Day eight hundred and fifty seven ... Just another day.

In two hours and eighteen minutes, in the Eastern Time Zone, I will be forty years old.

It's just another day.

I love my birthday. I always have. From the first few that I can remember, with all the angel food cake that a toddler can smear on his face, body, arms, legs, and high chair I have always loved this day.

My mother always made it so supremely special for me, her only son; her only child. I was the one she had dreamed of for so many years. From the time she pushed around a little carriage with a doll dressed in a tiny blue jumpsuit, she had always wished for a boy.

My aunt thought I was going to be a girl. She believed it so strongly (and some say she tried to will it so) that she showed up on the morning after my birth with a bouquet of pink flowers for my mom. Was she ever in for a surprise when she showed up at the hospital.

But my mom knew better. And that was just like her.

In two hours and nine minutes, in the Eastern Time Zone, I will be forty years old.

It's just another day.

A story my mom told me, which my aunt confirmed, is that May 10, 1970 was Mother's Day. At the hospital at UCLA, where I was born, the nurses gave out beautiful carnations to all the moms who had babies on that day; I was born on May 9 at 11:20, after 15 hours of labor ... just shy of midnight.

It seems mean, and it's hard to believe, myself, but I was told she didn't get a carnation, anyway.

But she always told me that I was the greatest present she had ever been given so it didn't really matter much to her.

In two hours and one minute, in the Eastern Time Zone, I will be forty years old.

It's just another day.

I was told that for the first few months of my existence my bed wasn't exactly the most luxurious of children's cribs. In fact, if I am to believe what I was told, my first bed was the top drawer of a bedroom bureau--a well appointed drawer with linens and fine blankets, but a drawer, nonetheless. My mom didn't know the first thing about raising a baby and there weren't exactly too many how-to books on the market so she did the best she could. If she could only see me now.

In one hour and fifty one minutes, in the Eastern Time Zone, I will be forty years old.

It's just another day.

On my twenty-first birthday I celebrated with my mother and my then girlfriend a few short days before I officially moved away from 1073 Bedford St. where I had lived all my life. We had decided to spend the summer on Martha's Vineyard, and then, perhaps, move to Western Massachusetts where we had mutual friends. Things were turbulent between members of my family and me to say the least but my mother made that day as special as she could. We celebrated with a grand dinner and then gifts and, of course, a cake--angel food cake, my favorite. And then she went back to the house I grew up in, and I went back to the duplex I was slumming in, and we went on with our lives like people do. I never moved back home, and now I type from the house I hope to someday raise my own child. Someday I may return back to this house after seeing him or her off to begin their own unpredictable journey. Only time will tell.

In an hour and nineteen minutes, in the Eastern Time Zone, I will be forty years old.

It's just another day.

The last couple of birthdays I had with my mom are cloudy at best. I've gotten into the habit these days of focusing less on the negative parts of my life than the positive so I'm not going to sully this time here trashing myself. But I just wish I had a clearer picture of what we did. I probably remember the last couple with my mom, when she was still here, as well as I remember the first few. Go in either direction and things get more in focus, but back towards the beginning and end it's just not there.

In one hour and thirty minutes, in the Eastern Time Zone, I will be forty years old.

It's just another day.

I love my life. I love my girlfriend. I love my house. I love my friends. I love my cousins on the west coast, my aunts, my great cousins in Poland, and everybody whom I work with in the Young at Heart Chorus. I have everything I could possibly ask for. I long for nothing. I am one of the lucky ones. Every day is a collection of moments all so unique and precious that I can let the aggravating ones slip under and between the good ones, and as they all stand at attention for roll call at the end of the day, as I kiss my love goodnight, I can average them together and smile and fall asleep and know that I, thankfully, will never be able to predict what the next collection of them will be like. I've had amazing accomplishments. I've had devastating failures. I've lost the most important people in my world. I've welcomed the most important person in my world in and watched her grow to love me like no one before and stand by me as strong and as tall as I ever thought I could. I've seen my world change from one of drunken, drugged, slurring and rude to one of clear focused power and serenity, endlessly beautiful and unflinchingly real.

I have come to a new place.

I have shed a thousands skins.

I stand with a spine strengthened by the words, actions and results of a renovated life ripped from the clutches of an early demise, shaken out on the porch and left to soak up a good, long rain.

And if you think that's dramatic you're damn well right.

Because a life without drama is a life never begun.

And I'd like to take the time now to thank my mother for beginning mine.

In an hour and eleven minutes, in the Eastern Time Zone, I will be forty years old.

It's just another day.

And when I stop to think about it, if I was born on May 9, at 11:20 pm at the UCLA hospital in California, then that would mean that in the Eastern Time Zone on that same night it would have clearly been 2:20 in the morning. And if that morning would have been Mother's Day ...

Needless to say she should have gotten that flower.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

I love you so very much.

Your boy, always,

Frederick Alexander Johnson

Thanks for reading.

PS: the pic above is dated 5/11/1970 with the words

"My life ... my joy ... my SON."

"(2 days old!)"

My how time catches up.

Day eight hundred and forty six ... Be careful what you wish for.

I get so mad sometimes.

I get so mad that I want to take everything off of the table in front of me--TV, lamp, phone, magazines--and just brush it all off to the side and throw my hands in the air and scream. I get so outrageously incensed that I wonder if it's even a good idea to leave my hotel room for fear that I will say or do something that I'll regret for the rest of my life.

But I'm a rational person who has a reputation to uphold (really, I do) and so I refrain from said outrageous activity and just try to breathe. It really helps me, breathing does. I can't believe I forget sometimes almost as if it were intentional and I'm just pouting and holding my breath in hopes that Mommy will come running and soothe her poor upset child--let him know that she cares about his feelings and will do whatever it takes to make things right again for him in his world so he can grow up and, hopefully, grow out of these selfish tantrums.

But Mommy is gone now.

And her baby is well past the stage where he can just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind, which is usually a curse aimed at whatever is standing in the way of his immediate gratification.

I'm writing this from the sixth floor of a four star hotel in Brooklyn, New York, where I'm stationed for two weeks to play music with my group. I have a view of the Brooklyn Bridge out my window (all I have to do is lift my head slightly off the bed and I can see it clear as day) and I have enough free time to really accomplish just about anything that might tickle my fancy. I just learned enough about the subway to get me from one end of the five boroughs to the other, and I have enough gadgets to fully document my trip with pictures, sound, video, and more.

So why am I so angry?

I don't really know.

Time.

Time makes me angry.

I used to curse my previous restaurant jobs for taking up all of my time during the week and weekends. I never had enough time to go anywhere by myself. My band would go on tours, sure, but that was different. That was hard work, mostly. The two hours on stage was nothing compared to the other 22 in the day spent getting somewhere else and trying not to pass out on the way to the stage.

Now, I have all day to wander around New York City, and it pisses me off that I didn't do much but wander around all day.

I got mad tonight because I misread the hours of operation at the pool here where I'm staying; I didn't realize that it closed at 9:45 rather than 10. I wanted to spend a few minutes in the water and I didn't get it. Meanwhile, the guy who sits in a chair for 8 hours a day, while guys like me flounce about in Comme des Garçons swimwear, was happy to inform me that I was out of luck. I got the look from him that I used to give customers who came to the place I worked and knocked on the glass window right above the clearly displayed "closed" sign asking me if we were "really" closed.

