Which footstep is my next step?
Which footstep is not my next step?
Which footstep heads in a difficult direction?
Which footstep leads in a straight line?
Once again, act on what you know.
Wait for what you don't know.
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Dear Aldous Huxley,
You were right. Once you open the doors of perception, you do not need any mind-altering drugs again. No matter how much I miss them, continuing their use is flatulent self-indulgence, because they really are part of a sacred ritual meant to connect you with what Emerson called “The Over-Soul.” Here in a Native American Sweat Lodge, guided by a shaman whom you trust to be trickster and comforter, you can confront your own, unique, inner demons, and grow wings to join angels of forgiveness.
Or so I would hope.
The problem with altering the mind is that it makes me stupid. And depressed! It’s like being suckered in by commercials that picture a delicious hamburger sandwich. As soon as you buy one and take a bite, its greasy morass always disappoints. These days, in cold sobriety I often feel as if I am having a delayed reaction, regressing into a helpless child -- an autistic child abandoned among grown-ups who know how to change tires on a car, how to replace the filter in the air-conditioning unit, how to multiply and divide by eight. Sometimes I believe that my whole generation has regressed to infantile whining and vested self-interest. You predicted it, Dr. Huxley: test tube babies and sperm banks -- everybody’s regressing to the 1950’s T.V. Quiz show, “Beat the Clock.”
You cannot will your destiny. Where you thought you were going may not be where you arrive. Soothsayers on “Entertainment Tonight” hold wakes for immortal icons no one believed would perish, but cryogenics does little more than freeze the skin. Dry ice will not dry your tears when someone you love dies. I know, because the wind has gone out of my sails and I am drifting aimlessly to earth where I took a bad fall. Let Jacob wrestle with an angel. I wasn’t named Michael for nothing. My generation was promised an Apocalypse. Well, where is it?
Yours,
Michael Karl (Ritchie)
[Disposable Prose Poem September 15, 2009]
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