Waking on a cool autumn day- dog walking in the wee hours of morning as the world comes alive. My friends are celebrating their wedding in DC- and so I'm watching the house and kids. Abbey is growing older and still avoids me. I think she is afraid I'm going to steal her away.

Waking with thoughts of the sexy troubadour on my mind. A brief interaction last night left me wanting. Wanting to hear him play guitar, wanting to hold and kiss him. He is retreating- feeling strongly yet feeling that he does not wish a relationship. It allows me to look internally and examine my motives, desires, and intentions. He is a drug- as he stimulates me on multiple levels- mentally, spiritually, and sexually. I desire him. I have desire for him.

Wanting to write love songs, poems, verses conveying the feelings I'm experiencing. I am a little frightened to put into words the things running amok in my mind.

Just a shot in the dark...he is definitely causing me to look at and evaluate many aspects of my internal workings. That seems like growth on some level. Relationships in my world have been unions forged in love. He sees the bonds of love as tethers. I guess they can be. Nothing like the paradoxes to illuminate the way with some foggy moonlight. Not at all clear.

Feeling as though there is a connection that defies logic. Some inner voice whispers that I've known him longer that I know. Something strikes an inner chord of familiarity and kinship, brotherhood, fraternity, comradeship, something. My desire for more causes his retreat. That should resonate loudly to my core and yet insanity ensues causing me to redouble efforts to see him, hold him, and love him. The insanity of love can be blinding.

So just for today I will retreat and allow him to unfurl in his own lovely way. Love him from afar. He knows where I am. That is enough today.

A beautiful Autumnal day has unfolded- it began on the porch with screech owls and crickets and will be closing in a similar manner...

I have avoided writing this week as I lick my wounds and vacillate between acceptance and frustration. I still smell his scent on clothes. If I close my eyes, I can feel the embrace that seemed to at least temporarily repair all the broken pieces. I miss it. It has been a week of no contact. I miss him and still find myself wondering if  he is safe, fed, and has shelter. I am ok until I contemplate what he does in order to obtain those things, and then I am saddened and my heart aches even more. Nothing like picking at a scab to prolong the healing. There is a certain twisted satisfaction in such endeavors.

Yesterday found me burning the 8 volumes of journals I had kept with Michael. They chronicled our 2+ years together. They were a form of hostage taking for me- I got mad if he didn't write in the book. My drunken control freak wanting constant reassurances demanded of him that he read what I wrote and respond. Not a healthy game, not a fair game, and not a thing to do to someone you love. Fear of losing him and us drove me to the depths of despair. Adding drugs and alcohol onto that simmering madness was sometimes explosive. So I loaded them into the fire pit, doused them in gasoline and struck a match. A tinge of sadness came and then a great sense of release- as though I had somehow severed a bond that kept us bound to a time and place. I gave up the ghost on a beautiful day at the close of summer. I set him and I both free.

It is Sunday. Tomorrow is the Equinox. Fall is already hinting of its presence as the poplars drop leaves and the dogwoods begin to turn red. The temperature is dipping lower at night, the slant of sunlight has changed. It won't be long until the forest is devoid of color and the starkness of winter descends.

The day found me being extremely lazy. I left the house late afternoon to obtain cigarettes and petrol. I have begged out on the porch for hours on end today. I have however, continued to complete at least thirty sit ups and a few reps of planks each day, often twice a day. I am feeling the burn, and might be seeing a little definition begin to take form. I am not sure I desire ripped abs, but a more toned body would be nice. 

So I ask the universe to guide my thoughts and actions each day, to help them be divorced of anger, resentment, jealousy, and self seeking motivations. I say thank you at the close of each day for the gifts bestowed. It seems to be working a little magic in my day, although I can quickly offset any gains by not remembering to eat, being tired, angry or lonely. I also am remembering that I can reset the day at any moment- thank you Scott C...your advice when I was a drunk still rings clear in my ears, and has worked its magic for a few years now.

I close the day and smile. I remain. I remain connected. I remain willing to learn. These all come together and seem to be vital ingredients to a relatively sane and purposeful life.

Sunday late afternoon.  The air is cool and the sky is overcast. The day began with coffee on the porch followed by a meeting a bagels with friends. I came home, walked around the yard, did some sit ups and took a nap. It has been a little slothful, but it feels good.

