Long Talkers, Tiny Rooms, and Tiffany Joy

This post is part of a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

—

After what seemed like hours, Lynn and I stumbled out of the van Gogh exhibit. I blinked like a mole because it had been so dim in there. I needed to find a bathroom and asked a nearby guard, who launched into the story of her life, which included having diabetes, moving to Chicago from Gary, Indiana, and being a weight lifter. I made the mistake of saying, “I lift weights too,” and that gave her license to talk some more. She wasn’t talking with me or even to me; she was just talking.

Lynn had done an about face right away but I would have felt mean walking away. In my imagination I filled in the story of her life—how she must be an impoverished single mother who had to do this excruciatingly boring job, how it must be so hard on her back to stand all day, and so on. Then I remembered I needed a bathroom, butted in to ask her again, and made my escape after many Minnesota-nice thank yous and repetitions of “Have a nice day!”

This type of talking was a theme on our trip, I realize in retrospect. People launching into long, one-way recitations about themselves, with no encouragement from us. There were never any questions about us—none of the give and take that turns talking into conversation. It’s like being held prisoner by words. What is that about? I’ve experienced it from time to time throughout my life but is it more prevalent now? Does it have something to do with social media and people wanting to tell their stories? Is it a symptom of loneliness and isolation in our modern society?

—

Speaking of long talkers, David our innkeeper had recommended that we see the miniatures at the Art Institute. “I took mama and Miss Rose to see them, when they visited from Kentucky,” he said. “Mama didn’t say nothin’ the whole time. I wondered if she didn’t like it. Then I finally said, ‘Mama, don’t you like them?’ and she said, ‘Oh I do! I do, but I can’t imagine dusting all of them!’”

I laughed and Lynn fake laughed but I could tell she was puzzled. Once we actually got to the miniature rooms and she saw what they were, she explained why. “When he said miniatures, I thought of tiny portraits that people used to have done before there was photography.” Here is an example of an English miniature:

Here is what the miniatures in the Art Institute are:

Miniature rooms from various periods and countries—hundreds of them. They are really fun to look at and yes, they must be a pain to dust.

We thought we were done but to reach the exit we had to walk through the Asian section. So we took another hour or so to admire works from Japan, Indonesia, China, and India. Lynn has been to all these places. She’s Anglo-Indian and has been to India many times. She worked for Oxfam in Aceh, Indonesia after the Indian Ocean tsunami. So she’s learned a thing or two about the vast territory covered by the label “Asia.”

“But I never retain anything I’ve learned,” she explained. So she knew which god was Ganesh and which was Krishna but I was definitely going to have to Google them later to learn more.

—

David had also recommended that we visit the Chicago Cultural Center, one block north and across Michigan Avenue from the Art Institute. “It was a library, but now they hold concerts and have art exhibits there, and it’s fabulous,” he said.

And he was right! I had never even heard of the place, and it turned out to be the highlight of Chicago for me. The building was completed in 1897 and features the largest dome of Tiffany glass in the world:

I loved the details. It wasn’t called The Gilded Age for nothing:

I was happy to realize that I still had many classic works left to read: Scott, Burns, Tennyson, Gray. Someday—when I can no longer travel.

Artisanal Art

Leave a reply

This is the fifth post about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

—

Lynn and I spend hours in the Art Institute. We lingered with the impressionists, then she specifically wanted to see “American Gothic” by Grant Wood.

I found a sweet little website for children, or maybe just simple-minded people, that describes the painting: “After he made sketches of the house, Grant looked for just the right people to go with it. He thought his family dentist and his own sister, Nan, would be perfect for the farmer and his daughter. Grant entered American Gothic in a big show at the Art Institute of Chicago, and won the third place prize. People all over America loved the newspaper pictures they saw of it. Soon, Grant’s paintings started to become very popular. One reason for this was that many people felt Grant’s art was easier to understand than a lot of the new modern art being done.”

