(insert witty ass title HERE)

by Clinton Rolen Gandy on Saturday, March 26, 2011 at 10:22am

I was thinking about something I heard a friend say, If you don't have a sponsor and aren't working steps you can't really say you have relapsed- you just used. So for the unlucky bastards that keep picking up white key tags, I wonder if they realize there is more to recovery than coming to meetings, being their own sponsor and smoking on the porch. The reason I even was thinking it is there is a very sweet natured , older than me that re-tags periodically and I got the sense he may have never "heard" the part about the actual program in the time that it was right for him to "hear it". I'm kind of compelled just to talk with him a little because he is one of those people I run into time and time again that I am not real sure they aren't some sort of undercover spiritual creature sent just to see if I am paying attention and provides us all with the opportunity to love without judgement. lol You know that song "What If God Were One of US", "just a stranger on a bus". What if I was wrong and this guy was God, and he was "secret shopping"

Recycled Material Inside

Breakdown or break-through. It's so curious that in life we aren't given a crystal ball to see how things will play out in the long run. What seems to be a disaster today can ultimately be the thing that brings us to whole new level of living and loving. I've seen lotto winners run head on into their own demise with the freedom money can give. I've seen a 7th runner up in a big TV talent contest get tossed way to soon and end up winning an Oscar and Grammy, while the winner of her contest season crumbled with having to much too soon. Cancer survivors who fight the illness, come out on the other side and never see life the same again. A complete perspective shift is possible at anytime for any reason and suddenly life as we understand is gone forever. It is like exiting one world and being birthed into another.  Sometimes I get a prompt on the computer that Windows has another, ANOTHER patch or upgrade I need to take. I look at it and read it like i actually know anything I am looking at and hit update. Everything that I pull into my life has the capacity to be an upgrade, there isn't a problem in my life today that can't serve as a catalyst to make me more loving, more understanding more aware of the human condition. Only by making contact with a power, a loving power bigger than me every morning and keeping in contact with it through various ways through the day and night are real changes made possible. In our GREEN conversion, it makes me kind of tickled, that I am being recycled. A power and a program are taking my strengths , flaws, and weaknesses and putting me through the process of being wholly made useful. "No part left behind".  "Renewable Resources". What looks like a disaster to me at first glance isn't quite the big deal it was a year ago, because I know, that when i am willing, I can ask to see things in a different way. I am willing to see this from a different perspective and that is when the REAL Recycling begins on me. A perspective I might add a perspective not distorted through the bottom of a margarita (yes, I drank the girlie drinks) or  the amber haze of a plastic pill bottle.
If I had a Tee Shirt machine I would make us all Tee Shirts with the NA logo and a stamp of  RECYCLED MATERIAL on the chest of the shirt.  Gregg County Recycle Center. lol

Portion of an online conversation that i had with a cool chick i know that i wanted to go back over and read again for myself before I forget everything

You know, it's just right for me right now. I fell in love one time when I was 18 and it was spectacular, it burned out within 2 years but I have never seen or heard anyone that made me feel that way again, 25 years later. It was magic and I'm not sure if you get to have that more than once. I don't really no anything about your spirituality but mine is entirely based on the creative loving spirit. when i am creating or loving I am doing what i was brought into existence to do and I think I am most like the creative force/flow that breathed me into possibility. When I create, whether it be a laugh or a document on computer, I create real energy, an energy that is needed to absorb the negative shit so many others crank out. Energy created through the ACT of creating is like stem cells to earth and world of spirit. I hit the thrift stores and try to match up cool things I can afford with cool people. Creating is way easier than most think. I love my life. I love the interaction I get to have with people when both parties come with honesty. No extraneous bullshit, I just can't be around it long. It's corrosive.

 

The first notice is usually always cordial.

