Category: Philosophy

Human

I suppose I am a human being. I mean, that must be the assumption, right? I have always felt like a freak. I was frequently called “weird” and “a freak” growing up. I admit I have always been puzzled by the way people around me behave. They all seem to be in on a secret to which I have never been privy. What to do and when to do it. I have always done my best to act in ways that that meet with approval—whenever I can, anyway. I guess the word people use now is “masking.” I’m glad we finally have a term for people like me: neurodivergent. It doesn’t sound so bad when you say it like that.

Physically I am average in every way. I look normal, I suppose. Somewhat attractive, I am told. I have traced my ancestry and I come from a long line of everyday people. My genetics are English, German, Scot and Irish, in that order. I am a plain old ordinary guy, but somehow I was gifted and cursed at the same time. I’m hyper-sensitive, queer, musically inclined, and with a very high IQ. Oh, and also an alcoholic (with forty years of sobriety). If you are meeting me for the first time and are interested, scroll back and read “From Boom to Bust,” a thread in which I recount my childhood, and you will get a sense of who I am.

I hit a point in my autobiographical storyline where I had to stop and rethink how I wanted to proceed. I have been thinking about it a lot over the last few months and have decided that the theme must be “a man’s search for meaning.” Mine has been a journey of spiritual growth, but I have to take a moment to define what I mean by that term.

I don’t believe in God or gods, or in any of the things that are generally encompassed by the term “spiritual.” But there is no denying the reality of what I call “the human spirit.” Humans are interesting beings: we evolved like all animals, yet we have reached a point where we can reflect on ourselves and assess. If other animals have this capacity it’s hard to know, since they don’t talk to us, at least not in words. They do communicate, and we form bonds with them. How much they are like us I just don’t know. But humans, we talk a lot. Every person has a spirit about them. I mean all the things beyond the merely physical: qualities of character, vibes and energy. What we value shows up in everything we do. Most importantly, I believe in the plasticity of the human spirit. We can, by choice, cultivate in ourselves any qualities we wish, given time and persistence. The Buddha recommended developing compassion, generosity, and wisdom, and any of us can do that if we choose to prioritize those things. What we often forget is how amazing that is!

So, I see humans as animals with a little something extra. We are organic life forms, but something about us can transcend mere nature if we try. Inside of each of us is an image of what we are striving to become. I call that our higher self. When I do 12-step work, that’s the “higher power” I’m working with: the yearning to be more than I was yesterday, and the inherent power to move one inch closer each day, trusting the process.

It has been a long journey, and I have learned a lot. My life story includes many stages including grasping to make some sense of my life when I was in the depths of CPSD and alcoholism with a dissociative identity disorder, recovery with the help of 12-step programs and therapy, a decade as a devout Methodist, then as a “new-age guy,” then Buddhism. Eventually I became a licensed massage therapist so I could go back to college. I completed a double-major undergraduate degree in philosophy and economics and finally felt that life made sense.

Until lately. Now I am living through the descent into darkness, the ripening of negative karma, of my once great nation, with which I happen to share a birthday, July 4. My disappointment in my species, of which I have only ever barely felt a part, is crushing. Humans are more than our animalistic urges, but only barely. People can rationalize any atrocity if sufficiently motivated, and I’m seeing a lot of dark motives playing out in our public life. I am disgusted.

But I also feel a sense of urgency bordering on despair. I have so much I want to say that I feel I could pound away at this keyboard for the rest of my life and barely scratch the surface. Today I wonder if my country will die before I do, and if these “messages in bottles” will be picked up and read by anybody, or if I am just yelling into the wind. Regardless, writing in this blog is a duty I owe to myself and my loved ones, so I will proceed.

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We Get to Talking

That first weekend is still kind of a blur. Drinking, making out. How I got from one place to another, whose house we were at, how I got home: I have no idea. Even at the time I was in a haze. But over the next week we began talking more and more: on the phone, at school. I remember kissing in the hallway in front of everybody between classes. If anyone hadn’t heard the news by then they knew now. I think we both relished the thought that we were the talk of the school. We were an unlikely couple, and we were both well-known. It had everyone speculating. Our friends congratulated us.

The surprise for me was the nature of our private conversations. Shelly was brilliant and articulate. Whereas I didn’t even last one year in Catholic school (see the thread “From Boom to Bust”) she had thrived there. She was a great student and the nuns loved her. She loved being Catholic and was fascinated by all the theological and ritualistic aspects. She sang in the church choir and relished the music. As you may recall, by that point in my life I had become an atheist and felt completely alienated from my Catholic roots. She had taken an additional middle name at confirmation and now her initials were SASS. I kid you not. Shelly was athletic. She played field hockey and swam. She was adventurous and assertive, and when she played field hockey it was “banzai!!” as she rushed into the middle of the action. She worked after school, reading for a blind woman and assisting her with her personal and professional paperwork. She had been saving money all through high school and planned to backpack through Europe alone during the summer after graduation. She had her airline tickets, passport, and Eu-rail pass all ready to go two months early. In the fall she was entering UCLA. I learned all this very quickly.

