On the fifth of this month, in a post called “The Old Indian’s Cane,” I wrote about residues of a former mortality. We’ll consider this an addendum that broadens the residual range.

I’ve mentioned the credit card debt that’s leftover, but I also owe a woman whom I respect and who has done a lot for me both an explanation and an apology for performing poorly in and eventually leaving a job she went to bat for me to get and fought for me to keep. That might be the thing I feel worse about. The other night I had a nightmare (one of many these days) that I was going over to visit her at her house. I was in New York and close by. But I wasn’t ready to face the music. The dream was about that trepidation along the way. I was walking over. I was wracking my brain. I was sweating. To the extent that dreams landscape and tread through the stresses, fears and worries of the day, this one’s right on. I sense more humbling on the horizon and I’m in no hurry to arrive. Maybe it’s an avoidance tactic, a cowarding away from taking full and culpable responsibility, but I’d like time to heal and put some distance between us and my wounding actions. (For the record, I don’t think I did any major damage to the small firm she was a partner, but the whole thing was probably an embarrassment and more certainly did damage to her trust and estimation of me. Maybe it’s vain—perhaps counterproductively so#8212;but I’d like to have that dreaded conversation not only after the dust is well settled but after I’ve fixed myself up and accomplished a thing or two to be proud of, so that I can also convey a message to the effect of “hey, look, I’m past all that now. I’m doing well. You weren’t wrong about me, that was just a bad time, and in a funny way brought me where I am now, which is a place I may not have been able to get to any other way.

Other lingering detritus is more amusing, if anything. Take the item that fell out of my sleeve the other day. The torn corner of a baggie. It wasn’t no Ziplock, I’ll tell you that. It has the unmistakable size, configuration, and ragged-edge of a used up crack bagette [sic]. But it’s weird, that popping up and falling out after so long. I had stuck pretty faithfully to the grey pullover I’d bought for a dollar at a thrift store the morning I was riding my bike around Garden City after leaving the coat that one Mexican friend gave me at the house of some other Mexican friends. So, maybe when I pulled the folded-up red sweater out of the drawer it was the first time I’d done so in Arizona. But the sweater had been laundered since I’d last been naughty in it. And packed. And flown cross country. And unpacked. And so on. Who knows where that little plasticity had clung to, I didn’t see it come out, but shortly after donning the red sweater (that Joe had given me#8212;I’m a welfare case even for my poor and illegal friends) I found the thing lying face-up on the floor. Well, if there’s a lesson here#8212;not a home ec lesson but a drug lesson#8212;I’d say it’s that past actions come back to haunt us, long after we think we’re free of them, and when and where we may least expect them, and therefore, us recovering addicts, must be prepared and vigilant. Here’s to prepared vigilance and vigilant preparedness.