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Saturday, April 28, 2012

I'm Gonna Be Frank--This is an Essay About Drugs

The world today is toxic, and we’re losing our planet and ourselves to it. We bathe ourselves in chemicals, drink them, eat them, breathe them in and out, use them to power our cities, and clean our houses. We use them to color our hair or our skin or the walls of buildings stuffed full of chemicals. We use chemicals to make us attractive. We use chemicals until we get sick, then we use chemicals to make us better again. We pump ourselves full of chemicals, almost as fast as we’re pumping them into the earth. We inject them into the earth, pour them by the tons into oceans and rivers, and coat the skies with them.


It makes me sick.

I refuse to do drugs not because I think it is immoral or because my parents told me not to. I refuse to do drugs not because of middle school assemblies, because of any religious establishment, or even because they are against the law. I refuse to do drugs because I am fucking sick of chemicals.

Humans are, in spite of our protest, not divine beings—whatever that is supposed to mean. We are not only subject to the laws of physics, biology, and nature; we are manifestations of them. Any notion that any component of our existence might transcend these laws is mistaken.

Ironically, it seems that our true nature of being is best summarized by a passage from the book of Genesis, in which God tells man, “You are dust.” Most likely, the writer of Genesis intended for these words to focus on the mortality of the human race and its vulnerability in comparison to its Creator. However, they seem very appropriate when attempting to clarify the perishability and true nature of mankind. We are star dust.

Our lives are possible because of chemical reactions. Our flesh, insides, and brain matter are composed of molecules, which are composed of atoms, which are composed of even smaller units of matter we are hardly even beginning to comprehend. Hormones are responsible for our emotions. Our thoughts are electrochemical signals. Our personalities, appearance, and entire beings can be traced back to genetic coding and its interaction with the environment.

For quite a while, the inescapable scientific truth of our existence has clashed horribly with our preconceived notions about ourselves and the Universe. Put simply, the concern here is the conflict between religion and science, but in reality this is just the outcome of a fundamental issue that encompasses everything man has come to understand about his own consciousness, existence, and purpose in the world.

What is a soul, if DNA is responsible for one’s personality traits, behavior, and character? Perhaps it can be argued that the idea of a soul is indeed compatible with science and nature—that just because a person’s soul is composed of nucleotides and enzymes doesn’t mean it’s not a soul. I mean, what else would a soul be composed of? Divine particles? Those are particles, nonetheless.

Yet at the same time, where does a person’s soul go when they suffer a severe brain injury and can no longer talk or form coherent thoughts? When their minds have been so wrecked by misery or hatred or whatever-have-you that they are only shells of their old selves? People claim we can chip away and away at person as much as we like yet their soul will remain unscathed inside them. But if we really just keep chipping and chipping away, what could be left? What would distinguish one soul from another? Could our souls really be independent of our bodies? Of our brains?

Where am I going with this? Isn’t this supposed to be an essay about drugs? Yeah, I guess it is. I suppose I better get to the point soon.

What with all of man’s scientific ventures and discoveries in the past several centuries, perhaps the most disturbing question which has arisen in light of these discoveries concerns the identity of an individual. As I mentioned before, where does the concept of the soul fit into science? And if the soul is only a fallacy, what defines the self?

I guess the only remaining answer is genes. The environment. Memories. The mind. The body. But even those can be altered.

As I said before, we are alive because of chemical reactions. We are strange displays put on by the interaction of molecules and various reactive elements. One’s identity and being seems so volatile, and the definition of oneself is so very ambiguous and subject to change. How can we live with this? How can we continue to address ourselves as “I” and “me,” if we don’t even know who we are?

I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll ever find out. But in the meantime, I do not plan to taunt my body with stimulants and narcotics. I have no desire to plague myself and my body with even more chemicals than I already do, to afflict myself with further confusion about my own self. About who I am.

Furthermore, I don’t want my happiness to depend on my stash of weed, or nightly acid trips. I don’t want to wreck my body, already so frustratingly, terrifyingly fragile, with toxins and all of those countless chemicals. I don’t want to spend the rest of my short life in despair anticipating the next opportunity to inject myself with supposed magic potions which will bring me happiness, or fun, or remedy for pain, or whatever you want to call it. I don’t want to make myself numb.

At the end of the day, when it comes to drugs, I have this to say:

Hallucinogens are a poor replacement for dreams.

Junk and cocaine are artificial and meaningless when you compare them with emotions that don’t come through a needle.

Ecstasy doesn’t count as ecstasy when it comes from a pill bottle.

I’d rather not love someone on the condition that I have heroin in my bloodstream.

I don’t want my happiness to be drug-induced.

