I’m not entirely sure how to articulate why, but tonight was absolutely one of the top ten best nights of my life.

The One About the Cup, and the Runnething Over

As an adult, I spent much more time single than most people.  It can be easy to forget that, now that I have met my darling and been with her so long, but I was single (with just a few brief  flings) for well over a decade in my 20s and 30s.  Over that long stretch of time, obviously I developed a method of living by myself that I found quite comfortable and rewarding.  I had a lot of fun and tons of experiences.  I did things people in committed relationships simply can’t do—like relocate and/or start new careers with very little forethought.  It was an incredibly interesting and fascinating way to live.  Some blocks of time, I spent living not just single but far away from all my family and friends.  It allowed me time to breathe, “find myself”, and do some major work on fixing my deep flaws I had developed over years of alcoholism.  It was a great setup, but it did pose one great drawback: it was super lonely.

 

I never would have admitted at the time that I was lonely—mostly because I don’t think I even knew I was lonely.  But of course I was.  There was a lot of upside but being lonely was inevitable.  Luckily, I refused to settle or even actively date when I knew that I wasn’t ready.  This allowed me to be available when my Karla came into my life and also to get as much inner work done as I could before she got there.  So when she found me, I was the best version of me I could have been at that point (although you can ALWAYS keep being a better version of yourself, always always always).

 

Going from single for a decade to in a deeply committed relationship naturally had some shock value for me, and required a period of adjustment.  Fortunately my partner is full of kindness and innate understanding and guided me through the change.  Certainly there were elements of living with another person (or in our case, two other people and a dog!) that were challenging for me at first, but also of course, there were a great many positives and bonuses that come with having an all-the-time partner.  Most of these positives I at least anticipated or could have anticipated.  One thing I never saw coming:  her parents and grandparents.

 

I knew, of course, that when you gain a life partner, their parents become a part of your life.  That was not a surprise.  What I was not prepared for was the level of connection I would have with these people, and the amount of affection and caring they would have for me, and me for them.  From almost my first meeting with Karla’s mother, father, step-mother (although that term doesn’t do adequate justice to the maternal force that is Amy) and grandparents (I’ve only met her maternal grandparents as her other set lives a good distance away) I have felt a true and abiding acceptance.  Karla and I are not married but all these people truly are my family and I love seeing them any chance we get.  They are all different, unique, loving people who I am genuinely excited to get to know more as the years pass.  What a boon!

 

What staggers me the most, when I stop to think about it, is that I spent so much time completely alone, and then finally found a partner—and then a kid and a dog!  They all fill my heart up so much.  On top of that, both of my parents have been terrific parents throughout my life and continue to nurture me emotionally, in addition to being stellar grandparents.  And now to come to the realization that I’ve gained even more family, have even more love and help and caring…well, as I have said before, my cup certainly overflows.  It’s like the world felt it had to make up for all that time I spent by myself.  And sometimes you just have to write a blog about how great things are.

Let’s Slow Dance in the Living Room Tonight After Dinner, Honey

More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
to no music in the living room. A slow dance
between the coffee table and the book case,
at the end of a challenging workday
after we’ve eaten the vegetarian tacos and refried beans
because it’s begun to rain and the rain
slows us down and quiets the dog.   A slow dance
to bring the evening home, to knock it out of the park. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
We could both hum a little bit.  Do some cheek kissing.
It’s a little like cheating on each other with each other.
Your head resting on my shoulder
(or vice versa),
your breath moving up my neck
(or vice versa).
My hands along your spine. Your hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about how all the stars in the sky
are dead. Long dead and just cosmic dust
swirling like light. My body
is talking to your body by slow dance. The Unchained Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-chord slow dance. All my life
I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
I made decisions I knew would hurt people.
I couldn’t save money or keep my car clean.
I blamed others for my misery.  I hated.
I couldn’t bother to talk to strangers.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children
running in sprinklers. Like being held in the arms
of my parents.
This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
This is the sun-dappled Spring meadow
living room slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scrapping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutang slow dance.

