Day 25 - (A Sort of Hiatus)

A picture of my day:

Gotta kick it like this for a few more days at least.

 My illness is getting the better of my ability to write cogently and in a timely manner. I'm going to have to take some time off and re-prioritize - focus on the goal of getting healthy soon, and without letting my grades slip.

So this is a picture of my day - I'll tell you all about it, hopefully in a week to ten days when I'm feeling better.  In the meantime, thanks for all of the get-well wishes.

By the way, if you have any questions about Sickle Cell or how it affects me, or life as a chronic hospital patient, please don't hesitate to ask, here or via email.

Day 24

A picture of something I wish I could change:

Let's face it, I probably could do more about my looks here, but I took the specific language of the prompt to imply, "A picture of something I can do little or nothing to change."

I wish I could change the treatment for a severe Sickle Cell Crisis.  I just ran some extremely underestimated numbers, and I figure that I've been hospitalized for pain crisis at least forty times since birth, for a total of well over 365 days.   This number only includes the hospitalizations I can specifically remember, and only the ones solely motivated by sheer pain - not, for example, by a sudden inexplicable limp, or sudden blurred vision.  Maybe I'd double again the number of ER visits made.  But lost time is not my lament.

I have mentioned addiction's genetic component before - not that it is automatically passed amongst families, nor that a woman who lives without any family history is "saved" and may now smoke coke to her heart's (unattainable) content.  But doctors are discovering more and more genes that increase the risk of addiction.  Examples range from Native American ancestry to a single amino-acid substitution on the dopamine-D2 receptor site.  For some reason, the predisposition breeds more truly from male to male than any other gender-pairing: sons of predisposed fathers are far more likely to be predisposed than are daughters of fathers or children of mothers.  At some point in the kid-building process, if too many of these markers are found present stacked atop one another, we say that person has a 100% addiction potential.   This is still not genetic damnation: even with 100% addiction potential, you'd have to be repeatedly exposed to an addictive substance in order to become addicted.

...Oh.  Oh shite.  Oh....pissbollocks.  (I have Scottish blood tae, don'tcha know?)

Doomed from the start.  A full genetic predisposition and a congenital chronic pain disorder - a disorder so painful and so chronic that it meets several criteria for childhood trauma.  This is what I would change if I could: I'd give myself a fair fucking chance.

The secondary damage is piling up, now.  My veins can't take the strain of the efforts asked of them; it took two specially-trained phlebotomists an hour with an ultrasound to find the IV.  Even with my body in a near-constant state of SNAFU-management, there are proactive steps I can take to improve my condition.  I was asked to confront something I only wish I could change; so I have.

Day 23

A picture of my favorite book. I ran a contest similar to what I did for Day Thirteen in my head: I visualized my way through my library, and decided that the most well-loved book would be the winner.  My poor copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany has been falling apart since our first reading over thirteen years ago.  If you could leaf through it - carefully please - you'd actually see my relationship with the text in margin notes, asterisks and underscores.  I really wish I could take that picture and show it to you.

Unfortunately a) I'm not at home, and b) when I considered the rules of the contest, I hadn't considered copies that were so well-loved I'd had to replace them.  And when I considered that lofty criterion, One Book rose to mind.  If I were given to punning I'd call it - One Book...to Rule Them All:

Day 22

A Picture of something I wish I was better at:

Over the last two years, I've discovered just how much I enjoy writing.  The occasional persuasive post  or online journal entry is blooming into a hobby - no, I'm wrong.  It is a hobby, blooming into a passion.  And when I'm passionate about something, I want to be good at it.

I wish I was better at evoking rather than describing. I wish I had the ability to cook ideas down to their essence, to burn off unnecessary language.

(No Trans...Words?  Meh.)

So "Take a Creative Writing Course" goes below "Join Martial Arts Studio" on the list entitled For My Health.

Day 21

A picture of something I wish I could forget:

12170 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, California.  January, 2000.

This Starbucks has been the scene of many Talks - you know the kind, always prefaced with "We Need to..."  Here's another one from the Sandblast List.

This time, I'm sure of it: I'm in love with her.  No more second-guessing, no more self-conscious self-recriminations about any of it.  Yes, she is my best friend; yes, those boundaries have been well-established and somewhat well-respected; yes, this would be the final insult to those boundaries.  But I'm in love with her;  friendship must take a back seat to the romantic imperative.

Knowing my ability to chicken out no matter the stakes, I have allowed news of my love for her to leak. I've closed off all possible routes of escape behind; all that remains is the terrifying, inexorable march ahead.  Onward, Sancho!

We take our seats. She decides to rip off the conversational Band-Aid: "I think you have something to tell me."

She is inscrutable; each time I'd said I could read her like a Clifford book weighs individually upon my chest, mocking me.

I blink at her.  Right now, right now, I need my God-given gift of gab more than I ever have - more than I ever will.


I want to say: I am in  love with you. I know there are things to work out, but I also know there is love in your heart for me.

I say: "Umm..."

I spent hours that night trying to salvage what was between us.  I wish I could forget everything that followed from that first sentence of hers.  The heartbreak was twofold: yes, a girl for whom I felt deeply was explaining in careful detail just why it wasn't going to happen; but more importantly, my best friend (one of the four, but I digress) was furious with me, for reasons I didn't entirely understand.  What I did manage to understand pissed me right off in return.

When the anger faded, what was left felt like a hole in my center where something vital had been crudely amputated.

Our friendship didn't survive the coffee 'date.'  Every time I encountered her after that evening - whether it was in person, on the phone, or online - I was drunk.  It was the only way I felt like I could handle the confrontation - less with her than with my feelings for her, which remained potent long they after they had soured completely.

Day Twenty

A picture of somewhere I'd love to travel:

Ireland.  I don't know why, really; I've just always felt that, if I could wander the cliffs of Ireland, I'd feel incredible peace.  They say Geminis are at their most comfortable at meeting places: crossroads, beaches...the horizon...which would certainly explain the underlying sense of impatience I've lived with most of my life.  Those cliffs are a hell of a dramatic meeting place.  Not that I completely buy into the whole astrology thing.

I was actually surprised how few pictures of Kathy Ireland appeared when I searched for this image.

Day Nineteen

A picture of me when I was little:

"I wish I was a little bit taller..."

When I think of going back to the beginning, starting the whole thing over, I think of stepping back into this picture and becoming this boy again.  I don't know what all I would have done differently, as I went through the process of re-living, but I would have started by cherishing the good times more, and wallowing less in the pain and the anger.  Maybe that alone would have changed the makeup of my entire world, by age twelve.

I would also have skipped playing Spider-Man on the stone steps in my childhood home, because you can see the results in this bonus picture!  Me in my first of two (so far) body casts.  The old house had these steps that protruded about three inches past the banister.  I climbed the steps using the outside 3", going hand-over-hand up the banister.  At the top of the stairs, I'd climb over the rail and be home free.  I don't know how many times I'd gotten busted doing this - the top of the banister was right across from the master bedroom, and I remember this was a spanking offense.  Not enough to stop me.  Even what you see below, the result of losing my balance in the wrong direction at the top of the banister, didn't stop me.  I had to do it one more time, to prove that a broken femur hadn't taught scared me.

Badass in a body cast.

Day Eighteen

A picture of my biggest insecurity:

Hello...handsome?

Taking a picture of an insecurity is a ludicrous notion, the pragmatist in me wants to protest.  I'm sure as shit not taking a picture of the 25 lbs. I want to lose - if I felt comfortable doing that, it wouldn't be much of an insecurity.  In any case, that's not my biggest.

