Magic in the Air

I’m grateful for a super early morning. I’m grateful for Symphony # 31 in the dark. I’m grateful for a train trip later today and a hangout with my grandson. I’m grateful when people let me in. I’m grateful to get to be myself. I’m grateful to be sober today.

song of the week:

I’m going to tell you about a perfect moment that I got to experience earlier this week. To set the stage (and expectations), this was not the kind of “perfect” moment that involves the acquisition of a large sum of money, or th everlasting love of someone, or a lot of things. I guess what I’m trying to say is that while it’s going to seem like my perfect moment is kind of pedestrian, it’s a perfect moment in the sense that a couple of really funny things happened all at the same time.

So, as often happens on weekday mornings, I found myself on the subway. Many people don’t like the subway, they focus on things like the sometimes really terrible smells,¹ the constant mortal danger, rats, the general level of cleanliness, things like that. I like and sometimes love the subway. I fell in love with mass transit around the same time I had my paper route. I was allowed to take the city bus from the stop by our house downtown by myself. I was 10 or 11. The equation in my paperboy head

Mass Transit = Freedom

I had $6 or $7 of free cash on a weekly basis, burning a literal hole in my jeans, and now, for 35 cents I got transported to happening downtown Iowa City where I could look to spend my Des Moines Register booty and plunder.² These days, almost 50 years later, for only $2.90 I can pop up literally anywhere in this greatest city on earth. That is freedom. Spending a few decades as a car commuter in the Washington DC suburbs, well, I’m just going to tell you, this is way, way better.

There are aspects to my commute that I’m less fond of, like the young people who walk holding their phones in front of them, staring mindlessly at the lives of others unfolding before them—as they try to walk up the subway stairs. Also, tourists. Since my office is in a tourist high-density zone (the subway stop is Times Square), one must engage in a bit of broken field running to get where one seeks to go. ³

It’s Tuesday morning, a relatively busy day on the subway. I board my train at 86th Street, excellent skim cortado from the secret coffee place in my hand, music blasting through the airpods, sometimes maybe loud enough for other people to hear.⁴ It’s only 5 stops to Times Square and I know where to stand on the platform so that when we arrive at Times Square, I can make a beeline for the dreaded stairway. This is a potential choke-point, and the hordes of people lumbering up the stairs, staring at their phones, well, it kind of makes someone a little crazy. Like Ricky Bobby, I want to go fast.

This particular Tuesday, the door opened at 42nd Street and I was the first one out of the car and I was positioned perfectly, had only about 5 steps and then I was the first person on the stairs. This is a minor miracle, I don’t have to do the mindless shuffle or try to dodge around it—I jog up the stairs, drift diagonally across the rows of turnstiles to the far left, pushing through and then I’m only 5 big, long steps until I hit the exit stairs. I can smell the sweet, fresher air of freedom and liberty from here. I jog up the stairs, there is no one in front of me. I have achieved the mythical “first off the subway” status on a Tuesday in one of the busiest subway stations in the world.⁵

This whole time, the song I was listening to was coming to an end, and when I made the turn in the stairwell to mount the last set of stairs, a new song started and this song was not one that I had selected for this playlist, it was a Spotify suggestion and it was the song of the week. See, I told you this was going to sound underwhelming, so why did this strike me the way it did? This is where I get off the subway:

On Broadway.

They say the neon lights are bright on broadway, 
they say there is always magic in the air

I chuckled out loud and had a pretty big smile as I turned right on 41st street. For whatever reason, I had been feeling a little down and tired that morning, but now I was singing along in my head:

They say I won’t last too long on Broadway, 
I’ll catch a Greyhound bus for home, they all say, 
but there they’re wrong, I know they are, 
‘cause I can play this here guitar, 
and I won’t quit ‘til I’m a star, 
on Broadway.

I’m not aiming to be a star, and obviously don’t play the guitar, but I had a pretty big smile on my face as I navigated the cut-through to 42nd Street, past the Shake Shack, my office filling my vision and looming high in the sky.