I could relate to that later, when we visited a modern art exhibit:

The second photo is actually an air vent, but really, how different is it from the “real art” on the left? Maybe I’m just a philistine. But then there was this, made entirely of snake skins:

—

We waited in line for lunch in the shi-shi café at the Institute. The young cook kept up a stream of talk while he worked. Or, that is, he stopped working every time he started talking. He wasn’t talking to us; it was like a stream of consciousness. After 25 minutes we finally reached a table with our stir fries and some fortifying red wine.

Two couples from St. Louis sat next to us at the picnic-style table and struck up a conversation. They were all eating giant sausages. Lynn peered at them dubiously.

“This one is a Chicago style brat,” the woman next to me explained. “And this one is a Polish sausage—there’s a big Polish population in Chicago.”

“And this is a wiener,” said her husband. Lynn turned to me and gave me her special blank expression that said so much.

After they had wolfed down their sausages, Lynn had her say. “None of those were proper sausages! A wee-ner,” she dragged out the name to emphasize its silliness. “What’s a wiener!?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure whatever’s inside isn’t good.” I said. “My mom used to buy them by the dozens and keep them in the freezer. We would eat them like frozen treats. A couple years ago there was an outbreak of a mysterious neurological illness at a meat packing plant in Minnesota. They were using a new technique with high-pressure hoses to blast out every bit of brain matter from pigs’ skulls.” Lynn recoiled in horror, rightly so.

“I’m so glad I stopped eating pork years ago! I’ve never paid much attention to British sausages, or to American ones for that matter,” I said.

“British sausages are very different to what those people were eating. We would never eat anything like a wiener!” Lynn tried to describe how wonderful and superior British sausages were but it was lost on me.

These are the kinds of conversations you have when you travel with someone from another country. They’re amusing and confusing, and eventually I find myself Googling “British sausages” late at night.

—

Back to the impressionists. There was a special Vincent van Gogh exhibit called Three Bedrooms. Lynn pronounced his name “van Goff.” In America we say “van Go.”

There was an interpretive film. They had physically recreated the bedroom. There were other artists’ paintings of bedrooms or some such. And on and on. It really put the “anal” in artisanal.

Then, finally, the three paintings:

Now, I like Vincent van Gogh as much as the next person. Again, maybe I’m just an ignoramus. But I can hear the marketing department at the Institute brainstorming: “I know! Let’s find three almost-identical paintings by some name-brand artist, make up a story about them, and call it an exhibit! We can charge extra and sell lots of merchandise!”

The merch part was good, as I was able to buy my Vince a Vincent t-shirt. One souvenir crossed off the list.

Hail, Prince

Leave a reply

I’m interrupting the series about the road trip to New Orleans to write about Prince’s death. It’s very sad, and we in Minnesota will miss him. He had a huge impact on the local music scene. In the Minneapolis Star Tribune today, Doomtree rapper P.O.S. credited Prince with making Minneapolis “a city full of musical weirdos.” That’s a good thing. You want artists to feel free to experiment.

Bob Dylan, another tiny weirdo superstar from Minnesota, lives in Malibu, California. Prince stayed here, and like most locals I had gone to First Avenue, the club he founded, hoping he would show up for one of his impromptu concerts. Last year I went to a party there celebrating the 30^th anniversary of Purple Rain. They showed the movie on a big screen and local musicians, including P.O.S, played songs from the album. Lots of people I know have stories about hearing Prince at some small local venue, or meeting him at a restaurant, and they all describe him as friendly and warm.

The headline in the Star Tribune today was irritating: “Lonely death scene despite legions of fans.” Yes, he was alone when he died, but does that mean he was lonely? It’s just such sloppy writing. Probably the person he would have most wanted to be with in his dying moments would have been a paramedic. The Strib also referred to his “passing,” which is one of my pet peeves. It’s sad enough that he died. Can’t we just say it?

