Trust and WTF?

I used to take at face value the things people said to me, more often than not. I think this was a reflection of my codependent tendencies. If my intuition was fairly screaming that something weird was going on or that someone was lying, I would push that down and reassure myself that they were telling the truth. I think I did this most often because I wanted to feel respected and loved, and the idea that people I cared about might lie to me, deceive me or betray me was too acutely painful. 

I am not sure whether this denial of mine made me come off as a total rube or as having made a tacit agreement to not rock the boat, but it was a definite pattern. Looking back on the many times I also lied and people took what I said at face value or at least didn't question it, it seems I have been in a dance of mutual deception many times in my life. 

When my love swears that she is made of truth, 

I do believe her, though I know she lies, 

That she might think me some untutored youth, 

Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties. 

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, 

Although she knows my days are past the best, 

Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue: 

On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed. 

But wherefore says she not she is unjust? 

And wherefore say not I that I am old? 

Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust, 

And age in love loves not to have years told. 

    Therefore I lie with her and she with me, 

    And in our faults by lies we flattered be. (Wm Shakespeare, Sonnet 138)

For some reason, over the past year or so, I have been transitioning into basically not believing what people tell me if my intuition is telling me something strange is going on. In some ways, I think it has been benefiting me to trust my intuition rather than other people. I think it has helped me develop more of a compass, more discernment and more of a sense of how to protect myself. 

However, it sometimes feels like I have over-corrected. I have tended toward paranoia at times, which is a distinct feature of the alcoholic mind anyway. Sometimes I fantasize about not being in a position to either trust or mistrust anyone. That is, if I had no feelings or attachment at stake at all, regarding anyone. Total gaps, drops, silences and strange changes in communication patterns mean nothing at all to me when they are occurring in regard to an acquaintance or in a situation where it doesn't matter that much to me. But knowing someone I would like to interact with is on their phone, connected in some way to both texting and social media, but is ignoring me or leaving me on read— that is an unsustainable situation. 

I wonder what would happen if I just said "I don't believe you" in a matter of fact way, every time I don't believe someone? I guess that's pretty much annoying af. I also wonder what would happen if I made a commitment to radical honesty regarding social situations. "I know I agreed to have dinner with you tonight, but now I just don't feel like it, maybe another time." Instead of telling that kind of truth, I'm still drawn to the "little white lie" of "I'm sick" or "Something came up at work" or "my phone died." 

I actually don't use that excuse, because anyone who knows me well enough knows that I am fucking addicted to my phone, and I *never* let it die. Ever. I guess I could use some of the elaborate excuses I've heard like "Oh, I ran my phone over but got it fixed this morning," or "I dropped my phone in the toilet!" or whatever. 

It's definitely the case that my intuition is often telling me that *something* is going on that is not being communicated. But in this case, any effort on my part to confront or get clarification is met with what I take as very artful dodging and denial. And my intuition continues to sound the alarm. But I know that this might just be post-traumatic hypervigilance due to the catastrophes of a lifetime of bullshit, so it's a weird situation. 

Not good. 

Three Sundays Unplugged and Why Self Help Books Don't Work (part 1)

Yesterday was the third Sunday in a row that I took my own self-created "Absolutely No Media or Devices Challenge." I slipped a little yesterday in putting on my FitBit when I started working out, just out of habit. I decided it didn't really matter that much and left it on. But otherwise, no computer, no phone, no music. I don't own or watch television, so none of that anyway. 

These Sundays have been an immense, profound blessing. Even just one day like this reboots the system. I find an inner calm and level of spaciousness that simply does not happen for me on days when I am connected. My dreams are vivid, I sleep longer and better. I read print books and write by hand. I can focus on working out when I am doing it, rather than stopping every now and then to check media. 

These days have also made it clear to me how addicted I am to social media and mediated communication. For the past several years, so much of my community and social energy has poured into Facebook and other mediated electronic forms of interaction. Having done some research on why Facebook and other forms of media are so addictive, I don't feel quite so defective in that regard. The shit is designed to be addictive. 

I have pretty much pulled the plug on Facebook and moved to MeWe, which, for the moment, promises privacy. 

I am going to reconfigure many of my other ways of using the internet to try to maximize privacy as well. 

I mean, geez, if you can't have privacy in Hades, wtf?

Part of the way I spent yesterday was reading The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller.  I like the book, although it is at times poorly written and he needed a much more vigilant editor. This is a frequent lament of mine when it comes to "self help" books. Some of my favorite authors in this genre really just are not very good writers. 

The general advice from Weller is: make space for grief, create ritual for grief to be invited to appear, and grieve wildly, openly and powerfully. He includes a lot of the usual weird psychotherapist anecdotes, which always make me uncomfortable because they read like fiction, and he also includes the usual cultural criticism about how bad evil wrong bad wrong evil "modern society" is. Yes, Francis, we are all just emotionally empty zombies addicted to fear with absolutely no emotional resources or soul whatsoever, awesome, very insightful. 

I do generally resonate with the book. A lot of it would be stunningly obvious to anyone who has done any kind of processing work whatsoever. 

The main issue I have with it is not my snarky snipes above. It's that, like so many self help books, it is almost *hermetically sealed*. That is, it is nearly 100% inner. So many stories of people who were all bottled up and sad, went to "grief rituals" and blew their tops and wept and pounded the earth and wept some more, and (huge lacuna) their lives were changed forever. In that huge lacuna lies the shadow. That is— action. 

Behavioral fucking change.

Like, actually changing your life. By making new decisions and choices that lead to new experiences. "Such and such client of mine was wracked by self hatred. She went to a grief ritual and realized all of those stories about how worthless she was were wrong. She grieved and her life was changed." Um, excuse me, but having had similar experiences I know for a fact that I can enter sacred ritual space and have catharsis out the ass but then return to my quotidian life and NOT ONE goddamned thing changes. 

Yes, the inner experience is important and may even be a precursor to certain kinds of life change. But does Weller ever say to his clients: "Okay, great, you got the message. Now you know that you are not worthless and loathsome. Now: go back to your life and change it. Get rid of your boyfriend who reinforces your feelings of worthlessness. Find new livelihood that reflects your inner feeling of self care. Change your diet. Exercise. Get more therapy. Your life will only be brought into alignment with this deep inner realization you have had if you change your behavior. If you start making self-loving decisions that reflect your newfound feelings of self worth, your life will change. Otherwise, it will not."? If he does, he doesn't mention it in the book. 

