Various and Sunday

Spring seems early but it will frequently leave and stay out late. (Then you stay up waiting for her and wonder, why don't I worry like this when she's away at school?)

This morning I was on the phone to my mother and looking out the window. I exclaimed, "Mom, I just saw my first cardinal of Spring!"

"Oh, honey, " she didn't laugh but sounded amused, "cardinals don't go away for the winter."

I said, you're kidding me. I said, you never told me that before.
____
Iowa is fine. They have their weather which seems to travel longer distances than here. Everybody better get in the basement, you've got an hour and a half. Tornado in Des Moines, leaving with the Greyhound bus and coming right this way but you have time to finish your movie.

People don't see each other there much. Whole families in one city, run into a sib after midnight in the all night grocery, "Last time I talked to you , let's see, there was a big swim match coming up you were excited about. What was that?" Oh, that was last year. Say. Brother we may be getting old. How are my nephews?
___
Mom asked about work. My answer to friends is to boast that it's one of my most succesful, unsupervised runs ever, it may never close. So with Mom I have to catch myself up. I can't very well tell her it's hard, though. I'm usually speechless for a second and then I can't help myself from casually mentioning, again, for the 100th time, that I work "six days a week".

Well, that doesn't wash anymore. She doesn't say anything, but it's long enough now, I can join the real world probably without "slipping" and becoming a hopeless daily drunkard. (That sounds scarily appealing sometimes. Like on this day when I don't work, not when I do work.) A 40 hour week wouldn't kill me I suppose.

But it seems like it might since I hate this 30 hour week.
____
Meanwhile, I'm waiting for my pencil pal to come back from overseas...Last I heard from her, she was dining with a MOSAD agent (along with her husband) and he may have told her too much and was now tailing her around Glasgow. Or, so she hoped, since he was interesting to talk to, especially when confronted.

If I don't hear from her soon, I won't know what to think.

righty-o !

Via Right-Wing Bob , by way of The Associated Press, "Academics gather in Minnesota to deconstruct Dylan".

“I should think people need to explain themselves if they’re NOT intrigued, enthralled and obsessed with Dylan. Those of us who are, we don’t have any explaining to do.” -Christopher Ricks, a 73-year-old professor of poetry at Oxford University.

(title suggested by exclamation mark, btw.)

Sliding Past The Rock

Accompanying her this afternoon through all these suburban buildings in search of the right clinic. Around this corner, over this pine-needled ground is the Blue team building. We pass through, not sure where we're supposed to be. Green team, Gold team? Where's the magenta gang, so frequently maligned.

Take a left, back outside, along the side of the building, two steps down, right, right door.

In and out of doors, on to the next low slanted modern. Like walking through mini-forests. We may cross a stream soon.

Then as we pass through each not uncheerful, soft, whispery and lambent waiting room, it seems that I am not moving at all, but the scenery is changing. (It's like this sometimes when I'm following a friend and we are on his or her business, not mine.)

Suddenly we're recognized, or rather she is. We sit. She's heard me curse. Why.

Of all the waiting rooms, this one is lousy with kids.

She laughs and smiles and probably pats my leg.

This isn't conducive to reading, or for floating in unreal denial, or for praying.

Lord Father, in Christ Jesus' name. She's good for the world, she's your instrument. I can argue from behind the pure white cloak but I'm no chorus. We've kept this quiet, too.
_________
Now they've called for her and cheerfully admitted her away out of sight, I start to sink. And then these kids all around me aren't so vexing. I was just starting to sink but three children from one family in particular are happy, but calming too. Whispering their enthusiasms rather than shouting them. As if they're glad to have their seats. They stay put.

Ten minutes of informal god-bothering, more like thinking than praying. One sided, yet a conversation somehow. Unsheathe my heart before you read its desires. Then put it back until I'm strong in a few more years of sobriety.

Read my heart.

How on earth can I stand it, say for an instance, that I'm no longer safely 12 years old, in the house where I grew up, with my parents near-by, and everything normal, all I've ever known.

Got to think.

How do I sit here in this strange part of the world, knowing that I can't go home again, that my dad is dead and my siblings scattered.

All I have in this world is my mother's voice on the phone. It's been so for two decades.