In the process, I picked up on the fact that her energy and quick wit masked a great deal of anxiety. She worried about everything, all the time. She was actually quite insecure. Her way of dealing with fear was to just go balls-to-the-walls all the time. She told me she had trouble sleeping, for years. It’s possible that the only time she relaxed at all was when she was drinking. This explained a lot.

Our make-out sessions were passionate and intense, but even a week in we were fully clothed. It was just kissing and hugging. Whenever my hands would wander anywhere on her body I could feel the anxiety flow there. Touch is my “element.” When I touch anyone, I feel things inside the body. Like a sixth sense, I “see” what’s going on with the person. Many years later this natural gift made me a very successful massage therapist. At the time I didn’t reflect on it at all, I just knew what I knew. But I could tell something was up with her. We got to talking about it.

Turns out kissing and hugging is all she had ever done with a guy. The rumors about her being a “huge slut” were based on the fact that she had made out with a lot of guys at parties, but she told me she had never had a boyfriend and had never done anything sexual with anyone. In fact, she said, “I’m actually terrified of men.” The reputation was a cover, a magic spell to ward people off. I smiled, laughed, and said, “I get it.”

She then told me about her night terrors. I asked, “What is it you are afraid of?” She said, “I wake up in the middle of the night terrified that I am going to die unexpectedly.” I said I thought that was strange for a person so young, and she replied, “It started when I was eight.” That intrigued me, so I asked more questions. She said, “Well, there was this older man who lived alone in our neighborhood, retired. He had a nice house and a swimming pool, and all summer long all the girls from the neighborhood would hang out there all day. Our parents were fine with it. He was really nice and didn’t mind. We had a lot of fun there. But then one night he died unexpectedly in his sleep. That’s when I began to wake up in the middle of the night afraid that God would take me too. I would run to my parents’ room and climb into bed with them — that’s the only way I could sleep. Until one day Dad said I was too big to sleep with them anymore, and since then nights have been dark, cold, and lonely.”

As this story sank in I had one more question. “Did anything weird or inappropriate happen with the neighbor?” I asked. “Not that I can remember…” she trailed off. “But of all the girls that hung out at his house, I think I had the most close and special relationship with him.” I took a deep breath and decided to leave it there.

It turns out that I was the first guy she ever felt safe with. There was something about the way I listened, the way I touched her, and the way I articulated my own emotions that put her at ease in my presence. And now I understood that fate had brought us together so we could walk through our anxieties together. I sensed that we stood at a threshold.

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My Mom Gets an Unexpected Phone Call

“I got a very strange phone call this morning,” my mom said. It was approaching noon Sunday, the 9th of April, 1978. I will always remember it. I was hungover from a cast party the night before, the first time I had ever gotten drunk two nights in a row. I asked her to tell me about the “strange” phone call, and she began, “Well, it was Shelly1 Staival’s mom, Cleo. I haven’t heard from her in a long time, although we know each other quite well since we were in Faculty Wives2 together for years. After some friendly small talk I asked to what I owed the pleasure of her call. Her tone suddenly became very urgent and she said, ‘Carolyn, what are we going to do about the kids?'” My mom told me that confused her: what about the kids? Cleo said, “We have to do something. I heard they are dating. We have to do something to stop them.” My mom got a bit flummoxed and sputtered back, “Well, I don’t know what you have in mind. Kirk told me all about it. It seems to me they are old enough now that if they decide to date each other there’s nothing we can do about it.” Cleo took a deep breath and replied, “Well, we can’t just let that happen. Your son is so gifted and has such a bright future ahead of him — and I know my daughter. She is so intense she will consume him, deflect him from his goals and destroy his life.”

We sat there in silence for a few moments as we processed the implications. Shelly’s mom, whom I hadn’t met, sounded crazy to me. And how antiquated the notion of controlling your teenage children’s dating choices was! I was sixteen, soon to be seventeen, and Shelly had already been eighteen for a few months. We most certainly would continue dating if that’s what we wanted. But I owe the reader an explanation as this is all coming out of nowhere.

What happened was that on the previous Friday evening after opening night of the Spring Musical, I was invited to go to a cast party. I honestly don’t remember who I got a ride with, but it was at a little “country club” just outside of town. I use the term “country club” cautiously, as it was merely an acre of land surrounded by a chain link fence. There was a pool, a covered picnic area, and a couple of tennis courts. The rest was a large grassy field for whatever. We had been members when I was growing up: I took swimming lessons there when I was about seven. I had never been there after dark, so the experience of the cast party was surreal. I don’t think we even had permission to be there, but somebody obviously had a key to the gate. There was beer, of which I happily consumed several cans, and I even took a few puffs of a joint that was being passed around. This was only the second time I had tried smoking. Let me tell you, the beer and the pot combined hit me hard. I remember being in a highly altered state, just wandering around talking to people, then becoming very quiet. When the chaos and shenanigans started overwhelming my senses, I wandered off to the pool facility where there was a large restroom and changing area. There were a few people milling about in there talking and laughing, but I just retreated to a nearby wall and leaned against the cool cinderblocks, zoning out.

