Infinite Jest Book Club Notes #2 of 8: Pages 95 - 219

In the interest of posterity, I'm attempting to move all the notes that were written on the Infinite Jest message board last year. This will serve to preserve something that I spent a ton of time on, plus can act as a digital guide for anyone who decided to attempt to read my favorite book of all time after 2023 (or as a guide for myself when I eventually reread it).

Please see the new Infinite Jest tag for other posts as they go up. Before you read, double-check that you are on the right blog post; the pages are at the top, and I don't want you to be spoiled.

 

Pages 95-121: More Marathe/Steeply, and lots of the ETA boys

Probably worth putting a pin in the Marathe/Steeply stuff, which is really important philosophically, but continues for a while. Though I think that it's interesting to note how similar Marathe and Schtitt are in terms of how they think about sacrifice v. "interpersonal sentiment," and how noted Schtitt kiss-ass Ortho Stice is telling his Little Buddies all about it in their session.

Anyway... not too much to say in depth regarding either the locker room scene or the Big Buddy Session Montage (though cool that Hal immediately addresses and explains the former at the beginning of the latter section). Lots of shading in of characters, especially Hal's peers. Lots to think about in terms of who was the funniest in the Big Buddy section—Pemulis playing poker, Struck talking about farts, Wayne commanding a room without saying anything at all, Schacht boring everyone with dental tips, Hal wanting to get high and beat the shit out of Ingersoll, etc. etc. etc.

WALTER: The locker room scene is really interesting to me. Of course I've felt like I've missed something bigger, but the detail DFW uses to describe the metal lockers and showers brought me back to high school lacrosse. This scene felt real, especially the way he describes random banter, commiserating, and various trail-offs that one could observe of another on any given in-season-day. I enjoyed this scene a lot.

Can you expound on what is meant by interpersonal sentiment?

JOE: First, I think it's important to say that you probably understand this book a lot more than you think. You're bang on in your interpretation of the locker room scene. It's setting the scene (or a scene), and it seems like that scene resonated with you.

Second, you're right in that I should probably talk a little more about the Marathe/Steeply stuff, since in a literal sense it's kind of tangential, but in a philosophical sense they might be talking (in their own way) about THE most important argument in the book. It'll come up again and again in this book in different permutations (e.g. Schtitt having pretty much the same conversation with Mario, albeit a bit more one-sided).

"Interpersonal sentiment" is how Steeply describes it at some point. My interpretation of what they are talking about (and I definitely don't consider myself the expert here, this is heady stuff, probably why I tried to skip over it in the first place haha) is that they are talking about love/desire; Marathe argues that humans are supposed to consciously choose what they love, and Steeply is arguing that sometimes, love is not a choice, that sometimes love just happens.

They are talking about this in the context of the mysterious entertainment that made the medical attaché and a dozen other people so addicted to it that they don't want to do anything else, and are "lost" (not explained at this point, but we can maybe assume dead or unable to function or....?).

Remember, Steeply is there to determine whether the wheelchair assassins are the ones that sent the video to the medical attaché. Marathe says no, and now he's saying that, philosophically, it doesn't make sense for AFR to do that anyway. They (Marathe, like-minded people) believe that being a "slave to desire" is what makes Americans weak, that they think they can't choose what to love (a partner, a movie). He's saying there IS a choice, and that the AFR wouldn't be sending that video because it might prove otherwise. He's also making fun of Steeply, that he (an American) claims that America is "the land of the free," when really, it's Americans who find themselves slaves to desire more often than not, instead of consciously choosing what to devote yourself to.

The "interpersonal sentiment" is mentioned before that. They're talking about an American agent falling in love with a Canadian operative. Steeply is saying that the American (Rod the God) loving Luria P— (the Canadian) is not anything that Rod can control, and he is acknowledging that this isn't a theory that Marathe adheres to, that Marathe would say that Rod is CHOOSING to love Luria and that he can also CHOOSE not to.