He repeatedly mentions how much courage it takes to face dark and difficult emotions. In my opinion, while this is clearly true, it takes far more courage to change one's actual behavior. To rearrange one's friendships to include more people who validate exactly who you are. To end relationships that are impossible within a framework of self care. To find ways to transition out of numbing behaviors. To take oneself seriously and to love oneself not only as a feeling state but in action, in decision, in one's very life story. This is the work that takes courage, once the inner epiphany has been had. 

Without it, for me personally, I could weep and pound on the ground and be witnessed in grief and witness others until the last ding dong of doom (pace Faulkner) and not much would change in my actual life. I may even grow resigned and dejected to a greater degree. "I confronted my demons, I had the catharsis! When do I get the golden ring of happiness?" For me, I get it when I get off my ass and make life changes. That's how it works for me. 

The self help books that provide a framework for actual behavioral change are the ones I find myself drawn to now. Making a Change for Good by the wonderful Cheri Huber, for example. Although, even that is essentially introverted, with that same old self help basic theory that if you just reset your inner attitude and treat yourself better, change will be easier. 

Even Pema Chödrön gets caught, saying things like "you can never love others until you love yourself." I see the partial truth of it, and I think self love is a worthy goal, but I think the absolutism is horseshit. In fact, stumbling toward loving others and myself simultaneously, in all of that bloody, messy splendor, seems much more real. The idea that self love is the foundation for being able to love others seems like a weird, false promise. 

For me, actual life change is fucking difficult no matter what my inner attitude is. For weeks now, for example, I have been realizing that I would like to go for a run in the morning, shortly after I get out of bed. In spite of wanting to make that change, which would completely rearrange my day, since running takes a lot of prep (I'm old, I have to stretch a lot) and is a relatively big chunk of time, I have not once even tried it. As the afternoons and evenings get hotter here in Hades, it will be even more appealing. Why haven't I tried it yet? I am not beating myself up about it, I do not need an inner catharsis or big dramatic emotional experience to run in the morning. I haven't tried it because *behavioral change is difficult* even when I am my own best friend. 

This becomes even more the case in the face of addictions, of course. The main thing I love about 12 step recovery is it is explicitly NOT self help. Once some of the minor inner adjustments are made, 12 step recovery is a program of ACTION. Like, in the actual world. Where we live. 

Another cycle turning

Getting close to the end of semester 8 in the slog toward the PhD and it's been probably the most hands on, tangible semester of work directly related to the dissertation yet. It is no surprise, after having been immersed in this process for 4 school years, that some people take a lot longer than 5 or 6 years to complete their degree. If I had not been self directed and a very strong advocate for myself along the way, I could have taken a great many detours and ended up wasting a lot of time. My advising has been not so great and the department doesn't really map out a very clear path either, so I have had to stay vigilant for sure. 


I went in not having any idea at all what I was going to study, other than in the most general ways. By the end of year one, I still didn't know what I was doing, but I started to have a stronger sense of distinct categories research might fall into. My original idea was to do a cross disciplinary dissertation that included a chapter on ecotourism and small scale economies that might benefit from that in my study area. But by the end of the second year, I had discovered that the inclusion of social and economic policy would require almost a second PhD, so I narrowed things down. 

The next two years were about learning what the goal was. No one told me that the goal is to write a dissertation that is basically 3 or 4 journal articles. I made the mistake of enrolling in a dissertation prospectus writing seminar at the beginning of year three that was led by humanities professors. So my original prospectus, which they loved, was not in the right format for a science PhD. I revised it twice with extensive feedback from each committee member between January and November, and finally advanced.

Advancing to candidacy meant I could more aggressively pursue funding. I crowd funded about $4000, which was great. Pursued a few grants. The $8,200 price tag of getting some DNA sequencing done for one chapter was about 80% paid by the crowd funding and grants, with some of my own funds thrown in. Coming up, another full plate of 95 samples for about $7000 for a population genetics chapter, and, again, that looks like it will be about 80% funded by grants. Of course, I would have preferred 100% project funding from outside sources, but I have done the entire PhD with no funding from my lab or my committee chair other than some half RA's over the summers. I haven't been able to secure grants from science granting agencies either. The grants I have gotten have been from private clubs of aficionados of the organisms I'm studying. All of my attempts to get grant funds from peer reviewed agencies have been kicked back. I think this has been a reflection of my being completely ignorant of the conventions of my field. I am only now beginning to understand how to write a research grant that has a shot at getting past a peer review process. I'm sure as I finish the chapters for the dissertation and send them out to peer reviewed journals, I'll get even more practice. 

There's definite resonance between the theme of tripping through Hades and getting a PhD. 

Sobering

Fourteen years of sobriety today. Grateful, humbled and kind of weirded out. 

Time is very strange. It absolutely does not seem like fourteen years since I got sober on Easter Sunday, 2004. It's not that a whole ton of life hasn't happened over that time, because of course it has. It's more like all of that time just seems to have vanished. And I can project forward and realize that in fourteen years, I will be an impossible 70 years old, if I am still here. 

The logarithmic theory of time consciousness (tm) explains why our perceptions are this way as we get older. That is, each unit of time, no matter how you count it, is a smaller portion of our total experience, and so seems shorter by comparison, the more time we experience. At 4 years old, the next year marks a full 20% of our existence. At 56, the next year marks a mere 1.8% of our total experience. In this way, each constant unit of time shrinks by comparison. We wouldn't use seconds to talk about the time between the Pleistocene and now. We perhaps should not use years to talk about the time between when I was, say, 30, and now. Instead of years piling up, it begins to feel like large swaths of time pile up. Not quite decades, but you get the idea. 

I do not feel 56 and I do not feel 14 years sober. If I had to peg an age on how I feel, most days I would say I guess I feel about 36. And I feel one day sober, most of the time. Like: today. It's a cliche of the program, but it's true for me. 

