Two Chances Not To Read This

Item! The ominous Mimi at Applebones wants examples of nouns trying to slip over the verbage fence. For instance:... well I'm drawing a blank, but she gives some examples. You should visit! Catch her goat, it's fun in the comments if you can manage to provoke her.
___
Item! Tkd Junkie has done a thorough 1st step with her sponsor and I want to congratulate her in her comments section, except, well..I have an oddball perspective on the 1st Step and when I talk in meetings about it there are always crickets.

Or maybe offended crickets, like I've joked about the patriarch's will or ...called the 1st Step a cop-out or something...

OK. One more try, or two: when I give my 1st step speech, let us say there is a Silent Penultimate Fourth Panel.

It's like a thread killer, this speech.
___
Step 1, from "How It Works" in the book "Alcoholics Anonymous": "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable."

I walked in, age 32, read that with a prelude 'it goes without saying' and skipped to Step 2. ("Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.")

Years later, when I was really really really in trouble and backed up against nothingness, my unreflective resistance became obvious to everyone at my long term residential treatment home.

For four months, not only did my counselors tell me I had not completed the 1st step, but my best friend did too, and laughed---nicely, endearingly--- because she could see I really was oblivious and couldn't help it.
___
That house. That nice home for free, with fellow "rumpots, crackpots", etc.

I can't believe how easy it was to get along, and I can't believe how stubbornly I refused to follow any of the rules.

For instance I would leave at will, to go up the block to the college to print off any emails I'd received.

I would use the kitchen after it was closed.

When they changed the smoking rules and we had to stay indoors after 10 p.m., I would find a way to turn off the alarm system.

I did my chores but unlike everyone else I never kept the daily record of my activities everyone was required to do and everyone felt so anxious about...

When challenged, I defended myself with what must have been insufferable self-assurance. To other residents, I'd point out that I was risking punishment, and they were free to also, if they wanted.

I'm not cheating you when I break the little rules. Why are you so offended? In fact I'm not cheating anyone. I'm just cheating. Intransitive.

I entertained myself with cat and mouse games with the staff. I turned group discussions into debates with the teacher, and half way through, forget which side I'd taken and--- like the proverbial zealot--- redouble my efforts.
____
In the book, the writers say the 1st Step is difficult because for one it is difficult to accept that we are different. Also, that it is shameful to admit to being powerless. (The original first step is hilarious, by the way. So it is written: "We admitted we were licked.")

I couldn't relate to this. Perhaps I was genuinely shameless. Or so uninvested in life that I didn't mind powerlessness. (Oh I had dreams, but they were grandiose, and not realistic enough to inspire hope. I didn't "hope" to be a famous writer. I dreamed of being a famous writer.)
____
Finally people started to say, "Surrender". You haven't surrendered, just consider your day to day behavior, it may be a one man play you're directing, but you're still the play director.

So I went back and wondered. They said this 'surrender' was about my 1st step. I had a problem with admitting my powerlessness.

Finally, long after I'd been evicted and moved into this Sober House, I could see there was , ahem, ladies and gentlemen, a misunderstanding. Between Bill W. and me.

The problem was that I'd regarded the 1st step as proclaiming my powerlessness. I was ashamed not because I was ill, but because I felt like maybe I was faking. Or that there was no such illness.

I thought, how would my family react if I told them I couldn't help being an arrogant drunk, thief, liar.
Wasn't that in actuality a laughable excuse?

(And Jumping Jehoshaphat! What sort of autobiographical re-write would be in order, if it turned out I had a disease. This wreckage of my years, involving so many people I loved and so many I admired and wished would love me...what if it were genuinely TRAGIC? Instead of me being criminal!)

To this day, and maybe forever, I sleep on it. I sleep on the 1st step, like my anonydoc told me to sleep indefinitely on another important question.

Most importantly I move on to the moral inventory, the confessions, the amends. This program, to me anyway, is about spirituality through right behavior. I'm not too good at it yet, I'm fundamentally a plotter rather than a planner, a schemer rather than a
manager. In short, I'm as selfish as ever.

But dear god in heaven, thank you for my water wagon, thank you for my new eyes. If I drink, I have no brakes, I drink to indefinitely postpone hangovers. If I drink again, I will drink forever, my eyes will be closed again. It would be to choose against life, to close the menu of life.

Deliberately. For now, I do have the power, by my lord jesus christ, son of the living god.
___
I'm John, a proud member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Thanks for listening folks.