You Can’t Buy Me Happiness, but You Can Buy Me Fraggle Rock

I sure am happy right now.  I’m going through an extended period of inner peace, tranquility, and contentment.  It rules!  I’m not trying to get all new-agey, or brag about my emotional state.  The fact is, I’m often pretty content, at least moreso than most people (with, as I have noted at length on my blog, a steady undercurrent of fear of death and general despair that has been with me always and always shall remain…but it’s usually a little out of sight…my main operating mode is usually “happy”).  I just note this extended happy period here because it seems so very unusual for most of humanity.  This is only based on my very unscientific casual observations.  But even folks who most would describe as happy are, frankly, pretty unhappy.  Or at least uncomfortable, or full of worry or self-doubt or fear.  Isn’t it strange how difficult it can be for us to be happy?  Oy vey.  I got tempted to go super-deep on the subject there, but I’ll resist it.  I think it is impossible to go deep on this subject without sounding like a douchebag.  I just want to note that I’m super happy.  Tranquil is an even better word.  I’m under no impression that my life is always going to be easy or that things will stay like they are now, but I’m tranquil with that notion.

That being said, this winter sure does suck.  I know I know, someone wants to tell me It’s winter, what do you expect??? Well you see, here’s the thing: winter is uncomfortable.  Physically.  I do not like the sensation it creates upon my general physical being.  So yes, although I am certainly aware that winter is coming, and I know what it is going to be like, that foreknowledge does not lessen it’s wretched impact upon me.  I mean seriously, why does it keep snowing???  What kind of winter thinks it needs to snow this much??  Or be this consistently cold?  It’s all pretty lame.  Oh hey, also, look at this painting, “Chilly Observation”, by Charles Sidney Raleigh:

 

Another note on my happiness (and again, I’m not trying to get all zen on you here, I’m just thinking out loud.  Except not literally out loud.  I guess I’m thinking publicly), I’ve noticed lately I’m getting much less satisfaction from the acquisition of material goods.  Despite all my cultural philosophizing, I don’t think I’ve ever denied that I derive a lot of pleasure from buying or acquiring things.  Not big-ticket items, usually.  Most of my life I’ve just loved getting more and more books and music and movies and things like that.  And just random consumer goods.  Hats.  Backscratchers.  Wall art.  Random shit like that.  Well anyway, lately, I’m getting less and less pleasure from acquisition.  I suspect part of this is because of my natural tranquility right now, so I don’t have to supplement my happiness with the artificial high of stuff.  but I also think that I might just kind of have enough stuff, finally.  For one man, I have ALOT of books, records, DVDs, and the massive amount of random crapola that life in America will allow you to encircle yourself with.  I have so much stuff (note that I am passionate about most of it and find it delightful; I’m not knocking my actual stuff) that I can’t begin to properly enjoy most of it.  So I might need to chill on acquisition for a bit and start really paying attention to what I already have.

(although take note, I still really need some books by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, a vinyl copy of Neil Young’s “Mirrorball”, one of these, a really nice digital camera, the complete series of “Fraggle Rock” on DVD [I aint joking about that, and it’s getting pretty affordable], Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” on Blu-Ray, that really nice hardbound version of the collected “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” books that Barnes and Noble sells, an Ilya Bryzgalov Philadelphia Flyers jersey [even though he doesn’t play for the team anymore…oh and size Large], early editions of the individual collections of Philip Larkin’s poetry [specifically, I’m thinking about “The Whitsun Weddings” and “The North Ship”…first editions only, really, anything else is useless], a year-long membership to the Barnes Gallery…oh I guess there is still some stuff I need…)

Let’s laugh at the clock on the wall.

I grew up in a small, small town in Central Pennsylvania, right on the border of what they call “Pennsyltucky”, the outward lands of the state marked by blighted Appalachia, wide rolling hills, and miles upon miles of pastures, corn fields, and truck stops.

The house I grew up in was on a shaded street with expansive sidewalks, the smell of pine, and painted rain spouts.  In most towns this would be a side street, a forgotten street.  But in my small town, it was one of the main thoroughfares, although almost no cars went down it.  I remember once peering out our glass front door and seeing the town’s sole police officer giving hasty chase—lights and siren blaring–to a speeding motorcycle and thinking maybe the world was ending.

