Eating a tuna fish sandwich and drinking Perrier in Bryant Park at one in the afternoon. I bought my lunch at the same health food store at 40th and 6th where I used to buy my yogurt and Brazil nuts– how many years ago? Now I am 30 and sober and still writing in my black book in Bryant Park. The precarious hold I have on manageability seems bolstered these days by the attention I maintain to those small matters of pleasure– treating myself to lunch in the park, stopping by OTB to make a $2 bet on a horse with ridiculous odds whose name I like, browsing through the stalls of discount books set up for the summer in the park, buying a new pen. Minor joys that distract me from obsessing about the aggravations, the pain, the confusion of my new sobriety. A thousand times a day, triggered by a thousand different reasons, the pounding inner urging begins: drink, drink, drink. This business of living sober is totally new to me, and the emotions and feelings I am experiencing a swell and surge through my days like tidal waves threatening to destroy me. I know this is all an expected part in recovery, and that time will heal and change. For now, I need to avidly grasp any method, any device that helps me to face life, one day at a time, sober. That is why I have started this new journal.