Yes ... now go away.

My present life is currently comprised of waking up at 9:30 (my choice), opening the curtains to reveal the view of an amazing American architectural landmark, eating a bowl of yogurt with five kinds of fresh fruit along with freshly squeezed juice and strong New York coffee, taking a long, hot shower and killing time for a few hours in one of the greatest cities in the world. Then I play my guitar for 75 minutes to a roaring capacity crowd. Meanwhile, a maid named Nora cleans up my bathroom, makes my bed, dusts, vacuums, empties the trash, lint rolls the bed, and spritzes some lovely air freshener so that when my day is done and I return from my grueling job it will be a pleasant experience.

And now as I type here from the bed which I just slipped into I'm trying to justify why I'm upset.

My girlfriend came to see me over the weekend and we got to spend two magical days together (though it's hard to even imply that they were better than the rest of the time we spend together ... for real). She got to see two of the shows. She got to hang out with the chorus who she adores and vice versa. We went out for some amazing food. And we got to enjoy the better part of a beautiful Saturday together here before the clouds and rain descended upon us. And even at that having both the sun and the rain was like having two kinds of cookies--one flaky, light and frivolous and one darker and more dense with an added edge of unpredictability.

But she had to go back to Massachusetts because she has a full-time job. This time for her was a brief break in her work week--for me it was bringing her along on mine.

And little, inconsequential things happen now and my insecurities get the better of me. People don't feel like they need to make sure I know about a particular gathering because there's going to be a ton of booze there and they probably feel like it's not somewhere I either want to be or even should be. It was probably a last minute thing but that wouldn't have made a difference twenty-nine months ago. If I was drinking I would have known about it, I can guarantee that. Because if I was drinking I would be looking for things like that to pop up. I wouldn't be rushing back to the hotel to breathe in the last hour and a half with Jodi. I would be, antennae raised, sniffing out a god dammed party on the evening before our first day off of a week's run of the show.

But these days I cherish my privacy. I hoard my thoughts. I like to smile at the wall while I talk on the phone rather than at a person, regardless of how well I know them, who might ultimately be like me ... just waiting for an out so they can fill up their glass again, and maybe even sneak a bottle into their bag and go upstairs and order room service.

But that's who I used to be. And I don't really know if I was ever really invited to those things or I just heard someone mentioning it in the background while I was half paying attention to someone else about something completely different. But that sounds about right, too.

For better or for worse, now, I'm kind of the guy who just likes to be left alone. I don't like parties. I don't like small talk. I have very little need anymore to just converse for the sake of filling up the awkward silences with vapid frivolities and endless back patting. I like to read. I like to write. I love posting pictures from my many adventures. I'm enjoying planning my future with Jodi, fantasizing of a vacation home somewhere the ground never freezes.

I'm killing a lot of time.

And all the years that I wished that I could have more of it to spend as I wanted are behind me.

It's here now.

I win.

I got what I asked for.

And I never really pegged me as the kind of guy who could find fault with even the best situation. Hell, I was alway the one minimizing the negative. I always gave myself the most slack and hardly ever stacked up expectations or goals.

I was just keeping it even and wondering what kind of life was ahead of me when I finally cleaned up my act--if I ever cleaned up my act. And now I have everything I always wanted. It's right under my fingertips waiting for me to pick it up. I'm afraid, though, that when I pick it up I'll find something that turns me off. I don't want to examine it too closely or I may find a scratch I didn't notice when I was coveting it from the other side of the glass case.

Now that it's mine I just want to roll it around for a while ... to remind me that it's there.

But each time I do it slips away from my fingers and I haphazardly jump to attention, scared it might roll off the table.

Because I know how this is supposed to work.

I know the way it has to end.

I know.

That said, I really do feel like I can hold on to it for a good, long time.

Maybe the reason it keeps slipping out from under my fingers is because I'm putting too much pressure on it.

Maybe I need to just let it be for a while.

Maybe I need to let it breathe.

Maybe.

Hmm ... that's funny ... I'm not so mad anymore.

Imagine that.

Maybe it was just time to write all along.

Thanks for reading,

~F.A.J.

Day eight hundred and twenty six ... About time.

I've been saving up for this one.

I mean, this whole thing started 28 months ago when I did the last really dumb thing in a long line of dumb things and it appears to have reached its inevitable end.

But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here. I say "inevitable," but this point in my life where I am now has arrived by just about every means possible besides inevitability.

Since April 2, 2008, this little black box on a curly cord has been the first thing I see each time I get into my car. It's my gatekeeper to mobility and it was a big part of the process of getting my license back when I royally screwed things up (as my mother would have said) back in December of 2007. But I haven't been focusing on the day to day travails of living under the scrutiny of the Commonwealth over the last few months. Things in my life have become so vastly different in so many ways that this blog has taken on a different function. It's become more of an expressive conduit for my general take on this beautiful world we all inhabit and less of an "I'm so screwed because I'm an alcoholic and I will always have to put that at the forefront of whatever I do and never forget it because I may end up back in the same spot if I'm not careful."

I'm not all better--I'll never be all better--but if I'm going to progress and evolve I can't focus on the past, because I can't change the past. I can, however, prevent it from happening if I change reward structure. That's what got me in this mess in the first place. And though I'm certainly smart enough to know what not to do, I was just too selfish to actually not do it, if that makes any sense.

So, I've had this black box in my car since April 1 of 2008. I have never once felt like I was above having it in there. I have never once felt like I got duped. I have never once felt like I didn't deserve what came to me due to my stupidity. Because I knew that it would eventually be taken out.

And that day came, and that day went, and I still had that little black box on a curly cord staring me down each time I got in my car.

But let's not dwell on the past; let's just make sure it stays there.

See, when I was doing my penance I made a concerted effort to not only do things by the book, but to do what was unexpected of me. There were some rules laid down by the people at Smart Start (the company that leases the interlock devices) and these rules were more or less designed to be undertaken by the lowest common denominator. That is to say, the person who is bitter and unrepentant and feels like they got set up.

That person is a person I used to closely resemble.

But as it stands I realized what I had to do to get where I wanted to go. And having that clarity made it so much easier to arrive at my April 2nd date where I would be given approval to have my interlock device removed.

I went to the RMV in Springfield as scheduled and sat and waited for close to an hour for them to call me into the recesses of the hearings officer's office.

I was called in and I presented my papers.

The lady told me to sit on the bench while they cross-checked their info with the info at the Boston registry.

I sat back down on the bench and nervously waited.

She called me in again and as I was sitting down I said, "Good news?"

To which she replied, "Yup."

Ahh ... a breath of fresh registry air filled my lungs and a sense of completion nearly overtook the whole of my body.

And then she dropped her hands to her lap and said, "Huh ... actually I take that back."

And I almost fainted.

"It says here you missed three service appointments and that's three violations. If you have even one violation it's an immediate denial of removal. You can re-apply in September."

"I can ... I can what?"

"You can re-apply in September."

And I began to stutter and sputter and my face became flush and my body became weak and I could barely stand up to leave. I tried my hardest to comprehend what was happening to me. I told her there was no way that this could be possible ... and she just pointed to the papers she had in her hands. My world went mute. I told her with a hurried breath that I had receipts. She said that if I wanted to bring them back to her I had until 4:30. I looked at the clock; it was three. I grabbed my bag and dodged the people waiting where I had waited just moments before.

