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y0lk #117: "The Aftershock of Tragedy", by kreid

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	Gnosis.



	Physically relaxed, chemically collapsed, and psychically prostrate 

before my own self, it came to me.  Gnosis.  Complete cognition.  Amazement.  

Thinking about it now, it seems like nothing, but these things only hit us so 

often, so we tend to be amazed by them as they do.  Total gnosis of

myself, the world, God, and everything.  Gnosis.  Catharsis.



	I could never expect anyone to care, of course.  And that's not an 

accusatory statement, it's just factual.  When I have a headache, I keep my 

goddamned mouth shut about it, because I know nobody gives a rat's ass how my 

head feels.  Sure, they pretend to have sympathy for you, but really all 

they're doing is thinking about how their own heads feel.  It's simple fact.  

Human nature.  You can't blame men for being assholes.  There's too much 

tension in the world for all of us to be coping with blame.



	Anyway, that's just idle philosophy.  It's not worth speaking about.  

I have more important things to be writing about.  No, I will not attempt to 

explain or even describe the nature or form of my gnosis.  I know that would 

be nothing less than absurdly futile.  What I am going to describe is what I 

feel is the most interesting part: the circumstances surrounding the gnosis.  

The story around it.  The most useful way to communicate something, after all,

is through a story.



	I should stop blabbering.  I apologise, but we all know how a psychic 

revelation can turn a person into a blathering idiot for a few days.  We've 

all been through that embarassment before.  But on with the story:



	I was in a bar, on a Saturday night, numbing my mind out in a little 

poorly lit booth in front of a bottle of rum which I had procured from my 

friend, the bartender.  About half of it had disappeared down my throat so far 

that night.  Things were working out quite well.  A young couple with whom I 

was not acquainted with were stuffed into the seat next to me, in this booth, 

straddling each other, adjoined at the lips for at least half an hour.  Why 

they chose to express their passions for each other in such close vicinity to 

my head in such an uncrowded bar, I do not know.  I can only assume that they 

got a kick out of it, somehow.  I'm not too uptight about that kind of thing, 

anyway, I was actually quite flattered that they had selected me to rub up 

against.  My only fear was that they would somehow try to further involve me 

in their sinful play.  That was something I knew I did not want.  My mind, as 

usual, was not in the right frame to be thinking about passions or desire for 

any other person but myself.



	These late nights alone in poorly-lit booths were certainly not 

designated as possible preludes to sex.  At least, not sex for me.  I've had 

an unfriendly relationship with humanity all my life, and have learned not to 

take my chances with it.  I loved once, and it was wonderful, but for my own 

reasons, it is an experience which I will never attempt to duplicate.



	I reached out my left hand (my right one was pinned down by the 

passionate ones) and grabbed the neck of the bottle in front of me.  My next 

motion, of course, was the familiar pull of the vessel onto my lips and

its contents into  my body.  Down it went, and I don't know how much it

was, except that it was too much.  Much too much.  My eyes bulged as I yanked

the bottle away from my  face, spilling a little (actually a lot) on my

shirt and then on the table as I slammed it down.  I gagged and keeled over a

little as I felt the vomit start to boil inside my stomach.  Much too much.

What was I doing drinking  rum when I was this drunk, anyway?  Who was I

trying to impress?  Only myself, I suppose.  Obviously not the couple next to

me, or the bartender, or God, or  the dumb-faced waitress that always bounced

around this place, carrying expensive-looking cocktails to expensive-looking

people.  



	Jesus, was I going to puke?  There's no way I could make it to the 

bathroom, I'd be crawling on the floor, and crawling would just make me puke 

faster... Had I really gone too far, even for myself?  I had known pain which 

dwarfed this wretched taste in my throat, but it had never driven myself down 

to the level of a pathetic, vomiting drunk...



	There were a bunch of thoughts that went through me, as I tried to 

hold down the puke in my stomach.  Those just mentioned were only a few of

them. It's always amazing to me how one can turn off his mind so

effectively for so long, and then, through a complete alcoholic haze and

swarmed by such chaos, have so many thoughts in his head, as if he were

suddenly completely sober.  One would think that he would be reduced to raw

instinct in such a situation.  And sometimes he is, but not always.  Sometimes

it's quite the opposite.  Very strange, I think.  Alcohol is such a wonderful

and mysterious drug if it's applied in such a perfectly confused manner.



	Anyway, that's when it happened.  Gnosis.  Ecstasy.  The tragic 

culmination of my evening.  As the psychotic gagging subsided into mellow 

burping, the usual revelatory swarm of thoughts left my head, and my mind was 

anulled.  The world glowed as it spun around my dizzy head.  The sinful couple 

was Adam and Eve, the bottle was the serpent, and I was God, watching it all 

happen, unemotional, uninvolved, and yet responsible for it all, like an 

uncaring father to an accidental son.  My sick body and my sick mind had 

dissolved into thin air.  My veins conquered by rum and my throat by bile,

this moment was my sweet ecstasy.  My gnosis.



	And like that, I was changed.  By alcohol, of all things.  The idiot's 

elixir.  I was surprised, to say the least.  But that was just a peasant of a 

thought inside the kingdom my mind had become that night.  I stood up, slowly 

and wobbling, nodded goodbye to the bartender, and walked/crawled out the 

door, down the sidewalk, and into my car.  My enlightened mind had decided to 

overrule my common sense, as it tends to do sometimes, and my will to live 

wasn't speaking up, that's for sure.  I started the engine and drove to the

nearest wooded area.



	I parked the car in a little dirt clearing off the side of the road, 

and walked home, to my clearing in the woods, and I started to dig myself a 

hole in the ground.  I didn't have a shovel so I just used my hands.  The soft 

dirt between my fingers felt amazing, my whole body still in the shell of 

amazed ecstasy that the high dose of rum had strangely brought me.



	Why was I digging myself a whole in the ground?  It was my grave.  I

had decided that I was going to lie in my own grave and die that night, out

there in the forest under the half-moon.  It seemed like such a beautiful

thing to do.  I would finally have done something worth being proud of, and

I would have died completely satisfied with my life.



	Only, of course, I did not finish digging it.  I dug it about 11 

foot 

deep, then passed out, face first in the dirt, prostrate before the trees, the 

world, and God, which I was certainly not anything like.



	Today is Sunday, and I cannot rest.  This morning I woke up filled 

with emotion, something I have not done in many months.  And I'm sitting in my 

own hand-dug grave, with a little notebook, writing, trying to make sense of 

myself.  Today, I feel things.  I feel life.  I feel human.  I do not like it, 

and I don't know how long it's going to last, but I do believe that I am a 

better person because of it.  This is the price I pay to myself for wanting to 

believe in something, when I know that I should not.  This is the price of 

gnosis.



	There is feeling now, but the ecstasy is gone.  I've been living

inside a cold, uneasy afterglow of englightenment.  But all things

considered, I would say that it was a good experience.  I wanted it, I deserved 

it, and I am thankful for it.  But it was an experience which I will never 

attempt to duplicate.



	It's only on days like this that I can really see how tragic life

really is.

