Chickening Out

I'm chickening out, again, instead of going out to play.

"Imagine there's no heaven; it's easy if you try..."

While the White-breasted Nuthatch cries 11 p.m. from my singing bird clock, I sit here, wondering.

Wondering if the palpable feeling of foreboding in my stomach is worse than it would be, were I pedaling towards the Quarter right now, with the guitar that I haven't practiced on enough lately on my back.

I'm trying to convince myself, on this 5th day of juice fasting, that I'm investing in the future by kicking my addictions, and that, whatever money I might have made tonight will be recovered a hundred times over in future savings on booze, weed, caffeine, nicotine and kratom, if I stick to the program of alternately drinking alkaline water and apple juice on the half hour tonight, with a few rounds of Wim Hof breathing exercises done at some point.

On the subject of kratom, though, I might exclude that from my list of banned substances, along with LSD. Neither one is addictive, and in the case of kratom, when I have run out of it, I never craved it. It was only after getting some as almost an afterthought, once I came into some money, and doing a tablespoon of it that I then remembered why I had liked it so much. It's a funny substance that way.

Of course, since I discovered my friend Jacob right around the same time as discovering kratom; I will never know if all the strides I have made the past 5 years were from being friends with him, or from doing kratom...

I remember one of my first experiences with the stuff was sitting and typing out a story for something like 4 hours, and then losing it when I walked away from the laptop and the battery drained out because I hadn't plugged it in after I had gotten it back from the kratom bar. I felt no anxiety over losing the work, and in fact only looked forward to redoing it all even better. I was still focused in on the task.

And, I think the stuff just alters the brain's chemistry because I still have that sense of focus even now, after running out of kratom 3 days ago. Of course, fasting brings the same mental focus about; no surprise that that guy who almost starved in a concentration camp was able to write that book called: "The Meaning of Life" -probably wrote it in his head as he lay there feeling physically weak, but having no distractions from wayward thoughts.

Once the appetite for food goes away, so does that for alcohol or nicotine, etc. And, I guess, even kratom, although as stated above, it was never an addiction.

Neither was LSD. 

"Dave's Been Confused"

And, a college roommate of mine, Dave LeClaire (who was a big Led Zeppelin fan and who's high school yearbook epigram was: "Dave's been confused") was majoring in Biology, and grew some really good pot in a tin foil-lined closet, using special lights attached to a timer, and eye-droppers of various liquids to control the pH of the soil, and to turn male seeds into female ones, etc. and whose belief was that marijuana is a placebo; had a very different opinion of LSD. "That's something that radically f***s up your brain's chemistry," he once told me, over a joint we were smoking at the kitchen table.

And it's true that a lot of the older deadheads that I saw at Grateful Dead shows, weren't there to trip their teeth out, or to be able to sit and watch the shadow of a maple tree in a swirling breeze, dancing on the white-washed side of a building, and have that turn into a detailed cartoon, complete with an actual plot, instead of going inside the arena to see the concert; like I once did in Providence, Rhode Island, from the driver's seat of my car (I learned that night not to eat your hit of acid on the way to the show, but at least wait until you're in the seat written on your ticket).

Those deadheads had had their breakthroughs, gained their enlightenment, and would never again think that the universe is just what can be perceived with the senses; why belabor it? After you smash your way through a wall with a sledgehammer and are in the enchanted kingdom, why carry the hammer around with you everywhere you go? type of thing...

It hasn't been a perfect fast, as, last night, in a spaced out frame of mind, I opened a can of great northern beans, stirred some salt and pepper, to include cayenne, a bit of mustard, and even a teaspoon of honey into them and ate them. 

It was a good opportunity to find out what great northern beans alone can do for the human body.

For one thing, there was no perceivable flatulence involved; leading me to wonder about how the gut bacteria of a fasting person is able to digest beans without a byproduct being flammable gas out the anus.

Organic chemistry is something I wish I had mastered. Alas, though, when I took chemistry in high school the same thing would play out; Mr. McGuirk, the teacher, would start to explain something about moles and specific gravity's and allotropes, and it would lull me into a deep daydream, where I might be looking at the chalkboard, but somewhere else; and when I came to, the whole chalkboard would be covered in symbols, and Mr. McGuirk would be asking the class: "Any questions?" before erasing it all. I passed the class by cheating on tests off a kid who sat one row over and one row up from me. I think Mr. McGuirk knew, but let me slide. I wouldn't be going on to embarrass him by enrolling at M.I.T. as a Chem major and flunking out in the first semester; I would be studying subjects where there are no right answers; like English, where "Spring is a perhaps hand..." and "Mercy is twice blest," and Music, where, well, listen to Stravinsky...

It's only been an hour and a half since the White-breasted Nuthatch sang; perhaps I write more quickly when sober...

I left to get more apple juice and alkaline water, along with a zero sugar Rock Star energy drink.

"You're In The Way!!"

I felt like I was out of sync.

As soon as I got to the front door; there was an ambulance outside, and just as I started down the ramp to leave, they started towards it with the stretcher. "Hurry up, you're in the way!"

Then, all along my ride to the store there were cars trying to back out of places and I was in the way. I got to the store and a lady in front of me ran out of money and had to phone someone in the parking lot to bring her more cash. Then, when I tried to apply my "reward points" toward the purchase of Harold's food, it turned into the fiasco of me not being able to do it at first because one can is less than a dollar. "Well, ring up two, then I'll go get another one before I leave..."

Then, the cashier entered the amount for 2 cans, which was over a dollar, but he didn't calculate what the tax would be. Somehow, it seems like you don't have to pay tax on whatever you buy using reward points; it went through.

Then, there were at least 3 cars trying to back out of parking spaces that had to brake for me; then as I approached the tattoo shop where the sidewalk is always littered with half smoked American Spirit's a young lady was just sweeping them all up; I was a minute too late.

I just wanted a half cigarette to go with the Rock Star drink; but the message to me was clear: I wasn't where I was supposed to be. I should have went out to play at the Lilly Pad, but I didn't; so I was just in the way. No half cigarette for you; you're not where you belong...you chickened out; afraid that you would spend your tip money on alcohol and you would wind up full of self loathing and back at the bottom of the mountain that took you 5 days of fasting to almost reach the peak of...cluck, cluck, cluck!