Poetic Writing

Yesterday I went to an early meeting and then met with a sponsee afterward for coffee and talk.  Leaving him for home and chores, I checked my email and found one from someone in the program who I barely know. This guy knew from some of my blogs that I really like an author named David Richo --- so he thought I'd like to know that David was doing a book signing at a local bookstore that afternoon.  I called the sponsee I'd just met with to let him know about the book signing because we had just been talking about some of Richo's books while we'd talked earlier that morning.  Both my sponsee and I were able to go to the book signing, he with his wife.  It was an amazing afternoon.

Richo's most recent book, "Being True to Life: Poetic Paths to Personal Growth" talks about how both the reading and writing of poetry can become an important part of one's spiritual work or practice.  As he was talking, he mentioned that many of us have had some really bad poetry teachers in our lives and that the damage done to poetic literature has been devastating.  That was the reason for his writing this book.  He dedicated it to all his poetry teachers.

As he talked about the book, I remembered back to college when I was taking a poetry class that I now realize killed off in me what had been a budding love of writing poetry.  This professor began the class by telling us that there was no one correct interpretation of a poem, that they were all open to a multitude of interpretations.  The class grade was going to be based on one midterm exam and a final exam.  None of the other work that we would turn in (mostly our interpretations of various poems) would have any impact on our grades.  I really enjoyed the class and the poetry it exposed.

The midterm was one question: interpret a single poem.  Several weeks later, I was devastated when I got my midterm back because on it was an "F".  Apparently I had found the one incorrect interpretation of this poem.  I somehow escaped the class with a C- (the final was to write a limrick and the only challenges were to not make it obscene and to avoid plagiarizing someone else's work) but yesterday I realized that after that class, I never again risked writing a poem.  In fact, I don't think until recently that I ever gave a poem more than a cursory onetime reading (Richo says any poem takes several readings before the meaning can be even lightly touched).  I interpreted all poems as "blah, blah, blah..." --- nothing of value.

I see now that in recent years I've slowly been recovering from this poetically damaging event back in college.  Poetic recovery began shortly after I got sober, which is when I developed a weird habit of memorizing certain passages or writings that I've found to be "beautiful" or "true".  By memorizing, I mean reading and reciting "beautiful" lines and paragraphs again and again and again and again....until they became song-like, musical and could be recited/sung aloud during long commutes to/from work every day...  Now I realize that many of these types of passages are the essence of poetry.  They are words that have somehow captured a deep truth about life and this truth has somehow struck me to my core.  I told this to Richo yesterday and he told me that the word "core" means our "heart".  That rung true for me.

I also shared with Richo that some months ago, I bought several more of his books---including this one on poetry.  What was strange, I told him, is that while he's becoming one of my favorite writers, I simply couldn't open this one particular book.  It's been sitting on my nightstand for weeks now and I couldn't get myself to open it.  Poetry was of absolutely no interest to me.  Yesterday, I understood why.  His sub-title contained the word "poetic"!  He laughed and said that when they were getting the book ready for publication, the original title had had the word "poetry" in the main title but they removed it because they were afraid that it would scare many people off!  So "poetry" got relegated to sub-titled status as a mere adjective.  And it still scared me off!

I also realized yesterday that I had fallen away from my routine of blogging.  It's been a month since my last blog.  In fact, CJ commented on my last blog yesterday and let me know that she was missing my blogs and wanted to know where I was.  I was glad to be missed.  [Of course, I wanted to snap back, "CJ, where have you! been!  Blog yourself!!!  Course, I wouldn't say something so mean and judgmental.]

I'd gotten distracted with other aspects of my life and my recovery and blogging had gotten pushed to the background.  Yesterday, I realized that writing is very important to me and my recovery.  I don't see blogging as poetry --- although sometimes I suppose there's "poetic" bits and pieces that accidentally get wedged in all the flow of words.  I want to play more with poetry soon.  Blogging comes easily to me.  I suspect that poetry takes more work, more discipline.  Editting.  Slicing/Dicing.  Listening.  Watching.  Being still.  Struck silly.

Yuck!  ;-}

OK, I'm back.  Will try to be more regular with the blogging.  Might share some of my poetry once I'm satisfied it's "done".  Cooked to imperfection.

Take care!

Mike L.

Wondering "What If?"

Sorry that I haven't been blogging much recently, but I've been involved in a lot of work-related issues related to the economy and I've had to focus on those issues. Like many businesses these days, we've been struggling and last week we had to institute a layoff of about 10% of our non-attorney staff. Among those laid off was someone in my department and I was in the uncomfortable position of having to decide which one of my staff would be laid off. I really don't want to go into that here, but I did walk through that process focused on trying to be as compassionate and kind as I could, while at the same time trying to be loyal as an employee to a company that very well might fail if those in responsibility for managing its affairs do not do what's good for the whole firm.

Even before that process was over though, I began to play with the initially fearful idea: what would happen to me and my family if I was the one being laid off? While some might think paying attention to such "what if?" scenarios, I've found it helpful to give such fearful ideas a little room to play and to be played with. Not all that long ago, when I was drinking, I typically ran from such fears by anesthetizing myself with alcohol. Recovery has been teaching me new ways to deal with such normal albeit fearful life events.