Suddenly Shelly was standing in front of me, looking directly into my face as if trying to solve a puzzle. Without a word she stepped forward, put her arms around my shoulders and planted a sweet, wet kiss on my lips. The similarity with what Kelly had done four-and-a-half years earlier is striking, and my response was the same. Which is to say I received the kiss passively, in shock. But I liked it. She pulled back, intently surveying my expression for any kind of feedback. I looked past her, over her shoulder and, as if speaking to someone else, said in my best Spock voice, “Captain! I appear to be receiving a curious labial stimulus.”

Her jaw dropped, then she burst into laughter. She moved in a second time, took me in her arms, and we began “making out” for the first time. The first time for us, the first time for me, but certainly not the first time for her. So now I need to give you some background on who Shelly was, at least as far as I knew her up to that point.

  1. My wife Sarah [real name], whose advice I trust, has told me I need to make up fake names from here on out, so Shelly and Cleo Staival are not their real names. ↩︎
  2. Back in the early 1960s, when most of the high school teachers were men, there was actually an organization called Faculty Wives where the spouses of faculty met together socially. Shelly and my parents already knew each other when we were born. ↩︎
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A New Religion

I grew up in a big Catholic family with twenty-three first cousins but by the time I was in eighth grade half my aunts and uncles were divorced. My mom remarried and my stepfather, who was an ordained Methodist minister, turned out to be psycho. My mom threw him out of our house soon after my thirteenth birthday, but the two-year marriage had left me quite damaged. (I am summarizing for people who might not have read my synoptic “From Boom to Bust” thread.) I discovered a new worldview in the book, Dune, and found myself embracing humanism. I have talked about reading a lot of sci-fi and philosophy. What I haven’t mentioned much is the television show Star Trek.

Star Trek was airing in prime time when I was six and seven years old. I mentioned sitting with my dad in the big easy chair watching it with him, being terrified yet fascinated. By the time I was thirteen the show was in syndication. We would get home from school and be on our own for several hours before my mom got home from work. I would watch an episode of Star Trek almost every day. Eventually I had seen every episode multiple times. Two of my best friends were also into it: Chuck and Alan. (Chuck and I started out in beginning band together in eighth grade, having been friends since kindergarten. Alan was the airplane nerd from the Bay Area whose mother was the school librarian.) Chuck and I were obsessed with the show. We bought and read books about it, including the making of the series and the science upon which it was based. Chuck’s dad was an architect and we both had taken drafting in eighth grade. We set about designing our own starships, drawing up detailed floor plans and doing our best to sketch the shapes of the ships. We got into philosophical arguments about specific episodes (we would rarely agree on anything).

We were all somewhat secretive about it. You have to understand: back in those days Star Trek was just this campy, weird show that had been on for only two seasons. The entirety of the Star Trek “universe” was just some re-runs on afternoon TV. People who were really into it were considered weird nerds. It wasn’t something to brag about. But actually it was a bold and innovative concept — with the potential to become a new religion. Instead of ancient myths involving warring tribes in the Middle East, we are given a mythical future, wherein mankind has overcome our barbaric past by means of science and reason. On the bridge of the Enterprise we have, in addition to the All American Hero captain Kirk, an African woman, a Russian, an Asian, and an Alien working side by side. In 1967, in the middle of the war in Vietnam and the nuclear standoff with the USSR, this was a shocking vision of the future — almost too much to hope for. I grew up doing bomb drills in school. We all figured we might be wiped out in an atomic holocaust at any moment. Star Trek offered a vision of hope for the human future. It wasn’t mere entertainment: it was philosophical speculation of the best kind.

One day in high school this guy who had recently moved to our town from the Bay Area appeared on campus wearing a Star Fleet shirt and Vulcan ears. Everybody was talking about it and laughing. “Have you seen ‘Spock’ yet?” I had to admit he looked pretty good: he even had the Starfleet standard haircut — in the seventies when everyone was looking scrappy, or had feathered hair. It turns out my friend Alan was hanging out with him. Alan and I never hung out at school together. I would go to his house for sleep-overs and such, but I don’t think anyone really knew we were friends. I’m not sure why, but it felt like something I wanted to keep secret. Anyway, he called me one day and asked if I wanted to go to Sacramento to a Star Trek meeting. I had no idea there were such things, but I said yes. The three of us, Alan, “Spock” and I carpooled over to a lecture hall at Sac State where the meeting was held. There were mostly grownups there. I was considered pretty weird by most of the students at my high school, but even I was saying to myself, “Man, these people are really nerdy.” And the atmosphere! It was very serious, as if we were in church. There was mention of Star Trek conventions, which sounded amazing. But the room got very quiet when someone who had recently returned from a meeting with an affiliated Star Trek club in Los Angeles gave us all an electrifying update. There were talks — just talks at this point — about the potential for a Star Trek movie. Word was that most of the original cast had signed on to the idea, and there was funding and studio interest as well. It was likely to be a full-fledged feature film! Holy cow! I sensed the tension mounting in the room as people were afraid to hope yet were exuberant at the thought of it. You may be laughing now, but seriously, for Star Trek aficionados it was a first glimmering of the glorious future to come in the following decades.

