The Righteous Drink

3...2...1. The bell rings and all you see is a cartoonish puff of dust like in old cartoons. After being locked up for 13 years in public school, the American worker has been trained to sit down and shut up between the hours of 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. When the whistle blows or bell rings, we're given our freedom back for 48 hours of reprieve. For the past few weeks, the sun has been shining and the one thing on my mind, drinking. It's a pavlovian response to stimuli. At first, it's a pretty innocuous thing. I have cut down my drinking during the week, despite the urge to pound as much liquor into my system has possible. I refrain and try to live a healthy life. However, the drudgery of the day-to-day of customer service is enough to make the strongest minds break and alcohol delivers that sweet relief. It's starts off as a few drinks but things can quickly escalate, as they often do. Fridays, I'd start off with a 12 pack of cheap domestic. I can usually pound 10 before heading off to sleep. Normally, I can wake up without a hangover so I'll head to the gym and the sauna to sweat out whatever poison I had in my from the night before. Saturday is the focal point - if I'm going on a date, chances are drinks are involved and I normally can keep my wits about me but if things go well, then it's another drink. If there's no date, maybe a few more drinks as I watch Netflix or whatever I have stored on the DVR. A hangover may or may not ensue. Sunday Funday, as we Millennials call the Lord's day, is not a righteous drink. It's well intentioned, enjoying the last few moments before the work whistle is blown at 9 AM Monday morning and that's when it jumps the shark. Deep in our lizard brain, I think if you are unfulfilled with your day job, it is real easy to drink to excess. I didn't realize it until I sat down to type this out. This is where it is an unrighteous drink. I'm not doing it for the sport of it, for the flavor or for the social lubricant. It becomes something to prevent the oncoming train that's Monday. Sure, there are many people who would love to have my job but not for the reason you think. In order to play, you have to work. We'll do things you wouldn't if you were a first grader being asked what you want to do with your life. To our own detriment, we hunch over keyboards and squint at computer screens. The weekend past was rather eye opening for me. I spent most of Sunday in a bar drilling cheap swill into my face while watching soccer. It was enjoyable at the time, but I secretly wonder why I needed this escapism. Is there a solution? Maybe finding an engaging vocation that is not only financially rewarding but emotionally rewarding? That's a start - it's overcoming the fear that change ushers in. An ex girlfriend of mine said that the song "Little Lion Man" from Mumford & Sons was an admonishment. I saw the ghost of Christmas future and I saw it all. Honestly, I wasn't happy about it in the slightest.

The Way She Goes

     One of the most influential phrases that I've ever heard was "It's the way she goes." I heard it first when I was watching the Trailer Park Boys and Ray was out gambling. When he lost, he said, "It's the way she goes." "It" was luck. A very simple logic, either it does or it doesn't. That's the way the muse works, either you're there or you aren't. Walking home from having a few drinks, I had the most brilliant idea I've ever had, but as the liquor set in - I lost it all. Something distracted me from my thought process and an hour later, I'm left wondering what that idea was.

     Has your grandmother said, if you can't remember what you were going to say, it must not have been important? I still remember being in my grandmother's kitchen when I was trying to regale her of a story of kindergarten but my thoughts came out faster than my words and I went ass over tea kettle. That's the muse and she's a fickle bitch. You could be in the zone, throwing bombs downfield and then you have a wet fart and it throws you off your game. Steven Pressfield talks about it in his book, "The War of Art" how the muse moves in and out.

     Full disclosure, I've always considered the idea of reality as a frequency and my attention, my locus, focuses on a certain frequency. The world exists beyond my focus, which may be a computer screen or a fleeting thought. However, there are actions and ideas going through the minds of co-workers in the same building, in the same neighborhood and expanding out infinitesimally. I like to make it more malleable.  I think of existence was an old-fashioned record or CD for the kids reading this. My attention is the needle or laser and it's focused on a groove in the album or CD. There is album/CD before and ahead of the laser but the only thing that matters is the laser/needle and where it is now. Let's say there is a force that skews the laser/needle to a different spot in the album/CD. The muse is the force and it moves me somewhere else.

     Where am I now? I still can't remember the epic idea I thought of while listening to a podcast regarding the intentions of extraterrestrial beings but now I'm thinking about writing an independent news outlet here in Portland. Was that previous idea suppose to happen or was it just the seed of what I was suppose to really do? I've been propelled towards journalism for quite some time, but it's been masked in escapades such as these. The topic in transhumanism is that we are the sex organs of the cyborgs. A marriage of flesh and technology. Maybe that's how thoughts work - it may not be their intended consequence but the bi-product. How many endeavors have you had where you started at Point A with the intent of Point B but landed at Point Q?

There's no ending to this. You're suppose to draw your own conclusions.

Summer Hours

Normally, I would be getting ready for bed around 10 PM, but tonight was different. The air was crisp with the smell of petrichor and a slight cool breeze. Drink in hand, I sat on the porch and wondered what could be and what was. I had a long, thousand foot gaze at nothing in particular. Another schluck of the cheap domestic beer assuaged the unpleasant feelings left behind from working a job that just didn't cut it. The din of the city and ruckus of the traffic was gone. Finally, a bit of serenity.

The days are getting longer and the nights are getting shorter as we reach fever pitch towards the summer solstice. The sun is at its highest point and those who live in the lands of ice and snow (queue the Robert Plant wail in the Immigrant Song) spend at least 24 hours outside in their cabins drinking and enjoying life. In the US, Memorial Day is the unofficial start to summer. Instead of remembering dead soldiers, most of us are getting shitfaced near a body of water.

I was recently chatting with a friend about the long weekend just passed and a lot of it, we were up late drinking, with a side of stinking. Looking back, I remember most of my summers in a browned-out state, memories bobbing to the top of the surface as if they were held to the bottom of a lake by hops and barley. Summer concerts, friends grilling outside, summer love, staying up late to have conversations with a friend - all of these things that we do. I often wondered if I was solar powered. After spending winters in Buffalo, trapped beneath layers of snow, I know spend winters drenched in torrential rain in Portland. It's easy to feel blue when all you see is gray. Needless to say, summers are meant to be cherished - none more than the denizens of the Northeast. Summers in Buffalo were abuzz with activity. Concerts, ethnic festivals, outdoor dining, girls in sundresses walking down Elmwood Avenue. Portland is much of the same, I just don't have the depth of experience as I do with Buffalo.

Summer is the thirst that cannot be slaked. It's like being adrift at sea and drinking salt water. No much how much you take in, you'll never be satiated. Summer usually comes on hard and fast and that's why we try to enjoy as much as it as we can. We binge on the sun because it gives us the energy to stay up that extra hour. Sometimes, we'll binge on the booze too. After all, that's what this blog is about. As with the summer sun, the line between too little and too much is the difference in wasting a sunny day inside watching mind-numbing TV and staying outside all day getting sun burned and heat stroke. In our pursuit of a good time, we fly like Icarus - too close to the sun and was crash back to earth unceremoniously. Dehydrated and hungover, we spend extra time in the shower in the hope that we absorb the water and minerals we last through a weekend at the cottage.

Moderation in all things, especially in moderation. The summer is when we seize the day because the sun has given us a few more hours to do so. To try to bottle the energy of the summer is a sin because it's the very essence of what makes it special. It's a fleeting moment in an otherwise dreary and mundane existence. So my advice is sunscreen and some extra water because snow is right around the corner.