The meetings last night and this morning reminded me of what I need to do in order to maintain my connection, and my sobriety. While I have maintained my connection to the universe and have not had a drink or drug, I have not maintained my emotional sobriety. I have fallen for the bait and lunged into the fray- allowing anger, resentment, frustration, heartache, jealousy all rear their ugly heads. I wake after such an episode feeling as though I am hungover. I am...the emotional hangover lasts longer for me and drains me of life, energy, connection, desire. It all goes out the window. It is not worth it.

So I pause tonight and say thank you. I do a few sit ups- which is completely foreign to me. I am thinking again about my relationship with cigarettes. I have a desire to stop. I am forging a plan and plan to ask the universe to both guide me and join me to help met this aim.

I close the day with binaural beats and water on spotify. I am closing the day. I am thankful. My feelings about the young man are morphing. I can only do the next right thing. I can only be me. That is enough because in my world, the creator doesn't make mistakes. 

Sweet dreams. May you fly high and prosper.

Waking to Sunday morning and my wild brain. Coyotes before bed, crickets throughout the night. I want to sleep with the windows open, but Hesten doesn't like that idea, the dampness makes  for mold. 

I am sipping Costa Rican coffee brought back from Oregon by a friend. It is smooth and delicious, a lovely contrast to the darker roasts I usually gravitate towards. It is light bodied and goes well with mornings. 

My brain is mulling over life. Trying to remember that I am a passenger in this meat covered skull wagon made of stardust. Self will run riot...that has been me to a tee for the last little while. Time to give up the ghost and see that doing what works makes for a better Tim.

Reading through the BB, steps three, and ten. Yup, I got that.... Self-centeredness, Fear, Resentment, Dishonesty...I know what to do...

I am thankful to be given the opportunity to do this thing. I have no desire to return to where I was 7 years ago. That is no the life for me. And so I trudge onward...into the day.

I'm finding myself on the cusp of a milestone. My seventh year of this journey of sobriety began on September 17th, 2007. I came-to in a solitary jail cell on a concrete pad, no blanket. While the linen shorts and cashmere sweater looked good, the bare feet and soulless eyes that were reflected back to from the stainless steel toilet screamed a resounding cry for help. It was then and there that this man fell to his knees and asked for relief. In my mind I was asking to die. Little did I comprehend that there would be a death of sorts; the way I had been living was not working anymore. I began anew. New friends, playgrounds, path. The phoenix rising...

So I ponder life after 46 spins around the sun, and nearly seven anniversaries of seeing that reflection. 

I am still a hot mess. A seemingly benign summer tryst with a twenty year old has found me behaving badly. The instinct of fear keeps popping its ugly head. I don't do well with fear. I find myself anguishing that the tryst failed to fall for me in the same manner that I fell for him. My reactions are poor. Jealousy, anger, resentment, lashing out, belittling. Generally being a shit because my wants are not being realized, that something I had is not lasting. I could go into the self justification using words, honesty and etc, but the fact remains that I fell in love with someone. It is not recipricated in the same manner. That should be the end, but my mind takes it far beyond rational.

I must remember that my mind is a dangerous place and that relationships are gifts, not possessions. There is nothing to sooner make a fear of abandonment come to pass than acting like a fool. I can easily become the self fulfilling prophecy and create both doom and gloom.

And luckily for me, this beautiful being loves me. He displays love, compassion, attentiveness and honesty that far outweigh his age, Im envious in fact that I am reducing myself to a blithering idiot slinging barbs and jabs and he stands calm. He lives his life. He loves generously. He is a formidable teacher and I am thankful.

So I see that I got off beam. Now to get back...slowly by surely.

So I'm sitting on the porch, watching clouds roll in. Coffee is delicious...the elixir of my days.



Interacting with James... A source of both joy and heartache. Monday- stood up. Tuesday - stood up. Wednesday- hung out, talked, had dinner, he stayed the night. Thursday- no show. One of four planned interactions worked out. In his defense, Keith played a major role in his not showing up- threatening to kill himself, driving the car over a log, etc.



Friday was a long day- I worked both jobs. He went dancing. We had plans for Saturday- which he kept. I was pleasantly surprised. We hung out, he played guitar, we talked, I cried, he held me. He stayed the night and we watched obscure music on YouTube. Several hours of conversations were shared. I'm thankful for the insight. I am a little hurt that he slept with Keith. Exploring the sacred feminine or not, it still seems odd. That James felt himself falling for Keith hurts even more. My ego is bruised. The more I want him, the less available he becomes. Whatever was I thinking to get involved with a twenty year old? Why would it work? I guess I look back and see that my own path involved an older man, with whom I shared a life for 18 years.



