Confusion Salvation

Confusion Salvation

I'm sitting here, and I don't know what to write. I've had writer's
block for one and a half years and I don't know where to start anymore.
I once had such a clear view of what I thought life was about; what was
right, what was wrong, and who was to blame. But the older I get, the
more restless I get, yet I keep it all in, this general confusion. What
is love? What does history tell us? Where are we going? Can we save the
world from apocalyptic destruction? If the western world is so selfish,
with everybody living for freedom whom do we answer to? God? Our
mothers? Our fathers? Organised religion? Capitalism, Communism,
Evangelism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Romanticism? Am I free, or is it right
that I'm shackled by the sense of responsibility that I feel, and the
shame of my existence, the guilt for being a predator.

For too long now I've hidden myself away in the converted loft of my
terraced house, smoking on skunk-spliff, writing love letters in my
head, never to see the rock of a page. Thoughts drifted in and out of
my conscious, too quickly for me to pursue since my decrepit body was
too weighed down by lack of love, a lack of love for myself, because
all the things that I expected to come to light sunk back into the dark
and moist recesses of my mind, my desire felt strong but my will had
gone. So I had been left to make love with some crumbly green stuff,
mental love keeping me in prison, relaxing my aching bones, and my
aching heart, but keeping me alone. Getting more and more confused as
the hazy dream of life passed me by on fast-forward, on rewind and more
often on slow-mo. Everybody's moving but me, I've been stuck on the
pause button.

Another day at work finishes; folding clothes, stacking shelves,
painting metal truss, loading lorries, learning Tefl, filing paperwork,
writing more paperwork to be filed away, apologising to angry
customers, and unloading boxes of marketing, managerial and advertising
books, all full of useless words, filling me and others with unhealthy
stomachs, selling us dreams, selling us strategies and conformity, and
blatant selfishness for our Western dreams - power, manipulation, lies,
success, material wealth and freedom. Oh, where are our souls? I finish
at 6pm, I finish at 5pm, I finish at 11pm and at 4 in the morning. And
each time, the routine is the same. I avoid my mother and father's
expectant gaze, expecting me to turn around and tell them that I've
finally found something worthwhile I can put my energies into, and I
gallop up the pine stairs of my house, gallop to that loft at the top.
I break off some of the bud and carefully slice it into a fine dust of
green and orange, sometimes white and blue. That magic dust which would
take me away into a so called higher plane, away from the people and
the pain in the small of my back, away from conversations and thoughts
of dreams into the dream itself, always magical, and always full of
colours for a while, but I can't escape the darkness, I can never
escape the darkness. My dreams become nightmares of rape, impotence,
cancer and schizophrenia. Dreams of large ugly men wielding an axe down
on my poor aching back, of luminous sirens giving me glimpses of
something I can never touch, supple flesh, glistening sweat in a box of
miracles and temptations. And still I shouted, and still I raged that
'I was a free man.' Convincing myself of the reality of this
semi-conscious state as the way to everlasting enlightenment.

Enlightenment only lasts for a little while and then we plunge back
into the confusion, into the scary voices of reality, of responsibility
and work, and the tough path towards love. Where is my love? Sometimes
I took the medicine for my lack through a pipe, sometimes from a
bottle, or with a crisp, sharp snort into the nostril, but mostly I
inhaled it into my lungs, feeling it rasp down my dry throat, giving me
half an hour of lightness only to be replaced by two hours of dead
weight. The come down; my dead weight, when my anger seethes so strong
I can't even look at the faces of my companions for fear that they
might see the raving murderer in me, the possibility that a sudden and
unforeseen bout of tourettes may come over me and I slash pieces of
them, and of me, displaying the room with our guts and gore. We are
free preaches the politician and the media-mogul. But soon salvation
comes with the order of dreamless sleep, the mini-death, ready to awake
and start a new each day.

