May 9, 2007
Drying out
Dying is hard enough, but living – damn!
What a damnable space is the mind! Don’t venture there and if you do, don’t linger. If you must, take a guidebook. Alone in the uncharted mind the smallness of a self knows horror, even dread. It’s not the noise. It’s the silence – the vacuity of nothing, an expanding and consuming nothing that reduces a man to a cricket in the chasm of the mind.
A friend asked, “Why do you drink?” To shrink space, friend. That’s why. To make the limitless measurable, to bind infinity, to constrain the mind from the endlessness of possibility. Nevertheless, a friend is a friend so I told my friend I would quit.
Now, Hesse wrote better than I ever could that nothing is more frightening
to a man than the path that leads to himself. Yes, Hermann, but what is so frightening about fright. It’s not being frightened that should worry us. Fright has to do with uncertainty. It has to do with the concern that something might happen. Fright is awful, but it isn’t the worst thing. What is more frightening than fright? What fear is more fearful than fear itself? What should scare us more than uncertainty?
Certainty.
I am certain that I am sober and I am certain that clear-eyed and fearless I know something worse than fear. I know that I know what I know. I know that I can see the light. I know that there is a place where children sing and angels listen. But I know also of the darkness. I know a place where a man roars and hell bars its gates and hides the imps in the closet. Knowing is more awful by far than not knowing.
So my friend asked me, “How drunk were you?” How drunk would you be if you didn’t know how drunk you were? How old would you be if you weren’t yet born? What if you were dead? How far is everything from nothing? What is the color of sound? The mind is a damnable space!
But the questions of the mind don’t matter. Neither does it matter that I might fall along the way. I probably will. It’s not in never falling that we’re the strongest. It’s in getting up again each time we fall. At the risk of disillusioning you, readers, I will admit a truth. I don’t write this column for you. I write this column for me. And I need to tell myself in front of you why I’m trying. I’m trying so that I might live.
Dying is easier by far than living. The one is eventually over; the other takes forever. So why choose life over death? Why knowing over ignorance? Why suffer the damnable space of the mind that comes with being alive? Because dead I could not have my friend.
Dead I could not know my child in the fullness of time. Dead I could not lift my grandchildren so they could touch the ceiling. Dead I could not laugh at comedy, cry at tragedy or tremble at a fugue. Still worst, dead I could not have my friend.
If there were a god, surely he would have made us drunk. That would be the merciful thing. So surely there can’t be a god, just some accursed scoundrel who made life and made it sober. Or perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps the blessing of life is that the living of it kills you. What an ironic twist that would be. Maybe god is a trickster and maybe life a pun.
I can’t know any of these things, I’m just a man with a damnable mind. But I know that I know what I know and I know that I have my friend. For that, to be alive is a price worth paying.
I know this part gets easier. I have dried out before. I haven’t ever written of it. I haven’t ever admitted to anyone (not even myself) that I did it. It’s not the not drinking that’s hard. It’s the really wanting to live. Half-dead and sober is no way to go through life, which is why I’m writing this now. Sure, you readers help. But I’m writing this for myself to remind myself what I’ve chosen. This time I’ve chosen to live.
Boy is that a consequential choice! I hadn’t ever considered its implication. It implies accepting possibility, especially the possibility that life gets better. I want to hope that’s true. I really do. But standing in the damnable space of the mind it’s mighty hard to hope. Trust me, I’m trying, I really am. I just can’t let myself hope yet.
I will never write of this again. Not for me or for anyone. This is a bastardization of a craft and a perversion of a science. Writing is too important a thing to be wasted on one’s self. Done well it can make a difference, a difference that matters to you. Portrait of the artist my ass! If I want to show you me I should do so through what I write.
But perhaps, after all, I need to show you me and perhaps I need to see myself do it. Just as I’ve admitted why I write in the first place, perhaps I should admit that what I write about is me, be it a caustic commentary, a wry observation or a splendid tale of finery. Perhaps those things are me in fact and perhaps I should admit it. One thing I know is that I won’t know unless I can know what I know and for that, living is necessary.
So after all, why write this piece, this one in particular? I suppose here, at word 952 it’s time to ask that question and to search the damnable space of the mind for the answer. Thank heaven for nicotine and coffee. This one will require a break . . .
I wrote it so I could finally be me.
