A Dude Called Eric

Resent:  To express displeasure or indignation at.

There's technique that implies if an individual prays every day for two weeks for the health, well-being, and peace of mind of some asshole who desperately needs to be throttled to within an inch of his life then that resentment will begin to melt away.  I guess.  Whatever.  Never tried it, personally, being addicted to wallowing in a comfortable state of smug self-importance and knowing superiority.  I guess I should try it on this guy in my meeting, Eric, who I'll call "Eric" in an attempt to safeguard his anonymity, even though this cretin would never read my blog, incapable as he must be in parsing out the subtle wit and deep insight found here.

Seriously, it is the weirdest thing how much this kind of repetitive prayer can accomplish.  I've been including my mama, papa, and old sponsor in a prayer of release for a few months, and I've found a nice sense of release.  I can think about them, remember them, without drifting into a state of mind that makes me sad or remorseful.  I've been adding kind words about The Old City and about some of my friends there, too, thanking them for the big part they played in my life and wishing them the best of luck, with the result that I can look back comfortably on all of it, without an aggrieved sense of loss or resentment.

I'm trying to figure out where to go next with my praying.  I don't have a big prayer life.  It's not the way I get my spirituality to grow most of the time - not to be ignored but not to be obsessed over, either.  My lovely wife has pointed out that if she prays the same prayer for too long then she stops thinking about the prayer and just begins to recite words without thinking about them.

Maybe Eric.  Maybe Eric would be a nice addition.

Trudge The Happy Road To Destiny

Trudge:  To walk wearily, with heavy, slow steps.

Trudge: The slow, weary, depressing yet determined walk of a man who has nothing left in his life except the impulse to simply soldier on." 
(Chaucer, "A Knight's Tale")

I want what I want and I don't want what I don't want.  Everything should go my way.  Everything should go according to plan.  Learning should be a painless experience.  I want to grow magically - I don't want to grow as the result of having successfully navigated some uncomfortable growth experience.  AFGO - Another Fucking Growth Opportunity.  I do indeed know the future.  I do indeed know what's best for everyone.  If y'all just did what I wanted you to do then everyone would be happy.  If I could just set the scene and have everyone follow my direction then life would move along smoothly.

Sometimes I have to keep moving forward and know that everything is going to work out in the long run.  I don't expect anyone to solve my riddles or answer my questions or explain things away.  Sometimes I have to lower my head and keep trudging forward, into the rain, into a strong headwind.

Two recovering alcoholics attend a funeral of an old college classmate.  They pay their respects to the man's wife and inquire as to the cause of his death.

"It was the drink," she said.  "Alcohol.  Alcohol killed him."

"Oh, that's terrible," one of the men said.  "Did he ever try AA?"

She shook her head.

"Oh, no," she replied firmly.  "He never got that bad."

I feel ya, sister.

The Ship of Expectations

Dentist:  (Wikipedia) - a medical professional who is concerned with the study, diagnosis, and                         treatment of conditions of the teeth and the oral cavity.
                (Urban Dictionary) - A rich chap that sticks needles in your gums, wrenches around all                   your teeth, drills holes in your teeth, and bruises your face to fuck. Then he charges you                 loads of money. 

So finally - after six plus years - I go to a local dentist here in Vacation City.  There are four main professionals that are going to be important in your life - M.D., eye doctor, dentist, and car mechanic, with the car guy being, by far the most important.  Any hack with an off-shore medical degree can diagnose cancer but you can only trust someone with a great deal of integrity to take care of your car.  One of the great traumas about moving is replacing men and women in these four categories, especially if you've got good relationships in your previous location.  I continued to coordinate trips back to The Old City with trips to my dentist because I'm more suspicious of dentists than anyone else.  If I break my arm or get a rash in my groin I can see the shit - inside the mouth, not so much.  This is the great ace in the hole for dentists - you cannot see what they're doing in there so unless you're wracked with obvious dental pain you're pretty much at their mercy.