I look around , then close my eyes and try to find myself under all the smithereens. Even if the house was still there, I'm down in the tall, cartoon-billboard Ozarks. Nothing is right. Everything is far away.

This is vacation land, we'd come down for five or six days to fish for rainbow trout on the White River. Oh, Lord, I thought I was unhappy at 15 but not while we were on those last vacations when everything was new for the second time in my life and I would smoke hash with my nearest brother and drive across Table Rock, in between the mountains of trees and rust, with sheer cliffs everywhere that didn't bother me at all. Pre-vertigo.

Father... father/creator of my father (I've thought recently, and felt closer to Him.) I know what I want doesn't matter. You will give me wisdom and endurance, what I need. But I want this all to be all right, is all. And it's not just for me. For Christ's sake she's a 13 year old boy's mother and a Good Night Nurse, let her go! Worries enough here. And we're all growing.

The middle child keeps returning to the table before me for a new National Geographic. There are richer kids here. nullified by ipods.

The receptionist calls out a middle aged woman doctor to show her something on her computer. It's nice how the computer leavens the relationship. The madam doctor is listening carefully, she's understanding after a few questions. One exclamation, "oh, I see. A-ha."

Anonydoc speaks fondly of some of her secretaries/receptionists. Not all of them, not without discriminating intuition or intelligence, which she explains well. I wonder if this woman has anything like her humor. It appears she does. She's nice anyway.

Suddenly she is standing there, a little to the left, smiling. I drop my book to my lap and can't understand this. Sit down beside me. Tell me, I'm about to say.

"You know what, " she uses a whisper voice without whispering. "It's nothing. There's nothing to biopsy, there's nothing there at all. No biopsy. " Eyes open wider than usual, a beam of light broader than usual from there. A smile. I jump up, you're kidding! Really??

We laugh and leave the place arm in arm. People smile at us, maybe they think we've just learned that she's pregnant. No, better! She lives! Then we step out into the beautiful, mild sunny day and head to the car. Shaking our heads. Now we remember with pleasure that she is on vacation, her son is coming to town. Also, I don't work again until tomorrow afternoon.

Wow, what a wonderful memorable day this will be, Angel. Where shall we go, with all this strange but fun time on our hands, all this time in the world. By god, free in the world, too, with these wheels! We've got wheels, baby.

Show Me ( The mystery of the cherries)

I put this Renee photograph on my desktop for a week, thinking now what the hell is that? Did she superimpose a bright hand painted drawing or some clip art onto a photograph?

Best to click on the picture to see what I mean...

On my monitor this looks like thin, cut paper. The lines on the leaves look pencil drawn (but almost too perfect).

The color looked impossible, on my monitor anyway. A beautiful illustration. Like a cell from Song Of The South.

That is how I rate beauty , you know, something looks like a child's cartoon, a Disney or Warner Bros. cell, that's art if the colors are unreal.

Or, "Arf !" if you will.

I scowled that there was no explanation accompanying the photo. I've been planning for two weeks to confront her about it. Really. What the hell, that is just stunning, you can't leave a photo like that un-captioned!

She took me to see.

So, look. They hang from her rear-view mirror and one day as she and Zigfield were driving I-80 the sun came through the translucent plastic just right and she went "oooh!" and snapped the pic. The back ground is the windshield as they are speeding along.

Now I am admiring the background of the photo!

One thing about successful photography is just paying attention. (An earlier scroll of hers was titled 'pay attention'.)

Paraphrasing here, she told me how if you focus on an object and the surroundings are a blur, usually that gives the object depth. Well, that was another thing. But to me it was the string that seemed to give the "picture within the photo" depth. A reality that heightened the unreality. The blur surrounding the cherries was the blur of speed, motion, and maybe the slant of the windshield.

I'm not kidding, this pic so bewildered me, having the object finally dangling from my own fingers was a pleasant freek out.

"Smell them. " she said. "They're air fresheners."

And Teem Was Good Pop

It's in the spotlessly clean, time-abandoned kitchen of one of the churches where I attend A.A. meetings.

I'd forgotten this brand of Coke.

Haha. Why don't you laugh, son? That's a regional joke, everyone calls pop "Coke" down south.

