Manifold

 I wonder why some of us are sent here already out of phase, set at variance with the rest of the cast. Each maladjustment a virtue to be unlocked, or so the eastern spiritualists would have us believe. A constellation of pathologies recalcitrant to treatment - how do you cure something that is not a disease. 

Woke up drunk again today, unsure of where I departed or where I arrived. How is it that one can elevate their experiences by lowering their faculties? The paradoxical disinhibition that alcohol provides me is the only reprieve I ever seem to have anymore. Every day of my life is a going out of business sale, everything I am is 90% off as long as I can get paid tonight. 

The hierarchy, unseen, has compelled me to bow down and worship the profane. Our eyes glisten as they pass over the things or people that we want, trying to determine how they would be integrated into our lives, living out fantasies instead of our own lives. We esteem ourselves based on how bright they glisten back at us, our purpose and connection tethered to this invisible rubric we all lay prostrate before. Where is the self? The seat of consciousness? I don't even know what I am when divorced from all this ceremony we clothe ourselves in. One foot in Atlantis at all times. 

I can remember taking my mother flowers I picked on the way home from the bus after school as a child. I can remember later in life having to pull her face out of the meal she collapsed in after one too many doses of Lortab and putting her to bed.