Handsome Lightning

My favorite thing to do on the planet is to drink large amounts of beer, blear the evening or afternoon and sleep it off. There’s nothing quite like it on Earth. I’ll admit my experience in this life has not been wide. I have not been outside of the United States except for a week-long trip to a resort in Mexico. And I have not been outside of my element, except when I was dragged, kicking and screaming in borrowed clown-sized chinos, to play a round of golf at an upscale Arizona course. 

I haven’t been to the Amazon. I haven’t taught children in rural India. I haven’t motocycled through Chile. I haven’t done anything. Not much interests me except drinking and listening to rock music and singing along. That has to change. Although I’m not sure which part yet.

Maybe because I have never actually felt in my element. Ever. I never felt at home with any particular social hot-pocket. Not with the nerds, although admittedly I am one. Not with the indie rock kids, although, again, admittedly I am one. Not the theater kids, the sports geeks, the poet cloud, the smart kids. No one. But that’s just the point.

Booze was my social rosetta stone. It connected me to all things and all things to me. It elicited an interest in people and their lives and the lives of the non-human and the things beyond things and the things beyond that. A connection to my spirit?

I’m romanticizing. All of it was muddy. I’m looking at it through beer-colored lenses. It was jagged and made me edgy. However, I feel doubt creeping in through the fantasy of it, and the reality of it. It is growing heavier. There’s no question I can stay sober, that’s not the issue. The issue is that I don’t think drinking was the issue. Of course it’s about something deeper. There’s a kraken beneath the sinking ship.

I guess 20 days sober is not long enough to offer any tangible evidence of efficacy. If my patterns that have persisted these past tens years of drinking continue through this “clear headedness” for another few months, then, well, I know I’ll need more than a spear-gun and snorkel to get deep enough to even wound the leviathan. I’ll need some cognitive therapy and a twelve pack of beer.  

Thank christ seltzer water is free at bars. I must have put back 10 of those over dinner and the first two periods of game six in the Bruins vs. Flyers semi-final playoff series. If it were beer, my bill would have fattened considerably, possibly tripling in price. Instead, it remained a soft, $12.00 blow to my bank account.

Despite the absence of bars lingering in my periphery like false oases or back-alley apothecaries full of salves and heal-all tonics, they still remain powerful in their solid wood solemnity. And I felt normal, set up on my stool, drinking seltzer with lemon while my friends drank their beers. It felt exactly the same, except I didn’t feel like I was trying to smother my life with a chloroform rag.

I look forward to a time when my life’s focus returns to the important calls of the world, whatever they are. Truth or heart or art or teaching. For now, the pleasant clarity I feel is a welcome space, the rest is work, because nothing falls in your lap except the occasional free beer, and, well, I don’t need those right now.

Bench in Skatepark. Courtesy of someone at Reddit.

Back in Early March I tweeted, “I have to stop “living in the now.” All it’s ever gotten me is a beer belly and an attitude problem.” And for me that statement is still true.

The actual act of living in the now is like writing without any edits: only a few people can do it and even they cannot sustain it for long. Eventually, everyone must edit themselves.

After living in tirelessly brainless and unthoughtful ways for over a decade I’m quitting drinking. Not for a month, or a week, or as an expirement, but for the foreseeable future. A length longer than a sabbatical but shorter than a lifetime. Instead of casting out a net I fell asleep in one and remained, tangled, for too long.

It has been one full week. Which is the longest amount of time I have spent without a drink in at least eight years. But it has not been hard. It has been a relief, if anything. Like how it must have felt when I quit sucking my thumb, or started swimming without floaties. I’m a late bloomer and this may just be another binkey to lose.

Anyway, leaving “now” for tomorrow.

12 of the Greatest Sea Monsters of All Time courtesy of io9.com.

Article at the photo jump.