That 12th Step

Ah, yes another Friday rolls around my friend. Time for strong libations. Whaddya say?

Twelve steps lead up to the second level of my house. But I have to take a 13th step to get onto the second floor. Is that unlucky?

What? What the hell are you talking about?

I am concerned that every time I go upstairs I am inviting bad luck, but it's a matter of interpretation. There are only twelve steps but I have to take thirteen to complete the journey.

Are you serious?

Maybe that is why my life has been so erratic, so unwieldy. Maybe it's not my fault. Maybe I should skip the last step. Then again, what if I pull a muscle stretching out to the top? I'm not as young as I used to be.

You're not as dead as you're gonna be if you don't pound a few with me tonight.

What other things have I missed in my life that might be jinxing me? I gotta get this shit right, man - I'm trying to make a statement here and I'm running out of time.

What is the statement - that you are retarded?

That is not a nice word. It is not politically correct. You know how much I care about being politically correct.

Jesus, man you don't give a shit about being politically correct. You spit on people who are politically correct.

I do?

Goddamn right.

Yeah, now that you mention it I think I remember something about myself along those lines.

Are you stoned? Do you know who you are? Do you know where you are?

I am a little bug, a tiny little bug trying to create big waves in this world.

The only waves you create are when you stand in front of the toilet.

Man, you are being harsh. What the fuck?

I just don't want you to waste time worrying. Just get drunk. Stay drunk. It's the only way.

I love the color brown but I don't wear a lot of brown. I don't know why. Why don't I wear more brown?That's gotta be bad luck, right?

Can we go now?

We should go shopping first. I need some brown shirts.

I don't wanna go shopping. It's Friday night. I just got out of work. I survived another day with my asshole boss and my soul sucking job. Know how I did that?

How?

I knew I was gonna get drunk tonight. It's fucking simple.

I don't read enough poetry. I love poetry. Well, not all poetry. Not that artsy fartsy stuff that don't make no sense with all those fancy goddamn words and ideas. I like the straight ahead stuff. Like "Life is a cesspool and you gotta keep swimming, if you don't swallow you know that you're winning."

You are a sick son of a bitch. Come on, man there are cold beers and hot ladies waiting for us on a crazy-ass Friday night. Let's dance.

Do me a favor. Go upstairs and find me a shirt. Preferably a brown one if you can.

Should I skip the 12th step on the way up? How about the way down - what do I do then - jump?

Oh Christ, man that's a good point. We better stay home.

I'll see you later. I am outta here. Call me when your brain function returns, knucklehead.

Dig

"Follow your bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say follow your bliss and don't be afraid and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else."

Joseph Campbell

I am beginning to think comments like this apply only to creative people and only to 1/2 of 1% of them.

I don't think the guy working in the warehouse, angry and drunk all the time and fantasizing about dismembering his boss, has followed his bliss. I don't think he could identify his bliss and if he could I don't think he would get the opportunity to follow it.

Casual Comments, Harsh Reality

Read an article in Playboy about the rapidly growing legal pot industry.

One guy involved in the business describes potential clientele as follows:

"At one end of the spectrum are young men in their 20s who just want to get high, and at the other are people who have cancer, epilepsy, and terminal illnesses. We're focused on the health and wellness consumers in the middle who want relief from chronic pain, arthritis, insomnia and migraines."

In an unwitting way this guy just described a typical arc of life. Pretty harsh words but pretty accurate too.

Enjoy your 20s, kids.

Epiphanies Are Supposed To Be Surprising, Right?

I am trying so hard.

Since cancer I am determined to make my life as much my own as possible.

Hard to change habits, hard to shift perspective, hard to affect self-perception, but these are the things that must be done for me to wipe the slate clean and write my own honest and true story on it before it is too late.

I spent the entire morning chasing websites, researching writing related jobs, anything and everything I can do with words to make a little extra money, regardless of the cost to my soul.

I have been sitting in front of this computer since 9:30.

But it didn't feel right. It has not felt right since I made the decision to approach this in this way.

I have been looking into higher paying part time jobs that are no less soul sucking than the one I have.

But it hasn't felt right.

Got a text from Keith turning me on to a group named Pentatonix singing "Hallejulah" a capella.

Checked it out and almost lost it entirely.

My response was so strong it surprised me.

And I realized it wasn't just the fact that it is a Leonard Cohen song, it wasn't just the fact that Pentatonix did such a beautiful job performing the song, that they respected the emotion within it and the man who wrote it, it was everything that has been going on in my head since the night I found out I had cancer.

