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Andy Warhol made movies of folks doing nothing.
George Costanza, in the comedy “Seinfeld”, tried to persuade NBC to make a TV
show about nothing. As much as I like “Seinfeld” and Andy Warhol, this journal
won’t be about nothing. I won’t try to make something out of nothing. I will
try to focus on the turning points, the moments of heartbreak and high drama
(at least as they seemed to me). Not that I won’t engage in some navel gazing
but I will attempt to cut away the rind, and get to the juice. Many things will
be left out. In no way will this journal be an all inclusive representation of
the events in my life. It will be more of a series of vignettes, incidents,
stories and poems. Memory is a funny thing. It is not an event in itself but
the fragmentary replication of an event, made of fleeting impressions, feelings
and images. It cannot be weighed or measured. It is dependent on us, on our
brains, on human consciousness. In the end, memory is a kind of fiction, an
illusion, a magician’s trick, where the past is revived and pulled out of a
hat.
The Emperor’s New Clothes (Memoir & Fable)—I chose this fable because I identified with the child in the story (who knows something is wrong). I was deeply disillusioned. My beautiful storybook parents had become unraveled by a monster, by alcoholism. My dad would drink and mother would fly into a rage. Often at night throughout my early childhood, I would be awakened not by a nightmare but by my parents, by their cries and curses, by the war between them. My beautiful parents were unrecognizable from the ones I knew in the daytime. TheUnited States Vietnam
Murmurs of the Heart—The vampires were closing in. No, this isn’t the retelling of a B movie but a portrait of my state of mind. Every night I’d fall into an abyss and in the morning I’d wake up with the shakes and a tubercular cough (the result of chain smoking cigarettes and pot).
La Vita Nuova or Vita Nova (English: The New Life) is a text by Dante Alighieri in 1295. It is an expression of the medieval genre of courtly love in a prosimetrum style, a combination of both prose and verse. Besides its content, it is notable for being written in Italian, rather than Latin; with Dante's other works, it helped to establish the Tuscan dialect in which it is written as the Italian standard. The prose creates the illusion of narrative continuity between the poems; it is Dante's way of reconstructing himself and his art in terms of his evolving sense of the limitations of courtly love (the system of ritualized love and art that Dante and his poet-friends inherited from the Provençal poets, the Sicilian poets of the court of Frederick II, and the Tuscan poets before them). Sometime in his twenties, Dante decided to try to write love poetry that was less centered on the self and more aimed at love as such: he intended to elevate courtly love poetry, many of its tropes and its language, into sacred love poetry. Beatrice for Dante was the embodiment of this kind of love—transparent to the Absolute, inspiring the integration of desire aroused by beauty with the longing of the soul for divine splendor.
The Emperor’s New Clothes (Memoir & Fable)—I chose this fable because I identified with the child in the story (who knows something is wrong). I was deeply disillusioned. My beautiful storybook parents had become unraveled by a monster, by alcoholism. My dad would drink and mother would fly into a rage. Often at night throughout my early childhood, I would be awakened not by a nightmare but by my parents, by their cries and curses, by the war between them. My beautiful parents were unrecognizable from the ones I knew in the daytime. The
Murmurs of the Heart—The vampires were closing in. No, this isn’t the retelling of a B movie but a portrait of my state of mind. Every night I’d fall into an abyss and in the morning I’d wake up with the shakes and a tubercular cough (the result of chain smoking cigarettes and pot).
La Vita Nuova or Vita Nova (English: The New Life) is a text by Dante Alighieri in 1295. It is an expression of the medieval genre of courtly love in a prosimetrum style, a combination of both prose and verse. Besides its content, it is notable for being written in Italian, rather than Latin; with Dante's other works, it helped to establish the Tuscan dialect in which it is written as the Italian standard. The prose creates the illusion of narrative continuity between the poems; it is Dante's way of reconstructing himself and his art in terms of his evolving sense of the limitations of courtly love (the system of ritualized love and art that Dante and his poet-friends inherited from the Provençal poets, the Sicilian poets of the court of Frederick II, and the Tuscan poets before them). Sometime in his twenties, Dante decided to try to write love poetry that was less centered on the self and more aimed at love as such: he intended to elevate courtly love poetry, many of its tropes and its language, into sacred love poetry. Beatrice for Dante was the embodiment of this kind of love—transparent to the Absolute, inspiring the integration of desire aroused by beauty with the longing of the soul for divine splendor.