What does sobriety mean to me? Literally, life. As I bottomed out 14 years ago, I was combining huge quantities of ethanol with benzos, quite frequently. Nearly every night, 12-18 beers, 5-7 shots of Wild Turkey 101 and an ativan, or two. Many mornings, it was a distinct possibility that I would not wake up. When I looked back, I realized I was terrified of dying but at the same time secretly hoping I would "accidentally" die. This is a dark, despairing and torturous way to live. 

But far more than just being alive, which in and of itself has no essential value, I get to be conscious. I get to experience my life and remember it. I get to learn how to show up for it, in spite of mistakes, sometimes very serious ones. I get to have an experience of living a life with purpose. I get the gift of being useful to others. I get to be free, to the extent that our conditioned existence ever permits freedom. In particular, I get to be increasingly free within my consciousness. This in itself is the greatest gift of all. 

It may be the case that the most precarious existence of all is played out in addictive behaviors of all kinds. One of my old mentors in AA, may she rest in peace, used to say "That which manages you is your God." To be managed by dependence on ethanol is a miserable existence. Or dependence on another human being, who is, after all, human. Or on gambling, or spending, or food. The maddening irrationality of the addict is particularly reflected by our weird choices to rely 100% on the most unreliable things. On substances and behaviors that leave us deserted, hollow, abandoned and full of despair. 

In fact, the clearest conception I have of my higher power is that "it" is reliable. It is the only reliable connection. I mean, my higher power is "reliability." The experience of connection is the same as an experience of a ground of being, somewhere solid to put my feet. What's wild about this existential sense is that I don't need "God" in order to experience it. I am an atheist. But I have a higher power. I try to explain this to a lot of people in recovery and only some seem to understand. 

Anyway, it seems like another way to frame learning how to live sober is that I have developed ways to bring myself into alignment with reality. With what is. And in a metaphysical way, with an existential sense of "isness" that is a ground of being. Of all the things I get to show up for, this seems the greatest gift. If I align myself with that experience, my life unfolds with weird and mysterious logic. 

Balance

The topic last night's speaker at the CoDA meeting chose was balance. She picked up her 11 year recovery chip. 

It occurred to me that "balance" is the perfect counterweight (pun intended) to precariousness. Simple. 

Maintaining balance while remaining open and loving and not slipping over into precarious-land seems like a good way to practice this recovery. 

After my extensive step 1 inventory, I'm beginning to have a step 2 experience. The opening script of the CoDA meeting says "no longer do we have to rely on others to be our higher power." Of course this is the essence of the precarious way of life. As I begin to believe that a power great than myself could restore me to sanity, I realize that means I am essentially okay no matter what anyone else says or does or decides or feels. The center of gravity begins to move to my own center. North on my compass is set by me. 

It's beginning to feel like a huge change, finally, after more than a year of being stuck at step 1. 

Normal, ordinary, natural misery

A great many people read through the lists of codependent patterns and exclaim, "Isn't everyone codependent then? Everyone does all of these things!"

This is an interesting defense strategy. In some ways, it's similar to how I perceived the behavior of others when I was a drinker. "What? I don't have a problem! All of my friends drink exactly like I do!"

But in other ways, it is perhaps true. Whatever truth it contains is a reflection of how shabby our "normal" is. Of how little we value the skills of humane relating and honest communication. 

Anyway, what do I know about "everyone"? Nothing at all. I know about my experience and I know in a rough way what causes my misery and I now know that there are some tools that stand a chance of alleviating most of it. 

This is where step 2 kicks in. 

Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore us to sanity.

Putting aside any questions about exactly what the hell that power is, it is clear to me that I am going to need a connection with something reliable that is "greater than myself" to get a foothold on sanity. In fact, one of the facts of codependency is the habit of making *other people* (in particular that one special hostage) one's "higher power." It follows that, if I am going to begin to experience some freedom from codependence, I am going to have to let go of other people as a hoped for anodyne to my insanity. 

I was thinking last night about my high tolerance for discomfort. But it occurred to me that I have a monumental tolerance only for *familiar* discomfort. Unfamiliar discomfort— ironically, discomfort out of my comfort zone— I avoid with extreme efforts. 

For example: the familiar misery of loneliness as a result of donning so much armor that no one gets to know me. The familiar misery of holding on tight in order to be certain I am loved. The familiar misery of accepting shitty situations as a reflection of not being worth better situations. 

But the unfamiliar misery of trust? The unfamiliar misery of letting go? The unfamiliar misery of trying something new in order to have a new experience? I have close to zero tolerance for these things, in my life history. I am getting much better at venturing into the unfamiliar though, especially as the familiar feels more and more immolating and excoriating and soul killing. 

In particular at this time, the unfamiliar misery of the discomfort caused by non-action. I am so used to taking action as a refuge from feelings of helplessness, precariousness and insecurity, that for me to simply not do anything and sit with reality is very, very uncomfortable. I am learning however that it is also incredibly powerful. In a larger sense of meta-action and right action, non-action is, like silence, deeply healing. But man, it makes my skin crawl. 

From Percy to Cecil with Love

Cecil Percival Taylor, March 25 1929-April 5 2018

I first heard Cecil Taylor when I was about 13 and my friend E put one of his recordings on the record player. It might have been the most widely known recording of Cecil's, Unit Structures. For some reason I think it was Cecil's solo performance from his time as an artist in residence at Antioch, Indent. 

This was recorded in 1973, so if it was this recording, it was about 3 years hot off the presses at the time, a remarkable thought. I recall that my first response to Cecil's music was to be frightened by it. Disoriented, mistrustful, thrown off guard, skeptical and threatened. In particular, I took the feeling tone to be anger and frustration. These initial reactions proved both wrong and unnecessary. 

The man's music caused so many different reactions in many people. If you follow the history of critics writing about him, you see that many emphasized how "out there" his music was, some even going so far as to call it "atonal," which hardly any of it actually was (there are some compositions such as Student Studies, some of his solo work from very early, such as Praxis, and a scant few other pieces that are highly chromatic and have constantly shifting tonal centers, maybe approaching atonality). Many critics exalted his "totally spontaneous improvisations," which is a ridiculous myth, as you can clearly hear Cecil's compositions unfold with stunning logic and structure if you just take the time. 

In truth, there is no one thing you can say about the man's music and have it cover much of any of it. Even when people say "I loved his solo piano recordings," I want to know which period? Because his solo piano style manifested in at least 4 distinct phases. 

