Seaweed: Quitter

What exactly is the anxiety doing for me?  What is it preparing me for or protecting me against?

YOU are the show.  Love yourself with all of your defects and craziness.  Embrace the insanity.

I am definitely not turning anything over.  I am definitely trying to shape things to my liking.

I am afraid of decline.  I am afraid that my back is going to feel this way forever - Forever! - and that is not what I want.  I would like to feel splendid physically and relaxed emotionally.

I feel good!

Quit:  To stop; give up.

I believe this is the worst experience I've ever had as a sober person.  I don't know that I've ever felt worse than I do now.  The anxiety is unbelievable.  My back is unbelievable.  At this point I don't know whether my anxiety is making my back feel worse or my back is stoking my anxiety.  It is a venomous feedback loop.

I feel great!!

Anyway, I have to believe that I'll get through this.  I need to take the Long View.   It isn't forever.  I'm going to give myself until the end of the year - four and a half months - to slog through this crap, all of this crap, whatever this crap is.  My life is a bad movie right now.  I should just tell myself that the movie is four months long.

I have always felt a little sheepish when I'm talking to someone in recovery who is going through something painful and all I can think of to say is: "It's going to be OK."  That's all I got.  I don't got anything else but that fairly obvious platitude.

I feel a bit like a quitter right now.  Where's the fight?  Where's the fucking fight?

More, More, More About ME

I think that my sore back is a manifestation of my worst nightmare: an illness or injury or disease that changes things in a Big Way.  This back injury has the feel of something a little more severe.  It may have some staying power.

Maybe my play needs to be the realization that this is the new normal - tight back, a different exercise paradigm, some discomfort.

There's a lesson here.  I can't hear it yet and I don't want anything except to have my back feel the way it used to, and not so long ago.

But then again.  I've continued to exercise every day - an "off" day was some extensive stretching.

Show me the lesson.
Gratitude list.
Positive affirmations.
Work The Steps again, maybe on this physical obsessiveness that I have.

Breathe.
Posture awareness.

I think I'm afraid of dying.
I think I'm afraid of The Big Decline.

I think I'm terrified of getting old.  Everything has been slowing down over the last few years.  My energy level has declined; my mouth was a disaster area and so were my legs (Needles! So many needles!); I had a hell of a case of shin splints after NZ; the whole sinus perforation nightmare; and now my achy back.

All of this on top of the deaths.  All of this stoking the coals of mom's nursing home fires.  It certainly brought my mortality front and center.  The thought has popped into the back of my mind: maybe I'm next.

Most of my journal entries over the last few months have been about my back - in great detail.  The focus is incredible.  The obsessive concentration on my sinus perforation - despite many assurances that the damage could be repaired - and now on my back.  It is a white-hot, laser-like focus.  I think a tornado could blow my house away while I was sitting at my desk and it wouldn't distract me for a second in my obsessive musings on my health.

After a few months of pretty extensive mullings I'm not so sure that the grief component about the deaths is the accelerant here.  I'm beginning to suspect that The End is encroaching on my serenity.  How powerful is the emotional component of our lives - overwhelming the physical part more often than not.

Man, we get some shit wedged in deep.   Be careful what you're telling your kids.

Seaweed: Life Warrior

I have not surrendered.

I have not turned my life and my will over to the care of my higher power. 

I don't understand what people mean when they tell me to "take it easy."  Take what easy?  Take it where?  What are they talking about?

I regularly put my canoe in the stream and promptly begin paddling against the current.  Why? Because it's where I want to go.  Yes, I know it makes sense to "go with the flow," to not fight the movement of the water, but I can't help it.  I have even been known to take my canoe out of the water and carry it over a mountain, through brambles and sticker bushes, leaping off a cliff to land at the same place that a gentle although longer canoe ride would have provided.

Maybe life is my enemy.  Maybe everything is my enemy.  I'm certainly a fighter.