This would all look a lot different if DFW presented the entire Marathe/Steeply convo at one time, but of course that's not how he operates, so let's continue this down the line. Much appreciated holding my feet to the fire and getting me to think about this a little more, though. Hopefully this is helpful for you in the same way it was helpful for me to type it out. I'm here if you wanna keep chatting about it.


Pages 121-126: Mario and Millicent Kent

So what do we make of this episode? Is it supposed to be funny? The header seems to indicate so, plus Mario making an unintentional vagina joke, plus Mario not being able to stop laughing when Millicent tries to get his padlocked clothing off.

But the humor is turned on its head a bit with Millicent's family story. On the surface, it's still kinda funny, picturing a grown man in a fairy costume... but at the same time, it's definitely left some severe emotional scarring in her family, not to mention that there's this sense (unless I'm mistake, this is more of a gut feeling) that there is a lot left unsaid. That there was some additional abuse/neglect beyond familial crossdressing.

And then some of it's a little foreboding. What's the deal with the spooky tripod? Why is there a dumpster flying through the air? Did Mario know what Hal is doing in the woods or not?


Pg 126-144: the other Wk7 vignettes

Marathe/Steeply — Another small blip of their 4/30/YDAU conversation. Not much philosophy this time, just a bunch of details thrown in to color in these two characters. Also, I have no fucking clue why the final sentence has its own separate but identical header. Any thoughts?

Lyle — An interesting introduction to a character that almost doesn't seem real. Maybe that's the point. On previous readings, I've always misinterpreted the part that goes "sitting yogic about a metre off the rubberized floor" as him literally floating above the ground. I think it's just that the drying machine he's sitting on is a meter tall. Whoops. The whole "don't try to pull a weight that's heavier than you" thing is probably something to keep in mind, I guess.

yrstruly — Definitely written like the Wardine / Roy Tony section (Roy Tony even appears in this one), though I don't know if you can necessarily call this "ebonics." More like Clockwork Orange, honestly, both in the way you need to adjust to the slang, and the violent behavior of the characters. Tough read, but a crucial perspective, I'd argue, when it comes to introducing all these drug addicts throughout the story. Not everyone is ready for recovery or is even aware of the depths in which their abuse has taken them. Also, lots of casual racism in this one, which is probably just enough for me not to be able to make the "well he's writing from the POV of the racist character!" this time. I dunno. I imagine this was a section that people are perplexed/frustrated by.

Hal/Orin on the phone — Another quick section. It ends on a cliffhanger, at least in respect to what we as a book club have been talking about, with the Canada stuff. Orin asks about it! Hal is going to give him answers! Hopefully eventually! Not this week though!

(Also pointing out that there's this conversation style that happens sometimes in this book that kinda frustrates me on a personal level, how there are two characters speaking AT each other instead of WITH each other. Hal and Orin do that here, not listening to each other, but just continuing on their own tangents. Felt some of that with Schtitt/Mario too. We'll see it again. I would be sincerely pissed if I found myself in such a conversation. I need to be heard!! Actually...... now that I'm writing it out, maybe this is connected to the whole thing with Jim not being able to "hear" Hal, and all that shit. "Communication" as a philosophical idea. Put a pin in this till next week, when we read something that is explicitly about communication styles.)

Ennett House — An intro to one of our main settings, the Ennett Recovery House, which occasionally feels like its own character (isn't that a cliché, something about New York being the "main character" in romantic comedies or something?). Plus the anonymous guy who founded it. And the funny anecdote about chewing rocks. Also a kind of intro to the idea of "Boston AA" being a "scene." Also also also also the one line that has always been pretty sticky for me, something I think about a lot: "since sobriety doesn't exactly mean instant sainthood."

D. Glynn's fall — Funniest intro to a character yet. Plus the spiritual connection to what Lyle was saying about not trying to lift more than your own weight.....

