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Fun while it lasted

Your usual fare from me on Saint Patrick’s day is literature extolling Irish history and talents for one thing or another. One of their talents I personally experienced in Boston is drinking. They and my Welsh ancestors are celebrated for their rollicking contributions to music and poetry extolling the delights of their habit. Richard Burton, the talented actor who courted Elizabeth Taylor, was Welsh and noted for it.

A Boston Irish pol introduced me to life enlivened by drink that lasted 42 years. It was fun while it lasted but given the choice I wouldn’t do it again.

Energy does what it’s told

Matter is stored energy and brains are matter that operate by electrical impulses. Energy acts at the direction of Mind. When our minds tell our bodies to say awake too often they’ll start staying awake and make getting to sleep harder. When we tell our brains with drink, psychedelics, or other substances we want to alter them so we think or feel differently they’ll get in the habit of altering. It’s sometimes obvious that bodies and brains made of matter are doing what our minds tell them and these are two examples.

The grateful brain

Good judgment depends on brains not altering. Too much altering is physical and mental abuse that leads to misjudgments. Misjudgments that accumulate over time degrade performance. Human history is replete with examples of talented personalities like Richard Burton whose lives and careers ended prematurely because of physical abuse that involves brain-altering. Personality differences kept us entertained with his and Elizabeth’s dramatics but drinking would have had a hand in it too.

By the standards of my Welsh ancestry my drinking life was hardly worth the name. I was reasonably disciplined though not always aware that too much is too much and it shows. When I quit fourteen years ago, there was a noticeable improvement in physical performance -- quality of sleep, energy, appetite. Then, three years ago, a great leap forward in every function of mind. Almost overnight I got better with creativity -- insight, free association, imagination. It was as if a better mind than mine took over or else potential that was always there had broken free.

What is my brain telling me? What yours might tell you if you quit altering it. Thank you!

3

Encased in every word is the memory of what gave rise to it
Events in human experience that caused a thought
Or discovery, that brought forth a feeling
Of melancholy or joy, regret or pleasure, satisfaction
Or despair.

Encased in every word is the story of how it came to be
And the message it has just for us alone
In the place where we are at
If we will let it flow through our minds and hearts
Our bodies, their sensations

Affect us until we alight in its place like a butterfly
In a clearing
Come to a woodland of strange and wonderful sights
Creatures of sound and movement, touching
And laughter wanting us to be there with them
Their place of wonder

With poetry
With words
Our friends

To a friend with love and whimsy
Saint Patrick’s Day March 17, 2021

Inspired by P Is For Poetry: Poems from Irish Poets
Edited by Seamus Cashman, Illustrated by Corinna Askin and Alan Clarke
(The O’Brien Press, Dublin, 2020)