One of the best things I have learned to do in order to align myself with my "power greater than myself", is listen to the tiniest of directives. Things like, "let's go home a different way" "Pick up the phone and call So and So", "Go to the meeting hall a little early" These are just a small collection of the things I learned to listen for but the outcome has been my internal directive system(IDS) is soo much stronger now and I can clearly hear the difference between my IDS and the voice of disease. So this is a quick little story of how my "HP" is quite gentle with me when I don't listen to the voice that has been provided.
Yesterday on the way to the meeting hall I stopped at Sonic to get a cold sweet coffee. I had like 2 dollar bills and my bank card. I paid for it with my bank card but did not have 2 quarters to give the gal who was gonna bring it out.  I thought about asking for 4 quarters but I thought that made me look like a cheap bastard. Then I heard my IDS say, just give her the whole dollar. For some reason I did not want to give her the dollar and was too embarrassed to ask for change so I left nothing.
 I pulled out and zipped down highway 80 with the sun roof open and the front windows down sippin' on my frozen coffee drink when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. The dollar bill that I had laid in the passenger seat was lifted up by the all the wind of the open windows and did 2 graceful loops, hung suspended for a split second and was sucked right out the window.
I knew as it was happening that was going to be the outcome and by the time it actually  flew out the passenger window I was already laughing. I was laughing that the power that loves me knows exactly how to get my attention when I am to into myself, too into myself to follow the internal directives. That was a reminder-lesson worth a dollar to me. It simply wasn't my dollar to keep and I wish the girl at Sonic could gotten it instead of the road side cleanup people. But following directives saves me the burden of worrying about results. I am only responsible to the universe for the actions it dictates and I choose to follow. I have nothing to do with outcome and even my perspective of the result is subject to being dead wrong. lol
I just thought it was a special little recovery tale from yesterday I would pass along. My listening skills are fine evidently, I just break down in follow through now and then. lol

Another Weekend Marked off the Calendar

When Monday comes, even if the weekend was a great one as far as an adult male living with his adult sister and mother goes, I am always glad to see Monday. 3 grownups in a smallish house at home at the same time is always uncomfortable. To many big personalities, don't you know. This weekend the ladies were spring cleaning and I was sick with a sinus infection that had been slow brewing all week long.

There have been some times I think about the money and energy I have wasted on reading books and articles aimed at better understanding yourself or to change parts of me and I wished I had my money back. lol I realized yesterday that all that practice for 20 years has made me very very good at spotting in recovery literature things that apply directly to me. It is sort of a muscle that even during times of relapse for me I never let die. I would drink beers at home two at a time from a glass and have my nose buried in books of spirituality and growth while I was doing it. I'd eat xanax like candy and muscle relaxer like sweets while I devoured books on changing my life and outlook.

The fact is, I have never , NOT looked for answers. I remember being 12 and deciding that there was no way you could realize you were happy while it was happening. Only in retrospect could you see, "boy , I was happy".

Of course I was dead wrong but  you have to admit that is some heady stuff for a 12 year old be be thinking up. I came to earth and into my being with a touch of sadness about my spirit. It to me is the quarter teaspoon of salt in the Toll House Cookie recipe. You think why would anything sweet need salt? The answer is you don't taste the salt directly but it enhances the flavor of the chocolate. It's like a super booster for the sweet. So the part of my soul that is always keenly away of the sadness , just behind the laughter, just sweetens the moments that life brings to me.

My response to a sweet article about no one wanting to be Miss Ice-o-Rama anymore

Thank you for your piece on Miss Ice-O-Rama. It made me a little sad for myself and a little sad for the young girls of the day and age. My name is Clinton Gandy and I grew up in rural East Texas. I grew up going to our annual Miss Hughes Springs. One of my earliest memories of all comes from getting to play on the bleachers in the hot high school auditorium as the annual pageantry took place. It wasn't just a big deal for the girl that charmed the judges, it was a HUGE deal.  They used the same crown for 20 years and by the time a family friend"s daughter had won the crown, it was mostly balls of soldering holding up some very persistent rhinestones that looked alot like a dirty faced hobo who clung to he last two teeth. She and the winners before her in 1976 were ribbon cutters, pancake servers, parade riders, local fashion models and visiting court duchess to other larger celebrations like "The Gilmer Yamboree" (a big deal in East Texas)lol. In 1985, when my closest friend was the winner, there were no prizes to speak of, just the goal of representing her home town where her granddad had a Chevrolet dealer ship for 40 years and he mother taught school for 30. There wasn't a girl before 1986 that didn't picture themselves riding on a Dewey Moore Ford or McMillan Chevrolet glistening in the sun during the Christmas Parade. There were years when there was more girls trying out for the title but there was always plenty for a good show and a contest right to the end.

