What a day in the life...

I knew there was a reason why I didn't post my musings this morning, as I am wont to do, but the reason didn't become clear until about 3PM this afternoon. First off, I woke up feeling like hell, mostly because I slept so poorly. I also decided to eat too late last night, and went to bed to soon after eating. All night long it was indigestion, bad dreams, on and on. Unfortuantely I cannot remember the dreams. The indigestion is another thing. So I wake up at 4AM, then 6AM. The latter with painful hiccups. I finally settle back down after a little bicarb of soda, around 6:30. I sleep blisfully until 8:15, when I wake up, and start hiccuping again. If you want to wake up crabby, this is the way to do it. At that point I figure I'll call the garage where my beloved auto is having her windshield wiper motor replaced--$275 for just the motor. I haven't even had coffee yet. It won't be ready until tomorrow. 'Nuff said. Plans are juggled, people are called, and am secure in the borrowing of a family member's car so I can get to my 11AM therapist appointment. I have some time to kill, so I go out and weed my veggie garden and transplant some pachysandra for my mother. Those 2 events actually transpired as planned--amazing. I leave for the shrink, have a decent time at his joint, where I reveal that I really don't want to do anything today but go home and go back to bed. We both had a good laugh at that one. At 11:55 I went to my noon AA meeting, where I run into a friend from the bad old days. He is really bad shape, stinking drunk, crying, paranoid, the works. I grab another sober man and we bring the poor fellow up to the nearby hospital and admit him into the detox unit. Thankfully he was willing to go through with this. By the time I get home, it's 2:45PM and the garage has called to say that no one, not even the local VW folks have a wiper motor for my lovely Loretta de la Jetta. Tuesday is the earliest that these guys can get hold of one. My appointment for my 70k checkup is next Friday at the VW garage in Kingston, NY. I make the decision: I will pick up the car tomorrow, and drive only when it's not raining, until next Friday, when I can get the whole kit-and-kaboodle fixed.


Guess what the weather report says...

Johnnyboy

It finally rained...

When I woke up yesterday morning, it had already been raining for an hour or so. It continued to rain all morning, and finally stopped sometime after 12 o'clock. We really needed a good soaking and we got it. The woods around my house were beginning to get very dry, and my garden was becoming parched, regardless of the evening waterings it had received. The rain also broke the heat spell and stirred up some breezes, but boyoboy, is it humid. Thankfully the temperature is only in the 70's. Enough of the weather, already. I talk about the weather when I am avoiding talking about other things.

Today is the birthday of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the French essayist and pilot who wrote, among other things, 'The Little Prince'. You can find out more about him here http://saint-exupery.org/ . The site is in French, but I think it gives you a fairly good idea of the man. There are other sites, as well as numerous links to booksellers and so forth. One of my favorite books is "Wind, Sand, and Stars", which gives accounts of his flying the postal route over The Andes in a Potez bi-plane during the 1920's. This book also describes his harrowing fight for survival when he and his mechanic crashed in the Libyan desert enroute to Saigon from Paris. It is from this experience that much of 'The Little Prince' is inspired.
Saint-Exupery (pronounced X-zoo-peh-ray) was a lifelong child of the world and never lost his love of fun and games nor his adventurous spirit. He was a hater of all things warlike and mean, including the petty actions of bureaucrats and politicians, professions he felt were a waste of time. He was quoted as saying "War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.". How true, mon Capitan. His last flight was in 1944, when, while flying for the French Resistance off of the southern coast of France, his Lockheed P-38 disappeared. Some people speculated that he had taken his own life, still others believed that he had been shot down by the Germans. At that time in his life St.-X (as he was known) was in such great physical pain due to his years of flying accidents that he was sometimes unable to even tie his shoes. He also began to dislike flying, as it had become more of a mechanical exercise rather than an art, with a cockpit full of different gauges and meters. He preferred to fly by the seat of his pants, relying on a map, a compass, and the stars to navigate the skies he so dearly loved.
For many years his airplane had been thought to be lost forever. About 15 years ago an ID bracelet was discovered by a fisherman off the coast of Marseilles. It bore St-X's name and military serial number. Immediately the hunt was on. 13 years later the wreck of a P-38 was found beneath the Mediterranean. All the numbers matched. His plane had been found. It was in hundreds of pieces, with no evidence of being shot down, and no evidence of any fuel explosion. It was surmised that he had gone out on his last flight, lost track of the time (as he was wont to do), and run out of fuel. Probably guessing his fate, he made sure of it, and dove his craft almost vertically into the sea. I believe this scenario. He had grown tired of the world, a world in which he was already an anachronism and certainly becoming obsolete. I am not romanticizing suicide, but rather paying respect to a man who believed in his convictions to the very end. He was the romantic, the knight errant, in all of us, at once playful and serious, as only children can be.

