Wile E. Coyote

I’ve sat on both couches and in almost every chair in the apartment at least once this morning. I’ve walked from one room to another innumerable times and have even lain down on the living room floor for a while trying to come up with something to write about. It’s not usually a struggle for me, but for some reason today my mind is a complete blank.

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Sleep

Sunday, March 7th was the first day of National Sleep Awareness Week, and, predictably, I was woken out of a dream at 6 o’clock in the morning by the unremitting sound of a car alarm going off on the street outside my window.

Subsequently, I stumbled onto the fact that it was Sleep Awareness Week when I realized I couldn’t possibly go back to bed and decided, rather crabbily, to just get up. So I went into the kitchen to heat some water for tea and turned on the radio. That’s when I heard the good news.

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Palladin

I finally got tired of my daughter hogging the Netflix queue with all her reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I asked her recently to add some things in that I might be interested in, too.

With Netflix there’s a wide selection of movies, internet downloads, old TV shows and such, and as we went through the list of available items, we came across one of my favorite TV shows from the early 1960s, Have Gun—Will Travel, with Richard Boone as the hired gunman, Palladin.

“Perfect,” I announced. “Put it in.”

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The Next Right Thing

I’m amazed the Valentine’s Day flowers I gave my wife last week are still blooming. Even more, I’m amazed I gave them to her in the first place.

When it comes to much-hyped events like Valentine’s Day and other such holidays concocted by advertising executives, I’m a bit of a grouch. I don’t take well to being told what to do, or, more importantly, what to feel. Nevertheless, since I’ve been sober, I’ve also learned that it’s possible for me to do the next right thing, whether I want to or not.

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Follow the Plow

I was driving up to Connecticut in the snow the other day to visit my sister when the light dusting the weathermen had predicted became more like a raging blizzard and the highway I was on suddenly got icier and harder to see. My sister had just lost both of her beloved longtime pets to natural causes within two weeks of each other and was feeling the incredible loss of what were family members to her.

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Contemplating Shangri-la

Shangri-la has finally come to my neighborhood. The Shangri-la Express, that is. Described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton, "Shangri-La" is a mystical, harmonious valley at the western end of the Kunlun Mountains, a mythical Himalayan utopia—a permanently happy land, isolated from the outside world.

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Becoming Different

Change is not the most popular word in an alcoholic’s vocabulary, but it’s one that cannot be ignored. For me, over the years, its perception and ultimate implementation in my life has, well, changed.

As an active alcoholic, change was something to be avoided at all costs, that is, of course, unless it somehow meant me getting more of what I wanted. If everybody else was willing to change to suit my particular needs and perception of how the world should be, then change was indeed something to be exalted, encouraged, and embraced with open arms.

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"I See You"

My friend John G. was admitted to the intensive care unit of a Staten Island hospital quite a number of years ago after a long period of uncontrolled boozing and drug use. He was admitted in a blackout and, as he told it over the years, had no idea where he was when he eventually cleared up enough to care. It certainly wasn’t his first hospitalization for alcoholism and drugs, or his last, but it always provided a moment of levity for those of us who knew John.

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The Gray Zone

When I was younger, I wanted things in life to be either black or white. It’s like I had an overwhelming need for things to be one way or the other. Anything in between caused me to think too much, and my thinking capacity was easily compromised.

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An Ounce of Prevention

I was happily eating a crunchy toasted almond granola bar yesterday when an old filling in one of my back teeth fell out. Suddenly there was something not so tasty that I was chewing on and I knew right away things weren’t quite right. Either the granola bar was filled with pebbles, or it was time to visit the dentist.

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