"Make My Coke A Teem!"
_____
Except for old model trains, which need to be shiny as the day they were left under the Christmas tree, immaculate relics are, to my vandal eyes, a trifle menacing. Somehow, an afront.

Maybe they don't respect the dead. Perhaps they mock my childish awe of history.

Or, in a church basement, I fear "dust to dust" and I am reminded of what is lost, that used to be common place.

If I'd been watching a Beach Blanket Bingo movie from 1966 and the camera caught that image behind the counter in a soda shop, I'd have been thrilled, and felt more reverence. (yea)

Sometimes there's no explaining what can make me feel hostile. You say "pang". Maybe that's right but it's surprisingly close to pain.

I need to look around and see the present through century old eyes. Learn to love the telephone pole and all the wires criss-crossing our eyes.

Like postcards

Anonydoc---I want to say my Anonydoc, since I feel possessive---is overseas for a fortnight. In London this week, she has telegraphed daily in an effort that I might fathom it all. L'il Nell is indeed dead, for instance, Fleet street turns out no news but only what her concierge calls "shocking stories"( he will only give her The Times or Telegraph, although she protested, saying something like, "but I am American and love trash!").

She and her husband have had tea at Fortume and Mason's. They have seen the Queen leaving Buckingham Palace, (Anony's husband may have tried to get a picture, but Anony loathes cameras because you are always having to stop life to take a picture.) (So I doubt he got a shot.)

At the National Gallery she saw Sunflowers and "one of those chairs in that room in your print,,the one at the asylum". (I wonder what she means? Did he do a study on the chairs by themselves?)

She has strolled over Isaac Newton ("among others", she says. I presume she means "along with other tourists", not that she's trampling the graves of other exemplars for the Ages.)

Anyway, here I am holding back, wanting to ask what television is like there. Ever since I was a kid, when I go somewhere new I want to see what the local news set looks like, and the station's logo, etc. "What cartoons do they have?")

The picture above is of the Grosvenor Hotel, where I stayed with my parents on our trip in 1978. Anony says she is looking for it.

I should be following her on Google Earth!

Dream Of An Elderly Drunkard

Getting along in years, I've already learned once to get along with library books, a television with rabbit ears, the radio at night , (A.M., just talk).
I praise God that what looks nightmarish to some looks like a secret passage to safety to me.



Never once in my grown days did I ever run out of smokes. The morning smoke makes you smoke all day but it's worth it. Because you know why? That first smoke, you reflect on everything you have , especially what they can't take away. You fill your lungs and it's like downloading yesterday's memories. Who you saw, what they said, how you answered them.

Day before yesterday, can't recall. It's not a memory problem, you just don't need to recall, I guess. Day before yesterday is just part of a general accumulation (and acclimation).

And I know how to make a quart of beer seem like a line to a keg. Right down to about three fingers, a long time.


An old bum might want a pal---a partner really, like in the old west--- that's a help. Kind of like a kid might need an imaginary friend. But anyway your chance of a run of luck doubles. Bums share. One must probably eventually have to cross the other, though. He'll get too lucky, and you don't even fault him for disappearing.


I can keep my soul together, body and soul I'm not so sure.

My whole life seems a run of good luck. Things happen naturally and every time I'm a little surprised. Small worries proceed that, but I've always been more amazed at civilization than violence. Violence shocks but it's nothing to contemplate. People cooperating, building buildings, not wrecking into one another, that's something to think about and marvel at.

What should I worry about except the phone going dead.

But it never has. Each day a mild, pleasant surprise, and maybe something in particular to look forward to, like your show.

Seas Of Linen

We can't decide what we like best about the new map.

Introducing Scrubs

I haven't told you, but maybe you have heard,
that the Prior of our dorter
has allowed me a Good Night Nurse

__
This is while I am struggling with alcoholism and drug addiction, and trying to write a novel and avoid any kind of labor. The Prior (he is new) is very anxious I "chill out, dude" because I am disruptive and known as "contrarian" at our Monastic meetings.

I call her Scrubs.

She's a very nice woman and a fun companion. We play gin rummy, watch movies, and sometimes enjoy breaking news, but only if it's a live car chase or something similar. Whatever I want to watch.