Salut, St-X!

Johnnyboy

It's Tuesday, time for some haiku...

Since I have decided to post my jailhouse haiku project, a little tutorial is in order. Haiku are not as cut and dry as they seem to be. There are different schools of thought surrounding the poetic form, with certain rules that must be followed. The most famous form is used in the practice of Zen Buddhism. The haiku must be an expression of nature, egoless and without any judgment. One must cultivate 'Mu', or a state of nothingness, that corresponds to the natural world. Only then will the haiku have 'satori', or enlightenment. As western poetry uses metaphor, simile, and all that, Japanese haiku use devices as well. There is the term 'sabi', which comes from the noun 'sabiru', and means 'to rust'. This means a word that shows age or aging, like 'wrinkled' or 'weary'. 'Kigo' is a seasonal word, like 'snow' or 'leafy'. Then there is 'yugen', which is a Zen metaphysical concept that designates the mysterious, what lies beneath the surface. It usually expresses joy, sorrow, or change. Then there are different forms of rhyme, with different syllabic structure, the most famous being 5-7-5. That is 17 syllables, arranged line-by-line. There are 'Renga' which are continuous chains of 14 (7-7) , followed by 17 (5-7-5), independently composed, but read as one piece. There are also 'Senryu', or mock haiku, which deal with humor and moralizing nuances. They can get pretty ribald and scatological at times.
My own work tends to be more senryu, but I tried for haiku, which is all anyone can really do anyway. To reach satori is to remove oneself from the wheel of life altogether through meditation and prayer. At that point composing haiku is a meaningless pursuit.

So here are 3 more haiku, from cell F201, in no particular order.

#78.
Walking quietly
I can sneak up on the waves
and catch them crashing.

#209.
Quit jamming, crickets,
and put away your fiddles,
morning is rising!

#111.
Man built this stone house:
a mortar of broken souls
holds the keystone tight.

So there are three more haiku, and it is now about 2:30AM and time for me to attempt sleep, once again.

Johnnyboy

Hot, hot, hot

Boy oh boy, is it hot! The temp has been in the high 80's-90's all weekend, and the humidity has been akin to walking through water, especially at night. My cat jumped in bed with me last night around 11:30, tried to lie down, realized it was too hot to even snuggle, and left to sleep in the bathroom. She has found a spot, underneath the dormer window, next to the sink, that suits her well. It is covered with ceramic tile, and she stretches out and snoozes away. She is there as I write this. Smart kitty. The other animal in the house is my sister's dog, Henry, named after the author Henry James. He is a Westy, and at the ripe old age of 15, tends to sleep most of the time. When he's awake he eats, goes outside for a pitstop or two, and barks at nothing in particular. I think he has the canine version of Alzhiemer's Disease. Sometimes he'll start off at a quick trot outside and then stop dead, as if he's forgotten what he's doing. He'll seem confused for a second, and then become distracted by something again. He and the cat have a great relationship. She is certainly not threatened by him, and he is very curious about her. When we are outside, she walks beside him, lays down in the grass next to him and reaches out with her foreleg, just touching him on the shoulder. It's very sweet. She seems to be acting as a kind of nursemaid or caregiver at times. We should all be so lucky.

