"Enlightenment is a dodgy proposition. It all depends on how much you want to risk. Not money so much as personal safety, precious time, against a very remote long shot coming in. It happens, of course. Out of the dust, the clouds of sweat and breath, the drumming of hooves, the animal rises up behind the field, the last you'd've expected, tall, shining, inevitable, and passes through them all like a beam of morning sunlight through the spectral residue of a dream. But it's still a fool's bet and a mug's game, and you might not have the will or the patience."
-Grand Cohen Nookshaft
Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
p. 239


One has to wonder if a life of total failure as a possible outcome is worth the most important search in the world: enlightenment, to create a profound brevity of consciousness, imperceptible to those not there. I guess most people just carry on, indifferent to this sort of thing, but my outlook doesn't allow for that. As long as life is seemingly absurd and irrational, my mind will focus accordingly. This viewpoint itself eventually becomes ridiculous and in line with the madness of the world. You fall right into the trappings of these subtle mindgames. Fall right in and become object to your subject. In other words, you're far more fucked than when you started.

Hope certainly isn't lost, though. In fact, hope always dies last. There are companions to be found on this road. D-lysergic acid diethylamide-25, for instance. I certainly wouldn't recommend LSD to anyone, but it certainly worked for me, in the sense of freeing my mind, or rather me being freed from my mind. For the first time, I felt in control of my mind. Before (and since) the first time, my mind was always ahead of me, dictating and deciding before I could even get there, ruining groundwork and souring possible relationships. On LSD, though, I felt completely in the moment; it was me, and only me, living my life, a unity of mind, consciousness and body. I had no fear, no anxiety of all the situations that, in a "normal" mindset, would've made me uncomfortable or bored. All those stresses dissolved over the course of the day. Of course this is just my subjective opinion here, but I believe that for that day, I finally knew what it was like to be mentally clear, unburdened of any sort of neurosis. I could make profound decisions that before seemed so distant and impossible, like ending a very unhealthy relationship that became my worst addiction and my greatest waste of time. Not that I'm bitter toward anyone (well over a couple things, but that's being human), but I just realize that I could've been doing so much more with my life years ago. Let's take a trip back, let's try to figure out what's been tearing me apart all this time.

The earliest matter of pertinent information began, I think, when I skipped first grade. This was at St. Walter's Catholic School, an extremely secular private school. What I mean is that, in religion class, we were taught the metaphorical validity of the Bible. The stories were never meant to be taken literally; they're just guides for life. They even taught us evolution. Anyhow, even before 1st grade, in kindergarten, when it came time to read a story together, I was set aside to read my own story then write a report on it. Already standing apart, the first steps of being "different." Apparently someone higher up believed me to be smart back then, and seeing how old St. Walter's didn't have a gifted program, I was displaced into second grade after two weeks in the first, away from people I had just sort of made a connection with. Ostracizing was instantaneous, as you could imagine. I did not fit, at all. And it certainly didn't seem like I was wanted to fit in, and for all the right reasons, surely: because I'm younger than you, and smarter than you. Thanks, class of the ought, for exposing your insecurities to me repeatedly over 7 years. I learned a lot. Well, to be fair, a couple people were all right (even if I still feel you had adequate desk space), and I have resolved issues over the years, but, overall, I was never a part of you. That has been the pattern: not fitting in with any group.

I think it rather safe to say that this displacement from a somewhat normal standing to being the obvious outsider profoundly affected my outlook on life.

(to be continued, at some point)