I guess one thing you could say was that his music was alive. Is alive. It is soaked in blood, electricity, the peristalsis of a fierce gut, the physicality of a deep tissue massage, the tenderness and vulnerability of gazing at a beloved, the entire night sky of uncountable stars, mud pits, tidal waves, fertility of spring pond peepers, Heraclitean refusal to stand, but formal intricacy refusing to tolerate fat or faltering (to quote AB Spelling) or lies or anything shabby whatsoever. A bundle of swords. A bag of daggers. A thousand dozen roses. Sentiment, but you have to work for it. Muscle skeletal and smooth and cardiac. Groin and balls, brain and spine. So that's one thing you could say. 



 

Listen to Cecil's romanticism here

 Being black and gay or maybe bi and an innovative musician in America from 1929-2018. Go ahead, I dare you. He was outed by the execrable Stanley Crouch in the '80s, when being outed was not okay. Not that it's okay now, but it could destroy a person back then. 

Cecil's radical awareness was astonishing. Go back and check out the fierce and fiery, uncompromising panel discussion he commandeered at Bennington in 1964. 

"That’s what we are and all we can ever be: what we are at the moment.  Even if we reflect upon that which we have done in the morning, when we write in the afternoon that’s all we are – what we are at the moment.  The sum total of the existence is like what it is up to the point that you die – that’s all.  So that if a cat chooses to improvise, which is, you know, a technical mastery of certain materials put in the framework of certain forms.  And we are talking about jazz, so we’ll talk about its first form which is the Blues.  You cannot tell me – you’ll have to prove it to me – that, when after twenty years of playing, that Charlie Parker didn’t play the Blues as many different ways as was possible within his experience.  And if he had sat down to write this it wouldn’t have been any more valid, because, in the final analysis, what we heard was what we heard..[Overton tries to speak, Taylor goes on.] Just a minute, just a minute, what you are negating there is that there is skill in improvisation.  What you’re negating is that – wait a minute, wait a minute.  Polish, you used the word polish before.  When one sits down to compose one…it’s sort of like a spiritual – this is Sunday – a spiritual thing.  You know, you sit down and you start writing and you become reflective and your mind works.  But whoever told you that in order to play the piano, or in order to do anything, you don’t use your mind?"

(an excerpt from that panel discussion)

In most interviews with Cecil, you get a sense of his fierce mind and his impatience with narrow mindedness, racism, misconceptions and ignorance. He seems to have repeatedly encountered especially white interviewers who honestly had done no homework whatsoever on him and who had little to no understanding of what he was about. There's a spectacular passage from one interview where Cecil is repeatedly badgered to talk about his "technique," one of the great fetishes of European and American artistic culture, and often a false yardstick that people seem to use to evaluate the worth of an artist. Cecil repeatedly bats the question away until he finally says, paraphrasing a bit becuase I can't find the exact quotation, "anyone with the time and resources can develop technique." That perspective has long stayed with me, especially coming from a man who obviously dedicated hours and hours and years to perfecting his own technical vocabulary. I can hear the exasperation in his voice. 

For the most part, the critical perspective on Cecil and his music is laughably inaccurate, often applying hyperbole in the wrong places, misunderstanding the intricacy and subtleties of his work, touting how "difficult" he is but not offering people much of an understanding of how powerful and moving his music is. Calling his "genre" "Free Jazz," which is an awful canard and misnomer, thinking of him as exclusively a rebel when in fact you can hear his reverent homage to a great many of his predecessors, thinking of his personality as "prickly" or "difficult" when in fact he was merely holding strong boundaries for being a black artist in a racist country that totally lacks and sense of black musical history and all of musical history for that matter. 

I was blessed to attend several of his performances after about 1981, both solo piano and ensemble. One of my big regrets is just missing the incredible unit he put together in the late '70s, featuring Ronald Shannon Jackson, Ramsey Ameen, Raphé Malik, Jimmy Lyons and Sirone. One of the greatest ensembles in all of American music, and relatively well documented by a couple of excellent New World Records studio sessions, the epic One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye and Live in the Black Forest. 

Check out the shuffle blues inflections of this remarkable piece

But I was lucky enough to get to about 10 performances altogether, inclouding Manhattan for two nights of the Cecil Taylor Big Band at Lush Life (or was it Fat Tuesday?). It was surreal, experiencing music of such astonishing power and uncompromising integrity in a nightclub setting with a "two drink minimum." Weird to remember that these concerts were not too long after he had performed on the White House lawn, in the concert organized by the Carter administration. 

The long partnership with Jimmy Lyons itself could be the subject of several essays and appreciations. It's always dangerous picking "a favorite," but one of the great high points for me is the encore to Calling it the Eighth, puckishly called Calling it the Ninth (the recording began on the 8th of Nov and ended on the 9th of Nov, 1981). Lyons and Cecil, perfectly backed by William Parker and Rashid Bakr, laying down some heartache. 


When I heard that he had recorded a series of duets with Max Roach, I was astonished. The recording is a remarkable document of a moment of intersection and continuity in American music. What a dialog! A breakaway breakneck heartbreaking and record breaking monsoon of exuberance. The CD version includes a spectacular drum solo by Roach and some solo piano by Cecil that is not on the vinyl. "Exuberance is beauty," writes Wm. Blake, and it resonates. 






Cecil tried academia a couple times, a path that some of his contemporaries were able to follow to provide some financial and material stability in their lives. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin for maybe one semester and I think he taught a jazz improvisation or jazz history class, not sure. One thing I do know, because he confirmed it, was that he failed every single student. He was asked to leave. No institution and no musical idiom could contain him. "I must create my own system or be enslaved by another man's," wrote Wm. Blake, and it resonates.

Another passage from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by Blake comes to mind:

Thus Swedenborg’s writings are a recapitulation of all superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime—but no further.	149
Have now another plain fact. Any man of mechanical talents may, from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg’s, and from those of Dante or Shakespear an infinite number.	150
But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.

The secondary side effects of culture that come close to Cecil's sun are just candles by comparison, whether those side effects are opinion, reaction, imitation, analysis, hagiography, dismissal and ridicule, what have you. 

