It used to be what I did to myself every day. Plied myself with daily waters...yesterday however, was not one of those days. In fact, it has been a very long time since I had a daily waters kind of day, blessedly!
However, yesterday I made a pitstop in a little town in the Northern Territory called Daly Waters. An iconic little town that has seen quite a lot of action in its time. Knife fights, sex in the bathrooms, bar fights, and I am pretty sure there was at least one murder. Maybe two...
There is not a surface of the bar that is not covered with one of the following: money, photos, bras, underwear or hats. They are stapled to the walls like some sort of planted flag distinguishing some new found land or species or something. “I WAS HERE!” Screams from every surface. Ironic that is the message when most of the people who posted up an undergarment, money or photo were likely completely, totally out of their minds at the time they did it. They were yelling how “here” they were when they were totally not “there” at all.
So weird to be in a place like that when I am on this journey edging ever closer to my 30 year sobriety birthday. 30 years ago I would have LOVED a place like Daly Waters Pub. I would have reveled in the miscreants, the debauchery, the heady intoxication that comes from a free pass to do, well, whatever the fuck I wanted to do! I know for a fact that my bra and underwear would reside somewhere prominent in that establishment.
Today, my daily water is actually just water. Such a long time since I have imbibed anything that promises me the world while subtly and slowly ruins my life...
Daly Waters is a testament, a sanctuary if you will, of what we all seek release from...the chores of just living this life. It is a temple to the release from care, from boredom, from loss and sadness, from disconnectedness, towards fellowship, connection and a good time. So many of us get lost on that long dirt road to panaceas that appear like mirages on the horizons of our lives. And it is through alcohol soaked lenses that we begin to view life as more meaningful with a glass in hand all while we ruin ourselves and all we hold dear in the process.
This is surely not everyone. There are people, so I am told, that can take it or leave it. But I don’t know these people, I have never run in their circles. (This isn’t completely true, I do know a few of you enigmas). I have mostly chosen the downtrodden sops that thrive in places such as Daly Waters where anything goes and that is the way we like it. Once upon a time I would have moved to a place like Daly Waters, set up camp and lived the rest of my days there, drinking myself into oblivion.
It was different yesterday. Like I stepped into some sort bizarre alternative universe/time capsule to my life. What my life could have been like...what my life would have been like had I not stopped when I did.
I didn’t walk in judgment of them or their choices, or of me and mine. Mostly I walked with bemusement for the follies that alcohol produces and the kind of treachery I avoided by abstaining for so long.
Daly Waters was epic. I loved each and every inch of it. And, at the very same time, I was grateful it was only a pitstop in my life, instead of the place I call home.
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