She's very thoughtful. She's brought me this beautiful world map to brighten up, enliven and enlarge my cell. (Oh, that' s another thing about our new Prior. He's imprisoned me.)

Difficult to see here, but it looks like it's been painted on linen. But it is not painted and it is not on linen. She is going to have it framed. Also she's made me a shelf and is going to frame some favorite family photos of mine.

I am one lucky convalescent from my dis-ease.

Tweaking Seekers

When I was wealthy for three months, I had a blog I called "Spin Whistle". It can be found degrading in the Wayback Machine. All the quote marks and apostrophes are now replaced by '?' marks.

Man, I was bombed. But well dressed.

"standin' on the gallows with my head in the noose,
any minute now expecting all hell to break loose"
---dylan, natch...

The blog makes cross-eyed sense only. It's a difficult read. Even I gave up, and I'm my biggest fan ever.
____
This is a much more interesting world I inhabit, "Recovery". For instance we're frequently in layman discussions about who to put away. And sometimes we actually follow through and off they go to the second or third floor at the University Booby Hatch.

Will it be days, weeks? Holy cow, it's been a month. No, longer! Leaping Lizards, Holy General Schitaki, they've got lodged in the system's throat, or they've disappeared with their paper work, oblivious and anonymous on psychiatric drugs. Somebody better go look into this! (You want to ?) (Nah. You?) (Oh, I guess not.)

But geez, by now you'd think they'd have turned up at Daybreak or New Horizons or Encore or The Discovery Channel.

Sitting over at the Eloise House the other day, the phone rang and our girlfriend Aaron wanted some chew-bacca. That wasn't the surprise, though, since we're in the Ozarks. The surprise was we'd forgotten all about her and it'd been three months. I remember at the time thinking she only needed 72 hours.

She's at the Last Word now.

And won't call me! I wonder why. Maybe she is of two minds about calling me. (New favorite expression of mine. Lately I've been telling people I'm of "two minds". A lot. I've said it to waitresses and convenience store clerks. "Well, to be honest, I'm of two minds... regular or premium, hmm...") Anwya, it wasn't me who dropped the dime on her.

Really, what the devil, Aaron? Signed, your friend John.

Then, as related below, I had the Phooka herself committed last January. Or, I provided an assist. Down the rabbit hole, wrong turn at Albequerqe, something, she's been gone so long I'm afraid they've discovered she's an interesting case. For the books. I'm glad I didn't say, "I'll be waiting."

(To the contrary, paraphrasing Marx here, "I never want to see you again after the way I behaved last night.")
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Addicts bear watching. Those of us in the area "Sober Houses" always have one extra room. You reach a limit, and someone in your house is going to go down the chute, maybe a head long dive, and it's almost always the newcomer. It's like Ten Little Indians and one of us is being stalked.

There's the one bed which seems to be only for those passing through.

You try to be fair. You want to disbelieve your own eyes sometimes.

Relapse time is Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. Someone gets some bad news, someone gets some good news. They're off!
___
My speech to the newcomer is simple: life gets curiouser and curiouser when you're sober. And remember, you're with the same cranks, freaks, eccentrics, heros, villians here in Recovery as at the bar. Same people! Only twenty times more interesting.

Now I've put this off long enough. Someone is out of control, and I'll put it before my peers. They say our fate is "jails, institutions or death". They forgot to add, "The Street". Of those four, "Institutions" are obviously preferable.

Journal entry 15 March 2007

I was in the mall, about to walk up the grand stairs to my apartment, when who should appear but Rory Place and this new girlfriend of his (the one with the small yellow neon tattoo on her shoulder).

We played army a lot when we were kids and he's still in his brown, World War Two style, five-star general helmet.

What a glad-handing bore he is. What a neighbor. Always so earnestly happy to see me again, and shake my hand. And then the conversation goes nowhere. I got nothing to say. I'm tired, coming home from work at the depot, where I spend my hours sending and receiving telegrams, and swinging the lantern for the locomotives.

Anyway I felt mean and wanted to make an impression on this little blond bombshell of his. So I tell the General, "I haven't seen you since the Alamo! And what the hell? I thought you were dead, Place."

