Truth and its Dimensions

[first lines]
[opening title card]: "... and all the pieces matter." - Freamon
Det. James 'Jimmy' McNulty: [on their way to see Major Rawls] What the fuck can I tell him?

Sgt. Jay Landsman: Whatever the man wants to hear Jimmy, whatever he wants to hear.

Magical thinking can you in trouble. For instance, I imagine Oppenheimer didn't really think he was going to actually father the atomic bomb when he mused about with it. Then the US flowed a little cash his way and the next thing he was all stuck with a conscience and a bank account full of money. Poor physicist. They always seem to get the short end of it. Us junkies, well, we're common enough and don't have the same sort of mystique. I mean, a physicist has to be smart and go to school and write papers and do math with letters that aren't even in the English alphabet. A junkie just begs, whores, and steals. They both think magically though.

Like angels and prophets, blind men giving directions to travellers. There are greater forces at play than we can claim and frame and hang on our office walls. Ask yourself over and over what the point is until you make your self sick, angry, tired, lonely, suicidal, and insane. Then come back and tell us what the answer is. If you meet Faustus or even Methuselah along the way, tell them old Joshua said hello. We had it out in our time. Only they kept at it long after the tea was dry and the smoke had cleared.

I've been called a liar before. It's not the worst aspersion. On the other side of the coin I've been told I'm clever. The problem with that sort of reputation is that it isn't earned or achieved. It's like being pretty or strong. You just are or you aren't, and the very nature of it lends distortion to exactly how truly you are anyway. Without drowning in a whirpool of semantics, let it just be known that I consistently introduce the truth.

The great composer of these theatrics, this tapestry of math and music, energy and light shows a generosity from time to time. Given enough to refine his talent so divinely, the punctuation of the levity is never a moment too soon. I've heard the madmen utter, "Don't leave before the miracle happens!" and knew they meant what they said when they said it.

I spoke with a soul in the dark about the duality in voices I hear, the entendre plain as day to the attuned ear. It would surely scare the shite out of me, but my reaction is to remain calm and still and wait for the opportunity to challenge the alliance, the will of any competing threads. There are old names that are never taken lightly and when invoked the smoke and mirrors become what they are. To live now, in these bodies, these cars, these media, with these memes and types is a challenge never faced before. The game's the same, it's just got more fierce. One could lose way in a labyrinth of collection, disbursion, prosperity, and dispair. Behind the smoke and mirrors are the same old carnies, the same old ones we've known and been. The magic lies in the darkness behind our heads, like the darkness behind the moon, or the darkness beyond the Universe.

Gypsies are a hated bunch. They're sure to steal your money, deceive you, perhaps inseminate your daughter, wife, or god-forbid your son. After all, who wishes for any of that? But still, the question asks itself, "Who would want to be a Gypsy?"

I can venture to answer: those who preserve very old traditions. They don't -choose- it, they respect it because it is theirs. If the exonym can be reconciled to perhaps the gentler Adsincani, we could speculate that their traditions and customs are vestiges of a much older world than our European Asian American one.

It doesn't take a stretch of debate to introduce the thievery and trickery. However, when you're one of a group of people whom most others view as beyond subhuman -- nay demonic -- it would seem more acceptable to go ahead and work the minds and the fears of The Haves against them. After all, we can't take anything with us. Part of me admires this noble savagery. It's a romance of an outsider, and surely the practicalities would offend my mild sensibilities, but the ethos of it seems to make more sense than the bloody bacchanalia Caligula conducts on Wall Street each weekday.

Sadly, the junky of the western world has less of a heritage to stead him. He's left alone at best and rehabilitated at worst. There is a junky ethos. It's the purest variety, a prelapsarian innocence of nature and animal, beast and man. The perversion lay in the manipulation of resource to the end of collecting the most standardized commodity. No, I'm not speaking of sex or real estate, but currency. If every yuppie popped into Starbucks, and every blue collar into their Dunkin Poppies in the morning for their constitutional we'd see the violence, the exploitation, the wars, and the lies dissipate. Only recently, within the past 150 years or so have we been to righteous to claim that Bartenders with their alchohol (and it has had its own character dissected) and Doctors with their pharmaceuticals have the piety to serve these tonics.

"Opium is mentioned in the most important medical texts of the ancient world, including the Ebers Papyrus and the writings of Dioscorides, Galen, and Avicenna." ‡

I've heard it supposed that the great architectural wonders of Egypt were moved by the men in a Pascalian Army fed on a nectar of poppy blood. I've heard a lot of things, but I'm more prone to share what I've seen. When fruits aren't forbidden, they lose a bit of the sexual lustre that illuminates them and draws the hand. When we can learn to tolerate that nature is nature, and nature is never wrong, we may finally accept that narcotics are a force majeure. Take that to court in any philosophical justice and invite me to bear expert witness.

Stealing is wrong. It negates the natural sense that the Universe is as it should be and we as actors in it are playing our parts well. Murder is a transgression that has precipitated societies to murder their murderers; a paradox in plain light. Rape is an opportunistic predation that takes from the most beautiful, fair, and gentle their freedom to grow, to love, and to share. Financial and more abstract crimes are no less significant, though the smoke and mirrors, the language and imaginary entities protect in proxy the men who perpetrate enormous covetousness, stealing, and false witness. These men are the most loathesome of all, and their psyches get the sexual high from getting over the walls built to keep the great unwashed out. We all pay; this I know. There is no cheating the muse. It cannot be done.

So where do we place our gypsy junkie thieves? Do we deport them to uncolonized islands to determine the level of threat established societies may pose to further exploitation through guns, germs, and steel? That hardly seems fair. No self-respecting Juif would tolerate sharing one of the Nazi's death machines with such a goyish jeer.

Perhaps, I propose, they possess a history and a vision. They carry with them a talent and a code that we may learn well from. The old expression, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Which of our accessable learning institutions offer the Adsincani tradition, the lore, the art and the ceremony? I find snippets and bickerings, but not one example of a credible first-hand account of the experience. The junkie culture in the Americas alone has a broad spectrum of subcultures, leaving out the consideration of the European, Asian, and Africa.

At this point, dear reader, I'll apologize for the grandstanding and defending the loathesome. Really my aim is to inspire just one reader to consider that even the most feared man has a heart, appetites, fears, hopes, and loves. Along with that a divine art communes us all, and when we seek to decypher and appreciate it we gain from it. We gain humility and the ability to alleviate pain and solitude.

Magical thinking is the only putty I know of that can fill in the fissures between the atoms, the gaps between the protons, the voids between the stars, and the seeds and eggs between the legs. Love will conquer fear all times. We are all felt alone at times, and we are all never more loved at others. We get the breath we breathe, the skin we spin, and the water we are. Threats are not weapons. Honesty counters threats quite well. So, my friends, my junkies, my gypsies, my priests, rabbis, and soldiers; even my temple money changers and the tax man: I love you. What more have you got?

‡ Please see the sources for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium