As you know, I was an addictions counselor for about seventeen years, on and off. I genuinely liked almost all of my clients. It helped if they liked me back, because it made the work go easier. But even if they didn’t like me, we still had work to do. And it was their work more than mine. Often, the hardest sessions were the most productive in the long run. Sometimes it could go something like this:

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Good afternoon, Michael. I see you have a new bucket with you.

Hi, Mr. Harper. You like the Hello Kitty on the side?

Very much.
…….
So, what would you like to talk about today, Michael?

Nothing much happening. Same old, same old, you know.

How’s your program going?

Um, work was pretty busy. I did a meeting on Thursday.

I think you told me last time that you might have found a new sponsor.

Yeah, he’s a good guy. Been clean three years now. You gotta respect that.

Yes.

It’s hard, you know. Sometimes I think about the old days. Back when I was all crazy. I’m a lot better now, but —

But what, Michael?

It’s like… I dunno… I just don’t feel… happy hardly ever any more.

That’s the brain changes, Michael. Everybody struggles with it. When you give up your bad habit, and all the intensity that goes with it, it takes time for your brain to adjust. It’s okay to not be happy while you’re working through it. You have to honor your loss, and learn to move onward. It takes time.

Yeah, I know… I just… Is this all there is? Just making it from day to day? Is this any way to live?

You’re still not sure it was worth it.

Yeah.

You’d probably be in the ground, Michael.

Sometimes I don’t remember so good, but I was wild and… and free, you know? Going balls to the wall like nothing else mattered. On a terminal buzz twenty-four seven.

I understand. You’re having euphoric recall. You’re remembering the good parts, but not the bad ones.

It was so great!

What about your family?

That part was great, too!…. Oh, shit. That’s awful, isn’t it?

You killed and ate them.

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I haven’t settled on a candidate for President yet (but btw, today was T minus One Year and Counting! Thank God! … ahem). If anyone, I lean toward Edwards. He speaks truth and takes no prisoners.

But I must say that—pace Caroline (and frankly, I can’t find fault with anyone disgusted with any politician; our system is so broken that in order to succeed you have to be, at least in some small measure, broken by normal people’s standards)—I think Susan Faludi may be onto something with this article about Hillary Clinton:

American society characterizes women as caregivers based on their young years as mothers. And when the American media demand emotion and warmth from Clinton, they are voicing the demand of a child to its mother (a demand not made equally to its father).

But there’s an entirely separate realm of female caretaking that is, in fact, more relevant to national leadership and to Clinton’s candidacy. Daughters shoulder the overwhelming burden of the care of our elderly parents. This too is a sphere of women’s experience, far more familiar to the women in the middle-to-older age bracket who supported Clinton most fervently, but its precepts are very different.

The woman caring for her aging parent isn’t being asked to bolster a juvenile ego with the necessary dollops of cooing, mirroring and inspirational atta-boys. The availability that a child asks from a young mother is not the quality most required in a middle-aged woman caring for a mature parent — or a mature nation. Competence is. If that competence is backed by the humanizing force of tears, that is lovely and appreciated. But as those women at Kaiser knew, the moment called most of all for practical solutions and a reliable problem-solver.

The greatest show of nurturance those women could possibly evince was steeling themselves to stand in that line all over again and make that hectoring phone call to yet another doctor, even if they were perceived as a “bitch” by the receptionist on the other end.

In their appraisals of Hillary Clinton, the pollsters and pundits who have not gotten beyond that mommy/ball-buster teeter-totter narrative of American womanhood also have not begun to diagnose gender dynamics beyond the perspective of the little boy and his mom. A lot of female voters, however, may be factoring in a whole other kind of female archetype, whose wet eyes do not signal weakness and whose flashes of anger do not signal coldness, only pragmatic perseverance.

I think she has a point. I have never had the aversion to Clinton that many have had. I have issues with some of her policies, but I read her as hard headed, level headed, and competent. Who knows? Maybe that’s what her supporters see.

Anyway, read the whole thing.

It’s been a rotten weather week here deep in the heart of Texas. I’ve been out on my bike under gun-metal gray skies for most of it, getting wet and cold and deeply aware of my mortality in the rain.

Somebody, and I’m sure that you’ll tell me who, once said that all great art is about love and death. In this crummy weather, my thoughts have not turned toward warm buttery love.

Here’s Willie Nelson doing a stark meditation on the subject, in Dave Matthews’ ‘Gravedigger’. I can’t imagine anyone who might have a better face or voice for this video.

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Of course, we also have Dave’s vision. It’s a lot more Grand Guignol than Willie’s.

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Two very different artistic takes on the subject, and they both work well this week, for me. I even recognize that both are also about love.

Today’s better, but I’m still cold, and the blood is flowing sluggishly.

And, yeah, despite my determined attempt to go non-political, and tend only my own garden, I find it hard to avoid glancingly reflecting upon all the unnecessary holes in the dark ground that the Bush mis-administration has caused to be excavated during its brief and artless time upon the stage.

Time for another cup of coffee, I think.

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