Selah

Originally Posted Sunday, January 12, 2014

The sun is up earlier, down later.  The days grow longer.  There is reprieve.  The difference is palpable.  It is a reminder of things.  At least our human activities hasn't been able to change that, the old, stable cosmos.  We may have ruined the seasons, migrations, ice caps, and everything else that was expected and stable here on earth, but look to the heavens for the old, wonderful world.  There is still a day and a night.  We have that. 

CNN has decided to make money instead of report important news.  They are chasing the Huffington Post in a PG way.  The writing is third rate at best.  Their online stories are more chock full of errors than this blog.  Of course, in a cost saving measure, I employ no editors.  Apparently, they have followed my lead. 

I am tired of reading their emotional stories.  They need not be reported that way, but apparently they are hiring the worst writers.  Each story that includes a death is 3/4s filled with the reactions of relatives and friends.  I've learned not to read more than the second "paragraph" (they are not paragraphs).  The lead is always bogus.  After the second part, they should just say, "The dead person's mother tearily emoted most of the usual cliches about the wrongful waste of human life, etc."  And I would appreciate some headlines that actually reflected the story: "Gov. Christie Is An Asshole--But He Still Won By A Landslide."  The story writes itself.  Actually, I may have stolen that from the New York Times. 

My A.A. buddy, Q, is reporting my bad influence over on his site.  Just for the record, I had half a bottle of abby ale on Friday.  I finished it last night.  Each night, I followed the ale with a short scotch.  It filled a hole that was opening up in me.  My plan all along was to reach a point where I didn't need to drink every night without thought.  I thought a lot about what I was drinking last night.  I calculate that I have saved enough money in the last month to pay the rent on my studio by not drinking.  That gives me a bit of a chubby, to tell you the truth.  I will have nothing to drink today or tonight, nor for the week.  If I go out to dinner with friends next weekend, I will drink wine with my meal.  The days of draining the bottles of scotch and gin at night alone without conscious thinking are gone, I hope.  I drink water after the gym now instead of beer.  I have something called a European Soda with my meals in front of the television.  I still, however, crave the digestif.  That is the difficult one.  My mother says I look younger, and I know I have lost weight.  My attitude about things is no better, though.  I am not cheery and bubbly.  I still see the dark absurdities in people, all people including myself.  I just don't feel the need to tell them as often.  When I laugh at them now, it is a shorter dagger than before.  I probably make fewer mortal enemies.  Enemies, yes, but maybe not mortal. 

But anyone who says that drinking isn't fun is nothing at all like me.  It is good fun.  It makes people and things more tolerable.  Events, too.  It is a reward for doing something dangerous or hard.  It is something to share with a potential new lover.  But it is a bad reading companion.  It is not so good for being productive.  It shortens the creative day.  As an enhancement or a reward, it can hardly be beaten.  As a habit, it is ruinous. 

Ask Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc.  You are better off smoking opium, I would think, than becoming an alcoholic.  I can't say that with any authority other than having read reports that alcohol ruins your internal organs and opium does not.  The opium smoker's brain is not all soft and fatty like the alcoholic's. 

So Q, I am still sober.  I'm not filling up the empty hours drinking.  I am filling them up with nothing at this point, and they are deadly dark and dull.  I go to bed and wait for morning.  As always, there is the beauty of the day for me.  If I were a night owl like most of you, I would be lost.  But I dare not miss a sunrise.  It is coming up now cold and blue.  The breeze slightly moves the trees.  The sunlight seems to shine from below the shining leaves.  This is as close to heaven as I get.  It is potential, a promise. When I am dying, it will be the days and not the nights that I will miss, though I have had some utterly splendid nights as well.  I have never felt the need to drink during the day.  Indeed, it seems a blasphemy.  That is not to say that I have not enjoyed the glasses of wine at lunch with Q in the Met or the MoMA or the Whitney.  Nor the beers in an outdoor cafe in a high pass of the Andes listening to Vivaldi. 

I'd better quit writing about it.  It's making me thirsty.  No matter, though.  I have a pumpkin loaf waiting for me after my second cup of coffee.  There are many bad things in which to indulge.  Selah.