I want it to be real. Whatever real is, I would choose real happiness any day. I don’t want to live my live blissfully addicted to substances, and then suddenly in despair when I run out. I don’t want to live my life in a narcotic dream and then be trapped forever when I realize that dreams don’t last forever. I want to me, whoever “me” is, and not attribute the essence of my identity to the ground-up powder of some strange plant or leaf.

And if I can’t be happy, I would rather have real sadness than a drugged happiness.

I am a living, breathing unit of nature. I have no intentions to further upset the earth and myself by using drugs. And most of all, I’m so goddamn sick of chemicals. So goddamn sick.

And don’t get me fucking started on cigarettes.

Nick and Norah's Playlist Is the Best Movie Ever and the Terrible Atrocities of Misused Memes

That's it. That's the post.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Favorite Line from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened--Jim allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened. I judged it would take too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it, because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest."

-Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Side note: I fucking despise the new Blogger.

-Christopher

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Ron Mueck

Check it out. Fiberglass. And fantastic.















Unbelievable. I wanna meet this guy and see if he'll make an enormous sculpture of my dick!

But seriously, I really think these pieces are fascinating. I love the look on the mother's face in the third one. It absolutely makes the piece.

The Book of Love, by the Magnetic Fields

-Christopher

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Sunspot Island

Living on a Sunspot Island
With magnetic black palm trees surging, dizzy
And liquid-fire tides lapping at the banks
Smoldering charcoal under Ultraviolet Sky

Eyeless fish spirits flickering magma
And tiny Godlike bacteria glowing white-hot
Wriggling—divine—scorching Archaea on my ankles
Silence suffocating throbbing heavy
Like a trillion Earths
And gas volcanoes spewing heat
My black island jungle with its
Tendrils of fire-fingers
Drifting dank, burning

How curious, this place
It was heaven, I thought!
For surely Miles—Or Centuries, perhaps
Below this beach of ebony clouds
Below my blazing merman feet
Breathes some Ancient Magic age-old, omnipotent
Some explanation for the thundering animal pulse
That shoots up through the sand and my swimming legs
That makes lightning-cracks in my skull
I hate the cracks, for they let the
Fire in

This lovely black Sunspot Paradise
With radioactive shadows stretching long
And iridescent rainbow-patterns on the beach, wonderful!
I can see the flaming horizon waves
From my hotel window; (hotel—what?)
I’m alone in my hotel

Prehistoric monster-heartbeat shaking the red sky
Alone on my Sunspot Island
I think I must be some abandoned Angel
Left by God in a fiery cage with a manacled Titan monstrous
Who is Apollo? Who is Ra?
Not this beast that lives under my feet
Who is Christ? What is Man?
Where and When is this Sunspot Island?
Who am I, and Why?
Why, on this Sunspot Island?

Ah, but the Fire is in my brain

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Poem

Sunflower, Sunflower
Golden kaleidoscope smile-flower
That sways like wind-chimes in the breeze
You who delights the trees, and humors the bees
And sends little girls crawling on their rosy-red knees
Amethyst jewel of an eye flower

Moon-flower, soon, flower
The stars will sing you their hymns, flower
Silver-bell songs that crash through the clouds
Raining angelic dust on these perennial crowds
Your petals sparkling bright in ghostly white shrouds
Of dew drops that float to your leaves, flower

How, flower? How, flower?
You lovely pearl of a small yellow flower
How, how, could you ever--ever cease to sway?
To bring life to my day, draw both the wasp and the blue jay?
To make automaton people stray from their way
All for a whiff of this dream of a flower

Sunflower, Sunflower
Plucked from the hot brown earth, flower
Today the radiant sunlight it just tastes so sour
You’re gone from the world and I long to devour
Your feathery scent and divine quiet power
My guardian angel sunflower

Monday, April 9, 2012

Happy Easter and a Poem

Happy Easter, everyone! Or Kwanza. I guess it depends.

Here's a poem I wrote several nights ago. I don't know how I feel about it, so tell me what you think.


Lamp-lit island bedroom blazes flickering
Golden-aorta heart bedroom, blind pulsing
Stranded-sailor desert planet bedroom, silent-falling
Fog-swallowed wanderer bedroom lantern swinging
In this black ocean midnight house: heavy breathing

And my skeleton chatters between linen sheets
And my eyes dart fiery-veined frantic
And the window shades look like monstrous eyelids thick-skinned
And every noise I make sends explosive strands of thunder into the dark
And my heartbeat races, neon hummingbird wingbeat
Peering into that conscious cold absurd darkness; and

I hear the frightened floorboards squeal out there
Every time a phantom’s icy feet brush the wood
My nightmares sway and shriek out there
Deluge of darkness where I once stood

Ghouls and goblins drenched in night
Wandering souls that scream and weep
Breathing in those tufts of yellow light
I realize what I really fear is sleep

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

For those of you who have not seen it...

Behold.



Look familiar?