Here it is, folks: I don't think women find me attractive.  I know some women have; some women have been effusive in their compliments. I've stopped explaining to myself why none of them count.  I even find myself physically attractive - finally - but the certainty remains that women don't.  Irrational, I suppose, but how many people's biggest insecurities are rational?

I was bullied for years, growing up - and my ugliness was the thing people liked to call out the most.  I had a pig nose, ugly ears, wrinkly dry skin (thanks eczema!), buck teeth, a head two sizes too big for my scrawny and short body - the list goes on.  And even when the bullying stopped, as my peers grew in maturity and kindness - and as I learned to stop flipping the world off all the time and actually made a few more friends - the simple fact remained: girls didn't like me.  Today, I couldn't tell you all of the reasons that was; back then, I just knew it was because I didn't look like Jake.

(It's a tough thing, when one of your friends growing up is a feminine ideal, the most popular kid in class; it's easier when he goes on to be a really successful actor and one of People's 50 Most More-Attractive-Than-You.  It's sort of like saying, "It's okay, Dash - nobody could compete with that.")

I've never truly shaken this core belief; it's the biggest part of what lies at the root of my social awkwardness, part of why I still feel nearly phobic about approaching women I don't know or asking out the ones I do.  It's part of what needs to change before I find that Right Woman.

Day Seventeen

A picture of something that has made a huge impact on my life recently:

I was nearing my fourth sober anniversary, and thinking about the changes I'd made in my life - mostly, about my career direction.  I'd been an addiction treatment counselor for over a year at that point, and was about to receive my certification as Specialist in Alcohol and Drug Studies.  I wanted to do something for my high-school community, and since I had no money to give I went to offer my time - I had it in mind to craft and deliver a substance-abuse prevention lecture.

I went to the headmaster, who was also my teacher for Psychology and Religion classes, as well as my academic advisor - we were tight, and it was about time for our annual pilgrimage to Fatburger in any case.  Jim had seen me through all the years of my addiction and into my sobriety; he's one of my biggest cheerleaders.  It's always been gratifying to know such a brilliant and kind man thinks I can do anything, and I wanted to repay him for that support.  I asked him if I could give the lecture; he gave me this nonplussed look, and said something I'd never heard from him before: "No, you can't."  He went on: "We've been using this great organization for a long time now!  Hold on, I have the name here..."

"Jim, I haven't been gone 'a long time,' and there was definitely no substance-abuse prevention when I was here, so..."

"Ah, here's the website, www.FCD.org - they've been coming here for seven years.  David, your ten-year reunion is in two weeks.  That's a long time."

So, though I didn't appreciate the reminder of how long it'd truly been, I wrote down the website and looked them up after lunch.  I sent them an email on a lark, just mentioning who I was and what I did, where I came from, and that I'd been looking to get into prevention.  What followed was the most prolonged interview process I've ever dealt with (not that I'm all that experienced in this area) - it ended during a two-week training session in Boston, at the end of which they finally offered me employment.  Twelve hours after I got home from Mass, I was in another plane on my way to Qatar for the first time.  Beijing and Hanoi followed on that trip.

I've seen amazing places; I work with incredibly gifted people; and I've discovered I have a deep affection and empathy for adolescents and their struggle with self-definition.  I've also discovered I'm good at this - my natural gifts, finite and diverse, all contribute to this single area.

A student asked me, after I finished singing for them (I don't always, but when they ask, I deliver), why I wasn't a professional singer.  I gave two of the many answers to that question: "One, I'm passionate about singing, and I'd like to keep it that way.  Two, there are many people in the world qualified to sing professionally, and perhaps I am among them.  But there are only a few people qualified to do what I'm doing with you all - and I know I'm one of them.  This is more important."

They applauded.  I was in L.A., so I'm still not sure if that was sarcastic or not - but I suspect it wasn't.  It also wasn't necessary; my reward for my work is the dopaminergic surge I get when I watch the light come on in a teen's eyes as she reconsiders her perspective on substance abuse and addiction.  It's in the happiness I feel knowing I'm doing something meaningful, something concrete to make the world a healthier place.

It's in my paycheck.  I can't say enough about the paycheck.  (And you like how I slipped in the plug, right?  You know you do.)

Day Sixteen

I did it again, sorry.  Stupid shortcut key that I apparently hit when reaching for Shift.

A picture of someone who inspires me:

I'd like to show a picture of my AA sponsor, but I feel pretty hinky doing that given the whole Anonymous thing.  So here's Bill Wilson, the founder of AA.  There are people I believe to have been spiritually - divinely, if you'll allow - inspired in life.  People whose ideas proved to be a watershed moment for human nature.  Wilson isn't that far below King, on the list of people whose divinely-inspired ideas have changed my life in a deeply personal manner.  Without AA, I would not be sober - nor would millions of addicts the world over.

Bill Wilson got sober through a "white-light experience" - meaning, the nondenominational equivalent of an Angel of the Lord came down and touched him, and he experienced what is clinically referred to as "complete psychic change." From that day forward, although he would be tempted time and again, alcohol had no power over him.  Seeking to reaffirm that experience during a time of temptation, he asked to be directed to an inveterate drinker, someone who was suffering the same inability to control himself that Wilson had once exhibited.  He met that man, Dr. Bob Smith (not an alias), and the two of them managed to recreate Wilson's experience for Smith without the Angel-of-the-Lord moment.  Dr. Bob, as he's called, went on eventually to lasting sobriety.

In 1939, the two founders, and the first hundred or so alcoholics who achieved sobriety in this simple manner - by sharing their experiences with other alcoholics who conferred upon the drinkers the strength and hope to abstain - published a book, Alcoholics Anonymous, from which the movement took its name.  That book and its 1953 companion piece, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, provided me with solace; with an understanding of part of myself that had escaped me all the years of my life, much less the briefer period of my substance abuse; and with direction and hope.

Long before Jellinek, Fonagy, and Gorski wrote the books leading to our present medical understanding of addiction, Wilson and Smith came to an oddly prescient grasp of its nature.  It's now known - despite the debate that rages on - that addiction is a disease.  It can be proven.  But long before the disease concept was even posited, much less researched, Wilson called it a "malady," and "an allergy of the body."  And to confront what was later discovered to be a biopsychosocial disease, Wilson and Smith and the first hundred devised a biopsychosocial program of recovery.  The biological: total abstinence is required for the brain to reach a "normal" chemical balance.  The psychological: the recovering addict must talk through his troubles in a structured format, to gain the insight needed to maintain purchase on that abstinence.  The social: recovering addicts must resocialize themselves and each other, forming healthy intra- and interpersonal relationships to make that abstinent life a healthy, happy and productive one.

There are ongoing debates about AA's effectiveness.  Some say it doesn't work; they see the millions of addicts who struggle with recovery as failures on AA's part.  Others note the millions who are recovering.

I certainly don't write this to proselytize - but it worked for me.  In a time when I needed inspiration like the desert-lost need water, this is where I found it.  A community of like-minded individuals, suffering from the same problems - people who truly understand this most confusing part of me - and who accept me just as I am.  Without that inspiration, I would be - at best - totally bereft, despairing.

Day Fifteen

A picture of something I want to do before I die:

A good friend asks me often, how I can stay single - and celibate - for so long.  How can I resist the temptation to settle for that girl who's interested in me, but maybe isn't the most attractive to me, or lacks some quality I require in a lover?

The question has several answers.  One, I can't always tell when women are interested in me, so often what looks like resisting temptation is total ignorance.  Two, I've been down the road of settling, and it only ever caused pain and frustration.  Three, I'm thirty, and time's wearing short.  I almost feel like I can't waste time on someone who doesn't have serious potential.