I drove home with the aid of my interlock device and rifled through my receipts. I found what I needed and grabbed them and got in my car and drove the backroads to the highway. I had seen on my rampage home that there was at least a mile of bumper-to-bumper traffic going the way I would be going.

I made it back at exactly 4:30. Parking was tight. People were angry. Nobody wants to go to the registry and nobody certainly wants to have to fight for a parking spot before they are made to wait for an hour or more. But I got a spot and hurried in the front door. I raced up to the hearing officer's door and was waved in. The same woman with too much eyeliner on looked at the papers I gave her. Then she told me they wouldn't do me any good--that I had missed my most recent appointment and that was the one they were counting as a major violation.

I was crushed. I could not believe it. I felt my body tense up and saw a flip book of a calendar in my head like they have in the cartoons with the months slowly turing by and the summer bearing down on me with my interlock device helping me get from gig to gig and from dinner date to dinner date. I watched the flowers bloom, the weeds grow, the bugs bite, the bites heal, and the leaves fall to the ground in my very clean and very sober head. And it was then and only then in said head that I could picture my dashboard void of the little black box on a curly cord.

There were worse things for sure. But the depression that came over me as I sat in that uncomfortable registry chair was mammoth.

I was not off the hook.

This previous day's worth of events occurred on a Friday--last Friday. And as I left the RMV at ten until five I realized that I would get nothing accomplished in this fight until Monday. I had a big weekend planned, so I did have plenty to take my mind off of this issue. But each thing I did entailed my car, and each time I used my car I was forced to use my interlock device which shouldn't be there anymore.

I made a few phone calls over the weekend to the place where I had been bringing my car for its monthly appointments. The guys there gave me hope by reassuring me that I didn't have any violations on my record as far as they could see. But sometimes just because you do something right doesn't mean you did it the way it needed to be done. The RMV, after all, truly does have the last say. And so, I spent the weekend on an emotional roller coaster whizzing around curves of "what if's" and "maybes" and careening down hills of "oh well's" and "it could be worse's."

Monday, I got to work.

I made some important phone calls. I spoke to some real, live people at Smart Start and was told that they would try their best to sort things out. They saw where the glitch was on my record. They could see where I was coming from.

They believed me.

I actually had somebody on my side.

On Tuesday, April 6th, I got a phone call from a man at the Boston RMV.

His name was Daniel.

Daniel told me that he had some good news.

I sat on the edge of my bed--the springtime morning air streaming in with the sounds of the leaf blowers cleaning up for the beginning of a long, hot summer. I sat there as Daniel slowly and carefully told me that I was "all set." He told me he was going to fax the paperwork over to the "registry of my choice."

I sat there and I almost started to cry.

He told me to go to the RMV and they would be waiting for me with the proper documents and that I would then be "free to go."

I told him he had used a funny choice of words.

I was in play mode.

I was out of the woods.

I had beat the registry and by not giving up and giving in I had won this massively important game.

I smiled a grand smile over the phone and told Daniel that he had made somebody extremely happy. He said he was glad to do it and he wished me good luck.

Then I got back in my car and blew into the little black box with the curly cord and turned the key and headed for the RMV and, almost like I had moved to a different part of the world, things were immediately different.

The same parking lot that I had to fight for a spot all the way around back greeted me with open arms.

That's my blue car there.

And the same waiting room where I had to wait for over an hour just a few days before was empty.

And the same lady with too much eyeliner on was waiting to see me. She called me in and told me that Daniel had coyly said to expect a man in tears to be stopping by soon.

It was a much different kind of meeting this time around.

She gave me the paperwork as we chatted about her necklace which I had mentioned was nice.

"Thanks," she said. "It was cheap."

"That makes it even nicer," said her co-worker who I had not even noticed on the prior two trips there on Friday.

She told me I would need to get my license renewed and that it would cost $25. She gave me the paperwork and told me to go out there, take a number, and wait in the waiting room.

And I just stood up and smiled and said, "Thank you."

I took a number expecting to have another hour to wait. But I had waited 28 months for this moment to come so an extra hour wasn't really going to spoil my day.

But the waiting room was empty.

And before I could even sit down and completely fill out the form they called number 1167.

I hadn't even had a chance to comb my hair but I sat down, filled in some pertinent info, and gave my paperwork to the girl.

She ran my debit card and I made a joke about whether or not they gave cash back.

I will never change.

She joked about how that would be nice if they could do that someday, and I had to break it to her that it was a joke. No harm done, though. Not this time. Not today.

She asked me to look at the blue dot and then she took my picture.

I didn't like it so much.

I asked if she could do it again and she said yes. Then I stared at the blue dot and thought about all the work I'd put into this moment. I thought about all the hours spent driving that car with the little black box with the curly cord checking in with me to make sure I wasn't doing something that the courts would be upset with. I thought about all the time spent writing in this blog, all the time spent at AA meetings, all the money spent on fees, lawyers, probation, my two week inpatient program in Tewksbury, and, of course, the monthly payments to Smart Start.

I thought about all of that and I thought about where I am right now in my life.

And then the lens opened and this is what it saw.

I took this little, rectangular piece of paper from the registry girl and slipped it in my bag with the multitude of receipts, forms, and letters and headed for the door. I got back on the highway and drove to Hadley. I pulled into to the place where I had been required to pull into once a month for the past 24 months. I parked in their ample and convenient parking lot for what I was hoping would be the last time. They took the approval letters from me and ran my card again like they had so many times before.

He said that they'd take it from here and to just hang out and wait--it would be about fifteen minutes.

And he gave me the keys back without ceremony. He just handed them to me and said, "You're all set."

I don't know what I was expecting. Did I think a bag of balloons was supposed to drop from the ceiling? Did I think I was to get a call from the mayor saying, "Good job. You've done Northampton proud." I really can't say what I was expecting. Regardless, I took the keys from the guy and walked to my car and opened the door.

The seat was pushed back to allow for a taller man than I to drive it. That's always a strange feeling. But I pulled the seat forward and looked down at the dashboard and took it all in. I just sat there for a few minutes and stared at the dusty molded plastic.

It was just a dashboard.

In millions of cars all around the world at any given moment any number of people are getting in their cars and staring at the same square foot of space. It's just a dashboard.

But none of them appreciated that mundane little part of such a common machine as F. Alex Johnson did on Tuesday, April 6.

And the picture of the spring flowers that Jodi had given me last year was now unobstructed. The speedometer and the gas gauge, the tachometer and the engine temperature were all in plain sight. I could see that it was 59 degrees Fahrenheit outside without moving anything. I could instantly view any warning lights that may have been on without lifting any devices.

And most importantly, I could see how far I had travelled as clear as day.

I put my key in the ignition, released the clutch, and turned the key and my car jumped to attention with a jolt. There was no more waiting in the driver seat for the device to warm up. It would not beep and ask me so discretely to "blow." There was no more uncertainty that I had eaten something that contained alcohol that it might mistake as a drink. And there were to be no more random retests while driving making sure I didn't have a bottle under my seat that it didn't know about.

No.

I was now on my own.