I have been blessed with a remarkable physical plant.  I don't have any major diseases, conditions, syndromes, or large unnamed growths on any of my internal organs, but my mouth has been problematic, despite rigorous brushing and flossing and rinsing.  I've had a good four year run without any mouth work so I wasn't too surprised when I got a whole shitload of bad news when I saw this guy.

Generally, I don't trust anyone who isn't giving me candy or money so my immediate reaction is to assume that I'm being SCREWED!  Some guy that I don't know from Adam looks in my mouth and finds a bunch of stuff that needs to be fixed, and it's going to be expensive.  What am I going to say?  I disagree - that's not a cavity, you crook?  God forbid I trust someone to do what's in my best interest.  I'd prefer to prescribe shadowy, mercenary motives to their actions.  

"Boy, Mr. Seaweed, you have a bad Johnson Rod in your right lateral bicuspid."  I may indeed.  Who's to know?  I considered becoming a dentist just so I could dispute any bad news that my dentist might give me.  I'd be the dentist looking in the mirror and fixing my own cavities so that I wouldn't have to pay a money-grubbing dentist any money.

So my first appointment is to fix a cavity.  Fair enough, until the guy adds the disclaimer that it may require a Root Canal but he won't know until he starts the work a few days hence.  This gives me some time to assume the worst, to project terrible outcomes.  Root Canal.  Root Canal.  Rooooooooooot Canal.  When I'm afraid of bad news I start repeating a simple prayer that, in this case, sounded something like this: "Dear Jeebus, I'd rather just have a cavity here and not a root canal, but I'll be okay with whatever shakes out."  This way I get to pray for what I want while pretending to turn all of my roots and canals over to his or her care, an action I am definitely not doing.

I add to the mix of discomfort by noticing some weird feelings in the one other tooth that also needs work that may lead to a Root Canal.  I run my tongue over this area repeatedly to see if I can make the symptoms worse, thus justifying additional fear.

I ruin a few days before righting the Ship of Expectations - sometimes the prayers don't take right away.  Finally, the day of my appointment arrives and the dentist doesn't find root problems. I'm happy - because I got what I wanted - and I'm mortified - because I wasted a few of my rapidly dwindling days worrying about something that didn't come to pass.  Let's also point out that almost everything I worry about doesn't come to pass.

But then the guy kind of intimates that while everything went well if I notice any symptoms then we'll come up with a revised plan of action, thereby ruining everything.  Why did he have to say this?  He totally re-opened the door to Bad Expectations.  He made me worry about a Root Canal, didn't find any root problems, then left the Root Canal door open a teeny weeny bit.  "What's the matter with you?" I wanted to shriek.   "Slam the fucking door!"

After the Novocaine wears off - and Novocaine is way, way up there on my Gratitude List - my teeth and gums sort of hurt.  I assume this is a delayed reaction to whatever problem is going to lead to a Root Canal except now it's going to be an emergency, after-hours, weekend Root Canal.  I'm vaguely aware that most people would chalk some discomfort up to the fact that I had a guy digging around in my sensitive oral mucous membranes with stainless steel needles, but I'm definitely not most people.

Compounding my fear is that I notice if I blow on the affected area or chew some hard seeds or nuts on that side of my mouth or drink freezing, icy drinks, or sip scalding hot coffee - boiling hot - then the pain is worse.  I also assume this is a sign of the emergency Root Canal.  I wander around in public sucking air in and out over my front teeth like some kind of deranged animal.  I must look like a mountain ape protecting my territory from a rival.  I look like I'm getting ready to attack, to blow.

On day two all sensitivity is gone.  Also, in a humorous turn, the second tooth that may need a Root Canal is on the opposite side of my face from where I was probing with my tongue.  I'm guessing that any pain or sensitivity in that area came from irritating the gums by repeatedly probing the area with my tongue.

And I wonder why I drank.

P.S.: Root Canal would be an excellent name for a rock band.
P.S.S.: I bought a T-shirt that says simply: Root Canal.  Really.  Urban Dictionary allows you to put whatever phrase or word you want on a shirt and they'll print it up for you.

I Garr-un-tee

Guarantee:  Anything that assures a certain outcome.

There was a woman at the meeting today who took a four year chip.  She had a little entourage show up to support this milestone - her dad, two sons, and the woman who was her sponsor when she was getting started.  It's always great to see examples of what can happen when we stop drinking and drugging - for most of us the rewards that we reap are huge.  It's amazing how family life improves when we quit drinking.  I will add legal life, financial life, and work life to that category along with almost every other kind of life that doesn't have "vomit" in the title.  Vomiting goes way, way down.

It's also important for me to realize that in my life these things that I'm sure are bound to happen don't always absolutely happen.  They aren't guaranteed.  They're likely but not certain.  And that's OK.  Most but not all family relationships improve.  Those of us who have been fired stay fired.

Porsches on the Inter-Web

Aparigraha - Abstention from greed.  Not coveting that which is not ours.  Avoidance of unnecessary acquisition of objects not essential to maintaining life or spiritual study.

I heard someone in a meeting once explain the difference between needs and wants.  Needs are food and water and a dry, warm place to sleep.  Everything else is a want.  I like simple explanations.

Maybe I should stop looking at pictures of Porsches on the InterWeb.

The word parigrah means ‘to amass’, ‘to crave’, ‘to seek’, ‘to seize’, and ‘to receive or accept’ material possessions or gifts from others.  The word also includes the idea of doing good with the expectation of benefit or reward, not just for the sake of merely doing good.  Parigraha includes the results as well as the intent; in other words, it means the attitudes of craving, possessiveness, and hoarding, but also the things that have been acquired because of those attitudes.  The virtue of aparigraha means taking what is truly necessary and no more.

Always be yourself.  Unless you can be a unicorn.  Then always be a unicorn.

Non-possessiveness.

Let Go or Be Dragged.  Letting go is not the same as giving up.

Ain't It Grand the Wind Stopped Blowin'?

On Monday morning the group leader reads a passage out of our text that we then use as a basis for our discussion.  Hard to have a bad meeting when we're reading out of the literature.  Unfortunately, as a general rule, if you want to suppress attendance at a meeting then read out of the literature.  It's a lot easier picking a topic that focuses on a problem to bitch about than to study the solutions that usually require us to do some distasteful work.

Anyway, here's what came out today:

"We feel a man is unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough.  He is like the farmer who came up out of his cyclone cellar to find his home ruined.  To his wife, he remarked, "Don't see anything the matter here, Ma.  Ain't it grand the wind stopped blowin'?"

My sponsor used to say that if you sober up a drunken horse thief then you're left with a horse thief.

Ultimately, of course, everything revolves around staying clean and sober.   What follows, of course, is the suggestion that the whole rest of the deal is to lead, to the best of our ability, a spiritual life based on the 12 Steps.  I was a drunk asshole when I came into The Fellowship - all I did initially was subtract the "drunk" part.  You can diagram the sentence to see what was left. 

And Now About Sex

And then there's Brahmacarya.  Sexual responsibility.  Regarding others as human beings rather than as male and female bodies.  The spirit of this precept is conservation of energy for the purpose of spiritual practice.  This includes not only sexual restraint, but protecting our energy for instance by avoiding endless chattering with no clear purpose.

In ancient and medieval era Indian texts, the term brahmacharya is a concept with a more complex meaning indicating an overall lifestyle conducive to the pursuit of sacred knowledge and spiritual liberation.  Brahmacharya is a means, not an end. It usually includes cleanliness, ahimsa, simple living, studies, meditation, and voluntary restraints on certain foods, intoxicants, and behaviors (including sexual behavior).

As you might imagine there is more stuff written about the yama concerned with sexual behaviors than all of the other precepts combined.  Screw around with someone's ability to screw around and all hell breaks loose.  On the other hand there seems to be a huge effort to find meaning in this yama that goes behind simple sexual behavior.  I guess if you're messing with sex you better have a lot of stuff in your cannon or nobody is going to listen.

Not Stealing

Numero Tres:

Asteya: Non-stealing.  Not taking that which is not given.