—

I once had a tangential connection to Prince. I dated his ex manager for a while. He and I hung out with Prince’s ex drummer, ex driver, ex chef … you get the idea. Prince was not an easy boss.

I’ll call my ex Larry. Back in the late 90s there was still a matchmaker for the Jewish community in the Twin Cities. She also ran the Big Brothers/Sisters mentoring program. She had matched me with my Little Sister, and after a rocky start it had turned out to be a perfect fit. Almost 40, I went to her to see if she could do as well with a man. She was a tiny lady named Bobbie Goldfarb. She peered at me and said, “Honey, at your age the odds are good, but the goods are odd.” That turned out to be true.

She set me up with Larry and it was great for a couple years. Larry had all sorts of Prince and other music memorabilia in his basement, including gold and platinum records. He told of how Prince came to live with him when Prince was a teenager. Prince could play the piano with one hand and a guitar with the other at the same time. He could do it standing on his head. Well, slight exaggeration but that’s just to say he was a whiz bang genius musician. Prince also had a wicked sense of humor. Larry told me a story of how he’d lifted the toilet seat, put plastic wrap over the bowl, and put the seat back down. You can imagine what happened to the next person to use the bathroom.

Larry rented a converted garage in Los Angeles that was his second home. It was a lot nicer than that sounds. You can live in a converted garage in Los Angeles and be perfectly happy, because you can sit outside surrounded by fragrant night-blooming jasmine and all the other lush growing things that can’t survive in Minnesota. And there was a pool. I love staring at a pool even if I never get in it. I have Larry to thank for my love of L.A.

—

New Year’s Eve, 1999. Larry and I went to a party in a house on the beach near Santa Monica. There was a sushi chef. There were fireworks over the pier. It was a nice night. Two months later I turned 40, Larry dumped me, I was fired from my job, and I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. I was devastated and played Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 You” (written by Prince) over and over and smoked and cried…such a great wallowing song.

Thanks, Prince, for the music, and for inspiring weirdos and sad people everywhere.

Monk-ey Business

Leave a reply

This is the fourth post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

—

Finally! I will get to our day in Chicago now. But I have to say, it’s the little sights and interactions and quirky people you meet while traveling that make it interesting. You can read about the Art Institute of Chicago in any guidebook or on hundreds of commercial websites, but you would probably not learn that a high street and a downtown are the same thing, and you would never get to know David the Innkeeper.

The temperature had plunged overnight, from the mid 70sF to almost freezing. The wind sliced through the thin clothes I had packed in anticipation of the New Orleans’ heat. No matter how much I travel, I always pack optimistically, and sometimes I end up shivering as a result. Home in chilly Minnesota, I can’t imagine anywhere else could be as cold.

I had checked the map and was focused on finding the Architecture Foundation of Chicago. I had been on their river boat tours several times and they were great. It was too cold for a boat tour, but they had lots of other indoor tours, according to their brochures.

Lynn and I wandered up and down Michigan Avenue for an hour and never found the AFC. I hadn’t realized there was a north and south Michigan, there was construction hiding the building numbers, and finally we just gave up because it was too cold and windy. Besides, we kept being approached by guys dressed as monks asking for money. I say “dressed as” monks because we eventually concluded this was a scam. The first guy approached us and thrust some sort of bracelet into Lynn’s hand. He started speaking badly broken English and pointing to a booklet he had with pictures and symbols that made no sense.

I tried to hand him some quarters, nickels, and dimes leftover from the tollway—win win! “No coins!” he barked.

I was inclined to walk away but Lynn is nicer than me. She’s also been to Bhutan, Nepal, Thailand, and everywhere else there are actual monks.

“You’re trying to build a temple, are you?” she asked, as the fake monk showed her a page of writing. “Where are you from?” she asked.

“Hong Kong,” he replied.

That did it. She said “No thanks,” and walked away. “Hong Kong just doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If he really was from Hong Kong he would very likely speak English.”