Hal's paper about TV police — Funny to imagine a seventh-grader handing in a paper like this. But what are we to make of its purpose in this novel? Are we supposed to consider Hal et al. "heroes of non-action"?

Steeply's magazine article — Real dark humor in this one. Also a quick turnaround for a Poor Tony reappearance. So is this supposed to be funny? Serious? Both? Just exists to advance the story (three different stories, really, with Poor Tony, Steeply, and the J.O.I. mention in the header)?

Alright, that's it, besides the terrorist list. Any thoughts on any of these sections?

SAM: On Hal's paper, the header clued us in that the last paragraph would be important as against the grain. I think that Hal (and DFW) are advocating him to be the post-post modern hero. Compare the first section of the book (the college interview) with Hal's description of what's next for a hero ("the hero of non-action, the catatonic hero, the one beyond calm, divorced from all stimulus.")

JOE: Are we taking "post-post-modern hero" and "hero of non-action" to be one and the same? I think that's maybe where I'm most confused, not really understand what "post-post-modern" actually means. I think your spot-on in connecting all this to that first Year of Glad chapter though.

WALTER: Good call out. I didn't pick this up but makes some sense in how I think I understand DFWs themes of mental illness, addiction/recovery, and enlightenment.

I am starting to categorize characters into certain themes of enlightenment...

• pure addict (i.e., not sober and actively using or abusing some "get-off") and causing direct harm without consciously feeling the consequences of his/her actions. Not very enlightened by the standards of the next category....
• The recovering addict — I'm not sure we actually see this, but perhaps with the AA place being introduced and with the character who smokes so much pot... then realizes it... stops, but ultimately relapses. There seems to he some harm or suffering, but less direct, or more a self-induced shame. Still, more enlightening to be had!....
• the bleeding deacon of sorts — one who can see the addict-recovery-relapse cycle and has felt some enlightenment from sobriety, and feels the need to pontificate on how one should be sober to enlightened, yet still has an addiction nonetheless (i get this theme from the mentorship program where the plateau of progress is explained).
• the post-post modern hero — this seems like the next level of "enlightenment," but doesn't really come off as such with the description used... because could a hero of non-action be a hero? Perhaps if you put a wide variety of self-centered folks in a room, this one becomes the hero... the mental patient sort of becomes the most sane person in a room of people who aren't able to connect spiritually with another...

And thus the paradox of my categories of enlightenment become, suddenly, apparent...

This is a bit of a ramble, but hopefully i can make more sense of it as we read on.

SUNNY: Good call Sam. And worth noting that this post-post modern hero "trapped in the reactive moral ambiguity" is not, in any way we have thus seen, acting "heroically"

SUNNY: Just one quick idea on the yrstruly section, which along with the ebonics section, is probably some of DFW's most hated work. The book, generally, is speaking from a past tense third-person narration, and if I didn't have these sections I might just read the whole thing as that—impartial third party narration. But yrstruly is written, very clearly, from yrstruly's internal monologue perspective. It's to follow, then, that much of the book which centers around Hal is written from -his- internal monologue perspective, which is one formed by a life defined by precociousness and incredible attention to syntax, grammar, etc.

It reminds me of something DFW has said outside the book that why he placed so much personal importance on writing is because writing allows you to structure a way to Think, and Thinking is the means to which you create meaning from the experience that is your life (whether this is true or not, of course, is a matter of opinion).

I only point this out because at times the book -does- change perspectives (even from Hal's, see: Year of Glad vs. the latest Hal episodes) and this is to indicate something. We may also want to keep it in mind for Gately's or (later) JVD's episodes too. And that, even if a section is written impassively, it is quite possible, if not likely, that we are hearing from an unreliable narrator.