But those all miss the real point: I'm a dreamer.  I think I'll find it all, someday, the whole shot.  My parents have; most people in my family marry for life.  Not because we don't believe in divorce, but because we find the Right One.  And this is the thing I want most before I die.  I want to stand up in front of everyone I love and make promises to the Right Woman; I want to spend the rest of my life keeping them.

I'm not really built for singlehood.  When I was a kid, I had two imaginary friends.  They were a couple - and just like my teddy bear was named T-Bear, they were named Boyfriend and Girlfriend.  I enjoyed their coupleness and helped them be a better couple.  Am I destined to be an MFT? Maybe.  But I know I belong in a loving relationship with someone special, and until I find her I want to be ready for her.

Day Fourteen

A picture of someone I could never imagine my life without:

High school.  I'm thinking junior year.

We were walking to class one afternoon; as usual when the two of us were together - thick as thieves, on so brief an acquaintance - we were laughing.  I'm talking about the gut-cramping, back-spasming, oxygen-depriving laughter that has been his constant gift to me.  Suddenly I realized that we were on the street, in public, in a stream of other students and oh-gosh teachers who could hear us curse and guffaw.  "Jesus!  Shhh," I said.

"I don't give a mad fuck!"  He nearly yelled it.  "Fuck 'em all with a big wooden stick!"

Although D may not remember this moment - there were, after all, many like it - it was pivotal in my life.  It was when I realized it was okay to be me.  I'd been told all my life that I was too loud - "My, you can certainly...project..." - here was permission to enjoy life at the volume of my choice.  Here was the freedom of friendship with one who accepted and appreciated me as I was, and taught me by example to demand nothing less than acceptance from the world around me.  For the last few years of high school, it was said that we were always heard before seen; I took it as praise.

D and I had diametrically-opposed strategies, in the struggle with low self-esteem.  Mine was to cower, pull in; his was to beat his breast and crow like a Lost Boy (think Hook, not Barrie).  If I had not had his example, I would not have known how to progress in sobriety; I also don't think the period of my active addiction would have brought me as many joys amidst the sorrow.

Something else, and maybe this is more important: D is the only other person I know who has anything approaching the same racial identity as I do.  Obviously, I'm not just talking about being Black American, or preferring that term to "African-American" or whatever else.  I'm talking about what it means to us to be Black, the whole mental scheme we have in our heads when we say "I am a Black American man."  The ideas we share have been forged by common experiences - by common battles.  There are differences as well, forged by the parts of our origin stories that are unique. But being able to have this simple inter-subjective experience, this external validation, has been invaluable. So many times in our friendship, which has spanned half of my life, I have needed to vent about something and realized: "Only D is going to understand why this upset me."
There's more - he's been my best friend for fifteen years,  of course there's more.  But for the sake of brevity - and by this I mean, not actually sitting down and writing my memoir now - I'll leave it at this: without D, I would have all the presence, self-confidence, and high-energy delivery of Steven Wright.

My Lawd, It's A Bonus Dose of Brevity!

I wish that everything they once told us would have to change, for America to have a Black President, had actually changed.

Day Thirteen

A picture of my favorite band or artist:

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Understand that I'm the guy who has had no fewer than three and no more than five "best friends" for the last fifteen years.  Asking me to choose my favorite band or artist, in my head, is asking me to shortchange at least ten others.  So I just went through my 80-gig music collection - in my head, because it's been lost to me for two years - pulled out the artists from whom I have the most albums, and ran a little imaginary contest.  The winner was the band or artist who had, on these albums, the fewest songs I felt like skipping when I listened.

Behold, the winner - because when I listen to Nick Cave albums, I never skip a track.  How could I? They're all so unique - a smorgasbord of tasty genre-defying goodness.

I found him, courtesy of Ian, about a year before I got sober.  When I sat in my room in indescribable pain (I could describe it, but I'll spare your digestive tract), I put on Abbatoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus and just drifted.  He's not my favorite artist because his music gave me peace when little else did; his music gave me peace because it is sublime.

Favorite tracks: "Get Ready for Love," "Cannibal Hymn," "Messiah Ward," "Nature Boy," "Breathless;" "Into My Arms," "(Are You) The One That I've Been Waiting For," "There is a Kingdom;" "Foi Na Cruz," "Tupelo," "From Her to Eternity" - aw hell, why am I bothering, just go spend a bunch of money or time finding yourself some Nick Cave (if you haven't already) and fall in love.

Day Twelve

A picture of something I love:

Drunky, Kelly, Anna, Gabe and Casie.

I know, it's a little trite; hear me out.

Two years before this picture was taken, I took the riskiest possible path to self-esteem and paid for it with the life I lived two years after this picture was taken: the college dropout, living on his best friend's couch smoking weed all day.  All my unique gifts, the whole of my potential, reduced to a walking stereotype.

In the moment this picture was taken, I thought I was living the dream: three thousand miles away from home, at my first-choice school, I was friends with everyone I knew - and I knew a multitude.  I had, in my small pond, no small degree of fame, and I attributed that to alcohol.

In the way of life's consequences, it wasn't that simple: I was right and I was wrong.  I wasn't living the dream because I was drinking; I was managing the dream despite the booze, in a tightrope walk that didn't last long enough for me to graduate.  And I do hate that.  But I love the friends I made, these four pictured not least among the multitude.  Not long after I post the sixtieth picture, I'll fly off to Philly to watch Kelly get married; Anna and Casie will stand as bridesmaids.  It might be the high point of 2011.  Gabe is married, living in Los Angeles, and a pretty damned successful actor.  They have been my friends for over a decade, and I cherish them.  As I said yesterday, I don't know what my life at Vassar would have been like without alcohol; if my drinking was part of what brought me to these people, I can't regret everything.  I cannot hate what brought me to those I love - even if I doubt that alcohol bears sole responsibility for bringing me these friends.

If I'm dubious about that, I'm certain of this: the life I lead today is entirely due to that sweaty, haggard face.  Without addiction, I would not have found recovery.  Without recovery and the principles to which I've been introduced as a result, my life would be a pale imitation of what it is no matter how many regrets it might mean escaping.  I love my life today; even if I had graduated college, and was even today running the world the way I knew I could at twenty, I wouldn't be able to say that.  I find it far more important to love my life, to love myself, than to love all the things I could have achieved had I taken another path.

So when the Sandblast List starts its ticker-tape crawl across the backdrop of my daily experiences, I do my best to focus on the joy.  When I start to feel anything approaching hatred for what an eighteen year-old boy unknowingly did to his future, I remind myself of all the scenes in my past I would have missed if not for that heinous mistake.  I forgive that boy, and I love him; without him, there's no me.

Day Eleven

A picture of something I hate:

Vassar, sometime sophomore year.

Look at me.  Look at me!

I don't hate myself.  I don't hate addiction (any more than I hate any of my other diseases). But there are things in my memory, friends, to which I would take a sandblaster if I could.

About two years before this moment, I was at another party.  Such beautiful girls, such perfect guys - these were the elite of the elite of the Los Angeles-area private-school set.  I did not belong.  Which is why my brother found me hiding in the laundry room of his girlfriend's Malibu family beach house.  My anxiety in this rarefied environment was a thing breathing down my neck, silencing every word I thought to speak, casting down my eyes and locking my hands in my pockets - I had to escape it.  Ian lifted the Heineken from the case, handed it to me, and said "You need to lighten up."  This will help.