(and for those of you who missed it, here The Secret Storm (1955)

Dick Cavett with 1970 Academy Award Predictions (Rex Reed's)

It's 1970, the year Midnight Cowboy and Butch Cassidy were up for Best Picture. Also, a time when it was almost safe to gratuitously insult John Wayne, without back-tracking a moment and then bravely charging forward again with something actually censorable at the time. (See if you can tell/ guess what Reed says.)

Rex Reed is just as I recall him from age 9: Not Sorry You Can Go F Yourself. Not dry-witted but pulpy. A professional kill-joy, as some critics are, but not quite up to the level of serious contempt.


What I see now is that he was with-it, man, making a lot of "bread" as a critic (and bit player) and he was going to help lead us into the Seventies' Great Wardrobe Depression. (But note, his argyle suit is from the 30's!)

If the film breaks, as it often seems to do from secondary sites, click here.

And to continue with the rest of the interview, here is Part Two.

He made it to the Gong Show. Still writes reviews (getting some attention when he lauded Michael Moore without noting any of Moore's dishonesty: it's the craft, you know.)

Now that I've put you off watching the clip, a brief note about Cavett and me. I will always be fond of Dick Cavett.

My bedtime was 9 and he was on at 10:30. My two older brothers got to stay up and watch and all I had was the furnace register, which was really only sufficient to hear how much my family were enjoying themselves, laughing or expressing shock.

So to this day I am still determined to get mine. I want to see every show, (and eventually I will even if it means going to the real Museum of Broadcasting History).

When I was finally old enough, the show was cancelled and I read Cavett's autobiography. I think it was written before his terrible bouts of depression and all the shock treatments. I found it laugh out loud funny in high school, anyway.

YouTube's collection of Dick Cavett clips has doubled to about 20 now, still mostly rock stars, like Hendrix, Lennon, Harrison, Bowie, Ravi Shankar and of course ABBA ...the Cherry Sisters, etc. But don't you worry about YouTube, anyone can post and it's the World Wide Web!

There is now an entire interview with Woody Allen, I ought to watch--- except for the first time in my life I honestly cannot get over this particular artist's arrogant self-absorbtion and apparent moral retardation. I really don't care for a visit with Woody, not even in his prime. Maybe especially in his prime. My mind can't get past that family photo Mia Farrow punctured with voodoo spikes.

Maybe I'll "lighten up" someday, I don't know.

"She's Back East. Visiting Family." (Thanksgiving at the Kettles)

This Thanksgiving the Kettle kin group wasn't quite complete, without A.C. and Emmy (oldest of the Kettle Kids, got thier own spin off shows now), and Renee and Rio, out East.

Pa Kettle is in charge of morale and he keeps it steady and high, like he's flying a box kite.

With this scarcity of women-folk, I almost didn't wanna come. Come to think of it, that made it all the more family-like, not wanting to be there, then being glad after all.

Za did most of the cooking.


We waited for her. Look at that bird. Look at that bird. Yeah!


Of course she was the last to sit down. Or, let us say she was, anyway. She isn't completely in charge yet.


We all had to say what we were grateful for. Then we argued a bit who came up with the best answer.

I started to mumble something about indoor plumbing and Pa took it away "Yeah, good one, Johnny, the age we live in!"

There's something about eating Thanksgiving at a table for 15, even if half the familys gone, you eat fast ...you know, just in case. And there's no rule about elbows on the table since everyone keeps their arms around their plate.

Then Pa says don't eat so fast. Wolfs not at the door.

After dinner I went out for a smoke. Aubrey came along and I asked how old are you now? He's eight. So I lit one up for him too. He asked if he could tell afterwards and I said "No, don't tell for five or ten years." He looked so disappointed, I do believe he'll try to keep his word. Aubrey is a remarkable character, the youngest and smallest, with surprising, admirable physical courage and what strikes me (during my too rare visits) as great, studied, deliberate patience. Like he knows he'll prevail and can wait. Well, if he can't help telling --how can I expect him to really---, I'll just tell have to take whatevers coming to me. Or leave town. Of course I can always leave town I guess.

Total Market Coverage Carnival Day

We spent two weeks preparing this Wednesday's papers, and I got a lot of extra hours pay, but on the big day all I had was my phoney-baloney job to record store and rack returns. I was out of action, way in back of the front lines, where even the generals were toting and baling.

