August 7, 2004

• I hope I can tie this together.

  Usually when I sit down here to blog I have a coherent topic or theme
  in mind.  Sometimes it’s a story with a beginning, middle and end.
    Today’s theme is me, here and now, there’s not much coherence in
  that, and I’m having too much trouble figuring out where to start to
  even think about a middle or an end.  What I’ll have to do here is
  find a loose thread and see how it unravels.

  At least today is better than yesterday.  Not that yesterday
  wasn’t a fine day — I don’t mean that.  The only thing wrong with
  yesterday was me.  For two days before, Tuesday and Wednesday
  after the unaccustomed activity of a big load of wash at the laundromat
  on Monday, I had been walking funny, a sort of stiff-kneed, flat-footed
  stumble-shuffle that felt like a slow and barely controlled fall down a
  gentle slope.  If I bent my knees or flexed my feet my calves or
  my arches would spasm and cramp and I’d lose that bare bit of control I
  had.  I was stumbling and falling into things all day.  The
  bright side there is that I’ve had this damned disease long enough now
  to know it’s best to stay close to things I can fall into harmlessly instead of
  getting out in the middle of the room and falling down flat.  At the
  worst of these times I regress to the “cruising” stage before I learned
  to let go of the furniture and walk.

  On Tuesday, I did no more than absolutely necessary:  kept myself
  fed, hydrated and made a trip to the bathroom whenever I had to.  Six
  hours sleep Monday night, four hours Tuesday, and both of those with at
  least one interruption in the middle.  In other words, precious
  little REM sleep if any at all.  On Wednesday, I started thinking
  about weaseling out of going to town Thursday.  It wasn’t my week
  to drive the rehab van, but it was the night for the monthly business
  meeting, our NA Group Conscience.  I typed my notes from the
  previous month’s meeting and thought about emailing it to the group’s
  treasurer so he could read them, but I knew that no one would keep
  minutes this month if I didn’t go.  I’d made the commitment… and
  I went back and forth all day Wednesday over whether I could stand (and
  walk) to keep it.

  I got about six hours of sleep, and Thursday morning my legs were
  functioning, though stiff and sore.  I got most of my clean
  laundry put away and took a shower.  That tired me out, but I
  figured all I had to do was dress and comb my hair, then get in the car
  and go.  Most of the rest would be sitting down, after the stop at
  the spring to fill a few jugs for Greyfox.

  When I got to Felony Flats, offloaded the water and found room among
  the five bags of clothing (stuff now too big for me) on their way to the thrift
  shop, for some bags of things Greyfox had scrounged for me, I decided
  (at Greyfox’s urging) to do some scrounging myself.  There was a
  big pile of stuff:  toys, computers and desks for them, household
  goods, clothing, hardware, dishes, art, books… stuff, as I
  said.  It had been there for weeks, out in the weather,
  unattended.  The man who had brought it there hadn’t been around
  and some of the other denizens of Felony Flats had been scrounging, but
  not Greyfox.  Then Hunter came around.  He was someone we met when he lived at the Flats
  last year, who has just moved back in.  He said that Mike, the
  landlord there, had said he could move into the shipping container that
  had previously been occupied by the teenage drug dealers if he would
  clean up the pile of junk.  What had happened to the owner of the
  junk was arrest and incarceration.  That’s why nobody had seen him
  for a while.  So Hunter told Greyfox to help himself.  The
  more stuff we scrounge the less stuff he has to haul to the landfill.

  It hit me as I was picking through the piles of stuff that The Flow was
  working there at Felony Flats.  Scroungers had been at my old
  place, and here I was scrounging someone else’s junkpile.  I said
  as much to Hunter and Greyfox, and they pointed out that I’m not a
  looter or a vandal, but an authorized scrounger.  What I really
  felt like was a salvage worker, trying to minimize waste.  I found
  a few things I wanted, such as storage bins, bookends, Correlle dishes
  and a yellow Tyvek coverall (no, I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but
  it’s kicky).  For Doug, I brought home a big sports bag, a stack of
  PC game CDs, a blue dress shirt and some toys (really for me, but he
  can play if he wants to), and a lot of electronic stuff to take apart
  including ten or so remote control handsets, phones, answering
  machines, an HP flatbed scanner, and a dozen or so mapping mice. 
  I loaded some bags and boxes with things to donate to the thrift shop,
  too.

  The Flow, the what-goes-around-comes-around principle, one of the spiritual laws of prosperity, was working for
  me before I ever heard it called The Flow, and long before I had
  learned anything about Karma.  Then I read in Linda Goodman’s Star Signs
  about The Flow, and finally had a name for that principle I’d observed in action.  Greyfox laughed at me when
  I talked about it to him, but he now laughs with me in joy at the way
  it works.  We give, and we get, we lose and we find.  We live
  in a friendly universe that is set up for our survival.  All we
  have to do is keep the energy flowing.  A lot of material stuff
  has been flowing in and out, but my personal flow of physical energy is
  puny and easily exhausted.  I could have squeezed a few more
  things into my car, could even have bungeed one of the computer desks onto
  my roof rack, but I was worn out so I quit and headed for the thrift
  shop.

