Notes:
I wish, for the me I was then, that I could add one more flash, much further forward. I wish that the me nodding out in a cold cinderblock cell could see ahead five years, or even ten… I wish she could see who she will become, and the parts of herself she will leave behind. The darkness that she will learn to live with, and the light she will learn to let in.
— Keri Blakinger, random excerpts from Corrections in Ink: A Memoir (St. Martin’s Press, June 7, 2022)
Notes:
“As much as I liked the fast pace of that hardboiled world, in the slow moments I wondered about the point of it all.”
“I learned quickly that there’s an intrinsically desolate feeling to being homeless. It was something I did not expect, and it cut far deeper than the simple, logistical difficulties and social stigmas of being dirty and unhoused. There’s something specific about not having a place where you are welcome or safe when the sun goes down. For an underage girl fresh on the street, safe was not really an option—but after a few days, I found welcome: the Family under the parking garage. The Family was a motley collection of a couple dozen young homeless goths and assorted street people dwelling beneath the first level of the curving parking garage across the street from the Alewife train station—the end of the line.”
“I’ll have a year clean on the 20th and I won’t get a certificate for that, but it’s the only thing that I deserve one for. But then, I guess maybe nothing really important in life can be validated by a piece of paper.”
“I was not tempted; drugs finally felt like a past life, an escape I did not miss. Unlike so many of my friends, I was not haunted by cravings or drug dreams, and I felt like I’d almost cheated my way out of addiction. Sometimes, I’m still not sure to what extent I got sober and to what extent I just found more socially acceptable obsessions like running and crosswording and writing.”
“When the end is near (in prison, time slows to a trickle. Not the way it does on the ice at Nationals, when adrenaline moves faster than the ticking clock. Not the way it does at the top of a gorge, when the world is frozen. And not the way it does in The Place, when the hours blend together and disappear. This is not reality fading away or closing in but simply refusing to move forward, with such stubbornness that it seems physically painful—like the struggle of a wild animal trapped in a tar pit and straining to break free. In prison terms, this is getting short. That’s the word for when your bid is almost over, and you are about to go home.”
— Keri Blakinger, random excerpts from Corrections in Ink: A Memoir (St. Martin’s Press, June 7, 2022)
Notes:
— Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence (Dutton, August 24, 2021)
I urge you to find a way to immerse yourself fully in the life that you’ve been given. To stop running from whatever you’re trying to escape, and instead to stop, and turn, and face whatever it is. Then I dare you to walk toward it. In this way, the world may reveal itself to you as something magical and awe-inspiring that does not require escape. Instead, the world may become something worth paying attention to. The rewards of finding and maintaining balance are neither immediate nor permanent. They require patience and maintenance. We must be willing to move forward despite being uncertain of what lies ahead. We must have faith that actions today that seem to have no impact in the present moment are in fact accumulating in a positive direction, which will be revealed to us only at some unknown time in the future. Healthy practices happen day by day. My patient Maria said to me, “Recovery is like that scene in Harry Potter when Dumbledore walks down a darkened alley lighting lampposts along the way. Only when he gets to the end of the alley and stops to look back does he see the whole alley illuminated, the light of his progress.”
— Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence (Dutton, August 24, 2021)
60° F. Cove Island Park. Morning walk. 452 consecutive days. Like in a row.
But before we roll on to today, let’s talk about yesterday.
Yesterday was Day 1: Refined sugar elimination.
And you might ask, why? Why change now? It’s all been workin’ right? 4-5 hours sleep on average. Walking around groaning, in a fog, a sort of seeing — hearing Quasimodo.
Susan shares a story in “Eating Well” magazine. Sciatica inflammation ‘may’ be due to my diet. Refined sugars. Processed foods. White bread. Pastas. May be contributors.
Day before — a sugar rampage. 2 Klondike bars. 4 packages of Welch’s Fruit snacks. 1 almond chocolate bar, downed in 2 sittings because even I need to pace myself. 2 diet Lemon Snapples. Peanut butter on white bread, layered with 1/2″ of sour cherry preserves. 2 giant bagels, with cream cheese, and orange marmalade. I’m going to stop here. But, it does go on.