By the time this picture was taken, I was among the elite of the elite - of an Eastern liberal-arts college.  My friends were the beautiful girls, the perfect guys - and everybody else, because I accepted and celebrated everyone as they were.  It was a promise I made to my awkward younger self and was pleased to keep.

Look at the price I paid to be King Shit.  I don't know if I ever could have shed that anxiety without chemical assistance; I believe I could have.  I know I could have if I'd known then even a tenth of what I know now about the nature of self-esteem.  But I chose the least certain route - I made the most unhealthy decision possible - and this is the sweaty, haggard face of the addiction that resulted.

What I hate is how swiftly the negative consequences of addiction tainted everything I had; I hate the sick ironies of my past.  I would have found my way to happiness at Vassar without the drugs; with them, I found some happiness, but I also dropped out of college.

That's just the top memory on the Sandblast List; all the times I said something I came to regret, or hurt someone with my careless words and actions, are on the list as well.  The time my sister and I got into a knock-down drag-out that ended with her scornful "Whatever David, just go have another drink" - that's up there.

Tomorrow, I complicate this thesis.

Day Ten

A picture of the person I do the most messed-up things with:

I can still hear it, in quiet moments of indecision: his cajoling "Come onnn, Daaave," in a drawl particularly odd considering his Boston-area upbringing.  I knew - knew - that whatever I was being asked to do would violate my sense of social decorum; I also knew that I would have a hell of a good time doing it.

I was and am a person chiefly governed, socially, by my inhibitions - as I've shared, I regret this.  But something impish in Matt reached out to the hellion in me; he urged me to push past those barriers in search of life's bizarre comedies.

I haven't done anything "messed up" (in the way I interpreted this prompt to mean) since the night before Matt's funeral: a handful of other mourners and I ran screaming, bare-ass nekkid, into the Atlantic off Cape Cod on a December midnight.  I've done things since that were messed up in similar ways, but the desperate abandon of a late-stage alcoholic doesn't feel the same as a young man's conscious lowering of his inhibitions.  The latter can be freeing, joyous; the former is constricting and shaming.

It was inevitable that with sixty days of photographic self-examination to complete, I was going to come across at least one repeat; more about Matt on Day Thirty.

Day Nine

A picture of the person who has gotten me through the most:

My friends in rehab thought this was my sister.  It made Mom's day.

In many ways,  I feel sorry for my mother.  She and Dad didn't just get the usual child-rearing experiences; they made a baby with problems.  The chief reason I feel bad is that I never thought my parents could fix everything.  Every child needs that phase, of thinking his or her parents are super-heroes - every parent needs to be seen that way by their children.  They eventually got that from my sister; still, I missed out on the experience.  When a boy in excruciating pain begs Mommy to make it go away, and she can't, it leaves an indelible mark on the boy, Mommy, and the attachment between the two.

Still, over the course of my life, it's Mom I've gone to when there was something I just couldn't figure out on my own.  Mom was most often the one who, on those occasions of excruciating pain, sat in the bedroom or the hospital room with me while I writhed and screamed in vain.

We're beginning to understand each other better. I'm coming to fathom, as I contemplate eventual fatherhood (one of the life goals I anticipate most), what those experiences must have been like for her; she's starting to realize the extent to which Sickle Cell has determined the course of my psychosocial development.  Even as I acknowledge that only at this point in our relationship have we begun to accept one another, faults and all, I also know: whenever life threw something at me that I felt myself completely incapable of handling, it was my mother who taught me I was wrong.

I took this picture in the D.C. offices of Skadden, Arps on January 20, 2009 - the view through the window is of the Inaugural Procession as it nears the White House.  Although this trip occasioned one of the most difficult discussions Mom and I have ever had, it was also one of the best trips we've taken. I watched her tears fall, as a day she never thought she'd live to hear of unfolded before her eyes; I repaid her a little bit for all of the hard words and resentments between us - and for the fact that her son never thought Mommy could make everything better, but demanded that she keep trying.

Day Eight

A picture that makes me laugh.  Another toughie, as I decided to go with something more personal than the punny-funny I post on Reader so often.

You jackass of a building.

It was the first full day of last month's two-week Qatar trip.  My colleagues and I were as thrilled with our accommodations as the pauper on his first day in the prince's castle.  I'd forgotten a toothbrush; my other colleagues wanted to sample the local flavor, maybe pick up some snacks for the room and souvenirs for folks back home.  We'd heard from the driver who picked us up at the airport that the buildings nearest our resort (hereinafter referred to as The Zig-Zag Buildings for their delightful design) were a mall, so we decided to take a stroll off of the grounds.  First, we asked if we could reach the Zig-Zag Buildings on foot (Doha don't have a lot of sidewalks, much less crosswalks).  "Yes," we were told.  We asked if the Zig-Zag Buildings were, in fact a mall - "Yes" again.  Five seconds after exiting the resort, the heat began to work on us.  Qatar may be on a peninsula, but it's still a desert country - the water just means it's hot and humid.

We reached the first of the buildings, and it seemed a bit barren.  We went through what appeared to be a rear entrance, and walked until we found ourselves in a lobby that strongly reminded me of the entrance to my father's law firm.  Beginning to have doubts, we asked the security guard at the desk if we could get to the mall by going through the front door into the courtyard between buildings.  "Yes, right through that door," he said.

We emerged into the courtyard to find it, and the low-slung building connecting the Zig-Zags, very definitely still under construction.  Lots of scaffolding, lots of construction dust, hard-hat-bedecked workers staring at us like we'd just teleported in from the U.S.S. Don't-Belong-Here, and very definitely no mall.  Adam began a diatribe against the peculiar social custom of Qatari culture that often precludes the outright denial of a request.  Qatari never say "no," when asked a direct question by those who appear higher-status, even if "no" is the right answer.  They might accept an invitation they have no intention of fulfilling, and fail to show at the appointed time.  They might give you all sorts of directions, when "I don't know" is the truth.  Steph and I approached the situation with a great deal of humor, which exploded into gales of laughter when I saw this on the dusty windows of Zig-Zag Building Two.

It wasn't enough that we were deliberately misled to believe there was a mall here by multiple people; it wasn't enough that we took a ten-minute noontime stroll in the damn desert to experience this defeat; it wasn't enough that we were choking down construction dust-infused oxygen. No, Zig-Zag Buildings had to make sure we knew they were laughing at us for our efforts.  If the building had somehow read "Gotcha," it wouldn't be more appropriate.

(I also just appreciated the irony of completing the assignment with a photograph of a naturally-occurring "LOL.")

My Semi-Annual Dose of Brevity, as Regards Egypt, Vietnam and the Power of Media

In 1968, televised coverage of a crisis halfway around the world served to involve the American Public at a deeper emotional level.  The conflict became less abstract, more humanized.


Today, televised coverage of a crisis halfway around the world serves as grist for the FAIL Blog mill.  The conflict became a spectacle, less humanized.

Day Seven

A picture of my most treasured item.

I received it on my thirty-first and final day of inpatient addiction treatment - my thirty-second day of sobriety - in early June 2006.  I earned it, by taking the first real look at myself in years.  I earned it, by becoming willing to evaluate another perspective on who I was, on the last eight years of my personal history - a perspective diametrically opposed to the one into which I'd invested each of those years.  I earned it by taking the greatest risk, on nothing more than the advice - and the smiling warmth - of total strangers.

I earned it by staying in rehab, by doing what they told me, and by engaging with the people around me.  I woke my ass up, in every way.  I took a look at my life and the fears that had kept me fleeing down the path of ignominious death, and I made a conscious decision - perhaps my first in years - to change.