Just a few blocks down the street from the house I grew up in was a corner store.  It was, I would estimate, about three blocks away.  This corner store was, even all those years ago, a throwback to older days.  It was not “intentionally nostalgic”, it was just a little store that hadn’t yet changed.  There was still a soda fountain there, where you could order Chocolate Cokes, or pineapple sundaes.  Things like that.  Folks gathered there in old wooden mint green highbacked booths, smoked cigarettes and spoke animatedly over outspread newspapers, hunting magazines, lottery tickets.  There was penny candy by the counter, a spinning rack of comic books by the door, and ammunition, shoe polish, and straight razors under a glass case near the back.

Frequently, but on no set schedule, my father and I would walk together down to this corner store.  It was something we did together.  Often, my sister came, too, but as a boy, of course, one singles out the times you are alone with your father.

It was three blocks away, but back then, of course, it seemed quite a distance.  Distances are always changing as we grow.  The walk to the store with my dad was half the fun.  I would try to walk on just the painted part of the curb, but I had the darndest time.  I couldn’t balance.  Then Dad would try, and I would try to push him off, but he was too good.  My father had impeccable balance.

We’d get to the store and, typically, the older neighbors who lived near our house were there.  Dad would settle into a booth with them, and so I would I, at first.  They’d start talking grown-up stuff after making obligatory kid talk with me.  They’d light their long cigarettes with colorful disposable plastic lighters, drink pungent coffee from thick-walled mugs, pop open cans of Tab.  I liked the smells, how they intermingled, how they wafted, how they meant Dad and I were together at the corner store.

Before long, I’d slip under the tables, make my way behind the counters, even disappear into the back stock room, which I remember as a long, dark hallway with one or two turns, and boxes up to a ceiling that looked fifty feet high.  I had the run of the place.  The owner and his sole young employee never tried to corral me.  I invented worlds within that store.  Alien lands, faraway cities, subterranean hideouts.  Every so often I’d pop back into a mint green booth and see that maybe Faye had won five dollars on a scratch-off, or Dad had a strong opinion about something that I didn’t understand, but I wanted to understand.  I wanted to.

One year, on the day of my birthday, Dad and I walked down to the store.  I had finished opening my presents and was already feeling very special, near ecstatic.  It was early evening and dusk was setting in.  My birthday is in mid-January, so it was decidedly winter.  Dad and I set out for what seemed to me the long, but pleasant, walk to the corner store.  What a night for me!  My birthday and now the store.

Halfway there, it started snowing.  Just a light, flurry-kind-of snow.  Still, I was sure Dad would suggest we turn back.  How could we keep walking to the store in the snow??? I thought.  But he had no designs to turn back.  We talked, we laughed, it snowed in our faces and stuck in my eyebrows.

Let us not try to make things perfect.  Let’s laugh at the clock on the wall.  Breathe deep the stunning air and wonder, wonder about everything.

Monday Doesn’t Always Have to Suck

(this entry was written by my sister, Adrienne McGuire)

 

Like most people plodding along in the corporate world, I used to dread Monday mornings with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. Now that I work from home with the freedom to create my own schedule, I could potentially take Mondays off if wanted to, but in the interest of maintaining an acceptable productivity level, I still find myself working pretty much every weekday. Since I’m a writer, a few months ago, I decided to make a list of my potential book titles, and I recently stumbled across the list again. One that jumped out at me was “Monday Doesn’t Always Have to Suck”.

Our weekends are filled with leisure time and having fun with friends and family, so it’s not surprising that most people have some trouble readjusting to the concept of work when the weekend is over. However, Monday isn’t going to be erased from the calendar (as far as I can see), and because most of us need to work on weekdays, I decided to create a list of ways to make Monday enjoyable. I actually started this a long time ago, when I was still working in an office setting, and I found that, of all of my coworkers, including those in offices adjacent to mine, I enjoyed Mondays more than the average person. Here are some of the things that I do to make easing back into the week a little less painful.

• Lay out your work clothing on Sunday night so that you have one less thing to think about when you wake up in the morning.

• Wake up 30 minutes earlier to enjoy an activity that makes you happy (yoga, meditation, reading the newspaper, enjoying a cup of coffee by yourself, watching the morning news).

• Take a morning shower. It will wake you up and get you moving.

• Listen to some of your favorite music on the way to work. Music always improves mood.

• Have a positive attitude. Think about what you can accomplish during the week rather than how long it is until the next weekend.

• Change your routine. Sometimes a slight change in our habits can change our outlook for the entire day. Take a different route to work or visit a new coffee shop. Sometimes we just get into a rut and small changes can make a big difference.

