My coat

I have an extraordinary coat: a full-length Harris Tweed overcoat. I picked this up free at the VA clothing room back in 1993, during my months there to depollute and revitalize by rapidly fading body. There were only two of us hanging around the clothing room at that time who were big enough for it, and I found it first. I've treasured it ever since. Came to mind because I wore it today, the weather a tad chilly.

My six months incarcerated in the VA were damn good months. There were a few relatively painless classes I was required to attend. I had to work but had a great job in the medical library, where I was able to educate myself about all kinds of things (relating to alcohol) not being told to me by the hospital staff, which unfortunately has been politicized throughout the U.S. I read up on the European point of view and walked out a wiser man. It's astounding, and disgusting, how much information is kept from clients by their various American institutions. I was even slipped a book at the VA by a counselor who said if I was caught with it, he would deny giving it to me! How's them apples for the pursuit of truth and health? The institutions in this country are run by lobbyists, and they only want you to know what they want you to know.

So I spent many hours a week in the VA medical library, feeling like I was reading banned books. It was wonderful.

The location of this facility in Vancouver, Washington, was rustic, atop a hill overlooking the Columbia River. I felt like I was on a long vacation. As an added benefit, I had a nice check waiting for me at the end of this ride because a hyperdrama of mine was being resurrected and my contract for same was excellent (the producers didn't realize they had royalties to pay, dumb shits, but they continued once I clued them in. They still made money.)

There were a lot of sad cases in the VA, mostly Vietnam vets. Man, that war, and this one too I'm sure, messed with a lot of troops, mentally as well as physically. The way we treat vets is one of the great shames of our government.

I had my laptop with me and got a lot of writing done while there.

A big treat was to go out in the afternoon and walk to Burger King and get a Whooper. Several of us did that about once a week. When you are incarcerateed somewhere, it's always a blessing to get a change of scenery.

If it hadn't been for the VA, I'm sure I'd have left the game years ago. I was lucky because in two years after I took advantage of them, their budget got decimated and the particular in-patient program I was in was dropped. I don't think I'd have made it on an out-patient program. I needed to be locked up to break old habits.

So here I am, still alive and kicking, and writing better than ever if you ask me (though damn few people around here are hip to this, the folks who still remember me for work in the 80s -- but at least I haven't been asked "are you still writing?" in several months now), so the VA is in my debt. All it needs is money to do its job right. And it's always getting its budget cut. Ah, me.