I had cast off the final chain that had kept me held tight to my incident.

It was finally all over.

I had made it to the end of this maze.

And I pulled out onto Rt. 9 and headed towards Florence. I stopped at the traffic light and put on my blinker. And as I filtered into the stream of cars all going to their own various destinations, taking for granted that they could drive for hours with the only care being that they might run out of fuel I just smiled and smiled and smiled.

I turned up the radio, rolled down the window, hit the gas and dove headfirst into a whole different kind of maze--one that I'm perfectly content to get lost in forever.

Thanks for reading,

~F.A.J.

Day seven hundred and ninety seven ... Belting it out.

I've been buying a lot of belts lately.

It's kind of a new fetish. I like shoes, too, but belts hold a different significance for me. I think it's because when I was a kid I I used to wear all kinds of crazy belts. I was always heavy, but I think kids exhibit a different kind of overweight up to a certain age. Your stomach doesn't really obscure your waistline by dropping down like an extended upper lip when you're a kid, so you can get away with things like tucking in shirts and showing off the turquoise and silver--which is something I liked to do very much as a precocious child of the Seventies.

But as I got older the belts became less and less important. As their visibility decreased so did the care involved in picking out a new one. I mean, who cares what your belt looks like as long as it's holding up your size 40 jeans. That was the main job of belts in my life for the last twenty-five years or so: hold up those damn jeans ... or else!

I've lost about fifteen pounds since Christmas, and so, all of the belts I've owned for the last few years have become obsolete as they're just too damn big. But really, I don't even still own too many old ones. They all either broke at the buckle from undue stress or I threw them away in exchange for a larger size. That's a big reason that I'm enjoying getting new belts that actually fit me comfortably.

But I've realized recently that belts are such an important part of our lives. It kind of bowled me over the other day when I stopped to think of how many needs a belt can service, as well as what symbolism they hold.

When we get our first belt it means that we are ready to start being dressed in outfits that are more than just a button-up or zippered safety pouch. It's our first fashion-oriented responsibility and our first step in learning that our clothes can be adjusted to our liking. We can't do much to our shirts or pants but roll up the cuffs, but with a belt we sure can tighten up that ol' midsection.

For some children a belt can be used for punishment. I cannot imagine what it must feel like to get spanked with a doubled-up belt to the behind, but I know that it has happened to many who were not so fortunate.

As we grow, our belts get longer. Our wardrobe expands as we do, and, if you are a boy, you will inadvertently acquire the iconic reversible belt with both colors--black and brown--to go with any occasion that may arise in our early life. It happens to the best of us.

It has been said that belts have found a use by some Lotharios as a scorecard for documenting romantic conquests--with a notch being carved in for each one. I think the Old West had a lot to do with this trend, as belts then held up more than just pants--they held up guns and ammunition. It was a sign of machismo. It was a sign of security. It was a sign of virility. And it helped remind the forgetful of the times that were important to them and allow them to boast to their peers. It has become more or less a tacky bit of misogynistic sediment but I'm sure there are plenty of guys out there (and perhaps some women) who still utilize this function of the everyday belt.

When we go through airport security we have to take off our belts due to the inevitable metal buckle on the end. To be belt-less in this capacity is to embody a feeling of helplessness like no other. It may be the only time we, as humans, get to see a random slice of others begin to undress and then dress back up in front of each other without a logical context and with countless authority figures on hand to make sure we do it right. And then in a matter of minutes we go from wearing all of the items that keep us held together to having every last scrap of our wardrobe's adhesiveness stripped from us. I have felt my pants come far enough down my midsection on occasion as to cause me to blush. Conversely and just as embarrassing, there have been times when I was so heavy that the belt I was wearing was merely as a backup in case my button popped off of my pants. My, how times change.

When someone gets arrested their belt is taken away so, presumably, they won't hang themselves in their cell. This has got to be the most powerful significance a belt can hold by far. Something that, for all the time we are alive, is used as a practical accessory--to hold our clothes on our body; to protect us from the elements--now becomes something that the authorities are concerned we will use to commit suicide.

All in all, when you stop to think about it, the lowly belt holds many high-level positions and wields some serious power.

It can connote safety.

It can inflict punishment.

It can imply sartorial and societal responsibility.

It can document growth.

It can provide a record of life experience.

It can provoke embarrassment.

It can aid in taking one's life.

To me right now my belts are something that I'm excited to start showing off again. I have eschewed the turquoise and silver of my 1970's youth in exchange for high quality leather, clean lines and polished brass. The form has changed little though. It is still what's holding me and my clothes together. And as they start to fit my body better and my body, itself, begins to shrink down to a height-proportionate size, my heart will beat stronger, my blood will course freer, my brain will think faster, and my feet will tread surer.

And much like life belts are adjustable. You can even make one smaller if you need to with a trusty awl. But just like life they only go in one direction.

If you wear the same belt long enough you'll eventually develop a marking where the buckle found its niche. That line tells its own story. It shows the comfort zone, the average, the usual.

Maybe that's why I've been buying a lot of belts lately. Perhaps it's not just because I'm changing my shape in the middle, but that I just don't want to wear a mark in the leather where its easy to see where I settled in.

And anyway, the buckle's edges cover up that line when you're wearing it so nobody knows except for you ... that is, until you begin to change again.

Thanks for reading,

~F.A.J.

Day seven hundred and ninety ... Batteries not included.

I learn something new everyday. Really and truly I do.

But I have to make a conscious effort to identify it when it happens or I run the risk of just letting it slip through the rusty colander that is my brain. I can tell myself that I'll "never forget that" and not write it down, and then the phone will ring, and the UPS guy will come to the door, and I'll break a string on my guitar and wonder in the middle of the day what the great revelation was that I had that was seemingly so important that I'd absolutely never forget it.

And that's why I wrote today.

I have more than a few things that run on batteries in my house. More and more these days the items that do, run from a battery or a charger pack that can be replenished with energy when it becomes depleted. They usually tell me that they're running down with either a light that changes color, by a system of gray bars that start to disappear, or by an auditory sound. Either way it's easy to see that I need to plug it back in to the wall or I'll run the risk of disappointment the next time I need them.

Not so with my clocks and radios.

They just run down.

And these are the things that I use the most in my life. I have a few clocks on my walls, and, as you know, hardly any wall clocks run from an outlet anymore. The cords are unsightly, running all the way down the wall. And it seems unnecessary to power them this way in a world where things are lighter, stronger, and use less power than ever before.

The same go for radios. I have an old 1930's "tombstone" radio I inherited which I've installed a speaker in from my home stereo. I like the irony of its use. That is to say that I enjoy the idea that a compact speaker from the digital sound system in the living room runs its sound to an 80 year old box which used to only get A.M. signals and was one day plugged into the wall by a cord that looks like a fragile mouse tail.

But today the radios that I use the most are two little ones that I have in the kitchen and bathroom, respectively. I have reached an age where public radio has become my "home of rock and roll." I do not like commercials and I do not like brash, boomy DJ's. That being the case I leave it on my local NPR station and just turn the "on" knob when I want to hear anything from the outside world.

Well, just the other day both my radios and my clocks started to give me trouble.

I had sent away for a cool Lexon radio that is covered in thin rubber. It's perfect for the bathroom and I don't have to worry about it getting wet if I bring it into the shower.