The last time I saw him, in Albuquerque back in maybe 2004, I went with a musician who had been in his big bands of the early '90s, the project in which Cecil invested his MacArthur Grant. My musician friend and I went backstage to say hello. I was floored, frankly. It's very strange, to have a hero for 40 years and then to have a chance to meet that artist. I have met many celebrities and while there is a certain novelty to that, my values don't really run that way. But to be in the presence of an artist with the combined personal and historical significance of Cecil was a weird moment. And my musician friend and I were invited back to his hotel room, where we sat on the floor while Cecil held court and talked for a couple hours, his conversational style weaving seemingly disconnected lines in long arcs that always somehow came back to tie together. At one point in the long solo performance, he pointed to me and said "and this person here, the friend of C (my friend), notice he hasn't had any champagne or anything else this whole time, but he's delightfully generous with his cigarettes, so he's no doubt paying very close attention," and he got a twinkle in his eye and moved on to more commentary on the Robert Caro biography of Lyndon B Johnson and somehow into a riff on Betty Carter, whom he referred to as "The Beast," and Ornette Coleman, "Ornette-y Poo" and Braxton "The Professor." I was still smoking at the time-- American Spirit menthol cigarettes, which happened to be Cecil's favorite. I think he smoked about a six of mine. I thanked him for opening up his hotel room to us, thanked him profusely and probably a little too obsequiously for the opportunity to meet him, when we left at 3:30 in the morning. He seemed deeply amused by my reverence and he scrunched his face in an exaggerated expression of dismissal and regally waved his hand and said "well, it was a *party*, after all, wasn't it?" His inflections were often in a long drawl, and it took him a few seconds to say the word "party."

These words too, just words. There's much more than words left. Go to his sessionography, dig and dig and dig. (That sessionography is incomplete, sadly, and the exhaustive one that included *all known performances*, not just recordings, is no longer online). Much of it is on record. Even his spoken word performances, as recorded on Chinampas, not just words. In 43 years of open ears I continue to find new ideas in the air when I listen, even when I listen to recordings I have had almost that entire time. Who among us is capable of comprehending the generosity of such a legacy, such a gift?

Well, it was a party, after all, wasn't it?

Checklist of precariousness, part five: Avoidance

I have gathered some momentum doing what has essentially ended up being a step 1 CoDA inventory, so I figure I'll just go through the last set of patterns.

The list:

Avoidance patterns:

Codependents often—

act in ways that invite others to reject, shame, or express anger toward them

judge harshly what others think, say, or do

avoid emotional, physical, or sexual intimacy as a way to maintain distance

allow addictions to people, places, and things to distract them from achieving intimacy in relationships

use indirect or evasive communication to avoid conflict or confrontation

diminish their capacity to have healthy relationships by declining to use the tools of recovery

suppress their feelings or needs to avoid feeling vulnerable

pull people toward them, but when others get close, push them away

refuse to give up their self-will to avoid surrendering to a power greater than themselves

believe displays of emotion are a sign of weakness

withhold expressions of appreciation

***
The recovery patterns:

I act in ways that encourage healthy and loving responses from others

I keep an open mind and accept others as they are

I engage in emotional, physical, or sexual intimacy when it is healthy and appropriate for me

I practice my recovery to develop healthy and fulfilling relationships

I use direct and straightforward communication to resolve conflicts and deal appropriately with confrontations

When I use tools of recovery, I am able to develop and maintain healthy relationships of my choosing

I embrace my own vulnerability by trusting and honoring my feelings and needs

I welcome close relationships while maintaining healthy boundaries

I believe in and trust a power greater than myself. I willingly surrender my self-will to my Higher Power

I honor my authentic emotions and share them when appropriate

I freely engage in expressions of appreciation toward others. 

***
Similar to the prior four categories (Denial, Low Self Esteem, Compliance and Control) these avoidance patterns are all over my life history in a lot of ways. I definitely avoid conflict. In particular, staying in the terrain of conflict for very long is difficult for me. I want most conflicts resolved as quickly as possible. I've gotten better at sustaining the discomfort of being in a conflict situation for a while, without trying to short circuit it, rage quit it or make huge concessions just to put an end to it. 

I have definitely intentionally acted in ways that would get people to react to me in negative ways. I wanted the outside mirror of how badly I felt about myself. I wanted confirmation, and I wanted to be right about how awful a person I am. I also a few times figured it would be a lot easier being hated than having to process any of the end of a relationship. Just pull some egregiously awful stunt and bear the outrage and contempt for a while and then be gone. So much easier than working through anything. 

Avoiding vulnerability is a big one. I think this has to do with shame and the fear of shame, since there have been few contexts where any sign of vulnerability on my part has been welcome. I have tended to become involved with people who are fairly steely and not comfortable with vulnerability, at least in my perception. My own functionality around my emotional life has more to do with "managing it" and "being fine" than it does with showing up respectfully for my feeling life and honoring it. I have known a great many people for whom "being strong" or even "tough" and "getting over it, dealing with it" were cherished values and points of pride. The same has been true of me, although less so since I got sober. I really wore contempt for my emotional life on my sleeve when I was drinking. 

It's ugly to look at pulling people in and then pushing them away, although it looks to me more like pulling them in and then disappearing. I have the repeated pattern of showing up in full force in the beginning of partnerships and then slowly or suddenly becoming emotionally unavailable, uncommunicative and distant. I think there's been something sadistic about that in the past, and it's a source of deep remorse for me. I don't tend to do this as much these days. 

I do believe displays of emotion are a sign of weakness. I often apologize for being emotional. I am working on changing that. I, like many of us, grew up in an environment where emotions were a problem to be solved, an inconvenience, an embarrassment and a trigger for anxiety around loss of control. One of the greatest gifts of sobriety is that there is no way around my emotional life, since I am sober. This has forced me to gain more acceptance and compassion or even welcome for my feelings. 

I don't withhold expressions of appreciation, but I can become resentful and shut down if I feel my enthusiastic appreciation is taken for granted. 

The process of writing through these lists has been painful. It's a step one experience for sure, to confront the powerlessness and unmanageability of my codependent relationship patterns. I feel a lot of bundled up grief, looking back at the ways in which these threads wove their way through many otherwise very fine relationships. I have been well loved by many people and it is a plain fact that the patterns outlined in the past five lists have poisoned the well repeatedly. I realize of course that this dynamic takes two and I am not beating myself up. I am simply acknowledging that I have played out unrecovered codependency in my relationships repeatedly, and the consequences are visible in a long list of formerly tender, loving, friendly, mutually supportive relationships strewn like wreckage across my past. The plain fact is that I have been the only person who was present for all of those. 