“Yeah, I bet as soon as we walked away he muttered ‘bitches’ under his breath!” I replied.

—

Finally, our site seeing got underway with a walk through Millennium Park:

We couldn’t stand the cold anymore so headed over to Starbucks for a hot drink while we waited for the Art Institute to open. Of course the people in line with us were from Scotland. That seems to happen all the time.

When the Institute opened we wobbled around for 15 minutes trying to figure out which line to join. I couldn’t believe it cost $25 to get in. That seemed outrageous. I was used to the free admission we have at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which is a great museum thanks to all the corporate headquarters we have here—like General Mills, United Health, Cargill, 3M, and Target—plus our tradition of individual philanthropy. Was Chicago really so different? Was the city in economic straits? I don’t know, but after I dithered and protested and probably embarrassed Lynn by asking a security guard “do we really have to pay $25 to just to see the permanent collection?” she coughed up the admission fee plus an extra $5 to see a special Van Gogh exhibit.

Meanwhile, I was snapping a picture of the back lighted wallpaper in the ticketing hall:

I’m kind of a wallpaper freak. I take photos of beautiful wallpapers when I travel, certain that I’ll somehow recreate them in my tiny condo. How hard could that be?

New Orleans or Bust

Leave a reply

This is the second post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

—

As Lynn and I were about to leave Madison for Chicago, the car’s engine light came on. I drove to my cousin’s house, pulled Bluebell into the driveway, and popped her hood.

“I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” I told Lynn.

“I know—I always bring mine to a garage—I don’t even know how to open the bonnet,” she replied.

I pulled out the dipstick, already knowing it would be impossible to tell if the oil was full or empty due to one of Mini Cooper’s many design quirks.

“Maybe the engine is hot?” I suggested hopefully. The coolant container was clearly marked: “DO NOT REMOVE CAP WHEN ENGINE IS HOT.” I unscrewed it anyway and quickly jerked my hand away as steam exploded out of it and coolant ran out onto the driveway. I screwed the top back on and waited for it to cool down so I could see how low it would be now—now that I had made sure it was low on coolant.

I didn’t think my cousin knew much about cars, but I still wished he was back from the pow wow. Car problems are the one situation in which I revert to my primitive, dependent woman self. I wanted a man to deal with it. A man would know what to do, right? Never mind the many times I had asked some male relative or coworker about a car issue and they got a panicky look on their face because they knew, as men, they should know about cars but didn’t know jack.

I also fell back on an old coping mechanism—denial. “I think it’ll be okay to drive to Chicago. I’ll deal with it in Chicago.” Thus commenced several days of flipping back and forth from outright heart-thumping panic to the blissful Zen of denial.

—

When you Google “Chicago tollway” here are just a few of the images that come up:

The engine started chuddering along the way and the drive was every bit as stressful as I’d remembered, with the added feature of an endless road construction project which had us all swerving into new lanes every few miles, amidst massive piles of concrete rubble that looked like a moonscape.

Every time we approached a tollbooth I had to talk Lynn through how much money to pull together. “Those little ones are called dimes; they’re 10 cents, get 15 of them. And 10 of the big ones, those are quarters. They’re 25 cents” This is one of those micro culture shock things: the UK has 20 pence pieces, while we have 25 cent pieces.

Each time we slowed, the car shook harder and I feared it would kill and not start again. I made a conscious effort to keep my back and shoulder muscles relaxed. The previous day, it had seemed like a good idea to take a new pilates class. You know, get some exercise in before sitting all day in the car. My torso felt as tight and tense as a loaded steel trap.

I didn’t trust what Marge, my GPS, was telling me, so I exited the tollway early and drove stop-and-go slow for miles through the city streets. The streets were swarming with crowds of people out enjoying the 75F spring weather. Marge got her revenge by beeping loudly at every intersection to tell us there was a speed camera. Fat chance of triggering one of those during rush hour.

