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.