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[personal profile] ninanevermore
Today on my drive into work, I was thinking about how my mood is always drunk, despite the fact that I barely drink at all. If I drank any less than I do, I would have to become a Baptist. Without going into it too much detail right now, I would make a lousy Baptist.

My physical sobriety is almost prudish. When I do have a couple of glasses of wine, I always forget to go back and finish the rest of the bottle within a reasonable amount of time. As a result, I find I have an almost a full bottle of vinegar when I come across the wine a few months later. It's a waste. I should swallow my pride and buy my wine in a box, since even time cannot make boxed wine taste worse than it does, but I can't make myself do it. I also have a well-stocked liquor cabinet, but all of the bottles are getting a layer of dust on them since I severed ties with my partying pal, Patty. If I wanted to get drunk, physically drunk, I wouldn't have to go far.

Still, there is this inebriated mood of mine to explain. When I first started writing here and I was going trough the list of moods, I thought it was funny that drunk was listed as one of them. Drunk, to my mind, is a state of being, not an emotion or a mood. If drunk can be a mood, then "full" and "cold" and "headachy" are moods. So I started to think about what kind of emotion "drunk" would be.

I concluded that if anyone could have an emotion that could be described as drunk, it would be me. So I went with it. I finally had a word to describe what I feel like. I decided that my mood would, from here on out, be drunk. Not that it always hasn't been, but now I would label it as such.

With this drunk mood of mine, I live in my head a lot. Like a drunk in a bar, I am always shocked that time has flown and it's time to go home. It always feels like I just got where I am and that I've been there forever, both at the same time. The past and the present collide in my consciousness, and things that happened to me ten years ago are as real and as current as things that happened yesterday, sometimes more so.

Because my mood is drunk, I tend to do things that seem inappropriate to people who's moods are sober.

I laugh when I feel like it, and apparently I laugh too loud. I get "shhhed" a lot for laughing. Sometimes I am the only one to see the humor in what I am laughing at. The world is funny to me, and the people in it are funny. I can't help laughing. Because my mood is drunk, I don't even want to not laugh since we drunks laugh at everything. This seems to bother people the most at funerals, so I try to curtail it when I am at one, no matter how drunk I feel. I can't say that I have always succeeded, though.

Like a drunk, I say what I think when I think it. I once had a coworker complain about this to me.

"You say things, and people let you get away with it, just because you're you," she said. This drove her nuts for some reason.

I had to agree that she was right, though I still don't know why it bothered her; I've always just thought that this is a benefit to being me. It is actually my favorite part of being me. I may get away with it in part because I am short and I have a small voice, like a child. To illustrate this, I will tell you that I still have solicitors ask if my mother is home when I answer phone. Because I am childlike, people tolerate my directness the way they would with a child (or a drunk, for that matter). Also, like a child, I have no malice to my almost perfect honesty. I don't come across as hostile to most people, just very blunt. If I don't like something, I say so. But I don't attack people or deliberately try hurt them.

I tend to have a polarizing affect on the people around me. This honesty either endears me to people or it makes them hate me. Thin-skinned people usually avoid me, and I prefer it this way. To paraphrase Monty Python's Flying Circus, people who are easily offended should not spend time with me.

Like a drunk, I might focus intently on something in my vicinity and not notice something obvious that is happening in my peripheral vision. I might get lost in a song, or a painting, or a movie, or in the color blue.

Let me clarify that my honesty is almost, but not completely, perfect. I am almost never really listening to Saber Dance, for example. Because I get lost in whatever music is playing around me, I can't listen to music at work. I wouldn't get anything done. Saber Dance represents how the world outside of my mind jumps and leaps around me. I'm sitting still, but everything else twirls, pulsates and jumps. Saber Dance is a metaphor for the world as I see it.

Keep in mind that I am a poet in my spare time, and I find that some of the best truths can be found in well-written fiction. This means that even when I am writing something fictitious, such as some of you may think that my encounters with the Carney may be, I am doing it to tell a larger truth. It all comes full circle, I think, and the perfection of my honesty is restored in the end.

When all is said and done, I can think of some advantages to my drunk mood. You can't smell my mood on my breath and it doesn't affect my coordination, so I am able to drive to and from work without getting arrested. It doesn't show up on a breathalyzer test at all. My drunk mood has no detrimental effect on my liver, so I don't have to worry about cirrhosis. Best of all, I don't have to worry about loosing my buzz, ever. I was born with this buzz, and it's not going anywhere.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~* ~ * ~ * ~* ~ * ~ * ~* ~ * ~ * ~ *

born with this buzz,

Date: 2006-06-30 09:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] erisreg.livejournal.com
i can relate,..:)

Re: born with this buzz,

Date: 2006-07-01 01:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neanahe.livejournal.com
I thought you might! ;)

Date: 2006-06-30 10:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] noir-au-blanc.livejournal.com
Toast. :)

Well written, very well written.

Date: 2006-07-01 01:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neanahe.livejournal.com
Thank you. Cheers!

Date: 2006-06-30 10:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] anne-nahm.livejournal.com
Coming from Baptist heritage - we all drink, we just go two towns over to secretly buy booze where no one knows us.