Lynn had found a great little place called the Old Chicago Inn just south of Wrigleyville. Lynn and the Innkeeper carried in the luggage while I searched for a parking space. The inn came with free parking—a permit to park wherever you could find a spot in the vicinity. I found a spot two blocks away and killed the motor. I checked the trip odometer—we’d driven 450 miles that day. I sagged over the wheel and exhaled. I thought about calling AAA but then what? They would tow my car to some garage in Chicago, one of the most corrupt cities in America. I was determined to get to New Orleans.

Innformed

Leave a reply

This is the third post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

—

Enough about the car for now! We had 48 hours in Chicago and I put Bluebell out of my mind for the time being. Here’s a photo of the Old Chicago Inn at Christmastime.

It’s an Art Deco-era inn and I was very grateful that Lynn had booked two rooms instead of one. The small rooms were…small, but they were en suite. For you Americans, that means they included a bathroom. The larger rooms shared a bathroom in the hallway.

Our innkeeper was David, and he informed us he was from Kentucky—or “Kaintucky” as he pronounced it. David turned out to be one of the best things about our brief time in Chicago.

He gave us a couple $10 off vouchers for the restaurant next door, which turned out to be a Key West-themed karaoke bar. We ordered a couple sandwiches and beers and sat back to watch the show. We must have raised the average age in there by 20 years; duos and trios of inebriated 20-somethings were sang while others danced. They sang and danced badly, but with a lot of heart. It was good for a few laughs. I’m sure Lynn could have stayed out later but I just wanted to lie down. I know I’m drained when I pass up a second beer on vacation.

—

The population of the Chicago metropolitan area is almost 10 million. It’s a bustling, busy place full of skyscrapers, art, industry, tourists, and music. They love their deep dish pizzas and baseball. It’s known as the Windy City, and for good reason. Chicago is perched on Lake Michigan, one of the Great Lakes, and the wind is ferocious. I think of Chicago as like a merger of New York and Minneapolis. A big city with a Midwestern vibe.

Lynn and I had breakfast in the basement of the inn, which had originally been a speakeasy. A speakeasy was a secret, illegal bar during prohibition, when alcohol was illegal in the U.S. from 1920 to 1933. It’s hard to believe, today, that we ever attempted to ban booze. Of course prohibition was a huge fail. My great grandfather went to federal prison for two years because he tried to steal liquor out of a government warehouse where they stored confiscated alcohol. He owned a restaurant and his business had tanked when he could no longer serve drinks. This was in Kentucky, and I mentioned it to David, our innkeeper.

“My grandmother was from Covington, Kentucky,” I said. “She always referred to it as ‘down home.’” I didn’t mention that she also called black people “coloreds.”

David was one of those people who knows a lot about a lot of things and appreciates a captive audience. He didn’t acknowledge my comment but launched into a story about his “mama” and Miss Rose, a neighbor of theirs in Kentucky. David was probably approaching 60. He was gaunt, missing a tooth, and wore Malcom X glasses.

I’m conscious as I write this that you’ll know David was white without me having to write it. I’ve probably done this a hundred times in this blog, but this road trip was packed with interactions around race, so maybe it’s good I’ve caught myself.

David stood between us and the door and talked about his mama and Miss Rose and the antebellum (pre-Civil War) house he’d grown up in. He described the closets which were designed to store hoop skirts and fancy ladies hats, and how they went to the Kentucky Derby every year. Normally I can’t stand this kind of person who talks on and on and never asks you a question about yourself. But David was just a lovable guy.

We finally broke away and walked over to the Belmont station to take the train downtown. Lynn asked me what “downtown” and “uptown” meant.

“Downtown is what you would call the High Street,” I explained. I wasn’t sure about the term uptown.

We arrived downtown and the first thing we saw was Trump Tower. We instinctively turned to each other and exclaimed, “Blech!!”

Spring Surprises

Leave a reply

The road trip is now in my rear view mirror, ha ha. I drove about 2,660 miles.

