Pegasus

Noon.

The only power I have is over my recovery. Something happened that reminded me of having withdrawals from alcohol six to seven years ago. It’s an awful cycle to be in. Another thing is my disability, which denies me even more power and freedom. It makes sense that I take inspiration from things like Black existentialism, in which the need for freedom screams to be heard and understood. Only once did I dream that I was flying in my sleep, a dream that symbolizes freedom pure and simple. Being free is not just a delusion you talk yourself into; it’s a state everyone understands intuitively, or else we couldn’t express it in words. As my life proceeds, it feels like more and more bars are added to my prison cell and my worries multiply all the time. People shrug and call it responsibility or being a grownup. But is it normal not to have any fun and happiness with your life? Does the sun bargain for its right to shine? Or horses with wings their right to exist? 

Puissance

Quarter after eight.

I kept dreaming about Richard Wright this morning, the leading proponent of Black existentialism, and how I’d like to start reading more of his stuff. Then I got up and fed my dog a half can of Purina turkey and sweet potatoes and made myself ready to go out to the store. It was nothing very exciting; I saw only a couple of things a little different from ordinary on the road. One was a brown paper bagful of stuff on the curb by the old car lot destined to be an auto repair shop. Also I saw scuff marks on the asphalt of N Park before you get to Maxwell Road. I was thinking what a grungy place that was, and how did I ever wind up being a street urchin, albeit one with a house to live in. It was my choice to sell my truck five or six years ago to a drunk with a name like Jerry. The fair thing to do would have been to sell it to my Mexican friend, but he was illegal and the situation then was very delicate. Otherwise I gladly would have done it. It makes me think how unfair things have gotten for all kinds of people, how backwards we’ve been going, and my impotence to do anything to change it. I can only write my dumb posts hoping to persuade readers towards better attitudes. This is how I can contribute, though it seems trivial. 

Questions

Today I almost pulled out my Richard Wright and finished reading his essay on How Bigger Was Born. I think I’ll do that anyway. But it’s rather strange to think of megalomania and radical libertarianism, etc; and I still believe I was directed into it by having Trump for president recently. Then again, Black existentialism doesn’t really sound like Trump’s cup of tea exactly. So I wonder what is meant by “empowerment” and so forth, and why is “freedom” so important to some people? I’m beginning to feel skeptical of this attitude, and it seems unrealistic and anything but ordinary. Again it’s megalomania, a view of life that’s larger than life, totally exaggerated and puffed up out of reasonable proportion. And these qualities are like the former President. It isn’t too much to call it quite crazy. To some extent it’s an American view, but it’s blown way beyond reason, sense, sanity, and limits.

What does empowerment really mean?

Even Ralph Ellison wrote that people wouldn’t know what to do with freedom if they had it. Or anyway, he suggested this in the prologue to Invisible Man.

I don’t have the answers to my own questions.

The idea of freedom makes us feel good, yet power is an addiction like other addictions. And this brings up Tolkien again in the figure of Gollum and what the ring did to him.

What’s the difference between freedom and power? Is that a jump in my logic?

Blow It Away?

So that’s a couple of things on my mind. And then I’m trying not to think about the election year next year.

We need Superman to intervene, but he is not Donald Trump.

Another odd thing, the whole Nietzschean idea of the ubermensch, and how I got pulled into it for a while. I wonder where it came from, though I’m guessing it was the political powers that be. Now I think I’m more self aware. The phenomenon of power is an addictive and corrupting thing. It’s also very dangerous, especially in the wrong hands.

Trump is a larger than life figure with a charisma that I can’t explain. I think it’s very strange how he could worm his way into my mind and do some damage. And it makes me reevaluate my blog and my reasons for doing it the past few years. And maybe I should blow it all away and forget it all.

I just want to be ordinary and “normal.” At the least, I should change the focus of my blog writing. I’m not sure how I’m going to do this, but time provides an answer.

John Carter

Eight o’clock.

I anticipate seeing Gloria a couple of hours later. It’s a cloudy and wet day again. I catch myself holding my breath and tensing my abdomen instead of relaxing and just being. Is everyone so unhappy with their life today? Maybe the illusion of happiness is as good as the real thing. You can find it in a bottle or aluminum can. A professional used to tell me I was pissing my life away. It’s a difficult question. Why is sobriety undesirable to some people, and why is escape so appealing? Probably everyone would like to live in a world under their control. I guess that’s what writing is for. “Haven’t you heard, it’s a battle of words…” And if a person had the freedom he desires, how would he use it? AA members say he would drink it. Their solution is to throw yourself into doing altruistic deeds and forget your own desires.

If you were John Carter, telepathically shuttled to Mars, a whole world to conquer, what would you do with your power? Perhaps a wizard would say destroy the power; live and let live. It leaves me feeling rather unsettled. At the same time, the sun comes out and there’s blue sky in the west.

Let the day take care of itself, and of you and me.

Why is trust so hard? Everyone is a critic. We all see ways that life can be better. The art of acceptance gets more and more difficult as things go more and more haywire. If we’re all in the same boat, then why can’t we steer it in a better direction?

Sometimes I could opt to be John Carter…

The Will

Seven thirty.

