NitN 7 - Judgement (Absolve a Zombie)

After Judgement is drawn from Geoff’s Rider-Waite deck, we discuss absolution and rebirth and how they relate to mental health, TikTok, God and a metric butt-load of other tangents! (That’s a lot more than an imperial butt-load!)

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Intro!

I.

Reincarnation has nothing to do with souls and everything to do with the perfect storm of social and cultural climates whose winds mint minds.

Accept that premise and it pushes past possible that the second coming has already happened;

Jesus two-point-oh was just propped up on whatever kind of cross was tops that epoch.

Who cares that the winners who write history fail to commit ink to challengers to their authority,

The twentieth century alone witnessed John Lennon, Dr. King and Ghandi emerge as leaders, preach ‘do unto others’ and get tragically martyred.

And meanwhile most Christians turn their heads and tap their feet, distracted by the metaphors they expect to be literal.

This is a story of a hip new form of crucifixion.

Typical of the times, it’s controlled by corporations with the consent of the apathetic,

Admittedly it's miles more humane

But it has to be to handle the multitude of would-be messiahs our overpopulated planet produces.

See me just post diagnosis,

Staggering into the bathroom in the early afternoon for a laborious morning piss,

One hand flat on the wall helping hold the stalled engine of my body.

Note the way bedhead and beard merge near hidden ears

Making a messy mane that frames a pair of eyes that used to see so much, but have been amply laminated, practically to opacity.

Wan blue eyes bedecked with bags so droopy I could have stored spanged quarters in them

if I was actually as homeless as I looked on those early medicated mornings.

I may look more put together now, but those meds still stuff my nose at night,

Making me a mouth breather and thereby tying my swollen, desiccated tongue

And coating it and my teeth with horrible, bitter scum.

Guaranteeing sleep for the first twelve hours following their popping and dusky somnambulance for the next,

These pills are prescribed mainly to eliminate mania.

That high energy hyper awareness where epiphanies are frequent and the ecstasy they bring seems God granted.

But that’s crazy.

It’s no longer normal to embrace the mystery of inspiration’s origin and call it divine.

II.

I activated myself with a simple secret: Moderation.

Dabble in irascible passions and satisfy and starve your appetites for everything from drugs to sleep in haphazard cycles...

You might just light your mind on fire..

It makes you want to take every value you’ve ever osmosed and mold them into moving models that seem to march toward paradise.

Which imbues you with a duty to recruit.

But that’s crazy.

Because apparently nothing smacks of sanity like not rocking a boat we all know is headed off a waterfall;

Who cares that the few who can afford oars seem to be actively paddling towards catastrophe?

Rocking’s the only option we’ve got to dislodge us from the destiny concocted by those who let their own cocks plot the planet's course.

The problem is, the unusual live like their hands are nailed to wood

And they may be bleeding but it's the exposure that will really kill.

The ostracizing stares from strangers will condensate on your scalp.

Dripping down, they’ll begin to combine at the peak of your spine

Affecting mania the way hot oxygen affects raw meat.

The same high energy and hyper awareness in an anxious context still creates connections,

But soon you’re convinced that those ubiquitous stone jawed strangers

Are targeting you and those close to you with acts of random vandalism and petty theft

Designed to derail your idealism.

You wonder whether acquiring a real following would cause

One of those surly turds to become a white blood cell of social homeostasis -

A lone gunman.

The choices at this point are meds and self defense.

But how many deviants who buy firearms end up fulfilling the public’s prophecies about the mentally ill?

Refusing to perpetuate the persecution of the eccentric,

I allowed this pointless melodrama acted out by listless driftwood to drag me down to its approved levels of impassive monotony,

Me screaming, “It’s no measure of sanity to be well adjusted to this profoundly sick society,”

And then falling fast asleep.