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Nine months & 2 days in -- touching the far shoreline and turning around

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Greetings from two days this side of the halfway point in this halfway house journey. It is hard to believe that this sabbatical is (at least) halfway over. If I am required to complete the entire sentence here, I have until April 11, 2007. Nine months ago, that seemed like an eternity. This evening, it just seems like another series of one-steps-at-a-time. I do not – am not – counting the days, spending any energy in anticipation of that day. That will be then – this is now.

There are ways that I am aware of the passage of time, here in this place and this time. For some reason, collecting a new set of linen every Tuesday evening, after another twelve hour day hustling on hard concrete in someone else’s store, seems to let me know that another week has passed. Certainly, my once a week 12-STEP meeting in Franklin is something that I do let myself look forward to, because it is always less than a week away. The small paychecks I collect at work elicit no particular thrill; the sporadic e-mails, calls and letters from you folks are worth so much more to me. In fact, I am learning that Skinner was right – variable interval reinforcement is the most powerful reward system, keeping me pushing the (e-mail) lever in hopes of another sweet pellet (your responses), coming without rhyme or reason, on no schedule but your own.

The last few weeks have had their share of trials and pleasures (including some guilty ones). In many other ways besides biding my time here, I feel like I am a turning point in my life. Just as I am now (finally) beginning to swim my way out of this federal cess-pool, turning my back to the once deep and distant shoreline and (finally) stroking toward freedom (of a sort, though one unlike the freedom I took for granted before), it feels like there are other things that I am beginning to swim away from. Other things I always took for granted would be there, but now feeling like that may no longer be the case.

Some of these things are very concrete – the news that a neighbor (not yet 50 years old) will likely be dead before I set foot on the land that I once shared with him and his wife, before I drive by the small tenant house on my farm where his first child was born, before I walk up the back road on my farm, across the hay fields that I still own to the homestead that he, his wife and their two children carved out of the Natchez trace ridge-land next to my place. I hope that is not the case, I hope that the judge grants me the weekly 12 hour pass to go home in order to work on my farm. (Thanks again to the 40+ of you who wrote the judge supporting that request.) Now that time at home will involve conversations with “Deputy Dan”, last of the Fly Holler wild men, who partied so hearty in the past that, one time, several of us tied him to a tree so that he could be the growling gargoyle ‘welcoming’ people to a long-ago harvest party. I hope to see Dan soon – before it is too late.

Some of the changes, though equally as painful, are not yet so clear. Since I wrote last, words (e-mails really) have passed between me and a family member that perhaps have long needed to be said. In writing those words, however, we may have ended all communication between us from this point forward. The potential separation is mutual and probably has for a long time been inevitable, but it is sad nonetheless.

And with the coming of fall, I am feeling the urge to get outside, to stop working under artificial lights and on hard, cold concrete floors, catching fleeting moments with my goddess (my garden) only when I can cram them in, mostly on my own time. I remain thankful for those brief moments, but right now, they no longer seem like enough. The store gardens have been a life-line and they continue to be. Just this weekend, I was able to show them off and discuss small-scale gardening with several dozen people at the store as part of the East Nashville Tomato Art Festival. But that garden time now seems hurried and harried, not as restful as it could be.

Other things have happened that have made me reflective, and restless. A “house” dorm-mate went into a diabetic coma two weeks ago and, for two hours, I was the only one who got out of bed to hold his head, and his arms and legs, to keep him from flailing away at the metal locker and bed-frame and the ungiving wall. When the firemen finally arrived, his blood sugar was down to 20. When, an hour later, the medics finally arrived, his blood sugar was down to 10. Despite trying hard, they could not find a vein that “worked”, puncturing him several times without giving him any relief. They (finally) took him out on a stretcher, me helping lift him out of bed while some dorm-mates grumbled about being kept awake so long. When everyone left and I lay back down in bed waiting for the last dark hour before getting up and going to work, it was easy to count my blessings. Earl (that dorm-mate) is finally home, but when I bumped into him last week, he said that he has already had another such seizure, been hauled away by the medics from his aged parents’ home. Five episodes in three months – how many lives do diabetics get, how many brain cells does Earl have left? Since we have no health care provided as part of this “cheap spa experience”, the Lord only knows.

And then after that early morning episode, I was awakened another night to help calm another resident who had tested “dirty” (for cocaine) at the “house” and was fearful that he was on the way back to prison. A relatively young man, spikes pierced through his chin, multiple earrings and gaudy, monotonous jail-house tattoos, talking about his four month baby girl, his fledgling business and his over-extended financial obligations, all of which would come crumbling down (or get carried away in the family-dissolving wind) if he were shipped back. What can any of us say at a time like that? I talked powerlessness and Higher Power with him for at least an hour, found a copy of the “12 and 12" and re-wrote the first Step to speak directly to him and his need to keep shoving white powder (soul-stealing powder) up his nose.

From his description of events, it sounded like he might be spared – that arrangements had been made by his PO (parole officer) to get him into yet another treatment program that would allow him to keep working – to keep his family. But the next morning, when I clocked out at 6:00 am, he was already waiting for the halfway house director, anxious to know what came next (perhaps knowing more about that calculus than he had been willing to share with me and other “residents” the night before). And when I returned 12 hours later, his was another empty bed, stripped of its linen, waiting for the next body, the next fleshy jail-house canvas, the next turning point-in-process (hopefully, in progress). All for the sake of two “bumps” of blow, not enough for much of a buzz – just enough to ruin what was left of his life for now. Something else for me to be thankful for -- that I was not in his shoes, that his stuffed-up and runny nostrils were not mine, that my “house” bed was not empty before its appointed time.

