Life As Performance Art 114

It's Saturday morning and all is well. I suppose, anyway. It's quiet, being only 6:16 am. I am waiting for my eggs to boil, sipping quality decaf (it tastes like the real thing, but I had caffeine yesterday, and I try to alternate days to prevent getting addicted again) We do live in a culture of addiction. That's what keeps the iron and nail-studded wheels of capitalism turning. This is why coffee is also called black gold. How many people would be buying it every day if they didn't have to? Not because of its lovely sweet flavour. Most people smother the aromatic bitterness with so much sugar, honey, agave syrup, Splenda, cream, milk, soy or almond milk, that they don't even know how coffee tastes. They don't want to know. It's bitter! They just want their little caffeine kick. They're hooked. That's capitalism at work. Like smart phones. Ever since they found a way of triggering the dopamine centres of the brain, there has been no turning back. It is pathetic, really, seeing all those little tech slaves wandering around glued to their little portable devices. Even crossing busy streets without looking up from their precious little screens. Natural selection at work! I don't have time for any of it. I live completely without addiction, unless you could call my daily chocolate fix an addiction, but I really just like the taste. I can go a day or two without it and I feel fine, but I love how it tastes (and yes, it is awful without sugar!). So, I live addiction free in a culture of addiction. This is a very odd place to be. I don't buy a lot because I don't need or want very much. Just the basics, just the facts, ma'am. Perfection is a lonely place to live in. But this has nothing to do with perfection or self-improvement, which can be another addiction, yet another voice of the Self-Hater. We really are a culture of consumers. We are all somehow so incomplete as humans that we have to grasp and consume just to remind ourselves that we're still alive. It's never enough till your heart stops beating. I don't watch TV. Not even Netflix. In most work places, that's all they talk about besides sports (not interested). Or yoga and meditation classes (ditto!). No room at the inn for me, I'm afraid. No wonder I'm always the quiet one in the room. I may have a lot to say, but almost never anything to talk about. There are only two things I do obsessively, besides breathing. I write. And I do art. Lots of art. Maybe that's where I get my dopamine fix. I also take long, quiet and solitary walks in forests and tranquil leafy neighbourhoods, and often I sing, or think and pray in Spanish. I also read lots of Spanish, and when my friend in Colombia lets me, I try to speak as much Spanish as I can legally get away with. It's what happens when you are a creative person living in a culture of consumerism. You are not motivated by the same hunger, greed and longings of your fellows, not in my case anyway, since I never really feel empty inside, but instead are focussed on the spiritual, the creative, and the beautiful. Not to seek and consume beauty, but to actually generate beauty, to become and live beauty. And this cannot be done while texting on a phone, or filling your cravings and addictions, or constantly seeking nourishment and gratification in other things or in other people. This can only happen from places of solitude, silence and peace. From the place that generates love. I think, really, that all of us are starved for love, but so incapacitated as complete beings that we are constantly seeking it, feeding a hunger that is never totally satiated. Or we seek out spectacles to distract and thrill and awe us. Tonight is the first big fireworks display of the summer, the Celebration of Light, that will attract around a half million watchers, who will all thrill, ooh and ah, over the magnificent colour and noise. And the fireworks are lovely. I have seen them many times, and I still enjoy them. But then everyone returns home to their bland empty and distracted lives, and tomorrow they will all be hungry again. I probably won't bother watching the fireworks tonight. I can no longer see them from my window, not since they put up the thirty-two storey condo tower across the way, that now almost completely blocks my view of the sky. But getting out to have to negotiate the crowds in order to see and enjoy the fireworks has also become onerous, and people in crowds tend to be unpleasant, if not downright ugly. Not to mention, 10 pm is usually my bedtime, and I have to be up early for church tomorrow, especially since I am one of the readers this Sunday. But I don't need to see the fireworks. I am already an artist, and there are lots of things I can do and work with colour in pencil crayons, pens and paints that would put those spectacles to shame. And as an artist, as a writer, and as a human being, I am still learning. I will always be learning, and that is one of my sources of joy.