Addiction
The Mundane & The Sublime
Now and then I get emails from writers who are also recovering alcoholics, asking me whether I found it difficult to write once I got sober. I tell them I did, but then writing’s always difficult. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it (and although some days it feels like everyone IS writing…
Read MoreWhere God Has Me
It’s been a difficult week. The Best Beloved and I just got back Montreal where we’d gone for my father-in-law’s funeral. Morris passed away on January 12th (which is, oddly, also the day on which my adoptive father passed away, back in 1993). My father-in-law, Morris, was a great guy. He owned a department store…
Read MoreStaying on that wagon…
I was chopping carrots the other evening and flipped the television to CNN’s Headline News channel. On a program called, Issues, Danny Bonaduce, somewhat infamous celebrity and one-time self-identified alcoholic, talked about why he chooses to drink again. It disturbed me, in part because as a person in recovery myself, I know how dangerous this…
Read MoreApril is the Cruelest Month
Angel, Passy Cemetery (photo by Ron Davis) April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. T.S. Eliott – The Wasteland Eliott was right, at least as far as my family is concerned. On Easter Sunday, April 6, 1996, my brother…
Read MoreA Simple Life….Beloved
Photo by Ron Davis – Newfoundland A couple of nights ago I watched the tail end of a television show about a serial killer. In this episode the serial killer in question was a goth rock star who had lost himself in his stage persona. At the end of the show a woman’s voice-over quotes…
Read MoreChaos vs Stillness – Writers' Habits
Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said “One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star.” Well, that‘s a poetic and hopeful concept for those of us who come from chaotic backgrounds. However, I’m not convinced that the life of such a tumult-born star can be sustained and nurtured in the…
Read MoreView from the mountaintop II – Spiritual journal
My last post was about the Monteagle Sunday School Assembly in Tennessee, where I went recently to lead a workshop on keeping a spiritual journal. In that post I talked about Monteagle and the people there. Today I’ll talk about the workshop itself. There’s a line in The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous about a…
Read MorePerspective
It’s easy to slip into obsessive thinking. It’s easy to lose our perspective and think our problems, our opinions, our troubles, are more important than they are. On my bad days, this is my view of the world (Thanks to Rev. Allan King for sharing the image with me.) I know that sometimes, when someone…
Read MoreDiscipline — for writers and drunks
As a writer, I have learned the benefit of regular habits. Although I realize some writers only scurry to the typewriter (oh, how I date myself!) when the inspiration strikes them, I am in agreements with March Heaton Vorse, who said, “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants…
Read MoreThe daughter of an alcoholic writes to the judge…
Looks attractive at first glance, yes? Earlier this week, a man called me from another city, a friend of my father’s. I’ll call him Joe. Joe has thirty days sober — made it through the holidays — but was having a bad day, full of anxiety, and was afraid he was going to drink again.…
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