—

As you may recall if you’ve been reading along for a while, I planned obsessively for this trip and felt anxious about what might go wrong. For instance I feared my car would break down in the middle of nowhere so I had all sorts of maintenance work done on it and I joined AAA (the American Automobile Association) a few days before I left.

None of the things I’d imagined would go wrong, went wrong. What happened was more ambiguous and thus, more stressful.

—

Lynn arrived as planned and spent the night at my place. She showed me the guide books and maps she had brought and I said I wouldn’t bring most of mine since hers looked better. Vince had moved out that morning, so we went to visit him briefly in his new pad before we rolled out of town. Lynn and Vince had been hearing about each other for years. It’s great when the important people in your life meet each other.

We left St. Paul around 8am. We had a lot of catching up to do, and the miles peeled away quickly as we cut across southeast Wisconsin. I needed to gas up near Warrens, which is home of the Cranberry Discovery Center and Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park—two sites I’d visited in the past and knew would be strange and wonderful to British eyes.

Lynn had never seen cranberry fields; here is what they look like:

We drove around Jellystone, a massive campground for families with kids with a water park, rides, and cabins.

The area was deserted, since it was only early April, and I was glad the gas station was even open. I filled up as Lynn perused the offerings inside—gun magazines, cranberry wine, bowie knives, cranberry beer, coon skin caps, and a hundred kinds of beef jerky.

Back on the road, we were quickly in Madison, where my cousin Bob lives with his wife Paula. We were joined by my niece Emily, who attends the University of Wisconsin Madison. Bob had promised “light refreshments,” which turned out to be a huge spread including many Wisconsin cheeses. They brought out the inevitable cheese head, an accoutrement of Wisconsin Badgers football fans, which Lynn refused to wear but which I was happy to model:

We talked about politics. Lynn, probably like most foreigners, is appalled and bewildered by the rise of Donald Trump. Bob is a radio news reporter, so he’s steeped in politics. Paula has been apolitical until this year, but the rise of Trump has got her reconsidering whether to jump into the fray. Emily, being a college student on one of the most liberal campuses in America, has no shortage of opinions.

Paul is Native, and we lucked out that the spring pow wow was taking place that day at the Madison civic arena. A pow wow is basically a big social gathering of a tribe—in this case, the Ojibway tribe which is spread across the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and central Canada—to dance and drum. It was unclear to me if there is any spiritual significance to it all. There were lots of colorful costumes—they prefer the term regalia. There were cute kids running around and stalls selling jewelry and fry bread and pop. No alcohol was allowed on the premises.

Since I’m not Native I didn’t take photos because it would have felt like I was photographing animals in a zoo. But plenty of other people do take photos at pow wows and post them online:

After a couple hours it was time to leave so we could get to Chicago by dark. If you’ve never driven the expressway into Chicago, flanked by giant semi trucks going 85 miles per hour while fumbling for coins for the toll booths, you haven’t lived. I’ve done this drive half a dozen times and it is nerve wracking.

As I started the car Lynn exclaimed, “Damn! I must have left my maps and books on your dining room table!” That’s when I heard the “DING DING! DING!” and my engine light came on.

Long Ago in a Land of Spandex

Leave a reply

Greetings from St. Louis. One more day of the road trip, and one more guest post from Vince.

Long Ago, In a Land of Spandex

It’s Friday again, my favorite day of the week. I like my job, but I like weekends more, and at this very moment it’s the longest possible time before more work. This will be the seventh post now on the topic of my career. Or careers. Or lack thereof, uh, yeah. I have no career; I have held many jobs over the years.

At this moment, I’m taking a break from packing my few belongings for the big move. I finally threw away all of my stuff from prison and boot camp. I was never going to use any of it, so I’m happy to toss it out. Alright then, on with it.