So I put a ciggie in my mouth and walked around taking pictures.

Had a rival.

His family had it particularly hard with all the extra papers, extra thick. Three generations on TMC Day!

Every known address in Our Town was getting the thick, advertising laden paper whether they liked it or not.

To make my alienation worse, all my coblings and I were served special luncheons before the starting bell. I was scheduled to come in an hour early and suspected this was the reason.

The Boxx met me and told me to go upstairs, eat! Ah, f.a.duck, all right.

Different crews, different rooms, I discovered on the way.

I passed several of these windowed rooms full of the suits and young skirts from the offices across the street. Some girls, you look and it's like, let's get this straight, I'm a man and you're a woman and we should go make out somewhere in that labyrinth of newspaper rolls.

Pirouetting on the ball of my foot---it would be understandable mistake! I had plausible deniability sitting down to lunch in the wrong room, with the salaried ones--- One step forward, turning back, double-taking, rubber necking.

360 defiant degrees to see if anyone was watching my indecision, then forward as if through a scrimmage of demons. The Boxx's words kept coming back: "Go upstairs and eat, John!" Upstairs, he said. That was clear. grr all right all right all right. Not like I can make small talk anyway.

'Hi, I'm John, who are you?'
*****

Through this door covered with signs warning against espionage. Remember! Don't take Mr. Gimble's ads and show them to Mr. Macy or we'll cut you loose! Steel myself for this socially awkward breaking of bread with The Boxx and Crew. Up these stairs I should hear them by now but no. Their mouths are all full I suppose.

Can't get to know anyone here except when you escape the roar of the stitchers and the balers and the presses for a smoke break.

In a year now, I've got more friends with the guys in the Olde Press area, where I do my clerical work.

'Helloooh', I actually project my voice, 'what's this an awards ceremony, ah...'

Eye darting mutes. For right now, I don't care if it's me, not them, that causes the eye darting.

Oh look, my one pal on the crew, Chris, sitting not at the table but by himself with a plate in his lap. He's a non-smoker so nobody knows him at all. Been here five years. I sensed he was the outcast my first day of work, and that he was the non-supervisor to follow around asking what to do. He was a grump for just a few days, then warmed to me.

Teddi. I do like Teddi, geeeeee, from North Carolina, who grew up barefoot a fur piece from Sgt. York's , and carried a flask most of her adult life. She was drunk as long as me, in recovery a few years longer now. She's my boss at the stitcher and I'm not very good at that but when we get smoke breaks together she'll say don't worry, your brain will grow back eventually, mine did.

Glad I'm late. Boxx opening new party sub, grab a plate, John. Thank you, "hey is that what I think it is, YES IT IS THERE'S A QUARTER ON THE FLOOR!" Gonna pick that up!

Bad etitquette to use the vending machines and buy a burrito I suppose...
____
I am a poor man, well to do. Quarters are for parking downtown when I have a date at a coffee shop (long time).

I'm in second hand clothes for a year now, but they're bed-comfortable. And thanks to Ms. Vanderbilt-Benz or whoever she is, the sprite in my life (say, where is she these last few days? Pooka family reunion, something like that? Maybe she's left me for a bus driver whose behavior isn't quite right to her liking, and she's complexing him). you can call me General John Dollar.

How much is this?
A dollar.
Hm. How much is this?
A dollar, sir.

These last two months of the year I'm looking at about ten extra twenty dollar bills. That's rich, it's all relative. I want to buy the Pooka something more loving than a coffee pot. A coffee pot we both know is for me. Bunny slippers, no. Cotton pajamas maybe.

Throw pillows? Socks?
___

I took a seat finally and there was utter silence and I got nothing to say, no one I want to impress.

Some guy brought up a murder reported last night. Someone else said, yeah I had just walked by there a couple hours earlier.

Silence. Then, uh, did you see anything suspicious?

An opening! I don't take it.

"Hey! D'ya hear Michaels was robbed last night?"
____
This sandwich is too big for my mouth, I'm so rich.

I was scheduled to leave after just two hours, but stayed until the end. Everyone was in rapid occupation, everyone needed help, I darted from here to there, giving people unexpected 15 minute breaks, pushing papers forward, getting palates out of the way, rolling ten foot high stacks of circulars into place at the GMA inserter (our long blue locomotive without wheels).

