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Tag Archives: famine

labels vs action

January 17, 2016
Uncategorized
1 Comment

To invoke the label “I’m an alcoholic” has always seemed to derail the conversation. TMI but as an analogy, I remember I had an enflamed gut, the doctor diagnosed me with gastroenteritis. “What is gastroenteritis?” I ask. “Inflammation of the gut.” Worthless circular logic.

Because a label doesn’t necessarily beget action.

So then to say “Well I don’t know that I resonate with labeling such as “Alcoholic”, what about to generalize to ‘Problem Drinker? That’s more behavioral / action-ey’ Because certainly I knew I had problematic drinking tendencies and I needed to behave better / more responsibility to reduce those problems. Except I don’t actually know how to “behave better” because I never fucking do and I would have figured this out by now if it were possible because that’s the solution I’ve always tried for.

So I try to take a step outside of the occasion of drinking: “I have problematic as well as known alcoholic tendencies that necessitate lifestyle changes which may include managing the amount that I drink.”

This is better but it is critically lacking to why specifically does my condition necessitate change other than to mitigate only Bad consequences? Because Risk Aversion is actually not a genuine motivator for me, and leads to question:

“For what greater Good am I in pursuit beyond merely mitigating the Bad?”

The answer is none.

I am pursuing no greater Good because I waste all of my physical time and health away with debilitating behaviors that enable me on a daily basis to never answer that question.

And truly in my heart, if not always my actions, pursuit of the greater good is the highest ideal of myself. The root of the issue is that I am not on that path.

So to be that person, and not to be the person I am that I don’t particularly like, there is one very specific task I can perform immediately to that end – to begin the journey, I must know Where I Am Going by answering the question “For what greater Good do I pursue beyond merely mitigating the Bad?”

In order to first answer that question, I must become sober, because otherwise I never will.

I don’t mean to cheapen the context of this lovely quote, but it has oddly stayed with me through the years: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank


feast & famine (II)

August 17, 2015
meter, metered poetry, rhyme, rhythmic
1 Comment

This is a rewrite of an older entry, but this here is my first attempt at legit poetry. Literally, mostly metered. If you make it to the end, obviously I need a real ending. But I think up to that point is a decent spur-of-inspiration.

Feast & famine

Life’s all right with adventure and movement;
Horizons span far and broad,
Unfettered by haze and fog
And noise and clutter.
And everything falls into place.

Try I might align myself, as prudent,
To as many harrowing odds;
Against better ways, and chance,
And poise, and balance;
With nothing to stand before me.

But alas should the sails fall flat, halfway through;
Or perhaps away all your crew
Have up and left you;
Straws drawn at dawn embarked, by dusk alone,
To a terrible thirst at sea.

And yet the cellars are dry, and so am I, oh why?
To weather the storm inside,
Abiding time in stride;
To try the tide to take its course – no guide –
And drift all along the way.

Without that pilot light that from all sight eludes me,
Curious to feel it gone but never burning.
So what did I do to deserve the flame, and what did I do to lose it?
Didn’t I care to waste not, want not?
And never abuse it?

I lie here a while in stow to prove it,
Concluding hereto it’s a soothing,
Illusion of forward moving;
For when I wash up at the shore,
Why the fuck was I on a boat?

feast & famine

November 13, 2012
Experience
1 Comment

The principle of the “Feast & Famine” is based on an experience I had paying a hand reader for a reading of my prints.

feast & famine

The wind at your back, the lights are all green. Calm and serene, yet sharp and enthused. Life is rife with adventure and movement, and horizons span far and broad, unfettered by haze and fog and noise and clutter.

And everything falls into place.

But alas should the sails fall flat, which they do. The cellars are dry, and so am I, oh why? What did I do to deserve the glow, what have I done to lose it? Didn’t I care to nurture the flame, to waste not, want not, and never abuse it?

My beacon extinguished, can no one see me at all.

But I can still see them.

***

Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his
environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left.
Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.

— Commissioner Pravin Lal,