Friday Musings

Waiting for the cable company to show up and install the phone jack in the library so I can move the laptop to my desk where it is easier for my to use. While the Grateful Dead's American Beauty plays in the background, coffee and smokes close at hand, thought I might as well type out some musings for your amusement and my sanity. Have I mentioned this not working everyday stuff is getting old, my house is clean but it is getting old, hopefully within a couple of weeks I will have the right balance of work and non-work, hey at least I have a job, think positive Wolfie.

So I am going through some boxes of stuff left over from the last move that where stored in the closet for keeping, stuff not ready to throw away yet. I came across my old note books of poetry. Most of the notebooks contain poems from a time prior to the last dark years of drinking, during those years I lost interest in writing and reading, well I didn't lose interest really I had no consentration left for focusing on writing and reading. One of the things I noticed in the poems that I had forgot about was that for a period in the relapse I expressed a strong love of God and faith, the Big Book talks about those with religious and philosophical convictions glore not being able to conquering or arrest this disease, pharaphrase folks, so I guess there was a period when I was there. I really don't remember much about this time, I know I was drinking daily but not as heavy as I would end up doing, not to say I had a lot of control just the progression hadn't got to the point it would eventually get to. There are poems to a woman I fell infatuated with, the poems express deep love but I know differant today, today this woman and I are close friends, she wasn't interested in me and as the friendship grew I understood we had less in common than I thought, this woman lived 200 miles away so I never got to spend time with her, our conversations were all over the phone and on the few business trips out west she would make but via my lonely desparation I fell hard for her. Another theme in the poems was anti-war and anti Bush administration, some of these were quite vile and violent, this stuff I do remember. I hated the war in Iraq and still do, I spent 21 years in the Armed Forces and understand war and feel a bunch of non-serving politicians and media talking heads have no right to take our men and women in uniform into grave danger unless it is absolutely necessary, I support bring Bin Laden to justice but not attacking Iraq. Alcohol fueled my rage at the war and those that were responsible for starting it and also the attempts at stopping freedom of speech, attempts at retracting the 1st amendment. I still have strong feelings about the war and polictics in general but the differance is I am no longer obsessed about them, I vote, I state my opinion but I don't get angry and depressed over something I can't change, I have learned to not listen to or read stuff that I know will make me lose my serenity because I strongly disagree with the context, this includes right and left wing material. For the most part I feel the media, some blogs included are a haven of intolerance, today my spiritual goals is to practice love and tolerance, so if I take in intolerance chances are I will spew it out. There is a lot of depression flowing through these poems, alcohol induced. Not all the poems where depressing, angry or about my achy breaky heart, There were some really good ones too, reflections on nature, historical places, the ones about Dachau concentration camp express the fresh emotions from just visiting it, something I couldn't recreate today, there are a couple of poems to Mich expressing my pain at being a single parent and one I wrote to my ex-wife after her funeral giving her the credit she deserved not the sick bullshit the preacher said at the funeral, alright so there is one resentment I rarely think about but yes I still have a big resentment toward the preacher at my ex-wife's funeral, someday I may write about it but not today.

Talking about my ex, in reflecting on the poems and how the Muse gradually died, it was her death via addiction influenced suicide for those that don't know, that accelerated my drinking not that it wouldn't have progress on it's own eventually but the death caused a lot of hurt and shame. The poems were a relfection of a man who was lonely, scared and desparately needing help, who eventually turned his back on God. A man who was in heavy denile about his alcoholism even after having 9 years of sobriety, I was proud of my partying in some and hated myself in others. I cried to be forgiven by my ex and daughter. The notebooks end about 3 years before I got sober, I am sure there were more poems in those years but the notebooks must have been thrown away, maybe for the best. Te poems reflect the start of a living Hell, if I sit still I can still remember the darkness of the last few years, the dependency on alcohol, the pain and heartbreak I created. I know longer feel shame about my ex-wife's death, God has forgiven me of any wrong doing, I have forgiven myself and I hope the spirit my ex forgives me, she wasn't a vengeful person so I am sure it has. What I received from the notebooks and writing about them is that I don't want to go back to being the sick person I was when I wrote them. If I am to stay sober and on this wonderful path I am on I need to continue to do the footwork I do, meetings, sponsor people and be an active sponcee, work with others, do service work, live the steps just not work them and of course prayer and mediation. I have changed, I haven't felt compelled to write a poem for N, some how the time isn't right, there is more to this relationship than simple words can convey, oh there are words I think about when I think of my feelings toward her but somehow if I forced them out on paper they wouldn't be from the heart and if I do write her something I want it to come from the muse and not me. The best words for now about our relationship are in the song "When You Say Nothing at All" sung by Alison Krauss

On to ligher things, and no the cable guy hasn't shown up yet thus the long ass post. I got a bird feeder and seed yesterday, I noticed a cardinal and some young rabbit's the other day so I bought them some food, I haven't seen the cardinal again but some sparrow's and dove's have found the food, oh the simple things in life that bring us joy. N and her youngest son are coming down tonight to spend the weekend. Tomorrow during the day we are going to go shopping for school clothes and shoe's. N sent me a text yesterday about going to a speaker meeting and street dance in Omaha put on by the treatment center sponsor's kids are in, her sponsor wants N to meet her kids, so tomorrow night we will be going to that, N was nice enough to ask me if I wanted to go, I smiled to myself thinking she knows I wouldn't say no but thanks for asking and respecting me. Sunday this Buddhist is stepping inside a Christian church for the first time in probably 7 years, with the expection of funerals and weddings. The last time N was in town a friend of mine told N about her church and N wants to attend a service so I am going with her. I have nothing against Jesus in fact I love his teachings and what the man represents, I no longer hate Christians either, a theme in some of my poems, I just dislike some of the un-Christ like followers of Jesus. So without getting my expectations too high I think it will be a great weekend. Well the cable dude is finally here. Until next time.

Peace Love and Light
Scott