Ways to Enhance Your Relationship with the Gods of Chance

Advice for those of you who feel as if existence and lack of meaning in life is bearing down on you with uncharacteristic lightness:

+ Tonight (or when it's not raining) intentionally take the long way home. The main thing is to take a different route, preferably one you have not taken before. Extra points for avoiding the freeway.

+ Next time you go to the store, or shopping, etc., park in the farthest parking space from the entrance. Walk SLOWLY to the store. Do not pass anyone on the way in.

+ Take one thing you really like, and this could be clothing, a gift, a CD, etc. and either throw it away or take it down to goodwill. Extra credit if it has high monetary value. Preferably, throw it away.

+ When you go home one night - if this is possible - do not turn on the TV, do not play the radio or music, do not pick up something to read. Sit down on your couch or chair and do nothing. If you fall asleep, it's ok. Staring at the wall or simply the shape of your house is fine.

+ Rearrange furniture in one room of your house/pad. Extra points for doing this randomly, rather than with a big plan.

A nice little quote from my friend, Southern California playwrite Joel Beers (a.k.a., Jody Brewski).

"Writers write. Whether it's every day for 10 hours a day or 10 hours one day or anything in between. Everything else is bullshit."

Amen, brother. Words to sooth even the most romantic heart on a rainy day.

More Notes on Addiction

Addiction is distinguished by two primary characteristics: repetitive behavior and some means of altering consciousness. The addict's repetitive behavior and pursuit of altered states of mind both serve to provide an authoritative, surrogate self that supplants the otherwise unformed, vague, and inchoate sense of self the addictive person is trying to escape.

The behavior's repetitiveness, intensity, and rigidity create the structure into which the addict can transplant himself. Mundane and boring life without the help of a some predictable behavior provides a sense of certainty and helps the addict deal with life. On his own, he frets, worries, and simply does not trust himself to do it alone. Repetitive behavior - such as working a lot (e.g., the "workaholic"), exercising excessively, cleaning, promiscuity, etc. - provides an external form whereby the self-perceived lack of internal form can be forgotten, subsumed. The repetitive behavior and ensuing structure acts as the "authority" that rules the addict's life.

When the addiction involves some substance that alters a person's consciousness and physiology (caffeine, alcohol, harder drugs, or even the feeling of high from exercise), this serves as an escape from the addict's unaltered state of mind, the scary core of existence that the person fears. Being alone with the self, when that self is not ever sure what is it - or even 'that' it is - is disorienting and frightening. When the 'normal' state of a person's mental state is not well formed, not based upon a level of security, stability, or calm, then altering that consciousness with a pleasurable, euphoric state of mind provides escape from the weakened self. The altered state of mind takes over from a sober state of mind and becomes the "authority" that rules over the addict's helpless, mistrusted self.

Smoking, drinking coffee or alcohol, even shooting heroin, all have a special time and place when the consumption takes place. Consuming the drug becomes a highly structured ritual, dramatized and stylized, which allows the addict to form an identity based around this ritual. The behavior and mind alteration provide a new definition of who he thinks he is. This is why when the substance or behavior is gone, when he tries to kick, he feels even worse than before he started, because he learned to believe that this false self created out of the addiction was actually who he was. In reality, that addicted self was only a substitute for the addict’s real self, which at heart is a slippery, shaky, elusive, center-less hole.

I've always liked this poem by Dylan Thomas. Though half the time you're not sure what he's talking about, he sounds so great. This poem (and a lot of his stuff) seems to talk about men, and their inner drives and rage.

Shawna, this is for you to read. Your assignment.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.