After leaving Rochester and finding temporary shelter with a friend of a friend in Fountain, Minnesota, I was given a job as a line cook at Pedal Pusher’s Café in nearby Lanesboro. The owners were a couple with three kids and they all lived upstairs of the restaurant. Looking back, it really sucks to see how things went down. They were kind, generous people who went out of their way to help me when I was down. They even let me sleep in their camper for a while after things went sour in Fountain, and while I waited to find an apartment of my own which they also loaned me the money for.

Lanesboro is a bustling little city full of B&B’s, bike trails, trout fishing, tourists, and spandex, It has a few restaurants too, and they were very busy in the summer. I hadn’t been on a line in some years when I started there, but I picked things back up pretty quickly. Time flew by, I worked hard, and started drinking hard. I also met a new friend that would play a major role in my life for many years to come: gambling.

In the form of pull tabs, I whittled away my pay checks one dollar at a time for months. Eventually, I started taking advances on my pay checks, and very shortly after I started doing that, I started taking advances without their knowledge. This may come as a shock to some people with whom I have not been entirely honest over the years, but I’m letting it all out now. I felt like a lowlife piece of shit, but unfortunately, I just did not care. It didn’t take them long to catch on to me and I was eventually fired for stealing.

Unable to get unemployment benefits, I became withdrawn and moved in with an unenthusiastic friend and his soon to be wife. I sat in that room for a month, maybe two. I wore the same clothes, I ate ramen out of the package, and I cried every day. I was too proud to ask for help. I couldn’t take care of myself, I couldn’t find a job (because I absolutely was not looking), and I was about as close to having a suicidal urge as I’ve ever come. Auspiciously, a very good friend of mine got me out of that trance and back into Fountain where I held a few more jobs.

About two weeks ago, I sent a letter to the owners of Pedal Pusher’s. I told them a lot of what has been going on with me, but more importantly, what was going on with me back then. I asked them to give me a chance to repair the damage I have created, and I included a small token of my sincerity in the form of money. I haven’t heard back from them and I don’t know that I ever will. But I have done my part. At the very least, I have tried to open an avenue of communication with them so that I may fix what has been broken for so long. It was the first of many letters to many people, and with each one, I hope to feel a little more human again.

Time to Make a Move

Leave a reply

Greetings from Oxford, Mississippi! This is a post written by Vince about his move. It will be bittersweet to come home to an empty house.

Time to Make a Move

Just shy of seven months as a free man, I am happy to report that, as a 37-year-old, I am moving out of my mother’s home. Again. Maybe for the fourth time in my life, and hopefully for the last.

I alluded to this in my last post but not before because I didn’t want to get overexcited about it until it was actually approved by my agents. Now it is official, and I can proudly relate this information to you: I AM MOVING! Just two short days from now.

I have written about this move before, but as a failed attempt at leaving the nest possibly too early. I’m moving into a house with two sober guys from the program, one of which I was in prison with, and I’ve worked with for some time. He no longer works with me, but we remain friends. I don’t know the other guy, but he’s sober, and that counts for a lot.

I’ve been to see the house once. It’s small as you can see in the picture, but I’ll have my own room, so it isn’t like a sober house environment. There isn’t a house manager that watches over us, or anybody to give us random shakedowns and breathalyzers. I have my agents for that. This is a step forward.

It couldn’t come at a better time, in my opinion, as I will be moving on to the next phase of Intensive Supervised Release program soon after. That will open up a lot more time that I can spend doing things I want to do like go to more meetings, and spending more time with my family. I am also finishing the last three hours of my community service this week.

It’s all lining up. Everything is going well in so many ways. So I need to be really careful. For somebody like me, good news can be all I need to trick myself into thinking I deserve a reward. Maybe I can go out and celebrate with just one drink, or just a little crack (“A little” crack doesn’t actually exist. It’s an all or nothing drug. For more information, go here). I mean, at this point I’ve built myself a pretty good network of people that I can reach out to if the urge hits me, but it’s always good to layer on the protection.

