Sickness overtook me this week like water over space. Whenever I get sick, I don't mess around. Storm clouds attack our windows as my head fills with blood drums, African infomercial chanting, the patter of bare feet dancing on sand. This alteration of perception is almost worth the pain it is packaged in. Almost.
Nietzsche said that suffering makes us stronger, Voltaire wrote that the anguish of any life is one drop in an unconquerable sea, Dostoyevsky said that prolonged agony leads to pleasure.
Is suffering necessary to color the soul, or does misery appear with passion? The original blues strummers starved while white men grew fat from their licks. Did Van Goh's madness drive his art, or art drive his madness? Or is it all unrelated, and art just an involuntary aspect of life like a birthmark or a giant penis?
Captain digression strikes again! Sickness makes me prone to wild inquiring. So, what is the story behind your most profound experience with disease? Years ago I had pneumonia and was sick for months before I made time to flem-surf to the local urgent care facility for antibiotics.
Could I have gone to sleep coughing and drowned before dawn? When you are confronted with death, you never make it out the same. Do you know that you are alive? The human brain can slow time, could all our lives be speculative imagination of a flashed in future at that sanguine moment when life slips by? Do you really know you are alive? Are there any sacred things which provide you with that sweet illusion of existence?
A toothache, a smell of vanilla, hard nipples in soft dark, torched alveoli, the sweet toxicity of feme fatal, the bitter poison of strong drink or the warmth of a familiar hand. The numb dragon of oblivion devours his own tail, and there is no middle ground within his dull coils. Pain leads to strength, strength leads to courage, courage leads to freedom, freedom leads to pleasure, and pleasure is the only way to escape the clutches of adversity that pervade the earth like termites in a dying tree.
Some believe that pleasure is self-feeding, a vehicle to ride in. Some believe that pleasure can only be attained by conquering those who stand in the way - the greedy, the terrorist, the tyrant, the enemy of the moment, joy as a sunset to die without reaching. I am of the former persuasion, but then I was raised by hippies. Which group do you believe is more happy? All I will say is that tie dies are more comfortable than neck ties.
What have we learned from this inquiry?
1. Nietzsche has a good reputation in philosophic circles because anyone who can spell his name correctly must surely be wise.
2. Cigarettes combined with mucus make your sinuses taste like an ashtray.
"I licked an ashtray once, and I'll tell you, it was nothing like kissing a smoker"
3. The Eskimos have 100 words for snow. The Russians have 500 words for anguish of the spirit.
4. Pleasure is sacred; take it in when you can. Butterflies explode from my toaster. My ceiling leaks tar. My cat speaks in tongues. Time to pop another cold pill. Hope your company brings you comfort and your world soaks in beauty. Cough, cough, much love. |
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