In 1987 the decline began in earnest.  Less and less girls were interested in old fashioned things. They understood nothing about the history of the town coming together , bringing the best girls possible to the stage and let them show everyone what they could do. It was a venue for them to express themselves and surprise everyone. Including themselves.  The slick auditorium long replaced the sweaty summer nights in the basket ball gymnasium  and somewhere slick modern distractions have taken away a few beautifully simple ones. I am 43 and can still remember the names of some of the winners and they went on to be great ladies and great moms and great members of their communities. I guess the unspoken part of nostalgia is the sadness that things have changed and not necessarily for the better. They quit having our little home town pageant and then someone will try to save it, but I have resigned myself to the fact the old saying is true, you cannot UN-RING a bell. The hometown pageant is DEAD in Texas.  Those girls, those "it"  girls who planned , practiced, set goals, polished up on current events, road in a dozen parades, waved when they felt like shivering, borrowed gowns to save money, pulled a talent out of a an empty bag that could charm a roomful of people and smile widely  to let you see they freaking loved every minute of it. It was such a great little piece of Americana, pretty girls smiling and waving from a spiffed up sports car in between the marching band and the Shriners in their spooky tiny cars every year at Christmas Time..

I knew for sure the death of the home town pageant hit Texas, a state that loves it's big haired beauties like no other, pulled the plug on airing the Miss Texas Pageant on TV. I'm sad for the loss  of interest in all things simple and American but very happy the Nicole Rezza is getting to carry on the Tradition in the parade for South Boston as the reigning Miss Ice-O-rama.  I hope she savors every camel spin and sequin. I hope she wins it until she is too old to be in the competition.

I love my WiFi and cell phones but there was something to be said about a girl with a dream, a crown and a crowd and a panel of judges looking for a girl, -THAT GIRL.

Thank you for giving me stuff to think about and miss today.
Clinton R. Gandy
Gladewater, Texas

Just skating by

Being Miss Ice-O-Rama isn’t what it used to be

Nicole Rezza, the current Miss Ice-O-Rama, tries on an outfit she may wear in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. (John Tlumacki/ Globe Staff)

Technically, Miss Ice-O-Rama is the winner of a figure skating competition. But in South Boston, she is more — a symbol of yesteryear whose existence owes more to nostalgia than demand. This is because that big title and all its attendant glories — riding in a convertible! in the parade! — go to the best figure skater in a neighborhood that has almost none of them.

Last Sunday at the Murphy Rink, as a 12-year-old named Nicole Rezza prepared to take the ice to defend her title, she had only one concern.

“I just hope someone else shows up,’’ she said as she scanned the other girls in the rink, all of whom were wearing hockey skates as competitors in the Ice-O- Rama speed skating and puck shooting competitions.

Those hockey skates tell part of the story, said Tommy McGrath, president of the South Boston Citizens’ Association, which has been hosting the competition as part of its Evacuation Day events for at least four decades. The community has become a hotbed for women’s hockey, which has all but eclipsed figure skating. McGrath has his own evidence. He missed the Ice-O-Rama because he was in Michigan watching his daughter play for the UMass-Amherst women’s team.

“Miss Ice-O-Rama used to be huge, huge,’’ said Michelle White, a two-time winner of the competition in the 1970s who went on to train many future winners at a time when several dozen girls often competed for the title. “I remember getting my trophy, and it was almost as big as I was, and then riding in the parade. I felt like a movie star. Everywhere I went, everyone knew who I was,’’ said White, who is 46 and now lives in Florida.

Jennifer Jackson, Miss Ice-O-Rama 1983, is now 39 and chief of staff for state Senator Jack Hart. She remembers preparing for the competition like it was the Olympics.

“We lived and breathed it,’’ she said. “We skated whenever we could, and every one of us took private lessons so we could have a routine for Miss Ice-O-Rama. The whole year prior to the competition, that was your focus.’’

Now, Jackson, said, “it’s different, and it has been for a while.’’ And for that, she and many others blame pure numbers: In the era after the three-deckers went condo, there just aren’t nearly as many kids in South Boston.

As this year’s competition began, Rezza walked toward the ice still unsure if she was skating a solo.

“I have a plan in case anybody who figure-skates does come,’’ she said of the two-minute routine she’d prepared to the Katy Perry song, “Firework.’’Continued...

 When Rezza stepped to the ice, she looked relieved to see that she was not alone. There was another girl, wearing a yellow sweater with a green scarf and gloves and . . . hockey skates.

As Rezza warmed up, she took off her coat to reveal a proper figure skating costume — Spandex, sequins, tights — which surprised one of the mothers in the crowd.

“Oh, she’s real!’’ the woman gasped.

Yes she is, and the reason Rezza became a real figure skater — she practices four days a week in Allston — was not to win the Miss Ice-O-Rama crown but to defend it. A few years ago, simply because she was there, she was named Miss Junior Ice-O-Rama, got “a really huge trophy,’’ and wanted more.

