Mango Tree (And More)

Just driving home from doing mundane deeds - Bob Marley pops up on Sirius - "Redemption Song."

Love the song.

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery

  None but ourselves can free our minds"

I have heard those lines hundreds of times but today they knocked me for a loop. I drove off the road and plowed head on into a mango tree - but I kept singing.

Perspective is a victim of where your head is at at any given time. I am beginning to free myself from mental slavery and it is a powerful feeling. A positive feeling. My perspective has been skewed into uncharted waters.

My mind was highjacked by Demons and held against its will for many decades. It was inside my skull but didn't really belong to me. The mental disciplines I am practicing now are having concrete effect so I kind of don't know who the hell I am. I actually feel happy and confident from time to time. More and more frequently.

It hit me last Saturday when I was driving to the dump with a side trip planned to the grocery store. I was feeling happy and completely calm. What?

Please understand - I consider myself to be a Superior Being - someone who should never be required to do annoying chores. Used to be I would be pissed off the whole time I was out and wouldn't settle down until I got home - where I could return to hiding from life.

Just now I was out doing errands on the day before I go back to work. That violates a taboo I have adhered to for a long time. On the day before, I must stay at home and inject maximum calm into my soul. The hope is that I will carry that calm into the workplace and increase my chances of survival.

It never works but I do it anyway.

Today's errands did not ruin my day. Who knew?

So I hear Bob Marley's words - for the 800th time - and today they hit me like a shockwave, because they relate to exactly what I am doing - emancipating myself from mental slavery.

This is what I love about songs and poetry - they have the power to move you, and they can mean different things at different times. You don't read a poem just once. If it rocks you, you read it over and over again over the years, and as your life changes the meaning changes.

Songs and poetry are so much than words and music - they are magic, they are inspiration, they are emotion - they are living, breathing things.

Within half an hour  - or less - of going in to work tomorrow I will want to decapitate every customer that walks through that door. And some of my co-workers too. I will hunger to blow up my phone with Semtex. Thankfully, Wednesdays are only four hour days. Still, I typically strut in and limp out.

But then I have to do it again for two more days. Two 49 hour days.

But right now I feel supreme. Absolutely good and invincible.

And, truth be told, I carry around some meditation techniques in my head now, that I silently resort to at work that just may prevent me from being accused, tried, and convicted of 2nd degree murder (although I would consider it justifiable homicide).

Personal change, man - a complicated concept.

Who am I?