So far I don’t know how I feel today. I’ll be seeing Gloria at nine this morning and maybe we can go do something fun, like a trip to the bookstore. The day yesterday went pretty badly except for early morning. I guess I was feeling lonely and uninspired. It’s totally reasonable to do something for recreation, especially when I never do anything like that. Going to church is just a shot of indoctrination every Sunday and it gets wearisome and irritating after a while. “If it’s all compliance, it’s a runaway train.” For a change I want to take control of my life. For so long I’ve felt powerless like a man with no balls. So much of rock music is about liberty and happiness, a message I grew up with, but somehow my life got derailed all over again when I gave my power to authorities outside of myself. “You lock the door and throw away the key / There’s someone in my head but it’s not me.” I used to write lots of posts on empowerment and I believed every word of it. But at some point I sold out my values to the agency and let them take over everything— except my bank accounts. I still have power over my finances, luckily. Generally I feel that I’ve been bullied into my current state of affairs, and I wonder what it’ll take to reclaim my rightful will. Because, the power is ours originally, to either embrace or throw away. It’s very difficult to get it back once you give it to someone else. This is my circumstance today. 

Liberty Bell 🔔

Well I’m glad this morning is behind me and I have two days now to rest and take it easy. I started writing in my new journal this morning: really pleased with it. Seems to inspire me to better thoughts than ordinary blank books. A while ago I returned to my old theme of individual freedom, especially in Continental thinking, for instance Spain and France over the centuries, from Cervantes to Sartre. I just love that stuff. I always get excited for the idea of personal liberty, whether or not it’s illusory, perhaps an impossible dream. The point, I guess, is to keep the dream of freedom alive in our imaginations and work towards its realization. It’s awfully easy to get depressed with the belief that we are nothing but pawns in a government game, puppets controlled by a master puppeteer. This is especially true if you are a mentally ill person snared in the system, having to take the medication and jump through the hoops that ultimately boil down to economics and the associated greed and corruption. Even if freedom is only a dream, still dreams inspire people to action in the end. I might argue that Edgar Allan Poe flew to the moon just by writing a story about it, because posterity made his fantasy a reality, inspired by his original idea.

Hot Air

Ten ten.

I had a good visit with Tim from church when we had coffee and a scone at Black Rock and then walked over to the dollar store to get a few things. It’s sunny today and forecast to be 59 degrees later on. I guess if I had to be graded on my independent living I’d get a D, or a low C at best. But this doesn’t really bother me right now. Tim remarked on my neighbor’s Spirit of 76 flag on his house. I shared with him that he’d told me that all you need to know are reading, writing, and arithmetic. Tim said that was classic. Oh well; politics is pretty silly stuff. It’s the ideology of the “real world,” but how useful is it in truth? Or how truthful is it in use? It seems like a lot of rhetorical hot air, though I’m fairly guilty of doing the same thing when I make posts. The purpose of my writing is ostensibly to raise consciousness for the fact of mental illness and try to empower those people. Also it’s to integrate their voices with those of the mainstream, at the same time being aware of the difficulties they face.

Quarter of eleven. Today is the calm before the storm Tuesday morning, so I’m going to appreciate this time, maybe read a book or write in my journal. I can play the bass if I need to let off steam or vent feelings of anger and frustration. 

Manuscripts

Quarter of ten at night.

I’ve awoken feeling overheated because the dog was plastered up against my side in bed. Before I slept, I made some personal notes while the rain trickled down like a narcotic lullaby. I said that I miss my old friends from an alcoholic social network and observed what an outsider I am today, not really belonging to any group of people because I can’t commit myself to a particular system of beliefs. I certainly don’t feel like waiting for the Second Coming to have something like happiness with my existence, and I don’t think life has passed me by; instead, it should be just beginning. I’ve spent most of my life being meek and mild, the thrall and victim of authoritarian parents who handed me down to my siblings to control, until finally I broke away from the whole family quite deliberately. I remember having dreams of my mouth being sewn shut, and even in my sleep I tried to speak but couldn’t get the words out because of the stitches. And if not for the power of the written word, my life would still be out of my own control, yet you know it’s a real struggle even now. The world is set up to be a devouring cannibal, always keeping the upper hand and gainsaying my every thought, as if it were criminal to hatch one original idea. But the progress of the human species ultimately depends on original voices, much as our philosophers are stuffed into a bottle and thrown in the sea, a desperate message of distress afloat on the waves towards unknown shores very far from here… or a bottle stowed in a balloon and released on the winds to seek its fortune long away.

Eleven o’clock. I just got an email from my friend Mark, the drummer and composer who lives in the south part of town. He included a link to his Craigslist ad and asked me to call him tomorrow. I can hardly wait until then, though I’ll bridle myself and keep a level head. 

Independence

Quarter after eight.

A few hours ago I read “The Delicate Prey” and didn’t like it very much. So much of Bowles deals with helplessness and victimization. Sometimes his characters are at the mercy of their own unwise impulses and bad decisions. If I were a member of AA, my Higher Power would be independence, which is really a contradiction with the meaning of the program. And if there’s an essence of independence, I wonder what it would be. I could never admit to absolute powerlessness, the first step of AA. It is just the opposite thing that is needed: empowerment… It must have rained all night long. Now it’s cloudy with a little sun at intervals. The anniversary of my mother’s death happens in two days, marking twenty years that I’ve been living on my own. It’s been far from perfect, but I managed to stay alive against very unfavorable odds. The forecast says more rain at noon. Maybe I’ll get home from church before the rain starts. On the other hand, it sounds like a shower right now… Yesterday, my brain was riddled with superstition, so I had to stop and assess what was wrong. But by now I seem to be feeling more or less okay again. Feelings of terror and helplessness are not constructive, so I consign all the past with AA and the other trash to the wastebasket.