sacred mysteries

how could it happen how does one drift from one person into another morph from one personality to another barely recognizable brand-new habits different features not physical no wait yes some physical shaped by stress care diversion distraction obsession compulsion call it addiction go ahead how does this occur overnight or incrementally invisibly moment by moment immeasurably imperceptibly unhinged from all consequence untethered from responsibility and remorse reckless to the point of indulgent death-defying what causes this brings it to the fore was it always there under layers of sedimentary deposition dolorous dolomite dangerous cementation percolating for years decades of decadent brew how does this volcano finally erupt when does it hurl lava rocks steam scalding all within eyeshot and after all is said and done said and done ad nauseam when is enough enough when does the person go back to so-called normal will there ever be a normal again was there ever a normal even a paranormal the road to recovery new neural pathways stroke victims new neural patterns relearning speech gait thought glance narrative halting steps a limp holding an unseen cane can one do it learn the healing find the healed self aromatherapy healing touch balm salutary salve soothing song how does one begin where does one start how does one take the first shaky step a sacred mystery  
 

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

My Last Hurrah

Give it one more try. Let's go out with a bang, shall we? One more shot. A last fling. My last hurrah. Throw caution to the winds. Three sheets to the wind, one more time. Some equation. Unmoored, head-first toward the shoals. Huzza. He who laughs last. Cries: "Hooray, hurry, oh hell." Gonna wait till the midnight hour. It'll be different this time. I promise. A look in the mirror: "No more." My swan song sung. My dregs done drained. My last hoorah. Hand over flame. How long, lord? The firing squad at dawn. Last requests? Sink or swim. Sunken treasure. Abandoned ship. Grace unnamed. Surrendered me. And salvaged self. We white flag waved. All aboard. We sure set sail. Wind at our backs. Into the sun. Under the wing. My first hurrah. Our shelter from the storm. Your brooding love. Our anchors aweigh.

Twelve Commandments of So What - Do Nothing

I once heard someone say: “So what. Do nothing.”

The “so what” was said to mean: whether you are addled, rattled, depressed, ecstatic, thrilled, terrified, despairing, or discontented, you are not the leading actor in your idiosyncratic, spotlighted melodrama. It’ll pass. You’re a speck of dust on an orbiting pebble in the cosmos. This reminded me of an off-the-cuff bit of wisdom a mentor breezily passed on to me decades ago: “Nothing matters very much; most things not at all.”

The “do nothing” part was said to mean: face it, feel it, suffer it, humor it, ride it out, don’t escape it. Otherwise, it will sneak up on you anyway when you least expect it. What is “it”? Any tide of emotion. Anything.

With all that in mind, here are my Twelve Commandments of So What - Do Nothing:

1. You shall pause, reflect, and shrug your shoulders.
2. You shall look at where your feet are.
3. You shall look up into the sky at midnight on a cloudless night in a deep forest.
4. You shall follow your breath, in and out, in a quiet space.
5. You shall accept and honor your self, with all your diamonds and all your rust.
6. Remember this day as holy, fleeting, and precious.
7. Restrain your tongue, pen, and Send button. 
8. Don't do the next right thing — not yet.
9. You shall let it come.
10. You shall let it be.
11. You shall let it go.
12. You shall smile.

palimpsest people

I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.  

Joan Didion

82. He crashes his head onto my chest. The baby blanket draped over my shoulder. Will it hurt him? The rhythmic pacing and patting. The ardently sought burp. His eyes on mine. And when he cries it's full and all and now and forever. To him. I know, he doesn't know, it'll pass. Travail will not last. Baby, be my metaphor. The sobs of relief and joy into the bathroom towel before they came home. Triggered by John Lennon's Beautiful Boy.