My love of Star Trek was a secret I shared with just two special friends, but perhaps it showed up with my band friends whenever I rolled out my Spock impression. While Captain Kirk resonated with my heart, especially reminding me of myself in elementary school, Spock represented what I was striving to become during my teen years. Having emerged from puberty being prone to emotional hysteria, Spock’s disciplined dedication to the principles of logic captured my own struggle to use my awakening mind to override my turbulent emotions. I amused myself endlessly trying to craft Spock-ish phraseology. I remember one time during band rehearsal when Tana turned to me and said, “Ooh, I love that harmony.” I responded with, “I agree: the nodal interference in the overlapping wave forms produced by the oscillating columns of air does produce an effect that is most pleasing to the ear.” She looked at me like I was nuts, then burst into laughter.

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Dune Applied

Perhaps the characters in a story about a violent struggle for control of a galactic empire who rely on martial arts, subterfuge, treachery, and manipulation are not the most ideal role models for a thirteen-year-old junior high school student, but then again. After Walt left I was a hot mess. I had always allowed my emotions to flow outward on clear display and it had gotten me into a lot of trouble. In class I tended to blurt out whatever came into my head, which meant a lot of quality time spent in the hallway on time-out. While I craved the attention these antics brought, it was doubtless slowing me down academically. Adults found me alternately delightful and threatening. Walt had attempted to break my spirit by literally beating the gay out of me. I struggled spiritually, having read the Bible from cover to cover when I was twelve and finding it utterly horrifying. I never told anyone about it at the time, but I will write about it in a separate post. The fact that Walt was supposedly a man of God, an ordained Methodist minister who was as bad an example as I can imagine, left me deeply conflicted. Once I started reading philosophy I quickly became an atheist and turned to science fiction and fantasy literature for usable myths. Dune really hit the spot with its deeply humanistic material. The character Paul Atreides, fifteen years old at the start of the story, was a role model for me. The product of centuries of selective breeding, he was also in the process of receiving deep training in mind control techniques, martial arts, and politics. I found the litany against fear to be incredibly useful in helping me control my own hysteria, the product of post-traumatic stress. It was the perfect formula to encapsulate the lesson of the story of The Mummy Box:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

I committed this to memory and recited it to myself whenever I felt anxiety. Inspired by the references to gestalt in Dune, I read “Awareness: Exploring, Experimenting, Experiencing” by John O. Stevens, a collection of exercises based on the Gestalt Therapy of Fritz Perls. I began training myself. Paul had trusted teachers guiding his training to prepare him for his future role as Duke. I had Steve (my therapist), my band directors and my piano teachers who I came to see as mentors. I embraced the idea of human potential and became committed to the idea of training myself to the highest possible degree. I became cagey about my true intentions and motives.

I began to observe myself, imagining a hidden camera in a high corner of the room. How did I appear to people, how did this scene “play?” So while outwardly I was still open, honest, emotionally present, behind the scenes there was another me, a director orchestrating secret plans. After Walt I was a person with many dark secrets. I managed those secrets in layers. I cultivated friendships based on trust earned through layers of self-disclosure, carefully listening to the revelations I would receive in turn, reflecting and offering insight where I could. Several young men wanted to be considered my “best friend,” the person to whom they could tell anything and have the confidence protected. They were jealous of each other, competing for my attention. All of them felt they knew me better than anyone else, but none of them ever achieved the security clearance of “above top secret.” There were things I would never tell. Eventually, through reprogramming my own mind using the principles of Psycho-Cybernetics, my deepest secrets were hidden even from myself. My true self and my true history became buried under layers of artifice, and I lost my core. But I had become very adept indeed.

