November 21, 2003

• I left out a few things in my most recent blog:

  
  

  SuSu’s Xanga Site – 11/16/2003 8:38:18 PM

  
  

  The photo captions, for one:

  
  

  First, at top there is that one I called “almost just sky”, and below that to the right is Kashwitna Lake on a summer day.  Down and to the left from that is Denali, Mount McKinley, on a day in late summer when Greyfox and I were on one of our infrequent getaways to a nearby tourist resort.  It had been cloudy for days, and I heard one of the out-of-state visitors speculate that there really wasn’t a mountain there outside those huge north-facing windows in the 3-story lounge off the lobby, that it was all a scam to suck in the tourists.  Then the clouds moved out and there was the mountain, and if that hotel had been a ship it would have capsized from all the people rushing to that side to catch the view.  I caught that shot from out on the deck… all by myself.  The wind was blowing and although it wasn’t REALLY cold, I suppose those people in their inadequate gear, unacclimated to the Alaskan weather, were more comfortable viewing The Great One through the windows.

  
  

  Charlie Boulding, below that and to the right, is identified, and just under him is a shot of the muskeg right across the street from here, on a day last summer, taken from within the woods looking out across the sunny marshland.  It may look like a lawn, but it is tangles of bushes crisscrossed by rabbit runs and game trails.  Below that, on the left is the young bear I encountered in a campground in 1978.  I blogged that story a year or so ago, not long after I got the scanner.

  
  

  Below the bear is the first of the two “solstice” shots on that page.  This one is at midnight on Summer Solstice, from a POV in my backyard, looking north northwest toward the setting sun.  Then down and to the right from there is the shot of the back of my head and my hat covered with the snow that fell on me off the trees as I brushed through the woods to get out to the muskeg and catch that peachy sunset light on the frost-and-snow-laden trees.  Down and to the left from me there is our trailer here.  The “warm glow” showing in the front windows is a reflection of a glorious winter sunrise.

  
  

  Then below that and to the right is the other solstice shot, taken at mid-day on the Winter Solstice, across that same muskeg shown in summer green above, beautifully illustrating the low sun angle in midwinter here.  Next after that is my son Doug, doing his maul dance, splitting wood.  He’s a graceful kid.  Every move is a dance.   I call the last shot “gloom over glow” and I’ve taken dozens of shots of that grove of trees, the same ones that dumped snow down my collar, just across the street from here.  That series of shots shows everything from new spring leaves, to full summer greenery, golden autumn… they’re nice trees, I think, and have the advantage of being nearby and always (well, almost always) standing still to be photographed.  There was that one windy day when none of my shots turned out….

  
  

  …so, having tied up those loose ends, I’ll get on to today.

  
  

  Much of my life since Greyfox’s last binge in mid-May this year has been involved with 12-step groups.  There’s always some conflict for me between the continual injunctions there:  “Who you see here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here,” and the fact that no meaningful journal of my days and hours at this time of my life could leave out all of that.  I will of course leave out the names, but tell just a couple of the recent stories that have had some particular meaningfulness for me.

  
  

  One is simply a sad and frustrating story.  There is this boy there, really a young man I suppose.  It’s hard not to think of him as “boy”, though.  It isn’t just because he’s near the same age as my youngest son and my eldest grandson, 23.  He has a waiflike quality, big dark eyes, long lashes, a childlike beauty.  That’s until you look deep into his eyes.  They are like holes into the Void.  He’s having a rough time in rehab, can’t seem to get with the program and is full of fears and insecurities, anger, resentment and confusion.  He projects his pain and I soak it up like a psychic sponge.

  
  

  The frustrating part for me is that he has said he wishes he could have a female sponsor, because he can’t relate to men.  I so wish that, too.  I not only understand him since I was never able to relate to women until I spent that year and a half locked up with a few dozen of them in several jails and a prison.  I know I could help him dump that pain and desolation, could offer not just a listening ear but some sound advice if I were permitted.  Dammit!  This story is not ended, and I won’t just quietly accede to those insane rules… not without a bit of a fight first.  If there are further developments there, they will be reported here.

