No Maps

January 15

NO MAPS

Maps have existed longer than I have. By the time of my birth, aerial photography had made pinpoint accuracy the norm. I can be tracked by satellite on my daily commute. I can get a Trip Tik and travel to the far reaches of this continent.

"So what’s your problem?” asks my sponsor.

There is no map for where we’ve been going. There are the twelve steps but after that, it is all uncharted territory, except, of course for my family’s warnings about dragons.

“Those critters stay to home mostly. You have bigger things to worry about.”

So, where’s the map? I need to know where to go.

“No map. We go through this together. The pitfalls are similar: sex and money. There are a few others. What each of us finds on this journey is unchartable, plus if you spend your time looking down, you will miss the view. We prop each other up as we step off into the unknown, and reel each other back if we start falling off the beam.”

How do I know if I’m doing it right?

“Are you still sober?”

Yes, but I’m unsure. Lots of people are sober right up until the time they’re drunk.

“So true. It’s all about motive, and it’s difficult to chart your heart. Do you have willingness?”

Yes, you know I do.

“I have found that is the vehicle to everywhere, Honey. Learn to enjoy the ride.”

Write silly verse.

*

Comparison Shopping

Cost analysis of the yeas and nays

requires a savvy consumer.

Every word has a variable price

dependent on whom it is spoken to

and when it is said.

Some words charge compound interest

and others pay dividends.

Timing and delivery is of the utmost importance.

Knowledge of the markets requires constant assessment.

The risk to benefit ratio varies widely

and the short term verses the long term price

can flip the market from profit to loss.

Hold my tongue, speak my mind,

these must be weighed;

the clock consulted and inventories taken.

What I say and when

can be less a matter of bull or bear

than whether or not I can afford to be a sheep.

Gravity Works All the Time

January 14

GRAVITY WORKS ALL THE TIME

Limits and boundaries are a drag. I hate feeling tied to the ground. I know I could fly if not for unseen forces. I sense myself lightening, smoothing, I drop my burdens; I pick up speed. Fourth dimension! Hell! I’m proverbial vapor trails. At this time I should explain. When I get moving this fast, I inevitably wind myself into a position where my head is up my in my nether regions, a place it does not belong.

I have slowly grown to love my limits; no restraint holds me back. In reality, I am supported, rooted as it were. I am not a hydroponic. I can live in the real world. I am me. Encouraged by the wind and the rain, I am not the hot house flower. I am truly free. I can walk where I was born to walk. I forget life has not been found outside my little world, and when it is, I’m still better off being me.

Introduce yourself to a new vegetable.

*

Specks

Spectacles are for specks;

tiny things that must be watched.

Commotion is nothing but a congregation

of minutia with an audience.

How many small things

do I strain my eyes to see;

then seek help to pursue further?

Some of these are put on display fishing for voyeurs.

Others are secreted away

only to be ferreted out through magnification.

Whether curiosity or contempt drives me

to these pinpoints I must search my motives

before I scan the plain.

For truly if I am not careful

I, myself will end up either speck or spectacle.

Catch

January 13

CATCH

How can my sensibility catch my intellect? Or find a map with enough information to get my heart to the current location of my mind? What are the common markers recognized by soul and brain? I know the pulse of my wrist is counter-pointing the firing of my synapses. My life signs run their course and I struggle to find the intersections. I long for more than signposts and curbing. I would like parallels, paradigms and conclusions. There must be a place of common home and hearth. I am looking for the depot of my life. I hope I hit it before I hit the coast.

Warm your heart with your thoughts.

*

Offset

I often feel out of round

and unmatched to my counterparts.

Awkwardly I sit unable to strike a plausible pose.

I want my asymmetry to seem chic.

I feel a victim of universal ugliness

and gracelessly plod through my days.

Luckily offset thinking,

the partner of my offset soul, saves me.

I see that I am uniquely useful,

Like a screwdriver set at right angles

for use where a straight one could not reach.

I am counterbalance and compensation.

I may be lateral but I am also collateral.

I am an embellisher, beneficial in unexpected ways

and shouldn’t seek to be inline with the multitude.

I am the new growth,

the spur to the future.

Life Is Too Good

January 12

LIFE IS TOO GOOD

I know it sounds crazy. Is crazy. But I hate having the fear, the gnawing gut of “what if I can’t maintain this”? The sober life I live, what if I get struck unable to connect to my Higher Power? I had a spiritual awakening; what if I get spiritual narcolepsy? My spiritual cord was cut when I was young, not by my choosing. What if it’s cut again?

“What if this line of thinking cuts it?” asks my sponsor

I hate when she’s right. What if this is the test? Be like them or not. Follow the path of the twelve steps when there is no weight of need pushing me. I have to keep my eye on the ball for myself when everything is going in my direction. I’m still not God. This is the lesson the abusers never learned. The one I have to.

“This has been a prelude to a decision,” says she.

What decision?

“What went wrong was not bad people making bad choices in bad circumstances. It was disconnected people making decisions without help.”

I have to stay in your pocket. Never be a free bird. I have to remember what true freedom is. It’s not being cut loose. I had that and it never felt free.

“Keep your eye on the ball; hold onto my hand.”

Read a children’s book to yourself.

*

Live Bait

Is being a taunt to others really a life?

Dangling as the cover for a hook,

luring intended and unintended to their deaths,

is that living?

Or if I draw you with my attack

rather than my appeal

is that a worthwhile existence?

