The Pathos of Things
Vol. 3, Issue 7
Right now I’m trying to remember what I drank when I had my last drink-drink. It was probably vodka. Maybe it was whiskey? It was unceremonious, whatever it was. I definitely don’t remember when I had my last coke binge, either, but every time I did cocaine I swore it would be the last time. I don’t remember the last time I took mushrooms and molly, but it was definitely between the summer and early autumn of 2015. But I do remember the last acid trip.
I was on a late-in-life acid kick where I’d do it a couple of times per week because I thought it would help keep my creative energy “open.” On a random Wednesday in July, I was peaking hard as it began to rain. I went outside on my deck to get a closer look because the raindrops looked like diamonds. Then I had to get back inside because the diamonds got too intense and I thought it might actually be a meteor shower that would destroy the building. The next day it rained again and I still saw diamonds. That was enough of that. I actually made the ending official and wrote it down: “No more acid!”
The night before I was supposed to leave for rehab I had five or six Budweisers at the Alligator Lounge in Williamsburg. I picked up a six-pack of Pacifico after that which I assumed would be my last ones for a long time. I invited a friend over that night to help me pack just in case I got too drunk. We watched Magnolia and they helped me clean out my fridge.
After they left I took two Xanax and waited for the morning to come to make my 1 p.m. flight from JFK to Charlotte to West Palm Beach, Fla. When I woke up, though, I didn’t want to go anymore. I didn’t act responsibly and contact the airline to reschedule, I just didn’t go. I thought about my empty seat and how annoying it must be for the person checking people in. I wondered if they called my name over the intercom like I was a lost child.
I booked another flight on a different airline for 9:46 a.m. the next morning, a direct flight from JFK into PBI. I emailed the rehab intake coordinator named Larry so he could inform the driver scheduled to pick me up of my new arrival time. I missed that one, too, but I just rescheduled it for the morning. I spent more than $600 on flights I never took.
Finally, I called Larry on the phone to tell him I was distressed and not ready for rehab yet. He was annoyed and then he used this old chestnut on me. "The mind is a bad neighborhood for people like us. Stay out of there. And get on the plane, Albert!”
Albert is my actual legal birth-certified first name – my father’s name – and I didn’t have the energy to correct him to say that I preferred A.J. I wanted to do something drastic and dramatic instead.
****
I used to smoke on the small, narrow balcony out the front window of my apartment when I was too lazy to walk upstairs to the deck or walk downstairs to the sidewalk. There was always a pathetic ashtray sitting on the sill, overflowing from the last rain, but I never liked to smoke out there because I’m afraid of heights. It was only three stories up, but still.
I managed to make it all the way out, shaking the whole time and full of despair, and I leaned my body up against the metal railing that came up a little higher than my waist. Then I purposely smashed myself into it. The second time I did it harder. I used enough force the third time to make the screws rattle. I don’t know what I thought an “accidental” fall off the balcony would do for my situation, other than break a few bones if I was lucky. I eventually went back inside but I really didn’t want to get on that plane.
****
After I got sober, I was determined to become a middle-aged physical specimen – I want to box! I want to surf! I want to run 50ks barefoot through the Mojave Desert! – and also become a million times smarter and more spiritualized. I tried to read all the books I never read in college and all the books writers were supposed to have read to be considered real writers. Faulkner, for example. I thought I should read Faulkner. (It’s been four and a half years and I made it through one page of the prologue to Light in August.)
As far as spirituality, I didn’t want to just do the 12 Steps – I wanted to be fully enlightened. I wanted to have principles and integrity and a value system. I wanted everyone to recognize the seismic change in me. What’s the point of sobriety if you can’t impress everyone who knew you when you used to poop your pants on the subway on the way home from the bar?
I read up on some basic Buddhist principles and poked around some meditation centers to take it to the next level, but that felt too LA. I also dug into Stoicism for a bit and that was helpful but very sparse. Then I moved on to lykke and contemplated buying a bike and sharing a house with our neighbors, even though our neighbors sucked.
I was open to all of it, but nothing stayed for too long.
Then I discovered ikigai, the Japanese concept of developing a “reason for being.” It suggested that if I found something I loved to do and stayed active I could lead a peaceful and meaningful existence: 'There is no word for retirement in Japan.” It also said I should drink green tea and tend to my garden every single day. I needed to build a garden ASAP. If I did that, I could live until 106.
I read about wabi-sabi next and loved the idea that cracked or broken things (like me) could still be beautiful. I accidentally dropped a small green vase I used as a pen holder on my desk. Instead of throwing the shards away, I bought a wabi-sabi kit on Amazon and put it back together, cracks and all, with gold glue. Once I knew I had that power, I wanted to fix every broken thing.
Then I picked up this book called A Little Book of Japanese Contentments and I learned about the definition of mono no aware which is sometimes translated as the “pathos of things” or, my favorite, “the ahhh-ness of things.” Here’s a clunky passage from that book:
“Mono means “thing,” and aware (pronounced ah-wah-reh) translates to the sensitivity or gentle sadness about the transitory, ephemeral nature of life. It can also mean sensitivity toward things and the nature of life – something that is consciously recognized and accepted with a hint of melancholy or wistfulness.”
