Untitled recovery piece 3
All the things I want to do spill joylessly out of me. I cannot even muster the energy to throw them off in spite. This is only partially true, but I still feel it for a moment before I sleep, somehow only beginning to tire though it's well into the next morning. Tomorrow will come and I will face it again, and when I encounter the many things I love I will simply do them. why does that feel bad now?
I wake up unready and go through with the day anyway. I resolve to enjoy my tea rather than just drink. Whether I have it in me is questionable (I do) but nothing that bad happens. I make something to eat that involves less killing than it otherwise might to ease my mind. Dehydrated and unmedicated and languid, you still take me and hold me just tight enough. Your eyes deliver me all the brightness and wonder of the full moon. something in me heaves and shakes as I realize the good life does not look like I thought it might.
Suddenly, I remember to walk with my feet instead of only my legs. How many weeks have I woken up and not remembered that despite the pain? or only remembered it when I am not walking at all and it does not matter? Where was that thought in me, which I know occurred readily before?
Where in me did you disappear, that I never bothered to knock? where are you now? you're here, in a part of my mind that reminds me to ask another where and how they've been. I mourn as if you'd died but I have no idea what's happened, really. Your sister was clearly tired but her eyes were still bright and when she told me that I could not see you she still smiled at me. That was the last time I saw her, spoke with her, long after the last time I saw you. You're here now, but where do you go? I can't seem to keep you and I wish for anything, a CD, a painting, something to keep you, but I know that they wouldn't do it anymore than I already can. how could they?
I come to not in conversation but in witnessing one between two of my fellow workers. I watch one speak, one who I realize always feels slightly timid to me but I see now in their eyes and their hands that they're excited and eager to share, and another, one of the best listeners I know doing exactly what they do. Watching all of this instead of listening, I entirely miss the topic of conversation. I think I imagined that something about this experience would make me a better listener. The opportunity to listen better turns out to be here now, so I do.
there is something and it's right here and it's not doing anything and it's not going anywhere and it doesn't want anything; it makes for a dismally uninteresting story
Maybe: there's a diamond, don't you remember? it was your birthright and, these wretches, they've taken it from you. It glitters, distant as their laughter fills your ears, red hot. You must take it back from them one day, when you are stronger and fierce enough to overcome them and seize what is yours. but where are you hiding now, while your strength is insufficient? and on what do you waste your time? Dereliction of duty when there is a prize to be won.
Instead: it is late in the season as the clouds are moving in but, as they part slightly, they confirm what you know already, that the mountain remains distant. In the breaks you can see: an edge on every rock and the soft glow of light off the glacier. You can recall every step of this journey, and intent upon the life of the one you know is there, you continue. It takes something peculiar to pass through so many fine places and encounter so many people but keep on passing, moving toward that place your purpose lies, no matter how frightful.
Clumsy storytelling aside—I believe I've no career in fiction—how much more lively things can be! What's the best story you've heard lately? what was your favorite as a child? where are you now, and if someone asked you how you got there, what story would you tell? And that dismally uninteresting thing, where is it when you tell them? where was it when you were living in that story you're telling now?
Since it cannot be the thing itself, a story must be a facsimile or a simulation of something that happens. It could also be this same type of representation but instead of something we wish had happened, or wish would happen, or we hope will not happen, or... but it is certainly not the thing itself, which no longer is. I think there are qualities of artifice and addiction that show themselves together: the artificial is exactly what it would seem to be (assuming you know it is artificial) with no more depth or nuance than that, and I believe that makes it easier to capture than that which it simulates or obscures. Its ability to be more effectively contained hints at its lack and what sets it apart from the real. I also believe that it is easier to become addicted to the artificial (or the fruits of the artificial) than it is to become addicted to the real.
I take a bite and the taste of the apple is there in its immediacy; the flavor of the apple is happening now, and I can connect it (if only in thought) to apples I have eaten before. This is new apple though, and it is not the same. It has the potential to take on many textures, many flavors, but we can also produce apple flavoring; could apple flavoring do the same?
For a moment, I experience as much of the world as fully as I can, and it has a flavor in its immediacy as well. At first, I taste it. If I then experience it more analytically, I can name and delineate recognizable objects in my surroundings, but these are not the moment and these are not the world.
There's a story I could tell about this moment, if I try: I sit in a firm but comfortable chair watching three couples, two in the kitchen and one out, while one man discusses his stomach surgery's effects on his eating habits and someone else in the kitchen discusses their genealogy; they eat and drink in the low light, spread throughout this fragmented floor plan while we prepare ourselves for the coming evening of music and dancing. Can you picture something like that? can you hear it—overlapping voices, background radio and cutlery? Maybe you can, if you try, but you can probably tell that it is not that moment. Hopefully what I can tell you about it is intelligible; you can capture the details as I describe them and know my story more or less fully. Even sitting right here I cannot receive everything, however, and I certainly could not capture it. In an effort to communicate, there is no other choice but to synthesize an artificial moment to deliver to you instead.
