Gemini AA
This image of the twins.
Friday, 7:15AM Grounded Group Groundwork Café Basement 108 W. 2nd St.//S. Main St. Note
It starts with Gemini. The twins that stare in two directions. I wake up this morning thinking of the events of yesterday where I drank 3/4 of a gallon of vodka in a binge that started with bits and pieces in the morning - I was functional until around 2 - getting a lot done. My girlfriend arrived in a haze of the afternoon. I asked her to hug me in a green chair, to hold me very tight.
This morning she is not talking to me. I do not know what happened yesterday. I ask her if she is mad, or sleepy. She is not responding. I hope I just passed out and it is just sadness she feels at seeing her man, rendered useless to her. I hope nothing else happened.
Yesterday in my drinking I came upon a blog called the Transylvania Gentleman. I liked many of its entries, the style reminded of what I was doing with my Facebook entries, that is, posting musings and reflections of life, links to ideas and musicians.
One of the many things the Transylvania Gentleman and I had in common is an interest in deconstructing Kubrick films. He had an interesting article musing on the end of The Shining, later he mused about changing direction in Full Metal Jacket.
My girlfriend has friends sleeping in our main bedroom at the moment. We are renting out the room with food to them to cover 800 dollars of next month’s rent. This is our third night in our second room, where I keep the computer and work. The feeling is strange here. We sleep in a sofa and inflate a mattress beside it. For the first time, my girlfriend and I are sleeping in different beds like the older couples who split beds out of victorian decorum - or even rooms because of one’s snore.
I have been increasingly inside lately, only going out for necessities. I have a pool and jacuzzi downstairs I use to go down to everyday. At the jacuzzi, in the morning, I used to play with light and shadow. The cauldron below and I was very aware of the comfort of shade, but forced myself into the direct sun, on and off, feeling the stress of change, the living of opposites, created balance. It did and this balance has not been with me the past three or four weeks.
Yesterday, I too saw, the first part of Arnofsky’s Noah on the computer. I was struck with how many of the ideas there are expressed in Gold, Guns and God - the book and documentary, I am working in right now - in this book - and in ideas I share with my friends in conversation. I no longer think of this as the universal unconscious, or synchronicity. As above, below. As outside, inside. I see the world outside as I am inside at each moment.
We both explore qabbalistic, gnostic motifs in our story. I see a symmetry and power of giving what I thought before only metaphoric, true form. I liked what I saw of the movie very much and hope to finish it.
Gemini is about contradiction. Walking to this meeting I think about the contradictions in my life. Vodka gives me this short euphoria where I move things forward in my writing and in my projects. It also gives me, well managed, this total black out sleep, I wake up from Vodka not with hangover but with this calmed out nervous system, where the most important thoughts emerge with ease.
Vodka and alcohol in general also are destroying or merging into frankestein this relationship, which has been the best in my life. I will stop drinking one month after submitting my 12 AA form to the court. I will do it to create a true shared dream with this being. That is my intention.
——
The 12 people at Gemini’s AA meeting are all middle and upper middle class. We have a young New Yorker woman. The guy that owns the building where there is a Groundworks coffee shop, loft apartments and the meeting basement, a guy who speaks about holding parties through the 80s in his Hollywood house. A latina clerk type that speaks about her grandmother. The theme is amendments.
The question in my mind is Gemini and amends. The amends of a sign known for being clever, insightful, fleeing. Gemini very much reminds me of the first hours of the binge, like yesterday, you have vodka with water in a cup, as you engage in other activities, you are still aware, you have time, structure, you have some clever ideas, new discoveries that move your projects forward. Near the end though you start not to remember, you start to fear what you did. You don’t remember and though you are curious, the next morning you don’t want to watch.
Paying amends - reliving your past - owning it - seems inoffensive, but it is actually destructive. An amend puts you back on that frame of mind, on that person, what is to be forgiven by others, are saying the words out, just you forgiving yourself, using the other as mirror, forgive yourself for what.
Talking like a Gemini. Seeing as a Gemini. Listening as a Gemini. Acting like a Gemini. I see insight and contradiction.
After the meeting I walk around downtown and take pictures of sculptures, landmarks, corners. I am very happy with a series taken outside the Los Angeles times building. They have put glass-enclosed poster-size representative news pictures. A beisball game, a revolution, an inauguration, fashion, movies. I have taken pictures of these at an angle that frames interesting ideas inside these pictures and also the environment surrounding the display.
There’s a lot of power in these pictures. I now see my girlfriend’s feet moving. Is this a sign?
I walked to Gemini’s meeting - my first meeting of Zodiac - not committing to anything but with a lot of things in my mind.