Filed under: Canada
“… but every junkie’s like a settin’ sun”
they are so easy to despise … the abominable addicted … cocaine, crack, crystal meth, heroin …
walk down the right street and they are impossible to avoid … accumulating like garbage in the gutters of the city … walking skeletons, dead eyes … desperate, degenerate and depraved … one after another after another …
we look at them as we would look at pigs in a pen … strange, separate, different …
avoid eye-contact … noses held high … pretend you don’t notice … careful not to touch …
’such a shame’ … ‘wasted lives’ … ‘weak and pathetic’ …
what a joke …
am i any less addicted ??? … are any of us ??? …
coffee shops are the easy example … blenz, waves, timothy’s, second cup, starbucks … timmy ho’s … how many canadian street corners spew legal speed to the desperate masses … i can’t work until i have had my morning coffee … can you ???
‘i’m not addicted’ you say … oh yeah ??? … if you are not addicted, i challenge you to give up television for a month … no ??? … ‘Why would i?’ … you say … ‘i like tv’ … hmmmmm …
one step further … i challenge you to go as long as you can buying nothing except what is absolutely required to survive … how long could you, could i, last before we indulge a desire … before we walk past something in a store and just HAVE to have it … how long ??? … a week ??? … a month ??? … what a pitiful joke we are … weak and pathetic …
coffee, television, consumption … what about food ??? … sex ??? … celebrity culture ??? … vanity ??? … we are all addicts …
you say ‘oh, that’s different’ …
but is it ??? …
how is it different ??? …
we feel a ‘need’ … by fulfilling it we feel a temporary, pleasurable physical and emotional sensation … that’s all it is, isn’t it, when you have a cheap orgasm with somebody you barely know, when you tune into grey’s anatomy, when you buy those jeans … temporary physical thrills caused by a sudden release of certain chemicals into certain pleasure centers in the brain … cold, hard cash for temporary highs … hmmmmmm …
you say ‘but they are destroying their bodies’ … and that fast food run you make every other day isn’t ??? … you who sit in front of the television for hours every night, passively entertained while your brain … your ambition … your imagination … slowly rots and dies … do you know how overweight our culture is ??? … best not to mention the emotional toll taken on insecure teenagers and adults alike by celebrity culture … and the desire to be beautiful … wasted lives …
‘oh, but what they are doing is just morally wrong, drugs are illegal after all’ … laws set by the powerful in their best interests … have you ever heard of coltan ??? … coltan is a wondrous mineral that makes things like YOUR cellphone possible … most of the world’s coltan comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo … remember the Congo ??? … one of the poorest nations on earth … the bloodiest war since WWII … still raging on behalf of our lust for technology and gold and diamonds … war funded by wealthy foreigners, fought by cocaine addicted 12 year olds with ak47’s … morally wrong ??? … such a shame …
‘but i NEED my cellphone’ … need ??? … need ??? … hmmmmmm
there is one difference i will acknowledge … the man strung out on crack cocaine … the woman desperate to sell her body for her next meth hit … they harbor no illusions as to what they are …
can we say the same ???
we pretend to be clean while indulging our every ache and desire and ‘need’ with sugar, caffeine and prescription narcotics …
we pretend to be good while our greed and desire and apathy permits and supports unimaginable atrocities all over the world …
we pretend to be kind while pretending we don’t notice the stinking, suffering humanity crying out for help on the sidewalk under our feet … talking about meaningless rubbish on our $500 mobile phone …
yes … when it comes to hypocrisy, the ‘addicts’ and us normal people really are not the same … i am not sure, however, that this justifies our misguided moral superiority or self-righteous indignation however …
the reality is … we are all addicts …
we are addicted to ‘want’ … or rather … getting what we want …
we don’t know how lucky we are that our lives have never dropped us so low as to send us looking to relieve this want in the dark places of the world … places where the psychological imperatives we all feel; to have friends, to be accepted, to be loved … are speedily and silently perverted into overwhelming and irresistible physical needs …
because really, that is all that makes ‘them’ different … you are just as helpless in the face of your desires as they are … when they cave into their desire, at least they have the excuse that every cell of their body is screaming in agony for their addiction to be fulfilled …
what’s your excuse ???
what’s mine ???
peace and love …
a quote from his farewell speech …
“But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere.”
Definition of “ideology” from dictionary.reference.com/
= i⋅de⋅ol⋅o⋅gy
1. the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group
examples of ideologies:
- capitalist
- democratic
- free market
what a complete jackass …
CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES COME ON !!!
Filed under: Canada | Tags: Confusion, Culture Shock, Homelessness, Poverty
i haven’t posted in a long time … i should explain that, but i don’t want to … i will say only that i have written a lot of posts that have never seen the light of day … someday, maybe …
i am in calgary right now, staying with my brother and his lovely wife to be … i have been back in Canada since the 22nd …
it has not been easy …
i have found myself, on occasion, sitting alone on the floor in the dark with my head in my hands …
some things just don’t reconcile … 2 contradictory truths … or 3 …
i have written about this … usually i write towards a solution … can’t win ‘em all …
the problem is … the contradictions strike at the very core of who i am … there is no way i can win … no matter how the pieces fall … i lose a piece of myself that i wouldn’t trade for anything in the world …
there are some things you just can’t forget …
in a couple hours i am leaving for vancouver … i have never been to vancouver … i am taking nothing but a couple hundred bucks, a ticket home in 1 month, a toothbrush and a change of clothes …
i have never been so scared of anything in my life …
i don’t know what i will do, how i will eat, where i will sleep or what i will look like when i come back …
i already don’t recognize the face in the mirror …
as always … i am happy and supremely confident in myself (though not sure who ‘i’ is anymore)… and that the Universe/God will guide me …
still terrified though…
i am telling people i am going to ‘find one solution that will help low-income people make a little more money’ …
somehow, though i speak the truth, i hear it as b.s. even as the words leave my mouth … what i really believe is that what vancouver will teach me will be nothing like what i expect …
and i wouldn’t have it any other way …
thanks to all for so much love and support … as of Feb 5th, my journey is officially over … many pictures/stories/etc. will be ‘unleashed’ in some form soon after that time …
happy new year my friends !!!