Drying out
Dying is hard enough, but living – damn!
What a damnable space is the mind! Don’t venture there and if you do, don’t linger. If you must, take a guidebook. Alone in the uncharted mind the smallness of a self knows horror, even dread. It’s not the noise. It’s the silence – the vacuity of nothing, an expanding and consuming nothing that reduces a man to a cricket in the chasm of the mind.
A friend asked, “Why do you drink?” To shrink space, friend. That’s why. To make the limitless measurable, to bind infinity, to constrain the mind from the endlessness of possibility. Nevertheless, a friend is a friend so I told my friend I would quit.
Now, Hesse wrote better than I ever could that nothing is more frightening
to a man than the path that leads to himself. Yes, Hermann, but what is so frightening about fright. It’s not being frightened that should worry us. Fright has to do with uncertainty. It has to do with the concern that something might happen. Fright is awful, but it isn’t the worst thing. What is more frightening than fright? What fear is more fearful than fear itself? What should scare us more than uncertainty?Certainty.
I am certain that I am sober and I am certain that clear-eyed and fearless I know something worse than fear. I know that I know what I know. I know that I can see the light. I know that there is a place where children sing and angels listen. But I know also of the darkness. I know a place where a man roars and hell bars its gates and hides the imps in the closet. Knowing is more awful by far than not knowing.
So my friend asked me, “How drunk were you?” How drunk would you be if you didn’t know how drunk you were? How old would you be if you weren’t yet born? What if you were dead? How far is everything from nothing? What is the color of sound? The mind is a damnable space!
But the questions of the mind don’t matter. Neither does it matter that I might fall along the way. I probably will. It’s not in never falling that we’re the strongest. It’s in getting up again each time we fall. At the risk of disillusioning you, readers, I will admit a truth. I don’t write this column for you. I write this column for me. And I need to tell myself in front of you why I’m trying. I’m trying so that I might live.
Dying is easier by far than living. The one is eventually over; the other takes forever. So why choose life over death? Why knowing over ignorance? Why suffer the damnable space of the mind that comes with being alive? Because dead I could not have my friend.
Dead I could not know my child in the fullness of time. Dead I could not lift my grandchildren so they could touch the ceiling. Dead I could not laugh at comedy, cry at tragedy or tremble at a fugue. Still worst, dead I could not have my friend.
If there were a god, surely he would have made us drunk. That would be the merciful thing. So surely there can’t be a god, just some accursed scoundrel who made life and made it sober. Or perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps the blessing of life is that the living of it kills you. What an ironic twist that would be. Maybe god is a trickster and maybe life a pun.
I can’t know any of these things, I’m just a man with a damnable mind. But I know that I know what I know and I know that I have my friend. For that, to be alive is a price worth paying.
I know this part gets easier. I have dried out before. I haven’t ever written of it. I haven’t ever admitted to anyone (not even myself) that I did it. It’s not the not drinking that’s hard. It’s the really wanting to live. Half-dead and sober is no way to go through life, which is why I’m writing this now. Sure, you readers help. But I’m writing this for myself to remind myself what I’ve chosen. This time I’ve chosen to live.
Boy is that a consequential choice! I hadn’t ever considered its implication. It implies accepting possibility, especially the possibility that life gets better. I want to hope that’s true. I really do. But standing in the damnable space of the mind it’s mighty hard to hope. Trust me, I’m trying, I really am. I just can’t let myself hope yet.
I will never write of this again. Not for me or for anyone. This is a bastardization of a craft and a perversion of a science. Writing is too important a thing to be wasted on one’s self. Done well it can make a difference, a difference that matters to you. Portrait of the artist my ass! If I want to show you me I should do so through what I write.
But perhaps, after all, I need to show you me and perhaps I need to see myself do it. Just as I’ve admitted why I write in the first place, perhaps I should admit that what I write about is me, be it a caustic commentary, a wry observation or a splendid tale of finery. Perhaps those things are me in fact and perhaps I should admit it. One thing I know is that I won’t know unless I can know what I know and for that, living is necessary.
So after all, why write this piece, this one in particular? I suppose here, at word 952 it’s time to ask that question and to search the damnable space of the mind for the answer. Thank heaven for nicotine and coffee. This one will require a break . . .
I wrote it so I could finally be me.
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