Transcendentally As I See It

One's own kingdom is the best of ensconcement, fortification and revelry. Sleep sweet sleep and kimonos to wear, goblets to drink from; styrofoam containers in the fridge and Wagon Train in the insomniac's pre-dawn. The good always triumphs. The hell with trauma and real-time drama.

I am soon to retire from a life of "service". 30 years out it has become humdrum--not a struggle or even a challenge. I love you guys, but I tap out. I need an iced beverage and some downtime.

When I am free of drudgery I can see the big picture and so with hope in sight, I was chatting with T last night about spiritual economics. You almost feel crazy suggesting such a thing so as I always do, I referred Eric Butterworth just to grasp at some straws of credibility. In this age of glut, when it comes to 'manifestation', even Eric's burst onto virgin soil is lost under cheap paperbacks with cute, greedy little titles. His was, if I remember correctly, pre-universe and purely God. That's always been fine with me. I wholeheartedly accept that this whole event of ours is a short-sighted exercise in childlike beliefs that all of this wonderment could be all there is...or got here by accident.

I've watched a man for years now who says he finally realized a long time ago that there is no God. He is dead in the eyes and he never smiles.

He used to smile about how less than he others were, but even that seems to have lost its appeal. I would suppose, like so many others I've known (mostly in 'the chair' of my clinical office), that hatred gives way to emptiness and emptiness gives way to meaninglessness. At that lower rung it's just easier to let go and drop, but he hasn't gotten there yet. I think this may be where the concept of 'putting me out of my misery' came from. It's fascinating in a psychological rubber-necking way.

There are moments of violence sparking from him, but these seem governed at least by the constraint of some social principle when observed. I suppose there is still some shame to be had. This process of warding off shame and punishing others for his shame seems to be the devolvement of his soul even farther. You would hope that at the bottom rung of his grace that there would be surrender for mercy's sake and that lying down on the damp packed earth and letting it all be, amen, would be enticing. This isn't him yet. He still believes occassionally that harming someone else will remedy his downward and deepenng buried alive. He has over the last few months devolved toward a penchant for physicality in his attempts to torment others.

I have no compassion for him. He is addicted and at the end stages of his daughter's addiction while abstinent himself. I see his sort as the worst addicts on earth. They are the ones with the unabated disease while 'sober'. Who is sicker?

Codependency is also a fatal disease--the pathology so imprinted upon the nervous system that no chemical ignition is required. It is a sad and dangerous state.

I believe he commits acts of unrestrained violence when he can. They are his only enlivened periods, followed by self-hatred and a tedious wearing of the righteous man's facade.

Photo: Salvation, Marie Monroe