Date: 2006-07-01 01:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neanahe.livejournal.com
I'm from Methodist heritage; Baptists are the people that we have to beat to the local cafeterias after services before they clutter up the whole line and get all of the good flavors of jello. We buy our beer in town and offer one to our Baptist friend, but we do it in front of another Baptist so that the friend feels obliged to decline.

What can I say? It's an intense rivalry that has gone on for generations...

Date: 2007-08-12 12:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robin-rule.livejournal.com
yes and we all dance and play cards while driving there...heh heh
(deleted comment)

Date: 2006-07-01 01:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neanahe.livejournal.com
I've always thought so, too.

Date: 2006-07-01 05:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] discreet-chaos.livejournal.com
I remember the explanation of drunk from earlier, but I hadn't noticed the "Saber Dance".
Well said and whatever you do, please continue being you. Enjoy your buzz.

Date: 2006-07-01 01:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neanahe.livejournal.com
Yeah, I thought while I was at it I'd better explain Saber Dance, as well. Now, the next time someone asks, I can link them back to this entry and be done with it.

And someone will ask again, eventually...

Date: 2006-07-01 06:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] anayasmom.livejournal.com
I have two of the same personality traits. My unwillingness to stifle my laughter and my bluntness.

Date: 2006-07-01 01:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neanahe.livejournal.com
Honesty and Joy - why would they want us to hold back on these things? I don't think we are the ones with the problem, in this case. It's everyone else.

Date: 2006-07-01 03:23 pm (UTC)

Date: 2008-10-09 04:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jewelaldridge.livejournal.com
And I know that I am not really a famed champion, but only a forlorn and lonely inmate of the doubtful castle of my body; and that I, who know not truly what I am, must die in this same doubt and loneliness, behind the strong defences of posturing and bluntness and jovial laughter which I have raised for my protecting.

Date: 2006-07-01 09:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rumble-bumble.livejournal.com
ha, that's wonderful. i feel drunk too.
and... I laugh when I feel like it, and apparently I laugh too loud. I get "shhhed" a lot for laughing. Sometimes I am the only one to see the humor in what I am laughing at. The world is funny to me, and the people in it are funny. I can't help laughing. Because my mood is drunk, I don't even want to not laugh since we drunks laugh at everything.
...i can SO relate to that! ha :D
damn those shushing people ;P

Date: 2006-07-02 05:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neanahe.livejournal.com
"damn those shushing people"

There's too much sobriety going around, and it's making everyone joyless. I think their moods could use a drink! :D

Date: 2006-07-02 08:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rumble-bumble.livejournal.com
ha, exactly, let's get the world DRUNK! :)

Date: 2006-07-05 03:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] callmekili.livejournal.com
I don't come across as hostile to most people, just very blunt. If I don't like something, I say so. But I don't attack people or deliberately try hurt them.

its amazing how there is such a fine line between speaking bluntly about whats on your mind and deliberately being hurtful to someone when telling them what you think... a line that many in this world dont seem to be able to even see, let alone, step over.....

it takes skill :)

Date: 2006-07-05 04:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neanahe.livejournal.com
It's a matter of tone of voice and choice of words. Some tact is still required. If the person is overly sensitive, I do step on some toes without meaning to. I'm pretty quick to apologize if it occurs to me that I may have been harsh; a willingness to say you are sorry will get you pretty far with most people. :)

Date: 2007-01-05 08:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thefounder.livejournal.com
wow. i thought i was the only person who felt like this. definitely adding you.

Date: 2007-01-05 09:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neanahe.livejournal.com
Welcome! Added you back.

Date: 2007-01-05 09:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thefounder.livejournal.com
thank you very much.

Date: 2007-08-12 12:28 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robin-rule.livejournal.com
yes and we all dance and play cards while driving there...heh heh

Date: 2007-08-12 12:29 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robin-rule.livejournal.com
the founder of what, may i ask? it's such a cool announcement...

Date: 2007-08-12 03:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thefounder.livejournal.com
i am the Founder of the Nexus Foundation. which is something that basically hasn't happened yet. or may indeed never happen, judging by how quickly i get things done. on here, my username has been thefounder since i first got my LJ about seven years ago, so. the Nexus Foundation has a website (http://www.freewebs.com/foundation/), which will probably raise more questions than it answers. you may notice that it says it was last updated in July 2004; this is true, making an update of my bio on there very necessary, although some things in it that ceased to be true have become true again. ah, life.

Date: 2007-08-13 11:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robin-rule.livejournal.com
as clear as the caterpillar on the mushroom in Alice. twinkle...

Date: 2007-08-12 12:31 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robin-rule.livejournal.com
i never thought my innocent question would get such far reaching answer and responses...!!! i'll have mine on the rocks of gibralter....

Date: 2007-08-15 02:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] neanahe.livejournal.com
It just so happens that I wrote the far-reaching response 15 months ago, and had it convenientlyc tagged so I could refer people to it as needed. The question just happens to come up from time to time, for some reason. ;)

Date: 2007-08-16 05:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robin-rule.livejournal.com
clever jane...

Спасибо за статью

Date: 2011-07-09 07:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tannypij.livejournal.com
Благодарю за блогImage (http://7wp.ru/)

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