Dune was teaching me how to be a gifted youth in a world of adults. I was learning how to play them, telling them just enough to win them over, but always holding something back. I remember one particular interaction that has stuck with me. I had a friend named Alan, a year older than me and not part of my school friend group. We had met when I was in fifth grade (my fifth grade class was combined fifth and sixth graders). Alan was a real nerd, obsessed with airplanes and also with the book, Airport by Arthur Hailey. Alan’s mom was the librarian at my seventh grade junior high school. Alan had an older brother who alternated living with his father and his mother, who were divorced. When I was still twelve I had a sleep-over at Alan’s house. As is customary in pre-teen sleep-overs we stayed up late. Somehow the conversation turned to time travel. Alan’s brother Jeff, who was a genius but also mildly schizophrenic and probably autistic, took an interest. As the conversation went down the rabbit hole of time-travel paradoxes, Alan lost interest and went to sleep. Jeff and I continued the conversation until dawn. I was trying to convey the idea that if sometime in the future you were able to travel to the past, then whatever you do/did in the past is already part of the history of the present, so it is impossible to “change” the past, even in principle. He insisted I draw up a flow chart, which I had never heard of. So we spent a lot of time trying to get me up to speed on flow charts. By the time he fully understood what I was trying to say, the sun was coming up. Satisfied, he retired to bed, but I was wide awake: it was the first time I had ever stayed up all night!

Their mom came out to brew coffee and start breakfast, surprised to find me at the kitchen table with a paper and pencil in front of me. We got into a conversation that meandered through several subjects, but landed in the realm of philosophy, which I had been exploring recently. At one point she asked me if this map of the universe I was building in my mind had any room in it for the possibility of God. “That’s complicated,” I replied. For the next hour I unrolled my view of the subject, which was agnostic, but probably close to Spinoza’s views of a rational core knitting the universe together. Alan eventually woke up and came out to inquire about breakfast, so we had to wind things down. But how she closed the conversation has stuck with me. “Well,” she said, “I can’t believe I have learned so much from a twelve-year-old. When you become an adult, if you ever decide to start a religion, I would like to become a member.”

That night and morning of deep and stimulating conversations with older brilliant minds left me with a quiet sense of awe and caution. I was awakening to the possibility of the influence I could have on people and I knew this would bring with it certain ethical responsibilities. I remembered the story of the temptation of Jesus on the mountain top. Such powers can easily lead to evil. I resolved to be humble in my goals even as my ego swelled. I came to see my potential as a world-maker and a leader, but it scared me. So through high school I made sure that my growing influence as a trend-setter and social locus was always directed towards good ends. At least, that was my intention.

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Intellectual Awakening

All through my childhood I enjoyed prowling around my parents’ tall bookcase where the encyclopedias were kept, along with a wide variety of books old and new. I was fascinated by the old books particularly, which my mom had inherited from her favorite aunt after whom she was named. Aunt Carolyn had lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband for many years and had collected Indian pottery and rugs, which we also had. The dusty old books were typical of the 1930s, with philosophy, poetry, mythology, fiction and non-fiction titles. I couldn’t actually read these books, but I would flip through them looking at pictures, savoring the old bindings and the musty smell. I was infatuated. One day when I was twelve I picked out one with an intriguing title: The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. I opened it to the first page and began reading. I’ve mentioned that I was dyslexic. Reading was a real chore for me, and I had never actually read any book all the way through except Hardy Boys mysteries. I had read every one of them in my elementary school library, beginning in third grade. But I had never been able to tough it out through any adult books. Until now. I was strangely able not only to follow the stories about the old philosophers, but was somehow able to comprehend the ideas they grappled with. My mind lit up like a Christmas tree and I was hooked. I just kept reading and reading as a sense of euphoria came over me. My mind was unlocked. In fact, I was puzzled why they seemed to think these philosophical ideas were so difficult. It seemed to me there was a lot of unnecessary struggle over rather easy problems. I had already contemplated the nature of reality and “truth”, the limitations of logic, the importance of symbols and semantics — I just hadn’t realized there was a discipline that had given names to these things and grappled with them. I had found my people.

Book in hand I marched into the kitchen to see my mom. “Mom! I finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up. I’m going to be a philosopher!” Her smile faded and her face took on a look of chagrined pity. “Oh, Honey, there aren’t any philosophers anymore.” I guess I knew what she meant: nobody is walking around in a toga with a laurel wreath on their head, whiling away the hours engaging in Socratic dialogue about the meaning of the word “Justice”. Now we only have career choices like Physicist, Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer. I was crestfallen. The wind had come completely out of my sails, and I made one of the biggest mistakes of my entire life.

I believed her.

I still haven’t forgiven myself for this blunder, even though I know I should. I was only twelve. My mom had a degree from Berkeley. I took what she said on authority. I didn’t know then that taking things on authority was what kept Europe in the Dark Ages for centuries. If only I had asked one of my teachers about it. They would surely have told me that every university offers courses in philosophy, often as a requirement for graduation. Who do you suppose teaches those courses? You can major in it. The world is full of philosophers, some who embrace the label, some who avoid it. At that time I surrendered to the impossibility of doing the one thing that really inspired me, but resolved that whatever I found myself doing after that, I would do it philosophically. I would be a philosopher in secret.