• Every Friday, make a list of all of the things you need to accomplish at work next week and take a few minutes to organize your desk. You will walk into Monday already prepared to take on your responsibilities.

• Treat yourself to your favorite latte or breakfast muffin as a welcome to the new week. Also, be sure to pack yourself a delicious and interesting lunch to give yourself something to look forward to halfway through the day.

• Take a walk during the day to step away from your desk and your duties. This clears your head and increases blood flow. When you return to your desk you will feel invigorated and ready to work again.

• Plan something fun or exciting for Monday evening so that you have something to look forward to at the end of the workday.

• Try to generate a list of all the things you hate about Mondays. You might find this task quite difficult and realize that Mondays really aren’t that terrible.

• Imagine what life would be like if you suddenly lost your job. Sure, you wouldn’t have to work Mondays anymore, but you also wouldn’t be able to pay your bills or afford groceries. Suddenly, Monday is looking pretty darn sweet!

If you find that people at your place of work usually have a really bad case of the Miserable Mondays, try printing out this list and posting it around your workspace. You might be surprised at how many people will take notice and may even put several items on the list into action! Sometimes, all we need is a nudge in the right direction to make small changes in our lives that can make a big difference in our overall well-being.

Adrienne McGuire is a writer, educator, and wellness enthusiast. You can enjoy more of her writing and more helpful tips at http://www.dailypath.com/.

Veil

Those folks who I’ve known only in the post-sobriety portion of my life (which, at this point, is actually the majority of people I interact with daily) often have difficulty imagining me as troubled.  This is not to suggest I live a perfect life or that I’m a paragon of emotional stability, but to all but a handful of my friends and relatives, it’s difficult to imagine me anything other than generally contented most of the time, in a way most people are not  (nevermind my temper, which can be practically elemental under the right circumstances). This leads the folks who have known me nine years or less to occasionally comment doubtfully upon my past as a pillar of depression, substance addiction and general misanthropy.  “I don’t believe it,” they say.  “You’re just so not like that.”

And they’re right.  I’m not.  Not anymore.  The lion’s share of my time, I spend marveling at how unoffensive  existence is.  Granted, I don’t exist on the improbably happy “pink cloud” of early recovery; my happiness is not super-human nor is it impervious to the ups-and-downs of the normal course of human life, but it is certainly a more even-keeled and consistent satisfaction than I witness in most of those around me.  I don’t often think much about it, or question it.  It’s just the way I’ve been since the moment I “put the plug in the jug”, as the old-timers in AA like to say.

Last night, for whatever reason, I had a moment.  Just…a moment.  That somehow clarified or confused my perceptions of happiness and sadness or whatever you want to call these dualities of human existence.  I was working the overnight shift, for just one night, which is always an eclectic combination of emotions and sensations for me.  Waking at dusk, just as the last of the day’s sun fades from view; dressing and primping myself as that evening’s prime-time television shows play in the background; driving to work as the other cars passing the other direction are heading home to their various comforts, and arriving to work as just about everyone else is leaving.  These aren’t all depressing facets; some of them leave me feeling a kind of ownership of the world, like I’m sailing alone on a ship on a vast, empty ocean.  A little bit sad, a little bit amazing, these moments before an overnight shift certainly make me feel different than usual, and perhaps a bit more receptive to epiphanies.

Last night, I left for work half an hour early.  And not on purpose.  By total accident.  I didn’t realize it until I was halfway to work, and by then it was too late to turn back.  But instead of going to work early, I opted to spend half an hour walking aimlessly through the Wal-Mart that is near where I work.