Pages 144-169: Videophony / Clean Urine / Tucson 1960

Thoughts on the videophony essay

• Why is this here? To establish context or set the scene of this near-future society?
• OR is there more to the whole idea of people not liking themselves when they see themselves on the screen? Could we take that figuratively, like here are dozens of characters, some of whom are examining themselves and don't particularly like what they see?
• I feel like, since 1996, society has kind of moved in the opposite direction, with texting. The essay posits that you can do the bare minimum to pretend you are paying attention on the phone, which you can't do with video. But with texting, you don't even need to do the bare minimum. I feel like most of my friends who are younger than me take hours or days to respond to a text.
• This essay also probably speaks to why I hated Zoom during the height of the pandemic.
• The essay also asks the question: is the advancement of technology always a good thing, or is it beneficial to society to pause or even reverse certain advances?

Thoughts on the urine testing scene

• I really appreciate these passages at Enfield Tennis Academy, especially in the beginning of the novel (yes, this is still the beginning). There's a lot of scene- and character-building, but a healthy respect for tangents that really add color to our world here. That whole thing about the "Fenway Park weinerman fallen on hard times" is unnecessary but so fucking hilarious.
• Really great character work, especially with Pemulis and Mario, and their oddball friendship really says a lot about both of them. And I love the casual POV-switching, like right in the middle of paragraphs. It'll be like describing Pemulis, for instance, and then all of a sudden it's like "and here's what Mario would think about this same subject."
• Some important information dropped casually into this section! We find out that O.N.A.N. stands for Organization of North American Nations, and that it's symbol is a sombrero-wearing eagle holding a maple leaf. We also find out (offhandedly mentioned in between m-dashes, no less) that some Ennett House residents work at ETA.
• Also hilarious that the whole section is centered around the idea of pee.
• What do we make of this line: "friendship at E.T.A. is nonnegotiable currency."
• Interested to hear what people think about Pemulis at this point.

Thoughts on the insane monologue with JOI's dad

• Much less to say about this section, mostly because it's a drunk dude ranting. There's value in that, and it certainly paints a painfully vivid picture of JOI's childhood, but I don't know if there are many ties thematically to the overall narrative beyond themes of addiction and how people value greatness.
• I did appreciate how JOI's dad called his own dad "Himself," as if that nickname has been passed down. I also appreciated JOI's dad's line about "You play right up to your limit and then past your limit," as that obviously resonated with JOI to some degree, since this is the belief he founded ETA (and hired Schtitt) on.
• So those two things make me think about how parenting is cyclical, and how we pass the best and the worst of ourselves onto our children. We see that cycle from generation to generation in the Incandenza family with big ideas (tennis, entertainment industry, alcohol) and small (fear of spiders).
• I always thought it would be fun to memorize this monologue and perform it, if I ever find myself with a year or two free.

SUNNY: On your 3b, videophony, it is funny how this section is both very prophetic and very far off 20-30 years to the future of writing it. I've only recently switched to a zoom-based type job and I find it awful for many reasons sort of spelt here:

• Obviously the whole idea of masking & appearances -for the screen-. We all know the cliché of being dressed waist up. We don't have the same sort of physical and then digital masking/tableaux described here, but we have our automatic brightening, facial touch-ups, and virtual backgrounds, so;
• On zoom, I often cannot resist looking at my own little window during a work meeting. But the idea of turning it off is even more horrifying because what if something is wrong with my makeup/toupee/surgical prosthesis/etc., so it must be on. But moreso, I cannot remember in the moment that if I'm so obsessed with my reflected self-image, probably most people on the call are too. The text has a great line "Regarded with the objectivity of hindsight, the illusion appears arational, almost literally fantastic: it would be like being able both to lie and to trust other people at the same time."
• What's funny, of course, is IJ talks about the videophony as a social/entertainment venture solely, and then the subsequent blowback. Even if folks today hate videophony (as I know many do), your job requires it, so suckitup.
• Side side note: if you're VP+ at any multi-million dollar org and use a virtual background, that should be a demerit. What are you hiding? Virtual backgrounds are for peons like me to hide our filth and black widow infested dwellings.
• This section is also compares/contrasts against the Hal/Orin phone calls, which as previously mentioned, are more about two people talking at/through each other rather than with each other

The ONAN emblem is hilarious and appropriate. Peemster's T-Shirt that's like "THE SUPREME COURT DESECRATED YOUR FLAG" I assume is a cross-reference. Obviously people on the internet have their mock-ups, attached.

