Quickie...
To:ms_allthat@hotmail.com, loveisarose11@hotmail.com, dee_offner@hotmail.com, wahine10@hotmail.com,
mystree_1@hotmail.com, lorelis@hotmail.com, decafi@hotmail.com, someone_new1@hotmail.com, RTMW62@cs.com,
oklahomalady@excite.com, chantellspring@hotmail.com, jcbinks@msn.com, sierra34@angelfire.com, lighthouse75@hotmail.com,
ksotulsa@yahoo.com, darcysmail@yahoo.com, tlfie@groupz.net, poetinmotion@hotmail.com, chart13@excite.com,
clavonec@excite.com
Subject: Quickie...
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 11:30:46 CDT
Dear Ones,
The friendly trolls here at the Lawrence Public Library have just informed me I have 17 minutes to get this thing finished, so I've rolled up my sleeves and am pounding madly away at the keyboard, a man possessed. Thanks for all the latest responses. Can't tell you how much they mean to me, and will wend my way up the Hill this afternoon and do some personal replies, as well as add to this.
Last night I was at the camp, sitting there cocooned in the sleeping bag a friend from AA brought by for me when Monte suddenly came upon me out of the darkness. Startled. I'd come by earlier, seen the garage door open, light shining, and thot, well, he's getting something to eat. Then at the camp, the bag I'd loaned him the night before all rolled up atop the chair. Bolted?
He sat on the three-legged stool, tall and balding, quiet there, and spoke of how his knee has gotten infected, how there is a red line going up his thigh. Not good, Monte, I said. Sounds like major infection going on. So he's off today to get tetracycline, fish pills, at the pet store. Sierra will probably give me hell for this, but I've been using fish tetracycline for years now to fight infections. Don't need a prescription and it knocks the stuff out in just a couple of days. And I find these little gills on my neck actually quite...um, cute. Heh heh.
I feel as though I'm sleeping in the midst of a bin of winter clothing. The little tent is near to overflowing with all those insulated blankets, coats, bags, and whatnot. Last night I used the extra sleeping bag as a mattress and for the first time actually felt comfortable.
It's lovely this time of the year. There are so many different kinds of insects out there. One sounds like a phone ringing, those newer type rings. Makes me smile. And then there are all these little doods and doodettes sitting about in a circle doing percussion. And the old moon just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
It's a lovely, lovely time of the year to be camping. And that's what I'm doing now: camping. There is no longer that sense of danger, urgency, boredom which was always with me when I was in Ft. Smith, Muskogee, and Tulsa. Not that sense of...gray. There is color here in Lawrence.
When I walked in the library this morning Clark came up and wanted to know the website where he could read "about your trip." Apparently my old friend Marvin is bruiting it about town, so perhaps we'll get a bit more readership as time goes by.
Msallthat is open to my wanting to do t-shirts for *the-Hold* so that is on the horizon. Be good to get back to screening, especially for a project I so believe in.
I remain silent at the meetings. Last night Sandy came up to me. Sandy is a woman in her 50s who was always so standoffish in the months before when I was regularly attending. Now she is...concerned, caring. She said, You aren't the Dickens I remember. You've lost weight, you're so quiet. What is going on?
I told her that I'd lost faith in myself, in my ability to maintain longterm continuous sobriety. Maybe I can get 4 or 5 months, I said. And maybe that's it.
Do you think any of us really had faith in ourselves when we came back? she asked.
She hugged me. It was a precious moment, as I've always liked her, even when she was even more distant than usual. I don't know what that was all about, perhaps just that back then I spoke at nearly every meeting, filled with the wisdom of my SELF and that's a turnoff for most.
I like being silent, just now. Loveisarose wrote, Perhaps you don't need to be speaking just now. Perhaps you need to be writing.
Perhaps.
Had coffee with dear friend Jackie last night after the meeting. She's a lovely woman, one of those people who can be talking with a perfectly straight face and if you close your eyes for a moment, you picture her smiling. That's the kind of voice she has, one that smiles.
She's in the program, has been sober since God made dirt, and ever since I first met her has been in that incredibly painful process of...LettingGo of a longterm relationship that ended so abruptly. It was good to sit outside in the cool of the night, holding the paper coffee cup within my hands, feeling that warmth and listening to her talk. She's moving on now, and when I asked her how she was with "all that" she smiled and told me she was much, much better.
I have just a few minutes left. Grrrrrrr.
I feel good, decent, hopeful. I am so grateful for the Circle. I wonder, how did I ever get along without you before? With you, I can talk, yammer on about this and that, and you write me back and share more and more of who you are, what formed you, and what moves you about Spoon River.
For those of you who didn't recognize that allusion, pick up a copy of "Spoon River Anthology" by Edgar Lee Masters. It so reminds me of "Winesburg, Ohio" by Sherwood Anderson, which I'm currently reading.
The sandbars are growing on the Kansas River. I've never seen the river this low. I have now had bits and pieces of all four seasons in Lawrence, and somehow I am looking forward to this time ahead. I know that what lies ahead is none of my business, that I am either the trusted or twisted servant of my Higher Power (perhaps both), and that all will dance its way to something glorious. This is my faith.
Meeting at Noon, then LINK. Then to the Hill and will write at greater length.
There are times when my mind feels so empty, blank. I search about for something to say and grasp at whatever straw my fingers close upon.
It's autumn in Lawrence. The students are here, doing their student thing as I did mine so many, many years ago. I feel at times astonished that I have survived so long.
The Slam is just a week away. I feel terrified. I want to write something about Lawrence, but nothing has come yet. It will probably happen the night before, when the tension is setting off sirens and bells and red flags awaving.
Be safe out there. Be radical. Commit a random act of Aloha. Let no one find you out. Just do it for the sake of doing it. And smile at that secret thing we share.
I love you.