Then I just walked away. Sort of like I walked away from the Alamo myself. I mean I'm not really one to talk, except my uniform is as a Western Union man. He's dressed like George Patton. And he's got the girl.

I'm fine with people as long as they're not top-heavy forward, living in past glories I don't share. Hell, who shakes hands anymore? And that grin.

Eh, forget it. Time to get to sleep.

First Annual Nazi Day A Wash

I was ten blocks away, assembling the Sunday New York Times during the anti-"Jew Communist" march in Colobocomo. Now and then I'd step out for a smoke and see if there was smoke rising behind the grand old Tigger Hotel (it's big red letters on top restored to their 1948 glory).

My last theory about this strange day was that the march was a diversion for a Great Robbery. But it was not to be.

Our state university town should be proud, despite what these close pictures show. Most people stayed away, as the City Fathers pleaded that they should every day on the front page of the Daily U.


A friend wrote to me, "communists, nazis, all the same to me". I'd agree but as you can see from the signs, these provocateurs were truly sub-normal race baiters. It wasn't a protest against the Left, it was a protest against "Jews" and "for" White people. So, yes this was more sickening than I imagined too.

Now you have to keep in mind that in Toledo in 2005, the Michigan Nazis called out black gangsters and were supposably there to protest black on white crime. Toledo was a counter-protester riot, with burning buildings.

Here in Colobocomo, they called out university Journalism Students. Who, quite frankly, are C students majoring in annoying leftist propoganda, which used to an area of expertise called "Reporting", practiced by cigar chomping, alcoholic men who were stridently anti-fascist and anti-socialist/communist.

So these Minnesota Nazis were pussies.

"Come on out, you four-eyed sissies. Lackeys to Jewish Movie Moguls! You Dateless Bookworms in your Che Guevera t-shirts!"

400 people came out, all right. But that's not a lot, considering there are probably 25,000 students.

The NAACP decided to hold their rally five blocks away, so there was no race confrontation, as feared. This was all some whitey P.C. vs. Un-P.C. thing.
Evidently the cops let these feckless Minnesota Nazis walk right into the Colobocomo Against Evil, and this was all over in about eight seconds. Everyone got the pepper spray, including the photographer. Hell, it looks to me like the cops sprayed one another too. See that stream of mace?
And the good people had their picnic on the other side of downtown. On a local message board, one "Starshine" asked for a report, what was happening on the other side of the Tigger Hotel? "Here we are cooking out, playing games. Everyone has a "Not In Our Town" shirt or button. Some of us are showing the children how to pot flowers and we're teaching them about plant diversity."

Yes. "Plant Diversity". (Oh, actually that makes sense, come to think of it.)

Later on the message board, it was announced that the police had followed the Nazi's "south on 63 several miles". It was about 3 p.m. so they left two hours early. No local Klan appeared, to my knowlege. So I cling to my belief there is no such thing.

Our skinheads are not European-Right, but Anarcho-Left (an oxymoron). One wrote that he was staying the hell away from downtown for fear of being mistaken as a fascist.

People rarely note, or choose to ignore, that the German Nazis were Socialists. Left or Right? They were national socialists, which meant, share the wealth of all the countries we plunder and enslave.
___
It occured to me the out of state licence plate on my car might draw some attention, and I later learned that this Minnesota branch did have some *gulp* Iowa members. My experience of the day was close to being oblivious, even being there at the newspaper. On my way home, driving downtown on Broadway, it was like any other day: we have a lot of thriving shops and lots of pedestrian shoppers, old and young, properous looking, colorfully dressed. There was the usual patina of freshly spent money. Minty green ice cream cones, Starbucks to-go cups. The youngsters, Junior and Senior High school age, walked in groups of five to ten, the grown-ups in groups of couples, and here and there the Ken Kesey types loitering unmolested, with guitars, drums and flutes. I saw a few obvious "activist" types, wearing vests covered with Peace Nook buttons. Shop windows all had signs reading, I can't quite remember the phrasing, "No Hatred Here".

I am proud of Our Town. As the time drew near for the march I'd become more angry than sardonic, even questioning whether this law of the land shouldn't be challenged in the courts once more. I know and deeply appreciate John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty", I understand that all ideas should have currency so the bad can be sorted from the good.