The elderly aren't suited very well to this heat. At the age of 81, my mother is effected by the heat as well. She becomes run-down more quickly, needs to slow down more often, and should be drinking more water, but she is not. She wears herself out and is asleep by 9PM. Of course then she's awake by 3:30 or 4AM, and starting her day. She exhausts herself, which in her case is not the healthiest way to live. I wish I could find a way to make her just stop, not worry about her children, and take a breather. Her own history, upbringing, and senses of responsibility drive her to a point of breaking, and then she stops. I am trying to learn a new way of living. I am trying to see farther ahead to where that breaking point lies, and to stop before I run out of juice and have to collapse. To conserve my energy, in all situations, to not get so dragged out that I cannot function, is my goal today. Whether I accomplish that goal is another thing, but I just have to worry about today, not the rest of my life.

Johnnyboy

OK, I admit it, I'm weird...

It's true. I'm a little bit weird. Today, I'll admit one thing that I think about that is kind of strange. I don't know how this came about, but I think it is because of my love of sci-fi movies, especially cheesy ones. Here goes...

One day I was looking at a bug on the ground, an ordinary little black beetle of some sort. I suddenly had this flash! What if bugs weren't bugs at all, but really,really, small, all terrain vehicles on little missions from their ET basecamps. And what if inside, instead of bug guts, there were teeny people at the controls, giving orders, navigating, fixing coffee, and all that? I thought the idea was a pretty good one, and I'm waiting for the defense department to start
using some kind of 8-legged crawler in some war. Then I'll say "Hah!, you see, I'm right! Just wait, the Giant People will soon be here, and we will look just like little bugs.". I had this thought about the bug/machine thing a long time ago. Since then I've realized that the idea is ludicrous. Those bugs can't all be machines...


As some of you know, I build model airplanes. This may seem a juvenile pursuit for a 40-year old man, but I find it to be extremely relaxing, a great way to learn about the early history of aeronautics, and just plain fun, no pun intended. There is quite a community of folks around the globe who all have the same love of aircraft, especially those of The First World War, or shortly afterwards, The Golden Age of Aviation. These were times when flying was truly a skill, devoid of any computers, and in some cases, altimeters and fuel gauges. The aircraft were made of wood, canvas, and steel wire. They were covered in what is called "dope", which was a type of varnish that sealed in the linen canvas fuselage and made it waterproof. This stuff is also extremely flammable. So basically these pilots were flying wooden boxkites covered in varnish drenched cloth, held together by a series of criss-crossed steel wiring, drawn tight to keep everything aligned. Sometimes they just fell apart in mid-air. Sometimes they burst into flame when the engine ran too hot. If they were shot down by an opponent, they would usually go up in flames, taking the pilot with them. Remember, no parachutes until 1918...Tough decisions at 5000 feet. Either jump and risk that scenario (some pilots did survive) or go down in flames and most certainly die.

Anyway, here is a picture of one of my "builds" as they are called. It is a Nieuport 28, post WW1, flying for the Swiss Air Service. This plane was widely used by the US Army Air Corps in WW1, but had the bad habit of shedding its lower wing in any kind of dive.
http://photobucket.com/albums/a248/jono1965/Model%20Builds/th_23589.jpg

I have no idea what I'm doing...

I really have no clue. I fumble about, taking advice from people all around me, hoping that this time all will be well. What I have to remember is that life will sort itself out, as if by some design, with or without my input. Having my number in the equation will steer the course along one path or another, but when you get right down to it, I have nothing to do with the navigation. The only choice that I have today is how I react to every situation happening around me. This is how life shifts, I think, hopping from one foot to the other, like an eagerly nervous schoolchild. Much of my reaction must be to accept life exactly as it is today, with no exceptions. I take that back--All of my reactions must reflect this philosophy. Once in a great while, I seem to get a glimpse of some kind of blueprint, like a flash in my brain, but then it's gone. I would love to view the entire schematic, poring over the tiniest of details, past and present. On this blueprint the future is not a pre-drawn section, but rather constantly evolving as the present moves along and becomes the past. What we think of as the future doesn't actually exist. It is always just The Now gradually moving behind us being replaced by something else. The Future is Now. Now is Then. Coo-Coo-Ca-Joob!


