Vicarious Rising

The Backdoor

When I was in college, I took a basic drawing class. For those of you who never took an art class in college, those courses took an inordinate amount of time relative to the rest of the academic course load. Each class was generally twice a week and 3 hours long each. Plus homework assignments took ages to complete.  At least mine did.

I wasn't an art major, but I loved my art class. I'd done quite a bit in high school and have won some national awards and sold a couple things. Nothing huge, but enough for me to know I don't suck. Art is one of those things I believe everyone can do with practice. If you've ever wanted to give a try to drawing, you should check out the book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" and do the exercises. It really does work. I've had several art teachers employ this method and watched loads of students go from drawing stick figures to real drawings.

Anyway, one assignment in college was to pick a piece of architecture on our campus to do a pencil drawing of. The trick was that we were not to look at our paper at all while drawing the picture. This is called a contour drawing, and the exercise is designed to get your eyes and your hand to get in sync with each other. Sometimes the teacher would have us do the same exercise without lifting the pencil from the page, thus having us do the drawing in a single continuous line. I don't think that was the case here.

I went to school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which has a gorgeous campus full of interesting architecture, so we students set off for our three hours of doodling all over with plenty of subject matter. Me? I chose the scummy back of the Carolina Coffee Shoppe, with its dumpster, greasy fan, empty wood crates and dilapidated screen door as my work of art. It came out pretty cool and the rickedy contour drawing style lent itself well to the trashy backside of the shop.

When we hung our pictures up for critique, I was the only one who'd gone left of center for subject matter. My classmates thought my picture was groovy (one thought it looked like a scene from Fat Albert's junkyard). My boyfriend at the time took it and framed it. He kept it when we split up and wouldn't give it back to me. I wonder if he burnt it. I wish I could have it back. I liked that goofy picture.

The other day I was sitting in the parking lot behind one of my favorite sandwich shops in town, and I saw this doorway. It's the back to an art store on main street here where I live. It reminded me of my drawing. I especially like the graffiti. Maybe I'll enlarge my photo and put it on my bulletin board. I like the reminder that there is always another way out. Even if it isn't pretty. Or something like that. No need to always be profound.

Vicarious The Vampire Slayer

Today I dragged my family to the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival. I'd read about it in one of my herb magazines, and it is reputed to be one of the two finest in the US. This was their 20th anniversary. They expect the weekend attendance to top 50,000 or so. Who
knew garlic had such a big fan club.

To say my son was not very enthusiastic is an understatement. Which is why we didn't tell him where we were headed until we parked the car after over an hour of driving. He didn't take long to change his tune. I strategically steer him straight towards the first chocolate booth and bought him off with a chocolate dipped rice crispy treat.

From then on he was pretty congenial. He even tasted some raw garlic on his own (something I declined to do) and even liked it. He also discovered he liked sundried tomato pesto. My husband and I ate more pickles than is natural. We also bought some venison sausage and horseradish.

This fall we're going to plant garlic in our garden. We picked up a 16 variety garlic sampler from a local grower. We'll be able to take a clove from each bulb to grow our own. It will be fun to decide which variety we like best. My father-in-law is not a big garlic lover. I guess we'll have to plan our taste tests around time spent with him.

Have I mentioned I'm a real nerd? Maybe I shouldn't tell you I spent most of yesterday looking at rocks in a quarry and was quite gleeful about it.

Stuck in the Past

Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I thought the Presidential Debate was rather intense.

It's funny, at my house, my son is vehemently against Bush. I'm not sure where he gets it from, but I assume Bush is the butt of a lot of jokes at school. Much of my kid's sneering opinion seems rather uninformed to me. I am no Bush fan, but I seldom talk about him nor do I speak visciously about the doddering fool. I did read an interesting book called "Bush on the Couch" a few years back that conjectured that Bush has an alcohol problem. I thought it was, well, possibly true, but mostly some overexcited pseudo shrink trying to make a buck. Most good shrinks stay away from that sort of armchair psychology and certainly wouldn't go writing public books about them. At least I don't think so.

Also, my son is a no-question Obama fan. Maybe I ought to ask him why. But I would wager the answer would be alarmingly, "what are you stupid? the other guy is a Bush guy." I still remember the days when I was in school how the kids picked their candidates the same way they picked their clothes - however the popular kids and their friends chose. Me? I almost always chose the underdog. When I came of voting age, fortunately, I got less squishy-hearted. Can you imagine if Gerald Ford had been elected because of wee girls' pity?