Asteya is defined in Hindu scripts as "the abstinence, in one's deeds or words or thoughts, from unauthorized appropriation of things of value from another human being."

Asteya in practice implies to "not steal," "not cheat," nor unethically manipulate other's property or others for one's own gain.  Asteya as virtue demands that not only one "not steal" through one's action, one shouldn't want to encourage cheating through speech or writing, or want to cheat even in one's thinking.  The virtue of asteya arises out of the understanding that all misappropriation is an expression of craving and a feeling of lack of compassion for other beings. To steal or want to steal expresses lack of faith in oneself, one's ability to learn and create property.  To steal another's property is also stealing from one's own potential ability to develop.

Misappropriation: The wrongful, fraudulent, or corrupt use of other's funds in one's care.

These damn Hindus can sure complicate a simple vice.  I thought that because I don't steal - I don't usually steal often - that I had everything under control.  It's interesting to think about how stealing shows a lack of faith in one's own ability.  It's also interesting to ponder that stealing shows a lack of concern for others.  It's a lot less interesting to consider that "wanting" to steal is not so good.  I want to steal a lot of shit.  I'd rather it all be mine instead of someone else's.  

The Sounds of Seaweed Silence

Opinion:  A belief a person has formed about a topic or issue.
Advice:  An opinion recommended or offered, as worthy to be followed.
(Ed. Note:  Do you see the word "fact" anywhere in those two definitions?  You do not.)

Nobody wants my opinion.  Even when someone asks me for my opinion - when they say: "What is your opinion about what I should do here?" - they still don't want my opinion.  If someone is sitting across from me, clearly articulating a ridiculous view of life and how it should be competently navigated, an plan so likely to fail immediately that an idiot like me can shoot a billion holes in it with a gun that doesn't have a trigger or any bullets, THEY DO NOT WANT MY OPINION.

I have no idea why this is so hard for me to retain, although I am better at keeping my opinions to my self.  Most of the time people just want to talk things out, to hear their own voice lay down a plan.  Now, of course, I'm not talking about someone detailing a scheme to rob a local bank - a discussion that would elicit an immediate response from me - rather someone kicking around a few perfectly reasonable options.  Today I try to listen.  I try to ask questions that may help to open up different avenues of consideration.  

Today I try to keep my fucking mouth shut.

There Ain't No Way to Hide Your Lyin' Eyes

On to the second "don't do this. . . . "

Satya:  Truthfulness.  Note that sometimes we may know our words are literally true, but do not convey what we know to be truthful.  This is a child's game.  Satya means not intending to deceive others in our thoughts, as well as our words and actions.

Truth is sought, praised in the hymns of Upanishads, held as one that ultimately, always prevails. The Mundaka Upanishad, for example, states:

Translation 1: Truth alone triumphs, not falsehood.
Translation 2: Truth ultimately triumphs, not falsehood.
Translation 3: The true prevails, not the untrue.

I like the phrase: "This is a child's game."  I was sober for a long, long time before I came to grasp the concept that lying means that you are leading someone to believe something that is untrue.  I really thought it was about the words I used.  I took great pride in my ability to torture the shit out of the English language until I lied without using the actual lying words.  I was also good at letting believe something that was a lie because I remained silent instead of contradicting the lie.  Same result: person believed that which was untrue.

I have no idea what it means to deceive another with my thoughts.  I'll have to ponder that one.

True:  Conforming to the actual state of reality or fact; factually correct.
Lie:  To give false information intentionally.
Fact: Something actual instead of invented; something which is real.

Those are all excellent definitions.

Don't Do These

I was raised in The West and I was raised in a Western spiritual tradition.  This is all well and good, and I still consider myself predominately Western in my beliefs.  I think it's hard to tease out years and years of inculcation.  That being said I enjoy traveling and seeing how other people go about things and studying these other cultures, and I've learned a lot about spirituality by doing this; in fact, there are some areas where the precepts are, in my opinion, an upgrade from what I have been doing.

In Buddhism and yoga thought there exists the concepts of Yama and Niyama or "don't do these" and "do these."  I've been thinking about these.  How about a little tour, starting with the "don't do these-ses."

