Monday, May 26, 2008

Experience Maintenance

After overthinking my depression into a state of worsened emotional confusion and physical illness I realized that this was one of those days where healthy completion, communication, and resolution is not in order. Instead – raw hard escapism is all that would lift the malaise and clogged sinuses.

One escape route is never enough. Besides, I’ve tried them all. I know the alleys and tunnels of release so well that they don’t distract, tips worn from running my fingers along the walls to blindly navigate the tortuous and pigmented trails of my self-imposed passage to obliteration, all I think about is “left turn here. Stop. Pick up trap-door. Down two floors. Around the corner. Ah, sunlight.” But I’m still depressed. And sick. And present.

No, I’m too encrusted and well-patterned for simplicity. I have fashioned my own currency out of the contrast between boredom and entertainment and having pressed the levers all so many times: it takes a complex and surprising circus to bring a smile to my face.

Today’s? Bathing with Nitrous. Bubble-less bathwater provided the weightlessness and sensory shift as a dais for the whippets. The danger of drowning and dirty text messages I sent everyone I could imagine fucking me completed the equation. A little death and sex with your bathwater and drugs, anyone?

Chuckled to myself realizing it had been far longer since I took a bath than it has been since I abused inhalants. Held a hand mirror in front of my face and giggled at my lips turning blue, but canceled out that moment of glee with the reality that having a cold on N2O reduces the effects dramatically. Realized the tension I was holding at the base of my spine and felt the Kundalini coil so tightly against my attempts to unsettle, squeezing the gaps out of the possibility of release – edging its teeth into my sacrum. Thankful (and not) for its holding on, for my strong baseline – another balloon. And another. And another.

The process becomes routine. Receive dirty text message. Put balloon on cracker. Put whippet in cracker. Hold hand towel over freezing metal, release whippet into balloon. Inhale nitrous oxide gas, hold it in, breathe out into balloon, re-inhale, hold, breathe out. Sink below the water. Come up for air, let ½ of bathwater out, re-fill with warm water. Send dirty text message. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

I think of all the famous drug gurus that have died in their bathtubs. I think of Addiction, not the small-a kind I enjoy that still gives me the delicious high every time, but the people with the big-A kind – the ones that are locked in a repetitious and laborious cycle just to feel better than sick and depressed every day. I think of how some of these scrimp and spend more money in a day than my Googleaires make. How nothing is as motivating as the need to feel right and settled in oneself.

Soon – the labor takes over the experience. I can’t feel anything sensual whatsoever. Instead, just mindless repetition – a 1950’s telephone operator patching and re-patching a signal. The flow of traffic. The rhythm of breathing. The ebb and flow of tides. Everything I give, I receive. So why give? Or why not give it all and be done with it? Why *not* throw out the baby with the bathwater?

Consciously: I am disappointed. It sounded more fascinating than it was. Upon rinsing, re-hydrating and recouping I realize in shock: I feel better. Much better. Both physically, and mentally. I feel accomplished. I feel like I have done something productive. All that work for experience maintenance: it sure paid off. Instead of providing a purely chemical relief it was the relief of a job well done. I re-realize that it matters not what we do with our time, there is no inherent value to activity, but only that we fulfill our imprinting and biology, a day spent working on a cure for cancer has as much value as what I’ve done with mine. I am comforted. I slyly pat myself on the back for knowing, somehow, in some way, how to take care of myself.

8 comments:

Diablolita said...

Happy Memorial Day!

Anonymous said...

Happy Memorial Day to you too!

Ah yes, the familiar pastime of nitronaughtotextobathing.

Now that even those pathways are too well known to distract, you'll need at least one more infix. May I suggest -nerdo-? You could simultaneously watch videos like this: http://idle.slashdot.org/idle/08/05/24/1335258.shtml.

Really I just wanted to share that video ;-)

Luv, Jeremy

Diablolita said...

Pretty funny that everyone thinks that this is journalistic and not fictional. I refuse to comment. Your feeble attempt at spamming my blog has failed because you did not correctly format your link. I could be a dupe and reformat it to work, but I'm not because no one will watch a video on a site that has crappy buffering anymore.

Luv, Diablolita.

P.S. Nerd funny.

Anonymous said...

:-P

You're right, it's clearly fictional. The activities described would be totally out of character! By which I mean, I've never known you to take baths.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9dpTTpjymE

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Wow, I am really not a good spammer.

the actual link

Diablolita said...

Aw, cute noob spammer. I should take pity on you, Mercury in retrograde and all. But I don't. Observe my related but better spam.

7 said...

As I always say, what's life without a little death?