For that, they gave me this copper keychain.  (I wasn't the first to convert it to a pendant on a necklace, but I'm one of the only possessors of this coin who still wears it so.)

There was a ceremony, of sorts: at the end of our last group counseling session, everyone I'd been in treatment with, one of the counselors, and my family gathered in a large circle.  Each in turn took a firm grip on the coin; rubbing warmth into it, they gave a brief testimonial to me.  Of all that was said that day, I remember this single sentence, spoken by my sister: "Our whole lives, you've always had to be the strong one, and you've always been strong; now it's time to let us be strong for you."

The coin is a touchstone; when I hold it, I remember the positive emotional and spiritual energy in the room that day and I tap into it.  It's a bottomless reserve I can access in need, when I'm feeling low or tempted to renege on the promises I made to myself that day.  My slightly superstitious side might even go so far as to claim that the energy is in the coin itself, transferred directly from the hearts and minds of those who held the coin through their hands and into the metal.  Either way, it amounts to the same thing.

The name of my treatment facility, where I later worked, is written above the representation of an oak tree ("Encinas" is "oaks" in Spanish) that actually stands on the grounds, and has since the facility was an asylum 106-107 years ago.  The Latin across the bottom translates (very roughly) as "Not just to live, but to live well."  The first stanza of the Serenity Prayer, that famous spiritual anchor for recovering addicts everywhere, is on the back.

I had to think about this assignment for a second.  I don't cherish items very often for their inherent value - mostly, it's either for the entertainment they provide (360, TV), basic utility (laptop, car), or the memories they evoke (photos and souvenirs). My coin from rehab stands apart from the last category; it has real intrinsic worth to me.  It's irreplaceable - the hospital unit that treated me, that had these coins pressed, no longer exists as it did.  Even though I don't wear it every day as I did in the early months of sobriety, I still wear it often, and proudly. Even though I haven't yet relapsed, I know there's the possibility that I will - and that now-small possibility would increase dramatically if I couldn't remember vividly what my treatment process felt like.

This coin is a touchstone to more than the day of my discharge. It connects me to every grueling, suffering day of treatment beforehand: the physical symptoms too gross to describe, the wracking sobs of long-suppressed tears, the desperate catch-22 of finally believing drugs were my problem and not being able to imagine a life without them.

It connects me to the long road I took to make it into treatment, as well; more on that road, I'm certain, another time.

Day Six

(For those of you following on G Reader, sorry I keep hitting the "Publish" button when I mean to hit the "Save" button - I have no excuses.)

I have to say, this is already working.  I've actually been more motivated than I have in over a year to actually sit down and write some of the crap going on in my head.

A picture of a person I would love to trade places with for a day. I thought about the different people with whom I might like to trade places, and the manifold possible reasons for doing so.  The fact that we're talking about a 24-hour period really obviated the venal personal-gain motives.  I would not enjoy trading places with some Zuckerberg-rich and responsibility-free single dude for a day, only to have to return to my life of scraping by with fiery ambition and little patience for the hustle.

That very quickly brought me down to two people: my sister and my cousin.  I have always wanted to know how my baby sister's brain works, what her inner life is like.  What thoughts does she think to herself, how does she really feel behind the stoic expression learned at our father's knee (okay, and perhaps mine as well)? But our relationship has really improved over the years (more on this another day, I'm sure) - someday, I'll be free to ask her with the reasonable hope of getting an honest answer.

That leaves my cousin.

Good-lookin' sunuvagun, ain't he?

G's inner life might interest me, but he's pretty honest about what he's thinking and feeling at any given moment; I can always ask him, and he'd always tell me.  Our personalities are sufficiently different - and our personal histories sufficiently similar - that I don't necessarily envy him anything he's got on paper.  What I envy, what I want to learn, is his apparently-effortless social skill, the magnetism I've watched draw every eye in a crowded room.  The way he projects a confidence so solid you can feel it; I want to know how G does what he does.

It's not something he can teach; he could instruct me for a year in eye contact, body language, small talk, and flirtation, and it wouldn't help much. Fact is, I don't lack in any of those departments (well, maybe body language, a little) - not when I'm full of confidence and/or comfortable with my surroundings and the people in them.  If  we were both at a party full of my friends, you wouldn't notice a major difference between our social behaviors.  But plop us down in a room full of strangers: Geoff shines in the middle and I prop up the far wall.  What I want to learn is how he views those situations, what thoughts run through his head: which thoughts become actions, and which are discarded (and how does he successfully discard them)?  What does his confidence feel like?  How does it inform and motivate his actions?

I'm rock-bottom, deep-in-the-gut certain - more certain than I am of my own name - that if I knew that secret, my entire life would change.  I'd see more doors open before me, and be more inclined to explore the paths beyond them.  Maybe nothing about my personality would change; maybe I wouldn't be any different a man than I am as I type this.  But I would be more able to share myself with the world, and ask people in that world to share themselves with me.

And learning that secret wouldn't take twenty-four hours in my cousin's head - it wouldn't even take a whole night out.  If we could have done this last night, I'd have known between the time he picked me up at 9:40 and five minutes after we crossed the threshold of the karaoke joint at 10:10.  Maybe I'd have stuck around while he sang. We have similar vocal talent, but our skills branch off into different areas (which is why hearing a Dash-G duet is a treat I hope you all get someday); I would love to do more of what he does.

There's something else I might like to learn, something he can't fully articulate - my cousin sees some light in me, some core thing I can't see in myself after years of frank self-examination.  Is he just assuming some part of what lies within him and his brothers - and his father, and my father, and one of our uncles - lies within me as well, because we share blood?  Or is there something truly there, the seed of true gregariousness and charm that is permanent rather than conditional upon my surroundings?  If I could see that as he does, find that seed and nurture it, I'd be a long way toward rectifying one of the last things about Dash that truly disappoints me - often, saddens me.

(If something about this seems a contradiction from what I posted for Day Five, understand two things: one, put an audience in front of me and ask me to perform and all social awkwardness falls from me - until I'm offstage; two, I was drunk and/or high for most of my offstage social interactions at Vassar.  Chemical courage worked for me, for years.)

I think the trade, by the way, would be beneficial for him too; that's often the way with close friends (for we are that, in addition to family).  There may be many facets of my world-view and emotional life that he could adopt to increase his happiness and effectiveness in the world.  As things stand, we're left to the more difficult path of learning from each other: one articulates and demonstrates, the other incorporates and emulates.

I Love L.A.

This one's for you, Whitbeck: Behold, the County of Los Angeles. The white areas are the City of Los Angeles; the colored areas are other incorporated cities; the gray areas are unincorporated.

Look at the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area, bound by the 90, the 10, the 110 and the 42.  This is where I grew up. It's part of the area referred to as South Central L.A., but you can see some of it isn't in the city at all - that's where we lived, in Baldwin Hills near the boundary with Crenshaw.  (More on this when I get back to 60 in 60.)  I lived fairly close to the downtown area ("Central City" on the map), but still not technically within the City of Los Angeles.  Nearly surrounded by it, but not in it.

Now look up, almost straight north, to the intersection of the 101, the 134, and the 170.  This is the East San Fernando Valley.  Most of "The Valley" (there are actually three within the county, and people from San Gabriel or Antelope get kind of annoyed that San Fernando gets the definite article) is incorporated into the City Proper, including Studio City, my neighborhood.  I live farther away from downtown than I used to, but now within the City of Los Angeles.

