You Can Call Me Baby

About six weeks ago I stopped smoking. Life has revolved around this point – waking, dreaming, laughing, screaming. And suddenly I’m not the person I thought I was. Wait, I simply don’t know who I am. Oh, it’s not so bad. When you don’t know who you are you don’t’ bicker with yourself so much, there’s not all this old baggage to address. I’m all newborn, covered with blood. Ten fingers, ten toes and a big mess you can call baby.

I’m in a rather menacing way. It’s fascinating. Dark thoughts at every turn. I don’t like it. However much I’d ceased liking who I was in that relationship with the addiction – well, I don’t care much for this girl either. On the ferry en route to San Francisco the other day, I thought about some essay I’d read here or there on mediation and prayer. The author contends that whether or not we consider ourselves religious folk and whether or not we think we pray – that we do – we pray and meditate all the time. The author urged us to be mindful of what our prayer rests on. Some people spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about money, material things, what others think of them (or what other’s aren’t thinking of them), etc. etc. So these are the kinds of things that might occupy our thoughts – which are our meditations and prayers.

Considering this unremembered author’s contentions I tried to be mindful. The bay, how beautiful the water, the sun glinting on patterns of waves in such and such a way to look like diamonds sparkling on something dark and mysterious and deep. The color of the hills surrounding San Quentin prison – electric green from the winter rains. The smell of salt and sea. The woman who asks for change on the Embarcadero – she has a lovely smile. I give her ten dollars. It’s what I would have spent on cigarettes that day – do I think for a second she is less worthy than that?

It’s all a fancy way of saying, go to a happy place. So I went to my happy place. I don’t mind saying that I have a bit of disdain that it’s a contrived place – not a natural place my thoughts and heart lands – not like it used to be. Or did it?

I keep trying to remember the wisdom in that thing that Homer Simpson said… Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen. It only goes to follow that it also takes two to speak the truth. Some days I feel like I’d have a real edge up on things if I were schizophrenic.