The song drew it out of me.

I respect Leonard Cohen because he figured out who he was and lived his life in a way that allowed him to express himself honestly and hopefully in a way that made him happy.

That commitment and awareness is what I am missing, what I have always been missing.

I sit here trolling websites day after day knowing in my heart that I am looking in the wrong places, that I am doing the wrong things.

The timing of Keith's text could not have been more perfect. After almost two hours of futilely looking for answers, for a way out, he turned me on to a performance that smashed me in the face with honesty and triggered an awareness in me I have been ignoring.

I am shattered right now. And in a little while I have to go do something so beneath me and so meaningless to me that five hours will feel like ten.

Just as I have done for my entire life.

So strange how life works, how an epiphany can result from an innocent or casual reference.

The catch is you gotta be open to it; ready to receive it or experience it.

I am a raw nerve right now.

I am in the right place.

Leonard Cohen

Last week was crushing emotionally after idiot Americans voted Donald Trump president.

I was depressed at the open expression of hatred expressed by voters. The lack of judgment. I did not think I could be more down.

Then Leonard Cohen died.

I have taken to getting quite high before I go to work now because the job has become anathema to me. I cannot function there unless I feel numb. I prefer whiskey but whiskey doesn't last.

Leonard Cohen died on Thursday. I did not get high on Friday.

Didn't need to. I was dead inside. I functioned as quietly as is possible in retail work, stayed away from people as much as I could, endured the five hours and headed home.

I discovered Leonard Cohen in 1994. In retrospect, the way I came across this man seems so stupid, so insignificant.

I saw the movie "Natural Born Killers". I was not on a spiritual journey, I was not looking for inspiration. I was looking for a heaping helping of insanity and violence.

Leonard Cohen had two songs on the soundtrack. "Waiting for the Miracle" and "The Future." When I heard them I immediately came to attention and thought "Who is this? These lyrics are heavy duty; the mood of the songs inflames my emotions".

Went out and bought some of his music, read up on the man, read some of his poetry, and fell in awe. I have been there ever since.

I read "Beautiful Losers", one of the two novels he wrote before beginning his music career. Difficult book to read, almost impenetrable. Sometimes you need to stretch yourself when you are dealing with a mind like Leonard Cohen's. How can you avoid boredom if you don't step outside yourself? It is worth the effort. I have read it twice. I will read it again.

I came across Leonard Cohen randomly in 1994 in a superficial, back door kind of way but because of that he has been in my life for 22 years, for which I am deeply grateful.

I knew immediately when I first heard his words and his music that his soul would connect with my own, and that proved to be true in a way much deeper than I could ever have predicted.

There are people who have covered Leonard Cohen songs in delicate beauty. Taken his words and music and lifted them even higher.

Jeff Buckley is the most well known for his cover of "Hallelujah." It is exquisite. If you haven't heard it you should go to YouTube and listen to it. You will feel like you are sitting in church. Or in life in its purest form.

Antony covered a song called "If It Be Your Will" in a Leonard Cohen tribute concert and documentary called "I'm Your Man", released in 2005. This is the one that shakes me to my core. Please go to YouTube right now - dial up Antony If It Be Your Will and listen. He hijacks your emotions and intensifies them until your only choice is to cry.

My favorite Leonard Cohen story is told by Rufus Wainwright.

Leonard was always impeccably dressed. The first time Rufus met him was in Leonard's kitchen and Leonard was wearing only a t-shirt and boxer shorts. He was feeding a little bird he had found that had fallen out of the nest. Leonard was chewing up sausage into tiny pieces and feeding them to the bird.

I was getting ready for bed Saturday night and Saturday Night Live came on. No fanfare, no bullshit. Just Kate McKinnon in character as Hillary Clinton sitting at a piano and singing "Hallejulah". She sang a few verses then said "I'm not giving up and neither should you."

Seems silly but it hit me hard. It connected Leonard Cohen's death with the tragedy of the election.

I had been distracted. Had some friends over for dinner. A simple night of friendship, laughter, food, conversation, games and drinks. Very nice. Took me away from my head for a while.

I was in a fog since Tuesday night. A fog that got pretty thick after Thursday night. Saturday night brought me back a ways. Saturday Night Live returned me to the funk.

I am mourning Leonard Cohen today. It had to be this way. I had to be alone. I have listened to a lot of his music.

Equally apropos, I had my cancer finale this morning. Last check up on the nose, a quick look at the back. Everything is fine. I don't need to cover up the nose anymore. I am left with a dent on the nose and a significant scar on my back. Reminders.

