A Farewell to Aergia

Not that she gives a shit, but I've been a devotee of the goddess of idleness, Aergia, for many years now. Was there ever a goddess more demanding? Kali perhaps, ha ha ha. Aergia of course is the un-Kali. The only death Aergia ever demanded was that of one's sense of duty (to any but herself, that is). The inscription over the door of her temple reads 'Abandon all ambition, Ye who enter here.' Not that that ever deterred those whose heads echoed with her siren song. Here lay a refuge from that world of care, stress, and anxiety.

Genocidal man-made pandemics? Contrived global economic collapse? World War and a fascistic one-world government? Ha! Nothing more than shifting transient patterns in the golden brown smoke of the temple incense. I lie back and with red-rimmed eyes observe the hypnotic sinuous shapes as they lead me down assorted trails, and all of them to somewhere balmy and untroubled.


Geez, is that enough of that? "Stop the metaphor, I want to get off!" Okay, I admit it - I'm actually talking about marijuana. God, the marvellous times I've had smoking grass and the brilliant people I've met - I wouldn't swap it for anything. But. For every reason I might offer as to why dope is good, the obvious falsity of the argument becomes ever clearer the longer one persists: all drugs obey the law of diminishing returns.

Biochemical inevitabilities are one thing and Les Visible is another, ha ha. I have no idea what percentage of the people who visit here read Les as well. There was a time when my entire readership (all ten of 'em, ha ha) was actually Les', lured sideways from his temporal blog, Smoking Mirrors (where I spent all my time hanging out). For those who don't read him, you should - he's a hell of a writer. However, somewhere along the line I found myself being more and more taken with his spiritual blog, Visible Origami. I don't know if this is a personal irony but it's at the origami blog that Les holds up a mirror in which my hypocrisies are cast in stark relief.


In the origami mirror I see a fellow extolling the virtues of selflessness in one breath, and... dragging on a scoob with the next, ha ha. Cue the descent into self-indulgence! Never mind me cleverly dispensing with everything in the Reckitt-Benckiser/Colgate-Palmolive aisle of the supermarket: for every dollar I didn't spend there, I'd spend two in the Cadbury's chocolate and Arnott's biscuit aisle. Pathetic.

I'll concede that that's not so very dreadful really - penny-ante stuff - but that's not the point. Les' words of advice over at Origami are not those of an allopathic doctor discussing a minor symptom in isolation. Les' ain't that guy. His view is holistic and addresses what ails us in the widest terms imaginable. And I'm so there!

Ha ha ha ha... fucking hypocrite! I'm not there at all, nor anywhere close.

Truth is, I'm a fucking mess - cigarettes, coffee, and grass rule my life. Without I shed these, I'm going nowhere. Whatever I want to achieve, or to become, all is subordinated to the fact that I have to have a cigarette every forty minutes or so. Subsequently, there's nothing for it but to bid them farewell and the one which must go first is also the easiest - marijuana. And what with Aergia being such a sexy goddess I thought the least she deserved was a big send-off. Frankly a quarter of an ounce of the sacrificial incense would have sufficed but as it turned out I ended up with an entire ounce of organic North Coast hippy buds. Ayah! I've encountered a few heroic dope smokers in my time and after this brook-no-resistance effort, I declare myself one of them, ha ha. (BTW - Did anyone suss me out? The six pieces preceding the last one were all written stoned. It was obvious if you think about it).

Me and the goddess aside, here we are, each of us on our own journey. And we know full well that this trip ain't going to be any kind of business-class as usual - no comfy seats, no free glass of champagne, no forty kilos of luggage. Never mind economy, in case you missed it, we never got on the plane! We remain the ant-like nobodies ten clicks below, doing the whole thing on foot. And down here, it's travel light or forget about it.


And me? I haven't even started, ha ha. Hell, I'm still ditching suitcases! God knows how many I've tossed so far. But I'm getting somewhere and I've only a few left to go. And then, whatever's coming, I'll be as prepared as I can be.

Not forgetting of course that this runs in both directions. There's us and where we wish to go, and there's the death cult with their own fucked up thoughts on the matter. In terms of the relationship between these two things, Les gets it, and the people in his comment section rudely demanding some kind of battle plan, don't. Anyone expecting some variety of Iwo Jima flag-raising over a pile of Savile Row clad corpses is going to be disappointed. Not forgetting the falsity of the original event anyway...


Hold that image of victory in your head if you want to, but you'll merely be that monkey who won't let go of the banana in the trap. T'ain't nothin' can be done for that monkey without he lets go. Okay, so time to let go.

Seeya Aergia, it was fun while it lasted mate.