Ahisma

Non-violence.  Not harming other people or other sentient beings.  Not harming oneself.  Not harming the environment.  Tolerance even for that which we dislike.  Not speaking that which, even though truthful, would injure others.

Ahimsa's precept of 'cause no injury' includes one's deeds, words, and thoughts

Ahimsa is inspired by the premise that all living beings have the spark of the divine spiritual energy; therefore, to hurt another being is to hurt oneself.  Ahimsa has also been related to the notion that any violence has karmic consequences.

Most of these ideas start out so gently and then get tougher and tougher.  I find myself thinking: "I never do that.  I almost never do that.  OK, I'm working on that one.  Are you kidding me - everyone does that."  And on and on it goes.  It's one thing to quit taking a swing at a stranger who's pissed me off in a bar; another altogether to practice tolerance for people I don't like.

Not All Prayers Are To My Liking

There's a guy at my morning meeting who is a real horse's ass.  Please note I didn't say I think he's a horse's ass - he really is a horse's ass, and he's been sober for ever, proving that long-term sobriety is no panacea for being a jerk.  He took a 40 year chip yesterday and spent five minutes talking about paying for sex early on - and not in a remorseful way, either.  Gleeful pride is more what comes to mind.

Anyway, being an intolerant son-of-a-bitch, especially when I'm dealing with clearly objectionable human beings, I make an effort to not let my judgment of others turn into a resentment.

Someone sent this to me once:

Prayer for Relief from Resentment

I release you from my hurt feelings.
I free you from my reading of your motives.
I withdraw my justified outrage, 
And I leave you clean and happy in my mind.

In place of censure, I offer you
All of God's Peace and Contentment.
I choose to perceive you singing,
With a soft smile of freedom, 
And a rich glow of satisfaction.

I bless you.

You are a shining member of the Family of God,,
And I will wait patiently until this Truthful Vision
Becomes a firm part of my Reality.

I pray God bless you with all of the Good Things in Life
That I want for myself:
Sanity, Sobriety, Good Health, Prosperity, and Peace of Mind, 
For I know that if we had those things, there would be no problems between us.

All things are healed between us, now and forever.

All things are healed in me, now and forever.

Amen.

Yeah, I don't get it, either.  What's with all of the capitalization?  Good Health does not serve as a metaphor for anything but good health.  You can lose the capitals.  And I'm going to imagine some racist, misogynistic, homophobic dude singing with a soft glow on his face.

Dean Wormer

My favorite personal example still has to be my sharp rise and crashing fall from Optometry College.  I was 4 1/2 years through a 6 year program when Dean Wormer booted me to the curb and justifiably so.   Really, this guy looked like Dean Wormer.  He was not a friendly guy.  "Relaxed" is not a word that comes to mind when I think of him.  "Kind," sympathetic," or "understanding are also not words that come to mind.  The only word that does come to mind is "Dean Wormer."  My recollection is that he had on a gray three piece suit that color-coordinated beautifully with his gray complexion.  He sort of looked like meat that was several days past its spoil date.  The only words that I can remember him saying were "if you quit you can't come back" or something like that.  For the life of me I couldn't tell you the sequence of events - phone calls or notes or the like - which led to me sitting in his office.  I wonder what I was wearing?  Hopefully, a Black Sabbath T-shirt.  I mean if you're going to flush several years of your life down the poop hole do it with some attitude, right?  It felt to me like the brief interval after you fall off of something high but before you land on something hard - my brain was trying to process the magnitude of the disaster.

At the time it seemed like the disaster to top all disasters.  Today it still seems like a pretty big disaster.  But I look back and wonder what my life would have been like if I had moved from A to B in this educational pursuit and graduated on time with my class.  I probably would have bought a practice in The Old City where I would have repeated the same basic examinations for 40 years in a windowless exam room.  I would probably still be doing this.  I would probably be in that exam room still.  I don't think I would have found an escape route.  I would never have moved to Chicago and met SuperK.  

