Posts by Keith Howard
After making local arrangements, I’m being driven by 4X4 into the desert with a tent, sleeping bag, food and water. I’ll get dropped off around 7:30, pitch my tent and experience the nighttime alone. In the desert. Until midday tomorrow. If my driver remembers, he’ll pick me up. If not, I’ll waste away slowly, the sun cooking me, evaporating every last bit of moisture, until, after a week or two, I’m just Keith jerky.
Eva and I also talked about the cultural differences among Europe, England, the US and Morocco. She asked what I did for a living. When I told her I work with folks in recovery from drug and alcohol, she got a very inquisitive look in her eye.
I’ve been accurately accused of being a lot of things—a drunk, a junkie, a weirdo, a pompous clown and just plain crazy, to list just a few of the charges. One particular adjective has been universally true, at least since I got into recovery—I am annoyingly optimistic, believing anything that needs to be done CAN be done, given enough focus and effort. The universe always has more solutions than it does problems.
After five hours in the Sahara Desert, or at least Merzouga’s Erg Chebbi dunes, I’ve found what I expected to have been completely wrong. I’m not being self-critical here. I’ve just learned my view of the world is different from normal people’s.
At 10, she moved to Durham when my grandfather was asked to start and be the first president of the Thompson School at UNH. In Durham she made new friends, who were also lifelong, including a girl named Jane Abell. Jane was whip-saw smart and she and Bev were inseparable until Jane left town for boarding school.
I’m now a bit more than halfway from Marrakesh to my destination, Merzouga, on the edge of the Sahara. The trip has unfolded beautifully, with time to sit beside riad pools and walk through the rocky and arid landscape, experiencing the vast indifference of heaven.
Driving alone through hard but beautiful land with no distractions, I was comfortable—with me, with my life, with the universe. This ease, this peace did not come early or easily to me. In my previous life, every time I drank and drugged, I did so to get out of me, to break the bonds that tethered me to me.
I came to Morocco to find a desert. Instead, I found an overflowing spring of humanity. In particular, I met Younes Krimane. Let me explain.
Whenever I travel, I think about the possibility of death, my death. I know the word “possibility” could be replaced by “certainty,” but I’m talking about dying during a particular period. Morocco is a safe country. I’ll be driving a safe car. I’ll be staying in safe lodgings. Still. Camels get rabies (I think). Flash floods very occasionally strike the Sahara. Meteors hit the earth.
Christmas is almost here, followed by Boxing Day, then New Year’s Eve, then New Year’s Day. For some of us, this is the most wonderful time of the year! For some, though, this two-week period should be balled up and thrown in a waste basket. Wherever you fall, you’re in for feelings galore.
Everyone’s invited to Hope Recovery on Wed. Dec. 14 to watch the World Cup semi-finals. It promises to be a great game. You can take it from me, a soccer fraud. Let me explain.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.—G. B. Shaw
Do whatever you can to prevent yourself from getting it, unless you like losing your sense of taste and smell, feeling sore all over, coughing, being chilled and needing to sleep 18 hours a day. If you’re not vaccinated, please get vaccinated. If you’re not wearing a mask indoors in areas where community transmission is high, please start. If you don’t wash your hands regularly, please do so. I don’t want you or anyone else to feel the way I do right now.
Who will step up to run a warming station, open from December 1 until March 31 from 11 p.m. to 7 p.m.? FIT has its hands full with its shelter and, much as they might like to, they can’t do more. Hope for New Hampshire Recovery and the 1269 Café (aka The Twelve) are two small nonprofits, one serving people struggling to recover from addictions and the other a Christian organization helping people who are homeless. Still, both places value dignity, oppose suffering and want to prevent needless death. neither of these small organizations have the budget to operate a warming station this winter, but it is obvious that Manchester needs a warming station staffed by human beings demonstrating love and respect.
As you know, my previous life companion, Lucy, died a little over a year ago and is buried in the cabin’s backyard. Lucy, who happened to have manifested in dog form, was also smarter, more insightful and attractive than I. She was funnier, too. You brought her into my life for eight-and-a-half wonderful years, and I bear you no ill will for taking her away. Still . . . I miss her intensely and painfully every day. Which leads to this third letter in three years.
Tuesday evening is a big deal for Hope, for you, for the Hope staff and for recovery in general. Not being a huge megacorporation, we won’t have a prime rib dinner or goodie bags with iPads. We will offer: Cookies, Coffee and Milk to the first 3,000 people who show up.
With all of New Hampshire a COVID-19 hotspot, and with the seven-day totals of confirmed cases continuing to rise at a crazy pace, I’ve made the personally devastating decision to celebrate Thanksgiving at home, with no guests.
In a perfect world, I could have driven the four hours to see her, whispered magic words into an amulet, placed it around her neck, and she’d never drink again. In a perfect world, Larissa could have met me at her door, asking to go to an AA meeting, where she’d meet a woman who’d offer to walk her through the 12 steps of that organization as Larissa got used to living without booze. In a perfect world, Larissa could look at the mess she and her drinking had made of her life, put the plug in the jug and move on to a life without alcohol.
