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.

st. thomas's day

"no: a canadian winter for my money; or a russian one, where evry man is but a co-proprietor with the north wind in the free-simple of his own ears. indeed so great an epicure am in in this matter that i cannot relish a winter night full if it be much past st. thomas's day, and have degenerated into disgusting tendencies to vernal appearances. from the latter days of october to christmas eve , therefore, is the period during which happiness is in season..." thomas de quincey from "confessions of an english opium eater"________________________________________________________________________tom had, i think, ulterior motives in preferring a brutal winter...he was a long-time laudanum addict, "happiness might now be bought for a penny and carried in the waistcoat pocket: portable ecstasies might be corked up in a pint bottle: and peace of mind might be sent down in gallons by the mail coach."...an ample supply of the drug of choice and foul weather to insure that 1) no irritating neighbors or pesky creditors might drop by to spoil the mood...and 2) he wouldn't have to share...addicts can be a giving lot at times and their disdain for personal possessions has been called deeply anti-social in a consumerist society...but they are notoriously stingy with the drug of choice...i am, at darker times, as much of a fugitive from polite society as tom was...i get it...i don't indulge myself in tom's dislike for spring or other seasons ( gardening can be as reclusive a sport as drug use...the outside world falls away...i can get cranky if i am interrupted while working on a project...but it is a constricted business to garden in winter...and i get seeds "by the mail coach" the way tom got laudanum ) but i do indulge myself in his serial search for solitude...it is the first day of winter as well as st. thomas's day...we are nearing the end of tom's time-frame when "happiness is in season" and i am about to pull on my boots and head out to a garden to check on things...no one else will be there.

hour

"since 1966 every twenty years congress has given us another month of daylight savings. we're up to eight months now, and there's every reason to believe that the chamber of commerce, the national lobby of convenience stores-which account for eighty percent of all gsoline sales in the country- and congress will continue to press for extentions until we adopt a year-round daylight savings."
michael dowling. tufts university.

"indeed, so great an epicure am i in this matter that i cannot relish a winter night fully if it be much past st. thomas's day and have degenerated into disgusting tendencies towards vernal appearances: it must be divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return of light and sunshine..."
thomas de quincey from confessions of an english opium eater.

so...the swine at the chamber of commerce and the whores in congress have given me back the hour the rat bastards stole last march ( and will steal again in a few months)...they always take it on a weekend...on my time...souless freaks who want me to drive that extra mile to the mall after work because it is still light out...one stinking hour isn't going to save this economy...i'm with de qunicey on this one ( and quite a few others as well ) it's dark outside as i type this into the infernal machine and i see the attraction...de quincey was an addict who couldn't stand people in groups larger than three ( a devoted father and husband though...that can happen in spite of the drug...don't let the feds, or worse, the mental health professionals, fool you) and wanted to be alone with the drug as much as he could...call it a recidivist behavior, but i understand that aversion...it is deep seated and probably precedes the addiction...addiction as a symptom of a deeper discontent....sometimes it is all there is...that or disintegration...a twisted sort of survival mode...substance abuse counseling is a hard dollar because most of those poor sods have no idea what they are up against...it may seem like we've digressed a long way from daylight savings, but the addictions it feeds are just as symptomatic of a deeper discontent...the consumerist utopia is as much a drug as de quincey's laudnum...bring on the dark.

i am remiss
today marks the nintey-third anneversary of the great bolshevik revolution....some have called it a palace coup led by lenin and trotsky ( stalin was somewhere in a bit role that ate at him until he was in a position to do something about history )...but it seems more like a voteless election to me...the tsar was deposed and the only ones happy about kerinsky's continued pursuit of the first world war were the brits and the french...after all the bolsheviks were offering bread, peace, and land...that they did not come through on those promises should come as no surprise...they were politicians after all...and politicians burdened with a teleology that told them they were correct and everyone else was wrong so they could do what ever they wanted tot get to where the ideology said they were going...too bad isaiah berlin wasn't around then...if they'd been able to read him they could have saved themselves and every damned body else a lot of trouble...i reccomend his book "the twisted timber of humanity"...read it and get a grip.

"surely every body is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fire-side: candles at four o'clock. warm hearth rugs, tea, a fair tea maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without."
thomas de quincey


ten minutes past five in the evening and the sun is nearly set...home at last.