Writing this is as my day one treat. I’ve taken the Picasso to get its brakes fixed. Written two emails to Belle – I’ll continue to email her, whether or no she replies. Her rate for penpalling seems to have skyrocketed ($23 a week) which I’m not surprised by, but not sure I want or need to pay that.
I’m not going to worry about who may be reading this, which is sort of why I stopped writing it in the first place. And I’ll send it, or a link to it, as my 3rd email of the day to Belle. Meanwhile I’m listening to Rod Liddle and Nigel Farage discussing Brexit etc
Where have I been for the last 9 months? I’ve been equivocating, between action and inaction, between nonsense talk about God and questioning everything, between drinking and not drinking, smoking and not smoking, and getting thoroughly confused and lately unhappy about La B. Her leaving for Switzerland, and leaving me marooned here wondering why I’m here, or what alternatives I have, has made me very unhappy. And she’s off in a black hole after her mother’s death. And although she insists we’re not I can’t keep the black suspicion that we’re over from coming in at me in the dark hours of the night, and broad daylight too.
Feeling alienated from most people here, alone, out of place. And usually grumpy, irritable.
I resumed drinking, mostly not very much, but occasional half bottles of whisky, and keeping it more or less secret, from everyone, La B and Belle included, perhaps especially. Which felt horrid. And the old habits all come screaming back. If I was alone, a la Sweffling, truly unwatched, or uncaring as to who as watching me, I think I’d have gone a lot further in to the pit, possibly past the point of no return. So I have something to be grateful to Bonnevaux and La B for.
Keep reading (Simone Weil, John of the Cross, Placid) about letting go, stopping doing things, stopping trying to make something happen. And perhaps that is the root of the unhappiness I’ve been oscillating in and out of all this year, which predates my drinking by several months – it just got to a point when I couldn’t see the point in trying any more. But the root perhaps is a kind of impatience, ‘am I really going to carry on doing this – meditating, working for Bonnevaux, denying everything to myself – for the rest of my life?’ A life which I think is all we have, and Nietzsche's question in Sils Maria, what if you had to live this life over and over again, without change – what would you say? He said yes, and so do I, but I don’t think we have that option – we just have this life, to be lived once, and made the best of. So Benedict and the Christian’s hope for the hereafter is futile and childish. My spark of consciousness may return to the infinite ocean of love and bliss, but the best I can hope for, as Simone Weil believed, is an instant of understanding and acceptance, and joy, at the end of it all. And I do hope for that, believe that that is a possibility, but I’m not sure I'm ready to spend the next day, or 5 years, 15, 20, waiting and preparing for that. And in any case, what are all the foregoing saying but there is nothing to be done, just patient attention and awareness? Which I’m happy enough with, and (partly) why I'm having another go at not drinking, and not smoking too, and continuing to meditate.
Also, because if everything else is equivocation, ambiguity, unknowingness, this little action, this staying sober for 7 days, or 30, or 100, is one thing I think is worth doing, for its own sake. And also because I wouldn’t like to lose La B just because I was drinking. If we are over, let it just be over, don’t let me fuck it up. I’ve come close a couple of times recently, shouting and crying at her, trying to get her to tell me what perhaps she cannot say, does not herself know, and both times after drinking. I don’t think I said anything unforgivable, or untrue, just lost the plot, which was maybe not such a terrible thing, even if it did upset her. More a case of the drink uncorking the emotional bottle, I think, than just the drink talking. But that is another reason for stopping – I don’t like living in the unreal world of the drunk. It may not be unreal, but I don’t trust myself, or reality, when I’m drinking.
Meanwhile I read about the Steppenwolf, and suddenly notice the coincidence with Belle’s Wolfie – that the drinker in me is perhaps the id, crying out for mother, or wildness, or release, all of which Hesse writes about
I’m not going to worry about who may be reading this, which is sort of why I stopped writing it in the first place. And I’ll send it, or a link to it, as my 3rd email of the day to Belle. Meanwhile I’m listening to Rod Liddle and Nigel Farage discussing Brexit etc
Where have I been for the last 9 months? I’ve been equivocating, between action and inaction, between nonsense talk about God and questioning everything, between drinking and not drinking, smoking and not smoking, and getting thoroughly confused and lately unhappy about La B. Her leaving for Switzerland, and leaving me marooned here wondering why I’m here, or what alternatives I have, has made me very unhappy. And she’s off in a black hole after her mother’s death. And although she insists we’re not I can’t keep the black suspicion that we’re over from coming in at me in the dark hours of the night, and broad daylight too.
Feeling alienated from most people here, alone, out of place. And usually grumpy, irritable.
I resumed drinking, mostly not very much, but occasional half bottles of whisky, and keeping it more or less secret, from everyone, La B and Belle included, perhaps especially. Which felt horrid. And the old habits all come screaming back. If I was alone, a la Sweffling, truly unwatched, or uncaring as to who as watching me, I think I’d have gone a lot further in to the pit, possibly past the point of no return. So I have something to be grateful to Bonnevaux and La B for.
Keep reading (Simone Weil, John of the Cross, Placid) about letting go, stopping doing things, stopping trying to make something happen. And perhaps that is the root of the unhappiness I’ve been oscillating in and out of all this year, which predates my drinking by several months – it just got to a point when I couldn’t see the point in trying any more. But the root perhaps is a kind of impatience, ‘am I really going to carry on doing this – meditating, working for Bonnevaux, denying everything to myself – for the rest of my life?’ A life which I think is all we have, and Nietzsche's question in Sils Maria, what if you had to live this life over and over again, without change – what would you say? He said yes, and so do I, but I don’t think we have that option – we just have this life, to be lived once, and made the best of. So Benedict and the Christian’s hope for the hereafter is futile and childish. My spark of consciousness may return to the infinite ocean of love and bliss, but the best I can hope for, as Simone Weil believed, is an instant of understanding and acceptance, and joy, at the end of it all. And I do hope for that, believe that that is a possibility, but I’m not sure I'm ready to spend the next day, or 5 years, 15, 20, waiting and preparing for that. And in any case, what are all the foregoing saying but there is nothing to be done, just patient attention and awareness? Which I’m happy enough with, and (partly) why I'm having another go at not drinking, and not smoking too, and continuing to meditate.
Also, because if everything else is equivocation, ambiguity, unknowingness, this little action, this staying sober for 7 days, or 30, or 100, is one thing I think is worth doing, for its own sake. And also because I wouldn’t like to lose La B just because I was drinking. If we are over, let it just be over, don’t let me fuck it up. I’ve come close a couple of times recently, shouting and crying at her, trying to get her to tell me what perhaps she cannot say, does not herself know, and both times after drinking. I don’t think I said anything unforgivable, or untrue, just lost the plot, which was maybe not such a terrible thing, even if it did upset her. More a case of the drink uncorking the emotional bottle, I think, than just the drink talking. But that is another reason for stopping – I don’t like living in the unreal world of the drunk. It may not be unreal, but I don’t trust myself, or reality, when I’m drinking.
Meanwhile I read about the Steppenwolf, and suddenly notice the coincidence with Belle’s Wolfie – that the drinker in me is perhaps the id, crying out for mother, or wildness, or release, all of which Hesse writes about
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Say anything you like. I do.