As her mother hit play on the boombox, Rezza began her routine — with lots of spins and jumps — while her competitor dutifully skated around the boards, occasionally kicking a leg into the air. The winner was evident, though Rezza had a slight moment of confusion afterward when she was handed the runner-up trophy. The trophy company forgot to send a winner’s trophy.

Following the win, Rezza sat in the lobby eating a mid-morning slice of pizza from the snack bar, assessing her performance. “I didn’t skate as well as I wanted to, and I fell a few times,’’ she said.

But it was over, and now she had to turn her attention to what is becoming a regular role for her, being the tween face of Southie in the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

In a neighborhood that holds tight to tradition, there have always been two reserved spots for local girls in the parade that is its biggest event: one for Miss Ice-O-Rama, and one for Miss South Boston. But the Miss South Boston pageant ended last year; so now it’s just the girl with the funny title.

Winning the competition may create nary a ripple nowadays — Rezza said it would mean almost nothing to her sixth-grade classmates at the Murphy School in Dorchester — but riding in the parade remains a big deal.

“It was always so exciting,’’ said Lauree Maiullari, who won the competition six or seven times (she can’t remember). “I would see everyone in my class. I had friends run out and give me flowers. People I didn’t even know were cheering for me,’’ said the third-year student at Northeastern University.

Yesterday, at her home on Farragut Road just behind the rink, Rezza prepared for her big moment in the parade by sorting through a pile of green accessories that her mother was piling on the couch. Her choices included a sash that read “Irish Girl at Heart,’’ mardi gras beads, a shamrock lei, and a neon green hair piece. Rezza tried each on, then hung them around the neck of her riding companion in today’s parade, a puggle named Angel, who sat patiently while Rezza’s twin brother, John, put flashing green sunglasses on her face.

Rezza couldn’t commit to a getup. A lot would depend on the weather, and she and her brother were having a hard time calming down because they’d received the news that morning that they had both won something that is still highly competitive in this city: acceptance into Boston Latin School.

Winning Miss Ice-O-Rama has become an annual thing for Rezza, so it’s not a huge deal anymore. And there doesn’t appear to be anyone stepping up to challenge her reign in the near future. But Doris Rezza thinks there’s some hope for the future of the competition, one that she whispers when her daughter is out of earshot.

“I want to give a pair of figure skates to some of these hockey players and see what they can do,’’ she said. “Those girls are good.’’

identification not assimilation.

Who the hell are you? I was getting out of the car at Walmart and the really nice SUV was covered in bumper stickers "GETTING HIS POINT ACROSS"on every topic. It just struck me as odd the things we choose to provide us with an identity and then be able to not grow, change or take on any new ideas because, "NOpe", "already know who I am"- see my tee shirt and bumper stickers tell me everyday who I am and what things matter". I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago that it is so common for our brains to believe they are our spirits or essences. The spirit directs and dictates who we are not the reverse.
So after I got through keying the shit out of his dumb ass Rick Perry stickers, I signed it love, 2.0 . That part is a joke but look around at what people claim for identities for themselves.

Next time you are at a stoplight look around and see, "Aggies Mom, Honor students grandma, Democrat, republican , Libertarian, Cowboy fan, etc. .......

Today because of years of therapy and lot's of 12 step times, halls and a variety of types, I know a few things about who I am today and it is information that is spirit based. I'm doing much better in not letting you tell me who I am, or my mom or one really pushy friend I have. It's a cheesy saying but, this isn't a dress rehearsal, I don't want to spend one more moment being someone that isn't me and frankly I don't like.

So my question to you, once again is "who the hell do you think YOU are.lol The hope the program offered me first was the fact, the understand that I was not the sum of all my fuck ups . I was more than an unfortunate score card of addiction and blinding failures in attempts to live a life on the planet earth.

I also have the privilege of sharing who i am with you not trying to conform to what I think you need me to be in order to like me. There is a huge difference in being in my life and being a part of my life. I hope for the same reciprocity with people that don't care for me in the hall but live along side me in the 12 step hall.

I'm not a mood ring from the 70's waiting to be told how I feel and what color I should be at any given moment and it makes me so look forward to more. More will be revealed and WE DO RECOVER.

NA is a process of identification not assimilation.

Saturday a.m.