Got to remember a lot of these folks have been working together for five, ten years. That dinner table quiet might have been more of a familial thing than a bad social mix.

Hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Better get up early Friday: limited supplies at those sales. Also look at the fine print for "in store price", under 'rebates!'

I've Been To The Promised Land

Every kid wanted the Frosty The Snowman Sno-Cone machine from the Sears Catalog, from 1967 to 1970.

Not one was ever sold. It's a fact!

This is the season of catalogs, a mailman told me today. (Tony, the mailman. He has the most weathered face I've ever seen and he wears a billcap that reads, simply, "Alaska". So you just don't ask, I guess.)

I've been thinking what a thrill it would be to find an old copy of a Sears Catalog from the late 60's, when I was a nit-twit instead of a fully revealed Twit. It'd be nice to see the one where Major Matt Mason finally had some partners. He wore white, NASA-proper, his first co-pilot wore orange, and finally there was a black guy who wore blue. Each year, from about '67 to '69, there were more characters, equipment, and finally a really glorious Moon Station.

You can find a picture of that here. Send it along, will you?
____
I'm flagging early tonight. It was a full house, this AA meeting, and so smokey you had to step outside to smoke. One kid got on my nerves. He's probably about 22, usually very intelligent (you can tell he has a future anyway).

He said,

"I don't care so much for Christmas. It's just too commercialized."
___
You can just imagine everyone turning in their seats and some of us half standing up to see who'd made such an original, keen and critical observation.

I can't hold back sometimes. It was hard to roll my eyes as large as I wanted to, so I had that chin swing ROLLING EYES going. And did it two or three times, wide chin circles, when no one noticed.

Let out a very long exhalation of mirth-dearth.

I want to bluster about it still, but the subject is too damned retarded. Just... just the precociousness, so embarrassingly unaware of its stunning banality; the moral pretentiousness too, and all before a crowd of poor people with kids who might be made fun of at school for their second hand clothes (a subject broached tonight).

I think he was given a pass because they allowed that he may have meant "Christmas is expensive". Or, maybe he wasn't given a pass and we're all home now doing a 4th step on him.

Then tomorrow we all go and say I'm sorry for hating you so much, kid. It's wrong!
______
My parents sure had me going for three or four years. Christmas was absolutely supernatural. Purple rich, in thick cotton benevolent, a long enjoyable time coming, and always with a heady summit of Good Ghostly Presence.

Then, for as long as the build up, we had a full week or more without school.

I don't even remember finally learning the truth. How smooth is that! My parents were magicians at Christmas.

There was simply no flip-side to it. No 'on the other hand' for me, age 5 to 8, I suppose. No church, even, that I recall. No neighbors singing carols, no having to join anyone singing carols. It was just the six of us, thank heavens. And then on Christmas Eve, Grandmother and Granddad Jiggs overnight, too!

The Apple Crisp lasted for days, the maraschino cherry cookies only one night but, as delicious as they were, we left one for Santa, along with a glass of milk.

And after you'd come downstairs, before dawn, and behold the unwrapped toys in the Christmas tree lights (we had fat, multi colored lights), there was a quick question mark: did Santa eat, did he drink? HE DID! JUST A NIBBLE SINCE HE WAS IN A HURRY, OF COURSE. How about that well back to the race track. NO, wait! Go wake up Mom and Dad to tell them it's happened! IT'S HAPPENED AGAIN, GET UP GET UP!

Wow, they were good, right down to the gel theatre lighting. Dad looked a little rough maybe. The mystery of the whiskers...

When I think about the commercialization of Christmas it's like this:

Seasonal Affective Order (S.A.O.),

I was thinking. And I thought, the Pooka-sprite's folks must be all pixilated.

So, I suggested she go to Alanon.

I do stuff like this when I forget, you know. Like, I'll send her a cab when I want her to come over, and it turns out she's right here. Pick up the phone to call her when I can just make a thought balloon.

But she played along and went to one meeting. I was waiting for her afterwards and said "Thanks, Florie," and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

"What? It was my idea. I was going to anyway."

I stepped back and her eyes were different. She smiled with extra twinkling and showed her pearly whites in a deliberate way. A friendly way , but deliberate. I mean she made a face. A nice face, but a face.
_____
Full week, and life is changing in this Sober House. Hardscrabble Ed, the hillbilly. It only takes one personality, a big one to be sure, but it's a bit thrilling, like you know you'll remember these days.

Also we have a secret house guest, a friend of Florie's who is pregnant by our other house guest. She's a child herself, and I like her being around. She approaches me like I'm a GROUCH (!)or something, and waits for permission to speak and then starts chattering like a certain cartoon character, all about her day spent hiding with the TV in their room. Dreading running into our constable, who is a dry drunk at times. (I guess I love this being the good guy, is what it is. But no, it's her too, she's just charming without having any idea she is. I must be getting paternal or something.)
_____
Working on the line all this week, except for the three hour reprieve that my phoney baloney job gives me. (Whew! Boxx forgot all about it again. That parade must have really done a number on him.)
_____
Florie took a candid shot of me after I'd just realized a political villian was live on my tv eating crow. I thought the result would be of me looking giddy. Instead what she got was the truth:




I am 45 years old and that is a 60 year old man, there. For 27 years I drank, and started with one or two secrets (skipped gym! won't graduate high school!) and ended up with scores of secrets, some I surrendered without caring finally. My drunk life was unending worry, dread, and finally horror. I would wake up in a small studio apartment staring at a ceiling fan and think "oh, god no." (and reach for a beer.) Everyday towards the end, for several months, I was liable any moment to have a knock on the door where I would either be put out on the street, or taken to jail for bad checks. Two hours a day I was almost at peace: between 3 a.m. and dawn, watching wonderfully escapist old movies on TCM. Two hours was all though. Then I had to stay drunk and I had to have company on the internet.

My last five years were after a three year period of sobriety, but not recovery.

This is what has happened. And I am 17 months sober and not getting younger, like I seemed to before, the first time.

I'm beginning to understand the promise, "We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it." The photo shocked me but I don't feel the way you'd expect. Maybe Florie has something to do with this, but I don't mind, it's not that bad really. I AM SOBER and I have lost the compulsion and certainly the desire to drink. Life's menu is open now! How can I be anything but grateful (and often smiling and laughing).

Yesterday I remembered one of my teachers giving me the shocking news that I was only a semester or two away from a Bachelor's degree. (I had no idea. Didn't take those programming classes into account. Or the accounting classes.) I COULD get that degree and I COULD go to Graduate School. I mean, I could choose a profession still. Something for real. Teach Rhetoric or something. I don't know.

An idea is just waiting for me to let down my guard , I think.

Must Preserve The Dignity

I've been afeared of approaching this panel at work. I don't know what they do here, adjust the color somehow.

I tend to forget that my brain is probably functioning well enough now that I can learn something new. But all the technicians have to wear these jumper suits and if you saw 'em and then pictured me in one (those of you who know me) you'd agree that I'm not being shallow in ruling this out. I mean, we have my dignity and my finely tuned individuality to preserve don't you know.

Today was a good day, huddled with my friends outside sneaking smokes in the cold driving wind and the rain, turning to snow. Surprising gusts, from a whole other direction: So let's look over that way during this group meditation.

All the hillbilly cars lining up for the paper. Gaaa, ah! Of all days today that young, brash one is showing her stuff, her decolletagees, have you ever talked to her, no man I've heard her talking to others though and that's enough.

Someone else said something really stupid, I forget, and then we were talking about there being no coffee machines at the plant. You have to walk down to break time, man.

No, no you don't, they got coffee upstairs in that office.

Now where the f is that office, it's mythical man, I've never seen it. I've seen the beauties coming out here and I , I , I guess it's for real there's an office up there but.

Yeah, just go on up there if you want some coffee, they'll give you some. Man it is going to storm tonight and I'm going to the grocery store and stock up for the long winter and I'm calling in tomorrow, no way I'm gonna drive in that.

Think they'll give me coffee, really?

Oh hell yeah. They's nice girls up there.

What I go up there and tell 'em I'm cold cause I've been outside smoking?

No! No, no man. You tell 'em you were outside doing what those people down there are doing, loading papers!

Is that red-head still there, the one from last week we got a glimpse?

Naw, she's already moved across the street with the suits man. You could probably go over there at lunch and watch her work out though.

This is a strange place.

Man I'm going in I can't stand this. Some relaxing smoke that was. Jays !

Notables

My friend at Chopready is back. Or maybe he hasn't been gone but his poem "Looking Back" grabbed at me. Also, Renee at Haphazardous earned some more recognition for another bare and not-mundane but mysterious photograph from Nowheresville. In color! (I'm going back to look now because my memory of the photo tells me suddenly that I liked the color).

