DELIVER ME
Who knows why some of us are addicts? Who really knows what is the finer definition of addiction besides drinking a daily quart of cognac, shoving a gram of coke up your nose of an evening, smoking 2 packs a day, consuming ice-cream by the quart and devouring an entire package of oatmeal raisin cookies before reaching the check-out aisle? What I do know is that the above list was my menu for a long time, its ingredients liberally peppered with sex. By the time I reached my early forties I’d kicked everything but sugar. Maybe sugar was the last to go because it was my first addiction (at age 5, I was stealing from my mother to buy candy).
It’s been 6 months now since I partook of the last grain of sugar, which is about how long it takes after quitting any substance abuse to realize that a) you’re more fucked-up that you knew and b) you still really want something to take the pain away. What takes much longer to understand is that turning the spigot off doesn’t make the self-destructive energy go away. Like blocked water, it just re-routes.
I spent this morning hand-strewing earth over the struggling clover. Planted some 2 months ago, the seeds had managed to survive the violent storm that arrived the following day. Where the rain carried patches away I re-sowed. The newly installed irrigation system did its job beautifully, until it didn’t. Two weeks ago, Vincenzo had to change us over to a new water source. The source is a well situated at the bottom of a long sloping field. Turns out the pump can’t handle the pull. The pressure dropped so much that the irrigation nozzles, designed to spray water at least 12 feet in every direction, now only manage a radius of 12 inches.
In a normal May it wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but we’re in the 3rd week of a heat wave. So every morning and every evening I wield, for a total of 2 plus hours, hundreds of feet of hose out of which issues sporadic, half-hearted bursts of water. When I awoke this morning I saw that my effort was failing. Large patches of clover were curling up and dying. That’s when I started hand-strewing earth, in an attempt to cool and nourish the ground.
dying clover
I felt heartbroken. Enraged, too. How dare this happen! The truth is I’ve been on the verge of rage for a couple of weeks; rage at what I perceive to be failure; on my part or anyone else’s, or nature itself.
Since I decided to let go of “success and recognition” with regard to my writing I seem to have taken on more and more projects which I convince myself I can succeed at. Like renovating 2 bathrooms, re-covering the couches and planting 2 enormous new gardens along with overseeing the digging in of trees and the placement of boulders. I won’t bore you with the “still to be done list.”
The problem with addiction is it seems perfectly normal when you’re actually in it. However, any seasoned addict like myself, with a quarter century plus sober and clean, eventually recognizes the whiff of poison. But it wasn’t until I heard the horn of a delivery truck in the lane that I woke up to the extent to which I had enabled my addictive energy to re-route; not just in one rivulet but several, simultaneous streams.
I was at my desk, working on a new book while answering calls from plumbers, stonemasons, supply companies and the tailor when the horn beeped. It was only a beep but for me it was a clarion call. I burst into tears and in the arms of my loved one, begged for help. Isn’t that really what we all crave, to be held by a loved one? Someone who is willing to hold our self-poisoned self and in so doing allow us to spill the beans?
Today’s beans were these: When I made a ‘conscious’ choice to let go of “success and recognition,” my addiction to it merely re-routed. Determined to succeed at something e.g., the perfect house and garden, I became a dervish. Terrified of failing I had ramped up my will until I couldn’t tell the difference between giving up and letting go.
How sweet this cup of tea I now sip, made from herbs I picked from the garden. How peaceful to sit here in the dappled light, writing to you and looking up once in a while beyond the clover to all that is alive in the garden, and out beyond its borders to the little red tractor on the hill, alone out there in the vast landscape. That’s Vincenzo. He’s busy harvesting the season’s first crop of grain. Tomorrow that green hill will turn brown. Then it will be reseeded. Vincenzo has already got the new holding tank into which water from the well will be pumped. The tank will be re-situated at the top of the slope, just outside the garden which should do the trick. Next week Vincenzo will work overtime to hook the irrigation system up to it. The clover? Either it will make it, or not. Rain is forecast for the weekend, but to count on that would be like counting on deliverance from yet another substance over which I have no control.