Moreover, optometry is a profession that has changed markedly over the years as have many medical professions.  It used to be that every neighborhood had a physician, an eye doctor, a pharmacy, everyone operating as a stand-alone business.  Today if you want an eye exam you're as likely to end up in a Costco or a Wal-Mart as anywhere else.  I walk by the little exam area that they've built into a corner of the local Costco and peer in at the optometrist sitting in there. He has to show up at a certain time and then leave at the end of the day.  "Captain of his own ship" is not a phrase that comes to mind.  He looks like an actor on a set in a big warehouse in Burbank, California.

Everything is going to be OK.

The System

I get shit stuck in my head - luckily, a lot of the times it's now good shit instead of a recurring loop consisting of nothing but an incessant drum beat of disaster.  I've been mulling over the fact that the arc of my life continues to bend upward and I'm glad that this is so.  I've gained great faith in The System, The Process.  I believe if I strive, to the best of my ability, halting often but moving relentlessly forward, to practice a set of simple spiritual tools - tools I've found by working the Twelve Steps - that all will be well in the long run.  There will be ups and there will be downs, there will be pain and there will be pleasure, but I'm always going to end up in a better place than the place where my journey began.

Laws of Seaweed

Law:  A well-established, observed physical characteristic or behavior of nature.

I have been musing over the concepts of spiritual laws or laws of nature.  I have, in my past, mused exclusively over the laws of man, mutable, imprecise, discretionary things that they are.  So much of my youth was spent breaking the law and being in trouble with the law and hiding from the law that I confused these specific things thought up by ordinary humans with the immutable laws that run the universe.  I might be able to find a place where there is no law against smoking marijuana - I will not find a place where the law of gravity does not apply should I be interested in testing it by throwing myself off of a cliff.

If someone cautions me not to stick my hand into a boiling pot of oil they are warning me to respect a law that has no nuance.  Being a laws of man obsessive-compulsive I thought I could sidestep the laws of nature as I sometimes successfully avoided the laws of man.  When this was proven foolhardy, I would get mad at the person telling me not to stick my hand in the pasta water.  If you get a ticket I can see how you might be frustrated with the system - speed traps and cops who should be spending their time doing important things and unfair punishment for great drivers and the such.  You might think the law is stupid and should be changed, maybe even agitating for a new law.

Good luck with that on the gravity front, Roadrunner.

This is why we don't tell people who show up at meetings that they can't drink or they shouldn't drink or they oughtn't drink.  We don't want people to confuse the messenger with the consequence.  Not really our business what anyone does.  We do have some hard-won experience with the consequences of abusing spiritual laws, and we share these freely.  We don't have to pile on with a whole lot of you oughta or you shouldn'ta.  My sponsor is very strict about not giving me specific advice - we talk things over, look at different options, then I do something or don't do something as I follow my conscience to the best of my ability, with the result being my own doing.

Most of the time when I live an ethical life stuff works out well for me, but not always.  Bad shit happens to good people, right?  God makes it rain on the just and on the unjust to get all Biblical on you.  Why this is remains an unknowable mystery to us ants.  I generally don't let it get under my skin for long.  I generally pick up the pieces and move on. 

Deep Travel

Travel:  To pass from here to there; to go from one place to another.

Travel need not involve an epic journey - a simple visit to the coffee shop at the end of the street can bring it on.  What travel awakens is a latent, childlike sense of wonder at the world around us.

Nevertheless it is long journeys that bring out the possibilities of Deep Travel most strongly, removing us from our familiar comforts and security, taking us into new situations, alone and vulnerable, our minds open to the world and its sensations, bringing about an enhanced sense of perception.  Such travel can also allow us to rediscover parts of our own selves that are normally obscured by the hum-drum routines of daily life. 

Travel allows us to tap parts of the self that are generally obscured by chatter and routine, and also to realize how subjective our certainties can be.  One of the first things we learn on the road are how provisional and provincial are the things that we imagine to be universal.

The Insufferables

There's a long-timer who's almost always at my morning meeting and this guy irritates the hell out of me.  Really, he fries my ass.