But this was not a debate, it was a provokative demonstration. That one needs a permit to gather at all seems questionable, but if you do need a permit, shouldn't it be to prevent melees as shown above? "Fighting words" are not, as I recall from 8th grade civics, protected speech. These fools drove into town to literally "disturb the peace".

Nazi Day in Our Town

Some wise guy played a really devilish prank on our little college town a couple of weeks ago: he asked for and recieved a permit for 20 to 50 Nazis to parade downtown (adjacent to campus) this weekend.

He alledged his group was the "fastest growing" National Socialist group in America, and promised that they would be dressed in full Nazi regalia, including bright red flags with swaztikas, arms bands, etc. The permit is for five hours, a long time to spend walking around and around and around one city block.

This has happened all very quickly, and has been on our front page everyday, as the police are naturally concerned that the counter protesters may accidently burn the downtown down.

Frankly, we are all just as excited as could be.

The police are begging people to stay away, and worry that they will be percieved as protecting the marchers. The NAACP has announced that it will not stay away, since it was made very clear this week, with the resignation of their president, that they are an activist group, not a social services provider.

As of today, according to the paper, it will be the high school students, especially the over achievers, to worry about. One is quoted in the paper saying he doesn't want to miss a "historic event". Shiver my timbers, it just might be historic if enough A.P. History students show up to fight evil incarnate. Myself, I figured it more likely that the, well, Communists and Socialists would be showing up, drunk on fake absynth. We'll see.

A teacher at the high school has taken this opportunity to teach about the first amendment and to have her students discuss their feelings.

There's been a weeks notice, so we may get some "tri-state" action, and for both sides.

The area Klan may manifest itself. Who knows? Maybe prove finally that one actually exists.

The city has arranged for a picnic in celebration of non-nazism at one of our nearby parks. They will be passing out t-shirts and buttons that read "Not In Our Town", but presumably (hopefully) no one will buy those and then walk downtown to make their point.
____
I noticed on our local intranets people weren't calling the cops "nazis" anymore. That insult completely went out of use for awhile.

Then, on the local leftist message board, one man (actually an old friend from twenty years ago, haven't seen him since) admonished everyone that they couldn't see the REAL nazis in our midst: the Republican Party.

He is a Catholic Worker peace-nik, against all war, (what is it good for?) and certainly against our current war against Islamist-Fascism.

People just aren't sophisticated enough, he said. They should recognize who deserves to be pelted with rocks and bottles. If only those Republicans would don their business suits and parade.

But sadly people are so apathetic nowadays.

Now these goons dress up like storm troopers, carry Nuremberg Rally flags, wear the traditional brown shirts, and you just know, you know, it's going to get a lot of journalism students in a contest.
____
Only, it's a prank. I'm sure of it.

Except the problem is no one knows it, and we may have some local Nazis dressing up and coming out of their closets. Looking for their Minnesota chief, perhaps.

Or, if the local myth turns out to be true, there are Klan in these here hills. They just might show up in their dusty, thirty year old buicks, armed with rock-salt blunderbusses.

Or have real bullets.

This will all be blocks away , while I'm working tomorrow. At the newspaper of all places. Unable to see.

Prank or not, it's Nazi Day in Our Town, and hoopla will ensue somehow, somewhere. And good barbeque with soft drinks. Maybe an Arts Fair. Is it too late to organize "Hands Across Colobocomo"? That would have been the solution all the city fathers were looking for this week, during all those late night town meetings.

Too late.

For The Clinical File

The day split in two and both halves fell out of my hands. I told a friend an hour ago that I was sleepy, and I was, so after saying goodnight I shut off the light, got into the sheets under the quilts and... began listening to a busy talk radio station in Los Angeles.

It might as well be the alternative universe, L.A. It is so familiar, but as mirror- reversed as England.

I visited L.A. in 1988 at my dad's invitation, while he was working there and considering moving there. I flew in from snowy Iowa and on arrival I remember a mossy tint to the air and an unnatural warmth. It was like all the outdoors was indoors. The sky should have doors and windows. Some egress.

Also, the sky seemed too close.

How strange it was. To me, California is where you go in complete resignation: you're in God's mouth, maybe his teeth, as Sebastian Dangerfield would say. Or, it's like after taking a pill, when it's too late to make yourself pyuke.

