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Memory suggests this picture was taken in the fall of 1984. All I can say for certain is, the picture was taken sometime shortly after I had acknowledged that I was an alcoholic. The date I've written down for that momentous date is Sept. 22, 1984.

This picture has a companion, posted at Jonah 365. That picture was taken yesterday, Saturday, March 10, 2007.

I remember I had gone to visit Andrea. I think it was Andrea. I know her husband who took this picture, but it seems like they were divorced by the time this was taken.

I'm going to remember the details after 20 years?

Actually, the picture was taken at Andrea's mother's house. It was on the west side of Norman. The good side of town.

I look happy. Compare it to the picture I took Saturday, I which I look very serious. I tend to look serious when I'm posing for myself. I'm focused on beating the timer to my chair. I'm focused on being posed just so before the camera triggers. So, the seriousness you see in that new picture may be misleading.

That's all I'm saying.

I don't remember the details of this day, but I remember feelings of the time. I was wound up. Tight as a cheap watch. I was wired for sound, as I like to say. Not that I needed a drink, per se, but I did have to reassess my identity as a person who did not drink.

And Larry asked me if he could take my picture. At the time, I didn't like to have my picture taken. So, I was nervous about that, too.

That's not necessarily happiness you see. I think it's a nervous smile.

I think I'm better centered now. I am walking a contented road. I walk the beauty path.

Not counting communion wine and the occasional O'Doule's, I haven't had a drink since that Sept in 1984. Not bragging. I have other bad habits; the difference being the other bad habits are not self-destructive.

I walk a sober path. Yet I also dance. I dance for sorrow, cry for joy. I breath cleansing air.

I know about resurrection. It's not much. Can't brag about that, either. I wasn't near death. I wasn't sticking needles in my arms. I had long before quit speed, and had stopped dropping acid. I hadn't smoked "wacky tobaccy" in a long, long time.

I drank to get drunk, is all. Even when I swore it would be only one, it turned into five. I passed out at parties. Nan still remembers the evening I wrapped around the large wooden spool - the kind used for heavy cables, then as post-hippie furniture - and feel asleep. Well, I was tired; the party was boring; I went to sleep.

I didn't die. I had a job that got the rent in on time. I had a room full of books and records. I had friends, and I had the proper proportion of spiritual hunger.

The last time I drank was at a church function. The college group at church. It was cheap box wine. I didn't get drunk. I didn't act inappropriately. I only had the one plastic faux stem-ware glass. I may not have even finished it.

Thing is, I had promised myself I wouldn't drink that night. I didn't even care for cheap box wine. May have been a sweet wine, which I don't like. But I still drank. I can't remember why.

Somehow, all it took to convince me I had a problem was an unfinished glass of cheap wine.

Yes, I didn't die. But I can truthfully divide my life into "before" and "after". But, isn't that a kind of resurrection. Can I say, as John Newton once did, "I once was lost, but now I'm found"?

Yes, I can. The path on this side of before/after is the better path. It is the healthier path.