When I turned thirteen my step-mother gave me a book I had never heard of. No one else I knew had ever heard of it either, perhaps because it had only been published nine years earlier. Everyone knows it now: Dune, by Frank Herbert. As I held it and looked at the intriguing cover graphics I felt the weight of it in my hand. I flipped through it: no pictures, only small print. And it was thick. What on earth? She couldn’t possibly think I could read such a tome. She said, “I think you might like it: the main character is your age.” So I began the slog–dictionary at my side. It was slow going, but she was right. I very much saw myself in the character Paul Atreides. I quickly became obsessed with the story, which dealt with topics like arid land ecology, power politics, and deep philosophies regarding artificial intelligence and selective breeding (of humans!). It became my new bible. I had, I just now remember, already managed to read The Bible cover to cover: perhaps in another thread I will explain how and why, and what I really thought of it. This was so much better though, because it was intellectually stimulating and coherent. On the cover of the book were quotes from book reviews, one of which compared it to The Lord of the Rings. That sounded intriguing, so after I finished Dune (it took the better part of a year), I began reading Tolkein. Oh my. By the time I got through high school I had managed to read both trilogies about eight times. I could only read a dozen or two pages at a time, mostly at bed time, with classical music playing on my cassette recorder. Then I would fall asleep.

In my earlier thread (Boom to Bust) I talked about discovering that I could easily get top grades just by showing up to class and paying attention. I wasn’t good at finishing homework, but I would do enough of it to convince myself that I understood the subject. In high school all the cool kids were taking college prep courses, so I followed suit. I was a top student in just about every class. So when my schedule became completely full of music, including before and after school and during lunch as well, I found myself making a cup of instant coffee at ten-thirty or eleven at night to begin working on my chemistry or physics homework. I would finish at midnight or one AM, set the alarm for five-thirty, and do it all again. During my senior year I got sick with walking pneumonia, as one might expect, but it wasn’t diagnosed until after I graduated. But I had no trouble with motivation because my brain was on fire. Even with the grueling schedule, I continued reading on my own in philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, and history. I always had a book with me, which I would pull out whenever there was a pause in a rehearsal or before the start of class. In algebra and geometry there was usually time in class for working on the homework assignment. I would would finish it very quickly, then pull out my book! I remember at a musical theater rehearsal (I was the pianist) whenever we stopped for the director to re-block a scene, I pulled out a book on calculus. Calculus was not offered at our high school, but some of the more advanced kids commuted to the university to take it. Someone saw what I was reading and asked what it was for. I said, “It’s interesting, I want to learn it.” They gave me a weird look and said, “Okay.” Looking back, I think I might have been compensating for a sense of inferiority because I had gotten a late start in taking academics seriously. I wasn’t able to actually take a calculus class until my first year of college, but I did well because I had already familiarized myself with the subject during rehearsals for “Gypsy.”

This all left little time for philosophical reading, but I found time during breaks from school. I liked Descartes, Spinoza, Plato, and Emerson. But I was particularly enamored of two books that I found on the bookshelf at home. One was Out of My Later Years, a collection of essays by Albert Einstein, and the other was Pragmatism by William James. Both sat well with me, raised very few objections. I had finally found a way to harness the madness inside of me and make peace with my weirdness.

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Radical Acceptance

Tomorrow I will resume work on the thread I have been doing about “From Boom to Bust,” but on this day I feel I should take a moment to offer a few reflections on sobriety. No one asked me to give a speech, but it’s my blog and I have the prerogative to say a few words here if I want to.

Today happens to be Saint Patrick’s Day. It is also the thirty-ninth anniversary of the day I decided to try sobriety one last time. This morning began as all mornings do, fixing a cup of coffee for myself to have during my first chess session of the day. My wife, Sarah, gave me a little squeeze of appreciation as she congratulated me for making it through another year sober. I smiled. A few moments later my phone buzzed with a text message from my ex-wife, Laura, also offering a celebratory sentiment. This year we will have been divorced for thirteen years, having been married for twenty-two years before that. She is the mother of my biological children. I thought to myself that it’s nice that we still wish each other well. My mother sent me a “birthday” card every year for as long as she was able. Reflecting on all this made me think, “Wow, what does it say when there is a general consensus that the world is a better place just because I don’t drink anymore?” I guess my drinking must have been pretty bad.

I came-to that morning of March 17, 1985, which also happened to be a Sunday, after a crazy binge that began Thursday after work. There will be future posts with more details about how I had hardly drawn a sober breath for the previous eight months, but suffice it to say for now that what made this Sunday morning different from the previous ones was not the fact that I was contemplating quitting drinking. What made it different was that for some reason I realized that it was a loop: I had been having these thoughts every Sunday for weeks now. I would resolve to take a break, if only to clear my head and get a little perspective. But by Monday I would forget, and find myself drinking again as if my resolution had never happened. This had been going on for weeks, and only on this occasion did I have the mental clarity to realize I was stuck. Eight months earlier I had come to a point of radical acceptance of my fate. I was moving out of the apartment I shared with my then girlfriend because my new love interest wouldn’t have sex with me as long as I was living with someone else. Why? In her words, “because I’m decent.” That left me no choice but to get my own place. As I was leaving, my girlfriend tearfully asked me why I was being so cruel. I looked at her intensely and said, “I’m doing this to protect you. I’m dying, and there’s not a damn thing you or I can do about it. I’m getting out of your life to spare you.” In that moment I had every intention of dying drunk, and I knew it wouldn’t be more than a year before it happened.