I can't believe I am awake at nearly 4 in the morning. It's been 11 months or since my last "hospitalization" that I was up at this time. Mostly what got me out of bed was the stinging and burning of my sinus's and painful eyes form allergies. But I figured why freak out just get up and do something for myself. I got to listen to a fellow NA member sort of unload on his frustration with the people in the meeting hall. It made me think once again that whatever I give attention to is fed by it and it gets larger. If I focus on the ugly, it is I am going to see. My attention makes things grow.

Another thing I was remember today, about 4 years ago, actually I have no for sure way of know the time frame, I began working with someone reading the Eckert Tolle book called "A new earth". It talks in great detail about what he terms our "Pain Body" and it is like a black clouded filter, in which our current moment passes through and tells our brain that since it ended badly last time, this is what I have to look forward to this time. This energy body of suffering and pain acts like a veil in which, through which I see a warped and distorted version of my now.

It's wasn't a quick easy read but I was glad I read it. I then went back and read his first book, "The power of NOW". Much easier to read and much more the message I needed to hear. It got me noticing how much exposure I had to negative people, places and things. I purposely started protecting myself from "bad mojo". I blocked all the cable news nets, no murder profiles on Dateline and NO TRUE crime stories on the court house channel.

Our wireless service was interupted and I called the 800 number. The lady had me unscrew the coaxil cable where the cable attached to the modem and she had me touch the copper wire with my finger for 45 seconds. I did that, screwed it back in and Boom, we were back in business. She told me that extraneous sound bits and basically particles of noise would collect at the point where the coax joined the modem and it needed to be grounded to clear the floating bits away. She was talking about the wireless modem, but I was hearing her say, "You collect bits of energy like lent on a sweater, so when I have the ability to choice what I am exposed to, I try very hard to choose stuff that if buts of it linger and attaches to me, it won't be bits that bring me down, cause me pain or keep me from my own wireless connection with the universe.

The shit we subject ourselves to has consequences. It's this something that will make me better or is this something that will make me bitter.

So cute I want to cry and laugh simutaneously.

F E A R L I E S!

I woke up thinking about when I took figure skating lessons in 1994. The Olympics had just ended and 4 or 5 guys on my softball team in Dallas decided it would be fun if we paid for a private class for 6 weeks and learn how to do what we had seen the skaters doing. We all had the same level of experience with ice skating which was NONE. We had our class in the Downtown Dallas Plaza of The Americas.  I've watched the stuff on tv my whole life and it never once entered my mind wouldn't be able to skate.
We all laced up for our first class and everyone got on the ice. Frankie, Gill and the rest of the guys were holding on to the railing and I just skated right past them. In ten minutes childhood roller skating muscle memories came back and I started skating backwards. My friends were telling me that I was lying about my skill level and I assured them that I wasn't. I wanted to try one of those cool jumps. I did, and I landed flat out knocking the wind out of my lungs and barely missing coming down flat on my chin, It was the hardest fall I ever had without breaking something.

The next lesson, I was back with everyone else, learning how to stand up right and move holding on to the rails. The fall had introduce fear into me and it completely convinced my that i couldn't do this. I could barely stand up and the ice looked hard.

We hear a bunch about being perfections. Martha Stewart is called a perfectionist. To me, my fear on not doing something perfect keeps me from participating in many many things. Fear lies to me, it says things like there is no room for mediocrity and this if it isn't pretty than it's not perfect.

I saw some 10 year old do something incredible on TV and a friend with me said "How did that kid do that" and my response was, he didn't have anyone he believed in, tell him he couldn't do that. He didn't know how to listen to the voices of doubt in his own mind. It's so crazy that the more experience we get on earth the harder it is to do and try things because we are afraid, (I am afraid) to fail or look foolish. Think about all the stuff we had to learn as children.

I'm not sure I would have ever learned to tie my shoes, to read, learn to swim or to go to the bathroom on my own if I had to deal with the idea that failure had been a possibility.

Every major religion tells its followers/studiers to "be like children" and frankly for me a lot of the times means- to do it now, fear it later.

There is really a beautiful thing that happens when I face a fear, live through it and come out the other side. First, it gives me usable experience to share with others and second, it makes me a little big stronger when I need to pull from my own courage reserves to get through the next big horrible monster of a  thing I think will kill me.

Just for today I will show up and "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain". I may have to hold someones hand but I can get through whatever fearful stuff comes my way.

To paraphrase someone elses idea "We spend our lives running for monsters that didn't exist and never really chased us."

THE POWER INSIDE IS GREATER THAN THE FEAR THAT LIES AHEAD.