Woke up and read blogs while having coffee, waiting for the dawn. More and more as I become familiar with posters’ lives and concerns, hopes and challenges, I am able to read between the lines and feel the weight of the unspoken.
My heart aches for the friend who died of alcoholic convulsions in New Orleans last week. I had not seen her for years and remember her only as a brilliant architectural student. The struggle is over for her now.
But the news gave me a hollow chill inside — I was reminded of a morning a decade or so ago when I went into the kitchen all shaky and nauseous with bruises on my face and saw empty vodka bottles everywhere, vomit all over the place. I couldn’t believe I had drunk so much, had no idea how I had obtained the alcohol, had no memory of the vomiting, knew I might well have had some kind of seizure because there was blood in my mouth. Alcoholism is such a frightening death-in-life.
It is such a pleasure to wake early and see dawn breaking, to look at the world as if it is fresh, that intimate tender drama of seeing something or someone for the first time, made anew. Colour pouring into the grey valley, the mountains warmed with light. It is so important to stop and reflect on the beauty in our daily reality, the loveliness of a transient dawn in Africa. In ancient Hebrew, the planet Venus was called ‘deer of the dawn’ because it appeared so shyly and had such a delicate fleeting presence.
The word ‘dawn’ intrigues me. It has a number of meanings. Dawn has to do with light filling the sky. An idea dawns on us, meaning that it develops and grows. There is the sense of opening, changing, light filling the mind and heart. A luminous beginning. It comes from the Old English dagian, to become day and is an active verb in its Norse origin: to dawn. We emerge into a new dawn; a new consciousness dawns in our lives; there is a dawning awareness of possibility. An hour of gold, starting afresh.
Image from photographer Nick Brandt found here.
love the picture
With my Mother so ill, I feel the dawning of a new era in my life. I will soon be an orphan. Can one be an orphan at 53? Such a sad word, reserved for children but it fits how I feel.
I read your gratitude for sobriety ‘between the lines’. A new dawn, a new day! May you enjoy all the beauty in today.
As a woman’s name, I never liked it but I will take a second look at the next Dawn that I meet.
You know how they we say “it’s always happy hour somewhere” when we’re having that Bloody Mary at 9am? Well, it’s always dawn somewhere too. Once again and as always, thank you for your light.
I am glad that you are aware of the dawn now and all it connotes.
I guess that’s the other thing that has kept me in the planet in the past (the first being the pain and suffering that I know it causes in the lives left behind): that niggling uncertainty that my death might not, in fact, resolve the my own problems – that, wherever the consciousness is next, it will not be free…
I think I know – but maybe I don’t…???
We also dawn garments (“…dawn we now our gay apparel…”) – I like to think similarly that I can dawn a new idea or way of being…
Blessings and aloha…
The quiet, gracious tone and emotional truth of your beautifully written blog are a haven for me. You really should publish.
I’m not in AA, I came to your blog via an Alice Munro link.
I grew up in Cape Town then came to England in 1975.
My father’s drunken unpredictability crushed me. Coming to England was the worst thing I could have done – and the best. The English are world leaders in the art and practice of the calculated insult. My attempts to save face would be watched with amusement – I was dealing with pro’s. I OD’d on hatred. One day the scales fell from my eyes. Why were people being nasty to me? I may have been giving off victim signals but why did that get their blood up? Then I understood it was nothing personal – centuries of class-warfare had refined the attack on dignity as weapon of choice. But why did some do it with such relish? I studied bullying and concluded that the roots lie in loveless childhood. Lacking the self-esteem required to be popular they settle for notoriety. I needed to change. I switched to a policy of exposing myself to their slights and humiliations without retaliating, hoping to eliminate the fear and stop the poison of hatred. It’s transformed my life. I haven’t quite reached the ideal of loving my enemy but I manage something like compassion. (They want hatred from you, so they can settle that old, old score that has nothing to do with you)
My demons are still live and well though. The reason I’m writing now is that I sense you are in an unhappy place. I personally am not ready ready to wrestle with those pesky critters, my demons, just yet. Not ready for the bottomless pit. These are the emergency measures that work for me:
1. An hour of free-writing, catching the stream of consciousness uncensored. Never mind if you miss some thoughts at first. But don’t omit any disturbing thoughts. After an hour of that I feel purged. And it can feed my fiction-writing wonderfully.
2. If you haven’t got a spare hour, carry a notebook or dictaphone. When a fearful thought breaks cover, write it down straight away. Stops them forming flocks.
3. I tried exercising but I couldn’t escape my thoughts. I found that doing something requiring some, not too much, manual dexterity, did keep out toxic thoughts. I kept a list of DIY stuff I could turn to an emergency.
I offer these ideas from my heart
BTW two of my oldest friends in Cape Town are in advanced stages of alcoholism. I worry about them every day but I fear they would run a mile if I mentioned AA. One of them is at the paranoid stage of severing ties with his best friends. Any advice?
Thank you again for the tranquillity you spread with your blog