Here's the Podcast on Apple
or
Spotify so you all can listen!
I speak about Addiction, Writing, Joe the Salamander and the book due in 2023, The Best Of Timothy Gager.
The host, Chris Joseph is a very inspirational dude, who has dodged death, with his "illogical" non-wester medicine cancer treatment. I've had the pleasure to have been published by Chris in the Epiphanies Project and interviewed him myself for the Dire Literary Series.
As defined by the Oxford Dictionay:
Essential-absolutely necessary, extremely important.
Here is a draft of the Table of Contents - which should be close to the end product.
GROUNDED, New poems, 2022
Runway
Purple Robe
Although
I Never Called You Beautiful
Beach Rose
Defining Unnatural,
Non-Scientific Thunder Bolts
Reversing the Rain
Window
at the Oceanic Hotel
Shared
Bathroom at the Oceanic Hotel
The
Holy Orchestrated
365,000 Poems Written About You
A Sonnet First Seen at Walnut
Street Café February 2019
The
People of Star Island
Walk
Until The Legs Go Numb
Denouement
Addictions
At
the Farm in Elkton, Maryland In Memory of Jones Purcell
Dog
On Zoom
COVID
Fears
Deductions
and Ends
The Suicidiversary: Years and A
Day Late
Opposite
Magnetic Poles
Dinner
Party
Streaming
While Napping
Global
Conditions
Seasonal
Fire Effect thoughts on The Bootleg Fire
Thoughts
over the Deluge
Science
Political
Climate
Occupy Forever for Blaine
Hebbel
What
Dante Learned
Introduction
to a Séance at Turning Tables: Delphine
de Girardin for Victor Hugo
The Great Appearing Act
Not
Perfect Does Not Make Practice
Mutualism
In The Obituary of Paul Felopulos
The
Haunted Mile
Vaccination
Extravaganza
It
Happens in Spring
The
Attenuation of Wide Ranges of Thoughts
Somnambulism
Nighthawks
There
Once Was a Harvest
Ode to a Tree Cut Down
Can
I Fly You a Drink? a found poem from an
internet article with internet comments
How
to Be a Werewolf
Family
Silence for Sixty-Two Years
Frosting
On a Barren Field
Inlet
Sunset
We
Are the Ones Left on the Beach For
Natalie
God and You
Tuumaq
Christmas 2019
Never Heard at Home
patents held by charles h. gager and charles
fowler
Father’s
Day/Funeral
Sleep,
My Dear Poets
Jones’
Song
Living
with Rabbits
I
am Alone (Watching Bad Movies during the Pandemic)
after the movie Fathers and Daughters
(Warning Spoiler Alert)
Things I May Say
SECRETS AND COMPARTMENTS, New flash fictions, 2019-2023
Nor’easter
The
Kicker Loses the Game
Late
Night TV Ad, Summer 2020
Rabbit Care
She
Does (Doesn’t) Exist.
The
Training of Staff
It’s
a New Year
After Getting High
Can
Anybody Do Anything?
Encasements,
Compartments, Boxes
The
Resigned Life of a Condo Trustee
The
Drowning Girl
Beautiful Prayers
The
New Coach
The
Tinkerer
The
Strength of a Single Lion (A Political Jaunt)
Airport 20/20
Annual
Cookout-(sung to a nursery rhythm)
The First Four Steps
Walking up a Cliff
Kill the Baby Makers
The
Pillows of Society
Times Square During Lunch Hour
Predators
and Prey
Perfect
Crimes from an Imperfect Man
Ambien
Beatle
The Cost of Love
How
to Stop Birds from Flying Into Windows
Hey,
Benni
I
Saw Hell
The
Off-Season
How
You Met Your Husband
Up
and Atom
Iconic
Folks Talking by a Fire
Working on a Marriage
Why I am Not a Penguin
Her
Hotel
Beloved
Do Us Part
Poke
Becoming Ice
The Retired Poet Bought a Falafel
Truck
Suggestions
for My Ashes
from THE SAME CORNER OF THE BAR
Sitting
drunk on a cooler in my backyard
Arlington
Catholic
A
Do-Dah-Day
The
same corner of the Bar
What
were you doing when the Towers Fell?