"Rochester: A City of Quality"

I didn't learn much from this five minute, 1963 film-boostering of Rochester, New York, though I did get a needed reminder of my allergy/ constitutional horror of marionettes. (Thanks to the Malls Of America Blog for its YouTube contributions, by the way.) This is actually a clip discussing Rochester's new downtown mall. And no, they did not call it a "mall". But it was closed, air conditioned and the size of a football field.

"Meet me at the clock of the nations", the familiar narrator says in friend-some, neck-tied, business man spirit, "where each passing hour is gaily saluted in the carnival spirit that is universal with people everywhere. And I'll acquaint you with Rochester: A City Of Quality."

"Enjoy the "electronically controlled marionettes of our fabled time piece. Each passing hour they dance around the clock to the bright tunes of different countries from around the world."


I am always wary of the "Decoy Vintage" on YouTube (I'll call it). The citizen posters (anyone can upload a video, one-two-three) and commenter's at YouTube have this Mystery Science Theatre mentality that our forebears' ignorance of the future somehow equals dim-wittedness or even moral depravity. (Never mind that we stand on their shoulders).

But this parody, "Rochester: A City of Poverty" is not really parody but more a simple, dark reflection. It is taken from the same film. Same narrator, same upbeat advertisement, but spliced to modern day footage. Played straight, it's still interesting.

All of this brought to you by Jay Ward's Quisp and Quake cereal!

Sidebar Attractions

I've now included The Silent Penultimate Panel Watch. Along with The Comic Curmudgeon I think this constitutes the Funnies here.

The Silent Penultimate Panel Watch is ostensibly a complaint about "the use of the silent second-to-last panel" for comic timing in the strips. Sample:

All very important to understand! Myself, I think most of the silent panels work. What's nice is the humorous commentary in each of these blogs, and hey, we can read the funnies together. (At Comics Curmudgeon, half the fun is reading the +100 comments for each post.)

I like this 1959 Sunday Peanuts (the blogger notes is a "a curious reverse of the formula".)

But note something very alarming (if the Schultz estate is going to continue reprints).

I may be wrong but has some modern soul 'helpfully' written a sort of, what would you call it --- 'Emo Balloon'?--- in the fourth panel to explain Lucy's motivation?

(click to enlarge)

I may be wrong. Maybe Schultz had that in the original strip. BUT I THINK NOT. And I'm in some purist bad mood, by the way, after watching a DVD of ancient B/W Dragnet episodes last night, where-in the opening theme music has been replaced by some college student's experimental score.

But what if none of this were my fault?

Today I was George Stuffingenvelopes for three hours, didn't even notice what the publication was I was stuffing.

Baptist Orphanage Newsletter? Auctioneers' Quarterly? It was menial but not unpleasent. My mind reached for questions and answers, spiraled but spiraled forward, moments, and time was away, gone.

How was I here, and not where but when. When am I?

I only recognize happiness in retrospect. Suspect these might be some good old days.
*
Some feelings coming back.
***
I'm god-conscious as well. I believe that He is like some two-by-fours over a deep well, I stand upon, some incredibly deep hole of falling falling remorsing remorse, without Him.

But inside I am deeply flawed, and my short-comings exacerbated by years, decades of "self-will run riot".

I work now. When I volunteer to do extra work, I'm learning that I feel better.

But would you believe that with me, sometimes I have not wanted to feel better. I have a theory now about some "alcoholics" (I reject that term, have no other) being deliberate invalids, like some normal people admit to enjoying a fever and a cold ("sick days" for the hearty, good soups and extra blankets and other treats they give themselves) but far far worse and crazily mixed up, or "complex".

I've never read anything serious about masochism, the subject has never interested me, and I don't believe that's what I'm referring to. No, masochism would be to relapse, and I'm talking about addiction in it's last stages, when you are out of control and there is no pain, remorse, fear or any governing feeling that will cause you to save yourself from "jails, institutions, death".

Just a theory that I began to enjoy dying.
____
I say I'm learning that I feel better when I volunteer for extra work, not that I've learned. Somehow, the lesson will not stick, my mind will not have the lesson as instinct. The instinct should have been there all my life, not to be learned.

So that is one way a Drunkard mystifies others, and in recovery is mystified by himself. Do this, and you will not float away into fearsome danger. Do this and you will not feel like an outsider.