I'd wake and smoke the stubby from the night before, reading stories
from the pen of Kurt Vonegut, Joseph Heller, Vladimir Nabokov,
Elizabeth Wurtzel and Albert Camus. I thought that these were the wise,
but they seem just as confused as I am. Searching for a reason to all
the pain and glories. Searching for an answer to why and wherefore? I
listen to Rage Against the Machine, The Chemical Brothers,
Spiritualized, Faithless, Outkast, Orbital, Primal Scream, beating and
pumping the rhythms of my lazy heart, giving it life, dancing my gangly
outstretched dance, the surge of a fist here, the swing of a leg there.
Dancing alone to the unfocused melodies in my head, dreaming of a slow
caress, or an aggressive fuck. And the stories of my heart, head and
soul are heard from The Band, Bob Dylan and Van the Man, dreaming of a
lifelong waltz also. Who are these preachers who soothe and heal my
soul? Who inflame and ignite my passion? Do they work for God or the
Devil, or do they work for Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch. What is
freedom? What is love? Do they know?

When does salvation come? In death, or in life. There are a lot of
people out there who want to know. The politicians want to know, the
lorry drivers want to know, the office workers, the students, the
mothers and fathers, the daughters and sons, the homeless and the
criminals, the artists and the scientists, my friends and my enemies,
the teachers, the war-mongers, the rich and the poor. Some want it so
much; they can't wait for it. Instead of letting nature take its course
they hi-jack planes and plunge them into the megaliths of a supposed
free land. There are claims by one misguided fellow that there is an
axis of evil out there. He thinks he can identify it, tame it and
control it because it is separate from himself and his people,
projecting his bad self onto others. Where is his insight? Does he
really think it doesn't lurk inside him as well? I'm afraid of this
fellow and the fact that World War III looms large over us all. What
would you do? Who would you fight for? Especially when we can no longer
distinguish who the aggressor is. Would you survive? Would you pick up
a gun and fight? Or would you run? Could you run? Or would we even know
about it? It being over in a manner of seconds with a great white flash
rippling through the sky, and the earth strewn with mutant half-bodies
trying to survive the half-life.

Where does salvation come? In the house of God - those monstrously
foreboding churches that pedal sin and shame and guilt and a fiery
revelations ending. Or in the house of God, our own mortal selves,
experiencing the pleasure, the sensation of living, the joy of
breathing, smelling, touching, weeping, laughing, holding, hearing,
seeing and thinking, along with feelings of pain and loss, anger and
injustice, hatred and illness, fear and loathing. Is it this house we
should worship at in all those equal measures, giving our all,
expecting nothing in return, for our all is all that we have to give.
And it is so much better to give than to take. Try it some time, it
might be difficult, it might be painful, but it's better than the
alternative, damnation for our-selves and this earth. Throw away your
copies of Cosmopolitan, throw away the copies The Bible, throw away the
Big Macs, the Porsches, the Armani suit, the position of power over
others. Throw away your desire and want, throw away The Sun newspaper,
the bag of cannabis, the wrap of cocaine, throw away the materials that
surround us and find a girl (or man) you can fall in love with. Give
yourself to others, but don't expect it back because you will go
through all of the above all over again.

When did my salvation come? And will it last? It came in the early
hours of February 3rd 2002. When high on skunk and pills, listening to
Love's 'Forever Changes' I decided to quit all the illegal drugs that I
had been taken for the past five years. I am an obsessive-compulsive
you see, an addict, (I suspect we all are in our own ways) and these
kinds of drugs weren't good for an addict like me. I subsequently wrote
three poorly written, but passionate letters to the people who were
closest to me (my parents, my brother, and my drug-dealer) telling them
that I was quitting and ready to re-enter into the hustle-bustle of
life again, to take a position and point of view, ready for love and
happiness. I had the shakes for two days afterwards and I suffered from
insomnia for a week, but it's worth it. I can now take a stand, I can
now look people directly in the eye and not feel a fraud. I have come
out of my mental cell and realised that the notion of freedom is a
dangerous and selfish one. I have a duty to be myself and to treat
people with the love and respect that they deserve even if I feel that
many of those people are ignorant and selfish. I'm ready to take the
rough with the smooth, and I feel strong. Why am I doing this? Why am I
writing this? Why is life full of pain and torture, rape and murder,
war and love, dreams and imaginations, music and laughter, hope and
desire, boredom and laziness, ignorance and passion...?

Why?

Because...

"And you are happy, because you are happy, that's what you're happy
for."