False(B)logic

This letter was written and sent to my two senators, congressman and president…

Dear Senator(Congressman, President, etc…),

There really wasn’t any topic to put this under, I suppose ‘Government Affairs’ will have to suffice. What do you think to yourself or say to your staffers, friends and colleagues when you see the project voter turn out for this fall? What to you do to justify the apathy and dejection those numbers represent?

I myself no longer try to explain what is happening in this country, it all seems so… futile. The state of our Union is such that it leads to not only thoughts of political suicide but personal as well. How is that possible? How is it that the machinations of the rich and powerful in this nation can drive an individual to contemplate the extinguishment of his own life? What alternatives are left us, the powerless? I have no voice in Washington. I have no voice in Sacramento. The only message that I have recourse to that might have the chance of sparking interest, debate, discussion, anything really is to take my own life. This is a depressing thought.

I do not flatter myself into believing that my position or thoughts are unique to myself. I know that there are many others like me who wish to make their wills known but have recourse to only this most radical form of protest. Even more depressing and tragic is the realization that my suicide would do nothing. That it would affect nothing in our nation. If the deaths of 600,000 Iraqi’s does not perturb the consciousness of our Nation what will the death of a single person do?

I am powerless and if I am mistaken and some small power is still within my grasp its presence has been hidden. Poor both intellectually and materially I can do nothing within the system of government to create change. Outside of it in the civil world the government has so shaped the laws that here to I am powerless. Falling ever more into debt and despair as I struggle wholeheartedly to realize even the smallest portion of the american dream I only fail.

Who do I blame? I blame myself for not being able to affect the change s I so wish this nation to make, to make it a more equitable and fair democracy to further push the dream of our founders. But, I also blame you and your fellow congressmen and senators. I blame the President of these United States. I blame the system of courts. You have failed in your duties, miserably so. And finally I blame my fellow citizens for turning their backs on their neighbors, their brothers and sisters.

Dejectedly,

Jonathon Howard

Had a long ‘conversation’ with a friend through AIM. I suppose we no longer live in a society where conversations are held face to face in a comfortable face for each character. Now we stay in our techno caves, comfortable and hold anonymous chats, not only with strangers but also with those closest to us.

That isn’t the point of this post. I don’t know what the point of this post is. My friend mentioned things about me that perhaps I don’t want to recognize in myself. I don’t know if she is right or wrong. There is a good chance that she is right. This site is not a laundry line for me to hang and expose my own flaws. What bothered me was how much she knew about me. When did I become so open? So easy to comprehend and understand?

I didn’t like the experience at all, to have myself painted so broadly and so accurately by someone I have known less than a year and would not consider to be an intimate friend. Have I become desperate for attention or company? So much so that I will tell anyone, anything about myself if only they will participate, if just a little, in the play of my life?

So what do I do? I think I need to return to playing my cards much closer to my chest. I can be friendly without giving away all the sordid details of my life…

They say that not all who wander are lost… I can’t think of a better euphemism for living. We all wander and we all want to believe that there is a purpose to our meanderings. That the ups and downs of daily existence point us in a certain direction, or betray a subtle clue to the inner workings of the universe.

And why shouldn’t it be this way? The only bigger mystery than the purpose or meaning of the universe is the purpose and meaning of an individual life. We have made it our goal, unstated largely, to discover that meaning. Does anything else but the search for causality, purpose, meaning explain the phrenetic absurdity of human conduct? No more is this absurdity apparent in the attempts at rejection of it. Philosophers and others declaring there is no purpose or meaning to it, but thereby creating one that isn’t. Only a human could be so crazed, so sublimely beautifully mad in the pursuit of validity

If so I have not found it

So where do I fit into the equation. Whether I know it or not, I do. My denial or desire for uniqueness goes unheard. As do yours. I too am victim to the ancestral madness, made more absurd by my exclamations to the contrary. To my overloud protestations that I know the meaningless of it all. Yet ever hoping and clinging to the idea that I might be wrong, that in fact I should be wrong.

I add perhaps one thing to it all, and I doubt that my addition is original. As in all things, I am treading where others long ago passed. It is this, that everything in modern life is made to be a distraction. A distraction from this overwhelming madness, this endless search. Even our religions, which give meaning and even at times validity (whether they be correct is a question I’ll not take up here or anywhere else for that matter). These only work to slow us down, give us rest on our search, but no they do not satisfy. Every religious person in their heart of heart allows themselves too to wander…

We are the pilgrimaging species. Finding no pleasure in ends but only in means. Strange how we have chosen to be alone as well….? Walking down paths millions have already tread, we refuse their advice, trusting only ourselves to find a true path, while the path itself is all there is and we all walk it together.

“What nonsense is this?” you ask. The nonsense that makes sense of the one thing that we all believe truly matters, ourselves. You need not believe it, I myself don’t. It’s why I also know it must be true.

So here I am again. It’s been just over a week since I last took my lamictol. At this point if I wanted to get back on it I would have to start over again at 5mg and build myself back up to 400…

So why did I quit? I can’t say. Many reasons most of them I’m not even able to form into words to describe them. A feeling I guess, a drive, a desire. Humans have been on this planet for what? 4 -6 million years? Bi-polar has most likely been with them for most of that time… 5 million years has been insufficient to eradicate the genes that cause the disease from the pool. So, perhaps bi-polar isn’t the disease it is thought to be. Perhaps there are some benefits for those of us lucky enough to suffer from the disease. I don’t know. I do know that after 5 billion years I am here a product of said evolution and a “sufferer” of bi-polar. Modern medical treatment for mental disease began what maybe 30 years ago? Effective treatment at least. So how did those generations that came before me handle their malady? How did they continue to live when it seemed so easy and right to end it?

I want to find this out. How else am I to do so if I remain on the medication?