dis-ease

Consider: disease

dis-, as in lack of, not, opposite of, apart, away, asunder, in a different direction, as in two, twice, two different ways, twain, between.

ease, as in mitigate, alleviate, relieve from pain or care, render less difficult, relax one's efforts (including 1863 to 1907, a more specific sense in sailing), to content a woman sexually (slang, 1861), physical comfort, undisturbed state of the body, tranquility, peace of mind, pleasure, well-being, opportunity. Compare adagio. Cf. at ease as a military order denoting freedom from stiffness or formality.

These from the Online Etymology Dictionary. 

Put the two together.

Dis-ease.

Read the above all over again. 

No, I'm not going to walk you through it. I'm not going to sermonize on what breaking down the two word parts means separately or together, or what marrying them conjures up and gives birth to. You can do that yourself.

It's revealing, isn't it?

But, still, add to the mix not at home in the world, nor in your skin, your psyche, nor in your bones.

The etymological and existential tension (infinitely tender and fragile; unspeakably personal) between cling and let go, grasp and avert, indulge and refrain, partake and repel, pause and pirouette, explore and perish.

Why is that?

So much depends. (William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow")

So if you have only a thin wire,
God does not mind.
He will enter your hands
as easily as ten cents used to
bring forth a Coke. (Anne Sexton, "Small Wire") 

taking a sip

what's the harm

who will know

just a taste

after the dance

just a touch

no pain all gain

we can manage

a single kiss

ain't no trouble

have one more

just a sip

give it time

give us time

for one last hit

before the slip

lurks a lie

has a name

shiny bauble blaze

sends a scent

and hides a truth

of fire and rain

flame and fury

crashes to ashes

rust to dust

-ism

I see that Merriam-Webster for the first time selected a suffix as its Word of the Year: -ism. Their selection criteria include various calculations based on lookups and combinations of lookups and year-over-year increases etc. So, 2015 evidently saw a lot of search activity (lookups) related to socialism, communism, feminism, fascism, racism, terrorism, and capitalism. I am mildly surprised not to find "alcoholism" on that -ism word-lookup parade. Am I being a grouchy growler (hate that word, though why should anyone hate any word?)? As for "-ism" and "alcoholism," there have long been clever and insightful pop-culture associations, with "-ism" representing the solipsistic "I self me" of the disease or the "I sponsor myself" approach that is said to thwart recovery.

ties that bind, or loosen...

...around the collar, that is.

For eight weekdays in a row now, I've worn a tie, a different tie each day. Jaunty ties, dressy ties, sober ties. No bow ties yet, though I have a very fine, handmade collection of bow ties.

Why this sartorial binge?

I'm not entirely sure of why I embarked on this experiment. I didn't see myself embarking on anything, really; it just happened into a habit. So far.

Perhaps I was inspired by the mother of my daughter's friend, who wore a different dress for 30 straight days. And then created a blog to tell about it. But this is different. I work at home. I could theoretically stay in my pajamas till noon, or later. And I won't publicly say whether I have accomplished that feat (speaking of feet, don't you just love pajamas with feet? No, I don't have those). I also often work on weekends, during which I don't shave or wear a tie, except for church. Episcopalian.

It is simply too facile to say I did it (or am doing it) to be more "professional," to exemplify the thinking that says: If you are making sales calls or telemarketing, wear a suit. I don't know if I've ever bought into that, whether it is empirically fruitful or as productive as making calls with a tin-can-and-string phone.

But I have had a good week or so. 

So who knows?

Another tie tomorrow, for a meeting in the morning. Who knows, maybe even a second tie for another meeting in the afternoon. You may call that "tying one on," but if I were to tie one on in the sense of abdicating an abstinence of many years, one day at a time, I'd be truly tie-died, tied-dead, three sheets to the wind, in my winding sheet -- to put it in jejune Joycean terms.

Coachez-vous avec moi?

Have you heard about this one? You can hire someone to make sure you stay clean and sober. But it might cost you $1,000 or more per day to enlist the services of such a provider, called a sober companion.

Let me pause here to note how I discovered this fact: The hugely entertaining Sunday Styles section of The New York Times, which spotlights the glitterati, ran a piece on this phenomenon. You've got to admire their pluckiness. Last Sunday's edition featured a section opener on a designer, Anand Jon, who always found himself aswarm with barely (pun intended) nubile wannabe models and who now, um, faces multiple charges of rape, sexual battery, and lewd acts (big shocker); an article on fancy inventions, such as slippers that double as mops; and the piece on sober companions, featuring a profile on an ex-con, ex-user named Ronnie Kaplan. Oh, and the bottom of the page is anchored by a large banner ad (say, 14 inches across by 6 inches deep) by Gucci, for an "indy" silver leather bag: $2,590 for the large and $1,990 for the medium; roughly the cost of a few days for a top-drawer sober companion.

Apparently some of these sober companions come out of the entourages of celebs. Hey, they get sober and why not be a smart entrepreneur and combine the skillset of bodyguard, therapist, coach, pastor, and cashier! A sobrepreneur! (I take credit for coining the term.)

It should be noted that part of the sober companion's services typically involves attending with the client meetings of free 12 Step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA. And it should be further noted that AA encourages and suggests that the new person find a sponsor (also for free). The sponsor is someone who shares his or her "experience, strength, and hope" about sobriety (but not about film deals, fitness tips, financial planning, or tattooing techniques).