If I carry myself filled with poison

praying for a strike is that anything

other than a march to an unhappy grave

for two, or more?

Hidden under an avalanche of harassment

strips me of my vital quality

and my soul loses its true nature.

I am allowed to transcend

the setup of competition and social strife.

It’s alright to be tempting with no agenda.

I could be an appetizer

if only I removed the barbs

or better yet I could be dessert.

Loneliness Eats My Lunch

January 11

LONELINESS EATS MY LUNCH

There are days loneliness eats my lunch and I can’t fight back. How can I stand it? How can it still be this bad? I pull out the old chestnuts: If I’m not happy with what I have, how could I be happier with more? And, Even tickets on the fifty yard line don’t interest me; I came to play! I roll them around. I think of the other slogans, the tidbits, the smiles and hugs. Still, there are days my lunch is gulped down and I sit with my plate empty. Pickle juice, coleslaw drool is small comfort. Actually, it’s a jeer. I stare at my empty plate. I turn it and twist it. I stick out my tongue at it.

“You're good company,” says my sponsor.

Then why am I alone? If I’m so good, if my company is worthwhile, why do I sit here hungry and desperate?

“Are you sure you are?”

It sure feels that way.

“Well it might be true.”

And it might not. I get it. I am unhooked from myself; I’m ignoring the multitude at my elbow, looking for someone in my lap. I’m holding out for old terms from a new contract. I am loved by people who aren’t trying to consume me and I am letting my expectations dine for free.

Imagine who the wind visited before you and who it is on its way to visit now.

*

Pepo

My father used to destroy a perfectly good watermelon

by cutting a triangle in the top

and pouring a bottle of vodka into it.

I used to destroy my perfectly good melon the same way.

Emulating bad ideas in new ways

was a onetime pastime of mine.

Giving it up was harder than I had expected.

Flawed thinking blends so freely with my mental landscape

I have trouble distinguishing it.

Condemning the action and not the man

is not usually my preferred method.

I would rather condemn the man.

But this leaves me with the actions in place

and him long gone and though I prefer him gone

I will recreate him within myself

if I don’t flush his actions as well.

I have a good pumpkin on my shoulders

but it is my job to keep it intact.

Breaking my own Glass

January 10

BREAKING MY OWN GLASS

The police of a small town caught a serial glass breaker today. The man who owned a plate glass repair shop was breaking store front windows. I break my own. I go through my life; I slash my own tires and break my own glass. I fear continuity, stability, success. I love damage control, making arts and crafts from my slivers and shards.

“Think what you could do with undamaged goods,” says my sponsor.

I don’t know how to do anything with undamaged goods, except damage them or give them to others.

“Saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” she counters.

“Stick around,” I tease.

I can make a quilt from discarded clothes, mosaics from shattered dishes, collage from junk mail. I can hold your hand and cheer you on. See the potential in every person in a crowded hall. Rescue every stray on the block.

“What have you done for you lately?” my sponsor taunts.

She is making my point. What can I do for me? Search and destroy? Live outside myself? I have to be sober to be me. I can’t go around making messes so I have something familiar to wallow in. What if I can’t do anything fresh?

“Learn to market the retreads,” she says.

Watch an old thing in a new way.

*

Hoarfrost

On balmy evenings dew forms in my life

and moistens my extremities.

This friendly act requires the maintenance of temperature.

If I become suddenly cool the landscape changes

and the once welcoming vapor

is now a show of crystalline rigidity.

Cold to the morning light I am brittle

and snap at even a tentative touch.

For want of passion I have replaced it

with definition and structure I can not absorb.

I am outlined clearly but no longer myself.

I am frozen, formally changed within and without.

Warmth is necessary, but how to start my own fire?

Learn I must and quickly, lest frostbite set in.

In a Backwater

January 9

IN A BACKWATER

There is a place so removed, uninspired, ignorance flourishes. I hate to go there. I avoid it when I can. Today I could not avoid it. Today I saw the gable end of a small barn, half hidden in the scrub trees. On the face of the gable end are two plywood cutouts, large, taking up the major portion of the space. The first cutout is a budgie, a bright blue parakeet, 7 or 8 feet tall. Tilted to its side, it looks dyslexic, but intriguing. Above it is a cutout of a black guitar, similar length, hanging long ways across the top, almost from eave to eave. I don’t know what it means, why they are there, who could have put them there.

A story’s tongue is sticking out at me; I can hardly bear it. I think of God, and laugh. If my God has nothing better to do than tease me, I need a better God. I think of my Higher Power and wonder if the power is curious, too. Am I overlapping a layer of consciousness I have no part in? Is this a subliminal preview of my future? Or am I far too nosy for my own good? My sponsor says the latter. I just don’t know. It could be something all together different. I have only time. Time will tell in the end; it always does. I hate to wait.

Compare and contrast eggplant and green beans.

*

Crestfallen

“Whoa is me,

I have crested the rise only

to slide down the other side.

Hard work and determination culminated in victory

but alas it was short lived.

Success is barely meaningful if it is permanent.

Poor, poor dear,

I will have to strive once more

at the face of a new challenge or even worse

might have to make another run at this one.

How shall I ever bear it?” I lament, my sponsor smiles.

“Are you learning to be amused at yourself

or hoping to bring back melodrama to the everyman?”

She queries.

“A little of both I think,

whining is a consolation to me,

” I reply.

“It’s nice that you’re not doing it at me,

but even nicer that you have let your achievements

teach you to laugh at your mishaps,”

said my sponsor with a kiss to my forehead.