The little note about Ennett House doing the grudge work at ETA, being recovering drug addicts cleaning up the pee bottles of actual, high performing, drug addicts, is ironic and funny and shows how these two very different orgs have much in common.

The James Sr/Jr rant is half-funny, half-sad. I think there is some kernel in his drunken ramblings that JOI takes out of it, in his research of optics and physics and tennis and film, but mostly it feels as a tragic display of how Orin fucked up Sr who fucked up Jr who later tries, desperately, not to let the same happen to Orin, Mario, or, particularly, Hal.

There may also be another drawing of the line backwards in filmic heroes, talking about Brando here. Is Brando the Hawaii 5-0 type Hal talked about, or even the progenitor of all that?

WALTER: Amazing. Yeah, I felt the same with the back and forth conversation. Its chaos... absurdity... 

It's funny how you and Sunny are able to put so much in words to describe the scenes. I'm only able to feel it's all absurd, but luckily I have you both to explain so much of the metaphors I cannot connect to my real life. Until nowwww!

I do think a lot of my physical world is even feigned, similar to the videography (or zoom, in real life):

• don't look like you're having fun when the company is so disorganized.
• keep focus on things that are important, but everything feels important.
• smell neutral or nice, but nice may be offensive anyway
• don't gawk
• be careful how you interact around other, so as not to offend them.
• don't look dirty...
• needing to take a shit at the same time as your colleague, and not talking about how awkward it can be to share the air with one another (hell, we should all wear headphones at all times; god forbid you hear yourself or someone else blow-hole a fart... or Japanese toilets.... duh)

I'm a sucker for Joe's response with text etiquette. I'm not sure if multi-channel attention is also metaphorically depicted in this section, but I think our attention micro-economy is in overdrive and we shut down some channels. Like me in slack versus email versus confluence versus google docs... so many platforms. I'm guilty of this.

For some reason, I think I'm striving for more survival instincts to kick in... I'm too comfortable, ya know? Nothing really at stake... maybe until I have a kid.

Otherwise I'd like my work to be survival... but I don't take my woes as a survival. I feel entitled instead. Wtf.


Pages 169-193: Brief Thoughts About the Readings

Pemulis / DMZ

1. Everything Pemulis does is hilarious ("please commit a crime," "gracious me!")
2. Chekhov's DMZ?????
3. Note that DMZ's local street name is "Madame Psychosis," whom we meet later in this week's readings... thoughts?

The dialogue of Mario's movie

1. Clearly written by Hal
1. which is incredibly sad, that he views his life this way
2. or is it?? It's all about total devotion to the THING, this thing being tennis mastery, and thus mastery of self
3. it's called by Hal a "dark gift," so take that as you will
2. "Detours of the so-called normal American life," like pot
3. "Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you."

Ennett House Transcripts

1. FINALLY we get to hear some of the residents, who have been silent background players for the most part. It's wild how long it took us to get here.
2. Two purposes here, IMO: a) to give us a sense of "AA lingo" and how those who are new or new-ish to sobriety communicate with others and internally, and b) to be really fucking funny.
3. At least one voice you should know based on the details of his story—Bruce Green, who we met probably a month and a half ago, he who was in love with Mildred Bonk, and for whom "life was one big party" until it wasn't, apparently
4. Gately gets a mention, remember him? Wonder what he's been up to....