My prejudices about California are dear to me. They're like my fingerprints and I don't want to go around with bald finger tips. (That brings another automatic thought: I believe if I lived in California I would drift into some sort of arch criminality. Or perhaps just criminal arrogance. I believe I could be especially cruel in California. This is probably because I know I couldn't hope to distinguish myself being especially mellow, laid-back and non-judgemental. "Kind", I guess I mean.)

(I must distinguish myself. It's my instinct, I can't do anything about it, short of a lobotomy or an overwhelming spiritual experience. Maybe this "terminal uniqueness" is characteristic of what folks call "alcoholism".)
_____
So I am up, thinking of anything but the missing halves of my day. I received some bad news around 3 o'clock in the afternoon which changed everything, as far as the eye could see.
__
Yesterday I'd started reading Song of Solomon. I wanted elemental phrases of endearment, for one thing.

"thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead.

"Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them."

You can smile as I did at first, but this is the King James Bible and you can't get more genuine than that.

Her hair is a great unexpected, galloping sign of new wealth and salvation.
Her teeth are like a new white keyboard after dusting, and not one gap, no missing '!11!1!!'.
____
But now I am also thinking of the myriad ways women can be grievously hurt. There is a line in Song of Solomon, "I am sick of love", and perhaps that refers to something else but it still jumped out at me, amidst the beautiful verse.

He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.


Matthew Henry writes:

"Oh how much better it is with the soul when it is sick of love to Christ than when it is surfeited with the love of this world!"


Someone said that the tragedy of mankind is how much he can endure.
Like it's a pity how somethings don't kill us. You would expect to die.

"Can they imagine the darkness
which will come from on high?
When they will beg God to kill them
but they won't be able to die" ,

...Dylan sang in his first gospel album.

It was late and obviously my mind was disordered, my thoughts following from a confusion even of feelings.
_______
Early in treatment they had a wall-hanging or poster, which read "How Do You Feel?" It flummoxed some of us, who were so used to saying "high" and "hungover, or "great" and "f_ng dyin' here".

Abandoned Abrasive Absorbed Absurd Abused Accommodating Acknowledged Admonished Adored Adventurous Affectionate Afflicted
Affronted Afraid Aggravated Aggressive Agitated Agonized Agreeable Airy Awkward Alienated Alive Alluring

Ambiguous

Ambitious Amorous Amused Angry Anguished Animated Annoyed
Anxious Apathetic Apprehensive Ardent Arduous Argumentative
Aroused Arrogant Astounded Attentive Beaten down Betrayed
Bewildered Bitter Blah Blessed Blissful Blunt Boiling Bored Bothered
Brave Breathless Breezy Bright

You get the idea. It wasn't a lack of vocabulary, it wasn't English as a second language. We'd been flattened in our years of substance abuse. We were inarticulate. The list of possible feelings was not exactly inviting at first.

I remember my thinking, you don't mean "ambiguous" , you mean "ambivalent". That's what I said I was for a month or two.

No more.

you shoot an arrow straight up and it doesn't come back down, you think God must be making a gentle joke, with some disapproval, and maybe you can have it back after you've finished (and have learned how to behave).

(is how i see it at three and one quarter hours.)

My very self you knew;
my bones were not hidden from you,
When I was being made in secret

Psalms 139:14, 15

God's Re-Uptake Inhibitor

Alarm at the foot of my bed, I woke up and got up on my feet like striding out of my dreams. I got my trousers on and went to the kitchen, forgetting my eye glasses (I thought that was sleep in my eyes). I started a pot of coffee then sat down and had a holy smoke, while holding a palm sized Gideons' Bible.

" 1: LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
2: Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God."
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This week I made my quarterly visit to the psychiatrist I met through the treatment house. I have always been on Klonopin, this year and a half away from the keg, so I go in there and he signs me up for another four months. It would be a short visit but first I have to meet his Hindu (always a new one) who gives me a very polite sales pitch for SSRI's or the other anti-depressents.

I say I don't want you to waste your breath. My decision about psychedelic therapy is final. When I was in my 20's I'd eat anything, even if it was going to turn color into sound and make time jump over mountains and I'd be a wise elder in seven hours. But those days are over.