Intolerable:  Not tolerable; not capable of being borne or endured; insufferable; insupportable; unbearable; extremely offensive or insulting.

(Ed Note: I like the phrase "not capable of being borne or endured."  That's a high bar to clear.  When I was a kid we bandied about the phrase "beyond belief."  Same idea - so amazing that it can't be believed.  You can't even consider it as true.)

Yeah, yeah, I know - treat him as I would a sick friend and any criticism I make is a criticism of god's handiwork and what do I see in him that I don't like about myself and pray for him every day for two weeks blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda.  I STILL can't stand this guy.  I mean I REALLY can't stand him.  He is, in my opinion, the poster child for the term "Bleeding Deacon" which is a really Bleeding Deaconish attitude on my part.

I repeat myself: The Bleeding Deacons would be an excellent name for a rock group.

"Will you welcome . . . from Vacation City . . . The Bleeding Deacons!!"

I continue to work on my tolerance of other people, places, and things, even the ones I find totally intolerable.  The problem as I see it is that I'm virtually without fault and even when a small fault pops up it's here today and gone tomorrow.

Also, I never lie.

And I think The Insufferables or The Unbearables or The Insufferables would all be excellent names for rock groups.

The Purge

I was cleaning out some old files this morning when I came across a paper copy of an email a friend of mine sent me 15 years ago.  It made me smile so I took a picture of it and popped it off to my buddy - I hope it makes him smile, too, as he ponders my question: how would the list he compiled then differ from one he would put together today?

I saved a copy electronically then pitched the note.  I think this would irritate my friend who wonders at my relentless purging of the traces of my life.  It makes me wonder as well.  I don't think I was always like this.  Just 6 or 7 years ago I had a big basement and big attic and a big garage, all of them full of Stuff.  And sort of normal piles of Stuff, not the truly excessive piles of Stuff that many people hang onto.  We all know the feeling of looking into a garage that is literally stacked to the ceiling with mountains of Stuff, most of it having languished in moldy, cobwebby obscurity for years and years, likely never to swing into its intended action ever again.

So what happened?  Much of my transformation was the very practical result of our big move.  It's one thing to let an old lawn chair rest quietly in a corner of a garage, another altogether to pay someone to move it 2500 miles to a small house with no garage and no attic and no basement.

I flatter myself tremendously but I think that some of this is the very weird result of my spiritual development.  In all of my thousands of hours spent in prayer and meditation I've yet to come across any thoughts as to what to do with old lawn chairs.  Just doesn't come up.  I do get the sense that the goal - in part at least - is to give up as much of my attachment to the physical world and all of its people, places, and things that I can.  Can't take it with you, no one here gets out alive, etc etc.

I'm also under the impression that some of my traveling has influenced my thinking.  I've had a bunch of trips recently to countries that pursue spirituality in a different fashion than was presented to me in my upbringing, and this has made me think Great Spiritual Thoughts in a different fashion.  I know that spirituality is spirituality, but I think we can come at it from a variety of angles.  I've seen cultures in India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and how they approach life and whatever comes next.  Even in New Zealand, with its Maori culture, spirituality was a different animal than what I'm used to.  

I'm sure my memory is somewhat clouded but I remember in my youth being a lot more afraid of hell than certain of heaven.  Hell sounded pretty bad and heaven sounded like a place where the Savior was.  I mean, nothing against the Savior or anything but if one side of the equation is an eternity of incredible pain and suffering and the other side is a place where the savior is then I'm feeling kind of gypped.  Can a brother get a bag of candy or a really comfortable Barca-lounger or something?  Wandering around on a nice day wearing a white toga sounds great but not that great.

A Mistake Pitch

Mistake:  An error; a blunder; (baseball) a pitch which was intended to be pitched in a hard to hit location, but instead ends up in an easy to hit place.

Some random musings, none of which add up to a full-throated scream of a blog, but aren't anything to sniff about, either.

Seek god - serve others.  Could I make a good run of it basing my whole existence on those four words?  I'd throw my hat into the ring that I could.  I don't think I need much more than that.

