C.C.
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Subject: C.C.
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1999 16:53:53 CDT
I came early to 8th Street, the upper room where the meetings are held. Coffee, so wonderful early in the morning, a quiet corner in an empty room, all the chairs hugging the walls, soon to be occupied with bodies.
I like the quiet time, I need it, somehow.
Sitting there smoking, thinking of nothing much in particular, just that feeling of God which I so often think of as simply "Aloha." The Aloha was there this morning, and there was nowhere which needed to be gotten to. Another lazy morning in Lawrence town.
Heavy clouds. Last night I sat in the red nylon folding chair, my legs pushed deep into the maroon sleeping bag, and looked at the patterns of leaves projected onto the tent wall by that lovely old full moon, and wished you were here. I was suddenly put in mind of Kerouac's novel, "The Dharma Bums" and especially that part where the protagonist is out in the woods, he's sitting there in a kind of meditation all warm in that down sleeping bag.
You've finally gotten there, I thought. You are finally, finally in the very middle of that novel. You are there, pal.
Yet it is my own novel life that I am living, influenced though it has been by the Kerouacs of my youth. Dharma, the Way. So a Dharma Bum would be a Bodhisattva seeking the Way. That feels right for me just now at this point in my life.
I was thinking these things when CC walked in, all jittery and jangly and twitchy. Less than 24 hours sober, been hitting the Jack.
But I didn't know that. All I knew was that she sat down in the dimness of that subdued light and I suddenly began talking, which I never, never do.
I began talking about the preacher in Ft. Smith, under the bridge, the reformed heroin addict who looked so much like the fire chief of Altus, Arkansas, he could be his identical twin. Just aged a bit more. I began talking about something I'd heard him say as he was about to celebrate his 50-somethingeth birthday.
He said words to this effect, that, given a best-case scenario, there weren't all that many years left here on the planet. And that, given that, how could he best use the time remaining to him?
He held that big old Bible up and gestured expansively with it.
By doing the will of God, he said. The Will.
Ahhhhh, I remember thinking. The Will. Of course.
In AA the 11th Step says, "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out."
I have for many years now thought that makes ultimate sense. I'm not speaking of this or that god in particular, but perhaps that little personal angel which lives and breathes within each of us. Our passion. Daimon. What we are really and truly all about. That thing which, if denied, marks the ultimate failure of our lives. That thing. And I think we all have it.
So there are times when I will sit there in the light and shadow of a full-mooned night and think about such things. Of being a Dharma Bum at the ripe old age of nearly 55, of loving my life, loving the angels in my life (the Circle), loving the meander of the path as I see it glimmering up ahead.
Somehow I connected with CC this morning and gave her just a wee bit of hope, just as she gave me a wee bit of hope as well. Just as so many of you have reached out to me in various ways and given me hope, encouragement, faith.
I marvel that I lived my life so long without you.