Show some get up and go, for crying out loud.

But no. The automatic answer is no.
*****
A.A. is contradictory to me.

We are to believe we were powerless and therefore blameless.

Yet we are to forgive ourselves by confessing to ourselves, one other person, and to God.

We have a disease.

Yet the cure is a moral inventory and overhaul.

I know very well what my attitude is and will always be. I remember this much. I chose to drink, to cower, to steal from my parents, to steal from businesses. I chose to drop out of school and I acted indifferent about betraying my parents. (What, should I credit myself for feeling a little bad? Of course not. That means I felt bad and did it anyway. I'm not a brain deformed sociopath, not insane or retarded.)

I live with the contradiction. That, or I only accept part of the 12 steps, and those parts are all after the first step which says we were powerless (the essential step, they say, and number one for a reason).
***

Some feelings coming back, after 17 months. I'm all right. I thank my Father for this home, my job, my friends, my remaining family, for the age we live in, for the humanity we share. All that and more.

Sometimes and again, we all have glad news too. Hm! I think about that too of course, but funny how it is more of an after thought for me now.

What did I miss

What happened?

Today the Imaginary came over and we listened to all the Lileks "Diners" we've missed since she became pals with that gal reporter. Three weeks worth, calm, pleasent amusement (also with musical novelty recordings from way back).

With Lileks, it's kind of like hearing Jack Benny talk to himself. Good friend you never met but understand, especially when he makes a wrong turn and nests tangents within tangents. ...

She wanted to go back into the archives because she'd missed Part 2 of the Jimmy Leeks conundrum. I was only too happy. Having a bad memory is a plus when it comes to professional entertainment.

Went to the Noon and 5:30 meetings at the Dead End Club, and I saw my foster Sponsor, who was offering me reassuring words about something...I really can't shake this feeling like I'm a walking amnesiac today, what WAS it...

Hm. Dreamed last night that Barney the First Scottie was put in the pound. That was just, haha, ...well, silly! You know.

But that was only the beginning.

What? I'm fine.

The noon meeting was especially good, as the daily meditation was about meditation and prayer, and no one was afraid to mention Jesus (or TM, for that matter).

One old fellow said he makes himself quiet and listens for the word that tells him to do what's right.

In the morning, I do that, in a way. I try to pull myself together , though, as if sleep has split me into an Alcoholic Congress of Demons. It's a bit too busy, too deliberate, and not quiet inside.

I read a random bit of scripture.

Sometimes just holding the bible in my hands, as I sit in the kitchen waiting for coffee to brew, somehow I get additional comfort. To me the Bible is like a touch stone to all generations. And I remember I am only an individual , and just how deep some feelings can go, and how I should keep that foremost in mind about my fellow man.
_____
Oh, wait. It's coming to me. It's all rushing back now.

Last night this guy in Oakapaloaka I don't like (from way back to Junior High) won a seat in the state house. He's an attorney, and in all his ads he refered to himself as a "small business" owner (technically true, sure, no problem ok, ok, forget that.).

It was a close race. His opponet pointed out that he'd failed to pay his taxes on time , six times. My nemisis shot back that this was a bald faced lie. It had only happened twice.

Ah well. I should send him an email congratulating him. I need the Governor up there to pardon me for something 12 years ago, about robbing drug stores. I don't advocate robbing drug stores, by the way. In fact I'm against that, so that makes me a hypocrite. I hate to bring the subject up, naturally. Nothing worse than hypochrisy. Hell that's even worse than whatever you did, according to some.

I'm FINe !11 Thanks for visiting. Sheesh.

New York Times To Topeka Day

It's really, really, really unlike me to have a job.

That neon sign tells you who just made a mistake. I wish you could hear the bells, sirens and foghorns going off. It's out freakin' rageous!

Tid bits, Larks' tongues, Wolf's nipples...

Item: I've found The Neglected Books Page via the always compelling blogger at Anecdotal Evidence. It's in the sidebar now (one bookmarking technique of mine).

This could be more than just intellectually satisfying. It could also be helpful. Say, in 2014 when everyone's talking about Harvey Fergeson's Capital Hill...you can cough and uninterrupted tell people you read it in 2007. "What. They make a movie?"
______
I continue to marvel at Dylan's latest ("Modern Times") as well as Love And Theft from 2001, which took awhile to hook me. It's strange though: I read the lyrics before hearing Modern Times, as did my older brother, who is also a Dylan devotee. We both agree now that this was a mistake. Not that the poetry isn't astonishing, for its uncanny emotional realism. Just that on first reading, you can't get it and after all they are just words on paper, read one time, without the music.