And I can feel what you are thinking right now — “Have you no shame DK?” And I would say, either this: “Dance with the one that brun you here” or I would fire back: “Don’t you think the things people are most ashamed of are things they can’t help?” (C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces)
So, after another sleepless night, we’re going Cold Turkey. No baby steps here. ‘Definition of insanity…doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results..‘ Quote source: Not Einstein as many believe but Narcotics Anonymous. N-a-r-c-o-t-i-c-s.
Breakfast: Wheat Toast. Buttered. Scrambled eggs. Handful of nuts. Handful of cherries. Two glasses of water. Pancake mix in pantry. Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Nuggets in cupboard. Giant chocolate chip cookies on the island in the Kitchen. Man walking, tiptoeing around landmines.
I glare at Susan — “Eating Well? Is it any wonder I have all these fr*akin’ problems!?” I stop there, because after 35 years you know what’s coming: “you wanna do the grocery shopping?”
For Lunch: Ham & Cheese Omelette. Handful of almonds. Handful of raisins. Bowl of cut watermelon. One glass of water. Klondike mini ice cream sandwiches in freezer. Peanut Butter and Mixed Berry Jelly in pantry. Frito Lay Barbecue potato chips in cupboard above the fridge. I smile. Restrain. I’m so much bigger than all this. I am. Really, I am.
VOLUME UP! (I SO LOVE THIS!)
Thank you Sue W.
It started on Friday with my virtual Aussie friend commenting on my T.G.I.F. post: “So, are you sitting there yet.” And like Pavlov’s dog, I take the bait and reply: “Sitting? There? Anywhere? No.” But, the punch lands and it hangs all day yesterday, and into the wee hours of this morning when I reply: “It’s 2:10 am here. Lifeline required.” She gives me another shot, this time about gadget addiction. What is it about me that encourages these blows?
I step away from her truths (therapy) and go back and re-read her last post titled “Accept…then Act” @ Living in This Moment — “change comes from making space in stillness to see my situation from a higher perspective…” Like WTH is that, and where does one start? I totally have the “Act Act Act” part down, or perhaps better stated” Do Do Do Do.”
I read several chapters in Susan Burton’s new book “Empty: A Memoir” and stop at “…A deeper understanding, a new tenderness.” I close the book, crawl out of bed and get ready for my morning walk.
4:30 am. I’m out the door. [Read more…]
Whether you snort white powder, or you shovel crystals down your gullet, the consequences are…
June-ish, 2016. It was the last leg of the morning commute, on I-287. The heart starts to race, this followed by a pinch, with its roots pushing outward like the tail of a lightning strike.
Doctor’s diagnosis: High Cholesterol. Root cause? Diet, with any 3 or 4 of following occurring on any given day:
And the pre-bed-time sedative…which warrants its own paragraph, not a mere bullet. Grape Jelly trembles as it waits for the tablespoon to dig deep and scar its surface. Jelly coats the teeth and slides smoothly down the throat. A trace lingers on the lips. The body settles in, calm now, with its fix. Bed time. [Read more…]
1:14 a.m.
The digital fluorescent clock leaves its reflection on the night stand. What a pretty color! What is wrong with you?
Turn pillow. Adjust. Hot. I skootch Zeke over. I get up. Cup hands, slurp water. Then to Toilet.
Switch on iPhone. And then there was Light. I flip through emails. Blog posts. Morning papers.
1:43 a.m.
Close eyes.
Replay Message on answering machine from a week ago: “Tests good, But”…and a long pause. But, What? “Cholesterol a problem.” Cholesterol a problem. WTH is that? [Read more…]
My friend Denise tells me somebody told her, “Shopping is despair,” but my daughter Jennifer says, “Shopping is hope.” Hope gets out of hand. One turquoise ring from eBay is not enough. I must have five. A single secondhand Coach bag is not satisfying – I bid on seven. As I have implied, one is not a concept I understand. When I smoked I smoked three packs a day, when I drank, well, let’s not get into that. If your psyche is a balloon animal and you squeeze to eliminate the cigarettes and whiskey, the crazy has to go somewhere. A friend’s mother ate nothing but clams for six months. Morning, noon, and night, nothing but clams for six months. “I don’t know what it is – I can’t seem to get enough of them,” she told her son. He shakes his head, but i understand. I eat nothing but broccoli for a month, then yogurt for six days, then (for one glorious week) lamb chops. One day I roasted a chicken and had seven chicken sandwiches before nightfall. If I like something, I like it a lot. Just one doesn’t cut it. I don’t know what it is I can’t get enough of. At least I don’t have shopping bags full of duck sauce.