So I savor my coffee and contemplate it all. I am in love - but am I in love with the idea of being in love...? He plays my heart like an instrument. Glimpses into his soul bring me joy. Intimate moments shared on the porch, or in the bedroom make me smile. If I can remember that in this moment all is well and perfect, then I seem to have a fighting chance. If I struggle, I drown in the quagmire of self pity and despair.



Which will I choose?

So I'm struggling this past month. Health, money, home, romance all seem in disarray, and I'm growing more and more irritable and discontent. Life has happened, and rather than stick with has helped, I retreated into the chaos- more than observer, I have actually added to the insanity.

My insanity is usually spawned from fear. I'm afraid that something isn't going to go my way, that I'm not going to get my way, or that something I did will bite me in the ass. Instead of meeting fear with love, my instinct is to fight, knowing full well that it is like quicksand. The greater the struggle, the quicker the defeat. The irony is tremendous. I forget the lessons of "give up to win" and resent in this state the idea of waving my white flag. Give up I must.

So my struggle has kept me from my beam that works. I've cut back on meetings, retreated to the safety of my home. I have fallen for a young man and don't like how it's playing out. And while I pray daily, it has become rote. Feeling lost, this article appeared in my newsfeed. It was a Godsend. Thank you Andrew for these words to remind me.

[Editor's note: Every Wednesday, New York City's own Andrew W.K. takes your life questions and sets you safely down the right path to a solution, a purpose or — no surprise here — a party. Need his help? Just ask: [email protected]]

Hey, Andrew.

Thanks for doing what you do and helping people. I'm going to make this short and to the point. My older brother was diagnosed with cancer last week. My whole family is freaking out and trying to deal with the news. Everyone is trying to find different ways to help, but something my grandmother said has really got me angry. She said we should all just "pray for my brother," like prayer would actually save his life. Just thinking about it now makes my fists clench with frustration. We need to actively help my brother and do actual things to save him, not kneeling on the ground and mumbling superstitious nonsense. I got into a fight with my grandmother and the rest of my family about this and now I feel worse than ever. I need to get them to see that praying and religious mumbo jumbo doesn't help. How do I explain this to them?

Thanks for reading this,
Not Gonna Pray

See also: Ask Andrew W.K.: My Dad Is a Right-Wing Asshole

Dear Not Gonna Pray,

I'm deeply sorry to hear about your brother's diagnosis. I'm sending you my thoughts, and my heart goes out to your brother and your whole family. Guess what? That was me praying for you. I think the idea of "praying" is a lot less complicated, a lot more powerful, and a little different than you may realize. In fact, I'll bet you're already praying all the time and just don't realize it.

Prayer is a type of thought. It's a lot like meditation — a type of very concentrated mental focus with passionate emotion directed towards a concept or situation, or the lack thereof. But there's a special X-factor ingredient that makes "prayer" different than meditation or other types of thought. That X-factor is humility. This is the most seemingly contradictory aspect of prayer and what many people dislike about the feeling of praying. "Getting down on your knees" is not about lowering your power or being a weakling, it's about showing respect for the size and grandeur of what we call existence — it's about being humble in the presence of the vastness of life, space, and sensation, and acknowledging our extremely limited understanding of what it all really means.

Being humble is very hard for many people because it makes them feel unimportant and helpless. To embrace our own smallness is not to say we're dumb or that we don't matter, but to realize how amazing it is that we exist at all in the midst of so much more. To be fully alive, we must realize how much else there is besides ourselves. We must accept how much we don't know — and how much we still have to learn — about ourselves and the whole world. Kneeling down and fully comprehending the incomprehensible is the physical act of displaying our respect for everything that isn't "us."

This type of selfless awareness contains a contradictory aspect that sets the tone for true immaterial experience. It's the feeling of power in our powerlessness. A feeling of knowing that we don't know. A feeling of gaining strength by admitting weakness. We work so hard to pump ourselves up and make ourselves believe that we know all the answers and that we have the power and strength to do anything — and we do — but the fullest version of that power comes not from our belief that we have it, but from a humbling realization that we don't.

