antonarchus

snowing light

snow Frustration at powerlessness may never go away. Desire for complete control sometimes is overwhelming, yet things are happening the way they are supposed to. I’ve witnessed that many times and yet I still battle it.

Two days of Spring at the time that Spring should have been majorly on the way, and then… the warmth and melting of snow and ice is replaced by the coldest day of the week and sharp wind, carrying more snow. The white joyously proceeded to cover everything that has melted like the warmth hasn’t been around for weeks. And I’m laughing at it, because I don’t want to growl in frustration. I’m tired of Winter, I’m tired of cold, and ice. I have to grin at the changes that I do not welcome to stay at least somewhat positive.

Yet for some reason I find it hard to apply that grinning to darker currents creeping up from the voids opening under my feet and tempting me to support my ego fire to the point that I assume I should have all things bending under my will.

Humility is easy to express unless ego prefers to listen to things that work for other people and I want to have that. I know that I should remember my limitations and be grateful for those. Snow lit by the morning sun starts falling at the time I wait for inspiration calls. Winter is not ready to retreat. Springtime will come when the nature says so. My gratitude for realizing it opens my eyes some more, and I can see that the right inspirations, not the things I want, but the ones I need, are continued to be brought to me, whether it is when I’m looking for them, or when I least expect them.

the image was copied from https://www.123rf.com/photo_48132831_winter-watercolor-abstract-background-with-falling-snow-splash-texture-christmas-new-year-light-coba.html and cut up mercilessly by me to avoid intrusions that don’t belong in the balance. thank you.

into sindrihallen

To the distant hall you went

With no coming back

Sindri gold is your new home

Pure at heart is the air

You continue to breathe.

Whether you watch over us

I do not know,

Although I asked

Yet memory keeps holding strong

Like the Norse steel,

Even if your candle’s flame

Shined on different paths.

Shine Until Tomorrow

Words drop on you suddenly and kick you in the teeth. Words you may have heard countless times wake you up suddenly. Words you don’t really care for anymore because the meaning is lost in the constant use. And yet they come and wake up something in your mind’s lazily burning flame.

The words now are “Shine on Until Tomorrow, Let it Be.” The Beatles are the band that I’ve been listening to since I was a kid, but their earlier records were more fun and I liked those, while the later songs were something I didn’t care to listen in albums. I guess the rock-n-roll driving force was more important to me than progressive and philosophical streams that had flown in later times of the band.

Yet at times the songs from the later 60s/early 70s creep into my life more often lately, as from the Doors that I go back to often, as the Beatles repertoire that I come upon by a chance, and those songs kick teeth. In the case of the Brits, “Let it Be” song caught me by surprise at the place I’ve heard it recently, but also by the meaning of the words. The thought of a person lost in the darkness and yet accepting to hold on until tomorrow, and so it shall be – it never struck me as a one day at a time idea, yet that’s how I heard it. There is a lot of hope in those words, just like in the Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” that I came upon recently after not caring for it for 25 years. Something hopeful that I may have heard when listening to “Let it Be” in my youth when studying English and translating classic songs word by word, be it the Beatles or Iron Maiden, yet not fully taking to heart.

The days lately are dark, whether it is because it still winter that refuses to go away, or because of the fear of lurking sickness and many shut doors. As the members of this mighty horde called humanity, people have made it through many obstacles on their paths, and this is just another serious one. We are going to make it through another day in order to make it through months. Although the days are dark, there is still light here – we’ve got food and we have people to talk to. Isolation and social distancing doesn’t mean you have to play alone and walk in solitude all the way. March on and the light will shine. Until tomorrow. What’s after – we’ll see to that later. Today is the most important time.

the image was copied from wikipedia.org and lighted out by me in reverence mixed with confusion. thank you.

runners will be shot

PO11188957-front I seriously thought I could escape this rat race. Like Jeff Waters wrote “I just needed a break from it all.” Only a long term one. I wanted to keep on being drunk. I loved it. Bliss. Lack of care. Beautiful solitude… and then from time to time I’d meet like-minded people, only at the end I’d always end up alone, so I kept that as normality. Besides those unfortunate occurrences, all was great as long as I was not sober. I didn’t want to care about anything. I just wanted to dedicate myself to alcoholic intoxication, for its illusion was beautiful. It was love at first sight and love that promised to be endless. I was all for it.

Funny how life keeps working on a different level and by different rules than what you think you need. Life started grinding over me and forcing me to change which is what I refused to do. While I was trying to escape what I thought was a tyrannical regime, all I could feel was constantly been shot at by the guards. And it went that way until I gave up running and accepted life on its terms.

Easier said than done, of course. Much easier in my case. I felt like surrendering would be betrayal of everything I knew and stood for. I fought relentlessly. It took time to realize that what I was really betraying was giving myself an opportunity to live a happy life. Not that happy worry-free life they show in Disney movies, but a realistic happy life where I do everything I can and care for and get what I deserve, including the mental and spiritual balance.

And when I fully realized that life without booze and running could actually be a good life still, I stopped in my tracks. I then turned around and went back in the direction where I was trying to perpetually escape from. The walk towards turned out to be much shorter than the running away. I was arriving at something with every step I made.

the image was copied from https://www.customink.com/fundraising/escaperoom and butchered by me. very smart shirts, by the way. escape rooms rule!

When It Was Proclaimed to Be Over

Anticipation

Fear

Of heights and flights

Of loss

Of fear itself

Recognition

Heartbeat of the chat that happens to be the last.

Pain of knowing pain of those so close

Waves of freedom falling on the beach

Joy of meeting

Misery of the reason the meeting took place

Wanting to let go

Wanting for the others to let go and go on

Wanting for the dark within the room to retreat

Caring

Holding hands that bind

Seeing things one thinks they shouldn’t see.