~ Abigail Thomas, Thinking About Memoir
Photo Source: weheartit
David Carr died last week. He overcame drug addiction, survived cancer and struggled with alcoholism. He was a best selling author, a top media columnist at The New York Times and a member of the faculty at Boston University’s communications school. He was a “mentor to young reports and a blunt critic of those who didn’t measure up.” Here’s a excerpt from today’s paper:
NY Times: David Carr’s Last Word on Journalism, Aimed at Students:
David was interested in people, not their résumés. He didn’t care where someone went to college or who their parents were. So instead of giving his students a standard biographical blurb…David told them this, under the heading “Not need to know, but nice to know”:
“Your professor is a terrible singer and a decent dancer. He is a movie crier but stone-faced in real life. He never laughs even when he is actually amused. He hates suck-ups, people who treat waitresses and cab drivers poorly and anybody who thinks diversity is just an academic conceit. He is a big sucker for the hard worker and is rarely dazzled by brilliance. He has little patience for people who pretend to ask questions when all they really want to do is make a speech…Your professor is fair, fundamentally friendly, a little odd, but not very mysterious. If you want to know where you stand, just ask.”
He encouraged teamwork. “While writing, shooting, and editing are often solitary activities, great work emerges in the spaces between people,” David wrote, adding, “Evaluations will be based not just on your efforts, but on your ability to bring excellence out of the people around you…”
Mikaela Lefrak, 26, was his teaching assistant his first semester. “He didn’t want us to sound like everyone else,” she wrote in an email. “He wanted us to sound better. Extended metaphors should be indulged and encouraged — the stranger, the better. And clichés were poison. ‘Try harder,’ he told me constantly. ‘Create something with your own dirty little hands…’ ”
David warned there would be a heavy reading list. “I’m not sliming you with a bunch of textbooks, so please know I am dead serious about these readings,” he wrote. “Skip or skim at your peril.”
I encourage you to read the entire article. You can find it here: David Carr’s Last Word on Journalism, Aimed at Students.
His best selling book, “The Night of the Gun,” is a memoir of addiction and recovery. I highly recommend it. Maria Popova at Brain Pickings shared some excellent excerpts from the book in her post: Addiction to Truth.
And here are links to some of my favorite quotes by Carr:
Carr lived in New Jersey with Jill Rooney Carr and their three children. He was 58. As Scott Peck would say, he took the road less traveled and many of us are better for it.
RIP.
Credits: Photograph of David Carr in 2008 – NY Times
For most of my adult life, I have read, like E. I. Lonoff in Roth’s The Ghost Writer, primarily at night: a hundred or so pages every evening once Rae and the kids have gone to bed. These days, after spending hours on the computer, I pick up a book and read a paragraph; then my mind wanders and I check my e-mail, drift onto the Internet, pace the house before returning to the page. Or I want to do these things but don’t, force myself to remain still, to follow what I’m reading until I give myself over to the flow. What I’m struggling with is the encroachment of the buzz, the sense that there is something out there that merits my attention, when in fact it’s mostly just a series of disconnected riffs, quick takes and fragments, that add up to the anxiety of the age. How did this happen? Perhaps it’s easier to pinpoint when. Certainly, it began after the fall of 2006, when I first got high-speed Internet, which I had previously resisted because I understood my tendency to lose myself in the instant gratifications of the information stream. […] It all felt so immensely freighted that to look back now is to recall little more than the frantic blur of stimulation, the lab rat’s manipulated jolt at pressing the proper button, the junkie’s temporary relief at the fleeting fix.
~ David L. Ulin. The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time.
Related David L. Ulin Post: We immerse, slow down. Photo credit: dailymail.co.uk
Join me in taking the NY Times Magazine Quiz: Are You Addicted to Food?
Part A: Answer 0 for never; 1 for once a month; 2 for two to four times a month; 3 for two to three times a week; and 4 for more than 4 times a week.
Live & Learn 