What is ecstasy in life? I’m not talking about the pill named molly. I’m the only one here who’s being a pill ask- ing such a phony question, and I’ll take on the name Molly too while I’m at it.
Anyhow, the Google machine tells me it’s “an overwhelming feeling of great happiness or joyful excitement.” Quite a scary either/or to distinguish between – either I’m in touch with something outside of myself in blissful harmony or out of touch with myself in discordant rapture. The googol machine also told me that the ecstasy etymology means to “stand outside oneself”, which really begs the same question – am I being invited outside on a picnic or shutting myself outside of the house for some fresh air?
Being out on a picnic would be lovely. You plan it with someone and you go and open yourselves to the opportu- nity of one another’s personhood. It’s error-prone certainly – it’s a closed sys- tem if you picnic for picnic’s sake. You each get to snack on food and try out each other’s souls a bit as well. It seems so simple, but maybe this was the real euphoria you craved. After this picnic, you might invite each other for after- noon lunch. You can let someone into your house and forget that you ever needed to go outside.
Shutting yourself out of the house for some fresh air is a bargain. You can’t see the air. Maybe it’s all around you, maybe it’s wisps in a void or vacuum. Maybe it’s all noxious gas or CO2. The endless opportunity of wandering an open system without a compass. Didn’t you say you were leaving specifically for fresh air? Who could say? It could be oxygen or a nefarious otherwise rushing to your head. Maybe your house had a filtration system and the confines of this industrial park did not. It’s a dubi- ous quest, a dysphoric one too because you’re still the same you. What have you to do but return home?
Go clean your room, someone might tell you. It will make you feel free. Maybe they’re right, but maybe not. Couldn’t a clear bed be as cheap a thrill as a hit of heroin, just to get messy and redone again? So much for freedom. Go clean litter off the streets, someone might suggest. It will make you feel whole. Cleaning streets so that when they’re done and dusted you don’t feel worthy of them. Perhaps you feel a whole lot worse. Then what to do – what to do? The obsession with “cleansing” to solve issues is strange. It’s at the quaint hellish intersection where we find the genocidal and health-nuts. Might you feel better for a bit? Certainly, but you may only rust your cogs further while oiling others.
Maybe we won’t clean the room. Maybe it was already clean, sorry for assuming. Maybe we need a different bedspread for a bit, one with a floral pat- tern. See how it feels. Maybe you should put some goofy posters on your wall, even ones you don’t like with garish col- ors. Just see how they feel for a bit. Just give it a whirl, you know? It’s nothing like a snort of blow, but you might learn a thing or two along the way.
Maybe we won’t clean the streets. Maybe the streets were already clean. No, stupid point – streets are almost always in need of a sweep, scratch that. Instead you can invite the streetsweep over for tea and learn. It’s a fresh per- spective to glean. Better not to assume streetsweeping a toil because your own life deemed it due penance. Why impose your disconnect on this noble profes- sion? Have we not pitied the streetsweep enough across our stories?
As time moves forward, so do our brains unzip; so do humanity’s pockets pour out. We stood outside ourselves as we couldn’t let anything in. Maybe it was a pill all along.