The paradoxical nature of this concept is difficult, but it is the key to unlocking the door of spirituality in general, and it remains the single biggest reason many people don't like the idea of prayer or of spiritual pursuits in general — they feel it's taking away their own power and it requires a dismantling of the reliable day-to-day life of the material world. In fact, it's only by taking away the illusion of our own power and replacing it with a greater power — the power that comes from realizing that we don't have to know everything — that we truly realize our full potential. And this type of power doesn't require constant and exhausting efforts to hold-up and maintain, nor does it require us to endlessly convince ourselves and everyone else that we're powerful, that we know what we're doing, and that we're in control of everything.

To know that you don't know is the definition of a spiritual awakening. And keeping that realization at the front of our mind and in the core of our being informs the rest of our existence. It takes a deeper type of strength to admit to ourselves that we don't have it all figured out than to run around keeping all our plates spinning. It seems strange to think that turning yourself over to your own bewilderment would actually bring clarity, but it does. Solving this riddle is the beginning of any true spiritual journey.

Many people feel threatened or uncomfortable with this sort of gray area. They like things to be "yes" or "no," "black" or "white," and "right" or "wrong." They want to live in the "real world" that they can touch and make sense of. When things "don't make sense," they retreat. These people will have to allow themselves to fully admit that they don't know, in order to actually begin knowing and that's often too frightening of a task. It can be too painful to even imagine, after all those years of effort, simply abandoning our carefully crafted structures and stepping into the immense chasm of the uncharted and unknowable.

Many of us worked for years to build up our idea of the world and who we are in it. We've clung ever more tightly to the idea of what is true and what is false. We've toiled and schemed to get what we need to "be happy," and to gain the sense of security that comes with "figuring things out" and "making it." We do that by building a better and stronger protective shell to shield us from the painful horrors of the unknown.It can be too painful to even imagine, after all those years of effort, simply abandoning our carefully crafted structures, and stepping into the immense chasm of the uncharted and unknowable. And now, it's time to take it.

I want you to pray for your brother right now. As a gesture to your grandmother — who, if she didn't exist, neither would you. I want you to pray right now, just for the sake of challenging yourself. I want you to find a place alone, and kneel down — against all your stubborn tendencies telling you not to — and close your eyes and think of one concentrated thought: your brother.

I want you to think of your love for him. Your fear of him dying. Your feeling of powerlessness. Your feelings of anger and frustration. Your feelings of confusion. You don't need to ask to get anything. You don't need to try and fix anything. You don't need to get any answers. Just focus on every moment you've ever had with your brother. Reflect on every memory, from years ago, and even from just earlier today. Let the feelings wash over you. Let the feelings take you away from yourself. Let them bring you closer to him. Let yourself be overwhelmed by the unyielding and uncompromising emotion of him until you lose yourself in it.

Think about him more than you've ever thought about anyone before. Think about him more deeply and with more detail than you've ever thought about anything. Think about how incredible it is that you have a brother — that he exists at all. Focus on him until you feel like your soul is going to burst. Tell him in your heart and soul that you love him. Feel that love pouring out of you from all sides. Then get up and go be with him and your family. And you can tell your grandmother that you prayed for your brother.

Love,
Andrew W.K.

While hiking today in the wilderness above Graveyard Fields I reconnected with a part of me that had been severed. It was a crowded place as the holiday weekend lead many others to want to be in nature. It did my soul some good to hike about and to lay out in the sun on a secluded bank next to Laurel Creek. 

There is nothing more peaceful and serene to me than shedding clothing's and trapping and being at one with the universe in the woods, or in a stream. 


When I returned to cell range I received some messages and flirts from a young man out of the blue on a social networking site. Intrigued, I responded. It has been an interesting interaction, and has my curiosity piqued. I wonder where this will go... Bohemian Cloud....

Wednesday, fun day. A long day at work followed by coffee at sbux - Griffin joins me and we chat. James appears. It is our first meeting since the 24th. Conversation is strained and communication doesn't really occur as the audience doesn't allow for heart based discourse.

We leave to meet a friend- we three share dinner at Thai Tara. It is delicious.

We part ways with our friend and head back to his car. We go to the botanical gardens - it is dark. We sit on a bench and talk. We cry. He plays music. A beautiful and sad song. We kiss. It all floods back, and he comes home with me.

We talk and fall asleep. I feel safe. I feel something major has shifted, but my feelings for him are still very much alive.

Morning comes too early. I drop him off as I head to work. I love this man and still I know he will break my heart...