Strange Sunday night thoughts...

...at the end of another wasted weekend.

Well, I got a little bit of work done, posted pictures of cats and plane crashes and ranted semi-coherently about light bulbs...so how can I call it wasted?

Easy. All those things were part of the continual process of sublimation, which cannot go on indefinitely.

Aside from the normal total lack of money, the normal shortage of people who behave honorably toward me, the normal total lack of anyone with whom to share my tiny patch of the planet, the normal thoughts about someone I should never allow myself to think about and the normal total lack of worthwhile distractions from items 1-4, I guess I could say things are just freekin' dandy.

I ran across an interview with a performer who has had his battles with heroin. Strange stuff, horse. I've never tried it -- it is, at least for the most part, a rich person's drug -- but I've known a few people who got hooked on duji, and it really messed up their lives.

Funny thing: though they are quick to proclaim that living clean is better -- and a couple have managed to get off and stay off -- they still get that faraway, wistful look on their faces when they try to describe the stone they got from it.

I remember talking to a jazz musician friend -- who, to my certain knowledge, never did anything heavier than puff a little pot in the long-distant past -- who had nothing good to say about the white powder. Even so, he would sometimes say, "man, Miles did that sh*t, and Ray Charles, and they really knew how to lay down sounds...."

How did I get off onto this riff? I mean, I know hard drugs are nowhere. Lenny Bruce took the big fall after shooting a heavy load of smack; so did some other major-league people. I've never even seen the stuff. And I doubt I could stick a needle in my arm for any reason.

Okay, here it comes: I'm basically your addictive sort of guy. When I'm into something, I'm into it right down the line. Examples: when I started digging music I was into it solidly, and still am. I was handed a camera, and haven't been far away from one ever since. The first time I cracked 100 mph in a car (I was 17), I was hooked; I needed a taste of 150 (I was in my late 30s when I got there) and then had to feel the rush of 200....

Those are socially acceptable (maybe not the speed-thing) and no one would ever tell me to put 'em down.

But I had to get to my current age to develop my serious addiction. Like someone hooked on dope, I was promised the Ultimate High, the system-wide buzz that would carry me out somewhere beyond the moon. I didn't even have to sacrifice for it; it would make all my other cravings so much more intense, so much better when they were fulfilled....

The one about whom I should not think is my jones. From the first taste, I was hooked, needed the mainline dose. And I still do.

It doesn't matter that it didn't last any longer than a good shot of duji. It doesn't matter that other fools fell (and are still falling) for the untrustworthy seductive lure of that high, too. All that matters is that I'm hooked, and I need a taste, right now....

Love is the ugliest drug of all.

I was forced to drop that stone cold-turkey, and the withdrawal symptoms are pure everlasting hell, Jim.