End of life of the one

Who was always

Who loved constantly

Who stood strongly no matter what

Sleeping dance of spirit united with spirits of many

Who know even if others share not the glory of knowing

Then, from dark – light

Wanting to be a part of the sunshine

Sea keeps approach/retreat approval of life

Even in the event

Of the proclamation of it being over

Within our mind

For energy never ceases to amaze

In its perpetual breathing.

Peace in union of three

Desire for more wonder

Sorrow wanders in our feet

As we walk with our faces

Turned to the sunrise

Anticipation

No fear

Loss is natural

Pain is not eternal.

the image was copied from https://embroidery.design/download/rune_jera_transparent_background/ thank you

eating crow

Heard an opinion recently that AA is a glorified Losers club.

I must agree. We are not perfect, not omnipotent how we thought we were before, perhaps, but together through connecting we stand strong with all our common and individual weaknesses and weirdness.

We ate our amount of crows and we still sometimes do, but we know it and we know why, more often than before. Humility makes us more aware of ourselves and our limitations, which is how we become to know our strengths. We come to understand our character defects and we do our best to promptly admit them and learn from the experience not to repeat our mistakes. Sometimes we fail to do so, but so do not just addicts. People in general are imperfect, so we try to stop beating ourselves up and concentrate on improving instead.

We can be wrong in our minds, but it is actions that count. We are not wrong to reflect on thoughts we have or actions we are about to take.

We are the glorified losers club after all, and the glory is true and it’s all ours!

Going back to the speaker – they said they remember being wrong many times. They still can be wrong, but they have improved – if they were wrong, they stay in denial only for two days, no longer for two weeks, and no more for two years. Talk about positive thinking!

the image was copied from https://www.flickr.com/photos/itsyourdaycakes/53498212 thanks.

the dance

As you passed,

I kept seeing what I want to see,

That you weren’t gone yet,

That you still breathed.

What my eyes caught

Must have been

The sight of your spirit dancing serenely

Around what you’ve left behind,

As extreme heat leaves the road in a haze,

The road towards the dimensions unseen,

Yet dreamed of,

Journey with no end

On which you fly leaving us walking

In pain,

Yet in gratitude and reflections

Of your beautiful path.

know nothing

A member at the recent meeting shared that there was a massive difference in how they felt about recovery between one and seven years of sobriety. It was not just about the amount of sober time. It was the difference between knowing all and knowing nothing.

I can relate. At age one in AA I did think I knew quite a bit about the program and with that, about the world around me. Around that time it happened so that I did a little lecture about it to a Russian sobriety program on their request. I also wrote an academic paper about it. I went to lots of meetings, talked to people, and it felt like I knew the important stuff, and I guess I assumed I knew more than that. It was about actual alcoholic sobriety and serenity to me then. I thought that if I knew a lot about sobriety, I was doing well.

I wasn’t though. As it says, without the work, the faith is dead. It was true, as it turned out, because in my first two years of sobriety, although I was working on steps, I was doing it way too slow, and other than that, I was doing no work. Just going to meeting was enough for me, and I didn’t catch the moment of change when I started feeling stagnant in life and sobriety. I had to eventually change groups and once I did that, I found there was more to the program. I joined groups of people visiting recovery houses and intox facilities, introducing my group and AA methods of recovery to those who were in treatment. I started writing more about sobriety. That’s when I started feeling I am doing well. Perhaps that happened because I realized AA was more than just a program of going to meetings. It was also about relationships and connecting. It turned out I seriously needed to work on those things, and although I was willing, I didn’t always have a good guide. I only discovered that years later.

As time marches on, I look at the world and at how people communicate and treat each other, and I feel I know nothing about life. Good thing is, I still know how the program of recovery works. Writing about it, just like now, and communicating with people whose opinion I value, helps me to keep afloat when it feels like the world is going even more mad. It seems to me that sometimes knowing nothing (or feeling that you know nothing) can be healing in a sense that all you need to do is keep walking forward and do simple things that you know work, and that’s how you get by.

the image was copied from reddit.com and circumcised by me. thanks.

to be an apple

He wanted to be…

OK, he was an Apple

He was red, and green, and yellow, and even white,

As apples come.

He was this juicy thing you could eat right away

He had things of his own he could’ve been happy with

Yet he wasn’t because

He always wanted to be an Orange.

To him, the Oranges were all that he could wish for,

How they grew, and laughed,

It looked so infectiously simple how they did things,

Including drinking –

It seemed intoxication and consequences came to them effortlessly.

He could sell his core to be like them

And he tried to do so.

It took him many falls and been kicked around,

Dark spots and pinches off his red, and green, and yellow skin

To the point white was all gone, or so it seemed

Until one day he learned something –

He will always be an Apple

Because his body was thought through and made in a different way

Selling his core brought no desired fruits, pardon the pun

And when that dawned on him,

He cried, yet the sun failed not to keep shining on him

And the dew still looked beautiful in the waking up grass.

It took much time, enough to feel like eternity,

To find peace with that realization.

Then one day, it all became clear to him –

He could look so many ways,

Feel so much different being alive instead of jealous.

And he also found there were many other Apples to talk to

Which he didn’t cared to do for a long time,

Lost in his resentment.

Next day was very red, and green, and yellow, and even white,

And so many colors he didn’t know existed.

There was much time to grow and enjoy them all

And he kept on doing so

Effortless one day, with some strain another

Yet drinking over that he didn’t need to anymore.

the image was copied from https://retouch.ca/portfolio/apple-orange-retouching/ thank you.

thank you to Russ for the idea.