The Appeal of Suffering

Suffering:  The condition of one who suffers; a state of pain or distress. 

What is it that I'm anxious about, exactly?

Death and dying?  The decline that happens as we age?  Pain?!  Hell, yes, pain - I hate pain. Pain sucks the big one.

Have I reached the top of the roller coaster and I'm now on the way down, plummeting toward oblivion?  After all the average age of Death in the US of A - for men - is 76.3 dog years and I'm 60.7 years old!  That's getting uncomfortably close.  I can see a dude in a black hoodie, holding a scythe firmly in a skeleton hand, peering at me over a copy of the Sunday Times.

My friend ElderLow had some back surgery a year or so ago.  He has been healing albeit slowly.  He was grousing to his physical therapist, a young woman, about his bad back, especially stiff in the morning.

"Of course your back hurts," she said.  "You're old."

He groused about some of the physical activities he was no longer able to do: golf, jogging, cage fighting.

"Do you see anyone else your age cage fighting?" she asked.  "There are very few men your age out there cage fighting."

She wasn't done.

"Most men begin to have some trouble with their backs," she said.  I don't know why she's such an expert on this except she probably spends half her day dealing with people grousing about their backs.  I mean why do you think there are nine masseuses for every man, woman, and child in Kettering, OH?

We're all looking to escape unpleasantness.    Here's what our Book has to say: "Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and problems.  We fled from them as from a plague.  We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering.  Character-building through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us."

Appeal: To be attractive.

Here's a thought for some fun - suffering as a means of growth!  Does that appeal to you, too? It has a great deal of appeal for me.

I think my body is telling me some things that I'd rather not hear.  I think that this mudslide of death has made me acutely aware of my mortality.  I think 60 is bullshit.  Bullshit!  60.7/76.3 = 79.5%.  That is terrible, the thought that I may have lived 80% of my life already unless of course I die sooner which is definitely possible.

Positive Affirmations.

Gratitude Lists.  

I had a friend join me in the hot tub the other day and we talked about such matters.  He's relentlessly optimistic.  He makes gratitude lists as a matter of habit.  He doesn't concentrate on the negative.  He finds work-arounds for obstacles.  He gives it to me straight.  Quit Complaining is sort of the point.

I shall try to balance my expectations with my acceptance.  

Hands Where I Can See 'em.

Surrender: To give up possession of; to yield; to resign.
Capitulate: To end all resistance; to give up; to go along with or comply. 

Today I have been sober for 30 years.  That would be alcohol AND drug free sober.  I actually haven't had a drink for an additional six months but I still managed to convince myself that a little non-addictive marijuana wouldn't be a bad idea until I realized it was a very bad idea.  In many circles this is known as the Marijuana Maintenance Plan, The Seaweed Plan.

I've been sober for almost half of my life.  That's some symmetry.

SuperK strolled in last night and said: "Anyway . . . what makes YOU think you can get away with no pain?  You've been living this charmed life and now you're mildly hobbled and THIS is the reaction?"

What can I tell you?  There is intellect and there is emotion - all the reasoning in the world can't overcome a powerful emotional reaction.  It's like trying to explain to a little child that there is, in fact, no monster under the bed.  It's difficult to assure the child that there is absolutely no chance that there could possibly be some kind of monster under the bed in the near future.

A drunk is wandering along the top of a cliff when he stumbles over the edge and begins plummeting toward certain death on the rocks below.  Miraculously he grabs onto a small shrubbery sticking out of the cliff face and hangs there perilously.  He begins yelling for help.

"I can help you my son." A booming voice.

"Who's there?" asks the drunk.  "Who is that?"

"It's god, and I can save you, but first you have to let go of the branch."

The drunk takes a minute to ponder this turn of events.  

"Is there anyone else up there?"