I had installed the generic Korean batteries that it came with, and it had been working just fine for a few weeks. But last week it started making a sound--a horrible rumbling sound. I picked it up and shook it as I do with most things that don't work (it's part of the caveman in me that just won't seem to go away). That did nothing. I gently banged it on the sink--nothing. I turned it on and off; I flicked its underside with my index finger; I squeezed it together at the edges for what reason I will never know. And then I put on my bathrobe to go downstairs and call the company that shipped it to tell them how upset I was that they would have the nerve to send me a defective radio!

And then I took a big breath ... and I went downstairs and grabbed four new AAA batteries and a screwdriver and replaced the ones that were in there.

I pushed the "on" button and it worked perfectly.

I have a clock that has been in my family for three generations. I remember my grandmother standing in the kitchen calling me to dinner from the living room and me looking at that clock to judge how long I would have to suffer through her delicious food before I could go outside and play again. I remember coming home at 1:30 am and seeing a parental figure sitting in that same kitchen under that same clock wondering what kind of trouble I had been up to and why I hadn't called.

Suffice to say that it's an important clock ... and it's powered by one little battery.

Just the other day I noticed it was out of sync by three or four minutes with my irrefutably accurate iPhone. I keep my iPhone charged up whenever it's not in my bag en route (and even then I sometimes charge it with an amazing portable power source called a "3G Juice" that Jodi gave me for Christmas. Thanks, honey). So anyway, I never do this but I was in a hurry and so I physically moved the minute hand ahead three or four minutes to where it was supposed to be.

And then the second hand just went insane and wouldn't budge. It kept lifting itself up in a valiant attempt at forward progress but it appeared to be devastated by some internal injury.

I couldn't believe it.

I developed a feeling in the pit of my stomach which I haven't felt in some time. I realized (or so I thought) that I would have to replace this family treasure of a kitchen clock. This was something that I wasn't prepared to do. And so I let it sit on the wall for the day in hopes that it would right itself. Perhaps it was just a bit worked up from being manhandled. Maybe it needed a dusting. Maybe it was telling me that it had done it's duty for forty years or more and needed to be let off the hook and set aside ... to let a new, more efficient guy take its place.

And when I came home that night at 9:30 and saw it sitting there--the second hand obsessively batting upwards with a faint "click" in an attempt to move around the dial--the minute and hour hands mired at 6:45--I was more than a little sad.

So I put down the bag of 9 volt batteries I had brought home from the store--the ones I had bought for the smoke detectors (which beep when they need a new fix)--and took it down off the wall. I laid it face down on the counter and inspected the back for, perhaps, an on/off button I had missed.

And then I saw the battery--the little AAA battery that had been in there for probably three or four years--the battery that had never asked for much and yet had spent its life informing me of my day's progress; telling me how long I had before company arrived; when the roast should be done; how late I was for work; or when it was definitely time for company to be thinking of leaving on their own--I saw that battery and I was filled with hesitant hope.

I delicately took it out and laid it on the table. Then I opened the box of AAA batteries that were on sale along with the 9 volts at the store. I inserted one of the slender cylinders in the receptacle in the back and turned the clock over. Just then I heard the stuttered "click, click, click" that could either mean success or frustrated stagnation. But when I flipped it back around I saw the workhorse of a second hand moving again! Heavens! "It's alive," I shouted! And then I put it back on the wall with a great and wide smile. I had repaired a priceless treasure from my life, and I would not have to begin the dreary search for a suitable replacement which would always pale in comparison.

I had fixed a great problem in my world with a most rational solution. But it was a solution which I had become conditioned to implement only by way of a visual or audible clue that was dedicated to its cause.

And once again, the analog world taught me more than any millions of digital signals could ever hope to.

These things that I do--these lessons that I learn--may just seem like a big deal over nothing. I thank you for reading my tales of progress in making life easier to live. Or perhaps you just finished this story and scratched your head and said, "Huh? Whatever."

But I must say that these two experiences--the radio and the clock--have taught me so much. We all have a power source. It's in every one of us. And every day and night we charge ourselves up so as to be able to tackle what may come next. We become better and better at knowing how much sleep we need, or how much food we have to eat in order to function properly. But those signs are the obvious ones: we feel hungry or we feel tired. But there are times when we start to malfunction and we can't figure out why. Sometimes we feel like there's a mechanism broken inside us. Sometimes we feel like giving up and looking for a new source of inspiration because the way we've been running has become compromised. I know that I did for more years than I care to remember. It's not easy to see when our insides tell us it's time for a change because they aren't as clear cut and obvious as we'd like them to be. Often it's something we used to do or something that used to be a part of our lives long ago that we've forgotten about. Perhaps it was something that we found from the world around us that gave us energy and hope at a time when we needed it, that has been overlooked for so long that we forget it was ever there to begin with.

So before you go banging your radio on the sink and doing real damage ... before you take the clock that your grandmother put up on her kitchen wall 40 years ago ... take a quick look in the space where the batteries go.

Make sure that the thing that is broken isn't the thing that you knew you'd have to change one day.

You may be surprised to find that it's an easier fix than you could have ever imagined.

Thanks for reading,

~F.A.J.

Day seven hundred and seventy two ... Lucky at any age.

I'm getting so old.

I'm ancient.

You kids today!

Oh, woe is me.

Blah, blah, blah.

I hear it all the time and it makes me wonder if everyone forgot how amazing it is that they're alive enough to complain.

I'll be forty years old in a little under three months--May, 9th to be exact. It's quite a milestone for me to say the least. And in saying that I must add that I'm extremely excited to go through it. I'm delighted to enter a new room--so to speak--in the aging process of my life. I'm really, truly, and with all my heart prepared to sink my teeth into this inevitable occurrence.

Because if I make it that far it will mean that I've lived almost three months from right now.

Fingers crossed.

When we're young things are so different. When we say things like "I'm almost five," or "I'm four and a half," we don't say it with horror, despair, or worry in our voice. We say it with wonderment and awe--with hope and anticipation at the whole idea--because we practically can't wait to get there. Then somewhere around the beginning of our teens we stop using fractions and forecasts. We say it straight up with no hesitation or wavering.

"I'm fifteen."

And so you are.

And so it goes for many years--excluding the inevitable attempts to pass oneself off as 21 for the four or five years preceding, in order to get served alcohol--and we get through our twenties enjoying all the colors on the palate of our flourishing youth--our salad days, as it were. We fall in and out of love twenty times; we fail and ace test after test; we move from one shithole to the next and enjoy the transient nature that is living out of cardboard boxes. We leave as many things behind as we pick up from others who left theirs where we just landed. We argue with landlords and absorb with a raised ear tales of those who were in our indignant position and held out for months without paying rent. We hear stories of how our rights trump those who pay the property tax and mortgage. We are defiant in defense of our undue plight while the world on the other side of our sense of entitlement rolls along not really noticing our disgust. Because the rest of the world is a little too busy to pay heed to the guy with his arms crossed, his head in the air, mattress on the floor, with a milk crate for a table and a self-imposed static tram route from the dishroom to the bar and back to the mattress again.