Just before I left his office the Doc made sure that I am set up for regular monitoring by a dermatologist. He said "I want you to be healthy, I want you to live for a long time. But these two incidences of cancer are a sign that the sun has done some damage to you. That you may have to deal with this again in the future. So you need to be religious with the dermatologist."

This is what I love about the man. He doesn't sugarcoat anything yet he manages to give me a sense of confidence.

And he's into the blues.

So that is where my life is at. I have to spend the rest of my time with an awareness that cancer may not give up. And I have to use that knowledge to concentrate on beauty in my life; on the things and the people who count.

Leonard Cohen's death is wrapped up in that. His death makes my life smaller. It hurts as if he were family.

In fact, 2016 has been especially brutal for me; many people who I loved and respected have died.

My life keeps getting smaller. That is the way life works. As I get older it will continue to shrink. I will not be able to do this, I will not be able to go there, I will not be able to enjoy that.

Leonard Cohen leaves a huge vacuum. A hole in my heart. Muhammad Ali did the same. It took quite a while to accept that Ali was gone.

I have not yet accepted that Leonard Cohen is gone.

Nick Cave's tribute may be the most accurate: "For many of us Leonard Cohen was the greatest songwriter of them all. Utterly unique and impossible to imitate no matter how hard we tried. He will be deeply missed by so many."

Leonard Cohen himself recently said: "I am ready to die. I hope it's not too uncomfortable. That's about it for me."

That is so Leonard Cohen.

And so is the "clarification" he offered later on, saying that he was "exaggerating". "I've always been into self dramatization," he said last month. "I intend to live forever."

I will miss Leonard Cohen deeply.

It is a comfort when you know there is a human being out there fighting life's harshness with beauty and honesty and reflection.

I do not know who I will turn to now.

Thirty Good Seconds

I need to consume a massive amount of whiskey tonight. And wash it down with a bucketful of beer.

What the hell are you talking about? It's fucking Monday night - you just barely jumped back in to the cesspool.

Doesn't matter - everything is so shaky. So unpredictable. Just when my life is supposed to get easier, it gets harder.

That's life, baby - it is a goddamn swamp full of alligators. You make your way through as each of your limbs and eventually your internal organs gets ripped off and out of you. Every once in a great while you inadvertently smile through the painful shrieks. Those are the high points.

That is the stupidest fucking analogy I have ever heard.

You know who the blueprint for survival is? It's that Monty Python knight who gets his limbs hacked off and keeps hopping around saying "only a flesh wound." That's life in a nutshell.

What the hell is the point of life lived that way? What is the point of being alive?

Thirty seconds of happiness in eighty years of life. That's it. The trick is to recognize that thirty seconds for what it is and then tell everybody "I have had a good life". Because that is what people want to hear.

I'm thinking about stabbing myself in the chest with an ice pick just before jumping off the side of the Grand Canyon with a bottle of whiskey in my left hand, an ice cold beer in my right, with the hope of breaking my spine in the belly of what is most beautiful about America.

That would be cool.

You would like that, wouldn't you?

Goddamn right. I would record it and post it to facebook.

You wouldn't care that I chose to die?

Christ no; caring is the problem. If you care about anything in your life it exponentially multiplies the agony. The trick is to not care at all. That way the suffering is meaningless.

I'd rather be dead.

You're kind of dead already, right?

What are you talking about?

Well, if you are thinking you'd rather be dead, you really are dead already. So save us the bloodshed and the horrific waste of good whiskey and beer. Live the rest of your life like a zombie just like the rest of us do, and when death comes you won't even know it.

Talking to you is so damn comforting. Let's get out of here. Let's get Monday-night-wasted.

Now you're talking.

Oddly Prescient

Got a big, fat, hard cover book in my hands lately.

It is a collection of three Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch detective books. 793 pages strong.

Never read this dude before. Digging it. A lot.

The second story, "Black Ice", which I just started this morning, is doing double duty notable quote-wise.

"I found out who I was."

That is a suicide note written by a cop who blew his head off with a double barrel shotgun.

Seems profound. Could be a suicide note written by any one of us if we ever got down to the bare naked truth.

"There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself."

That is a quote from a book titled "The Long Goodbye", written by Raymond Chandler.

Again, seems oddly prescient.

OK, I am showing off my vocabulary. I am proud of it. Don't get to flex it much.

In other words, again, it seems like words applicable to any one of us interested in the truth.

The whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Ciao.