We don't live in a surrendering kind of society.  We hold onto this ideal that if we can keep on persevering long enough, heroically pounding toward the goal line or surmounting the heavily fortified hill under withering machine gun fire then we'll Get What We Want.  We don't celebrate folks who say: "Eh, I'm runner-up.  That's pretty good.  I'm going to have a Popsicle." The camera never pans back down the hill to show all the bodies piled up, cut down in the hailstorm of bullets.  No, we look at the one guy who made it all the way up.

I'll tell you this: god has a HUGE machine gun.  God has the best ordnance.

Boxing with god is not a good idea - god has longer arms than you do.

Have you ever seen that movie: "Knute Rockne - Pretty Good Coach?"  The movie starts with a slow pan around his office which is festooned with pennants and banners and trophies celebrating all of his second place finishes.  The big denouement, the final scene, shows Knute running out onto the field, 1 minute left in the game, the opposing team driving for the go-ahead score . . . He gathers his troops around, thrusts his fist into the air, and shouts: "OK, men, let's go out there and surrender!"

I assume that eventually I'll give in here.

On The Other Hand . . .

Grateful:    Showing appreciation, being thankful.  (Ed. Note: I'm appalled that I have never looked this word up for inclusion in my blog.  Figures).

Here's my life . . . 

I'm a very healthy man.  I take no medication.  I have no serious injuries or funky diseases and my family history is free of some of the hereditary conditions that might reasonably be expected to eventually strike me down.  In fact, some of my progenitors have lived until they were nearly 100 years old.

My back is sore and out of sorts but doesn't appear to have any structural problems.  I'm taking good action - trying some new exercises and seeing a masseuse.  I'm attempting to learn from this - not exercising every day, picking up a class or two at my gym, substituting stretching and/or weights instead of my relentless aerobic exercise.  I don't need to exercise this much.  I need to keep moving but not as if some predatory animal is nipping at my heels.

I have a wonderful partnership with my long-suffering wife.  It has been a bit rocky over the last six months but that's mostly on me - I've commenced a long delayed sweeping of my side of the street  - and that is mostly understandable given what I've gone through.  I've been distant and unemotional and disengaged - not a good framework for a relationship.  We're working on this.  It has taken some time to dig this hole and it's going to take some time to get out of it.

My relationship with my sister has settled into a nice, historical equilibrium.  Not too close but close enough for both of us.  This is fine.  Not every family is as thick as thieves.

I'm blessed with a lot of friends and acquaintances.  A lot of people know who I am in a pleasant, cordial sort of way.  Some of them are close friends.  I have close friends here, in The Old City, and from way, way back.  These are real friends, too, not the drinking companions I hung out with in the day.  These people care about me and listen to me.  I'm not alone.  I don't have to go anything by myself when I can just remember this.

I seem to have enough money to pay my bills and to do some fun and nice things for myself.  The fact of the matter is that a lot of people are living check to check, one illness or car break-down or lay-off from disaster.  A lot of people have more bills than money.  I need to remember this more often, too.

I live in a nice mobile home.  We've got it fixed up OK.  It has enough room for the two of us and tons of light.  It's warm outside in the winter and cool in the summer.  I don't have an air conditioner - and don't need one - and I rarely run the heat.  That's pretty amazing.

My wife has a new very expensive car.
I have an almost new very expensive and very impractical car.

I'm aware that I've given my age too much power.  I'm a healthy, vibrant man with a lot of interests.  Focusing on a number is a negative, self-fulfilling affirmation.

Here are some positive affirmations:
This is the best time of my life.
It's going to be a good day.
Everything is going to work out.

There is a lesson here.  I'm still very resistant to the message.  If the message doesn't come from me then it's a bullshit message.

Shake My Booty

Teach:          To show (someone) the way; to pass on knowledge to.
Lesson:        Something that serves as a warning or encouragement. (Ed. Note: My, that covers                        each end of the spectrum).
Surrender:  To give up into the power, control, or possession of another.

I still can't figure out what the lesson is.  Maybe the lesson is to quit trying to figure out what the fucking lesson is.  

