Starts and stops

            I never realized that I was addicted to nicotine.  One of the only ways that I could get past the difficult beginning of quitting was observing.  They say the observer changes what is observed so I’m willing to take full responsibility for myself.  Especially under these circumstances.  I did the journey.  I found some valuable and arresting items along the way.  I recovered a large portion of my history and I’m still exploring that archival find.  Though this isn’t all about historical reality.  At least the kind of reality I grew up with.  In retrospect, my parent’s world seemed as if it were vacuum sealed in a jar.  I reserved nothing on this journey.  Everything was used.  Even the air in the jar.

            I used interpretations like a tool.  Stories took on personal meanings because I worked them.  I was able to go down that bit of road, with that tale or person, knowing how it was a part of me. I’ll be honest, sometimes I still want cigarettes.  But I crave sugar and crunchy carbohydrates even more.  I have a strong desire to chomp and chew.  The common wisdom is that this too will pass.  I love the idea of wisdom being common because then even I can have access to it.

            What I learned serves me now and served me at the most difficult part of the journey.  In observing what Nic’s pull was doing to me, I had given myself power that I never had before.  It’s like turning a light on to see it better.  He didn’t like this.  It robbed him of some of his best moves. You know he’d flourish in a nightclub atmosphere far better than a sunny room filled with healthy people and holistic, environmentally sound surroundings.  Though even there you can’t be sure that he’s not lurking.  Because much as I’d like to say ‘Nic is this and Nic is that’, he isn’t.  He’s Nic and you gotta watch out.

            All journeys have their starts and stops.  You have to take a rest now and then, fill the water bottles.  Eat.  Sleep a little.  Even dream a little to get those nourishing REMs.  REM sleep is to the brain what M&M’s are to the person craving sugar, just the right sort of nutrient to make life worth living.  Besides, some dreams, rich in symbols and reconstituting stories, make it possible to keep on reeling in the real world.

            If Nic stretched my humanity it was because I was the willing participant in the stretch.  Or else it meant that I needed to end the preoccupation I had with his pull on me and grow some on my own.  Observing my behavior and inner dialogue during the worst of my withdrawal symptoms actually diffused his pull.  This effect, opposite from what I would have expected, was something I explored and developed over the first few months.  It’s a technique that I continue to learn from when I remember to use it.  It does have that ‘dog chasing its own tail’ quality about it.  No doubt any sort of introspection can have that.  But it also gives you the ability to drop the damning cycles you might be putting yourself through.

            I’m always trying to get a handle on what it means to live in the moment.  There are so many angles and so many moments.  It’s an important part of the starts and stops because something pushes you through to the next period of your life.  Which could be just down the road apiece.  One rarely gets to see the momentum in the moment that gets you going.  It’s like the movement of a glacier.  A lot of what we experience is like a cat’s jump, difficult to see the steps along the way.  But it happens.  They jump all the time. 

http://amzn.to/14jUNUs    Nic link to Kindle copy