Peaeater

I have two writing moods: manic, and low. The first comes after coffee, or on sunny mornings, or after a puzzle successfully solved. The second creeps on the heels of alcohol, or defeat, or the world in shadow. While in the grips of mania, I can be funny. Rockabye in the cradle of the downside deeps, it's all Eternity, and Flame, and a trip down pale and winding stairs.

It's not a bad thing. I can feel parts of myself now fighting to shutup and conform and deny I ever think that way. I really detest those parts.

Sometimes I don't even think I know myself until I land again at the bottom on my back surrounded by stars in a black limitless sky. Like I've forgotten, like I've been a ghost since last time. There are many versions of myself. The thing is, it's not depression. Depression is a state I find myself in when I can't get here. I am more alive when I am like this, is all I can explain, and words and ideas get big and take on a kind of glow.

When I was younger I ate psilocybin mushrooms on an occasional basis. If you did not know this about me, then we should have a conversation about it, because those experiences were among the most powerful in my life, and I certainly don't regret them. I have asked many people about their experiences with mushrooms, and their responses can be very instructive about who they are as people. For me it was an opportunity to face myself, my inner self. I have been both frightened and delighted by my self. Even now I can draw strength from realizations I was forced to make while stripped mentally naked. And remember how thoughts and words burned up and out of my mouth as easily as breathing. 

It's been a long time since I've taken anything mind-altering. But I have always been influenced by metaphor, image, language and magic, and occasionally a combination of these can get me down to a similar ground-state where life becomes Life, if you know what I mean. And then I feel I need to say less and mean more.

Sing a song of stupor
little songbird
bring the nightingale narcosis

Here comes a leaden Mongol horde
a dart in chains
a thought lashed about with loops of iron

Lie still little corpse
let the grave pull you in
you are too heavy for light and air and green and growing things

You will sink
light collapse around you
a crackling shell of radio density
armored in uncertainty
with these dark halos
you will blacken the night

What now is sundered will draw to you
like love to a bed
The sky will fall about your feet in adoration
when it is made low you will be highest

You will pull up the edges of Earth
its tethers will be loosed,
you will take its mantle to your fiery heart