Madame Psychosis Intro / Mario Listens at HmH

1. I didn't take many notes for this section. It felt like a good one to just kinda ride out, like a gentle wave. Feel its rhythms as it moves back and forth from MP being alluringly mysterious while reading a pamphlet for UHID, and the context of Mario hanging with Avril so late at night, plus some interludes about the sound engineer. A lot of information, some of it necessary, some of it pleasant window dressing, really strong stream-of-consciousness shit from DFW here.
2. The description of the layout/engineering of the student union building is insane, and after reading it four times in my life, I still do not understand it nor can I picture it in my mind at all
3. Is it just me, or does something seem a little sinister about Avril in these passages? (And not just because her involvement in the M.I.T. language riots apparently led to the previous student union building getting blown up with C4?!).

Page 193 onward: Building #7

SAM: I love the reveal that the tennis academy is forced to pay rent on the uninhabited medical building. Since most of the other facilities at the VA are devoted to behavioral, mental health, or addiction services, this punishment seems just for ETA. The school is a breeding future inhabitants of one of these VA facilities, ETA might as well pay rent in the meantime.

JOE: I would have never thought about it that way, so I appreciate you saying that. Absolutely bang on. Especially with the whole thing where Hal and his friends are already hanging with the Enfield security guards at the bar. It's not too far away!

This is a great section. Lots of what seems like superfluous info with crucial info almost incidentally thrown in there. Like all the little anecdotes about Gately adding up to us now knowing that he has completed the Ennett program, is sober, and now works as a staff member at Ennett. Plus, there's the jarring POV shift where all of a sudden we hear Gately's thoughts about ETA and he calls is a "snooty tennis academy," and a "rich tennis school for blond gleaming tennis kids."

There's more, I think, to the idea of the methadone clinic as seen through the eyes of the 12-steppers at Ennett... I'll gather my thoughts when I'm done this Substance Use class I'm currently taking.

Finally: it took me till the fourth reading of IJ to look up what the fuck "objay darts" meant. Apparently it's a dim Boston cop bastardization of objet d'art.

WALTER: Just wanted to say ditto on this. It's like a little factory of addicts, this whole ecosystem, eh? Burnouts, whatever you want to call them. Kind of a social welfare system. Those who make it still end up paying indirectly through a system they're funding for their offspring or whatever. The "other side of the coin," so some say, may be the addiction to want to help... I wonder when/how this is revealed?


Pages: 193-219

Shout out to Sammy for taking the initiative and posting about the section describing all the Enfield Marine complex buildings. Here are some thoughts about the other readings on these pages.

The ETA weight room

I have no notes for this brief section, but I can picture it clearly in my mind, as if this is one of Mario's movies, the camera slowly panning across the room, close-ups for the steroidic 15yos pumping iron, the older man sitting on top of a drying machine licking the sweat off a child, Pemulis devilishly calling a younger kid a pussy... this is some good stuff.

Exotic new facts ---> Tattoos
Here are some of the "facts" that stood out to me, for various reasons:

• My reaction to the facts about child services is... complicated. Can maybe talk about it when it comes up again later.
• That "god" doesn't require that you believe in him/her/it for him/her/it to help you.
• "That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it." I like this one, and think about it often when I find myself disliking someone or annoyed by someone. That they are in my life for a reason. I was thinking about my friend from first semester of grad school who was fucking insane, and it was probably to my ultimate benefit that she dropped out after that semester... but I still think about her a lot, and know that I learned so much from her re: how to interact with people who are different than me.
• "That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them." Is this true? I think so. I wish I would have known this earlier in life. It feels like another way of saying "You have to force yourself to care about some things."
• "That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, angendaless kindness." Compare/contrast to how Hal felt about being kind toward the Little Buddies?
• The whole bit about no one ever going back to using substances after sobriety and finding that they are better off with the substances.
• "That it is permissible to ~want~." Damn, that's an important one. I think in this context, it's the idea that "wanting to use" is not the same as "actually using," and that we can't help how we feel sometimes, and so we must judge ourselves on our actions, not our thoughts. Easily applicable to other areas of one's life.