Murmurs of the Heart
The vampires were closing in. No, this isn't the retelling of a B movie but a portrait of my state of mind. Every night I’d fall into an abyss and in the morning I’d wake up with the shakes and a tubercular cough (the result of chain smoking cigarettes and pot).
“Did you see her?” I called out to Rosalie from across the room.
“Who?”
“The woman, the ghost standing right next to me.”
“Not this time.”
I downed a large tumbler of white wine and lit a joint, took a puff and handed it to Rosalie.
“We have to get out of here.”
“Where will we go, Billy?”
“To Terrell.”
“How?”
“We’ll go to work for Bob. We’ll get an advance.”
Rosalie and I met at the same fly by night company—one that I helped form. In 1982, the TV show Dallas was popular and I’d hooked up with a group of ex commodities brokers (all alcoholics and addicts themselves) peddling (telemarketing) oil and gas projects to investors across the country. Originally Rosalie hooked up with the president of the company. Since he had an ex wife and a teenage son who often stayed with him, Rosalie moved in with me. We slept together that first night. I was twenty five, she was thirty nine. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever known. She had short blonde hair, was five foot tall and weighed less than a hundred pounds and drank a fifth of scotch daily.
On New Year’s Eve we’d gone out with Jack (one of our associates) in his black Lincoln Continental. Jack had killed one man and severed the legs of another while driving drunk in that same car six months before. When Jack became too drunk, Rosalie and I took turns driving. But we were equally drunk, equally insane. I could not even sit on a bar stool without falling over much less drive a car.
Yes the vampires were closing in. But the darkness came from a sickness within and leaving town would not change that.
* * * *
Rosalie and I did make our escape to Terrell, Texas (a small town just outside of Dallas). We lived in a farmhouse in a rustic setting. We drank constantly. For a time, Rosalie’s mother and nephew moved in with us. This was a disaster—but one that led ultimately to my sobriety. My family suggested to Rosalie that I be locked up in Terrell State Hospital. This frightened me. One morning, after Rosalie had a few drinks she called the number of a married couple who were in recovery. We met with them and began attending recovery meetings. Rosalie relapsed after thirty days of sobriety and left me.
Soon after this, I heard one of my oldest friends in Dallas had been killed in a drunken motorcycle accident. I met Pat when I was eighteen and a freshman in college. Pat was five years older than me and was pursuing an MFA in art. He was a musician and a fabulous artist. We were great drinking buddies. I saw Pat buried when I was forty five days sober. I believe he has been with me on my journey of recovery, one that we have taken together in spirit.
As I write these words, I realize how blessed I am; how blessed I am to have gone over thirty years without drinking any booze, or smoking any pot, snorting any coke or shooting any dope, or taking any kind of mind altering drugs. I'm down to aspirin and caffeine. And that is a miracle. I was once a three pack a day smoker—that too ended over twenty five years ago. I am so lucky and so blessed.
* * * *
Murmurs of the Heart
(for Rosalie)
(for Rosalie)
Together we drank fire and walked
on waves of guilt.
We spoke the language of the drowned.
At night, I could hear the murmur
of her heart,
and feel her breath on my neck.
of her heart,
and feel her breath on my neck.
She was so small and so pretty.
Asleep, she dreamt of a prince
and a white wedding gown.
While still a child, she offered her virginity to Christ
but her father took it in a drunken stupor
and left a hole in her psyche
she would never fill.
She entered the convent but never took her vows.
She drank fire and walked
on waves of guilt.
on waves of guilt.
She spoke the language of the drowned.
She made the call that saved my life.
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