ad dlo yadah

so, there's a lot of stuff on the blogosphere about Purim and general drunkeness this week. and I want to say something too but I'm still not sure exactly what. it's all too vague.... but there's definitely something about that place where perception gets hazy and happy, where it's easy to talk to people bc the things inside you that always hold you back are suddenly gone, and you think "why not? why the hell not?" and I'm the first to admit that excess alcohol can turn messy and ugly pretty quick. it isn't, by any means, always pleasant for more than just the individual involved. but there is stuff about it....there is stuff of beauty and truth embedded somewhere in the land of the drunk people, (or people otherwise stimulated) that normally stimulated people don't see. and I personally have made an art form out of getting high on life. or, well, too little sleep and too much coffee, which, trust me, is not totally dissimilar to highs of other kinds. but there is a difference. there is. I just don't know that it's worthwhile defending it....I get so annoyed with all the denigration bc I do think G-d wants us to get drunk sometimes. I think that He wants us to see the world that way sometimes. maybe it's my naivete that still leads me to think that there are deeper dimensions in everything, that everything really does serve some more layered and more interconnected purpose, that everything has a something more if you just look close enough, are open to more possibilities.

anyway, I don't know. I'll end with a pleasant drunk-boy story. I went into Yerushalayim for a seudah in Har Nof with my adopted family, and in the middle of the meal a boy who no one, as it turned out, actually knew, knocked on the door and greeted, and was greeted by, the baal haboss as old friends do. he was invited in, he sat for a bit...couldn't have been more than sixteen, was probably aaround fourteen; very clearly drunk, falling off his chair etc. but all he asked for was some singing, a dvar Torah, and at one point insisted on dancing even though he could barely stand. "rikud rikud! chayevim rikud!" ("a dance a dance! we need to dance!") it was cute. we were all amused. he went off on his way soon enough; I just thought it was cool to see someone that drunk still intent on fulfilling the spirit, not just the letter, of the laws of Purim.