2002-07-30 - 6:00 a.m.
Publication is a drug. Some people it doesn’t interest at all, while some people can take it or leave it. But once you experience it clean and strong and in the right setting, you feel the irreplaceable positive sensations flow in, from unexpected, surprising directions you didn’t even know could produce such positive feelings, only to fade soon, die out, and you want to do it again. Keep it up for any amount of time and then one day you want to stop, because while doing it is still fun, the thrill has worn off and doing it has become a chore that requires more and more effort, only you have to do it, it has become self-actualization, measured in words.
I regret not taking the time in the Annapolis hotel room the morning after the field school’s final binge to invest the energy into my laptop. It would have been a major score. Last semester Maria arranged for me to score a massive hit, a high-grade assignment that was more than anyone at my level had taken before, but the raw material wasn’t as good as we thought and I didn’t cook it right. My best hit that semester came with some junk that two others passed on before me, that only I saw the real potential of, and when prepared with the experience of an addict it gave me a high that I can still bask in through re-reading. That’s what I do when I can’t take a new hit for some reason, reread old clips, although that’s not as good as it is the first time around, although the "power of synergy" is as brillent now as when I first put it into my brain.
Now I’m at my mother’s house in Miami, where it is not available in high quality. (Online is more reliable, although it still needs raw material, but online can’t compete with the pure potency of print.) Last fall was the best. I was in total control of my supply of it, and I was even helping other people get it. It was so good, I was in a continual state of self-actualization. I lived for it, and it distracted me from everything else that was going wrong in my life. I only had one overdose--more of a bad trip, actually, that was only possible because I was doing it so casually and with such enthusiasm that when I screwed up preparing it one time, it burned all of my receptors when it turned out to be bad. Even that, though, was still an ‘experience’ in sheer quantity. I’ve had bad experiences before, but they’re usually not intense and were outnumbered and outweighed by the good ones; people who have mostly bad or mild experiences usually don’t get into the harder stuff or get addicted to it. I don’t think it would be possible to overdose on a good trip, unless it was so overwhelming in its effects that you couldn’t get thrilled anymore by everyday doses.
After that great source I had last fall ran out, I found after the new year that I didn’t care about anything else as much as I did for it. When a new supply eventually became available, I found I didn’t like the people I had to associate with to get it--they weren’t as experienced, and didn’t want to share it but wanted it for themselves, at my expense. I withdrew--except for the aforementioned attempt at a big score, which didn’t pan out--and I found I didn’t really care about anything as much as it, especially not going through all of the effort with none of the effects. Journalists and academics are clearly addicted, as they judge almost everything with the question, “Is it publishable?” That is the question that I ask myself about everything, and if the answer is yes than the potential hit has my full attention. I associate drugs with it, because drugs are publishable.
I am an addict, and if I interpreted more of the ordinary, everyday tasks as things that must be taken care of in order to assure my supply of it now and in the future--which they are--then maybe I would get more accomplished. For I have multiple incomplete papers due at the end of the summer, and if I do not finish them then I may not get it next year. By that last “it,” I mean the position of General Editor of the Catalyst for fall of 2002. During the last week of this spring, Maria offered it to me, and addict that I am, I said yes. She may withdraw the offer if I fail (or don’t meet the alleged written deadlines to pass) her and Uzi’s classes, which would mean that the only class I passed last semester would be the tutorial for what I call The Aberration.
Assuming I pull this off, I am going to be so high next semester. I recall what my probable co-editor said shortly after I offered her the position, “We’re both going to be on so much drugs next semester” [sic]. Yes, both literally and metaphorically, most likely. I recall what my future roommate said in the first month of college when a pipe was passed around, “No thanks, I’m just collecting material for a novel.” Fair enough. To each his or her drug of choice.
