I understand there's a personal growth exercise that consists of sitting on a chair, hands motionless, mouth silent, listening to a person give one the bad news about oneself. It's the one where you learn the meaning of the phrases, "I'm an asshole and my life doesn't work". or "I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground". After about three days of that, you call every person in ones life and apologize and ask for a new relationship. I've taken that course twice, and it's almost working. I've considered turning myself in for another round. It's probably more effective than shock therapy and probably prevents commitment to a structured environment euphemistically described as a stress ward. Don't worry about being Wilbo being lonely if he attends another one of these seminars, usually in Chicago or Dallas or Washington or Detroit or Los Angeles or even Amsterdam. Usually, there's two to three hundred people in the well air-conditioned room and there's plenty of facilitators on hand to keep the environment peaceful. You begin to feel very close to those people engaged in the seminar with you. You eat all your meals, breakfast lunch and dinner together. You tell stories one wouldn't tell anywhere else. It is more confessional that a Catholic Confessional. Everyone has agreed to be discrete and confidential and no recording by tape and video occurs. Afterwards, you never hear from your fellow seminarians ever again. It's too intimate. Plus, the people who run the class encourage a full return to the originating circle: family, friends, team-members and neighbors. It is this encouragement that keeps these classes from being cults. However, the classes do show up on cult lists.
I was attempting a similar exercise this weekend. I agreed, with my mischievous lying self, to stay within a range of ten miles north and ten miles south of my home. That's up to Whitehall or over to Nunica or down to Grand Haven, but no farther. So as I was driving down to Grand Haven, I decided I couldn't deal with Washington Boulevard two days in a row and so I summoned up a perfect day in Saugatuck. Heading up to Pentwater, Saugatuck's sister city, would have been out of bounds too. Wilboterria to Saugatuck is a drive of fifty miles down there and then fifty miles up there to home. It's was a capitulation to an idea that life is more interesting and exciting some place different than home, where I now merely sleep and wash clothes. Really, I have two friends who want to organize a dinner party at my flat with a beautiful view, which includes Eagles hunting flying birds in the swale. One is a well-regarded cookbook author and another is a splendid entertainer when it comes to dinner, drinks and atmosphere, an interior designer by profession. I have give them no answer because I can't imagine being home that long.
So maybe this week, I'll arrange to not have a car. Turning a car key in the ignition or snorting a line of crack is essentially the same act for me right now. Yes, I'll go to work, shop for food, go on appointments, reach out to friends. I can practically walk to work now that the weather has turned pleasant, and it will be good for my cardiac health.
I am proud of my Friday night. I had a beer after work at a familiar bar. I had a simple dinner at Edgewater Cafe, on Green Street and US-31. And then I retired to my home, cleaned in the kitchen and bathroom, and fell asleep on the couch. Waking up in the morning at 2:00 AM, I resisted a drive down to Rendezvous for a cuppa coffee and a smoke with the night owls. Oh yeah, the smoking is seriously down as of late. I gave away my last pack of Marlborough Lites to my friend's girlfriend, and I smoked only one on Friday night, my first in a while. I haven't purchased another pack of the Marlborough Silvers, so that's a good sign of progress. Ok, I scored a loosey from a man setting off in the morning for a fishing trip with friends from Grand Haven to Manistee, but we smoked them outside the Theater Bar as if we were two great men of the Great Lakes. And we were. This is going to be tough. Smoking a cigarette out on the sidewalk with a woman ones just met is metaphorically the same as kissing her. It's all face to face and lasts around three minutes.
Is there a way to wander and be carrying out some great and productive good AND still have a home that is the still point of the turning world. I spent most of 2005, 2006, and 2007 out on the road, and I'm sure it has bent me for the rest of my life.
I will give you progress reports. Wilbo
I haven't been everywhere man, and maybe I could stop trying so hard to go everywhere, be everywhere. Only God is omnipresent, right?
Nat Sherman Cigarettes are so much fun to share, especially in the fancy box. I was sitting on a roof in Chicago, smoking with a few new friends, and a newly minted non-smoker open my box of Nat Sherman cigarettes like a book and inhaled deeply their aroma. Then he gave the box back.
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