100218 oi so say we compromise. say we can hit Snooze ONCE on morning seshs. That seems reasonable and do-able (for these 5 oclock ones anyway). m mind still seems REALITVELY blank. of course there is stil the usse of the overlapping mildog. But so then i gues i could set the alarm for 4:50? I’m not sure I’m ready for that level of insanity. Just seomthing about that “4” that seems i don’t know, too young to be plucked. I gotta pee. hang ong. it’ sjust that it’s so much like clockwork! if i get up at 5, i have ten full minutes to get a head start before millie junps in the shower and starts radiating the house with waves of activity. if i get up at 5 ten, we start at literally exactly the same time. she has such a rigid habit! this is so much easier in the summer, when i can get up early but not killingly early. you know what else this is so much ewasier when? When I haven’t smoked any weed the night before. I KNOW that makes it harder to get up. It may even be effecting the clarity of my dreams, too. They seem turgid. I can’t remember a single thing except a loose conflagration of voices, tumnbled over each other like dumped out matchsticks. What happened to all those trains and characters and late nite city events and intrigue and calumny? What happened to all that? Is it jus out of reach because of getting up so early by an alarm? Or is the self-medication killing it? I guess we’ll find out when we run out, cuz lord you know I can’t have the stuff in the house and not use it. That’s really weird when you think about it. I can take a break of a day, MAYBE two days, but then if it’s there, I’m going to use it. Like I’m never an incapacitated junkie or anything; I don’t drink myself to death or anything, but, quite simply: if there’s alcohol in the house, I’ll drink it. Not all at once; it’s not huge and horrible like that, but I will drink it if it’s there. If there’s weed I’ll consume it in one form or another. If there’s a snooze button, I’ll hit it. I mean, that’s just it, isn’t it? I am weak. If I don’t have set structures in place to shore up my weaknesses, then I am basically guided and bounded by them. Whatever they leave me, leftover like the scraps after Templeton’s done, that’s all I get to work with. That may be very limiting. I know they say limitation is the soul of creativioty, but I don’t think this is what they eant. (Who said that? I never heard anyone say that! I just said that! But it sounds like something someone would have said.) SO yeah, I don’t know. This is all so aware and mundane. I miss the thing where you wake up and there’s still mystical stalactites of weird wonders dripping down in slow motion perfect clarity from the calcite of your mind’s wet caverns. What do I have to do? 1. don’t hit snooze or else get up at 4:50 if you have to hit snooze once 2. get rid of the self-medication, but if I do that, there’s going to be this period of rough mourning. this backwards-glancing dull roar of regret. This already working towards the next scheme, the next plan, the next quiet manipulation of so-called chance events that will lead me towards being once again in possession of that gas pedal for the pleasure centers: *having something.* If you don’t have something, you’re at the whims of your own frenetic mind. Your bursts of energy. The way you whip through the kitchen putting dishes away like a madman robot. And then crash and take a nap at 2:00 whether you have time or not. Why can’t I relax without a chemical agent? Why can’t I slow down enough to love the present moment, without burning down the forests on either side of it? It’s really only the first three or four days or so that the present moment really jiggles like jello anyhow: those first few times after you acquire the substance are like a revelation. Like a big breath, and a big smile, and a growing wave of equanimity that spreads out from you like the invention of radio, time traveling backwards into space. But then it changes. You stop adding something; it stops being like a surprise massage from a new lover, and it starts being like a palliative. Like hospice for the death of your authentic inner centered self. Instead of going from normal beta waves into some kind of enlightened alpha, it’s like going from jagged waves of irritation into some kind of sedated compromise with yourself. You just get the dulled-edges effect; the inspiration subsides. It becomes, basically, a tranquilizer. If enough days pass by, you come to expect the feeling of being pacified, and you forget that it started out as something energizing and creative. It become a baby bottle for your addled nerves; you forget that your nerves are addled mainly by the distance between the present moment and the last time you sucked the nipple. Oh and it starts out real sexy too; and that fades pretty quickly as well. You aclimate to the subdued feeling, the numbed feeling, and pretty soon you’re jerking off just as infrequently as you did before. What’s so bad about normal life? Couldn’t you find some kind of a way to just relax and be open and loving without the sedation? Haven’t you been asking this same question your entire adult life? Well? Tai chi? yoga? Making some real friends? Having someone *else* to be physically intimate with? Yeah, but those things sound hard. They sound like a lot of work.