And as we go through these predictable motions we creep closer and closer to thirty, that haunted island off the mainland that one has heard terrifying stories passed down from generation to generation. We see it and we don't want to even think about having to someday be forced to languish there. We don't want it because life is so unbelievably simple and serene where we are: twenty-something, energetic, and devoid of the expected medical predispositions and familial expectations that accumulate as we age. We have for nine years lived a life where it's okay to not have a plan. It's all right to sleep all day and go out all night and take and hold (or quit or be fired) the menial jobs that barely--if at all--pay the bills. And in our mind we keep checking that departure slip, rolling it around in our head, understanding that there will come a day--very certainly and irrefutably--when we will wake up and we will be looking across at the mainland from afar ... from that spot we had been staring at for almost ten years, shuddering and picturing the darkness and dread, the banality and drudgery of a life where things start to count--both physically and figuratively--where there is no turning back ... and the hills just get higher ... and the days just seem to slip away.

Then one day you wake up and you're there--you are twenty-nine no longer. You don't know how it happened but you are not on the mainland anymore. And as you stand there at the edge of the island--your new home--and peer off into the distance you see you standing there at the edge of the water looking back--arms folded, head up, convinced it'll be different when the time comes.

But as we all know, things always seem to take longer before we've traveled the distance.

And so I'm so very happy to age. I see it now as a goal and not as a predicament. I see the end of every day as a case won rather than a death sentence. Because I really believe that I am lucky to have gotten this far (and anyone who knows even a little bit of my history can understand why). I am here and I am breathing and that's about all I can say on a minute to minute basis. I'd like to say I can make plans for next year, and I most certainly will. But I have no guarantee that I will be here or that I will be healthy or that I will be sober. All I can do is plan for it and hope that I can realize my goal.

And that's why I just don't understand the many people who I hear complaining about getting older. I mean--not to be insensitive--I realize that there are many drawbacks to aging, be they susceptibility to medical maladies and the increasing attrition rate of one's contemporaries as the road lengthens. But I guess I just enjoy the feeling I get looking at the calendar whose markings and fingerprints weigh down the pages of days that came before today's, tomorrow's and all those from here to the end of the year.

It's a game--it really is. And a great, magical, marvelous, mysterious one at that. And we have so many options as to how to handle our time. When I'm in an uncomfortable position in my life--be it being stuck in traffic, or having said the wrong thing to the wrong person--I like to make a special effort to recall it in the future, to see if it was really as bad as I thought it was, and that's assuming I can actually recall it with much accuracy in the first place. These things slip away--that's what they naturally do. And we can move on and move over and uncover the next hidden treasure ... or we can become hardened and bitter and deplore whatever comes next. And unless we die now something will always come next.

Like I said earlier, things always seem to take longer before we've travelled the distance.

I'm hoping what lies ahead of me takes as long as humanly possible.

And when I say "I'm almost forty," I don't say it with horror, despair, or worry in my voice ... I say it with wonderment and awe--with hope and anticipation at the whole idea--because I practically can't wait to get there.

Thanks for reading,

~F.A.J.

Day seven hundred and sixty two ... On the defense.

It's so much easier now.

Really, I truly mean this from the bottom of my heart. It's so much easier to go through my life now facing its daily battles, its seemingly insurmountable challenges, moral quandaries, incongruous rules and regulations, mystifying inconsistencies and quirky interpersonal button pushing competitions.

Because all of these frustrating facets of life seemed to just become a smudge on the window to my world when I stopped trying to kill myself.

Not to be too dramatic.

For so many years before I smartened up and quit drinking I would pretty much wake up, go to work (ugh!), barely scrape by until the end of the day, hit the package store and begin the ritual. It took a little bit of me away each time I did it. But when I was in the middle of it I truly believed it was just the way I was destined to live. I had seen it in enough movies and on television--I had read enough Bukowski and even seen some of it first hand from my friends who could tell me all about what I did the night before when they were loaded beyond belief.

I was the one with the deathwish.

Now, I didn't start writing this post to get all dark and depressing. I started writing this because of a conversation I had with a friend yesterday--an uplifting one. We were speaking about how amazing it is to wake up on a regular basis and get ready for work, travel the obstacle course that is our transportation system, do what we each do, come home, and go out at night and really only be worried about the randomness of the world of everything that exists outside our own heads.

Because for the longest time what was inside out heads was the most dangerous thing for us bar none.

Shocking, right?

But so true. I know for a fact that if I had let the gray matter in my skull keep hold of the wheel for any longer than it had I would not be here to write these things that some have said are inspirational and/or entertaining. I know I would not have been able to travel the world as I have with my musical group. I know I would have missed out on helping my aunt like I did as she was preparing to die. And I sure as hell know that I would not have been around to meet my true love and develop parts of my self in my heart and in my head that I had often wished I could someday aspire to.

That said, I would have most likely never admitted it was me who was measuring, cutting, installing, and shutting the many doors I had come to believe were erected by everyone and anyone else years and years before.

I was just the way I was.

I would have never come to the realization that now the only real and present danger to my existence solely and independently exists on the other side of my eyes and ears. It's all out there. There are a million busses careening down busy roads waiting for the wrong person to cross at the wrong time. There are robberies going on right now and there are, unfortunately, people who will get caught in the middle of it and may likely end up in trouble. There are wars occurring in multiple parts of the world that ensnare the innocent and the brave in its grasp and turn out wounded, disturbed, displaced people. And that's assuming you survive it. There are probably as many ways for someone to end up in peril as there are people in the world. But there is a solace that I can take in knowing that there is one unfortunate outcome that--as long as I stay clean and sober--I will never have to endure.

And that, of course, is self-destruction.

Today I live defensively.

It's not me anymore that's going the wrong way down the highway.

It's not me anymore who's adding a minute amount of poison to my food every day.

It's not me anymore who's peering over the edge of a cliffside wondering how far down it is.

It's not me.

And I understand this because it most certainly was me for almost half of my life, whether intentionally or not. I was that guy. I was laying plans daily to make it possible for me to quit this whole game right in the middle and leave my pieces on the board. And if you ask people who knew me then they'll tell you that I always seemed like such a happy person ... until I got drunk.

But this situation, I'm sure, is common for people in general, not just alcoholics. I realize that my particular problem manifested itself in a way that was easy to observe, but I'm guessing that it happens to many of us to a certain degree which we may not even notice. I'm not saying everybody has a subliminal death wish. What I am saying is that many of us live our lives with an extra added risk. Whether it be the unchecked obesity that eventually took my mother from me, or the self-imposed stress that added to my aunt's risk of cancer--taking her from me as well--many of us have problems that are so much greater than the odds of a car accident or a stray bullet. They are greater than the possibility of a tornado or a landslide, electrocution or a runaway semi.

Because we do them and we don't have to.

And when I realized this not too long ago--that I don't have to worry about me killing me as much as I used to--the world took on a much different hue.

I began to be a little bit more aware of what was going on around me in the lane I was driving in ... and a little less worried that I forgot so and so's name at the party.

I called in a professional to fix the electrical wiring in my 19th century house to lessen the risk of fire ... and put behind me the regret of having never allowed my mother to see me live life as a sober man.

I started to look left, right, and left again, like they showed me when I was too young to realize the clear and present danger of things bigger than I was ... and allowed the line at the grocery store to move at its own pace rather than letting its frustration raise my blood pressure and take away even a few precious minutes of my life.

