The affect of alcohol, if not abused, at least in my case, is purely aesthetic.  The world presents itself a level above time, immune to its ravishes.  My attention and the object are unified.  The world frees itself from what I ordinarily diminish it with—the urgency to establish an imperishable Self.

Artistic creation most often is drawn out through hours or days yet there is no time, no aging, and the same thing happens, and I feel liberated from the need to establish identity.  I already am and can simply be. The good life is simply to react and each reaction during that state is perfectly appropriate.

<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas:contacts" />Hope is fulfilled in both.  The promise of the world has been fulfilled, every contingency redeemed. It seems I’m describing the Rapture.  My every action has been both morally and esthetically perfect and the reward has become one with time.

The problem is that nothing can prove that those perceptions are authentic.  Each time the effect ends and I’m back in the familiarly polarized world again.  Judgment no longer is so concise, proven in emotional responses by yielding beauty, but has the same problematic nature thought has as its positions are always haunted by insubstantiality, existing between poles that exist not essentially, but only for the sake of thought itself.

So it’s homesickness.  Exiled from the enchanted state one can turn on the Self that vanishes so completely during those raptures, but has reappeared, with the inauthenticity of violence.  The impatient Self turns on itself, wants to destroy itself in order to regain that perfectly aesthetic world. 

Resist the temptation and be patient, knowing that even a little sip of that nectar is all I deserve and the beauty I experienced will extend into my everyday life like like from a rose… but sometimes the spirit is so weak, the temptation to experience again that fragrance too great, the means to get rid of myself, though artificial, so near…