I was invited to a party this afternoon, and I actually think I might go. I have coffee on a regular basis with this guy who is a phenomenal drummer. I'll call him Pete, because that's his name. Anyway, he and the band he plays with are jamming at an outdoor party today, up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, about 45 minutes from where I live. He invited me to go. If I do go, I am guaranteed to run into some folks that I haven't seen in about 4 years, or since I got sober. They all know my history since then, so there are no great surprises. the surprises will be all the other folks I run into. The function is being held at the house of a member of another recovery group, some of whom I met while in jail. This might be weird, it might be great, or it might be nothing at all. But I think I will go. The music will be stunning and fun, that I am sure of. The rest of the shindig will be a reaction, by me, of the outside stimuli being served, like so many canapes. I'll try not to eat the salmon mousse.

Ciao

Planning a nap...

Today is Friday, and aside from a brief snooze in the late afternoon a couple of days ago, I haven't taken a really good nap this week. I always feel extremely well rested and, oddly enough, sleep better later that night. I also have very vivid and colorful dreams during the day. I read somewhere that that is because of the natural daylight during REM sleep. I don't know. All I know is that I like to nap, and my cat naps with me. She always senses what is going on and hops up on the bed, curls up in the crook of my armpit, and is soon purring away. We bond that way. A little QT with Miss Kitty. So I'll plan on a nap this afternoon, around 3PM or so.
I have to put this kind of self-healing into context with the rest of the crazy world going on outside. War, political upheaval, death, disease, all that stuff, can weigh pretty heavy on my little noodle. I have a natural drive to run around and try to get as many things done today as possible. Call it a Protestant work ethic, overcompensation, manic behavior, or being a busy-body, but I have come to the realization that there is nothing so pressing in my life that can't wait until tomorrow. I'm not being lazy. If I plan 7 things to do today, and by some miracle, I complete all 7 tasks, I will be run down and exhausted. This is not healthy. If I am able to concentrate on 3 of those 7 tasks, and complete them to the best of my ability, with care and understanding, I will be a much happier person. In this gogogo world we must all learn how to stop, take a look around. Take the speakers out of your ears, stop running to "the store", turn off your TV, and sit down. There is no competition. There is no race. Quit the life of a lemming. Live as a Human Being, not as a Human Doing. Relax. Recharge. Renew. You don't have to always be on the go. There is no such thing as "doing nothing". So do something else. Me? You know what I have planned. See you in Dreamland.

Johnnyboy

Letters from overseas...

I love receiving mail. There is a childish part of me that jumps at the chance to have Christmas every morning when I go to the post office. My email can have the same effect. This morning, after I had waded through a small puddle of spam I found a letter from my sister, who is travelling in Iran with her husband. He is Iranian and they have been married for about 5 years now. She has an Iranian passport so she can travel freely in that country. She keeps her US passport safely tucked away lest it is found by the Iranian authorities. If that happened she'd be deported and would never be allowed to come back to Iran, a country that she has grown to love. Her email was more about her next little series of travel plans through the 1st of July, but there was one interesting bit. Because she has an Iranian passport, she is allowed to vote in the current run-off election between Rafsaanjaani and the other, more conservative, guy. I find all of this very exciting. To think that by voting we can change the world, even in small ways, is a great leap from the idea that one king, dictator, tyrant, benevolent despot, CEO, mullah, or Top Dog can make all of the decisions shaping our lives. We must never give up on this belief that we are making a difference when we vote. Only fascists want us to think otherwise.
My therapist cancelled my appointment this morning, which has now freed up an hour for my own fun. I think I'll go over to The Salvation Army and Goodwill and see if they have any nice shirts or something. I really love to shop at those places. Even though I can afford more expensive things, I find great satisfaction in knowing that by buying used clothing I am not contributing to the sweatshops of the world. Plus, where else can you find Ralph Lauren for $3?

I'm not fighting, I think...