Insect
My Heart
the Car
from THIS IS WHERE YOU GO WHEN
YOU ARE GONE
Rabbit Maranville
I've Drunk The Holidays
My Uncle Coming Back from Vietnam with
a Stump
Disowned by most of The Family
Waking up around noon
reply to someone who said my poems are all sad
your personal ground zero for Franz Wright’s writer’s block
from
THESE
POEMS ARE NOT PINK CLOUDS
Hit the road now Jack
Once Upon an Ocean Town
On the way home from Maine,
1970
Summer Job, Concord, Ma.
Somewhere South
my dear god, we are all so small
Night in New York City
The
Things I’d Say
from TREATING A SICK ANIMAL
Mangiare per vivere e non vivere per
mangiare
Hidden Hoboken
Your
Vasectomy Journal
Punchless
Jimmy Collins
The Top of Grace’s Upper Lip
Just
Dessert
The Short Marriage of a Bride and Groom
ESSAY
Experience, Strength,
and Hope
from
ANTI-SOCIAL
NETWORK
When It is Still Winter
at eleven-fifty-nine
ESSAY
A Bit On The Bombing
from
THE SHUTTING DOOR
Walking Out of the Woods
I have mostly Nightmares
The
Shutting Door
Missteps
You Knew Me Before
The
poems at my House
Meeting with Father Vincent
When you live by Yourself
from
CHIEF JAY STRONGBOW IS REAL
Throw Certainty Out in the Air
like a Lasso Reflections on Alton Sterling
Didn’t
see it Before I Stepped in it
Prayer By a Stream
Sobriety
How We Exist
This is where I Am (when
here)
A
Poem For Forever
Unfit
Father
Cross Country Family Vacation
When I Think of my Childhood
Hot Biscuits, Country Ham at The
Loveless Motel
There’s A Fly in My Soup
NOVEL EXCERT from THE THURSDAY APPOINTMENTS OF BILL
SLOAN
Inside the Mind of
Brad’s Therapist
NOVEL
EXCERPT from GRAND SLAMS: A COMING OF EGGS STORY
Kayak
Kenny
from
EVERYDAY
THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT ELEPHANTS
Jack
How Penguins Break
What Are The Reasons They Hang On?
I Look At You Through Glass and Water
Full Moon
If We Don’t Think, We Will Sleep
Everyday There is so Much About
Elephants
from SPREADING
LIKE WILDFLOWERS
Bromley’s
Funeral Home
The
Miracles of Recovery
Still
There Are Boxes
Faith
At
a Cookout for Poets
How
to Unring a Bell
from 2020 POEMS
21
Lines / 2020 / Covid 19
Guesses From a Stable Genius
Kleptoparasitic
Unformed
Relief
reply
to someone who said you should write a poem about her
When
You Have This Connection
Long
Distance Thinking
Ballet
of Surrender
ESSAY
It Sucks Getting Old
NOVEL
EXCERPT from JOE THE SALAMANDER
Adrian’s
Prologue
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| These are my actual chips. They can be yours |
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| This one not mine, but it's pretty fancy |
I also had some medical shit, so there are changes around that too. I'm tired both physically and mentally --- I'm fucking lonely a lot of the time.
Would I like these things to be different? Of course, as they all cycled up and had an effect, but even though it was a challenging year for my sobriety, I made it. Yes, 2022 was an asshole! Relief was hard to find, especially after years of finding it in unhealthy ways.
So, woe is me?
I didn't take a drink or a drug over any of it, nor do I want to because I now have a good life--something I didn't have on November 6, 2010. I have a roof over my head, I have food, I wrote a book in the last year, Joe the Salamander, which I'm proud of--and may have another life in another streaming form. My kids are healthy, my son got engaged, and I took a few trips too. I have a therapist. I have a sponsor. blah-dy-blah-dy-blah
I have a lot of gratitude for my life. I hope the next year is better, but if it's not, I have 365 days until I post about 13 years, because there is no guarantee that I can go even one day if I decide that my solution to stress, anxiety, a dick of a year can be found in some Johnny Walker Black.
Here is my progression (in metaphor) of my drinking:
It all used to work--even when I was still using the way I did in college years later. (Sign Post: If you are 10-15 years out of college and are still drinking the same way or worse, it might indicate something).