One of the firms that offers these services is named the brilliantly marketable Hired Power. (Why didn't I think of that? Conscience? Envy? Not quite enough shamelessness?)

Incidentally, this all reminds me of some of the scenes in "The Player," the acerbic and first-rate movie by the late Robert Altman, where the guy pitching movie screenplays is told AA meetings are a hot place to shop scripts.

May I discreetly and delicately mention that (as readers who have read this journal can discern) I have some "credentials" in this arena? Ergo, I hereby offer some suggestions for other sorts of companions along the same lines. Alas, someone undoubtedly will take these suggestions and run straight to the ATM with them.

Labor Coach -- (No, not the one for labor and delivery of babies.) A professional to keep one on task during the workday, making one productive, happy, and whole. (I'd make a great one -- for someone else.)

Lustwaffe -- A personnel weapon, or battery of tools, to assist one in navigating through issues of concupiscence (I just love that word from my seminary days; come to think of it, seminary itself is such a richly layered word, too, in't?).

StepMaster or StepMistress -- Just another name for a sober companion, perhaps skewed toward sub-dom addicts.

Better Up -- Aimed at helping compulsive gamblers or impotent sex addicts or persons with low self-esteem.

Lip Service (or Imus-n't) -- Someone to protect you from saying the wrong thing at the wrong time (not that I'd ever need that, oh no, not me).

By the way, The New York Times article ends with this observation by Mr. Kaplan, "The lifestyle, most of it is a facade....Most of them are miserable. I try to bring meaning to their life." [Some day, I should do a post on the word "lifestyle."]

Excuse me, the phone is ringing. If it's Lindsay L., I've got to turn her down. Men with men and women with women. I know, sounds kinky. Hey, I was just in Berlin!

Unperson of the Year, 2007

Well, today it is things back to normal, more or less, back to not being Time magazine's Person of the Year 2006. In fact, it is back to being Potential Person of the Year 2007, or Potential Nonperson of the Year 2007, or even potential person, or potential nonperson (I threw that in for existentialists and FOSK [Friends of Soren Kierkegaard]).

And what is "normal" on New Year's Day, anyway? It is not a normal day. It is a day groggy with the hangover of the memory of ancient hangovers, after a night of no imbibing, except for the intoxicating vision of numbing television, including the watching of the Waterford cystal ball falling, by increments of seconds, backwards-counting seconds, like those manned-spacecraft or unmanned (neutered?)-spacecraft launchings we watched in my youth. This, a scene from the new, Disney-fied Times Square, a far cry from the ancient, tawdry carnal "Midnight Cowboy" fleshpot carnival of yesteryear, though I admit to sometimes missing its vulgar, if menacing and perilous, "atmosphere" and allurements.

New Year's Eve. The memory -- my memory -- of retching mercilessly by the clock at Grand Central Terminal (frequently mistakenly called Grand Central Station, which is a post office), slobbering onto the marble floor, oblivious to the star-spotted cerulean blue, majestic ceiling. New Year's Day. "I'll never do that again. I promise." Those powerless vows. One such first day of the year taking the train from that very terminal (not the day after the oblivion onto the marble), drinking again, cavorting, parading, mock-marrying, annoying, dancing, falling, menacing for four, five, six hours. And then after the train ride making the rounds by car and foot and lechery through blurry strip clubs, Marvin Gaye music, a crack-up somewhere, knocking on strangers' doors at 5 a.m., fearing I was in Brooklyn (where I had never been). And then deigning to go to work the next day! These days, I'd have been fired on the spot -- and arrested too perhaps (cardiac or otherwise).

And so this sometimes unperson surprises no one when he says his New Year's Eves -- and the other 364 eves -- demand at the very least a modicum of sobriety, not so much as a virtue but as a personal, communal, and redeeming necessity. Achieved only by surrendering to and embracing grace, with an uppercase G, never the less. But always enough. An Abiding One-Day-At-A-Time Unearned (except by pain) Grace.

So what was "normal" today? Getting up around 10:30, everything thrown off. Sitting outside Toys R [with that obnoxious backwards, Cyrillic-alphabet-like inverted R] Us and laughing out loud at Steve Martin's genius novella The Pleasure of My Company. Laughing out loud as chubby suburban wives and surly dads and restless children run into the store and see an older man in a car reading a book -- and laughing. Do they think me a potential pervert? A molester? Let us hope not. (And somehow I think such miscreants are not inclined to wholesome laughter. Roaring laughter. Laughter at sheer humor, as well as the utterly distinct pleasure of reading someone whose style you love, whom you'd love to emulate, who just-plain resonates with you. Me, that is.) (The novella reminds me of Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine for its vision of daily minutiae.)

Did some dishes.

That's normal, isn't?

(We do not have one of those dish-washing machines, and I am glad.)

One never knows, you know? Today, in checking my emails, I found a very nice note from one of the authors on my list of 14 books, and authors.

Yikes! Who reads this stuff! question mark

It could be anyone!

Case in point: In November, I got an email from BBC Radio because I once mentioned A Perfect Spy by John Le Carre -- and they invited me to ask him a question for a radio show. And I did! I talked to him by phone! (enough of the exclamation points, dude)

Whew.

Merry New Year.

Laugh. Or....

Else.

p.s. Thanks for stopping by, Mr. Mystery Author Author. Clue to readers: I enjoyed The Nervous Breakdown.