My parents had also reached a point of radical acceptance. They hadn’t heard from me in months, but they had a sense of what was going on. Divorced for years, both of them were attending Al-Anon meetings in their respective towns. My dad had twenty-one years of sobriety at that point, but his biggest challenge had become what to do when your child is dying of the same disease. They prayed for me and had their friends praying for me also. Both braced themselves for the seemingly inevitable bad news that could arrive at any time, probably from a third party, that I had met my end. It was a dark time.

But that morning was different, somehow. The miracle arrived in the form of a question: what if I am wrong? I had acquiesced in the knowledge that it was my fate to die drunk. I had stopped fighting it. I was embracing it. I had burned all my bridges and was just trying to go for all the gusto I could on my way out. People I didn’t even know were stopping me and offering warnings and advice, it was so clear from my behavior that I was going to flame out. It must have been sad to know me then. But that morning, for some reason, it occurred to me that maybe I was wrong. Maybe I wasn’t meant to die drunk. What if I was supposed to recover? That was a terrifying thought, because every aspect of my life was a complete shambles. To try to turn things around now was going to be incredibly difficult. Even just my financial situation was astonishingly hopeless. I had just lost my latest girlfriend, I was about to lose my job, and it seemed like no one at all was buying my horseshit anymore. I had run out of cash and had only enough in my pocket to buy a pack of cigarettes or a six-pack, but not both. When I realized that I had been vainly trying to stop for several weeks and forgetting each time, I realized that this might be my very last chance.

As I sat there contemplating the question of which fate I might be destined for, another question hit me. What if it’s a lie? What if the one thing that has been making my life a little bit bearable, the one thing that gave me a moment or two of relief from the hatred I felt for life and for myself was actually causing all the problems? What if instead of being my one true friend, alcohol was actually what was killing me? If that were true, I owed it to myself to at least try to get sober one last time. Ugh. But if it were true, and I were to pick up that next drink and begin the slippery slide to oblivion knowing what I knew, it would be very embarrassing, to say the least. What a fool I would have been! So, that’s how it started. All these years later, I have still not picked up that next drink. It turns out that it was not my destiny to die drunk after all.

I brought my phone to my wife to show her the text from my ex-wife, and made a wry comment about how bad my drinking must have been for everyone to celebrate the fact of my sobriety. But neither my current wife nor my ex-wife has ever seen me drink! Sarah said, “Well, it’s always been clear that your sobriety is very important to you, so I’m happy for you.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Of course it’s very important to me. It is the foundation of every good thing in my life, everything valuable thing about me as a person. Yes, it’s very important to me. Sometimes I mention to someone that I have been sober for a long time and they respond with, “You must be very proud of yourself!” No. I went back to college in my fifties, thirty years after I dropped out, and busted my butt over the next three years to graduate with a double major, summa cum laude. I am very proud of myself for that! But sobriety? I only feel gratitude for it. Grateful that I escaped the whirlpool and I don’t have to do that shit anymore. And I am grateful every single day that none of my kids has ever seen me drink. Very grateful, indeed.

I wrote a post a few years back called The Wisdom Prayer in which I talk about how pointless it is to accept anything that is not an actual fact. For example, for thirty years I accepted the “fact” that I had missed my chance, that it was too late to go back to college! People in recovery sometimes seem to elevate the idea of Acceptance into some kind of general principle, as if it is the key to everything. But like trying to use a screwdriver when what you need is a wrench, practicing “acceptance” in the wrong situation can keep you stuck in a victim mentality. In such situations what is needed is Courage, and to know that, you need Wisdom. But I want to share something, a fact which I have accepted as such all the way to the core of my being. When I think about all the things that could possibly happen to me — illness, bankruptcy, tragedy, horror — I am unable to imagine a situation that I couldn’t make worse by taking a drink. Honestly. That particular form of radical acceptance keeps me sober.

This is the first year I can remember where I haven’t had a single drinking dream. You know, the nightmare in which I am at some sort of social gathering walking around talking to people with a half-finished drink in my hand. I suddenly realize that I am drinking and wonder, how long have I been doing this? And in the dream I think back and realize that it has been happening for a while now, and that somehow I have lost my sobriety without even noticing. I take these dreams as a warning. In my youth (I was twenty-three when I took my last drink), whenever I would resume drinking after a few weeks or months it would happen without fanfare. No drama. I would just “forget” somehow that I wasn’t drinking. I have no doubt that if I were ever to start drinking again it would happen like that. Terrifying! But I haven’t had any of those dreams this year, thankfully, not even during the Annual Dreary Rehash. The past year has had it’s share of challenges — a couple of colonoscopies, people around me having mental and physical health challenges, financial stress, a sense of impending doom for Western Civilization — but I have a good life. I believe that as long as I am grateful every day for the gift of release from the horrors of alcoholic drinking, I will be fine.