1) It's still working: I go out wearing a coat, bringing my keys and letting myself back in.
2) I think it's still working: I go out sometimes wearing a coat, sometimes losing my keys, and have to bother people to open the door at the end of the night.
3) It's not working and I don't give a fuck about anyone else: I go out never wearing a coat, and now it's freezing, always losing my keys and banging on the door, sometimes for a long time and people are tired of letting me in.
4) It's not working and I cannot stop doing it while not giving a fuck about anything: I go out, no coat and it's below freezing, no keys and people are no longer there at the house to let me in. I find it to be ok sleeping outside on the porch, after all, I deserve it.
Twelve years ago, on November 6, I decided against the next number. Number 5
5.) Hospitalization from frostbite or death by hypothermia. No coat, no keys, no people, and this strange feeling of warmth...all I have to do is close my eyes.
Finally, I had Hope. There is some hope for anyone who could use some There are people out there, many needing help. Some of them I care about, and I've been saving a seat right next to me. Besides saving seats, my people all are willing to help. I heard a story from a friend who knew someone struggling and they couldn't believe I would be willing to point them in the right direction. But it's not only me. There are thousands of us out there willing to help, so if things are getting out of control, please find someone you know who knows what to do---and if you don't know what to do, reach out to me, I'm available unconditionally.
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| \This one is not me, but note the faint resemblance |
Recently a woman in my
writing group said, “You guys are the absolute joy in my life,” which got me
thinking. Certainly, she has had other greatest joys in her life, and I
understand the hyperbole, but it made me consider the joy, in general, found in
life.
Through personal experience joy is often found
avoidance. It is the avoidance of the day-to-day redundancy, where we must seek
endorphins to get through it. Not that
all avoidances are bad, but some are. Alcoholics and drug addicts come into the
destructive aspects of this avoidance, while non-problem drinkers, thrill
seekers, meditators and nature lovers do not. There is joy found in books,
streaming shows, relationships, growth/self-improvement and in travel.
Sometimes joy is captured in just being a part of, or making yourself a part of
a larger group.
We have to be a part of. Endorphins thrive on it. There is an interesting phenomenon here in Massachusetts every October. It is people traveling to Salem for Halloween season from all over the state, and country. The town even has a clever moniker, “Witch City,” and hell if that doesn’t sound like a theme park. Actually, it is kind of a theme park because people flock there in October as if it’s Disney World. An estimated 100,000 people travel daily to this small town to mingle around, wear costumes, or witch’s hats, to take in everything spooky or surreal. The town embraces this, because as we know, tourism equals money. We also know the true meaning behind Halloween has nothing to do with candy, just as the true meaning of events and witches in Salem has nothing to do with black hats, getting drunk and dressing up like Beetle Juice. Salem, though, certainly embraces this heritage with witchcraft shops, live mascots, which cross over to the High School and even the Police Department.
So back to endorphins and Joy-Avoidance. Romantic relationships fit the bill of avoiding boring day-to-day life as well. Seems like many of us can’t sit on our own for one damn second without being having to be in one—as they complete us, right? We are either a part of or not a part of, good, or bad, when society measures us based on this one choice. Make the choice to be in a relationship and then only showing the joy of it in social media, then others can see what a good choice you’ve made. ‘Showing’ being the key word in that sentence..
Now
back to the Joy, the one with the capital “J”.
Like the phrase, "Find Your Joy," JOY
is in the eye of the beholder. Life offers choices and outcomes. It
certainly relates to how people find joy in spirituality and organized
religion. I’ve heard people say they speak to God, personify Him and speak of
Him being their best friend. I’ve heard others talk about leaving their bodies
during Transcendental Meditation, while in other sects, it is the care for the
living Earth as central to the lives of all people.
You have the right to choose who you want to be
and what to belong to, and also who are the ones that make you feel a part of.
Spirituality often indicates growth and inner-peace but it is also a wonderful,
often fulfilling avoidance, again from the boring and even troubling aspects of
our society. We reach for all of these Joy-Avoidances because both Joy and
Avoidance are holding one another’s hand.
Without Joy-Avoidance it’s difficult to deal with what are we are
actually left with, which is this thing we call life.
