the tribe.

The prediction of a very cold winter or the tribe needing to do battle with another living down the river may have been heard from the schizophrenic shaman's internal voices or sensed by her paranoia or perhaps even connected with her delusion. Maybe it wasn't a truly divine enlightened prediction as much as a statement of the perpetually obvious in a tone that was cryptic. Or maybe this type of future descriptive insight and understanding is brought on by a perfectly proportional brain?

Maybe enlightenment and psychosis are relational. The words psychotic and psychic are separated with nothing more than an O and T. Separated by nothing more than respecting the differences as opposed to prosecuting them or infiltrating them with chemicals (like when I drink after a bad day at work or an old man swallows viagra or those few people who are still employed take Ritalin or Concerta each morning to make it through the day).

Or maybe I just don't know what to do with myself.

(P.S., I found the picture in this post at a site called My Health Guardian.)

(P.P.S. The title is part of a line from a poem written by a lady I used to work with & for.)

2 comments:

Zoro said...

Hi Jen, my own musings are similar. I get cynical about the Way and buddhahood. I drink and drink again, Whisky is the big bad wolf, I am safe as long as I don't buy whisky. I feel really really sad and anger threatens me with taunts of culpable homicide. I liked your outburst ( in the existential sense). I am pretty poor right now and need to pay £300 to the ISP before I get back on the internet. Love and Luck.

Z.

deraz said...

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