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November 16, 2002

an earthly lot

Up here on the wagon,
the wheels turn slowly,
but the wagon moves at light-speed.

......--beastmaster

Those words of the great philosopher, writer, and dilettante are as true now as they were when  they were coined circa thirty seconds ago.  The life of a sober alcoholic is uneventful.  He makes a choice, both consciously and subconsciously, to live the uneventful life because he has lived a truth about which 4 in 5 experts agree:  93% of all events are bad.

As a drinking drunk, my life was eventful; in fact, it was an uninterrupted chain of events over at least two decades.  Was it fun?  I don't remember.  But I have before me, in bloody bits of ragged spirit and broken hearts, direct evidence that the eventful life is not worth a damn.

Uneventfulness should not be confused with boredom, although the two are frighteningly similar.  The uneventful life is better described as peaceful and exquisitely mundane.  Here, the reader will find instructive the precise definition of "mundane" as:  of, relating to, or characteristic of the world; characterized by the practical, transitory, and ordinary; earthly.

We are an earthly lot.  Altered consciousness, whether by chemicals or mysticism, has no place in our lives.  We move in the minutiae of marking time:  another bed made, a dish washed, an ivy tendril pruned.  Another day in the world and of the world.  A deliberate, Frankensteinian stagger that propels us at light-speed.

©  2002 by the beastmaster