54. The first-grader whom Mrs. Nutter called "Sunshine," memorialized in a photo lost, for now. The one who forever onward remembered "left" as the windows side in the classroom and "right" as the wall side with the entrance door; he who idolized Willie Mays but more so decades later cherished fatherly arms wrapped around him, secure, swinging at a lobbed baseball, this being the hugs and outward love signally recalled; he who played priest with a blanket over his shoulders, awed by the breathless fear of eternal hellfires and brimstoned purgatory mirrored. bookended, by pristine absolutioned after-bath crisp sheets purity. 

73. Soho. A few pounds sterling. Drunk. Another drink. A few more pounds. In for a dime in for a dollar. Another drink. More pounds. How much is that in dollars? Her name was Tanya.

77. At the altar, at a cathedral no less the velvet kneelspace of the prie-dieu not cushiony enough. Her back hurting, she in Renaissance array. Vows. Not a word of the sermon called to mind. Mom and Dad supposed to bring up the "gifts" but a foul-up, a confusion. Have and hold. For richer or for poorer. Sick or well. Unto death do they part. No incense. No asunder. No consummation, not here. The exchange of rings. Looking into the eyes. The hand places the ring on the finger. The public kiss. Not the consummation. The communion, even for Protestants. The beard, gone. The suit, not a tux. 

86. The splash of liquids, fluids, on the other side of the draped cloth. Here. It's a scissors. Here. What? Take the scissors and snip. Tough meat, that umbilical cord. Want to keep it? No, thanks. The fierce and roaring wind the night before. The nub on the bottom of her foot, subtracting from a perfect Apgar score but not hindering the strength or stamina or stretch of a soaring ballet career. Looking across the glass, at the latest crop of newborns: there, there, no, yes, there there that's her his beaming.

79b. Noon. Up the dark wooden stairs, slowly, hopefully, warily. Raise your hand. Stories. It was just stories. J. was there. Drunk in the middle of the night at a party months before on your side of town. He was not drunk now. Serene and sober. Just stories. Only an hour. The hot bath at home. New water. Lighter. Buoyant. Walking up those steps. And back down again.

97. Kentucky Derby. Waiting. Timing contractions. Chinese takeout from Seymour Street. Her walking, her nausea, her vomiting. What? She had taught childbirth. What was this? Walk halls with her, the IV tubes trailing. Sleeping in the room. Sunday morning. Here we go. Is this possible. This is physically possible. The slow miracle. The shrill cries. Hold her. New. She's okay. Newer. They're okay. Newest. We're okay. More. Even more. She. Her.

95. Let's try this again. A chapel we never returned to. Warm and windy for November 11. Veterans, we joked, of previous wars. Was the priest drunk? What did he forget? There was talk. The kids said we came back, driving in a November blizzard, peppy. Was that their word? Peppy. 

79a. Out there, the life of the party. They were all laughing. The Rolling Stones' song about the Puerto Rican girls. Miss You. Carrying on as if it were a dance floor. What a time we were having. We were all laughing. Shitfaced. Almost falling down. In the bathroom, in there, staring into the mirror and proclaiming and praying: You can't do this anymore. You can't. It's gonna kill you. You can't keep doing this. You... What am I gonna do? Back out there, the life of the party, the ringleader, manic. What a carnival. A circus. Closing time.

Iceland itinerary

This is already kind of crazy, as in cuh-razy. I am slated to fly out of Newark on a Monday night and land in Keflavik on Tuesday morning. Stay three nights in Reykjavik. I've booked an apartment through VRBO for three nights. Leave Friday evening but land in JFK. Smart, eh? That would be one major reason for the good price on the flight. 

While in Iceland, what to do? I tend to be a take-it-as-it-comes traveler, open to serendipity. I've been exploring the excellent I Heart Reykjavik blog and website, including its tour offerings. Very appealing. I have never taken a tour as a traveler -- not in Ireland or Germany, for example. I felt a tour would have restricted me, limited my possibilities. But I am not thinking that way now. I am thinking that some guidance and direction will actually open possibilities, relieve stress, and enhance the whole experience.