I know that I can call it quits at any time--we all can. But there is something magical about knowing that that's not what you desire--to really understanding that you want to be here. And not only that but I get a real rush out of waking up every day and being aware that I have to work at it to stay alive. That no one ever gets a guarantee that they'll live long enough to get a degree, or meet the person of their dreams, or star in a movie, or write a timeless melody ... and that's where it all begins to become self-evident and the sky opens up, the sun wraps you in its yellow linen, and you wake up, up, up a little bit more each and every minute until you're standing straight and tall, looking over all you have, can, and are able to do, and you know there's more to come if you live defensively and pay more attention to the world around you and less to the buzzing beehive behind your eyes.

I'm not worried so much about me anymore ... but that's only because I now know I don't have to.

Thanks for reading,

~F.A.J.

Day seven hundred and forty nine ... All you can eat.

Who doesn't love ice cream?

Well, I realize that more often than not I live my life in my head. And in my head there is no room for people who don't eat things that come from cows. I also realize that there are plenty of other ways to enjoy a satisfying desert that doesn't entail milk.

But this grouping of words I'm amassing doesn't really have that much to do with the product, ice cream, itself.

It's all about the little, pink spoon.

If you live in the U.S. you probably have been to a Baskin Robbins ice cream shop. It seems there used to be more of them when I was younger, but that may just be because the supermarket ice cream selection was lackluster at best back in the seventies and eighties--before Ben and Jerry's changed the game--and we had to go out to get the good stuff.

In a world of soft serve machines and Carvel Flying Saucers the ice cream at Baskin Robbins was a bright and shining star. It was consistent, it was open year round, it was damn good, and it was everywhere. Not to mention that they had 31 flavors. As a kid a big part of the experience of going to the ice cream shop to buy a cone that cost a little less than a half gallon of Hood was getting to sample one or more of the 31 flavors available. Regardless of the fact that I always ended up with the same choice of ice cream (Jamocha Almond Fudge) as did my mom, to get to what we knew we liked we would purposely climb our way through a selection of the sugar mountain of flavors. And that required a little, pink spoon ... or ten.

I wish I had one to take a picture of to show those who may not know what I'm referring to, but suffice to say that it was about two and a half inches long, three quarters of an inch wide, thin, plastic, and pink. They would give you a new little spoon for each flavor you wanted to try. This was before anybody actually gave a damn about germs.

The habitual collector I was, I used to save these spoons up in my pocket where they would inevitably collect some serious pocket crumbs. When I got them home I would wash them best I could, then I would put them in the silverware drawer where my mom would find them and then re-wash them and put them back. Then, when I would get a bowl of ice cream on occasion (read: often) I would be sure to grab one of these little, pink Baskin Robbins spoons from the silverware drawer to eat it with.

And here is where I begin to understand what I used to do as a child shapes the way I am as an adult.

See, the reason I used to like to use the little, pink spoon to eat a big bowl of ice cream is because in rearranging the approach I was able to extend the effect. It put me in charge of how many spoonfuls could be carved out of a normal bowl. It took my regular serving of ice cream and stretched it out fourfold. It gave me the opportunity to enjoy something that under normal circumstances I would just wolf down (as my mom would say) and instead extend the feeding session much longer and with greater opportunity for pleasure. I was also increasing the chances to give my tongue a moment to recuperate before I added another tiny shovel full and not only hit it with a temperature drop but also with a sugar rush.

And this is how I take in each and every day.

I like the curve of my computer regardless of if it's a runs little slow every so often.

I appreciate the balanced weight of my guitar even if it's a little tough to keep in tune.

I take into consideration not just the time it takes me to get from my house to band rehearsal, but also that the snow is starting to melt along the sides of the road and little tiny patches of brownish green are able to peek through.

I've been told on more than one occasion that I should be more picky about what I consider to be "good" whether in regards to a song, or a bargain, or even a handshake. During what seems to have been a whole lifetime ago I have reason to believe that more often than not this probably was the case and, who knows, I may not have gotten in the mess I did over two years ago if I had. However, if I hadn't gotten into that mess I would be willing to bet a bigger one would have found me sooner than later.

But today I take in my days with so much less anxiety. I open my eyes every morning and am thankful to a concerning degree that I can walk to my bathroom to brush my teeth. It sincerely gives me a chill of pleasure to notice how I remembered to clean the sink the night before. How a simple action like splashing a little water around the top of the faucet and then wiping it down with a paper towel can ensure such serene sense of place and order the next time I need to use it. And when that moment comes, there it is ... white, silver, dry, and waiting for me as the first object to entertain my needs at the start of every day. It makes me so very happy to do these things.

In keeping with my ice cream fetish I will have to add that I also love--and have since I can remember--the feeling I get drinking a glass of cold water after eating a whole bunch of ice cream. I love this because if you do it immediately after a few bites the water takes on a strange characteristic: it becomes less cold than it actually is to the nerve endings inside the mouth. This, I'm assuming, is because the ice cream has just assaulted them with its swift and merciless temperature drop, and now the equilibrium has shifted. It's different in so many ways in a localized part of the body, but its effect stays the same everywhere else. The glass produces condensation; your hand feels the coldness; your lip understands what's going on; but once it reaches beyond the gates of one's mouth it fools everyone involved for a few seconds as it chases the sweetened perpetrator down to the belly and settles in for a nice laugh at your expense.

These days I often wish I had a little, pink spoon handy. Not always at the dinner table, though I have a nasty habit of finishing my plate/bowl/cup before my company does. But just in general in a more philosophical sense. I wish I could slow things down and take them in at my own pace. I wish I could carve out a little bit of any number of moments in life--a kiss, a hug, a laugh, a personal victory--and take it in on my own accord and not just in the gigantic, emotional truckloads that they are normally delivered in.

But this is impossible in real life. There is no pause button to hit, no emotional Polaroid to capture a snapshot, no portion control. It all just happens and I have to take it in and file it where it goes and hopefully be able to remember the important ones more than a few minutes after they occur.

And as these many, varied, potent events arrive on my doorstep, if you will, I sometimes get so overloaded that I don't know what to do. Sometimes they pile up and come at me so fast and furious that become numb from it all. Though they've mostly been good ones for quite some time now I'm not fooling myself into thinking this is how it will always be. Hell is always closer to heaven, and gravity doesn't help matters much.

So sometimes I just have to sit back and have a big glass of water. I love water in all it's forms. I love ice. I love snow. I love rain. I love steam. I love condensation. And I love the way that I can look at a big glass of it and assume what temperature it is from the way it affects the container it's in. I also love the fact that often times it doesn't feel the way I would expect it to when I take it inside. It all depends on what came before it. It all depends on where the nerves have been roused.

When I'm hot it cools me down.

When it's hot it warms me up.

But when I change things up and confuse my expectations it has a different effect.

I can go through life waiting for it to do to me what I've seen it do to others.

I can take every event at face value disregard the details.

I can let what has happened in the past hold me hostage for a lifetime.

Or I can live life in a way that makes me happy.

A little, pink spoon, a bowl of ice cream, and a glass of cold water.

Who knew it could be that simple?

Thanks for reading,

~F.A.J.

Day seven hundred and forty ... We meet again.

"Hi! I don't know you really, but you Facebook friended me a couple months ago and I deleted you."

