psychic acceleration via gravity slingshot

I'm a big believer in the gravity slingshot. That's the maneuver where a spacecraft allows itself to fall towards a planet or moon, using the acceleration afforded by the gravity well to actually pick up the momentum necessary to escape the planet's gravity in a near miss by using a vector of its own engines.

One problem, sometimes it doesn't work and you either end up with a trapped spacecraft or, worse still, a direct hit at high velocity. It's a risk you have to take to accomplish certain things, allowing for resource and necessity, to achieve certain speeds and trajectories.

I do it myself, from time to time, emotionally. It helps me get over a funk, it helps me fight off a mood. Maybe I am slightly bipolar, maybe not (One doctor and one relative think I am, everyone else and the consensus of medical authorities say "No"...but I allow for all variables in these calculation). But I know this, the risk of losing my gifts as a writer if I were to take meds far outweighs any complications in my own life caused by what I merely consider stong tidal emotions. It is a shame that having a personality in these graceless times is the basis for being medicated into mediocrity. Of course, many of the people who manufacture, prescribe and fill the prescriptions get rich off of that little concept, so I don't expect it to change. It's lik the old saying: War is good business, invest your son.

So, here I am, on a Sunday evening. I got all my "to do" list done yesterday. The CD ads are up, the podcast is put to bed. I have a major reading coming up in a couple of weeks. I've lost almost twenty pounds in the last two weeks on the Paleo Diet (and I like both the diet and the effect) and I'm bored.

Let's face it, Morgantown is not Los Angeles. It is fine for what it is, but for a restless soul such as myself who doesn't think self-medicating with alcohol is the same as being entertained or being productive, it's pretty much a gravity well in and of itself.

So, here I sit, firing the rockets by amping up the iTunes with the most emotionally wrenching songs I know, the equivalent of psychoreactive drugs: "Crash Into Me" by The Dave Matthews Band, "Heart of Gold" by Neal Young, "KIss from a Rose" by Seal, "Don't You Forget About Me" (the Billy Idol version, I prefer it to Simple Minds' - this is my head, not yours), two from Dire Straits - "Brothers in Arms" and "Romeo and Juliet" and finally, the fusion-drive death spiral that is Don Henley's "Heart of the Matter".

All "end of life as we know it" songs in and of themselves. But, laced together and unleashed on my naked preconscious, pure acceleration. Twelve G's of pervasive bend in the continuum.

I've done this before, so don't worry, I know what I am doing...and I am not ready to sabotage myself unto madness or death or despair, the heat of the high mental atmosphere friction will burn away the space barnacles I've been collecting over the last few days and weeks...and I will emerge the other side with a shiny new hull of a brain pan and a new joy for life.

And I will write of wonders that, right now, still seem only vague visions and fading memories.

Ah...I can feel the pull now and the heat of the rarefied gases. Life is good.