I actually don't really know who my husband is leaning towards voting for. This is not unusual. He actually failed to vote in at least one Presidential election since we've been together. I read him the riot act and told him for the next four years he could not complain once about the state of the country. To his credit, I don't believe he did, at least to me. I'm pretty sure he leans more towards the Republican side, so when we vote, we probably cancel each other out a lot. But I don't think he's a Bush fan either. However, I suspect he likes McCain more than Obama.

Watching the debates together this year was a first. My son got sleepy at the end, so I didn't have the opportunity to ask him what he thought. I do want to listen to what he got out of it without injecting my opinion. My husband's first comment, after I said that I thought the exchange was intense, was that he didn't think either candidate did particularly well or that they fleshed out their positions any more fully. Basically, they just rehashed the same old same old. I shut my mouth - I'm not sure why - but I had been about to say that I thought Obama had done a significantly better job than McCain, that I thought McCain seemed a little whiney and kept saying Obama didn't understand things when Obama actually seemed to get it rather well. I also thought McCain relied too much on his past and didn't look into how times and the world have changed and how our dealings with it need to evolve with it. He seemed to mired in business as usual, which I think is a serious problem. How we engaged foreign powers in the past may not work the same as they used to when the US had a different reputation and status in the world. And then McCain made one stupid comment about his runningmate, his "buddy maverick" that made me feel like I was choking.

I did go into the debate feeling uncertain about my vote. My primary reason for my distaste with McCain up until recently was his selection of running mate whose beliefs ran against most everything I believe in. And I also had grave concerns about McCain's age, particularly in light of his choice of scary Sarah. As for Obama, I was not at all confident in his experience to lead our country.

The debate has tipped the scale for me firmly into Obama's camp. While he may not have the specific experience, I felt like I watched a man tonight that could handle difficulties thrown at him. I felt like he was someone who wouldn't hesitate to find the right people to ask the questions to find out the knowledge he needed. He seemed a man with an openmind. I felt McCain is set in his ways, and I don't think that is what our country needs right now. I believe McCain is good for America, but not the man to lead us.

Of Unsavory Character

Disquieted is a word that a friend of mine from my early AA days used to describe some of my reactions to questions he asked me. Although I'd heard the word before, I'd never had a use for it, nevermind thought it applied to me. There are synonyms for disquiet, like preturbed, mildly anxious, uneasy, troubled, restlessness, absence of peace, but there is a nuance about disquieted - deprived of quiet - that lends an interest to the term and makes it fit more properly to my state of mind.

I think it might have to do with some sort of niggling voice somewhere telling me there is something I should be paying attention to that I am not.

I've noticed that while the hits on my blog have not gone down, the comments certainly have. This disquiets me. On the one hand, the purpose of my blog has primarily been for me to write whatever I feel like writing. But I do get a viceral pleasure when what I write connects to people.

On the other hand, I have no expectation that I am everyones', or even anyone's, cup of tea. I know I often walk to my own drum beat. I like that people have their own drum beats. I prefer it when people have a diversity of drum beats or when they beat together, it's because they want to.

I don't want people commenting on my blog just to "yesman" me, but I do like it when I touch something in someone and they say so. But what I wonder is happening right now is that I am saying things that are unappetizing and no one wants to tell me that I suck. Or simply that they disagree. Or anything in between. I kind of wish people would say something if what I am saying pisses them off or otherwise. I like discussion. I don't think I tend to be rude to commenters even when I disagree. I think discourse is healthy.

I'm also worried that I may be an unwelcome commenter on the blogs of others. Well, for one, I am pretty sure Little Miss Can't Do Wrong figured out that I was not much of a fan of her willfully blind view of the world blog posts because she dropped me from her blog roll. I'm surprised she recognized herself; delusional people rarely do.

Still, I honestly don't want to be pressing my unpleasant self of people who really don't want to hear it from me. I tend to be rather straightforward and realistic. I don't like it when people take a pile of shit, put whipped cream and a cherry on it and try to pass it off as dessert. I think addiction is a huge problem in society and I think too much is being done to sugar coat the accountability for it to the point that the cycle will not be broken until someone takes it back.

I also have tons of compassion for those addicted and those with addicts in their family. I've been there. I was and am those people. I'm a mother with a young son and have no way of knowing where he will go. I know how fragile life is. I know how important love and support is. I have known hurt, disappointment and cruelty. I am a survivor that wants to do more than just be alive.

The silence from people disquiets me. It makes me revert to my early reaction that I have done something wrong. I suppose I would like it if people would let me know if I have crossed some line. Or maybe I am being overly sensitive. Or if they would prefer me to take a hike off their blogs.

Any way you slice it, I'm glad I put it out there. This way I don't have to have a dream about being naked in public.