This disease of mine can also be described as an allergy. When I drink or do drugs, things just go haywire. My body responds differently to them than normal people. Also, my allergy in particular is a little more severe than say, a gluten allergy. Oh, also I don’t believe that’s a real allergy, but I’m not a Doctor. Anyhow, let’s say that somebody with a gluten allergy accidentally ingests some flour. Well, maybe an hour or so later, they fart a little and that causes some slight discomfort or embarrassment. Well, when I ingest a little alcohol, or maybe some meth, my world flips upside down. I can no longer take care of myself financially, mentally, or physically. And this allergy affects others, too. For example, if I smoke crack, you may no longer have a television, and some of your smaller valuables may go missing as well.

Simply put, chemicals make me not give a fuck about you or me. And I’d really like to avoid all of that so that’s why I’ve immersed myself in this program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m not worried about relapsing because of my new place and my new freedoms, I’m excited to see what I can do with them. And I’m really happy to be able to share this with you people. For you that are new to this blog, I encourage you to see where it all started almost two years ago with just five pieces of writing paper and a 3” flexible safety pen behind the unforgiving bars at St. Cloud Men’s Reformatory/State Prison.

Easter Interlude

Leave a reply

I was Skyping with someone at work who is an attorney who documents torture and other human rights abuses perpetrated against Syrians. I loved this quote she had on her Skype account:

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

It was said by E.B. White, who along with William Strunk wrote The Elements of Style, usually just referred to as “Strunk and White.” It was first published in 1918 and is considered one of the most influential English language books. It was like a Bible to me when I first began my career. Basically, in a little over a hundred pages (1999 edition), they tell you everything you need to know about punctuation, grammar, composition and commonly misused phrases and words.

Here’s another quote from White: “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.” That’s a great affirmation from someone who basically inscribed the Ten Commandments of writing on paper. As someone who often wonders, “Why am I writing this blog?” I appreciate this one.

And finally, “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.” I hope I am both.

—

I’m going to share a couple posts from my son Vince in the next week or so. We started Breaking Free as a co-blog, to write about his experiences in prison and mine as a prison mom. Is that a thing? It is now.

—

Easter Interlude

The anxiety started a little over a week ago, when I found out how soon Easter actually was this year. I was finally going to jump over another big hurdle. I’ve been out of prison now for almost seven months and haven’t had the opportunity to attend a gathering with the extended family, and today was that day.

I don’t actually know what it was that I was afraid of. I guess it’s the fact that I haven’t seen them for a decade and I really don’t know that any of them have any idea where I’ve been. I visualize a hundred conversations all ending abruptly when they ask what I’ve been doing, or why they haven’t seen me in so long. And of course it’s not their fault that they’d be curious, we’re family. My grandparents are wonderful but as far as I know, they didn’t really spread the word about my trip to prison, or my years of alcoholism and drug addiction. And there’s the shame factor for me that I didn’t really want to go into any of that at Easter (or ever). I mean who wants to hear such a sad story on Jesus’ Birthday? Or whatever it is.

All the worry and apprehension was for naught. I was greeted with hugs, handshakes, and warmth. And truth be told, I felt some connection with a few of them that it turns out I really missed. And once again I was sitting at the table with my family, laughing, conversing, and feeling all the uneasiness dissipate. I didn’t recognize a few of them as they had all literally aged ten years and were just kids the last time I had seen them.

I think what I realized is that it doesn’t matter where I’ve been for so long, only that I am here now. Not just in this particular situation, but in everything. It took me a while to adapt to life outside the walls, but now that I have been away for a while, I think I can let that go. That time of my life is over, and even though I constantly need to be work on recovery, it’s not so much about not going back, but being able to move forward.

I just got home from the gathering and wanted to get those words down while the event was still fresh in my mind. I feel really good right now. As if a weight has been lifted off of me. But like many of these weights, it was put there by me. I need to quit that. I’m a work in progress.