Sparks

Soul is one of those movies that has a takeaway that you don't really expect kids to pick up on. To my daughters, Soul is a silly story about a talking cat. To me, I am taken aback by the raw intensity of the realization that our "spark" does not equal our "purpose." This is what Joe Gardner misunderstands, up until his soul's final redemption. We are not what we do. There is more to life than that. There is wonder and amazement to be seen and heard and felt. A spark is all about connecting to our world and the beauty in it. It's about experiencing life as it comes to you.

Once Joe realizes this, we see a montage of some of his sparks. They mostly play out as a series of small moments. The big Dorothea Williams concert is missing, for instance, even though it was important in his life. No, the quick snippets we see are Joe Gardner living and breathing and enjoying his ordinary life, which, depending on how you look at it, is also incredibly rare. It's ordinary to find a leaf and ride a bike and eat pecan pie, but how rare is it to come across one of those moments when you feel at one with the universe, using the so-called "ordinary" as your vessel?

Say the character in focus Joe K*** instead of Joe Gardner. Here are one hundred sparks that might play through my montage.

1. When the kids jump up and start yelling "Daddy!" when I walk in the front door
2. That moment the plane lands and the passengers feel the compulsion to clap
   
3. We start digging into a bushel of crabs on a warm summer afternoon
4. Having a ton of dishes and yet everything fits together in dishwasher like a puzzle
5. Pam reaches over to scratch my back, minutes before I fall asleep
6. Every time I hear that Reba theme song
7. When I help a little old lady grab something off the shelf, and make some pithy remark about how it's no problem, ma'am, this is just my duty as a tall person
8. Clicking "submit" for a paper and feeling that it's over!! feeling
9. Standing at the base of a skyscraper and looking up
10. That scene from the final episode of Lodge 49 that acts as a treatise about happiness and its joys and burdens
11. Stripping off all my clothes after long day of work and standing there naked, in silence, with the window open and a nice breeze coming in
12. A random spurt of runner's high on a neighborhood street at 4 AM
13. Walking down a Philadelphia block I've never walked down before and soaking it in
14. That nightly end-of-the-day deep breathe out
15. Me and Willow and Martha play the "listening game" in the woods, where we stand there with our eyes closed and just... listen
16. Any moment where a whole stadium cheers about something wild that just happened
17. Going 100mph in city minivan on a Sunday morning
18. The lights and sound of a casino, not even playing the slots or anything, just walking through, just existing in that space
19. The kids make me play the game where I hold them upside down, and the get all excited and ask if we can play "the upside-down thing"
20. Pam's genuine laugh
21. Pam walks down the steps after getting ready to go out, and looks like a stunner
22. Book Club hits something poignant in our conversation, and you can just feel it thick in the air, the fact that we're touching on something important
23. A horse runs down our street
24. The quiet of snow, especially on an empty city blacktop
25. Surveying the freshly mowed lawn from the upstairs bathroom window right before a cold shower
26. Witnessing a nice butt in public
27. Seeing the Ferris wheel as we're headed over the bridge to Wildwood, NJ, and Bruce Springsteen is blasting over the speakers
28. Whenever I make a mad dash to catch the bus, and I actually fucking catch it
29. A wildly close finish on four-player Mario Kart 64
30. When a walk-off happens in an important baseball game
31. Biking east on Spring Garden toward Delaware and seeing the green light from like three blocks away and pedaling as fast as I can to catch the green, and making it
32. The John Bonham "Moby Dick" drum solo on the Led Zeppelin live DVD I had as a kid
33. When we seventh-grade shitheads sang "Salve Regina" at the top of our lungs during the 2002 May Procession
34. Sweating and then running toward a pool and time freezing in that split second before you hit the water
35. When you make eye contact with a stranger who is equally pissed off about the same moron as you are, acting like an idiot in public, and you both kinda just look at each other and roll your eyes and make a brief connection
36. Hitting that first slice of pizza on a Friday night
37. The last 0.1 mi of the only half marathon that I've ever run, when I saw god if she exists
38. Showing off my T-shirt before the Broad Street Run, feeling like I had made the right decision
39. Sitting in a comfy chair, in the shade, on the beach, and closing my eyes.
40. Going camping and, at night, seeing the stars brighter than I ever had before
41. Playing dodgeball in grade school and pulling off an evasion technique that felt pretty wild at the time
42. Drumming for Burholme and feeling in the pocket
43. Seeing a wild animal up close, usually a critter like a fox or deer
44. Hitting the pavement at the start of the run
45. Getting picked up at four in the morning on a deserted street, off to a destination to begin the summer
46. Getting that couples massage on our honeymoon
47. Seeing Pam's smile from a distance as she walks toward me
48. Making a speech in front of a large group of people and getting some laughs
49. The moment the Eagles won the Super Bowl and being in a South Philly backyard as the fireworks started to shoot off
50. Seeing the Philly skyline in the morning as I'm driving up the entrance ramp for a deserted I-95
51. Making a diving catch in the outfield
52. Pam and I having a good laugh at how goofy the kids are acting
53. Reading someone's album review when they really fucking go for it and take a big risk and it pays off
54. Waking up and smelling pork roll frying in a pan, first thing in the morning
55. Being under the big party tent when the hail starts to fall
56. I'm reading a thrilling book and it's barreling toward its conclusion
57. A good haircut, looking the mirror when I get home and marveling that they, for once, got it right
58. The act of memorizing a script and acting it out on stage in unison with other people who did the same thing, and creating something tangible
59. That moment of stillness at the top of a log flume slide
60. Getting a good crack in with a group of friends
61. Arguing with a good friend about pop culture bullshit that doesn't really matter to anyone, not even us, except for in that brief moment when it's the most important thing in the goddamn world
62. Being able to see a far distance from a great height
63. Seeing an infant smile
64. Seeing toddlers playing together
65. Sitting in a structure that has been abandoned and wondering what the heck happened there
66. Hanging out in a hot tub during a snowstorm
67. Hitting a really tough shot in billiards by chance
68. Sitting in small parks in the middle of bustling city centers
69. Whenever I crouch and my ankles crack in a really satisfying way
70. The silent start of a long walk / journey
71. Walking with a large mass of people and listening to music through the earbuds that makes that otherwise pedestrian moment feel cinematic
72. A pretty girl in a summer dress smiles at me
73. The realization that you're watching a long take in a movie or TV show, and then holding your breath as it plays out
74. Standing atop the Grand Canyon and looking down
75. Checking out the Hoover Dam and marveling at what it took to make this fucking thing
76. Sleeping outside, like in a lean-to or whatever, and feeling one with nature in the darkness
77. Dreading leaving the tent but the bladder is so full but it's so cold out, and then finally unzipping the sleeping bag and wandering out into the pitch-black darkness to pee somewhere
78. Hearing the audience file in before you perform onstage
79. Sun coming up on the beach, feeling between your toes the sand that got cold overnight
80. The process of birth, up close
81. The lightning bolt connection to a song that burns into your brain exactly where you were at that moment
82. The sound and smell of the meat hitting the grill
83. When you're driving past a cornfield and you're able to look down each row
84. The voting booth
85. Fireworks blowing up on the ground in Lawncrest on the Fourth of July
86. Grandmom's lemon cake on holidays
87. When I make a spiritual connection with another parent in parenting groups, a stranger who I now know a piece of because they were willing to be so brave and honest
88. A swish on the basketball hoop from the foul line
89. Skipping stones on the creek
90. Eating a BBQ'd dinner in the yard on a summer day
91. Sleeping in and cuddling
92. My daughters in their princess costumes
93. Sneaking out and hanging on the train tracks at three in the morning
94. Watching old home videos
95. Some dumb stupid bullshit making me laugh for an hour
96. Combining a soft pretzel and chocolate milk (or Yoohoo, which isn't really chocolate or milk)
97. Witnessing the Cliffs of Moher
    