The first thing I read this morning told me that I am free, that I don't have to fight anything or anyone anymore. What a relief. I, of course, at breakfast, ruined that by bringing up the sticky subject of my sister's stubbornness. I tried to be very open minded but I found myself getting frustrated and in deeper than I wanted to go. So I gave up and we changed the subject. The "we" I am referring to is my mother, who at the age of 81 needs someone around just in case. There is plenty of room in the house and as of yet this living arrangement hasn't cramped my busy social calendar. But I don't need to fight anymore. I need to remember this. I can work on myself today, and let other people just be.
So many wonderful things have happened to me in the last few months. I was writing a gratitude list last night(!) and it occurred to me that I have it really good. I am sober and getting somewhat sane, my family loves and supports my goals, I am building a circle of sober friends, there is no one coming to drag me away (anymore), I eat, sleep, play, work, and relax very well, and I am working on going back to school soon to finish my BA. Amazing. I dropped out of college (Denver University) in 1985 because I wasn't getting what I wanted (more beer) and took the route of The School of Life. I worked in restaurants, went to culinary school, eventually became a chef, made the money, all that stuff. So now I am going back to school and will be majoring in journalism. First, however, I must write a 2-page paper for my orientation meeting. I was given a choice of subjects:
A. Describe your job, and how it is easy or difficult.
B. What obstacles have you overcome, and how?

Pretty vague stuff. I may take question A, because it's easy. Strangely enough, I'll be writing about a field in which I no longer work and which practically killed me. I guess it will be easy.

I recently returned from a stunning trip to The Balkans (Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Greece) and have put up a bunch of pictures so please feel free to check them out. There are also pictures from The Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome and a growing album of my airplane models. Having a hobby is relaxing for me. I can lose myself in the building of an airplane kit, focusing on the tiniest of details. Go here http://photobucket.com/albums/a248/jono1965/ and check 'em out.

Haiku Tuesday

If you read my last entry you will note that I had the misfortune to spend some time behind bars. I know that what I did was wrong. I was willing to fess up, say "guilty", and let the hammer come down. On the day of my final trial I really had no idea where I would go or for how long. The most terrifying moment was the 5 seconds before I was sentenced. The DA was feeling generous, however, and he only sentenced me to 2 years, non-mandatory, to the local county hotel. I was able to earn "good time" and was finally released on September 3, 2004. I will never forget that date. There were tough times in jail. Some were truly terrifying. There were times of great inner peace. The food was horrible. Fried carbohydrates for almost every meal. I gained 40 pounds. I have since lost 30. I spent a lot of time reading and am lucky to say that I had the resources to have books sent to me from the outside. I also had 2 magazine subscriptions. I am probably the only inmate in the history of that particular jail to receive The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. I also kept a journal, in which I kept a daily log of happenings, fears, and hopes. Of the 1800 pages I wrote, I think that most of it is pretty self-absorbed drivel. I did have a period of a few months where I wrote haiku as well as my regular journal entries. I tried to write 2 or 3 everyday. I ended up with about 250 total, not including a "long" haiku story about an apple blossom and her adventures on the river. I hope to use that as a text for a children's book. So in the spirit of my own past adventure, I'll publish 3 haiku every Tuesday, written while incarcerated, in no particular order.

#7
Concertina wire
secures the perimeter
from the basketball

#102
I'm never alone:
at my most solitary
God touches my soul

#6
A parole letter
written by a friend and read
by faceless strangers

Watching the world-go-round, for free

I've been thinking recently, which is not always the best idea in my case. I can get extremely lost in those thoughts and start to envision a reality where I am actually speaking out on current issues in public and whatnot. Does this make sense? My friend Lisa refers to this as "talking to the voices in her head" and she's right. It's as if I'm having conversations with people that we all know and love (politicians, rockstars, all those folks) and telling them how it should be in my oh-so-perfect world. They are all humbly nodding their heads and saying things like, "Yes, you're right" and "Wow, I never thought of it that way". I know this all sounds sycophantic, grandiose, and somewhat delusional, but there it is. Obviously, I do not voice these "conversations" out loud, and actually this is the first time that I've ever told anyone about them...But that's not what today's blog was supposed to be about...
I woke up this morning to a common sound around these parts--a mowing machine making it's rounds through a field. In this case the field just behind my house and outside my bedroom window. I had left my window open last night so along with the rural sound of machinery came the fresh smell of new mown hay and birdsong. All of this was too idyllic for me to take, so my mind began to think of way back, when this county was all farms. Farms full of cows, corn, and apples. A pleasant combination I think. Very wholesome. Some of these farms had been in their respective families for generations, going back to the tenant farmers that worked for the Livingstons, the wealthy landowners that owned much of eastern New York. I used to ride along with my folks along the smaller county roads and there would be nothing but the smell of manure, docile bovines, and apple orchards. Somewhere along the line this changed. You can chart the political changes, but that's an obvious and boring tack. I' d like to think that MTV has ruined the family farm and caused the farmers to sell the land. No one wants to get dirty anymore. They just want to get jiggy, have the bling-bling, ching-ching, and not pay. Meanwhile, the prime real estate is snapped up by wealthy horse breeders and that's what you see these days along County Route 9. Even the locals can't afford to live here anymore.
I have no idea what the above was about, but it felt good expressing my morning dialectic: MTV is evil, the love of money is the root of all evil, and I do not want bling-bling, ching-ching, or to get jiggy. Just give me a little peace!

