Reading Responsibly
Well, here we go again! The good news/bad news dichotomy. The good news is we made it back in one piece from the wilds of Alaska. The bad news is it’s blog time again. I assume you’ve learned the Aeolian harp and are now fluent in 2 or 3 languages. Probably got the Chinese poetry translations down pat too. Maybe even — no, probably — you got more erudite interests than reading South End Scripture or Skeeter soliloquys. That’s what withdrawal is all about. Learning that when the monkey is off your back, life is fine. You didn’t need that fix after all.
Take me, for instance. I hauled up to Alaska with my buddy and chauffeur, Sky Pilot Larry, through B.C., the Yukon, the interior of the North Star state and, just to synchronize with all of you in sympathetic Cold Turkey, I decided to deprive myself of one of my fav-o-rite indulgences. Drinking. I didn’t even drink Lite Beer. Sure, the spiders and bugs came off the walls of my tent. Course I had the shakes and tremors. All that delirium stuff….!
And that was only the first hour before we hit the border at the Blaine truck crossing for customs inspection of the glass crates at the impound yard. I think they sensed my anguish and took pity so they never did anything but lock Larry’s trailer and send us north where I could howl to my heart’s content with the grizzlies and the coyotes, the moose and the mosquitoes. The buffalo may have been hairy figments but … they blocked the road in the Yukon. And the muskox up by Prudeau Bay, hell if I know if they were real or not, but they sure seemed like it coming up off the Sag River delta.
Long days indeed up there in the Midnight Sun! Try it dead ass sober and see how long they are.
“Moderation,” I heard espoused recently, ” is for cowards.” Well, perhaps. But abstinence, I submit, is for the birds. The real trick of living is to maintain your balance. It’s different for each of us. Maybe a small dose of Skeeter here and there, you can manage it without undue personal harm. Sure, there’s going to be a reader or two who take it too seriously, too far, who lose their way, who actually believe half this stuff. Junkie mentality. Comic addicts. I don’t know. Sure, we should help them if we can, same as the gamblers, the alcoholics, the crack users, the dope fiends. But the rest of us? Just proceed with caution. Most of us will be okay. In the end all I can say is: Read Responsibly.
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