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: