seventeen words

“infirmity and misery do not, of necessity, imply guilt”_________________________________ today is thomas de quincey’s two hundred and thirty-third birthday and i couldn’t let the day pass without a few words about the self-described “fugitive”, “pariah”, and “opium eater”…all addicts are fugitives…mostly from themselves ( not all though…there are other variables that can contribute heavily )…self-perception causes difficulties that engender the need for escape…we all run away at times…some just run farther…he understood addiction from the inside ( bill borroughs as well, if you are interested ) which is actually the only way to understand it ( and no i am not recommending it…easy to start…difficult to stop…proceed cautiously…which is something addicts scorn…the whole experience is rife with paradox )…he was well liked…especially by children…he sought the society of others…he sought solitude as well…” i am not particular as people say, whether it be snow, or black frost, or wind…i can even put up with rain, provided it rains cats and dogs; but something of the sort i must have; for why am I called on to pay so heavily for winter , in coals, and in candles, and various privations that will occur even to gentlemen, if i am not to have the article good of its kind? no; a canadian winter for my money; or a russian one...” why the desire for the harshness of weather? we come back to solitude…social he may have been, however if the weather is bad there is less likelihood of an unannounced, uninvited guest dropping in …no one to disrupt the ritual of use…or worse…to engender the social need to share the drug…addiction isolates even in a crowd… he understood how it changes…it never starts out with much of a hint of where it is going to end…he writes about the “pleasures of opium”…its effect on listening to music and its impact on the vividness of dreams…however he learned that at some point he “pleasures” flee and the addict is left with conflict…”there was the collision from both evils, that from the laudanum , and that from the want of laudanum”…the use of the drug ( whatever it might be ) in a cycle of withdrawal and use and all the issues that creates in social, economic, and physical terms…and a struggle…”to fight up against the wearying siege of an abiding sickness, imposes a fiery combat”…which brings out another point…he understood it was not a moral failing or a lack of will…he did ( and could )not frame it in terms of a genetic predisposition ( even though he hints at the possibility ) however he did understand that not everyone could or would become an addict…”there are, in fact, two classes of temperaments as to this terrific drug, those which are and those which are not , preconformed to its power; those which genially expand to its temptations, and those which frostily exclude them. not in the energies of the will, but in the qualities of the nervous organization, lies the dread arbitration, fall or stand.”…he understood he was one…”…the reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed opium rater, of whom to ask whether on any particular day he had or had not taken opium, would be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the heart fulfilled its function…” and tom was an addict for most of his life...although he succeeded, through what i can only imagine as an intense assertion of will, to get his dosage down to the extent that he could claim to have “triumphed”…that he did so is no surprise…overcoming addiction is not a collective endeavor…with or without support, in the end, it is the addict against the addiction…that “fiery combat”…we face our demons alone…tom took notes and wrote about it…he wrote about a lot of other things as well…essayist, critic, journalist, biographer…he continued to produce and died in december 1859 a few months past his seventy-fourth birthday ( as a side note…he was the only one of the wordsworth/lake poets cadre to live long enough to have his photograph taken )…he said, “ I have untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which fettered me.”…that “almost” rings hollow for me…one would have hoped he would have undone it completely and moved on…still…he did the best he could with what he had…like all people, his own condition concerned him and he could be remarkably self-absorbed at times...he never lost sight of a wider existence though…and he knew it was all transitory…and he also knew you have to keep moving forward even though it is moving into the unknown…”…and a grief which had not been feared is met by consolations which had not been hoped.”...all of human life in seventeen words…happy birthday tom.