This grief feels old and stale. It reaches back to childhood stuff, dissolution of same sex friendships, conflicts with employers, fraught and painful romantic relationships and the entire panorama of my interpersonal involvements. While the recent love affair was glorious and exquisitely, poignantly beautiful, and was an unexpected gift for which I am thoroughly grateful, the fact is that this trip through Hades has continued unabated. Things there have taken a heartbreaking turn and I feel generally inconsolable most of the time lately. But I'm striving to just stick with my feelings and not exit that situation in destructive or unskillful ways. I'm feeling like I'm walking around with a bunch of rusty daggers in my gut, but I'm trying to stay present through it. 

Pluto won't deal in "solutions" that are rooted in distraction, denial, stratagem or "getting it right this time." The old man requires plumbing the depths and touching old, dark, shadow grief.  

image copyright noell oszvald

supplies

Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house-
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
This is the death of water and fire.

(TS Eliot, excerpt from Little Gidding, Four Quartets)

Checklist of precariousness, part four: Control Patterns

The list:

Control Patterns:

Codependents often:

believe people are incapable of taking care of themselves

attempt to convince others what to think, do, or feel

freely offer advice and direction without being asked

become resentful when others decline their help or reject their advice

lavish gifts and favors on those they want to influence

use sexual attention to gain approval and acceptance

have to feel needed in order to have a relationship with others

demand that their needs be met by others

use charm and charisma to convince others of their capacity to be caring and compassionate

use blame and shame to exploit others emotionally

refuse to cooperate, compromise, or negotiate

adopt an attitude of indifference, helplessness, authority or rage to manipulate outcomes

use recovery jargon in an attempt to control the behavior of others

pretend to agree with others to get what they want

***
The recovery patterns:

I realize that, with rare exceptions, other adults are capable of managing their own lives. My job is to let them. 

I accept and value the differing thoughts, feelings, and opinions of others

I feel comfortable when I see others take care of themselves

I am a compassionate and empathetic listener, giving advice only if directly asked

I carefully and honestly contemplate my motivations when preparing to give a gift

I feel loved and accepted for myself, just the way I am

I develop relationships with others based on equality, intimacy and balance. 

***

This is an interesting area for me. My first intuitive reaction is that denial, low self esteem and compliance are more common in my approach than most of these items, but there are definitely some exceptions. It's interesting to look back and realize that most of my relationships have been with people who are highly independent and place a high value on competence and who rarely ask for help. In CoDA settings, people sometimes talk about the two "types" of codependents: the victim and the rescuer. I think the victim role has been more comfortable for me to sustain, although I have been in unequal, caretaking situations too. I tend to bail on those fairly quickly however. 

Some areas where I have definite habits along these lines though:

Convincing others what to think, do or feel. Especially if their decisions, feelings or behavior are not aligned with what I want. I have deployed my verbal arsenal and "logic," as well as whatever pathos might be at hand, to try to sway people to do what I want. It's difficult for me, when someone makes a decision that deprives me of what I want, to just accept it, respect their decision and move on. I think I learned a range of cajoling, whining, needling, persuasive techniques when I was a kid. Most times, it was all wasted effort. But there must have been intermittent reinforcement, because I have often felt that I could "change someone's mind" or even how they feel just by using the right words. 

Listen Zig. Integrity doesn't get me what I want. Nice try. 

I definitely become resentful when people decline my help or advice and I must sometimes use gift giving as a way of influencing people, because when I don't get the "appropriate" level of gratitude and amazement over what a great gift I have given, I sometimes sulk and feel hurt. 

Look at how much I love you! 

I have often used blame and shame to try to exert emotional power. I don't think I do this anymore, at least not to the degree that I used to, but there is a definite pattern of wanting to get emotional revenge on someone who has hurt my feelings. Primarily, my impulse is to hurt that person in return, usually by performing my hurt feelings for them and trying to force them to feel responsible for my pain and guilty for causing it. It's a retaliatory emotional racket that seeks to deflect suffering back to the person I perceive to be the "cause" of my suffering. I sometimes avoid simply saying "my feelings are hurt and I'm angry and disappointed, but I respect your decision and I'll work on my own stuff." 

Re-reading this, it occurs to me that a huge rat's nest of these controlling codependent behaviors is revealed when I think about my motives to stay in the profession of teaching. The ego-feeding elements of teaching probably made many dysfunctional and painful situations tolerable for the 30 years that I taught high school. Performing, being the expert, getting to act like a good listener, a compassionate sage, getting the approval of students and their parents, stepping into that heroic pedagogue archetype as limned in so many fictional tales (think Dead Poets Society or a million other fantasies)— it seems like teaching is almost tailor-made for codependents. I'll have to take some time to do a separate inventory around that career, I think. I guess it is a sign of progress that I shifted into a field I was interested in that offers little opportunity for all of those ego-feeding, narcissistic experiences. 

Trying to manipulate outcomes in weird ways is perhaps the biggest control strategy I have. The magical formula of exactly the right words to say to get what I want is one of the big quests of my relationship life. It's a deeply rooted superstitious belief in the incantatory nature of words to cast love spells, which seems like a major motivation of many kinds of art and poetry. Of course it sometimes "works," at least for a time. But the dark side is, at least in part, that when someone chooses to do something I feel hurt by, I also imagine it is because I caused it— I said the wrong words, I lack skill, I am deficient. A failed poet. The successful poet gets the prize. 

But I also have withdrawn in order to be pursued, tried to force outcomes I desire by being pushy and aggressive. Ghosting and love bombing. I used to be a much more raging and intimidating person, also. Mostly, I quickly move from all of these manipulative behaviors to realizing the outcome I want is not going to happen and then sulking, performing a victim role or even cutting people off altogether in a violent but passive aggressive way. 

