This distinction made him angry. 'Have you the slightest idea how close we are to the end of humanity?' he asked. 'I'm a scientist and I'm afraid. Only from the morality inside us can we learn restraint and that morality must come from religion.' 1
Tempered by a Kerouac wanderlust girded by Frost's fork in the road, I weep tears of opium that morph as they slide down my cheeks. The brine on my lips is far from bitter and fills me with silent resolve.
I am an experimentalist, that is, when I try to avoid the blank stares I get when I tell people I am a spiritualist. I will try nearly anything just to see what I can learn from it. For most, this strays far from the path of a moral life, but I counter that my philosophy is a morality in and of itself. If God is omni/scient/present/potent than we and everything are all God. Everything we experience is God's experience. I dare not place a moral limitation upon God's experience, and I can honestly say this without ego. Of course, I am being rather vague in this daylog, attempting to get my thoughts out. I rely on the reader's knowledge of Teilhard and the idea of an Omega Point. This usually leads me off onto a tangent where I excitedly discuss evolution and my belief that it holds somewhere in it the very key to humanity's grandest spiritual questions. And now, I self-indulge.
My desire to emulate evolution, as I understand it, leads me to try every possible path, judging the benefits and detriments of each road. For the most part, I can safely say that I have developed a plethora of species and organisms in my self that cultivate, compete, and sometimes destroy.
I am an addict.
Lest my flow is awry, you could see how my philosophies may have led me there. The only problem I have with the previous admission is the present-tense inherent in it, taunting you with a permanent problem that cannot be overcome. The contradiction can be soul-shredding.
and they say that alcoholics are always alcoholics
even when they're as dry as my lips for years
even when they're stranded on a small desert island
with no place in 2,000 miles to buy beer
and i wonder
is he different?
is he different?
has he changed what's he about?...
or is he just a liar with nothing to lie about? 2
I have been in recovery now for five months. I live in my parent's house. I have no social life. I AM sober. I have learned at least one thing. Abstinence, when it includes even abstinence from life and the self, is a wraith's existence.
Sometimes there is such a thing as too much honesty, even here in the annals of E2. Whatever... my "give a fuck" has long since broken.
I have converted my family, and some of my friends, to exhorting preachers now. There are rules to follow, disciplines to adhere to, and a timeline consisting of years to plan on. Maybe I evolve faster, but I feel I have exausted this path. I move back to San Francisco, freedom, challenge and quite possibly chaos (which I often thrive on) this Monday.
I sat down with an actual preacher, a client of mine for some tech-support work, but also a friend of the family. He defined morality as taking the whole scope of all possible experiences in life and narrowing them down. Of course, I asked him, how do you know which experiences to limit yourself too?, expecting him to knee-jerk "The Bible" back to me, but I had already expressed my disgust with millenia-old dogma as a guide for life, so he thankfully spared me that. Still, there was a wisdom borne of compassion in his eyes that I find in any person of true faith, regardless of religion.
For me, morality is that which is best for your soul, body and mind. Add THE golden rule to this, being 'love your brother as you love yourself,' and you have an excellent roadmap from which to navigate your life. In my opinion, that's all religions are trying to do: give you a roadmap to get you through to the end in the best possible shape. I'll leave the subjective nature of "best possible shape" for another writeup.
you were always half crazy, now look at you baby
you make about as much sense as a nursery rhyme
love is a piano dropped out a four story window
and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time
i don't like your girlfriend, i blame her
never seen one of your lovers do you so much harm
i loved you first and you know i would prefer
if she didn't empty her syringes into your arm
here comes little naked me padding up to the bathroom door
to find little naked you slumped on the bathroom floor
so i guess i'll just stand here with my back against the wall
while you distill your whole life down to a 911 call
so now you bring me your bruises
so i can oh and ah at the display
maybe i'm supposed to make one of my famous jokes that makes everything ok
maybe i'm supposed to be the handsome prince who rides up and unties your hands
or maybe i'm supposed to be the furrow-browed friend who thinks she understands 3
I couldn't be happier and I couldn't be more afraid; "a liar with nothing to lie about."
1 A Point of View by Brian Walden - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4387563.stm
2Ani Difranco - Little Plastic Castles - Fuel
3Ani Difranco - Little Plastic Castles - Two Little Girls