A search for an undisturbed sense of comfort led to the worst of my drug abuse. Can you imagine a perfectly smooth, slow comfort? I once described it as the feeling of becoming warm syrup; an artificial comfort, but one that was identifiable, accessible, and (for a time) incredibly consistent. In contrast, the comfort brought about by an encounter with the real, one that strong relationships with others and oneself might bring, takes diverse forms. The comfort I feel with each of the people closest to me is unique and changes not only from person to person but from encounter to encounter; they take forms that surprise me at times, for which I must feel my way through the unfamiliar to realize. I could not describe myself as addicted to these experiences, but the guarantee of painless, friction-free syrup overwhelmed any hope of building a true embrace at one time, and the possibility of encountering that real comfort in any moment diminished as I plunged deeper into that warm, dark hole in my head.
Because addiction is a very personal experience, I believe that there could be a lot of contention around this framing. One might complain that I'm not accurately describing addiction if they have a particular type in mind; that's fair, because I don't believe all forms of addiction are the same, though I believe many follow this pattern. If my point isn't immediately understood, I imagine that there could also be an objection that the encounter with addiction is still itself an encounter with the real; I believe this is absolutely correct. My personal encounters with drugs were, in fact, real encounters with real drugs. I would still propose that these encounters were me seeking something beyond that particular experience, just as someone thirsty could easily be satisfied with a plain glass of water, but would not be satisfied if they expected and very much wanted a glass of whiskey. I think this sort of unsatisfactoriness often underpins the development of addiction.
For over a decade, some behavioral patterns of humans interacting with technology have been studied using the addiction model based on their interaction with our reward systems, and I think one will serve as a particularly good example here. I will ask that you at least understand that I am not condemning everyone as addicts in this, but if you don't want to be party as I discuss the case of porn, that's fine; I have kept it to just one little footnote.1 I offer this as a contrast to the more generally understood drug addiction, in preparation for discussion of a yet more subtle form. A substance or experience is not an addiction and it is not sufficient for addiction, but as we use some artificial form to substitute for some real experience, we take the risk of engaging in a use that begins as a desire for the real, but sours as that desire continues (or even grows) in the absence of that experience large enough to fill it.
For a moment, I experience as much of the world as fully as I can, and it contains a depth and diversity of experience that can overwhelm the senses. I have read that our first act of communication is with ourself, but just as I cannot capture it to communicate it to you, I cannot even really communicate this moment to myself. I am either it or I am myself creating some story I can relay, first to myself, then to you. I can talk to you about an encounter with the real, and you can have a real encounter with that writing now, but I cannot write you a real encounter. In this very moment can you know it? Where are you now?
I feel compelled to create this; I record this story of addiction and feed another all the while. This story is artificial yet (for me, at least) oh, so enticing. Still, it contains much less than the moments about which I write, or even this one in which I write it. It could never give those back to me, so of course I cannot give those to you. I have a real experience of writing this which stands in the place of some true, direct experience of communication which I feel must exist only in fantasy. Just as a small object viewed closely can block out the entire world, this relatively short and featureless story now stands in the place of an enormous, infinitely rich world of experience.
I write on and on about this seemingly lesser experience of the story, of the otherwise simulated or artificial, and after a time I try my best to share it with you so you can see what occurred to me in a real, momentary encounter, but when you ask, "what of my story, that I tell from the heart when I come to you crying?" I still have no better answer than "Tell me everything."
We cannot expect to live without them, perhaps not even alone, but certainly not together. Long after giving up their daily use, I would not expect others to forego painkillers after surgery. I would not ask anyone to give up anything mentioned here for the reasons given, especially not on these words alone. Even as I write all this, clearly I cannot contain myself, so come to me and tell me your story as you've let me tell you mine. My one request is that we both recognize when the moment for that storytelling is through, and we both let it pass. For now, I am through.
Someone can encounter porn and engage with it just as that. When someone becomes addicted, I believe it to stem from not just the real encounter with real pornography, but because it is approached with a desire primarily for one of the other simulated aspects of that experience: sex, desire, control, etc. We will say for this example that the real pornography addict is using it as a form of what we will call artificial sex, to which they develop an addiction. Engagement in real sex comes with the same diversity of experience and the same potential for the unfamiliar as I described earlier in other forms of relationship. Real sex must be navigated with a consciousness of the self and as a mutual encounter with the unknown of another; though this uncertainty can vary based on the conditions, it is inherently more uncertain. The addict's artificial sex circumvents the need for this, allowing for an accessible, replicable experience of a similar kind, but one which cannot contain the same wealth as the real encounter. Still, the encounter with the real that would be the alternative to this addict's experience can still be the addiction of another: someone else can become addicted to real sexual encounters. Plenty of people engage in real, casual sexual encounters without necessarily becoming addicted to that experience, but I propose that those who experience the addiction, the compulsive seeking of casual sexual encounters, probably do not do so solely for the encounters themselves, but as a proxy for some other form of connection. In this way, we can see that the real experience is not really the point, but the relationship to the real experience as a method of accessing the artificial. I feel it is perhaps a distracting example, but porn was the first example that came to mind where someone could be addicted to an experience of proxying something that someone else was using to proxy a third thing.↩