I can't get over this sensation that, in song, Dylan somehow gives voice to people I am certain are quite ordinary but somehow I've never met them. Or maybe , they're people I met long ago and nearly forgot.

One song, "Floater" uses quaint out-dated expressions. Some sound like defunct cliches, as if our language became absent-minded and we may have forgotten the truth, cliches always have.

The first person voice in the song seems to be a young man, considering his story, so you imagine he is still at an age where he parrots his folks, with these expressions.

Also there are clues that he admires most of his elders, or at least is interested in them.

Here are a few of these old turns of phrase. Maybe I heard my grandfolks talk this way. Maybe I hear these words all the time from people I am not really listening to.

In a song, they are striking!

I'll underline the phrases I mean, from the verses.

A summer breeze is blowing
A squall is settin' in
Sometimes it's just plain stupid
To get into any kind of wind
*
There's a new grove of trees on the outskirts of town
The old one is long gone
Timber two-foot six across
Burns with the bark still on

They say times are hard, if you don't believe it
You can just follow your nose
It don't bother me - times are hard everywhere
We'll just have to see how it goes
*
They went down the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee
All the rest of them rebel rivers
*
My grandfather was a duck trapper
He could do it with just dragnets and ropes
My grandmother could sew new dresses out of old cloth
I don't know if they had any dreams or hopes

I had 'em once though, I suppose, to go along
With all the ring dancin' Christmas carols on all of the Christmas Eves
I left all my dreams and hopes
Buried under tobacco leaves
______
I'm "how could he know?" and then , "Oh he could have read some old books!" Well, that's smart of him!

Maybe my examples just go to show, you really do have to listen to the music. Reading the lyrics without knowing the tune? Say, Meh.

Sean over at R.W. Bob recalls from "Chronicals" that Dylan is quite a Civil War buff. I am too, but like to get down in those middle times too, those odd times where nothing much seemed to be happening. Maybe Dylan is reading about the 1870's.

Of course, you may have read, "Modern Times" seems partly inspired by the poet laurette of the Confederacy. Which brings me to the heart breaking "Nettie Moore".

But I'm NOT going to re-read the lyrics... yet. Maybe not for years, maybe never.

I'm absorbing this song.

Apparently a man has lost a woman who was either his slave or a very submissive wife.

At the start of the song, he is sitting on the railroad tracks, and a passer by senses "something's out of whack".

The singer begins this internal dialoug and the story is told not by events but simply by his revealed attitude. For instance he will recall things he regularly said to "Nettie", ("...you better keep your business straight"). Then as more is revealed ---and again, not from any recitation or narrative--- you come to understand the depth of his loss and don't wonder that this is a type of true love, although fractured and morally corrupted (from memory, there's a line that 'everything I knew turned out to be wrong').

It is (maybe) after the Civil War and at the end of each refrain, ("I miss you , Nettie Moore") he states with deep aching wonderment that "the world has gone black before my eyes."

All of these songs are between six and eight minutes long, by the way. The more I listen, I start to think that this isn't just to complete a story but to maintain the atmosphere Dylan has magically conjured to appreciate. There are throw away lines, for instance, oddly humorous. ("well the world of research has gone beserk: too much paper-work").

Well here I am writing about what interests me. Dylan is my last idol from my teenage rock and roll worship days. I swear, I started thinking that pencil thin mustache of his looked good, after awhile...And now I want the cowboy hat that's in this video.

(My current favorite Dylan song, incidentally, called "Cold Irons Bound".)


_______________
Over the top of the week, into real time not saving daylight, November now. It's not nice outside, why why why must the outside take its stand? But I am keeping my warmth through friction, debating our local graduate students and young professionals on the local political forum
in this enchanting university town.

It worries me, who I'll find to get surly with after the election victories. What's to argue. I win my point and what do I get but silence. And hey! They turn back in anger and call me a name, too! I should throw rocks at those people before they call me names, because I know they're going to, they always do. Go on, get outta here.


Thanks for visiting. I hesitate to post because it will put this week's instructional movie a little further down the page. Do scroll down if you are interested in some short time travel.