I
guess this is a little awkward to announce publically that I have a bad
heart. Anything announced publically on social media can be awkward
though, but the point of this is more about my Health Care than it is about
my personal medical issues.
Let's go
back in time in my medical history, shall we? In 2020 I had a physical which revealed some high cholesterol
numbers. My doctor said that in the next ten years I would have a 10% chance of either
a heart attack or a stroke. I didn't like those numbers. Medication was
suggested, but I'm anti-medicine which might be prescribed indefinitely. So I
decided to change my diet and do some other things. I even began to run---and was all in with it. My numbers
went down in 2021 and by late 2021 I advocated for a follow-up lipid panel and
the numbers were still good--up a little, but still good.
Fast
forward to 2022. What had happened since my last physical was that my insurer, Harvard Pilgrim
(part of Atrius Healt) was overtaken by a for profit company. When I scheduled my
physical there was only one blood test, for my PSA level, but none for my
cholestrol. In fact, there were no other blood tests. When I asked for
the lipid panel, I was told that it wasn't due until 2026.
What? What? What??
Did they not want to pay? Probably.
I asked how could that possibly be---cholestrol was something I was monitoring, which I was so freely being prescribed a medication for just two years earlier---because of the 10% of something bad which could happen. I called the office, and advocated for the test and being in charge of my own health to the person at the doctor's office, who promptly hung up on me.
Finally, they "allowed" me to have a blood test, and the numbers were up---not alarmingly so, but up still. I had relapsed a little in my diet in the past year, mostly because of my running, I figured I could treat myself to some shit again. When the Nurse Practitioner informed me of my 2022 levels (certainly not my doctor because I saw her at the initial screening three years ago, and not since) she said that I could get a Calcium CT to see if there were blockages or plaque built up in my arteries. Totally optional, and I would have to pay out of pocket. I almost didn't, but thought, what the hell, why not go in there and have piece of mind. I was fully expecting to have a pretty clean scan, but unfortunately it wasn't. The Agatston calcium score, in order to be considered SEVERE was 100-300. Mine was 656. I was of HIGH RISK FOR HEART ATTACK. I got a call an hour after the scan, not a good sign, and immediately was prescribed Rosuvastatin, which I immediately filled.
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NEWS FLASH: If I hadn't pushed so hard for the lipid panel, then decided on the optional Calcium CT, I probably would have had a heart attack before my next physical. Self-service medicine for the win.
But then there was a silence from my medical
provider, and I had to email them the next day and ask if there was a plan to
refer to a Cardiologist. As I have learned, I wasn't about to wait, so I spoke
to a friend*, who recommended a Cardiologist covered by my insurer. and I did
all the legwork calling Harvard Pilgrim at the Corporate Level and the office
of the new Cardiologist---and I got an immediate appointment. Meanwhile while
this was going on, there was no response from my GP's office. When they did
respond in late afternoon they said,
"I could refer you to Cardiology, but they would not treat you differently, so there's no need for that"
Being denied a second treatment opinion and also the chance to talk about my medical issues with a Cardiac Specialist was extremely baffling---and angering.
Did they not want to pay? Probably.
Now all this negarive buzz in the past 6 or so years about "Evil" Socialism and medicine is such horse shit. I don't know anyone that would be against good treatment, scanning/testing for everything at a decent cost. But you know, GO USA, and GO Capitalism....the economic system we wave the flag at because it's good for all--it's apple pie///GO USA---Ha!
So what about Capitalistic
Medicine? Here's the secret held tight by money grubbing corporations: It leads to cost saving, and bad health care by making the patient
advocate for themselves at every point along the way, so you'd better know your
shit about treatments in general. In addition, we all be trained to trust the medical profession at face value, but it's really money over care of people, again and again.
In
December I'm having a colonoscopy, so I'm thinking how the health care system is going to want me to bend over.
*A little bit about
friends and action plans. I belong to a fellowship called Alcholics Annoymous
which encourages us to share our problems, which often I do. I didn't raise my
hand and tell the full group, but I told one of my good and trusted friends--a
person I decompress with after my Sunday meeting, nearly every week. She got it
immediately and knew what I needed. My old drinking buddies would have either
met me at a bar, or done something to avoid the subject, like drinking, for
example. I am so lucky to have friends who understand what we need and are
ready to go straight to an action plan.