Moral Depravity Anonymous

I'm a bit of a stickler for taking responsibility for my sobriety and recovery. While I know I am far from doing it perfectly or even in an exemplary manner, I also don't think I should pin the fault of my stumbles on anyone else. My kid has a bad day at school? Not a reason for a set back in my recovery. I get disappointed by the fact that my parents are still not coming around to being affectionate or even living up to their claim they would visit me this summer? Not an excuse to get glum. What these events do represent is an opportunity to explore what feelings come up and perhaps what it taps into so that I can begin to recognate my thought processes. But use them as reasons to stall my progress? I don't give myself too much room for that.

One perplexing excuse I find in the addiction world is this idea that the addicted are powerless over their addiction so therefore are somehow not morally lax. I've pondered this and pondered this. And for whatever dumbass reason, it took me until the other day to Google "moral depravity."  What came up put into words what was bothering me about this concept: who exactly is morally failing? what exactly is moral depravity if it is not going against your beliefs of what is right?

You may wish to go through the exercise yourself, but the gist of it is that moral depravity is defined by acting on your sinful impulses because you are not allowing your will to be aided by a higher power.

I don't know. Sounds an awful lot like we addicts, if we are buying into the whole spiritual aspect of recovery, have been a morally fucked up lot. I'm willing to accept that I was fast and loose with what was right and wrong behavior in terms of my alcoholism. What is interesting to me is people, like some members of my family, who want to pass off the accountability of what was wrong with me on some biological "thing" that the Wheel of Fortune ended up on the wrong marker for me.

Perhaps it is that moral depravity is not the prettiest of nomenclatures. It also smacks a bit of free choice. I believe the root of the term comes from the idea that man is born sinful, which is not a concept I adhere to. So then, what do I think happened to me that sent me down Alcoholic Row?

I think it was a lot of things. Certainly, I was physically addicted, but the main of the problem was psychological. I could easily dump my excuses and reasons on biology or I could go the route of blaming my horrific childhood. Neither matters all that much now. Today I choose the behaviors and thoughts of someone who deals with life as fully aware as possible, pain and happiness equally. I think, I question, I breathe, I live. I make moral choices by a morality that I am trying to understand from my own point of view (which I'd never truly developed before while I was still living in fear and a drunken stupor). I try not to make excuses or elaborate explanations for why I am stuck. I haven't been stuck very much lately as a result. I fuck up a lot, but as I've heard, anything worth doing is worth screwing up.

I am trying to own my life, for better or worse. I wonder why I don't feel like such a degenerate person anymore.

A Quirk or an Aberration? You Decide.

Now is a good time for a meme about the idiosyncrasies of me, dontcha think? Apathetic Bliss, author of the wonderful blog Learning to Breathe, tagged me with this one:

Here are the rules:

1. Link the person who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules on your blog.
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.
4. Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them.
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged.

 

Hmm. I dunno about unspectacular. I mean, is there anything that is less than brilliant about me? Aren't you all sitting on the edge of your seats waiting to hear about some peculiarities about me that you didn't already know?

 

a) I prefer tea to coffee (I almost never drink coffee and even with tea, I drink primarily herbal teas, not black. I just generally don't like coffee), but my absolute favorite ice cream of all time is coffee ice cream. Coffee ice cream floats with Diet Coke are dreamy. Oh, and I love these desserts that are a shot of strong espresso with gelato, some caramel drizzled ontop with whipped cream. It's called affogato. Sometimes I'll order an extra shot of espresso to put in the dish.

 

b) Whenever I enter a new bedroom, I immediately know there is a certain side of the bed I must sleep on. I have no idea of what the criteria is (i.e. nearness to the exit, bathroom, windows, etc.) that makes one side preferable to the other. Luckily my husband defers this eccentricity to me. I think it might be a feng shui thing.

 

c) My left ear is slightly deformed as if something took a small bite out of the cartiledge on the top ridge. Most people don't notice this unless I point it out. I don't know why I sometimes point it out.

 

d) I still carry my crocheted turtle my mother made when I was 2 with me whenever I travel. It is also the one thing that if there were a fire has to come with me (aside from my family, natch)

 

e) I have an entire shelf of books dedicated to Jack the Ripper stories and research (plus a book on Grimm's Grimmest Fairy Tales). On the same shelf, I have a little basket of adorable amigurumi critters with sweet smiley faces. People who see this shelf laugh and say this set up is so totally me.

