Fear and Loathing in Crouch End (with apologies to Hunter S.Thompson).

Sometimes I wish I used drugs - not just aspirin or antihistamines, but real, mind-altering, heavy duty drugs.  The kind of drugs that would make my humdrum everyday world look psychedelically different and take me to a different  reality without having to leave my armchair. The kind of drugs that would grab my life and shake it up into a new pattern.

Hold on there, this is not a notice of leaving my senses or a declaration of intention.  It's just that some days I am so bored and fed up with my own reality that I might welcome an easy way to leave it.  I don't drink, so alcohol is out. I've tried to have a glass of wine when I come home and I can't really understand what people see in it.  I have to admit that I drink wine when it is served to me and I can even distinguish between good and bad vintages (I think) but, you know what, I don't really like it.  I find all wines are a bit acidic and they never taste as good as a diet coke does. Does this make me sound unsophisticated?  Probably, but it is the truth. I've indulged and even over-indulged in mind numbing amounts of tequila, grappa and absinthe and though they do alter my world (and my balance) they also make me feel dreadful and the next morning, even champagne gives me a shocking headache.

I wish I could read science fiction or fantasy books and disappear into someone else's bizarro world for a  while, but again, I can't seem to get into books that blur the lines of the real world with some future life where women rule weird planets or people replicate by using machines.  It's just not my style and when I look up from a book, there it is again - same old, same old.

Unfortunately I am very reality-oriented.  I like my world to make sense and to have certain specified parameters.   This is as much the problem as it is a source of security for me.  My world is sort of limited by this need to be safe.  This confronted me today when a member of one of my courses announced that they had made a 'bucket list'.  A list of all the things they want to do before they die is how they explained it.  It has never ocurred to me to do this.  Am I missing something?  Should I be making a bucket list?  What would I put on it?  Where would my genuine desires end and my skewed realities begin?

OK - here is an attempt to begin to put together a list of things I would like to do or experience before I am too decrepit to enjoy myself (this, by the way,  could happen at any moment):

• Visit Japan,  especially the older, traditional parts of Japan
• Create an artistic masterpiece
• Spend a week in a luxury spa like Canyon Ranch
• Go to the Bhakti Fest in the desert in California and chant for a week
• Tour the palaces of India
• Share a beach holiday in a tropical paradise with Ralph
• Have a house in the hills of Tuscany
• Visit the monasteries of Bhutan

Suddenly I see that most of the things that immediately come to mind involve travelling the world.  I guess that this is the easiest and most pleasant way I know to alter my reality, to enter the reality of another culture and immerse myself in that new way of life for a while.  I am absolutely not interested in seeing ten countries in ten days as part of a cruise.  I want a month at least in a place.  I want to learn the foods of these countries and meet the people.  I want to watch craftsmen from all over the world demonstrating their particular skill.  I want to soak up these differences like a big, hungry sponge. I want to cook alongside the people of Kerala and the old widows of the Italian hills.  All of these things make me smile and especially because they are not unattainable.  I could do these things, at least some of them, quite easily.

I guess I do quite like fantasy, but they have to be fantasies that I create; lying on a beach sipping tropical cocktails (I do love those calorific drinks!), cooking and creating spectacular delights, painting masterpieces and generally opening up the borders of my world to encompass new things.  These are the mind-altering drugs I need today, just imagining expanding my boundaries is enough for now. I already feel better and even my own world seems different.