  They wouldn’t take anything.  Sign outside said “no more
  donations.”  The women there were shifting boxes around, trying to
  get stuff that had flowed onto the premises under cover out of the
  weather.   They told me they were planning a yard sale for
  this weekend, and were having a bag sale right then.  So, I filled
  a bag, paid six bucks, and brought home another pair of boots (knee
  high soft black leather), a forest green polar fleece jacket made in
  Homer Alaska, four more silk shirts, a Kinsale Smock made in Ireland
  that fits like it was made for me, size 10 GV black jeans and some
  like-new size 12 black 100% cotton Calvin Kleins that must have shrunk
  first time they were washed.  Again, I felt like a salvage worker,
  trying to find something of use to me among all those things discarded
  by others.  It wasn’t like shopping, but more like sifting. 
  It was near closing time so I didn’t try on anything but the smock and
  jacket, nothing that needed the dressing room.  I wasn’t “into”
  it, had been feeling disconnected all day, just going through familiar
  motions, pickin’ ‘em up and puttin’ ‘em down.

  When I got out of there, I had time to get across town for the 5:30 AA
  meeting, so that’s what I did.  I really felt I could use more
  than just one meeting that day.  Although I get a lot out of
  meetings, I seldom feel that I need them.  Greyfox and I have
  agreed that meetings are a necessity for him and a luxury for me, in
  terms of maintaining sobriety, abstinence.  There’s a high price I
  have to pay to make those trips to town, and virtually no danger that
  I’m going to relapse into active addiction without them.  My
  service work driving the rehab van and holding an office in the NA
  group is the main thing taking me down the valley every week, but often
  after I get there and have the chance to listen and share in meetings I
  am uplifted and inspired, and I have bonded with the other
  members.  But yesterday neither the AA meeting from 5:30 to 6:30,
  the NA meeting from 7:00 to 8:00, nor the business meeting afterward
  relieved that disconnected feeling.

  At AA, someone was celebrating 3 years of sobriety, and when called on
  to share most of what he talked about was the ten years he had before,
  the relapse during a divorce, and the fact that he’s now going through
  another divorce and hanging onto his sobriety with difficulty.  I
  empathized, but I could not relate.  I felt his fear,
  self-loathing, and all, but didn’t really connect.  I could not
  understand where it’s coming from.  In the NA meeting, someone
  talked about her problems with the law and child welfare authorities,
  her powerlessness and the anger she lives in through it all. 
  Again, I empathized but did not connect.   Everyone who spoke
  talked of thoughts and feelings utterly alien to me.  They spoke
  of struggling to stay clean, of trying to let go of fear and anger, and
  all I could say was, “In the words of the wise Yoda, ‘There is no try,
  there is only do and don’t do.’”

  There were only three of us at the business meeting.  The other
  three officers came for the meeting meeting and left before the
  business meeting.  Go figure.  It was a short meeting, not
  much to write down, anyway.  Later over dinner with Greyfox, I
  broke.  My voice was cracking as
  I expressed my confusion:  feeling the pain, anger and frustration
  of the others while experiencing  those disconnected, alienated
  feelings I was having, and my impotence, the inability to either grasp
  where the problem is for these people in those programs of surrender
  and serene acceptance, or to help them.  Hell, they’ve all been in
  those programs longer than I have and they have sponsors and supposedly
  work the steps.  I never had a sponsor, worked the steps by myself
  in prison, and learned about serene acceptance from Paramahansa
  Yogananda and Roy Eugene Davis.  I said I couldn’t understand what
  was wrong with me… “maybe it’s some astrological stuff going on.”

  Greyfox’s eyes lit up and one pointing finger came up as it often does
  when he’s making a point.  He said my sun sign in that day’s paper
  only got two stars for the day.  This evening when Doug couldn’t
  stay awake any longer and finally went to bed (online fanfic writing
  tournament going on for him now), I got on here and looked up the Celestial Weather Report.
  Sun opposite Neptune, Mercury opposite Uranus, Jupiter square Pluto,
  and Moon square Saturn.  Here’s some of what Rich Humbert said:

  …we are brought face-to-face with our
  ideals and projections.  Perfection is clear and shining before
  us.  Our imagination paints bright pictures of how life could
  be…if only…  For an artist this is a peak creative time -
  ideas and images flow from the unconscious to the creative will.  [This is what's going on with Doug, definitely.] 
  We can open our hearts to almost anyone since we’re empathetic and
  seeing similarities more than differences.  Sometimes, we project
  our vision onto those around us; sometimes we project our shadow and
  see our own faults in people near us.  This is a time for
  inspiration, re-dedication, and also some confusion.  The perfect
  future that beckons may be so far away or such a high climb that we
  don’t know how to take the first step.

  …

  In a small town, John Donne’s words, “No man is an island,” are easy to
  appreciate, and in the remaining small towns they still are
  clear.  But in a global urban culture it’s a leap for many to find
  the same feeling, and an even bigger leap to Gracie Slick’s reply, “No,
  he’s a peninsula!”

  But all that data came after I’d resolved my conflicted feelings. 
  I got it together on the ride back up the valley last night and in my
  sleep.  I woke this morning with my usual attitude intact. 
  I’ll give it (whatever it is) my best shot and the universe will give
  me its best in return.  It’s always worked that way:  EWOP –
  everything works out perfectly. 

  

  • 4:20 am
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