This game playing involves brainstorming a list of things that I could do were I to lose my job, either through a layoff (unlikely but possible in my circumstance) or through a failure of our business (more possible in today's world). Over several days, the list grew to about five:

1. Become a truck driver
2. Go back to teaching high school religion
3. Go back to studying for the priesthood and become a priest
4. Become an author
5. Find a job similar to what I have now, except with another law firm

In brainstorming, you don't get bogged down with analyzing or criticizing or eliminating any ideas that float to the surface. They come up, you write them down. Once I had my initial list, I decided to let my wife in on the process: again, something that does not come natural to me. She's very strong and opinionated: just they way she should be! I decided to let her in on this because I knew that there was a certain part of me that was beginning to stress over the fears associated with losing my job and that this fear was going to come into our relationship, for good or bad, whether I liked it or not.

So, last week, I decided one night to tell my wife that I was actually feeling some fear about the security of my own job and how well we might survive were I to lose my job. Actually, I didn't "decide" to do that. One night, she asked me to start talking to her about anything... I don't seem to talk much and our life together had been seeming to fall into a too comfortable for me routine of getting up, going to work, coming home, walking the dog, reading in bed, rubbing her foot, and going to sleep (some details withheld). I told her that I really didn't have anything to say, at least, nothing to say that wasn't stressful. She said to tell her anyway. I did. I said that I was worried about losing my job and how we would be able to handle it. She responded immediately that that thought was very depressing! I told you she was strong and opinionated!

We laughed and then talked this through somewhat. Before falling off to sleep, I began making my "what if?" list of things that I could do if I lost my job. First thing that came to me was becoming a truck driver. I'm driving all the time it seems anyway (my commute to/from work is a little over two hours). I'm always seeing "We Need Drivers!" signs pasted on the back of semi-trucks. Not sure what it pays, but it would be something that would bring in some income. In addition, the more I thought about it, the more attractive this job seemed to me: I would get to travel to different places, go to different AA meetings, meet new people, have time to blog, and this would get me and my wife out of this rut that we're in.

That night I had a dream where I was applying for my old teaching job and I woke up with a start. Hey, I could go back to teaching! The initial problem though with this idea is that most often these days I consider myself to be an ex-Catholic, a non-Christian...on my good days. I'm sometimes an agnostic (where I wonder if God exists), sometimes a theist (although I'm never too clear on the God of my own understanding and more clear on the God of my misunderstanding). Suppose that might be an obstacle, but I decided that I could be honest about this with folks and let them in on the freedom that I've found and how I could really help these students walk through all the normal questions they have about God and what the do or don't believe. That's really all I did when I taught in Catholic high schools back in the early '80s. I helped them with their wonderings. I challenged their comfortable beliefs that they felt they "had" to believe to satisfy the expectations of their parents and others.

The next day, I thought of the weird possibility of my returning to the Jesuits and becoming a priest. Sure, there are a couple of hurdles with this. But I decided to play with this a little. This option could be just a "worst case" option for me if nothing else panned out. I didn't spend much time with this idea at all, but it was a fun one to share with my wife when I eventually shared my list with her... When I told her the idea of becoming a priest, she laughed and said that I couldn't do that because I was married. I laughed back and said that while we would have to get a divorce, apparently my being a priest would not prevent us from continuing to have great and frequent sex! She got a nice laugh out of that one.

Another idea also came to me about becoming an author, writing a book. That dream of becoming an author has been with me for some time and was actually the genesis of this blog. Blogging was a simple attempt to "do something" along the lines of writing an actual book. When I began playing with this idea, I came up with some general ideas about a book that I would like to write: it would be on the use of memorization in the recovery process. I have come across several other AAs who've used memorization to enhance their recovery: Chuck C. (Chamberlain) used to memorize things from the Big Book and elsewhere. Dr. Earle did also. I actually got the idea for using memorization from watching a man in a meeting recite the AA Preamble from memory while everyone else read it together from a little card at the beginning of that meeting. I was struck that this AA Preamble must really mean something to him if he went to the trouble of memorizing it. So I stole one of those cards and began what has become an essential and daily part of my recovery program. Over the last seven years, I've memorized a ton of stuff from various AA and non-AA literature. If I were to recite all of these things one right after another, it would take me close to three hours.

When I shared the idea of writing a book with my wife, she innocently asked, what would you write about? I initially told her that I didn't want to talk to her about that because she might be critical of what I was planning and I was too sensitive to take criticism about this area of my life right now. This hurt her because I was choosing to keep something from her. After some painful moments between us, I did decide to tell her that the book would be about "recovery" and that sort of hit her in a soft painful spot in our relationship. She's someone jealous of my "recovery life" because she doesn't feel part of it. We're still not really done talking this one through, but it was important for me to let her in on this dream of mine even if it's difficult.

Now that I'm done with my "what if?" playing, I've noticed that I'm no longer anxious about the future in terms of my job or what might happen with it. In fact, I'm realizing that I don't need to sit passively by and wait for life to happen to me. I can get off my ass and take steps to make it happen. Talking about my book here was a first step in that process. I will not commit to begin drafting titles for this book (a Title is the most important part of writing for me....) and to making an outline of chapters and to drafting a preface which tells my story and how memorization has become a most important part of my recovery.

Take care!

Mike L.