I noticed a level of magical thinking along these lines with the process of getting my dissertation proposal approved by my committee and advancing to candidacy. For about 2 years, I thought if I just put the right spin on my ideas, phrased everything in the right way and made it all look good, I would advance. I finally realized that, in fact, very few of those stylistic and superficial elements were important to the scientists on my committee. They wanted clear research questions, appropriate methods, legitimate data and proof that I knew how to analyze that data. They were not impressed by charm or charisma, but only by tangible plans and visible preliminary results. When I snapped to that and got to work producing a clear, simple and practical set of plans, and spent some time analyzing the data I had, I advanced. 

Every time I go to the Sunday night CoDA meeting, and someone reads the steps, I am immediately reminded by step 1 of the core issue in my approach to relationships:

We admitted we were powerless over others—that our lives had become unmanageable. 

It's amazing to me how many different ways I try to have power over others. It seems like every time I let go of one strategy, another one pops up. Manipulation Whac-a-Mole! (I didn't know it was spelled that way until I looked it up). The flat out acceptance and detachment from the choices, opinions, feelings and behavior of others is so often completely lacking. Everything stays contingent and precarious as a result. Other people appear to me to be taking agency, making decisions, choosing their paths. When those directions do not include me in the way I want, I sometimes go to great lengths to exert control. Instead of going to great lengths to just fucking let go, just stepping back, accepting, and moving on, I even tend to go in more fervently, hang on tighter, work and work and work on turning the tide. It gets especially painful and humiliating when other people do their emotional work and emerge strong and without any need for me whatsoever in order to find their happiness. I create the situation where I am not only hurt but also discarded and irrelevant.  

When I think back over my personal history, there have always been only two outcomes for this behavior. The first has been that the other person simply continues to do, feel and think what they do anyway, and all of my efforts are in vain, and I am left demoralized, humiliated and feeling deeply ashamed. Or, I somehow at least temporarily "succeed," and "people do what I want," but even in those situations, I have set in motion a dynamic where the foundation of freely chosen, clear and equal encounter, based in agency and trust, has been eroded. I always suspect that the other person has only conceded to my persuasion, seduction, demands, guilt, ultimatums in order to get me to just shut the fuck up. I always suspect that I have not gotten what I want anyway. I have only gotten the appearance of the outcome I had imagined. And, eventually, those corrosive doubts and temporary resolutions have led to decay, alienation, resentment and the failure of the relationship anyway. 

If you know you have manipulated someone into staying with you, how satisfying is that?

Insidious. The opening script of the Sunday night CoDA meeting mentions: "We believe codependency to be a deeply rooted, compulsive behavior." The more I have inventoried these patterns and characteristics, the more I become aware of how my relationships have been driven by that deeply rooted compulsion. 

One more to go: Avoidance. I have the impulse to avoid doing an inventory on that one. 

Checklist of precariousness: part three: compliance patterns

The list:

Compliance patterns:

Codependents often—

are extremely loyal, remaining in harmful situations too long

compromise their own values and integrity to avoid rejection or anger

put aside their own interests in order to do what others want

are hypervigilant regarding the feelings of others and take on those feelings

are afraid to express their beliefs, opinions, and feelings when they differ from those of others

accept sexual attention when they want love

make decisions without regard to the consequences

give up their truth to gain the approval of others or to avoid change

***

The recovery patterns:

I am rooted in my own values, even if others don't agree or become angry

I can separate my feelings from those of others

I am committed to my safety and recovery work. I leave situations that feel unsafe or are inconsistent with my goals

I respect my own opinions and feelings and express them appropriately

I consider my own interests first when asked to participate in another's plans

My sexuality is grounded in genuine intimacy and connection. I know the difference between lust and love.

***

I see no necessary need for that last one. As long as I'm not using sex to replace a lack of love, the moralistic emphasis on "genuine intimacy and connection" feels biased to me. But of course genuine intimacy and connection are great.

Anyway, these compliance patterns are central to my inability to form real relationships with people. I can count seven times since 1980 that I have moved in order to "keep" a partnership going, when the long distance nature of it became uncomfortable. I can also count a few times when I did what I wanted without regard to the difficulty of the long distance situation and the relationship ended, often very painfully. So there's a punitive resonance now around following my own path and hoping the relationship "works out." I also agreed to share domestic space at the behest of the woman, when I had misgivings that I did not express. 

Reflecting on these patterns, it occurs to me that no one has ever given anything up in order to be with me, in any significant way. In the nearly 40 years since I left my childhood home, my parents have visited me where I live four times. One of my four siblings visited me twice. No woman I have ever been in a relationship with has moved to be with me. A couple male friends have visited me, which has always felt extremely special and like quite an honor. I should point out that this weird pattern of no one ever showing up for me has been a result of my own passivity. I don't recall ever asking anyone for anything in this regard. I never invited let alone demanded anything. In fact, quite recently, when the loml was thinking of visiting me in Hades, it became a little complicated and I just changed everything around and arranged to go visit her on her turf. I didn't really let it play out in any way. Just: "never mind, I'll visit you." 

Those are just the obvious "concessions" (often, totally giving away the entire store) that I have made, in romantic relationships. I can do a detailed inventory of my work situations where compliance has posed problems. A similar inventory of friendships with men. In particular, compliance has definitely damaged my artistic and musical paths. The opinions of others regarding my writing or music have really spun me out, sometimes for years at a time. I always admired those artists who just do not give a fuck and do whatever they want, no matter what others think or say. I was never able to do that. I made the mistake of sharing work in progress with the wrong audience and getting shitty feedback but taking it 100% to heart and completely shutting down for years at a time.

I'd add a weird compliance pattern that is the reverse of one of the above. The list mentions "accept sexual attention when they want love," but I think a manipulative strategy is also pretending love when the only thing wanted is sexual activity. This has been a huge area of pretense and harmful lies for me. A lot of damage and confusion could have been prevented by simply being honest and saying "I don't want a love relationship, I'm only interested in sex." But I could never be that honest because of a complex web of morality and guilt where sex was only "okay" within a commitment or within the context of "being in love." And I always assumed I would not get sex if I were honest about that being the only thing I was interested in.

The darker side of these compliance patterns is when I wake up one day and say "fuck this." Because then the level of rage I am feeling over having ripped myself off yet again, hollowed myself out for the sake of "keeping" someone, or whatever awful, thin deal I have arranged for myself, is usually a very high level of rage. And especially when I was younger, I took it out on the other person, not taking responsibility for the simple fact that I was the one who made those decisions. 