Perhaps it was the unique mood created by the preparations for the overnight shift, but I was not at all emotionally stable when I walked into that Wal-Mart.  Immediately inside the front door, there was a smell.  You know what I mean.  It doesn’t smell like anything you can put your finger on, like wet dog or cantaloupe, but instead, it just smells like your past, like a very specific day or time period or phase of your life that you can’t pinpoint or immediately recall but you know that it makes you feel a certain way and that you had never expected to smell it again and you’re amazed at the amount of feelings and sensations that it brings back.  Well, that is what I encountered immediately upon entering the Wal-Mart; a smell that brought back acutely the absolute immensity of what sadness used to feel like for me.  It was crippling.  I hadn’t even been that happy as I walked into the Wal-Mart, but the difference between what I felt like now and what I had felt like in the days of sadness was tremendous. I quickly was able to discern what the smell was:  stale cigarette smoke in a cheap motel room.  Just what the smell had been doing in the Wal-Mart entryway was certainly a mystery, and it was gone just as quickly as it appeared, but it’s job was done.  I was transported, and I would remain transported.  For years, I’d remembered as an undeniable fact that at some point in my life, I’d been terribly sad, for a long time.  But it had long since ceased to be a feeling I could remember.  Sort of like a war story an old man has told so many times, he no longer remembers the memory, but only remembers past tellings of it.  Now suddenly I felt it again, and not the memory of it, but it.  Not twenty feet into the Wal-Mart, I was looking at merchandise on shelves not as the self-sufficient thirtysomething who loved historical novels and art museums, but the twenty-three year old who couldn’t roll out of bed without a snort of gin, who couldn’t muster up the energy to shave even after he’d been threatened with lost wages if he didn’t just shave once a week, who stunk and was getting stinkier, who was convinced that he didn’t deserve anyone’s love, and he was dying—slowly, methodically, painfully.  The world felt shut off to him, and so now suddenly it felt shut off to me, too.  These Ritz crackers in front of me—such a simple, unimportant item—I couldn’t afford them, and even if I could, they weren’t for me.  They were for people who were fully of this world, fully in the world, full citizens.  I felt like I stunk, like I was unshaven, like I had 5-day-old bender breath and onion armpits, like I was staggering even before I drank, like I was being looked at, watched, judged at every turn, unworthy of even the simplest of life’s luxuries, like bubble bath or RC Cola.  I’d remembered plenty about this era of my life, many times over before, but this pure sensation of human uselessness and dismal despair had been shelved since the last time I truly felt it.  After a minute or two, I managed to push it back out, put it back in the past where it belonged, but it was an intense few minutes, to put it mildly.

For the next twenty minutes, I roamed the Wal-Mart trying to piece together what had happened after I smelled the smell.  Mostly, I was intrigued by the idea that purest happiness and utter despair seemed, for that moment, so close to one another.  Like a thin veil of this material world separated them like a silk curtain.  The curtain was pulled back, and while I remained in the same time and place, one extreme version of me became another, however briefly.  And, I thought, now that I’d witnessed it, I could almost will it into happening again, if I chose, for whatever strange reason a person would choose such a thing.  And to think that we must all be walking around, all the time, right beside that veil, able to peek around it or rip it down if we could just figure out how to.  If you’re sad, just throw back the curtain and be happy.  Or if you’ve been happy as a damn idiot for nine years and need a refresher course on what brought you here in the first place, move the veil aside, smell your bender breath, and be reminded.

Very soon (April 3rd) I’ll be celebrating my ninth sobriety anniversary.  I’d been waiting until the day itself to figure out what I would write (if anything) on the day, but I think now that this entry will stand as my anniversary entry, because those few minutes in Wal-Mart after the smell made me realize that, more than anything, what I celebrate on that day is having traded sadness for happiness.  Pure and simple.  My happiness may not resemble most people’s.  It doesn’t involve spouses or kids or houses (although Cheerio to you if yours does).  My happiness is selfish and aloof and not the type of thing that you make movies about starring Channing Tatum or Reese Witherspoon.  But, to the guy on the other side of that veil, looking at Ritz crackers like they were golden nuggets, it is everything he would have imagined, if he’d even dared.

Audio Poem: “The Timid Flowers of a Winter”

Year written:  2006
Collection:  The Salt Flats

The Timid Flowers of a Winter

I could go on for decades
scribbling poems
of puking off balconies
pissing into swimming pools
sweating in the dark
with nameless women
lit by lava lamps
quickly forgotten;
I could go on as long as I like
complaining about the state of my belly,
phantom shakes,
shadows glanced in sorrow.
I could go on forever about
those six years spent in the grip
of a lurching liquid army,
but why bother?

Why bother when
the days now bend to night
in their rightful orderly order
and all about me have sprung
the timid flowers of a winter;
(the sadness of love & the joy of regret)
and life in its most comely phase
descends upon my head like a burning halo.