I’ve been picking apricots (and more apricots, and then just a few more apricots). Summertime has just begun and the beginning of harvest time is here too. Retirement is a harvest. You’re reaping the fruits of your many years of work.
It makes me think of Neil Young’s “Harvest” album and a line from a song on that album, “I’ve seen the needle and the damage done, a little part of it in everyone, milk blood to keep from running out.” My thought processes travel circuitous paths. I like Neil Young’s music and I own the requisite copies, for anyone who was a teenager in the mid-seventies, of the “Harvest” album (both vinyl and compact disk). I wish I could say I don’t get the line from the song, “Needle and the Damage Done” but retirement has provided me with new insight. No, I have not used my free time to experiment with intravenous drugs, but I have developed an awareness of the false allure that addiction provides: ESCAPE.
Escapism is one of the insidiously seductive “isms” that become more accessible with the lack of workplace time management. There’s consumerism, isolationism, totalitarianism, and alcoholism just to name a few. This takes me back to Neil’s song. Maybe the little part of addiction in everyone is what we hold on to, to keep from running out… of energy, of hope, of motivation.
This reminds me of a line from another song. This one was popular in the eighties and nineties (before political correctness was so pervasive, and probably a strong argument for political correctness) on the local 94Rock, TJ Trout Morning Show: “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, than have a frontal lobotomy.” The line is attributed to Randy Hanzlick in Google. It seems to me that this is another, less eloquent, way of saying what ol’ Neil was saying; addiction can provide the escape needed to cope with the challenges of existence.
We all know that alcoholism rarely has a happy ending, so let’s look at the “ness’s” for possible life sustaining, addictions: happiness, fitness, awareness; and for balance, let’s throw in some “ity’s” like activity, civility… We can still drink and buy stuff, just in moderationness (or is it moderationity?). And we can always eat apricots.
It's Me: Jennie Block Taylor 