This is not what people from Los Angeles, nor people from anywhere else in the world with any knowledge at all of L.A., mean when they talk about being in or from "the city."  There's no delineated difference, municipally, between city and suburb; so the distinction becomes arbitrary.  People draw an imaginary circle of some radius, with Downtown Los Angeles as the center; they call the inside the City of Los Angeles, and the outside Suburbs or Not-L.A.  For most Angelenos, that radius is about the distance from Downtown to the 10/405 interchange.  Most Angelenos also tend to ignore the eastern hemisphere of that circle.

In any case, we identify by neighborhoods - which can often sound like we're not from what we consider the City of Los Angeles, even if we are.  Identifying by neighborhood is geographically convenient.

I think for most people not from the County of Los Angeles, and who haven't spent much time - if any - here at all, that radius is even shorter.  They think of Los Angeles as a relatively small city with a ginormous case of suburban sprawl on its outer marches.  It's not.  It's all of a piece, city and suburb; not quite all of a piece, city and county.  People from Sylmar are from the County and City of Los Angeles, but not from whatever people mean when they say "the L.A. Metropolitan Area."

My G Reader buddy who says he's never met anyone from the city proper may very well be wrong.  On one level he is, I live in the city proper; the question is, do I live in the "L.A. Metropolitan Area?" I think so - others don't.

Day Five

A picture of my favorite memory:

Behold a moment of glory.  The Vassar College Accidentals - the Axies, for short.  On the field at Camden Yards, singing the National Anthem for Cal and the Orioles.  The picture is too tiny to tell, but we're all wearing ballcaps - none of which represent the Orioles or whoever was their opponent that day.  Such was our humor, my a cappella group.  And such was our skill, to be standing there at all.  We were the best group on campus, for most of my time at Vassar.

Though I show you this moment of glory and brag about it, it's not actually my favorite memory.  It's up there, for certain - as are many memories of the Axies.  I could regale you with more tales than the washed-up former high-school quarterback sitting on his La-Z-Boy with a can of Milwaukee's Best propped on the belly it caused...but I think you understand from my analogy just what I think of such regaling.

My favorite memory is from a few weeks before this picture was taken.  It was sophomore year, before the first week of classes, and time for an event everyone anticipated: the A Cappella Preview Concert.  Each group on campus got up, introduced themselves, performed a couple of numbers, and posted a sign-up sheet for auditions.  It was meant for the freshmen, but open to the campus - and the campus came.

This particular year - 2000 - it was the Axies' job to host the concert.  After a brief intro, we got to the serious business.  The Axies live by a simple motto: "Collegiate a cappella is lame." Knowing this kept us from taking ourselves too seriously, but not the music.  The music we approached with consummate professionalism - most former Axies from my era are, in fact, professional performers or composers of one stripe or another.  So when we sang, people listened.

I had a solo, freshman year - well, I had a couple, but the favorite among my friends was my rendition of "You Are the Sunshine of My Life."  I did that song so many times in my first two years that I burned out on it - I retired it before the end of sophomore year, and I can hardly bear to hear Stevie sing it even today.  But it was one we knew inside and out, and we had little time to rehearse after a summer apart from each other, so it was first up on the set list.

That's the backstory, here's the moment.

We stood at the front of a packed room: easily five hundred Vassar kids crammed Birkenstock-to-Abercrombie across the floor and up against the wall, all breathing the same tired oxygen, all focused on us. A familiar feeling of rightness hit me - after too many months away from the stage, I was home.  I smiled at each of my friends in attendance who never missed a concert; their support and their enjoyment fed me.  I caught the eye of a freshman girl I knew from high school - she'd never seemed to think much of me, and I knew her perspective was about to change. The boys behind me hit the intro chords with pitch-perfect synchronicity and my heart rate picked up.  I cocked my famous eyebrow at her, and I smirked.  I stuck my right foot forward, took a deep breath, and leaned into the first notes of the solo as I opened my mouth and I sang.

After five notes, nobody could hear me - because every upperclassman in the audience launched into deafening applause and screams before I finished the first phrase.  It was a thing I'd never experienced before, but the joy of it filled me like the Holy Spirit, like the perfect high.  I had these hundreds of people, right there in the moment with me, caught in a revelation.

Look back at that picture.  Imagine what it must be like, to sing the Star-Spangled Banner at a crowded stadium.  I know that feeling, and its power is tangible; this feeling is better.  This feeling is more intimate.  The audience ends three feet from where I stand; there are friends out there, and friends I'll have the chance to make later.  Is there a headier feeling, than to meet a stranger who recognizes you because of your talent?  I have seduced women, with this performance. Young men will put their name on the list and audition for us because they heard me and saw the crowd's reaction.  (Three joined, that year, one of whom is a good and lasting friend who once credited me with teaching him how to sing. A higher compliment from one of his talent and resume, I've never received.)

So many moments like this, from college - and yet, none were quite like this. So once more, I've cheated: instead of a picture of my favorite moment, you get a picture of a favorite moment, and the story of a closely related moment I cherish more.

Day Four

A Picture of my night:

I started to go outside and take a picture of the streetlight across from the next-door neighbor's, with a moody perspective.  I'd have captioned it "Hello lamp-post, whatcha knowin'?" because I sing that to it sometimes when I'm outside late at night.  I'd have told you all about those restless hours, when I have to get outside into the night air (which just smells better than the day air) and breathe and not be closeted in by my hovel.

But, my friends, that would not have been an honest representation of my night.  This is my night: darkness that threatens self-examination punctuated by the lights of my distractions.

Blue Bloods is on TV - I don't watch that show, but I'm bemused that Tom Selleck and his mustache still have it after all these years.  (The dresser the TV sits on has a story; it's a sad one.  I'll tell it sometime.)

My cellphone has nine texts. Two are from a colleague who took the time to wish me a Happy Groundhog's Day the other day. The other seven represent a conversation between me, my cousin Geoff (do not call him "Gee-off") and my best friend Dustin.  We keep trying to make plans to visit Ian up north; scheduling is too tough, so we set smaller goals like tomorrow's planned excursion to karaoke at the Gas Lite in Santa Monica.  The only person who calls my cellphone with any regularity is my AA sponsee.  Ian calls once or twice a year, when he needs my perspective on something.  I usually call him when I need to feel close to my brother, or when I start to get worried that he's performing his one-man torpedo act on his life and not telling me about it.

My computer is my primary device for connecting with the outside world - my online classes, Google Reader, and Facebook pretty much comprise the extent of my daily interactions with people.  Sometimes I lament this; mostly, I accept that I'm much more comfortable and confident when I have the time to edit my thoughts.

I'm currently re-reading The Hunt for Red October on my Kindle.  I love the Kindle - it's saved me serious packing room on long trips, and e-books are cheaper than paperbacks - but I wish it had a backlight.  Instead, I make do with my awesome Mighty Bright book light.

The little light there is from my external hard drive, where I back everything up because of the number of computers I've crashed, the papers I wrote and was actually proud of, the number of pictures I'll never see again, the videos I miss, and the entire 80GB iTunes collection I lost when my last iPod crashed because I didn't have enough space on my then-laptop's hard drive.  So yeah, this laptop's got a 250-gig hard drive, and that little light is a terabyte of extra room and comforting insurance.

Also pictured: the royal mess my room becomes when I'm working fairly often, or feeling depressed; the water bottles I keep nearby, because Sickle Cell patients thrive on staying hydrated; the ever-present McDonald's Large Coke, the TV remote, two of my six comfy pillows, and a light switch I never use.

So this is a picture of my night.  If I often think it a little pathetic, I comfort myself with the knowledge that it's also completely within my power to change; I've chosen to accept this aspect of my life for now and dedicate myself to improvement in other areas.  This doesn't cultivate comfort so much as patience, but in an impatient soul the two are nearly synonymous.

