Ashley Bryan, 85 last Sunday.

The Warm Springs Gallery in Warm Springs, Virginia (population around 900) had an opening for a rare exhibition of his paintings. Bryan is best known as a writer and illustrator of children’s books. He was one of the first persons of color to present images of children of color in picture books that were not stereotypical. He was, as Poet Nikki Giovanni put it at the opening, a real pioneer.

I was working, of course. On assignment. Yet I can’t remember when I’ve had a better time hanging out with anyone. I think I was not alone in this. The enormous crowd (the gallery was packed to the squishing point) was mostly extremely well-heeled , sedate-looking folks, who appeared to be having a genuinely good time–as opposed to the usual effort-filled good time usually observed at such events.

I think Ashley Bryan’s paintings had something to do with this. He lives on a tiny island off the coast of Maine and this series of canvases were all of the gardens around his home. They were as bright and hopeful as new love, and they passed their brightness and hopefulness on to the audience. Bryan moved among us, charming us without appearing to make the slightest effort to be charming. The man was just so alive it’s catching.

Talking with him before the crowd arrived, I asked him what he’d like to think he brought to the world with his books, his art, his life. In response, he talked about his upcoming birthday. But, he said, every day’s a birth day, for it’s the birth of a new day. If I can convey something of the freshness, the newness, of each day, then I will feel that I’ve put something of myself down on the page.

Not a bad message is it for those of us in recovery, is it, to regard each day as a birth day; as the birth of a new day.

Multi-tasking.

I’d like to suggest it’s the antithesis of sobriety–at least of the all-important part of sobriety that’s manifested by a calm mind.

I re-decided this (for the 89th time!)  a couple of days ago while  talking on the phone while e-mailing someone else while simultaneously doing a web-search while trying to block out a too-loud hall conversation among my colleagues. My mind felt as though it were being–as a wonderful editor friend of mine likes to put it–as though it were being pecked to death by ducks.

I’ve often resolved to just do one thing at a time, but I can never seem to make my professional life work that way. What has disturbed me recently is that I’ve been letting the internal frenzy bleed over into my home life. I create artificial deadlines for writing projects, put too many tasks on my to-do list, and then low-and-behold, I’ve replicated my work-place frenzy. And this is just dumb.

It is, I think, a form of dry drunk. I was a frenzy addict during my drinking years. It’s actually a form of self-importance, I think–this thinking that whatever we are engaged in is so necessary to the welfare of the world that we have to drive ourselves relentlessly to do it.

The 10th Step is endless isn’t it? As an exercise in humility I went back and looked at the chapter I’d written on it in my book and I found this paragraph.

“I’ve discovered that Alice’s (GOD’s)  calming presence is usually felt or lost in the small events of my day. Now please don’t think I spend every waking hour monitoring myself. On the contrary, I probably spend less time thinking about myself nowadays than I have ever done before. I have my morning conversation with Alice, and then I let go of the controls and start enjoying the day. As long as I have established that conscious contact with the God of my understanding, I’ve turned on a gut-level monitoring system that warns me whenever I start heading toward screwy thinking. An alarm goes off just in time for me to veer away from the inevitable consequence of that screwy thinking, which is screwy behavior. I’m able to recognize that I have a clear choice before it is too late.”

Just what I needed–a good talking to myself.