You CAN handle the truth
Remember that stupid movie about Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson yelling at each other in a mahogany military court room?
I hate that movie.
A boy took me out on a date to that movie.
Matter of fact, it was my first date. It was weird and
a story for another time.
So there’s a fucking line from that movie — True Colors? Different Colors? An Officer and a Gentleman?
I could Google this (and I will later — not now).
The point is, you know the line even if you never saw the movie:
The truth? You can’t HANDLE the truth.
And it’s the part in the movie where the man is REALLY SHOUTING
because the man “really knows what pain is” and “the truth will destroy you unless you’re ‘man enough’ to handle it”
Fuck that movie. (A Few Good Men —Googled it — not Anchorman.
Anchorman is hilarious.)
Fuck that line.
Fuck that shit.
We fucking CAN “handle” the “truth.”
We just tell ourselves we can’t because it’s way easier
than facing the muddy, foggy, bloody bog we have to
wade through (and there’s leeches and sharks and alligators
in that bog) to get close(r) to the Truth.
This is basic Yoda shit.
Basic Odysseus shit.
Buddha-Jesus-Allah-Vishnu-Socrates-Michelangelo-Audre-Lorde
shit.
What’s the truth?
Any good pursuit, any good work points in the direction of, or leans itself against, this question, right?
When I write I’m usually in hot pursuit of some elusive truth whether about The Meaning of All This Shit or something much smaller like “Who fuckin’ invented marshmallows and why are they so fucking good?” The big: “Where did the universe begin?” and the small-but-equally-pressing questions “Why does Otis Redding’s voice make me sway? Are people with gifts like Otis Redding’s actual “people” or something else among us?”
Like we’re not all Liza Minelli, you know?
**Sidebar: My sister and I LOVE Liza. We can’t explain it, but the performer has always held us in some kind of weird spell. We marvel at her. She makes us laugh. But mostly we just marvel. Like how is that Person just a lower-case person like you or I? Know what I mean? Alas, she is a person with person problems — like getting older. Last night my sister and I attended her 75th Birthday Celebration (virtually of course) (and yes, I paid with actual $$ for this experience). My sister and I made a whole thing out of it: in our respective corners of America (she in Logan Square, Chicago; me in Sugar Hill, Tucson) we made ourselves snack tables and placed a FaceTime call and watched each other watching Liza Minelli’s 75th Birthday Celebration which, maybe, somewhere Liza herself was watching because there is a pandemic and she can’t have a big party like she probably would have had and THAT FUCKING SUCKS FOR HER. Just like it sucks for all of us who have had to celebrate big birthdays this year alone. Even Liza. And let’s be honest: Liza deserves a proper party after 75 years of sharing her talents with us. (That is a fucking sincere statement.)
Anyway. Back to the truth.
Also, when I mention artists
please never “at me”
as the kids say about how fucking “problematic”
many of our geniuses are. They’re geniuses. They’re weird
and fucked up by design — their weirdness is part of their THING.
I don’t mean their alcoholism or suicidal ideation or whatever emotional condition they suffer from — I mean that even the healthiest genius is fucking weird and “problematic” because at the end of the day, geniuses like Liza, are simply people and moreover ARTISTS, not priests, CEOs or senators — .
the latter group being the group
whose moral sicknesses
harm all of us — even Liza Minelli.
And don’t fuck with Liza. Do however,
as I know Liza would,
have the fortitude to just say “no” to facism and fascists.
Like I have forgiven a lot of my old British favorite writers, but even I can’t forgive Ezra Pound. I look at him, his work and just think “You drunken Nazi” and I will never teach the man though his name does sometimes come up in classroom discussions of Modernism (a favorite era of mine in art and literature — for better or worse). What I mean is there are a lot of artists whose work I really, really dig and who were just bastard people.
What I’m saying is there has to be a proverbial “line in the sand” — like, for example, in America I think it’s real fuckin important that we quit debating this “anti-facist” shit with our aunts, uncles, and cousins and shut that shit down. OF COURSE WE ARE ANTI-FASCIST. That is a morally objective value that we SHOULD SHARE regardless of ALL OTHER DIFFERENCES. So, like, please do draw the line at fascists/fascist sympathizers (the latter you can sometimes find saying things like, “I’m not a fascist but all this anti-fascist talk is garbage!” That would be like me saying, “Not only am I most certainly NOT a misogynist, but I ALSO hate the basic tenets of feminist thought!”
The truth. I can only speak to my own.
Today is one week since I started AA.
That I’ve not had a drink in a week isn’t much of an accomplishment.
I wasn’t a weekly drinker.
But the accomplishment is in the relief I’ve felt this week:
in breaking my silence about my alcoholism,
in sharing my recovery with readers, and working steadfastly,
in good faith, with sincerity, on myself
for maybe the very first time in my adult life
or ever.
I was pissed at myself last week, reader.
Not gonna lie.
I felt I had betrayed myself, others.