 

f) I prefer to drink my soda at room temperature and definitely without ice. I got this habit when I lived in Italy and the fridge was too small to keep anything more than a block of parmesan cheese and some milk. The same used to go for my chardonnay as well, which was convenient as I usually went through it more quickly than it would take for it to chill in the refrigerator.

 

Alrighty, here's my tag-ees. If your name is not on this list, it is not because I don't love you. I've probably already tagged you before or you've already done some version of this meme before. Or you've not done the memes I've tagged you for in the past. But feel free to do the meme anyway and/or yell at me. I'll take comments any way I can take them. The crickets over here are deafening.

 

First off, Steve of SoberSteve is back blogging (yeah!), so I've tagged him. If you get a chance, stop by and give him some love. I'm also tagging Confessions of a Serenephobic's MiseryMarketing, Lou of BrokenheartedMom, Kathy of Gospodi Pomiluj (man, I just love typing that blog name - it kicks ass) and This Can't Be It blog's Kel. Finally, my last meme victime is Timibe, who writes the blog Self Exposed to Self.

Late Blooming Bitch

Vicarious here has to admit to being rather late to the feminist table. I still don't fully know what being a feminist means to me. But from what I ken about it, the cool part is that I get to decide. I even get to shave my armpits if I so desire.

As such, I've been doing a lot of reading and found numerous voices out there, some I agree with, some less so. But many intelligent arguments about equality and inequalities and about human rights in general.

One of my favorite publications I discovered in this past two years is Bitch magazine. It is a non-profit publication that has survived much of the whoas of the print media business in recent years. But they too are struggling. So, for those of you who haven't read Bitch Magazine, get out there and do it. It is a great, eclectic read and extremely thought provoking. For those of who that have read it, I hope you loved it and want to join in the campaign to donate a few dollars to help keep it on its feet. Click on the weiner dog below, and it should take you to the donation site. This bitch gave to the cause. I don't want any bitches to be silenced. Thanks for listening to my impromptu public service announcement.

Updated 9/19:  As of yesterday, Bitch Magazine met their goal. Only three days! Apparently, many people didn't realize the publication was a non-profit. So, the Bitch goes on at least for another issue. They are still taking contributions, which will go to future issues. I'm just happy the mag is still around and has so much support.

Presenting the Preeminent PollyAndy

Someone came up with the ubiquitous measure of a person's disposition by asking the question of whether one sees the world as a glass half empty or half full. I'm a half full kind of gal. Although if you'd asked me when I was still drinking and my wine glass was half full, I would be thinking about how I was going to get my next refill. I was a good planner in not letting it get empty very often.

My 13 year old just finished his dinner and was reading about congruent angles in his brand-spanking-new geometry book and had one of those off on a tangent thoughts. Spike was generally absorbing what his father was explaining to him about the math, when he blurted out:

"Do you know what I think is a stupid question? When people ask if the glass is half empty or half full. It's perfectly obvious that the glass is always completely full. It's just half filled with liquid and half filled with air."

Then the boy genius goes back to geometry as if he didn't just answer the problem to most peoples' point of view.

Out of the mouths of babes. At what point is he too old for me to stop being amazed by the things that he comes up with?

Squandered Opportunities

I've said it before and I will say it again (for my own benefit as well, lest anyone be uncertain): anger gets a bad rap.

Now I'm not talking about rage-aholics or people who carry around resentments like a two humped camel. I'm not even talking about cranky old men or women who can't find anything positive to say about anything. What I am saying is that there are times when things have happened that anger is the appropriate response. How a person uses and acts on that anger is another story. But anger in and of itself is not an evil thing.

For example, I am angry about my childhood. I was treated badly. But I am not holding resentments (well, not so many) now about it. I think of it much in the same indignant way I would about any child abused by their parents. It is a terrible thing that should not happen. My anger is not specifically directed at my parents, although it kind of is. I don't know quite how to explain that except that it almost isn't me as their child and there is a sadness along with the anger for the innocence and relationships lost. But none of it is debillitating in terms of my current life and relationships. But so long as I told myself I should not be angry about it, that I had no right to be angry about it, I was in fact, crippling myself. The anger was still there, but it was directed inward instead. The shit I put myself through, while mostly subconscious, was as bad as what my parents did. It validated their abuse. It was an ugly mind fuck, keeping all that emotion in the dark.