Should we really be afraid of making mistakes?  I say: "NO!"  I say flush that fear down the spit sink.  Embrace the Mistake, which would be an excellent name for a rock band.  This is why I continue to maintain that I regret very little.  I think that trying to live a mistake free life is a big mistake.  Nobody knows shit about how anything is going to work out.  My basic goal for each day is to try not to be too big of an asshole.

I wish everyone would shut up for a while and listen to someone else talk.  I believe this is one of the greatest strengths of The Fellowship, this willingness to consider different ways of doing things.  Our literature is full of phrases like "people who wouldn't ordinarily mix."  This is why we're pretty tough. 

When I was a sales dude one of the things I got very good at was perceiving when someone was far more interested in talking than in listening to what I had to say.  I'm not saying I had anything worthwhile to say but even if I did I knew when the other guy wasn't going to listen to it.  I could watch the mouth muscles tighten, the sharp intake of breath which was held just until I shut my yap, and then the words spilled out.  I could almost see an alphabet soup of language sloshing around in the person's mouth.  Sometimes they never got to the point where they listened to anything.

So . . . listen up, people.

Paranoia Would Be An Excellent Name For a Rock Band

Paranoia:  Extreme, irrational distrust of others.

I go to the dentist yesterday for the first time here in Vacation City.  Finding a new dentist is right up there with suffering a sucking chest wound in things I'd like to have happen to me.  I have been blessed with extraordinarily good health and this trend is likely to consider if the lack of disease drama in my forebears is any indicator - no cancers, heart or cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or any of the other maladies that strike down so many Americans.  Frankly, my biggest worry is that KK may blow me away one day and bury me in a shallow grave in the backyard.  I've found a doctor, an optometrist, a car mechanic - in my opinion the most important of the big four - but have been hanging on to my old dentist in The Old City up to now.  With mom and dad gone my trips home are going to be too sporadic to maintain this relationship.

The new dentist looked in my mouth and found several hundred thousand dollars worth of work that needed to be done and by "work" I mean "digging, grinding, stabbing, and extracting living tissue from the soft and sensitive mucous membranes on the inside of my mouth."  I'm sure the guy is honest - I'm guessing most 60 year old men have some wreckage in their mouths.  And I've been cursed with teeth problems, despite my meticulous work in trying to keep them healthy - prone to cavities, a bunch of crowns and one root canal, a mouth guard required to try to protect the remaining stuff from the tremendous, grinding  forces that I apparently use on my teeth.  My mouth guard looks as if a large man spent some time adjusting it with a hammer.

Being . . . ahem . . . of a paranoid nature I immediately mistrust anyone passing along information that I don't want to hear.  Especially when I have no frame of reference.  What am I going to say: "I disagree with you on the assessment of my left lateral bicuspid?"  All I can do is decline to have the work done.  That's my option, and it's a scary one when you're dealing with your own personal health.  Same thing with a car - the mechanic could say: "Seaweed, your Johnson Rod is shot."  He could make a word up and tell me it's shot.  Car people always want to show me what the problem is - they take me out to the car and open up the compartment that holds the engine or put the car up on a hydraulic life so I can peer into the greasy machinery that lurks there.  Why would I want to look at the mechanics of an automobile?  The best thing that could happen to me if I got too close to car machinery would be a traumatic finger amputation.

One of the advantages of my recovery is that I process through my defects much more quickly.  I believe I still have all of the same defects that were present when I walked into The Rooms.  The difference is that I have some practice in Defect Mitigation.  The defect springs into action and I have a time-tested method of moving from raw paranoia to normal paranoia.  It's almost muscle memory at this point.  I feel better about everything this morning.  I'm not mad at the dentist which would be akin to burning one's hand on a hot stove and raging at the cook who told me to keep my hand away from the flame.  I see the wisdom at doing some of the work and have gratitude that I can afford it.  I know the next appointment is a week away which will give me time to continue to let everything settle and organize in my mind.

Sharp, stainless steel instruments being stuck in my sensitive mucous membranes.  Ah, isn't sobriety great?