State of the Nation - High Risk Edition

Greetings kids! it is i, the philosopher clown, come to stand upon his milk crate and piss squarely into a strong wind, to blabber on about the cesspool of capitalist bullshit and the burning need of consumption without which modern life would disintegrate into dust (and with which modern life will disintegrate into dust). A man with no discernible skills, of below average intelligence, a man without (gasp) a job let alone a fucking Korea (see career), a man so well versed in the wu-wei he could write a book on it except that would defeat the whole fucking purpose now wouldn't it? And so we begin this pagan ritual of end of year lists and trysts and bullshit, in a year that has brought us highs and lows and all things in between, in short another year of treading the terra...

It was roughly this time last year when (dec. 10) when our hero fell to the floor in mind-numbing pain with back spasms, i once thought they lasted for eight or so hours but now realize it was more like ten, a night that saw the worth (in the Breadwinner's eyes) of my pain and suffering not worthy of the few hundred dollars spent to get him some relief. Of course it was two days later as i talked to Pops that he broke the news that he had cancer, and not just one form but most likely two. Yes it may not have been the best week i've ever had but here i sit and in that year i've got on with things just as Pops has told me to do. Of course if i could call Pops i'd give him the fucking bidness for knocking me into the high risk category and thus upping the lovely ass probing by a couple of years and so next week i get to drink a ton of ass cleaner and spend the day shitting my brains out so that the good doctors can have a nice clean view of my colon. If not for the boyos i'd probably just laugh it off and take my chances but i owe it to me boyos to try and stick around for a bit and so precautionary measures will be taken. I'm not entirely thrilled with this prospect but hey man you buy the ticket you take the ride right?

And so as is usual with this diatribe i can say that the doc told me it's quite possible i'll live another year, there's some things that need to be tweaked in order to get me back to optimum fighting shape but i'll get there. As the ravages of aging have decided to kick the hell out of my back mainly but also the knees, hips, ankles, elbows, i've taken to the pool and become the fish i once was, swimming 3 or 4 times a week in order to be able to don the Speedo that so many soccer moms and bitter aging hipster women are breathlessly awaiting... surely you jest you say and surely i do i reply. Like any addict the pool has now become my new favorite place and like any addict i probably push myself too hard but if i'm gonna be addicted to something it might as well be something healthy right? i'm sure it's a bit better for me than the blow and Xanax diet of yesteryear. Of course i have noticed the mind does not wander as much in the pool as say when i'm plodding along on a treadmill, the runner's high is quite different than splashing along where sometimes the main goal is not to drown but nevertheless i quite enjoy the feeling and tiredness of the body when i drag myself out of the water...

Other than my father's passing the most important thing to take place this year was the re-introduction of psychedelics into my existence. Granted it was only a matter of time considering the in depth course of study i've taken up with a reading diet heavy in Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, and Alan Watts. A study not meant to find any great or deep meaning but a more a study of just to "be", which may very well in turn lead me to a deeper understanding but let's get the fuck out of here now, that's all bullshit, as the old zen koan goes, a student asked the Zen master, "who am i? why am i here? the Zen master looked rather quizzically at the student and then burst out laughing. As i eat those tiny mushrooms that open up the mind i sometimes wonder if i'm not getting closer to the laughter than the question which makes me think i'm closer to the question than the laughter but that all of course depends on when and where and what i'm doing. Of course Wilson will tell you you can attain the same level of consciousness by meditating or if you're lucky you can just take psychedelics and get there faster. Being lazy and having a love of riding trains while tripping balls i chose to go with the latter. Looking back i see that my first trip this year was a month before my father passed and i believe it had a profound effect on how i viewed the world and how i handled things since. Hence why i stockpiled a nice little stash of those magnificent fungi and hope to keep this practice up when the opportunity arises or when i need to reacquaint myself with the cosmos...

There are strange residual effects to the this new course i've plotted. Call it the third eye or the opening up of those fifth-sixth-seventh circuits of the brain (or eighth if you care to get that far). There was an incident not long ago where i got so zonked out of my skull ripping bong hits i thought i was going to pass out, first came the sweats, a wave of heat so hot that i went to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face, then came the shakes as the cold came roaring on, the whole time i was very cognizant of my breathing and the smile on my face and the lucidity and cohesion of the thoughts racing through my mind. I know to some this would be a nightmare, a trip to the ER to come down and it's not something i advise doing every day but fucking hell was it beautiful, every sense was in tune with the eternal cosmic joke, as i said to my friend sitting on the couch to my right, "if only i could tell you the ideas in my head but at present they are coming to fast and furious to put into words." The smile never left my face, it was the history of existence/non-existence in the span of 15 maybe 20 minutes, the hot, the cold, the yin the yang, the light, the dark, it was all there and it was something to behold... it will all shake out in the end kids, as i said i've bought the ticket and so i'll take the ride, why not sit in the front seat and get a good view...

So where does this leave our hero? Obviously right where he is... attempting to blend his psychedelic rigmarole into the age of modernity while not losing sight that it's all just a game, that modernity and the masters that be have made it a game of chasing carrots, that we are all tricksters and con men and it all depends on who you are conning. Is it yourself? or is it something or someone else and the trick becomes avoiding getting entangled in that web, to remember that work is play if you make it that way and really that's the only way it should be.