I often dream about days when I was young or times that were either pivotal or somehow spiritually influential to me. I dream of these moments as if the fold in time was pressed down like the corners in the book of my memory.
I have reoccurring dreams from moments like the time I was in El Paso, on a road, long as anyone could imagine, and driving through the beige view of the desert and the emptiness around the highway.
I remember this trip. I remember the quiet eeriness about watching a long freight train pass by, which seemed unending to me.
I can remember the opened doors on the sides of the box cars, where hoboes sat and watched the landscapes change from one place to the next. I assume this was a different view of real life and poverty. I assume I saw this through my young eyes and, somehow, I remember this now, but with a certain reverence or regard and respect for the struggle of life.
I remember this because I remember how my life was young and untested.
I was too small and unaware to know that more is on the way — or that life is about to happen.
I saw this as a foreshadowing moment of realization which told me, even then, there is a great big world out there.
Some are less fortunate and some are poor, some are lost, some people will live their entire life while dying alive, and some people will look around from their towery views and never see their privilege or fortunate safety; and there are people who will live in their own tunnel and never dare to look around at the truth and see that the world has gone mad.
I was too young to realize what I was seeing. I suppose my eyes opened again, years later, when I found myself in an upstate treatment facility.
I was kicking a social poison and the substances that nearly killed me.
I was too young to realize the honor and privilege and way too ignorant to understand the opportunity that I had to live, instead of die, or in fairness, I easily could have been like one of those kids on the other side of the column. Thus, I would have been a mark or a number, and a statistic, or I would be otherwise be nameless and sad. Eventually, I’d have been forgotten and faded from the marks of life.
I’d have been dead!
I will openly explain that I was raised around hatred. I never considered what I was raised around as racism because in my ignorance, I thought that this is the way the world is — there is a difference in class, style, culture, and there is a battle between color, creed, lifestyles, and status.
I was taught and I learned about hate from a young age. I was told that my background was from an enemy territory. Then again, it was not easy for me to grow up with Irish looking features from my Mother’s side and full-blooded Austrian features from my Old Man.
I was raised in a Jewish household, which was not a good math for my Irish and Roman Catholic neighborhood.
I lost a large branch of my family in death camps, such as Auschwitz and perhaps Mauthausen, due to it is location in Austria.
I know that my Grandparents on my Father’s side were able to leave in the early 1900’s before the racial tensions and the hatred spilled into the furies. Both of my Grandparents came from the same town, I am told. They left before the hate burned the streets or the more notable dates like the Reichstag Fires in 1933 or Kristallnacht back in 1938.
I never spoke much about this with my Grandmother. She never told me about growing up. I don’t know anything about my Grandfather, with the exception of a few stories. In fact, I never met him. I know that he was a hard man, tough, and that he was not patient or tolerant. Although my Old Man spoke about my Grandfather with a loyal tongue, my Father seldom spoke about his upbringing or the times from his youth.
I suppose hate was all around me at the time. And I knew this.
I knew that there were racial tensions, but this was normal for me.
I knew that Jews were considered to be dirty and cheap. I knew that there was a stereotype, and I knew that I was told that I wasn’t like “them” or I was told that I was a “good Jew,” which meant that all the others were bad and deserving of their elimination—or at least this is how life seemed to me.
I remember when a bunch of young adults set a cross on fire in my neighbor’s yard. I remember always thinking that there is always going to be a difference, and there will always be a line between people — and that in my best estimation, I had to figure out where I wanted to be and how I wanted to present myself and, of course, what was I willing to fight for, and, too, if war should come and the racial battle took place, where would I stand and who would I support?
As it was, I believed that everyone hated me, so I assumed it was only fair for me to hate everyone back.
Fuck’em
This is the way the world is.
Everything is ugly
and everybody sucks. . .
The real truth is, I never knew anyone.
I never met anyone in my life as kind as a man who pulled me aside in a treatment facility. He was a wino. He was a hobo and he was just like the ones I saw in the box car.
He and I were in treatment together.
He had had enough, he said. He lived homeless for most of his life and somehow, he heard that I was thinking of making a run for it.
This man was a great man. Dark as ever, blacker than the night and kinder than any angel in heaven.
He asked me to visit his room and then he took out a brand-new pair of jeans. He told me that he never wore a brand-new pair of jeans in his life.
Never. Not one.
He handed me the folded pair, and he asked me to take them. He told me that no one ever handed him kindness like the way he felt when they handed him this new pair of jeans.
I want you to have them, he told me.
You take these jeans, and you go where they tell you to go and you do what they tell you to do.
That life don’t need you, he told me.
“Now you go and get your head on straight, son!”
“Nobody here wants to see you end up like us.”
And here it was, all the times I was told that this man was my enemy because of the color of his skin, and to this day, no one of any race or color has shown me a kindness like him.
I was not ready to surrender myself to the idea of being clean. I was sneaky and grimy and worse, I was full of shit and undeserving of a kindness like this.
But, somehow –
I took the jeans like he asked. I went to the next facility like I was told. I don’t know where this man is or at this point, I am doubtful that he is still alive.
He wasn’t young by any means, and this was more than 35 years ago.
However, and wherever he is now, I hope he can see who I am and how he inspired me a retch like me, someone undeserving of such love and kindness.
I had a dream last night about the freight train, sitting in a car like I did when I was a kid, and watching the freight roll by me in the desert in El Paso.
I remember being across the river from Juarez Mexico which, at the time of my visit, cost ten cents to go over the bridge and visit—and it cost fifteen cents to come back home.
Some people live their entire life and never know what it means to be alive. Some people live with blinders on because, of course, it’s just easier that way.
Especially when you don’t want to see the truth.
Some live to hate. Some hate to live.
And some people are blessed enough to know that despite the hate we see, the depth of our love can reach farther than the span of our hate — if we allow it.
I don’t want to hate anymore.
It’s just too wasteful . . .
I could use a pair of new jeans, or the touch of an angel to let me know I deserve them.
The Written Addiction 