  
  

  The next story has its funny aspects although it was serious, I guess, to the man involved.  It started the night of the first meeting at the rehab center following my one-year anniversary off sugar, my life-long drug of choice and the hardest addiction I ever kicked.  I told it that way, and this man became angry and verbally abusive, banging his fist on the table and loudly insisting that sugar isn’t a drug and I shouldn’t be trivializing the meeting with such bullshit.

  
  

  There is usually at least one staff member at those meetings, and I suppose someone listens to our talk even if they’re not sitting in.  That would make sense, in that place under the circumstances.  The couselors have an interest in knowing what’s going on.  That man later got a “write-up” and a lecture from his counselor, who told him that sugar is indeed a drug.  Before then, right after that meeting, he got a mini-lecture from one of the other members of the group, who pointed out in the front of the NA Basic Text where it says the organization’s definition of “drug” includes all mind-altering mood changing substances. 

  
  

  There was a little flurry of discussion after the meeting, among some of us who have experienced the power of refined carbs, including one insulin-dependent diabetic.  It was apparent that I had some sympathizers present, and everyone in general tried to reassure me (although the incident hadn’t ruffled my feathers–I’m used to such reactions) and encourage us to keep coming back.  Most weeks, Greyfox and I are the only non-residents present at those meetings, and they value the outside contacts.  Some of them rushed to my defense, and offered support I didn’t really feel I needed.

  
  

  The man apparently left the counselor’s office the next day feeling hostile and resentful, still unconvinced.  His story came out gradually in other meetings in the weeks that followed.  First, at one meeting, he apologized, “making amends” for his outburst.  That time he said that “someone in authority” had informed him that sugar was indeed a drug.  At the meeting following that one, I got the rest of the story.

  
  

  He had gone from that counselor’s lecture to the dining room and had eaten an entire banana cream pie, just to prove that the whole idea was bogus.  His voice and demeanour were rueful as he told the story and described the “tingling” and the way his head spun and he couldn’t walk or talk straight.  I had a thought, and maybe the fair and just thing might have been to speak it, but I kept it to myself.  If he ate a commercial bakery-produced banana pie, he got more than just sugar.  Artificial banana flavoring is one of the more toxic chemicals allowed in foods by the FDA.   And then again, his usual behavior and disposition suggest that his adrenals are exhausted and he’s got a classic case of reactive hypoglycemia, so perhaps it could have been nothing more than the sugar and natural bananas, cream, etc., causing those reactions.

  
  

  Those residents of the rehab center have become very dear to me.  We see each other only briefly, and at most about twice a week.  There is one meeting a week at the center, and then some of the residents are allowed to attend our other meetings.  A woman in the ”town” group drives the center’s van and takes the rehab contingent back and forth.  She had been doing this on alternate Thursdays, every two weeks, for a few months, ever since her work schedule had caused her to cut back from every week.  I had applied for acceptance as a volunteer driver a couple of months ago, gave them a copy of my spotless driving record, got accepted, and tonight was my first Thursday driving the rehab van to the “outside” meeting.

  
  

  Ten residents plus Greyfox, rode across town with me just after dark, with a light snow just starting to fall in Wasilla.  We had stopped at a supermarket to pick up the drugs for the NA meeting first.  This has become a little in-joke between Greyfox and me.  I now am holding two “offices” in our group.  First, I accepted the job of secretary when the man who had held it had a serious accident and was going to have to miss a few months of meetings.  When he came back, he assured me that I was welcome to keep the job.    Then one night I spoke up at a business meeting and mentioned that we were out of coffee for the meetings, and very low on sugar.  That was tantamount to volunteering, I guess.  I ended up not only buying the supplies that week, but am now the permanent “coffee person” for the group.  So, with an ironic bit of a laugh each time the subject comes up, I am now responsible for supplying the drugs to the Narcotics Anonymous group.

  
  

  By the time tonight’s meeting ended, there was about an inch of fresh snow on the ground there.  I took the vanload of residents back to the rehab and headed up the valley in my car, Streak.  I had to pull off a couple of times because of the carburetor icing, and just this side of Willow I had to shift into four-wheel drive to make it any further in the deepening snow on the highway.  By the time we got here, I was breaking trail in about four inches of snow.  It was falling thickly in my headlights, cutting visibility not quite as badly as in the recent fog, but bad enough.  As I walked in with my first armload of grocery bags, Doug said, “Did you notice?  It snowed.”

  • 5:02 am
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