This, I vaguely recall, was what a very attractive, younger girl with a perky hairdo, big, hazel eyes and sly smile said to me on November 14, 2008, at a benefit show for a friend who had a recent personal catastrophe.

"Um ... right. Hi, what's your name?," I said.

"Jodi ... and I deleted you."

"You ... you did?"

"Yep. I don't really know you, but you friended me a while back ... and I have a lot of personal stuff on my profile ... and so I had to delete you."

"Wow!", I said. "I ... I didn't even notice!"

And so it began. So the long strange journey began in my life that would lead me to be here, in my house, lying--laptop propped open--next to a sleeping, very attractive, younger girl with a perky hairdo, big, hazel eyes and a sly smile--albeit a snoring one--madly, deeply in love on the eleventh day of January. But a lot of coincidences had to happen to get me to where I am now--very much awake--and trying to type lightly.

Let me explain.

Today is an important day for a lot of reasons. It is my very dear friend Steve's birthday. Happy Birthday, Steve. Stolat!, as they say.

It is also the day that I walked into the New Bedford, Massachusetts Rehabilitation Center to visit my mother who had been there for two weeks, only to find out she had passed on from this world. My whole life changed forever in that shocking moment, which really should have come as no shock. It was a long, slow, illness and she fought it tooth and nail. She hung on for a whole extra Christmas season that the doctors could have never predicted because she wanted--no, she demanded to be around for it. But almost like she had struck some sort of deal, three days after it was over, on the 28th of December she took a bad fall and was admitted to the rehab center. From that point on she slipped away a little more each day until she was tenderly and thankfully tended to by hospice. And then, sadly but mercifully she was released from this mortal shell, and the lifelong dialog we had between us was over ... and I had to do everything a little differently.

I made it through that year, barely. I've written about a great deal of it over the past two. Suffice to say that I could have killed myself from the stupid things I did with drugs, alcohol, my car, my bicycle, my nose, my mouth and my two legs. But I didn't want to die. If it had happened it would have been through selfishness and stupidity, not a cognizant desire to cease living.

And when I say I made it through that year, "barely" I should specify that what I mean is not only would I almost kill myself through stupidity, but I would not make it to the very end of the year before I would declare myself to be done with a life of drinking. It was officially over on the 27th of December, and I am happy to say that it has remained that way ever since.

The year between that upcoming January and the one that followed it was an eventful one indeed. My aunt would live long enough to see me successfully put down the bottle, but not long enough to witness my year anniversary. Because by September of 2008 she, herself, would lose a hard fought battle with cancer.

That month I would purchase an iPhone and install the Facebook application (or "app" as they say). I would see a girl named Jodi in a tiny photograph on the application's homepage who I thought was someone I used to work with years ago. I would request her to be my Facebook friend and she would begrudgingly accept. She would turn out not to be the person who I thought she was and I would completely forget the whole event ever occurred. "I don't think it's possible that we know each other ... but you seem harmless enough to befriend," was her response to my request.

Two months later I would buy a house and start another chapter of my life.

And shortly before I moved in, on November 14th I would be surprised at a benefit concert by the approach of a girl with a sassy lean and a good dose of moxie telling me that she had deleted me from her Facebook profile. I would then nonchalantly and totally deflate her flirty exuberance by the mere fact that I had no idea it had even happened ... because she wasn't even the person I thought she was to begin with.

And then, one year ago, on January 11, 2009 I would have another very important event happen in my life.

I remember only so much about the day. I remember that I was extra emotional because not only had my mom been gone for two years now, but my aunt was gone too.

I had agreed to judge a battle of the bands contest at the local music club, and I didn't want to go. Strangely enough I recall wanting to stay home and watch the Golden Globes on TV much more than going out and being in the public eye. It was snowing pretty hard and I called one of the other judges to see if there was any way they'd cancel the evening. He said there was no chance but he gave me the phone number of the promoter, Mark Sheehan. I called him and he said it was very much still on. I asked him who the other judges were and he told me there was some woman named Jodi involved who had seen over 400 concerts.

"Oh, jeez," I remember thinking. "This ought to be interesting."

I remember that my old bandmate, Terry, called me up as I was putting my gloves on to leave. I waited by the phone and listened to the machine and heard him telling me he was thinking of me on this important day. I called him back on my iPhone on my way to the club and we talked a bit while I sat outside the club in my car.

Then I got out and trudged through the two or three inches of annoying new fallen snow on the sidewalk and entered the club.

I walked in the door into the dark club and there she was ...

It was the girl from the benefit for my friend who had had the catastrophe. The very attractive, younger girl with a perky hairdo, big, hazel eyes and a sly smile who had deleted me from her Facebook account. And she was about to spend the next three hours sitting at a table with me and three other judges while we listened to a number of new bands who could potentially be good or terrible.

And I just closed my eyes for a second and thought to myself, "Oh, Mamma ... what have you gone and done now?"

And we spent the night flirting. I remember the fateful tap on the shoulder with her pen that got me to turn around during one of the performances. I'll never forget that look ... the look that says, "hey ... you seem like someone who I might like. Come talk to me near my ear and look me in the eyes a little bit closer because I'm not sure, but I sure want to be surer before I prove myself wrong again."

I remember we had this joke about people wearing scarves onstage, under the hot lights--"intentional scarfing," we called it. It was our first joke. And then we took a picture of the four of us (our fifth judge, Christian, being unavailable for the shot) with scarves on our heads, looking silly at the camera.

I remember thinking then, "This is nice ... It's never been this nice before."

And I meant it.

The night soon came to a close and I told Jodi the concertgoer that I was so relieved that we could get past all that Facebook deletion mess and start anew. I suggested that I "friend" her again intentionally, now that we had talked and laughed and had a bit of fun, and I hoped she would accept it for real this time. She said she would. We had a brief but meaningful hug and I went home and immediately looked her up and impatiently--without even waiting the night--requested her friendship at 1:50 in the morning on January 12, 2009.

I remember thanking my mother that night before I went to bed. I thank her a lot for so many, many things. Often it's for something she taught me or a trait she passed on through her genes. Other times it's because my spiritual side feels that she has exerted some kind of will over the events of life here on earth.

Tonight, as I turn off the light, I will thank her for all of these things. Because she not only gave me the sense of humor to laugh with a nearly complete stranger for three hours, but she gave me the confidence and the courage to believe that if I kept a level head about me and was true to myself that there was no reason I couldn't find someone out there to love me like no other.

And when that night came to leave the house two years ago, with the Golden Globes on television, the snow falling quick and sharp, and a heart heavy in the knowledge that new words would no longer be heard from deep within her ever again and hadn't for an interval of time which might warrant me staying home to cry myself to sleep while a panel of judges met at a club downtown that was having a battle of the bands contest ...

Well, I think she knew that she was giving January 11th a new meaning in my world.

Thank you, mom. I miss you more than words could ever express.

Thank you, Jodi. You are my one, true love.

Happy January, 11th.

It's a good day again, forever and ever.

From L to R: Jim Neill, Ken Maiuri, F.A.J. and Jodi (intentional scarfs and all). Taken at the Happy Valley Showdown, The Elevens Nightclub, Northampton, MA on January 11, 2009.

Thanks for reading,

~F.A.J.