98. Sitting on the roof
    
99. Seeing Pam smile from across the room
100. Drinking a beer
     

The next question becomes: what happens when you purposefully attempt to strip one of your sparks out of your life forever? What are the consequences?

I am currently working on that re: #100. As of the morning of this blog post's publishing, I am 51 days sober. It feels good to write that down. Not the number, which is small now and will seem small forever, comparatively. But just the idea of sobriety. Feels good to type it out and turn it into a truth.

It's the truth, but truth can be scary. This is one of those scary truths, sobriety. It took me weeks to tell anyone besides Pam because I didn't really know what it means, having been un-sober for so long. I still don't really know what it means. I don't have a handle on the truth, I just know it exists, and it's something that I need to try to wrangle over the next few years, or months, or weeks, or days, or, occasionally, minutes, during those tough moments when I need to compartmentalize and forget about the future and just think about the here and now, the present, just for this one minute refrain from drinking alcohol or feeling sad about not drinking alcohol.

I'm just spitballing here, but I have to assume some of that sadness has to do with the fact that I'm purposefully stripping away a "spark" from my life. I was happy drinking alcohol and being drunk. It made me feel, at times, like I was one with the universe. Sources (Infinite Jest, which I will do my best to not reference anymore, as it limits the audience) indicate that the grief of losing something like your chosen substance is a grief that you might not ever fully get over, even if you can eventually learn to live with it. Losing a spark means that, at times, life is a little dimmer.

Note that the other 99 sparks on the above list are all moments or situations that I met while sober. This made the act of creating the list about 99x harder than it would have been otherwise, because, for better or worse, the vast majority of my life's true wonders occurred under the haze of some level of inebriation. I'm not saying constant blackout, though there were plenty of those. I'm just saying that a lot of life's big and small moments were intertwined with alcohol. I had three or four Hamm's Special Lights before my wedding ceremony, as an example of a big moment and a small but more-than-zero amount of alcohol. I experienced the complete and total darkness of Wildwood's infinite nighttime beach after about 27 beers / Tully Nuts, as an example of a small wonder during complete annihilation. Had I made a list of sparks and didn't not limit myself to sobriety, I would've been able to get to like 500 easily.

Discarding this particular flint and steel that has over a lifetime created these myriad sparks means that I felt the need to do it. It wasn't just want. If it was want, then I wouldn't be sober, because what crazy person wants to give up so many potential sparks? No, this is need. I've long held the theory that everyone has a finite number of drinks in their life before something bad happens, and as winter turned to spring this year, I started to feel in some mysterious but intense and real way that my limit was approaching. There was a fierce weight on my psyche, some inner voice warning me in a whisper that if I didn't stop, then something awful was going to happen. I figured I owed it to myself to heed the warning.

So here I am, sober, for real this time. I feel comfortable saying it at this point, though I certainly don't feel comfortable living it yet. Mainly because I don't really know how to articulate my feelings about it yet, other than to say that I'm sober, and perhaps you can extrapolate from there. I figure it's also probably time to start exploring the mystery behind those so-far enigmatic emotions, and so I'll be doing that the only way I know how (writing about it on the blog... sorry in advance...).

But this is where I start: I grieve the loss of a spark, and I trust that the existence of 99 additional certifiably sober sparks will mitigate that grief a little bit, during moments when I need them.