I vividly recall when my romantic partner announced, out of the blue, that she had been accepted at the MFA poetry program at a university in a city I definitely did not want to move to. I told my sponsor that I was on the horns of a dilemma, because I didn't know what decision to make. Should I go with her or stay? My sponsor said "well, she already made your decision for you. Do you want to stay with someone who doesn't even take your desires into account?" Yes, sure, why not? My desires are not important. 

So I did move. 

Here are the things that have gone on a back burner as a result of caving repeatedly:

music
writing
education
career
finances
sobriety
health and well being
attachment to particular cities or landscapes
extended social networks and friendships (including recovery communities)

So, as much as I resonate immediately with the low self esteem list, the compliance patterns have obviously caused as much turmoil and loss. 

Okay! Three down! Only two to go. Fun stuff. 

A checklist of precariousness: Part Two, Low Self-Esteem

Onward into more aspects of codependency, part two of five:

Low self-esteem patterns:
Codependents often—

have difficulty making decisions

judge what they think, say, or do harshly, as never good enough

are embarrassed to receive recognition, praise, or gifts

value others' approval of their thinking, feelings and behavior over their own

do not perceive themselves as lovable or worthwhile persons

seek recognition and praise to overcome feeling less than

have difficulty admitting a mistake

need to appear to be right in the eyes of others and may even lie to look good

are unable to identify or ask for what they need and want

perceive themselves as superior to others

look to others to provide their sense of safety

have difficulty getting started, meeting deadlines, and completing projects

have trouble setting healthy priorities and boundaries
(from CoDA World Services, Patterns and Characteristics of Codependency)

***

This particular list truly resonates with me, point for point, all the way down the list. I certainly have "issues" with the other four sections, but in this case, all the bells ring at full volume. I am only beginning to unfold all the different ways that I have tried to live with, manage, ameliorate and exorcise this self hatred. I think "low self esteem" is a misnomer. I think self hatred, self loathing, self killing are more direct and true. With this list of ways that I have ben ripping myself off and attacking myself for many years, it becomes even more clear to me that alcoholism is a symptom. (Note: after publishing this post, while proofreading again, I noticed that I had typed "ben" instead of "been," and the thought that went through my head was 'you are a fucking clueless idiot.' So that tells you something). 

This marks the clearest departure between AA and CoDA that I have identified. In AA, traditionally construed, childhood circumstance and fundamental psychological dynamics may or may not be acknowledged, but one is strongly discouraged from seeing any of it as *causal* of alcoholism. Alcoholism is a disease, period, and nothing causes it except a "spiritual malady," which is never very clearly defined. To be fair, AA emerged at a time when there was no family system theory, little credence given to the power of childhood trauma and the Big Book was largely written by a man who clearly had not confronted and processed his own demons in that regard, in my opinion. I appreciate also that childhood trauma, abuse, isolation, wounding and loneliness are not *necessary causes* of alcoholism, and many of my alcoholic friends at least claim they had "good childhoods and loving parents."

But in CoDA, one is flat out required to dive deeply into the primal origins. Personal life history, family system dynamics, childhood and adolescent trauma— all are not only "allowed" to be looked at, but *necessary* in order to find the roots of codependency and engage in the recovery process. It makes sense to me. Doing the deep inner child, family system healing work would not have kept me sober from drugs and alcohol. In fact, in early sobriety, those themes may have just given me more excuse to drink. It was important for me to deal directly with alcoholism as a plain fact, not as a consequence of childhood issues. It was important that immediate family be on my 4th step, but with the goal of letting go of blame and finding at least some level of forgiveness. 

Codependency is a different beast altogether, though. Like all "process addictions," it's not related to substances (except insofar as oxytocin, for example, is a substance, or epinephrine, for that matter). To some degree, AA provided me with tools to alleviate the harsh self hatred and negativity toward myself that I carry inside. It especially is lifted by service work, helping others, prayer and meditation, a thorough step 4-step 9 process. But my feeling for nearly 14 years has been that these are all covering activities. I often return home alone from being of service somewhere and the old isolating sadness still washes over me. A voice chimes in: "You just did that for approval. You probably fucked it up anyway. Who do you think you are, trying to help others?" 

The recovery patterns around "low self-esteem," as listed in CoDA literature:

I trust my ability to make effective decisions

I accept myself as I am. I emphasize progress over perfection. 

I feel appropriately worthy of the recognition, praise, or gifts I receive

I meet my own needs and wants when possible. I reach out for help when it's necessary and appropriate. 

I have confidence in myself. I no longer seek others' approval of my thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

I recognize myself as a lovable and valuable person. 

***

I am not close to much of that. In fact, for example, merely typing that last one gave rise to the feeling of impending mockery and ridicule. Lovable? Ha, right. You are a sick motherfucker, selfish and spoiled, with no regard for the feelings and needs of others and with nothing to offer anyone. The more someone sees of the real you, the faster they will want to run away. Valuable? In what way? What a joke!

I can say with complete confidence that this is the voice of my father. I say this without rancor and without blame. I have done four different 4th steps on good old Kronos in the past 13 years and have made amends for my part. The present person, a frail 86 years old now, and I are on excellent terms and genuinely like each other. This in itself is a miracle. 

But the little 3 year old Percy, or 8 year old Percy, or the somewhat rougher 14 year old Percy— they are full of anger, loneliness, frustration, isolation, resentment, pain. They have not gotten to a place of acceptance with my father that I have, if that makes any sense. In many ways, AA merely echoes the voice of my father: "Grow the fuck up. That was years ago. Get over it. Go help someone." This was helpful for a long time. It isn't any more. There's a lot of sibling ridicule and belittling in there as well. Again, they are off the hook for it, from a blame perspective. I only recognize their voices in that ridiculing, dismissive, shaming, rejecting and isolating chorus that is in my head.

I think of all the turns that my psyche could take, a turn toward self acceptance, gentleness, kindness and compassion toward myself, matched by a friendly, encouraging, appreciative inner voice, would be the most powerful. Whether intentionally or not, AA offers a lot of opportunities for attacking oneself. CoDA doesn't allow it at all. 

It's remarkable how uncomfortable this makes me.