Month: March 2026

Sober Assessment

TWO-AND-A-HALF MONTHS AGO, I completed my tenth year of clear-eyed, clean-headed and grateful sobriety.

Now, when some people hear that, they might think, “Great, here comes the self-righteous lecture on the evils of intoxication.” But that won’t happen, at least not from me. I don’t and won’t disdain anyone else’s recreational or coping choices; frankly, they are none of my business, and refraining from inebriation is not a crusade that I feel either comfortable or qualified to pursue toward others.

Instead, I want to speak about the rarefied and addictive intoxicant that actually “saved” me, keeping me sane and healthy not just during the past decade but all of my life – and if you know me as well as you think you do, you can already guess what that is.

WRITING.

Not for nothing did Stephen King say of this 6,000-year-old-plus art: “Do it for the buzz.” There is an ineffable thrill in watching the words spill out onto paper or screen, an actual physical and mental rush only gotten from congealing thought into alphabetic form, that’s as hard to beat as it is to describe.

And the best part is, it’s free. Easily accessible. Shareable. No more watching my money go up in a cloud of marijuana smoke; no more furtively prowling dodgy neighborhoods; no more keeping it all to myself lest I run out.

Did I mention addictive? Once you start, you’re hooked for life. I sometimes find myself typing and typing until I fall asleep at the keyboard, literally unable to stop ’til I drop. (True story.) E.g., tonight: I meant to take advantage of the finally clear Sonoma skies and do a bit of long-delayed stargazing.

But as I write this, it’s well after 10:30pm (or, if you prefer, 2230 hours) PDT and I’m already getting sleepy. So before I trundle off to Dreamsville, I’ll leave you this hard-earned advice: Try not to let the Great American Novel (or Essay, or Blogpost) keep you from tending your other bodily needs. Otherwise, you may find yourself face down in a pool of your own ink – or even with “QWERTYUIOP” reverse-imprinted deeply into your throbbing forehead. Nighty night.

Aged I

LET’S SHIFT GEARS for a second and talk about something that’s been on my mind for a long but indeterminate while: in a word, aging.

Later this month, may the Force so will it, I’ll celebrate my 64th birthday. While momentous enough in itself, what’s even more of the moment is the matter of perspective this milestone brings.

I have now outlived several dear (and once-dear) friends and family members.

Many of the Hebrew-school children I taught when we first came to Sonoma are now out of college or vocational school and pursuing their own successful careers – some with children of their own.

I have seen my beloved hometown change from a quaint and sleepy rural community to a quaint and world-famous tourist playground. (Don’t get me wrong – it’s still by far the best place on Earth in which to live, filled with the best people to live with. It’s just … different, that’s all.)

And I have matured from a depressive but charmingly self-aggrandizing hophead to a joyful and sober social asset. (For some values of the term “social asset.”)

All these changes – particularly the sobriety – have helped me realize the fragility, continuity and inevitability of time and its cycles; it’s the sort of realization one can only derive from direct experience, and has also given me an appreciation of depth and focus. And they have rocket-fueled my innate and sardonic sense of the absurd. Most valuable of all is what the kids today call “radical acceptance” – a healthier byproduct than cynicism of struggling against the unchangeable – as well as a fierce love of life and its many inhabitants.

Wisdom? Enlightenment? Inner peace? I wouldn’t go that far, because I don’t know how to define or even recognize any of those. Let’s just call it a grateful and quiet delight in the simple, in the small, in the deep happiness of becoming and belonging. And we’ll leave it at that.

Moral Dissonance

HERE’S THE AGONY: As an American, I am angered and appalled by the unilateral, unconstitutional, and undiscussed-with-Congress decision to bomb Iran.

As a Jew, however, I am abjectly disturbed to find myself not being more bothered by it.

To be clear, I believe warfare is the most hateful, destructive occupation we humans can engage in. It speaks from and to the darkest parts of our primate psyches. It doesn’t care who gets in the way or how – you’ve heard of “the fog of war?” – and in most cases, leaves nothing behind save broken bodies and broken souls. And while sometimes necessary, war should be the very last resort of diplomacy. It is too-often invoked by politicians who’ve never fought in one and who don’t care about the human waste involved.

And yet …

The Iranian government has been a deadly threat to Israel and the Jewish people since its emergence as a theocracy. It lines the pockets of enthusiastic murderers from Hamas to Hezbollah, in places as far apart as Bondi Beach and Buenos Aires, and has made very plain its desire to kill every last Jew on our planet. It is not this world’s only dangerous government – far from it – but it is one of the most far-reaching and single-minded, and (dare I say) successful.

So that’s my conflict. Do I want war? No. Do I want anybody to die? No. But I also don’t want the necessity of armed guards standing watch outside my place of communal worship. I don’t want to have to shield the kids I teach from the knowledge that there are people who want them dead, simply because of who and what they are. And I don’t want to live in a world where evil can take on such gleefully cruel forms.

These are my raw feelings, and to speak from my heart, they scare me. Deeply. My co-pilot the therapist says it’s possible, and even normal, to hold conflicting emotions at the same time. While I know that’s true, being directly opposed to and grudgingly okay with this war is shattering me.

Favicon Plugin created by Jake Ruston's Wordpress Plugins - Powered by Briefcases and r4 ds card.