Posted on by Kirk 1

Greetings from the Far Side of the Moon

It has been over two months since I have seen any massage clients. I have barely left the house: picking up a pizza once a week, taking walks in the nearby arroyo, practicing Tai Chi Chuan. Many are in the same boat. Others are forced to continue working at essential jobs, bravely bearing the risk that entails. There is no way for me to practice my profession of eleven years remotely. I do teach chess lessons online, which adds a little structure to my days. I talk to my adult children on the phone, keep up a little with some long-term clients. Living with my girlfriend, her daughter and our dogs means I am not too lonely. Life during the pandemic has been mostly relaxing and physically healing. Earlier this year I was complaining that my vigorous massage practice was taking a toll on my body and mental energy. I am actually grateful for the downtime. Somewhat.

Over the past few days I struggled with the decision of whether to resume my practice or wait another month. As of yesterday my state is allowing massage therapists to see clients as long as we conform to a set of COVID-safe procedures. In April the models were predicting that the first wave would have passed by now, but while the trends of the past few weeks have been good, the virus is still almost as prevalent in the community as it was at the peak. The models now predict that the tapering of cases we were supposed to see by May 18 will not occur until early July. With reopening taking place now (early June) combined with mass protests and social unrest, it seems quite possible we will see a resurgence within a few weeks. So I made the painful and costly decision to delay. I had to cancel about forty appointments yesterday, with personal emails sent to each client to explain my decision. They took it well, and most have already booked appointments for July and August.

So now begins what I hope will be the final thirty days of a three-and-a-half month hiatus. It has been excruciating. For a quarter of a century beginning in the 1980s I either worked in offices or as a professional accompanist. I loved my work, but I often found the culture of touch deprivation left me feeling like a vaporous spirit. Was the world real or only virtually real? I didn’t realize the degree to which I am tactile. I need physical touch to know that I really exist. Going to massage school and becoming a professional massage therapist gave me a “license to touch.” The structure of the profession and the ethical training I received has made it so that my daily immersion in a world of healing touch is safe and healthy. I have helped a lot of people. I enjoy the one-on-one conversations. Over the past eleven years I have gotten to know some clients very well: I’ve heard their life stories. I have accompanied them through births, deaths, illnesses, career changes, marriages and divorces. Most of all I know how their life experiences and challenges affect their bodies. It is an honor and a privilege to be an important part of their lives. Imagine what it has been like for me to be sequestered in a virtual house arrest for two-and-a-half months!

Posted on by Kirk

A Gentle Warning to the Reader

One thing that has really held me back in the writing of this blog is a concern, based on regretful experience, that if I just relax and be myself, talk about my life and my thoughts, it will be too much for some. So this is a general “trigger warning.” I am likely to talk about some life experiences that could reopen old wounds. I might shock people by revealing bitter truths in blunt language, reminding them of their own dark past or unhealed hurts. Others may find my self-revelations to be in bad tasted, or suspect me of exposing myself to get attention or to attract readers through morbid curiosity.

Let this post serve as notice: I don’t really want readers. Not yet. Maybe someday. Right now I am not very good at this. I hope I don’t accidentally make someone’s problems worse by saying the wrong thing. So, reader, please feel free to stop reading a post at any time should you feel that it is too much for you right now. Perhaps avoid this blog entirely if you feel fragile or are not up to it. This is a tough time for everyone. I need to write for my own sanity. I don’t know if anything I have to say at this point will be of value to anyone, now or later. Thank you for your forbearance.

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Good Philosophy Is Good Karma

The Buddha talked about “the three poisons” which indulging in will lead to bad karma: greed, hatred, and ignorance. Fortunately, there are three antidotes that can ameliorate the effects of the poisons: generosity, compassion, and wisdom. Cultivating these antidotes is pretty straightforward and it is possible to do a little bit every day to better oneself. My work as a massage therapist grants me ample opportunity for the mindful practice of generosity and compassion, to which my clients often attest. But the other day I asked myself, “What is wisdom?” All of the Buddha’s teaching are recursive, operating in layers that constantly refer back to themselves. A first example? What I just laid out about the three poisons and the three antidotes is in itself a little packet of wisdom.

In several previous posts I began exploring the meaning of the word “philosophy,” and as you may recall it is from the Greek words for “love” and “wisdom.” Philosophy, when done right, is nothing more than the search for wisdom. And with a little logical slight of hand, we have our nugget for today: the diligent and honest practice of philosophy as the search for wisdom is, in fact, good karma.

Posted on by Kirk