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Thursday, June 12, 2008

Good Morning Hilo

It's been five days since I’ve felt this way. Only now it’s not the same. Residue from previous over-indulgences leaving me bloated sweating and nervous. Thoughts worry my mind in rapid succession. It is a breeding ground for anxiety.

This room stinks. It smells as if sour milk were lit on fire. I am aware of this odor's source. It could be from the mold encrusted dishes that have been rotting in the kitchen sink. It might have something to do with the piss smell that surrounds the toilet in the bathroom; months of drunken men dribbling or simply missing the toilet has left its mark soaked into the fibers of the wooden floor. What remains is a poignant and now permanent stench. Sadly though, I know that the rancid smell is coming from me. It seeps from my pores in greasy beads of sweat. I don’t get out of bed. I hardly move, but still I sweat.

Trying to distract my mind from its alcohol depression I ponder my current situation. The unconscious yet overwhelming desire to see everything fall into ruin. The self-destructive nature of man. It is adherently destructive though not intentionally, the destruction is but a byproduct a symptom of something else entirely. In fact it is the desire to live, the desire to attain more than is possible that drives this fervor. Kerouac explained away his alcoholism as a love for "ecstasy of the mind". In a clever lyric I recently encountered the artist proclaims "I would rather have more life in my years than years in my life." It is a worthwhile venture, but this search, this groping for more life, for excitement, for ecstasy, like many things, is ultimately corrupted.

I am feeling like I should light a cigarette. Unfortunately I left the pack out on the front porch and I am in bed. What is the greater effort: getting out of bed and walking all the way to the front door and all the way across the deck for that first smoke of the day or not getting out of bed and resisting the body’s addiction to nicotine? The correct answer inevitably presents itself.

I need a purpose to live. People fall into addictions by a shear lack of vocation, or as a means of occupation... simply to keep themselves occupied so that they won’t have to sit around philosophizing and wondering about things they will never completely comprehend. William S. Burroughs wrote that "You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in any other direction. Junk wins by default." We become addicts because of an intrinsic need for purpose. Addictions overtake us by taking the place of this purpose or by merely distracting us from it.

Today I have no purpose save one. I stated that it has been five days since I have felt this way. The feeling I refer to is sobriety and it is a feeling that, for now, I would like to maintain.

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