History (not quite) Repeating

A quick break while I re-politicize.  A friend linked to this article on G Reader.  I'll admit, I've been guilty of rose-tinting my view of Reagan on the basis of certain accomplishments of his. Part of this is because I was eight when he left office; it's nearly all hindsight evaluation, for me.  What I knew about our President while he was in office was told to me by my teachers, my parents, and talking-head snippets from the TV*. Part of my rose-tinting is because I desperately want to find someone on the other side of the spectrum to relate to in a human way, someone whose policies I consider valid if debatable on other grounds.  Someone who doesn't strike me as evil (by which I mean venal, selfish and grasping, not soulless).  So I take this human president, forgive him his trespasses, and wish today's Republicans could be more like him.

It's exactly like wishing today's kids would listen to better music, conveniently forgetting NKOTB, Right Said Fred, Color Me Badd, and Vanilla Ice.  Doesn't mean today's music doesn't largely suck, or that there wasn't also Jodeci, Boyz II Men, Public Enemy and NWA "in my day" (as one snot-nosed little Bieber-haired punk put it - Christ, I'm thirty, not sixty).  It just means that my blanket judgment has some holes.

So yes, Tea Party, you can have Reagan back, if that's really a huge thing for you.  Let's examine this article's whopping oversight, its careful omission which is either profoundly myopic or deliberately misleading.  We'll start from this Thomas Paine quotation and move on.

"Government is a necessary evil. Let us have as little of it as possible."

(So far as I can tell, this is not actually a quotation, but a summary of part of the first essay of Common Sense, but let's treat it as gospel for the sake of argument.)  I agree - but let us then agree what constitutes "as little as possible."  We live in a society with a distribution of wealth so painfully disproportionate that "distribution" might be a misnomer.  Power is allocated along similar if not identical lines.  This disproportion was codified in post-Colonial America - women and slaves couldn't have money - and it still wasn't as bad as it is today. Today's second-class citizens ostensibly have full citizenship; however, their rights and their earning potential are being trodden upon by the nongovernmental oligarchs' refusal to take a damn pay cut instead of laying off a few thousand workers and closing down a plant (or, you know, Detroit).

For the majority of American citizens to have full access to their Constitutional rights and the natural rights upon which the founding documents were predicated - including the minimal quality of life required for "the pursuit of happiness" - the government must adapt to changing realities that reflect challenges to the enfranchisment and prosperity of its people. This article would have me look instead upon the 1780s, the 1980s, and the early 21st century as some sort of constant - across which only the political aims of those who self-identify as liberal have changed.

What if Thomas Paine's America was transported through time and existed in the world today right alongside the U.S.A. as we know it?  This other country has no modern industry, no infrastructure, a population of about ten per square mile to our 73.5 - and we've got a hell of a lot more square mileage - and oh, yeah, slavery.  What author, PAC, pundit or politician could look at these two nations and say convincingly that the political exigencies of each were the same?  Who thinks these two countries require the same things of a just and efficient government?

I'm a liberal, and I agree - we should have as little government as necessary.  I'm a liberal, and I believe that is entirely about individual and personal freedoms.  I'm a liberal, and all of American History tells me that the government will have to take responsibility for extending and protecting those freedoms.

I'm a liberal, and I won't remain silent while my political raison d'etre is co-opted by so-called libertarians using imagery they don't understand to protest policies they don't understand.  It was amusing and only mildly offensive, until I had to swallow the phrase "Senator Rand Paul."

So, conservatives, I brought your Ronald Reagan back.  Any chance you have my Common Sense lying around?  If you're not going to read it, I could use it back.



 *So here's what I thought then, synthesizing a perspective from what I'd heard: President Reagan is helping us to win the Cold War (war is bad); President Reagan is a Republican from California (I'm from California); Mom and Dad voted for the other guy (Mom and Dad are Democrats). President Reagan might have had some part in a really convoluted but illegal thing involving arms (guns, not body parts), hostages, and something called a Contra (Contra is a video game where you shoot things. I used the Konami Code and beat the game - probably that's not what they're talking about).  This is not the sort of perception from which you can form a definitive value judgment; by contrast, it was clear to me from the perceptions of the elders in my world that Nixon, Goldwater, and the Republican Party in general were "bad".

Day Three

A picture of the cast from my favorite show:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was, in many ways, a pioneer before its time.  In 1997,  serialized drama and paranormal primetime were so rarely seen they were each off the radar of most viewers (I'm probably one of a very few people my age who even know what Dark Shadows is).  I fell in love with the writing first - among my other favorites, only Aaron Sorkin has anything approaching Joss Whedon's particular skill with fast-paced dialogue. I love Sorkin, dearly, but he didn't alter my vernacular. After I got into Buffy, I discovered that I could converse entirely in pop culture references (which is of some value humor-wise, Juno notwithstanding), and create an adjective by adding -y to the end of any noun.  (The less likely the noun, the better.)

Buffy was a study in iconoclasty. I'm not just talking about the fact that one of the most beloved characters attempts to rape the titular lead, though that is an exemplar of what I mean.  The main characters referred to themselves as Scoobies, but each individual found themselves uncomfortable in his or her role - simultaneously embracing and challenging the traditions of the ensemble cast.

The Mentor, haunted by his past, struggling with a charge who grows beyond his tutelage without ever fully embracing it.

The Witty Sidekick who knows and mourns that he's just a witty sidekick, unable to grow beyond his role.

The Brainy Sidekick who does grow beyond her role - she discovers her personal power, and it nearly eats her alive.  She alone of the original gang finds pure love (with another woman, in what is essentially treated - brilliantly - as an aside), and the loss of that love sends her on a path of destruction very few iconic heroes are ever given the license to take.  Yes, she is redeemed, but in a very real way that never truly closes the door on her inner darkness.

The Love Interest, who began as a one-dimensional angst-machine, and grew into a truly conflicted human (so to speak) character.  His moment of greatest happiness seals his fate; in order to seek redemption for the crime of achieving that happiness, he must leave his love (and venture on to the best spinoff ever).

And the Hero.  The Hero, whose darkness is tied inextricably to her gift.  The Hero, who is often profoundly unlikeable.  Smart of mouth, dismissive of friends, dangerously self-destructive, unlucky in love, needlessly secretive, prone to unwise snap decisions and often unable to cope with the consequences thereof.  She neglects her family - as all Heroes must, but Whedon (unlike most comic book writers and nearly all TV drama writers) knows this is not a selfless sacrifice.  This is the very essence of selfishness.  Buffy knows how to stake vampires - she does not know how to be a daughter or (later) a sister.  So she stakes the vampires.

Yes, by the end of her journey, the Hero becomes a Leader and the head of her own family - but it is the very end of her journey, the last twelve or so episodes of the seventh and last season.  If George Lucas read The Power of Myth and embodied its principles in Star Wars, Joss Whedon read it and challenged each principle directly in Buffy.  Some of those principles stood up in the end; some didn't.  But it was engrossing to watch, wondering which would stand and which would fall.

Buffy is to be forgiven for its role as the genesis of an era in which vampires aren't for slaying anymore (razzmfrazzm sparkling razzmfrazzm daylight razzmfrazzm).

Plus, like I said, best spinoff ever.

60 Photos in 60 Days - Day Two

Day Two: a picture of me and the person I have been close with for the longest.