For now, I am one of the two longest remaining residents of the “house”. The warm, hard bodies come and go, more rapidly it seems these days. Each week, the dynamic of the dorm, of the “house”, changes with these new bodies, though it is up to me and the other “old school” residents to socialize these newbies fast. We are getting good at it, at least in Dorm 4 -- the “grown men’s” dorm. I am sleeping, I am healthy, I am working through the first days of soreness with the new weight-lifting routine, I am reading, and writing some too. Even here – even now – it is all good.

Tonight, before I started this note, I wrote a four page memo to a friend and former Wyoming substance abuse reduction colleague, giving my suggestions on how that state could evaluate its new drug courts statewide. I ended that memo by saying to that friend: “I hope these suggestions help you folks. They have helped me by reminding me of what I once did, and who I once was.”

What I once did, who I once was. I am told in 12-STEP not to regret the past, nor shut the door on it. I am learning not to fear the future, just to prepare for it. The seasons are changing and so am I (so are we). Much to be thankful for, much left to do.

In the last two weeks, I’ve heard from the people in British Columbia whose 400 acre farm I almost bought, when I briefly considered running across that northern border (at the suggestion of my first attorney) for my freedom. A beautiful land, in the mists and deep moss of Yale, BC (eight miles from Hope), a land where the Klondike Gold Rush trail began, with its trout-and salmon filled stream, its 40 foot waterfall, its Japanese-style spa close by, between the stream and the new cabin. Close to Vancouver, but snuggled next to 10,000 acres of empty Crown land. A perfect hideaway, it seemed, if I had only allowed myself to run. But I didn’t. And it turns out that the man who bought that land (and, according to its former owners, did not appreciate it) has now lost that land in a treaty dispute with a local Indian (Canadians would say “First Nations”) tribe. Once again, I dodged a bullet by doing the next right thing – by not running, by staying to face the American music and pay the government piper.

In the last two weeks, I’ve heard from an old Berkeley friend, responding to my last message with an update on what hasn’t killed her (yet). Marveling that our friendship has lasted 20 years now, through thickness and thinness. A little longer ago, checking my messages at my farm home to hear the lovely voice of a long-ago lover, calling alone from an elegant hotel in Washington, DC, a city where we first met (over a quarter century ago), where I first gathered the courage to ask her out after admiring her from across the NIH halls for months, where we hit it off warmly and well weeks before she left for Montana, for a year of writing and riding the rafts through the white water that coursed through your Big Sky college town. That former lover and long-time friend, calling me now (alone) from an elegant hotel to say that this was her first time back in DC since our time together there – and that she was thinking of me. Thank you, Martha. I like thinking of you too and of our brief, shiny times in DC, and New York City, and San Francisco and Yosemite. You are one of life’s blessings that I count at night, when the snores and the street-lights keep me awake here in the “house”.

And lastly, another magical mystery unfolds. I had shared my last diary entry with one of the counselors here at the “house” and a female resident overheard us talking about it. She asked for a copy and I gave her the only copy I had, with my e-mail address on the top. The next day, I found a message from her in my in-box, saying that she had read (and re-read and re-read) the first paragraph (what doesn’t kill us may make us sad ....”) And then she shared with me her own private horror, a life-changing experience that she is still processing (and likely always will be).
And with that note, I am beginning another conversation with another interesting soul, though we will likely only “speak” though our e-mails because of the gravity of what may be shared, preferring to remain silent otherwise in the loud and crowded “house”, though maybe sharing smiles and slight waves across the crowded halfway house rooms. There are many ways to share, and to be supportive, of each other, no matter where we are and how much time we have together. A few feverish weeks in DC begat a long-time and lasting affection, a few scholarly months in Berkeley birthed a quarter century of friendship and caring, a chance encounter in a halfway house creates a chance to be of service, or just be nice when no one else is looking or keeping count. More blessings, more blessings ...

There are more blessings, but it is all still unfolding. Change is in the air, thank God(dess). I wonder what the next few days and weeks and months will bring, now that I have pushed off from that far shoreline and am swimming my way back home. Come on in, folks, the water’s fine. To end tonight, I want to share (or to share again) a Hopi Elders prayer, which has been my mantra for a while now, since my life changed so abruptly a little shy of four years ago. It talks of the rushing rivers we all draw near to and what our choices always are. To sink or swin, or stall out on the shore. To panic or to paddle, to scream or to celebrate.

My thoughts and prayers are for and with you, and you, and especially you. Those I hear from and those I don’t. Those I speak to and those I won’t. With all of you. Now time for bed, for dreams, for the start of another week.

From the Hopi Elders

You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.
Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.

Here are the things that must be considered:
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?

Know our garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.

Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.

This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel like they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore,
push off toward the middle of the river,
keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.
See who is there with you and celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves!
For the moment we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lonely wolf is over. Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

-- The Elders, Oraibi, Arizona, Hopi Nation

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