Felt like I’d broken some sacred pact that I made long ago with myself and some fucked up demon that’s possessed my family, much to our own suffering, for generations probably going all the way back to some alcoholic ancestor in one of the old countries:
Germany? Ireland? Take your pick of places in Western and Eastern Europe where corrupt leaders and the subsequent desperate poverty inflicted upon their “subordinates” have driven “regular people”
into such pain that the only solace they could find
was on the inside of the bottle. Any culture that has suffered
under tyranny will — without access to proper assistance up and out/healthy infrastructure — turn en masse onto alcohol: the cheapest, easiest way to soften life’s unbearable pain. (Yes, I am suggesting addiction — in my case, alcoholism — is inextricably linked to class.)
Any people, whether we’re talking about the Irish or the Iroquois,
that has suffered under tyranny and the subsequent financial poverty and existential desperation caused by tyranny (a fancy word for “bullies”)
is going to be a people plagued by addiction.
Which brings me back to the “truth” and the bullshit way we have nostalgia for that stupid ass line about “not being able to handle the truth” — some toxic masculine bullshit — you CAN handle the truth.
The truth won’t break you.
The truth might sting, but that will pass.
And from truth comes great art, music, literature
and happier people who can speak about their pain or who can
help shepherd others out of pain because they, themselves, are no longer
soaking in pain.
It sounds schlocky and I suppose some of you will be thinking
“Oh, yeah. Gruber’s on the AA train for real now. Talking nonsense.”
I want you to remember that I have had this blog going strong for a few months now and I’ve been talking about this shit on this platform going back to DAY ONE.
I’ve only been an actively recovering alcoholic for a week.
One little, life changing week.
I am sitting in my office.
Today is a cloudy day in Tucson.
Damn near cold (fifty-six degrees)
and this morning it rained in Sugar Hill.
At my morning meeting there were some stories
of snow in the Catalina Foothills. I love how excited people in Arizona get about snow — I mean valley people (my Flagstaff family knows all about REAL SNOW — you haven’t seen a snow storm until you’ve seen snow come down hard at 7,000 feet above sea level).
I’m in my studio in my pajamas with a cowboy hat on.
I now own a cowboy hat.
If you think I’ve gone round the bend
with this “new southwestern identity,” I’m here to tell you:
I’ve gone round the bend AND overboard with this “Tucson identity” shit.
If you think cowboy boots won’t be arriving at my doorstep in the near future, you would be wrong.
I like turquoise.
I find myself drawn to earthenware.
I’m totally serious, folks. I’ve lived in Arizona long enough
that the Arizona is really starting to sink in. Flagstaff is this magical
anomaly in the state, but Tucson? Tucson is NOT fucking around about
who it is, what it is, or where it is. And I love Tucson for that.
Now I’m off to watch some television with my wife
and eat some food and watch some television and probably take some cannabis because it’s Saturday night and it would probably be “ideal”
if I quit that, too, but my problem has never been with cannabis —
it’s been with alcohol. The worst thing cannabis has ever made me do is sit in wet paint (circa 1994) and once in the 90s cannabis caused one of my bffs and I to ask her roommate to drive us to the truckstop on the Illinois/Wisco border for some toxic peanut butter pie. Seriously, we ate the whole fucking pie and then our young, not-so-bright, server handed us our check saying, “Last time my friends were in here they ate the peanut butter pie and had the shits for weeks.”
Seriously, she said that. Poor dear.
My point is, I have never made any terrifying or deeply regretful (except for gastrointestinally) decisions while under the influence of cannabis. And if you think my truck stop story is “horrifying” then you must live a really fucking charmed life and I am envious of you.
Fuck it. I’m not justifying my off-the-clock-perfectly-fucking-legal-in-America cannabis use to anybody.
I like cannabis. Deal.
Also, my wife and I went and had our taxes done this this afternoon.
And guess what, America?
We paid you SO MUCH FUCKING MONEY last year
that now YOU owe US. Also, we paid you so much fucking money
that when I looked at the amount on the paper that we paid and thought of the fuckery and abject horror of this American year I was like “where the fuck did all my money go, and for what?” So a bunch of morons in a cult could
have the audacity to shit in the halls of a building built by enslaved Africans and the man who inspired this action wouldn’t ever have to suffer even the slightest consequence? Is that where my taxes went last year?
Also: do your taxes. By this I mean
“pay them.”And when you pay them, make sure
you hold your Senators and Representatives accountable for
every red fucking cent the way we hold kids accountable for
the content of 7–11 cash registers.
Personally, I don’t mind paying taxes so long
as my tax money is being used for shit that makes me,
my family, my friends, my community better.
I sell my mind and body and all of its wonders and assets
to an organization in return for certain work (I am talking about teaching, though virtually all professions could be described thusly).
Employees of all stripes, you know this right?
You are selling yourself to them.
How are they treating you?
And for the sake of this post, where is that tax money going?
By this, I mean, how are our state and federal reps using the money
we’ve given, in good faith, through our labor, with the understanding that they will use OUR money that WE GAVE to help ALL THE PEOPLE in OUR state and country. Help. Not swindle. Not kick deeper into the well of poverty. Not discourage from using their wondrous human intellect to leave the planet a little nicer than they found it during our brief visit.
Be gentle with everyone.
That’s all for now.