This is Ian, my brother (mentioned in one of yesterday's 15 facts).  Though we've called each other "brother" for about a decade, it really became true when I realized that the ties that bind us have truly superseded our friendship.  That is to say: if Ian and I sopped liking each other (which has happened, but let's say if it happened permanently), we'd still love each other.  Each of us would be - would need to be - some part of the other's life.  We met in first grade, nearly 25 years ago.  When Ian moved to Monterey during the summer between fourth and fifth grade, I felt bereft - though this was probably less because he was my best friend, and more because I often felt he was my only friend.  We kept in touch, and visited each other often.

To describe the entirety of our friendship, or even a slice of his significance to me, would be a losing proposition - I'd never manage to say more than I left out.  But for most of my waking life, Ian has been my friend, my enemy, my foil, my brother, my standard, my negative example, my cheerleader, my teacher, the devil on my shoulder, my debate partner, and a thousand more things I don't have words for. I trust him more than anyone else I know, immediate family included.  I have grown close to others since we met - two others in particular, who have also become friends with Ian, and whom I'm sure I'll feature at some point in time on this little quest. But none have been around so long as Ian.  We can finish each other's sentences, converse in shared looks or entirely in private jokes concerning the word "it" that were generated at a 1988 sleepover.

My brother and I are two sides of the same coin - to know one of us is to know a great deal about the inner workings of the other.  But this picture, taken at my tenth birthday party, is one of my favorites because it so eloquently expresses the outer differences - of race, yes, but also of demeanor.  My reserve, his utter lack of reserve.  My thousand-yard stare, his absolute presence in the moment.  My wish to shy away from attention - his ardent courtship of attention.

This picture is also a reminder of one of my favorite moments from early childhood - the massive battle royale that occurred with those plastic swords in some courtyard at Knott's Berry Farm, not long after this picture was taken.

60 Photos in 60 Days - Day One

Mostly, I ignore things like this - I totally missed out on Reverb10, for example - but I figured I'd rise to the challenge inherent in a friend's observation: "...we'll never be memoirists of the Sedaris caliber if we don't get to journaling and blogging."

Fair enough, friend.  And since a picture's worth a thousand, this seems like a fun way to get it started.  By the end of sixty days, hopefully I'll have gotten into the habit of writing something more often.

A Picture of Myself with Fifteen Facts.  I assume that I'm supposed to deliver the fifteen facts appended to the picture, rather than try to hunt up a photograph that illustrates fifteen things of interest about me.  I further assume that these facts should be in the category of Stuff Not Commonly Known About Me/Stuff That's Slightly Revelatory.  So:

This is the most recent picture taken of me that I can bear to look at.  It was taken during my recent trip to Qatar, about which I've already written sufficiently to leave it off of the 15 Facts portion of our agenda.

1. I often loathe my name.  David Alan Sherrell.  David Sherrell.  Dave Sherrell (Mom hates this one; "I didn't name my son Dave," she says).  No iteration I've found satisfies me.    I even tried D. Alan Sherrell, but since it's the "Sherrell" part that bugs me the most, that was sort of a wash.  My name doesn't flow well, doesn't mean much of anything.  I'm named after a relative I've met twice and a Biblical character with whom I've never felt much of an affinity, except that he too fell from wisdom into folly before he was very old.  Our last name is derived, as many Black American family names are, from the owners of my father's ancestors.  (It wasn't that many generations ago - we're long-lived and late-birthed on both sides of my family.)  Often I've considered being bothered by that; mostly, I just wish the owners had had a better name.  Like Stryker.  I could roll with Stryker.
2. Closely related: I don't hold nicknames very well.  I tried to put DS out there for a while, but it didn't take.  Dash, the closest thing to a nickname I've had for any length of time, is a name only known by my friends online. (Dash Stryker.  You love it.)
3. I struggle with depression.  Sometimes, I struggle harder than I let on.  Mostly, this means I spend a lot of time in my room when I'm not working or at a 12-step meeting.  Going to school online does not help matters any; it lets me feel like I've accomplished something most days.  Even though it's true, I'm still not the healthiest boy.
4. My body and I don't get along much; after years of battling it out with each other, I'd say we've reached a mutual nonaggression pact, which my body violates infrequently.  I retaliate by consuming massive amounts of junk food.
5. Not a day goes by without me wondering if I should be doing more with my singing voice, and resolving (again) that I'm on the right path (for now).  (Bonus fact: I have several recordings of me singing, both a cappella - I dub over all the parts - and self-accompanied.  Nobody but me and my mother will ever hear these recordings, as I don't think they're good enough for public consumption.)
6. I've been single for the last two and a half years or so - not entirely by choice, but primarily because I haven't put the effort in.  I know the time is nearing when I'll have no excuse not to get out there more; then I'll really have to face this irrational fear of rejection I have and the terminal shyness that's been a part of my social makeup for more years than I can remember.  In order to get there, however, I've got a couple more hills to climb and at least one major regret to put firmly behind me.
7. I spent all of my adolescence and a good part of what was supposed to be my early adulthood (but wound up being my prolonged adolescence) entirely too worried about what other people thought of me.  After nearly twenty years of therapy (off and on, but mostly on) and over four years of sobriety (entirely on), I've gotten to the point where it doesn't matter as much.  Not coincidentally, I think, I no longer have anything approaching a working concept of how others perceive me - physically, socially, characterologically, etc.  This only occasionally troubles me.
8. I have done a horrible job keeping in touch with friends who have been dear to me. This is, in the case of my friends spread around the world, very sad.  In the case of my friends in Pasadena, it's just lame.
9. When I'm feeling particularly down, I still think going to a bar will help.  These days it's the karaoke mic, rather than the beer tap, that soothes.
10. I spent the first twenty-five years of my life swearing up and down that I wouldn't be like my father. My first complete sentence was "Daddy, I don't want to go to Yale."  (Mom coached.)  I succeeded - I'm not like him, not in any of those ways I was worried about.  Now, I just need to deal with all of the ways I wish I was like him but am not.  (Congratulations, David, you are totally emotionally available!  Too bad you've got crap for a work ethic.)
11. I don't get why people are bummed about turning 30 - I'm totally fine with it.  Unless my problem is that I'm still busy being bummed over turning 25...or already bummed about turning 40.  Either or both are possibilities.
12. I am a pretty unflappable person - it's hard to anger me, hard to offend me.  But if someone were to manage either of those things, they'd quickly discover that I have three temperatures: cool, heated, and holy shit someone hold him down and keep him held for a while.  Only my immediate family, and one I would consider a brother, have ever seen that third setting.  My awareness of that rage is what keeps me so invested in staying centered no matter what; I imagine it's only different for Bruce Banner in terms of the scale of the consequences of failure.
13. I actually do wish I was a little bit taller and had more skill at basketball.  If I was better at it, I would play more often, and would be in better physical shape as a result.  I am fully aware of the hole in my logic here.
14. I can't wait for this phase of my life to be over, for the next one to begin.  I'm close to making some terrifying and amazing changes, but to complete them will take two years minimum.  It's like being near the top of the roller coaster, right before the first plunge, but it keeps stretching out before you like the horizon.  Ugh.
15. I want to lose about 25 pounds - I need to eat better and exercise more.  I miss the collegiate metabolism that allowed for two daily trips to McDonald's without gaining a pound - of course, I was also living twelve-to-fourteen-hour days back then, most of which involved sports and/or dancing.  We're down to about eight unless I'm working, I don't play ball, and you'd have to pay real money to see me dance.  Living is wonderful; maturing is okay.  Aging sucks.

I could keep going, but there's only so revelatory I want to get, y'know?  So there's fifteen, plus the bonus, and all the little side-facts.  So, really, here's the forty-third fact (by my count): I'm terrible at following directions.