Self-medication.

Self-meditation.

Selfish urges from the sub-conscious

Lurk just beyond the shadow-boundaries of the ego I.

What does it mean

to exist?

What do I do when I have nothing to do?

Originally, I must have felt some way.

Everyone has always told me that the one remarkable thing

about my birth

was that I was born with my eyes open.

I think my original feeling about life was a good one,

a feeling of openness and curiosity and hope.

I think outside of all the detours and depressions and orgies of self-destruction

I have always wanted to find my way back

to that place.

Self-medication.

Feeling out-of-place and out-of-sorts.

Feeling the need for something

to make things right.

In my early youth

I turned to pot

and pot is with me still.

Smoking pot comforts me.

It is a little ritual,

a form of prayer.

Smoking with my friends

expresses our tribal bonds.

Meditating with my friends

also expresses our tribal bonds.

Conventional wisdom seems to say

that as you grow older you move from one to the other.

I have always thought

“To Hell with conventional wisdom!”

Self-medication.

Self-negation.

Drowning the self in booze and sex and drugs.

It is not my normal mode of operation,

but it has at times ensnared me without the slightest warning.

Now bringing me into this time of crisis

where my medical-

and social-emotional-intellectual-spiritual-

needs must be accepted and addressed.

Now I must learn to stop playing

with fire, like an irresponsible child.

Now I must be careful and moderate

with my life.

Self-medication.

Self-centered thinking.

Thinking about boundaries, about how only I

am responsible for setting the boundaries

of my life.

Thinking about how many times

I have let those boundaries slip

and how the black and white borders

I used to perceive when I was young

have largely turned to shades of gray.

Again, conventional wisdom says

this is a normal part of growing up.

Again, I say, “to Hell with normal!”

But it sounds hollow

because I know

I must either change

or die.

I still love life.

Self-medication.

Self-denial.

Abstaining from everything.

Fasting and waiting and thinking—

Those are the three gifts

that come with a spirit that is free.

Self-indulgence

tends to become a habit. Obscures

the earlier clarity

which innocence

revealed.

In small stages

it is still possible

to move back closer

to that lightness.

Like a stream entering ocean,

Self-surrender

is always

a possibility.

11/21/04

Watertown, MA