The whole section with Tiny asking about tattoos is a really fun way to move around the Ennett House and meet / re-meet some of the characters on this side of the narrative. It's funny that no one shares Tiny's belief that tattoos tell something intimate about the person... it's also funny that CLEARLY tattoos DO reveal something intimate about the person.

Should we be compare/contrasting the "stoic man with PUSSY on his arm" with Pemulis and his comedic use of the same phrase in the previous section?

Pemulis, Hal, Axford, and the DMZ

• This section, more than any other we've read so far, feels like the plot mechanics grinding into action, finally. How the DMZ subplot will eventually pay off, we'll have to wait to find out.
• Some insight into the Canadianness of it all, with some anti-Canada racism from our characters, plus the aside about Pemulis procuring the DMZ from some "pathetic" "Canadian insurgents" named the Antitoi brothers. We're still waiting on the second half of that Hal/Orin phone convo where Orin asks Hal to explain what the hell is happening in Canada.
• Also briefly touches on what I personally consider one of the important underlying themes of IJ—Schacht's opponent "kind of cornily jumped the net and pumped Schacht's hand." The idea of sincere emotion being labeled as "corny," and maybe how substances are meant to uphold the ironic distance from your emotions as a way to self-protect..... sorry, might be jumping the gun a bit here. Ignore me. I'll bring it up again some time soon.

WALTER: Incredible section. I came here to post this as I'm reading and found your post super comprehensive.

The weight room reminds me of Long Valley Middle School (where I grew up). Public school, but the parallels to ETA feel so apparent. I never felt like I fit in at the weight room... but this section reminds me of characters in the weight room... especially an estranged best friend who was somewhere between Freer, Kornspan and Pemulis. I love how DFW later describes that this "weight room behavior" can be found across so many dimensions of people. It leads well into the next section about facts...

What do you mean by Exotic Facts -> Tattoos? Is this a metaphor to the Madame Psychosis (I'm not sure if I'm associating the tattoo reference correctly and can't find it for some reason) having a tattoo? All of these things are essential psychoses?

During my sobriety year, I went to a pretty famous "Atlantic Group" (AG) meeting... I learned many of these "facts" to actually be paradoxes of "The Program." Basically that facts are paradoxes, which is confusing at first... Until you accept the "THE FACT" that nobody knows anything at all, and we're all trying so hard to control something (OCD-like), but just need to give ourselves to "GOD AS WE UNDERSTAND HIM" to feel some serenity.

I loved the breakdown of "disease" to "dis-ease".... Reminds me of Jim Carey once saying, to the effect, "depression just means that you need some 'deep rest'." Not a perfect breakdown, but pretty good IMO. Any "-ism" is basically not feeling at ease with the subject... Some deep fear/anxiety or shame around oneself.

I totally relate to the analysis paralysis of addictive thinking. This is such corporate speak, and never really resonated with me until now.

Also, the biggest piece of wisdom, but somehow not simplest, is how destructive self-centered thinking can be... I can often point it out in others, but not myself. I often reference Hanlon's Razor when I feel any sense of paranoia. I can feel this paranoia while sober, or not... But without being mindful of this wisdom, the paranoia sets in much harder when I'm drinking/smoking.

One point on wanting: I was once told, during my sobriety year by a guy who had 20+ years, that "if you feel the urge to use, you are already in some sort of trouble and need to seek help." This "help" could be in so many forms:

• call a sponsor (or just talk to someone)
• meditate (or go for a walk or run)
• go to a meeting
• etc... etc...

This is great advice to any newcomer... even if one has lost his/her mind before (in a sober sort of way), but ends up back in self-centered thinking. This feels simply impossible to feel all the time whether you use substances or not and, to me, is the crux of the serenity prayer (as said in meeting rooms): "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Now I'm just rambling in circles... I could keep going! The latency of this shit is awesome.

Cheers.