Then it got more specific:
This is another way in which the Japanese language manages to capture the feelings of nostalgia we all experience. I recently had a conversation with a friend at a dinner party, who pointed out that at one point in your childhood, your parent would have picked you up or lifted you onto their shoulders for the last time – and mono no aware perfectly encapsulates the feeling that thought evokes.”
This part devastated me. When my children came home that night I picked them both up and held them super tight like we were all trapped outside waiting for a tornado to pass.
****
Once mono no aware came into my life, I obsessed about all the little things that disappeared each day without me noticing. Our oldest child used to have a very fixed morning routine from the time he was about 9-months-old until he was almost two. I would get up with him and we’d go downstairs to watch an old Sesame Street episode – the one with the ridiculously catchy “Disco D” song that I even watched as a kid – and I’d listen to it as I made coffee. He watched it every day and then...he just stopped.
Our second child began her own Sesame Street routine, but she was into more recent episodes, especially the Sesame Street Alphabet Songs compilation. She loved it when the Dixie Chicks sang “No Letter Better” and she made me pick her up to get close enough to the TV so she could point at Natalie Maines’s mouth. Every morning I’d have coffee and put it down once I heard “Bee...bee...beeeeee...beee" to pick her up again, just like the day before, until it was the last time.
Our third child will be in size-5 diapers soon and I don’t know how I missed sizes N through 3, even while I was paying very close attention. I just hope he’s into Sesame Street. I’d like to do that again.
The bedtime routine is changing, too. Before it was a bath, books, then bed. For almost a full year the book order was Little Blue Truck Leads the Way, The Little Fur Family, and then a big finish with My Heart Is Like a Zoo. Our oldest memorized most of them, then one night it happened – he asked for a new book. I looked at Julieanne and sighed. Mono no aware beat me again. I held Little Fur Family in my hands and waited for it to disintegrate the way all the superheroes did at the end of Infinity War.
I think about mono no aware when I watch TV shows, too. Like, I'd spend some days wondering if should watch the episode of The Office when Kevin drops the chili once more before I die. Or the complete first season of Friday Night Lights again.
Sometimes I’ll be reminded of an album I would constantly listen to as a teenager and quickly download it to give it one final spin in commemoration of its service to my life. I recently did this with the White Lion song “Wait.” I listened to it loudly in the kitchen and bored Julieanne about the details of the excellent and underrated classically-inspired playing of guitarist Vito Bratta. I didn’t realize until five minutes passed that she'd put on headphones. I Googled Vito Bratta to make sure he wasn’t dead. He was not, but according to a 2007 interview, he stopped playing with White Lion in 1992 by choice and wanted it to stay that way. “It was time,” he said.
****
Instead of hurtling myself off my small balcony onto Kingsland Avenue that day, I called another friend and asked him to help me, please, God, help me. He told me to come over to his place in Peck Slip right away. By the time I got there, it was night.
Somehow I managed to book a new flight at 6 a.m. the next morning. He said he’d go with me to the airport to make sure I got on the plane this time. I laid on his couch and he offered me a Budweiser bottle. The 2015 ALCS between the Kansas City Royals and the Toronto Blue Jays was on the TV. “Are you a Ned Yost fan?” he asked. I had no opinion because I was ashamed and exhausted like I’d spent all day screaming and fighting. So we didn’t talk that much.
I got up to smoke and set the beer down on his kitchen island. “You know it’s okay if you’re not ready,” he said. I wasn’t, but I’d missed too many planes. I laid back on his couch and left the beer where it was.
We woke up at 4 a.m. and rode to the airport in the back of an Uber. “I’m not walking you to the gate,” he said. I knew that, but I appreciated the heads-up.
My plan was to get drunk on the plane and stagger off of it sunglassed and stinking. I assumed the man hired to chauffeur me to the detox center kind of expected it. I didn’t drink, though. I just contemplated what was the least amount of time I could spend in rehab to make it look like I gave it a legitimate shot.
****
I bring all this up because it’s strange that I didn’t give drugs and alcohol the big send-off they deserved. They gave me so many amazing nights – long nights in strange places with creative weirdos who were successful and interesting enough to make me believe my life was also interesting. Drugs gave me sky-high confidence and made me feel less ugly around those people. Drinking made me unconstricted. And cocaine definitely gave me a New York City media career, which, at the time, I thought was more impressive than being an astronaut.
Maybe I should have had a formal going away party and stayed up all night drinking Johnnie Walker Blue and doing lines the size of gator tails? At the end of the night, I’d throw an empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue off the roof of a Lower East Side apartment just to hear it smash on the sidewalk. I’d talk to all my late-night S-O-S friends about everything and nothing with our dry mouths right up in each other’s sweaty crazy-eyed faces. Then we’d hug each other like assholes. “I love you, friend!” I’d squeeze tighter and lift them off the ground until we fell on top of each other. The next morning they’d all be gone but I’d be too hungover to miss them.
Instead, it was just that Budweiser I never finished. Maybe it got dumped into the sink while I was asleep or maybe it sat there all night like a wounded soldier. I used to get wistful thinking about it – I wish I knew that night was going to be the actual last-last night because I would have blown it out properly. But I now understand it needed to end without me knowing it was the end. No fireworks. No shattered bottles. Poof. Just like that.
And now it’s beautiful. – AJD
I Love You, Friend
by The Small Bow
Mountain Goats
An illustration by Edith Zimmerman
Illustrations by Edith Zimmerman
