The Stories of our Lives

Here is what I wrote in response to a post by Gunther today over at: http://expaa.webs.com/

I really miss Gunther's videos.  Gunther, I know you prolly have your reasons for not having them up, but seriously, I would *purchase* a DVD of them.  I remember that month, your "Park your car in the Harvard yard," all of it.  It was the month I realized you guys were all *real*.  I do not mean to make you uncomfortable; I know you sometimes analyze your “Part” for being a leader of sorts on the anti AA movement.  My unsolicited advice for you on this is to enjoy it and embrace it. 

I am rewriting my story, too.  All of the time and every day.  It is not like I am tacking on a new chapter though; it is like I am editing.  And while I am doing so, I am figuring out what my story actually is about.  And my voice is becoming so much stronger, too.  Even now, during the editing, there are times when I ask for "God's" help.  And this is interestingly, as I am evolving into an unbeliever. Sometimes I think leaving AA has completely changed me, everything is now completely the opposite of what is was.  It is like bizarro Jerry on Seinfeld.  But then I wonder if the change is actually infinitesimal, that things would be pretty similar if I stayed in AA; maybe I’d be uncomfortable with all the powerless stuff, the rapes, the control games, but I would look at these like they were only a   peripheral issue, and my voice would lucidly help new women coming in. 

If it is a huge change or not though, I wonder about my waning belief in God, especially my idea of God that was created in the AA context.  Today, I think it is OK for me to ask God for help, if only out of habit.  Some of the smartest academic and intellectual thinkers in our history believed in God with a fervor that I never felt, even while in AA.  Wanting to believe (even in the lame AA God) is not a weakness; for me, it is a way to make sense of this insanely beautiful, but mostly terrifying situation we’re all in, junkies, alkies, regular mentally ill people, or “normies.”   And sometimes I wonder if I had not hit AA, maybe I would have come upon another way to believe in God; the belief itself would have been similar, but it would have been a different mode.  And this different mode may have been far graver than any sick AA situation: think poly-type Mormon compounds, or think born time infinity.  I might have been the baby mamma opposite a sick, Baptist never nude with an appetite for teen girls.  Instead I am counterpart to an aging deadhead who still has visible track marks, but who loves our son like the stars burn into the night sky and who gave our spare cash (when we had very little) to Howard Dean’s misguided, but hopeful campaign.

(Unrelated Note: I drove with this same father and our son this weekend past the Eric Carle Museum, and Carle's stars danced unhurried in my mind.  This father, though intensely flawed is the father who, without question, would get the moon right out of the sky if his son asked.  The Eric Carle Museum is across the street from Hampshire COllege, where I saw Mary Lou Lord when I was like 18 years old.)


Mary Lou Lord is so fucking parenthetical to this post, but I gotta let you hear her sing, man, it is like watching a teenage ballerina dance.  And one last thing about her, the beginning riff to this song sounds like Big Star's "Thirteen."


Mary Lou:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvnMjZH9Zgk&feature=related

I have a tendency to write into what I am thinking.  As I write, I am not only expressing my thinking to the reader, but to myself.  It is a long, clumsy digression almost every time… And here is what I am reaching now, as I type this to you guys:  I think the germ of my overall life story has actually changed by leaving AA: if only my perception of my story.  And it is like this: in AA I was bad and sick and now I am flawed, but good.  And I am working on having the most fluid perception as possible, as I do not want to be imprisoned by that easy, black and white AA thinking that plagued me for so long.  It is hard, but, as Rilke says, I am learning to live the questions.  And I feel like I am in brilliant company, esp. with all of you, even the ones I fight with and say mean shit to sometimes.  To end this digression, I’ll say this:  I am glad you are all part of my story. Without irony or embarrassment I can say that we are like Eric Carle's illustrated stars, imperfect and splendid, bumpy and smooth against the darkness that is our collective experience.  Thank you.  

New Idea:  Expressive, autobiographical criticism of illustrated children's fiction. 

Who Is Violet?

Here is what I wrote on Gunther2000's new ExposeAA site.

Hello, I am pleased to meet or know you: 

It has been a trip and a half to meet all of you in this fragile, but intense Internet community. Some members of this site may know me well enough, but for those of you who are just joining this community, I am including some personal information (with caution, of course) and a description how I think and believe.

