Just a "Normal"
Trance
by
Dick Prosapio © 2006
We had a crew show up to put "seamless" gutters on
our place not long ago. As I followed the foreman of the group
around the house to re-cap what we had agreed upon, one of the crew
passed by and I got a whiff of pot.
OK. No big deal. He's a young guy, probably mid
twenties, and if he wants to work stoned, well, that's his business
I figure. I don't know how well anyone works that way. I know I
couldn't have done it back in my own stoner days. And later, when I
could tell he was coming down, he started making mistakes that the
foreman was catching him on.
Just before we signed up with this outfit we got
an estimate from another couple of guys one of whom was also loaded.
This time it was alcohol....and he was the head guy. That struck me
as a problem. It was ten in the morning and he already smelled like
ten at night so we passed on using them.
c
Elizabeth tells me that a statistic she heard the
other day noted that 93% of Americans do not exercise. This goes
along with the sky-high number of our citizenry that is considered
"obese". What was that number, 30 or 40 %? The latest news says "58
million overweight, 40 million obese" etc. (annecollins.com/obesity/statistics).
So a large number of these folks are sitting around, in some form of
stupor, packing on the weight and avoiding life. An active
participation in it at least.
Eliz and I were set to watch a movie the other
night and she got into a phone conversation that kept her engaged
for close to thirty minutes. While I waited for her return, I
channel surfed. We don't have cable or a dish, just regular TV.
Other than a PBS program I had already seen there was a "reality"
show on. I never watch these things but something in this one caught
my attention.
OK, it was the nubile, young maids in the (very)
small bathing suits. The attractive flesh of these folks seemed to
be animated by brains even smaller than the suits, but hey, for the
short time they were exposed, I didn't care if they could add
and subtract. But other than the titillation, I didn't get the
point. Of course, maybe that is the point.
I know that my tendency to get hooked by an
intriguing "series" on TV is fairly high so I avoid this stuff like
kissing someone with the flu. (Unless she's wearing a very small
bikini of course.)
What is it with all this "escaping"? What are we
trying to escape from? I quit drinking heavily when my body said
"Stop!" in very pragmatic ways. I quit smoking dope for mental and
emotional reasons, I just didn't want to be disconnected from Life.
I didn't want to miss the gifts that reality presented. Especially
the gifts of the wild and natural world. That would just be my
introverted, backpacker speaking. But there was also the very real
and natural interactions with people. Being stoned and interacting
can be a barrel of laughs.....and then?
In my experience, "and then" was followed by "not
much" including a memory of the event. Drunk, stoned, wasted,
blasted, f-up, blitzed, bombed, out-of-it (out of what?) all of it
became a real waste of time. And a waste of the potential for
"magic". And by that I mean, lost opportunity for something
really important to happen. Like a genuine, not drug influenced,
communication. Something with use-full meaning.
Really.
Like just a short time ago when the three men in
my men's group finally convinced me, with lucid and intelligent
persuasions, that I do love my "step" children every bit as much as
my "bio" kids. I was flagellating myself over this issue caught up
in a circular mind set powered by guilt feelings that I just wasn't
getting it "right". I would never have gotten that with an
artificial altering of consciousness. Or if I had, I wouldn't have
trusted it. And that is one hell of a gift to lose to doubt!
I don't want to waste any of this precious life on
ways to "kill time." The very concept seems incredibly dumb given
the finite amount I, and you, have.
You know, the "Life is short." thing.
And I don't want to arrive at death's door feeling
that if I had just used my lifetime with more consciousness it would
not have passed me by so quickly. Maybe this is a point of view that
doesn't become important until you notice that the Merry-go-'Round
is slowing down. But I'm writing this for anyone of any age to
read.....it makes as much sense for someone in their twenties to be
as awake as anyone else.
Let's call it a "public service announcement"!