The day begins with some peace...

Nice to be here today. I am so very lucky for all the life I've been given so far, and so much more to come as well. I can still fall back into the old fear based lifestyle of constant ego-feeding terror. When I do this, all I need to remember is my brief time spent in jail and the poor souls I encountered while I was inmate #1229. I really had it all, then. I had (and still have) a family that loved and supported me, visited me, sent me books, mail, etc...My program of recovery was very strong, which gave me another huge asset--sobriety of thought and deed, I was able to receive visits from my shrink every Tuesday, and I was never without the creature comforts that money could buy. I was rich beyond my wildest dreams. On the other hand, there were guys in there who had nothing, and I mean nothing. No family, no God, no faith, no hope, and nothing to lean on and grow with when they were released. BTW, this was a local county facility, so the max you could stay was 2 1/2 years. The anger and shame that rolled around the jail was immense. So many souls in pain (me included) and unable to reach out for help. The excuses for this are pretty common in the world, pride being first and foremost on the list.
But, after 19 months I was released back into the community and into the loving arms of my family and friends. It has been 10 months since that day and I would like to pretend that it is all better, that I'm fixed, that I can put it all behind me now, but it's not that simple. I still feel the watchful eyes of the guards, the suspicious attitudes of other inmates. I want to go back to my cell, listen to my little radio through the headphones, and let the world go away. I want to write away in my journal, catch up on my reading and generally avoid the outside world for a few hours. I want to isolate.
I guess, in some ways I am doing that right now. I kept a journal in jail (1800 pages) and it is all pretty self-centered stuff. I wrote a lot of haiku, though, so maybe I'll publish some of those on the blog someday. So this blog is my journal of ramblings and fears, hopes and stumbling blocks that become stepping stones into my future, whatever that may be. I must understand that my past has cast me the way metal is poured into a mold, and cracked open. Jail galvanized me to a degree, and now I am shaping that metal with sometimes painful blows to my own ego, cutting away the old fears, revealing new hopes, and trying not to get in my own way.

Lots of work left to do...

Being just me, today...

Well, here it goes...I woke up this morning feeling OK, but still unsatisfied with the way the world is being run. It all seems to be going the way of some cheesy Hollywood movie, like Soylent Green or something. We even seem to have the Charlton Heston types running around in rip-stop khaki issuing all kinds of barking commands and orders to everyone that is able to fawn and scrape their way tyo subservience. I was once like that, both types. But I've fopund a much better way. I grab a cup of coffee and let other folks dig their own holes. If they me for help, I'll be there, but until they do I'll watch them instead of TV. More entertaining and usually better for the eyes.

I try not to force myself into the world anymore. At times in the past I needed a shoehorn to fit in. Now I try to be just me for a change, and it can be awkward at times. I must accept the fact that although my formal education was curtailed by my social activities, I am a real geek. I look like a geek, I do geeky things, around some folks I can act like a geek. All these are my impressions, of course. Only god knows how the world views me. Probably from more angles than I can see myself.

So, in the future I'll try to put up some pics of my geeky activities, my geeky friends, and views of the world through my geeky glasses. Just kidding, of course. My friends aren't all that geeky, but they are kind of crazy, and they make me laugh.