I desperately want to resolve the AA questions and my hatred of its ideology that remain, with murder, in my heart. I believe in reading with passion and with intensity that mimics any escape artist. I love the whole entire forest and getting lost in its labyrinth of light and dark; and mostly, I live to understand, speak, and make peace with what is the truth. I might disagree and even hatefully argue with some of you, but mostly I want to feel as though what expelled us from the rooms joins us in a way that is powerful enough to keep us from going under again, that horrible feeling of hitting the ocean's bottom, that feeling of despair and affliction that is so ugly that AA looks like it might in fact save us. It won't.

Believe in yourself now, this moment, and the moment after this. Of course, there will be times of questioning, doubt, for you are human. You are not; no matter how loud the AA voices might be in your mind, powerless. You have the power, if only a tiny germ or whisper, in the knuckle of your mind. Reach, and you will find it. Listen to yourself and trust this voice, no matter how shaky or faltering, for it is yours. The more you listen and believe in this voice, the fiercer it will become. I have left AA successfully. I am trudging the road of happy destiny and truth. I no longer look to a fictitious Higher Power, waiting for the miracle that will change my life, all the while looking for where I was wrong. I look first, to see where I was right. And in the words of Ntozake Shange, “I found God in myself and I love her/ I loved her fiercely.” It is my hope that you will also believe enough to look inside and find your voice, your truth, and your power. It is important to listen, to read, to absorb as much information as you can, but it is also important that you speak, and that you question all things. Please, let us hear that perfect sound that is inside of you like a lark singing through the night. xo

Miss Violet

My blog, which is awesome, or, will be awesome the day I can stop being so utterly verbose and can figure out how to get to my point:  Out of the Library and Into the Night @ Blogger or Blogspot.  Link: http://outofthelibraryandintothenight.blogspot.com/

Note: I write for this blog and with other anti AAers  in a sort of affected way, not of an intellectual, but more like a valley girl who would actually look somewhat like a 1970's, vintage Blythe (my avatar), but the heart of my message, and who I am, is the spirit and fucking outrageously smart words of Ntozake Shange.  

"I found God in myself, and I loved her/ I loved her fiercely."  Amazing words by this amazing poet and play write. I have been whispering these words to myself since I was maybe nineteen-years-old.  Sometimes, while in the cult, I would not believe them with conviction, but underneath this, I still had courageous wonder and hope... My belief in both myself and the truth was a whisper under the lie that was 12 step religion.  It is this whisper, thank you Ms. Shange, that saved me. 

Remainder of the Ramble

It is basically impossible to write this evening, as I am completely emotionally exhausted by what happened today on the Stinkin Thinkin blog.  The Stinkin Thinkin blog is a blog that’s main purpose is to support the ever so normal questioning of AA.  Many members of this group are ex AA-ers who have been hurt by the program at its decided belief that Alcoholics, Addicts, and the like are powerless.  We have a disease from which there is no cure, except for more AA meetings.  I have loathed AA for quite some time.  Sadly though, I went for years, believing that I was fucked up in many ways because I could not wrap my head around these AA principals.  I know now that I was incorrect.  This blog, and many of its members have helped me to do this.  I do not want to discuss the blog any more.  It is hard for me to stop thinking about it.  My bf has told me that he will put blocks on our computers, if I need them.  The blog, I am embarrassed to say, has become another addiction.  I need to move on.

Here is what I do need to focus on:

Trying to find a job, in education or at the local paper

Deal with the cohabitation situation, whether this means moving or making more space

Make the middle school transition

Pass second scary test

Figure out what is going on in the Master’s program, should I do it, can I do it, etc.  Only four more classes to go

Start looking into local private schools

Start another blog, without this freaking Violet identity.  I cannot obviously talk about who I am on every level on my blog, as I often discuss addiction and cuss like a sailor.  But Violet is prolly a bit more caustic than I am in real life. 

Pick an idea for a story and stick to it.  I do not want to write the story on the blog.  The blog is for my rambles.  Not sure why I even have this blog.  I was inspired by GO GO and Gunther to write this blog, initially.  I wish G2K still had his blog.  I wish this a lot.  I miss Gunther.  It is interesting that the three of us have all at one point taken issue with the blog.  I do not think any of us took issue with the blog’s friendlier moderator. 

I am not sure how much writing in this overly general way about the blog and my feelings toward it help.  At all.