The term HALT gets tossed around a lot in recovery-speak. For those not in the know, it's an acronym for Hungry Angry Lonely Tired. Most people in recovery are told to avoid HALT at all costs. Now, I'm not saying we should go around starving ourselves, but I think this is another one of those times when the folks are taking things too far into the serenity pool and just plain avoiding the problem. Alright, it is easy to take hungry and understand that you didn't eat and take care of that. (Although sometimes our hunger is for something other than food, and we fill ourselves up with some other inappropriate substance or acts in avoidance of doing the hard work of unflinching self-analysis.) Same goes for tired - get some rest. But I've seldom heard the advice for lonely and angry that the person experiencing it 1) continue to explore the feeling or 2) try to understand the root cause of where it is coming from. Mostly what I hear is: find someone to talk to, don't isolate, help another person, get out of yourself, blah dee blah blow blah.

An enormous mistake, in my opinion.

Frankly, I don't think it is any coincidence that when people are hungry and tired and their defenses are down, some of their anger, loneliness and other less pleasant emotions begin to leak out. You can pretend they are not there, suppress them, cover them with acts of kindness towards others, but the stubborn things will not go away until they are heard and understood. So, instead of trying to soothe the bad feelings back into submission next time they rear their ugly heads, I propose people jump in and figure out why the hell those feelings are there. And I'm not just talking about the immediate issues at hand (the dog pooped on the floor, my husband came home drunk again, I got passed over for the promotion) - I mean go into the deep dark fears and give your psyche a good shake out.

Anger exists for a reason. It is a warning signal that something is amiss. If we ignore it, we are not paying attention to our own needs.

You Look Mah-velous

Back in the 80s, Billy Crystal did a character called Fernando or something like that who was a rather fey dude that ponced around saying that it was better to look good than to feel good and that "you, dahling, look mahhhhhhvelous." I'm not entirely sure why it was funny, but it always made me dissolve into giggles. Maybe some of it had to do with being able to stay up after 11 p.m. when my parents were out on one of their few neighborhood dinners. The sense of doing something adult and bad made my sister and I giddy. And yes, this is how sheltered we were - that as young preteens watching Saturday Night Live was an "on the edge" thing to do.

When I was in rehab, I was assigned to a particular group counselor that I will call Arlene because that was her name. Arlene thought she was a sharp dresser. Arlene was not a sharp dresser. Arlene was a tacky dresser. But she did obviously spend a lot of time putting herself together each day. Arlene often gave the young women in my group the advice that we should spend more time making ourselves more presentable while in rehab because if we looked good on the outside, we'd start feeling better on the inside. She actually pulled me aside and told me that she was worried about me because it didn't seem like I was spending much time on my appearance. I was so livid after this little chat with Arlene, it was the only time in my six weeks of rehab I thought about throwing in the towel and going home. My roommate, who took Arlene's glamour advice and dyed her hair and fluffed up each day, left rehab early looking clean and attractive. Three weeks later she had relapsed and lost her job, her home and custody of her seven year old son. Her parents institutionalized her. I am not making this up. I found all this out on my 90 day anniversary. Kind of freaked me out. I really liked this roommate.

I did not care much for Arlene.

However, I do think that there are times to look mah-velous. The other day while in New Jersey I went to the lovely Short Hills Mall and bought myself a dress for my sister's wedding. It's an Elie Tahari and made out of the kind of material you can ball up in a suitcase and it will come out unwrinkled. I got it on sale, double marked down, plus I had a coupon with my store credit card account for another $50 off. I so love a bargain. The only thing that would have been more perfect is if it had been an XS instead of a small, but I think I might be happier with a fuller cleavage coverage the larger size gives me. The photos are of me in the dress. As you can see, I have not yet gotten the breast reduction surgery I so badly would like to have. Yes, the damn things are real. Trust me, it is a great thing to find a gorgeous dress off the rack for a 5' 1" under 100 lbs. chick with big boobs. Especially one that travels well and I can wear again. I just need to figure out how to keep the fabric put where it is a little loose. That is a minor miracle in shopping for me.

Last night I dreamt that while I was visiting my mother, she got some bad news that I assumed was about her health. She wouldn't tell me yet what was wrong as she was preparing some sort of big announcement. In my dream, I began to tell her that whatever it was, I would be there to support her in any way that I was able. Except when I was trying to speak, I had no voice. I kept trying to say the words, but I was mute, so I ended up just whispering it to her. I don't know if this was because I would not be there for her should the worst happen (unlikely) or because if she needed me in a major capacity, I would feel as if I were giving myself up.

Maybe I will be wearing this red (excuse me "Tokyo Rose") colored dress as armor at the wedding. I know I feel very good inside and I do want to reflect it on my outside. There was a time in my past I would have worn something much more subdued to my sister's big day, something schoolmarmish and wallflowerish. While I am not trying to show up the bride, I also don't want to fade into the background. Is that wrong of me? I don't know.

What I do know is that I don't want to lose my voice.