A Hard Pass

Getting from Dawn to Dusk and Back Again

The Goddess of Chaos, Eris, setting out from the bunker toward a mountain pass

Our path ahead is unclear. The world and the people in it seem to be at a distance today. Nothing has changed but everything is different. We, collectively, are here now; those of us who are still alive and breathing. The further I go, the more I see the long view. The present is a compilation of everything that has gone on before. What’s next?

“A Hard Pass” is the title here. A new day is dawning. I feel at the moment that I am going to give this day “A Hard Pass” in the way that the term is used so often. Words are not forming into meaningful sentences. Sometimes, words fail.

Words are what we have to work with, however, so I will attempt to tell something of the current experience of life.

I am up and dressed. My wife will be getting a “Lyft” out to work today. She doesn’t want us to lose our parking place here in the neighborhood since the “snow-crete” persists. I’m grateful that she is still gainfully employed and will likely remain so through the next 9 years or so until she reaches retirement age. Fingers crossed! There is nothing constant but change.

Now that she’s on her way to work, I can sit down and write with intent. I’m looking at the world situation from my vantage point here in Washington, DC. Like everyone else, I have my perspective colored by my life experience and circumstances.

I was going to dive into an assessment of the global situation, but I took a bit of time to write a gratitude list.

Grateful:

- to have remembered anonpress.org/bb

- for AA.org which puts the program of AA into my hands with the click of a button

- to be

- for breathing

- for sobriety

- for all who receive these gratitude lists, especially you.

- for another day in “the bonus round”

- for all those who’ve shared their experience with me.

In sharing it, a fellow originally from the mean streets of Providence, Rhode Island who is now down in Florida replied:

Thanks, every day is gravy.

Now this immediately put me in mind of this poem from Raymond Carver:

GRAVY

No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.
Gravy these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”
he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don’t forget it.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1988/08/29/gravy

So it is. Every breath I take is another gift of the fact that I too, like Raymond, have stopped drinking. He was given another decade in which to plow his furrow. I understand that this poem was published in teh New Yorker shortly after he passed away from lung cancer.

It’s always something of a small world experience to me. The trick is to find our own voice and to use it to help others find theirs. We use words to connect with each other at depth, ideally. So it goes.

I was very fortunate to have had the life I have led to this point. I have to remind myself of this constantly.

On May 3, 2007, I met my wife on something of a “blind date” as these things go these days. I had been fishing around in the DC area since moving up here for a stable relationship. I had revisited one from my past as well. Everything that happened ended up informing the person I am today. I digress…often.

Lynn and I have been married now since May 3, 2008. We had the Reverend Ginger Gaines-Cirelli officiate. For this, I am profoundly grateful, and hope, in some small measure, to have had a positive influence through amplification of this pastor’s voice. Sometimes it isn’t about using my own voice. Others’ voices are, if not more important, at least as important as my own voice, you know?

I don’t know, as I have remarked in a past post. I just know how things seem to me and I could be mistaken, so I leave myself open to receiving new information; or, at least I try to remain open. I mean, someone just recently had the good graces to attempt to educate me on why I ought not hold back a sneeze…something I do from time to time. I wasn’t terribly receptive to this information and it came from a member of my “Board of Directors” too…in other words, a paying subscriber of “Harrowings” which is the publishing arm of the Harold B Gill Foundation, LLC. I am profoundly grateful to her for having the boldness to attempt to make a suggestion, and I will take it into consideration. I don’t take direction well, I find. I can only strive to do better in the future.

Meanwhile, the world outside goes on all around. I will go out later today to see the monks on their “Peace March.” I hope to tag up with some friends of mine as well in the process. We shall see how it unfolds.

One thing is certain. We, collectively, are co-creating this world we live in. We are responsible for how it goes while we have breath in our bodies and the ability to articulate ourselves. So, what’s it going to be?

Let me hear from you. I am genuinely interested in what you have to say. Furthermore, if you’d care to be my guest on the Harrowings Podcast, just shoot me a Direct Message. Click below to do that:

Onward!