The Land of In-Between…
I listened to one of those great sermons that (in my humble opinion) you only hear from an evangelical preacher with a southern accent. Think Robert Duval in The Apostle. He was talking about the times in life when we find ourselves in the land of “in-between”: those purgatorial stopping points on the road to adulthood, or recovery or enlightenment, when coming of age is just out of reach, but attainable with the right amount of desire, stick-to-itiveness and moxie.
That is how I feel right now. My friend Tall Girl tells me she thinks I am in “the hallway”. This is a metaphor, of course, although I have camped in the guest rooms and on couches and in the corridors of friends over the past six months.
I live in Florida, and September is always the cruelest month – no matter how long I live here, I can’t get used to an autumn that reminds me of an airline hot towel – proffered with tongs, smelling of eucalyptus and so scalding it fools me every time… My longing for a change of seasons only makes the waiting for a change in my situation more difficult.
I don’t think this is something I can look up on Google and conclude in the final paragraph of this blog post. I can’t drink it away or explain it away, as a phase of my recovery. I don’t mean to be obtuse. Certainly not coy… It’s just that I do not know how to properly explain this feeling, except to say that like the old song from West Side Story, “The air is humming. And something great is coming…”
Today I’m not drinking because “I gotta’ feeling there’s a miracle due, gonna’ come true, coming to me…”
How come you’re not drinking?