So, as it stands now, I am thinking:

• Tuesday: wander around Reykjavik in a self-directed get-acquainted way, eat, blog, tea or coffee, nap at apartment, meet "never-met-before friends with like interests" [that's code; can't say more without compromising principles and traditions]
• Wednesday: a tour that includes some awesome nature things outside the city
• Thursday: a mix of Tuesday and Wednesday's agenda
• Friday: another tour

That is pretty vague.

Gotta think about this a little more, but not too much!

shaking the snow globe

In "The Trip Treatment" by Michael Pollan in The New Yorker, the author cites neuroscientist Robin Carhart-Harris, saying, "It is striking that a single psychedelic experience -- an intervention that Carhart-Harris calls 'shaking the snow globe' -- should have the power to alter these patterns in a lasting way."

Shaking the snow globe.

Has your snow globe ever been shaken? What would shake it, freeing the crystalline flakes of ineffable beauty such that nothing in the globe of consciousness were ever quite the same again?

Shaking the snow globe.

Spiritual cataclysm, sobriety, submission, complete defeat, spiritual rebirth, surrender, love, mysticism, pharmaceutical redemption, satori, enlightenment, dharma, meditation, mercy, metanoia.

recovery

You hear the word recovery and you wonder.  You muse about what it means, and you do this by a series of questions, not tidily posed out loud, or even sequentially whispered inaudibly merely to your self and no one else. No, you wonder, after the fact; in repose, after you have heard that word recovery more than once, in various guises and contexts but most likely only in English, but maybe in German in Berlin, that time you exposed yourself to a recovery context there. Your series of untidy questions (and let's face it: there really were no questions; this is just a convention, a trope, a trick, a syntactic regime to get your point across, to attempt to get your ponderings on paper, digitally speaking). Questions in and around and above and under and alongside and through recovery such as: what was covered that needs to be covered once again? the naked self? the masked self? the unwalked terrain of sobriety? The overwalked geography of drunkenness? Who does the covering or the uncovering or the recovering? Is not recovery more a verb than a noun, despite its declension, a verb with all its active and passive voices, its tenses, its dynamic, its past perfect, imperfect, pluperfect, and embedded promise of future? And in the end, even in the beginning, aren't you glad recovery defies the straitjackets of category, definition, demeanor, steppes, solitude, sunrise or sunset, and syntax?

And for fun, there's this: recovery.

the time of day

It is Sunday morning. I thought of going to church, even wanted to, but staying up so late last night (in the wee hours) now leaves me so tired, after breakfast, that I am toying with the idea of crawling back to bed. It is an idea I hope and pray I resist. Is that depression? The whole feeling has echoes of the days of Sunday morning coming down, with hangovers both physical and existential, now 35 years ago, thank God, but still there for me if I succumb to it. I hear the sparrows and robins. The meteorological conditions seems pleasant. I don't know if any of those factors will be enough to rouse me. Morning is not my time of day anyway. Give me evening, its vespers charms of setting sun, chirping robins, and something something something. Yesterday I browsed two bookstores for a copy of the Book of Common Prayer. Here at home I have one, taken from an Episcopal church more than 15 years ago. Maybe they gave it to me. I guess I'm still a member there but have always wrestled with its suburbanness. I've been thinking of secretly returning it one Sunday, placing it in the pew holder. Why? I guess to allow me to float somewhere else, or because of a secret guilt over stealing that book. Which is nonsense, of course. Maybe I need a book of uncommon prayer. I already have those. In the morning -- usually mornings -- I read from a compilation of writings by Thich Nhat Hank and also, these days, The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer. The latter was given to me last year as a birthday or Christmas present. My tea has gotten lukewarm, not warm at all.

June rhymes with . . .

and now it is June
month of Bloomsday
anniversary of the start of this blog, in 2006,
June
anniversary of a certain sort of personal abstinence
if not,
I dare to say,
a certain sort of sobriety
June
with its moon croon loon tune soon
boon
June
with its heat and heart

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.