One of my favorite passages in the Big Book is the oft-quoted paragraph on “acceptance” on page 417:

And acceptance is the answer to all of my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place or thing, or situation—some fact of my life—unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place or thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.…

One of the keys to my sobriety was realizing this passage also applied to myself. That unless I accepted myself, I could find no serenity. Until I accepted that I had been placed where I was meant to be placed at that moment, I could find no serenity.Until I accepted my alcoholism, I could find no serenity. You get the idea.

The circumstances that led to my arrival in New York were weird and random, to say the least. I was starting from scratch during the pandemic, and when I think back to those days, it makes a lot of sense that I would wake up in a near-panic every morning.

What the f*** was I going to do? What the f*** had I done to my life?

I began to learn how to navigate solitude. I began to learn how to avoid fixating on fixing things, and just live things. I tried to exert less control over my life, realizing somewhat bemusedly that I had so little power, no wonder it was such a frustrating pursuit. Bill W. describes self-centeredness as one of the great enemies of the alcoholic and decrees that the alcoholic ego must die in order to gain sobriety.

So, a little bit of the old me died every day during those dark, hard days. Maybe I sloughed the dead parts off like a snake, on my long, winding walks through New York.

People have real issues with the loss of control and ego—and for good reason, because it’s hard and goes against a lot of what you get taught: That life is a continual series of achievements that can be obtained, that life is about acquisition and making sure the people around you know how successful and smart you are. I know I believed that the point of life was to make a “big noise with all the big boys.” Sure, you can get a lot of stuff that way, and I certainly had a lot of stuff. My ex-wife still has a lot of it—beach houses and what not.

I could be bitter, starting over in New York at 60, trying to work my way back. 60 hour weeks when you’re 60 are no joke.⁶ Lots of my friends are retiring to sailboats and golf courses and I’m on the subway at 8:15 on a Tuesday morning—with a full, full, full day ahead of me. But that’s not how I look at it.

I struggled mightily to get sober. It took me ten really hard years of failure and loss and desperation to get one year of white-knuckled, antabuse-backstopped sobriety. Then I moved to New York, lived alone and began finding my way, bit by bit. Listening to music and exploring the city, riding the ferry, wandering in the museums or Central Park. I fell in love, really and truly.With the City of New York. No matter what happens in my life, no matter how sad or lost or lonely or overwhelmed I might feel, I know there is an antidote right outside the door.

I’ve learned there is very little that isn’t helped by a long walk in the park.

Maybe this could all of happened somewhere else, but I have a sneaky feeling that’s not true. One of the articles of faith in the Big Book is that we are placed where we may be of maximum service to whatever the great force in the Universe is up to.There is no point trying to figure out the angles on that; the only move is to do the next right thing and believe that the next right thing will happen. For a long time, I used to quibble with the Universe over what was “right;” it turns out we had very different ideas. One of us was very, very wrong.

I don’t know what my purpose is. I don’t know what’s in store for me. I know I’ve been given another chance at life. I know I’ve been given the chance to build something and do something I love. I know my life has been blessed with love and redemption and grace. My arrival in New York surely did not seem like the start of a well-run, organized plan, but it was the start of a long-run of serenity.

Every day, I wake up to a city I love. Sitting in the dark, drinking coffee and watching the sun rise across the East River, with the Hopper-esque RFK bridge and smokestacks in the background, brings a bit of joy every single day. Maybe I could have gotten sober somewhere else, but I know I did, here in New York. I don’t think that was an accident. I’ve always had a sense this is where I’m meant to be, this place where there is always magic in the air.

Happy Friday.

1. Tip from a New Yorker: If you enter a subway car and it’s pleasingly empty, leave immediately and go to one of the crowded cars. Or hang out and wait until they close the door and then the smell hits you and then you realize there’s a reason the car is empty….

2. I was a dangerous man with a little money in my pocket.

3. Not a metaphor. At least not an intentional one.

4. I’m so waiting for someone to say something someday so I can do the “what” joke. What?

5. I don’t think other people are necessarily aware that this “first off the subway” thing is even a thing.

6. And I’m 62.