Day 90: You pull back the curtains

It's a great day to be a Curlew. Today it is 90 days since I drank alcohol, today I graduated from rehab and, most importantly, today I finished reading Infinite Jest.

The beast, defeated.

So, today I finally got that T-shirt. As it was a special occasion, the circle of blue chairs was rearranged into a horseshoe facing me at the top and I read a Obama-style speech (well, a letter) I had written last night to the group and staff. I had thought I was going to cry but for once I didn't. I'm feeling strong and happy.

A new guy joined the programme, who has already been there once before and, to my joy, I found out that he is the artist that drew the picture of the dog with its tail on fire! Correcting me that it was in fact meant to be a wolf, he was happy to give me the drawing as a leaving gift and I plan to hang it on my wall as a reminder of these incredible 12 weeks. It speaks to me somehow.

On recent trips home I had spent the entire seven-hour ferry journey in the bar and had to be almost carried off the boat by kindly strangers. This time, I was able to stand out on deck as the ferry came into harbour after 11pm, feeling the wind and north sea spray on my skin and watching the sun set behind the islands. When Mum met me I could see the relief in her face.(Apologies for blurry photos.)

When I told a friend I was starting a blog he replied "how retro", but while I know it's a little bit 2003, I've loved typing all this spraff. But also, since I'm a ~blogger~ and therefore an egomaniac, and because I'm especially full of myself today, I am curious to know who's been reading. Leave a comment below!

This song is just perfect today. Here's a Spotify playlist of all the music on this blog.


INFINITE JEST: Pages 961 - THE END (Page 981 + 98 pages of endnotes)
- At times I had been reading this book for so long that I forgot what had happened earlier.
- In the very last passage we are given clues to the terrifying truth of what the fatal Entertainment truly is. Mirrors and surgical suture are involved.
- "A voice that sounded like his own brain-voice with an echo said to never try and pull a weight that exceeds you. Gately figured he might die. It wasn't calm and peaceful like alleged. It was more like trying to pull something heavier than you."

Day 88: It don't douse the flames

A few months ago, I knocked on a friend's door unannounced (I didn't have my phone) and, because I was sober, I was able to notice the look of panic that shot through him when he saw it was me. What state is she in this time? It was the first time that I realised that people - my friends - were scared of me.

But, in the last few weeks, I seem to be getting more invitations. My life - and my inbox - feels like it is filling up. The things I used to talk about doing when I was drunk now actually have a chance of happening. For years, I had plenty of insight into my problems but was somehow unable to take the action I needed to deal with them. Now, I am actually doing it, though, gradually building up good things rather than smashing it all down every weekend, or each night, lost in alcohol.

I had been dubious about going into treatment partly because I felt - as I heard some writer once say - that therapy is like "giving it away". His fuckedupness was his material and if it was ironed out, what would be left to write about? Also, I had the feeling that the details of my life should surely comprise a bestselling melodramatic novel rather than being told for free to an NHS counsellor? Nonsense, of course. I can hang on to as many of my flaws and self-mythologise away, but I was going to produce nothing of worth around me unless I stopped being stupidly drunk or cripplingly hungover all the time. And to achieve that I needed to do this.

Shit, I just used the AA speech pattern of "I thought I knew what I was doing, but I didn't" that I was so scathing of somewhere in this entry. What has become of me?

"I just can't drink no more / cause it don't douse the flames"



INFINITE JEST: Pages 864-961
I've not got my copy of the book with me, but plenty to fill in here
- A few weeks ago I was reading in Soho Square when an American man pointed at the cover of the book and I asked me if I knew the title was from Shakespeare before launching, theatrically, into Hamlet's soliquoy: "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!"
- ARTWATCH: Apparently DFW considered using this chilling photo of Fritz Lang directing Metropolis for the cover: By coincidence, I've had a postcard of this on my wall for some time:

Day 77: Ideas, experiments, imagination

This track reminds me of driving at home in Scotland, accelerating over hills to huge views of low-lying islands and the sea. I'm going up to visit for the first time in more than a year this week - for a wedding - and am looking forward to seeing my parents, the farm and the open skies. Unfortunately, though, I've still not got around to getting my driving license back.

I've finished my ten weeks 'full time' at the treatment centre, and just have three and a half more days there. I was never confident I'd get here. The guys in the group have grown fond of me and joked that I should stay but (unlike previous peers) I am ready to go: my plans are starting to turn back to the real world (and away from this blog, also).

I'm coming around the idea that alcoholism is a form of mental illness (rather than just, like, a habit or a lack of control). Although I know that everything good that's happening in my life right now - re-gaining the trust of my family, suggestions of future writing work, the kind of confident step I've had the last few days - is reliant on me staying sober; just now, as I cycled over the bridge across the Eastway in the sun knowing I had a free afternoon, I had the thought that a couple of beers would not only be a nice idea but would be the only thing that would give me satisfaction right now. Although I don't think I am crazy in general, thoughts like this are literally insane. I think. I have to stay vigilant.

But I don't always 100% hate the fact that I'm an alcoholic. This is my story. My drinking - and the fact that I still smoke - means that it's hard for me to ever take the moral highground. When I see someone else being self-destructive or inconsiderate or short-sighted, I can understand. I think this is healthy.



INFINITE JEST: Pages 808-864
- DFW is a master of conversations where two characters are speaking a cross purposes - each carrying on with their own stories, only half responding to what the other is say. Like real life.
- An exciting passage where a military-style interrogation of Molly Notkin reveals a lot of missing details: about Madame Psychosis, the circumstances of Himself's death and Infinite Jest the entertainment.
- In the book, a lot of the story has been told in retrospect through conversations and interviews (notable exception to this Don Gately's fight with the Nucks).
- Some of the book's first pop-cultural references - a bedridden Gately remembering Seinfeld, Ren and Stimpy, and Cheers.
- Recovery joke: "In Boston AA, newcomer seducing is called 13th Stepping" HAHAHA.
- Hal's a week off the one-hitters: "I'd felt for almost a week as if I needed to cry for some reason but the tears were somehow stopping just milimetres behind my eyes and staying there."