He was sorry if I felt he was wasting my time and he was wistful, if only I hadn't used the term "sales pitch".

I said I was sorry, it was a poor choice of words.

He said there are seven signs of depression and each one can be cured. Altogether, not four out of seven, not five out of seven but seven out of seven. But the key would be to keep regular appointments and they would monitor my progress on each drug and switch and experiment until "we, together" found just the right one.

I told him I was sorry I missed an appointment, especially since the doctor only works here one day a week and is booked two months ahead. The Hindu said he was sorry about that but what I must do is tell the nurse that I must see the doctor.

"What magic words do I say to the nurse? She has her apppointment book and if it's another two months it's another two months."

"No. You tell her that you must see the doctor. I am sorry if that wasn't understood, that you had trouble getting in but you must keep your appointments or this will never work."

I scowled.

"These are very modern drugs. They're quite different now, each is different...There is nothing in my records that show you have taken any SSRI's. I apologize."

"The records only go back a few years though, don't they, I shouldn't expect you to know. I regret these misunderstandings. Yes, I've had Prozac, Paxil, Effexor, Lexepro, Nortryptaline..."

He sat up and allowed a mild contempt to enter his tone. He grinned. "Nortyptaline is not an SSRI!"

"Yes, I know. I'm speaking of anti-depressants in general. These are the ones I tried. I gave them all a month or more. I gave them long enough so the doctor agreed I should try something else. By the way I should have mentioned this, I was always a heavy drinker but I am not now and I don't think I am depressed."

"You are not depressed?"

"No. I'm sorry but I'm not."

"You complain of a lack of ambition, occasional sleeplessness, that you are not as alert as you would like, you complain of a lack of appetite," he began flipping through my back pages, "you have threatened suicide, you have been committed for major depression and anxiety!"

"Fah. Ha, ha! That sounds like me, yeah. Ha, ha."

"I beg your pardon. Please. Are you not, is your middle name..."

"No one knows why anti-depressents work."

"Oh yes we do though. They prevent the re-uptake of seratonin."

"My depressions are situational and alcoholic."

He said, "We will help you in any way we can. If it is just Klonopin you want, that is for you to decide of course. "

This meeting was going to end with our bumping heads, repeatedly bowing and apologizing to one another. Finally the doctor arrived and he's brusque. (Plus a liar. He said it was the Hindu who was in the office only once a week.)

"Do they let you have visitors?" he asked.

"I'm not instituionalized. I share a house with other recovering addicts. That's all."

"Still attending A.A. meetings? How many a week? "

"Less and less." I'd slid down in my chair so far I felt ashamed and sat back up, quick.

"Really? So your desire to drink is going away then. That's good."

I let it go.
__
Somedays, too flip...

A Gentle Tap

Patrick Kurp quotes the following Samuel Beckett passage and discusses it with odd, pedantic delight.

A writer is imagining a character he is going to create:

"It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter."

I have to let Kurp do the talking here.

"The bad in the worst" hints that something else is going on, something more subversive, and only with that final phrase does the punchline, the booby trap, go off."

It's an impish joke. I don't know why I laughed out loud and I probably wouldn't have if not for re-reading and wondering if there is something self-effacing that the writer believes his character will merely see "the bad in the worst". Probably though he means for his character to be shallow, so the author himself can be wiser.

The character would indeed be a character. His writer promises to be very good company, keen and critical, laconically exacting, but comfortably tipsy.
___
I grouch about literature sometimes because I feel like a pearl diver who isn't quite sure why a pearl is valuable. Kurp's having to lead me me through that sentence doesn't bother me though. I do love the written word, and it is always worthwhile to witness genius.

Maybe Kurp is the genius. Some have said that today's critics are the true artists, in their mining for that mysterious quality/ virtue we call "Art".

Back to the joke, or "booby trap". Something makes me think my maternal grandmother would have smiled and read it aloud to someone. She'd have been happy doing that. But it would be irritating having to explain.

"Well, see, the day you die will be like any other day probably but since you're going to die it will be shorter, oh never mind I guess you had to be there!" (Then she would laugh again, this time at her own joke.)