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.

Clarke's Third Law, part 1

If I can just
Make it up there
And if I can walk
Through that City bright and fair
There'll probably
Be a thousand things I'd want to tell the Lord
On that day
On that day...

I'll just
Begin to cry
He'll wipe the tears from my eyes
I'll say "Thanks" - He'll ask, "Why?"
This will be my reply:
You know millions didn't make it,
But I was one of the ones who did.
--The Winans, "Millions"

So runs a gospel number from my childhood, one of my favorites. Although my conception of God is no longer bound entirely by what I learned in church, gospel music retains a certain power over me. I've heard this power referred to as "catching the holy spirit" - a description generated by my old religious framework. The feeling of it is unadulterated joy - a rush of pleasure, chills waxing throughout the body, goose bumps, even misty eyes. Although this sensation is pure, the closest thing to it I've experienced otherwise is an IV morphine high. The buzz from marijuana or alcohol (or a finely tuned combination of the two) are rather blunted alternatives. Intravenous heroin users have experienced the feeling as well, ratcheted up in intensity to a level I can only imagine.

I don't find it coincidental that Carl Jung defined alcoholism as, among other things, a "spiritual search." I have experienced this personally: I have filled the inner void alternately with drugs and with an operational God-concept. The hard truth is that before all of the consequences of addiction began to pile up in my life, they worked interchangeably well for most things. Each has seemed to be, at varying points in time, that missing piece of me I needed in place to function as a productive social being and to cope with negative emotions.

(This, as you might have noticed by now, is a more personal post.)

I've had the lyrics to that song in my head recently. They certainly seem to apply to my new life; I'm grateful for my broader conception of spirituality now, because I don't need to wait for "that day" - my death - to experience spiritual redemption. Millions of drug addicts don't recover; I was one of the ones who did. In that alone - in the four years, seven months, and 26 days of sobriety I've accumulated - I have a great sense of pride and gratitude; but there's more to the journey than abstinence, more even than learning to function as that productive social being without psychoactive numbing agents.

Let me back up and see if I can explain more thoroughly.

There's a thing called anticipatory socialization: it's the process by which we place ourselves in hypothetical environments and imagine how we'll interact with them, how we'll act within them. It begins when we're children as make-believe, and remains an integral part of identity formation thereafter. Kids play grown-up; preteens imagine how much cooler they'll be in high school; college students picture life in the Real World (and then avoid living it for as long as possible). I've always sucked at it.

When I was 14 years old, I had yet to consume a mind-altering drug for any purpose other than the relief of physical pain caused by Sickle Cell (well, there was that time in kindergarten I broke my hip, but I digress). I suffered from depression as well, and had a generally gloomy outlook on my life. Most important to my eventual point, I didn't think I'd live to see adulthood. I tried to picture myself at 18, and I just couldn't. I couldn't see myself surviving that long in a cycle of pain, hospital visits requiring long absence from school, and lengthy recovery times. I couldn't see how that David Sherrell would ever contribute anything meaningful to his school community, much less society at large.

When I was 18, I had a somewhat fulfilling life despite the Sickle Cell and depression. I had found a niche in my school community, the lengthy absences were fewer, and I had started to believe I had a life somewhat worth living. Around this time, I had my first drink, my first hit of weed. I hadn't heard until then the concept of social lubricant - and I took to it like a fish who'd just learned of water. Although spirituality can be nearly identical to a good high, there was (back then) that major difference: God had never made me feel less completely awkward in any social environment. So I kissed off God in favor of a Corona lime and didn't look back.

But I couldn't imagine myself at 25. I couldn't see myself graduating college, becoming self-sufficient, falling in love and building a family. I had no idea how these things would happen, or what my role in bringing them about would be.

Clarke's Third Law, part 2

When I did live to see 25, I wasn't particularly grateful for it. I hadn't graduated college; I wasn't self-sufficient; I'd fallen in love and had blown it. Addiction, depression, and Sickle Cell had me fully in their shared grip; each was worsening the others in a pas de trois that left me off the stage. I had made a halfhearted (and half-assed) attempt at suicide, and failed even at that. The only thing left in my daily life that generated any sense of self-worth was my skill with a karaoke microphone; this did not exactly leave me inclined toward sobriety. To say that at this point I couldn't picture myself at age 30 is not entirely accurate – I didn't want to live to see 30, and was terribly afraid that I would.

I despaired: my life was going to be an endless tailspin of misery, pain, and self-defeat. I was not cognizant enough of my own addiction to label my substance abuse as a problem. Quite the contrary: those brief escapes from the gray hopelessness were my only coping mechanism. Stolen moments of artificial peace; a silence obtained not through the cessation of sound but through the plugging of the ears. An overinflated bouncy castle in the sky, whose resident is given to clothing himself in thumbtacks. And it was all I would ever be; all I ever could be.

I'm writing now from the Grand Hyatt Doha. I sit at an office desk in a king-size suite; the balcony door is open to allow the faint desert breeze through. My view is of palm trees, gardens, and a white-sand beach on a blue-water bay. I am paid to be here, all my expenses covered by our client. I'm here to provide substance-abuse prevention: to tell my story and speak my truth to children, some of whom feel as I have felt. I'm here to give them the answers I didn't have in my youth, to questions I didn't know enough to ask. I have found a productive use for all of my past experiences; there is a vindication here, for each prior version of David Sherrell who suffered and despaired. This is redemption; with it comes an indescribable joy. (And a paycheck.)

This is my point: to have been where I've been, and to live the life I'm presently living, is as indistinguishable from heaven as any sufficiently advanced technology is from magic.

If I were to describe my life to 25 year-old David Sherrell, he would not believe me; moreover, he'd be hurt and would resent me for dangling such impossibility before him. It would seem to him the cruelest of taunts, the notion of this heaven on Earth. To an extent, that disbelief still exists within me. When the gratitude and the joy are upon me, I often look around my life and think, this cannot be right; this cannot be me. Then that small part of me cocks a disbelieving eyebrow, lets off a sardonic snort, and waits for the other shoe to drop.

Granted, there are areas of my life ripe for further improvement: I’m not fully self-sufficient, despite the literally incredible job, and I’m still pretty socially awkward at times. I could be doing more to find that special someone. My perspective is often lacking, and I deem that the gratitude and the joy aren’t upon me nearly often enough; I still have depression, although I’d say I’m living with it rather than suffering from it. And as long as I live there's the chance that I will at some point forfeit my redemption for a fresh hell of my own making; such is the nature of addiction, and only an addict would ever make that choice (or, really, even contemplate it). But for now, I'm still "one of the ones who did," and I don't have to wait for an afterlife to revel in this joy. So when that small part of me strikes the disbelieving pose, I remind him: the other shoe may indeed drop, but I’ve earned this, and while it’s mine I will give thanks and enjoy the ride.