SOBRIETY SALOON
EXTENEBRIS, AURORA NOVA
SOBRIETY: the final freedom & most radical act left in a nation gone politically, morally & environmentally down the drain. Five years without a drink. Five years without income. Five years watching America eat itself alive, while
contemplating a humanity as banal as it is hell-bent on profit, prestige & protecting America’s automotive bourgeoisie.
Make no mistake—this is NOT a twelve-step testimonial, where our seeker finds Jesus and a corner office. This is the raw chronicle of a mind too alert to accept the cheap consolations of modern life & too honest to pretend that
sobriety solves everything. Like a prophet without prophecy, I can only bear witness & patience toward a society where one neither rises, nor finds escape from our all-encompassing capitalist order.
Dispatches revealing a portrait, in words, of a consciousness clear-eyed enough to push through, defiantly, the charade of consumer capitalism – all while bound, by society’s silent judgments, expectations & imperatives. I walk while
others drive, and observe, while others participate – writing in the manner of a television set, left alone in a room which no-one occupies, blaring its sickly blue light into the empty night. Meanwhile, the swells busily arrange their
futures & families to suit their station and ‘purpose’ in life.
I breathe deeply and reign in despair, asking God for the inspired implementation of this imagination, and the edification of those who read on.
Here is the dialectic of the modern seeker— of cynicism and hope, locked in perpetual struggle – negotiating something which doesn’t even exist yet, while seeking only to convey peace of mind within this moment. Any terms of
surrender, as of yet, have not been offered.
What elevates these writings is their unflinching examination of the complicity of alienation. I acknowledge & accept my shortcomings and malignant values with the same bewilderment and resignation I have, toward all of society's
pretense, failings and promise. My job is simply to tell it like it is.
In an age when authentic voices are drowned in the cacophony of social media's false intimacy, this journal stands as testament to what writing can still be: not content to be consumed, but consciousness made manifest. It's a clarion
call from the front lines of the human condition, where sobriety is just the beginning of a much longer reckoning – of with what it means to be wide awake, in a world determined to remain asleep at the wheel.
Whether you find this a meaningful contribution, or merely a defiant drift through Denver's streets is up to you, dear reader. What's clear is that this journey matters—not despite, but because of — its resistance to easy resolution.
The struggle itself is the path ahead, while negotiations carry on and the stakes become ever higher.