Maybe it's that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.

One of the troubles plaguing people like me is that we're used to applying ourselves systematically in an effort to accomplish something, and frequently accomplishing it. This can be a good thing and it can be a curse.  I'm the guy lying at the base of a brick wall, bloodied and unconscious, because I couldn't admit that my plan of busting through to the other side by ramming my head into the wall, repeatedly and with great force, wasn't a very good plan.

"But it's my plan!" I wail in protest.  "I thought it up all by myself.  It'll work if I just stick to it!"

Maybe the lesson is that I don't always get what I want.  If so I say this: What a stupid lesson! 

Maybe it's that I need to be patient until I understand what the answer is.  No!  I know what all the answers are already!  The problem is god isn't following the script that I've so carefully put together. 

Reminds me of listening to one of my brothers in recovery give some annoying spiel in a meeting and fuming about its content.  My lesson isn't contained in the words - my lesson is that I need to practice tolerance and patience and compassion.  My higher power delivers my lessons with some subtlety.

Maybe the lesson is that a roadblock in my path leads me down a different path.  Maybe a better one.  I don't change anything until I'm under duress.  Change is hard.  It's hard to change behavior.  

Sometimes I need a kick in the booty.

Notes From The Underground

The irritating thing right now is that other than my fucking goddam back my life is awfully smooth.

My back does not seem to be headed in the right direction - tight and sore.  I'm right in the middle of a substantial panic attack which is no doubt making things worse.  And it's not that much of a debilitating injury, either, falling more in the annoyance category.  But I'm famously susceptible to physical discomfort which begs the question: Why did I think I could sit in the jungle, in the dark, for 8 hours all by myself?

I cannot run away from this one.  This one is in my body, right here.  I'm always struck by the reminder that I need to be at one with whatever I'm feeling.  Trying to change things or make them go away ends badly for me.  That, as I understand it, is the basic concept of meditation: being at one with myself, in the minute.

I need to figure out the lesson here.  Maybe there is no lesson.  Maybe the lesson is "I'm in charge and you're not."  Maybe the lesson is that some pain is inevitable.  I've been remarkably healthy over the course of my life.  Maybe it's my time.

I would be wise to take ten days off the exercising.  Not sure if I should be moving around or sitting still.

I'm still trying to change things.  I'm still trying to bend circumstances to my will.  I'm still taking action - doing something, anything - to try to get what I want.  

Maybe the lesson is that I need to figure out how to live my life without the constant presence of physical exercise.

I am definitely channeling my inner mama when it comes to health and mortality.  She is a big instigator of the scourge of worrying about these things.  I got a ton of good from her but as is to be expected I also picked up a few traits I'd rather not have.

"There is almost no work in life so hard as waiting.  And yet God wants me to wait.  All motion is more easy (sic) than calm waiting, and yet I must wait until God shows me His will.  So many people have marred their work and hindered the growth of their spiritual lives by too much activity.  If I wait patiently, preparing myself always, I will be some day at the place where I would be.  And much toil and activity could not have accomplished the journey so soon."

The Daily Reflections

Helps To See It In Writing

(Ed. Note): Text of an email I sent to one of my oldest and dearest friends.  It surely helps me to flesh these things out using electronic pen and ink.

Ahhhh, don't feed me any of that gratitude crap - what do you think this is: 12 Step recovery? Next you're going to tell me to write a gratitude list.

You are, of course, right to focus on the positive, not one of my strong suits. 

I don't believe I mentioned that I started to see a therapist about a month ago.  My tendency to low-level anxiety had morphed into something uncomfortably powerful - sucker really started to pick up speed.  I think the accelerant was that fourteen month period where I lost my mother (suddenly), my father (in a slow-motion, alcoholic quasi-suicide), and my sponsor, a man that I was closer to than any other individual in the world.  At the end I spoke to him every day and I really believe I was listening to a man who had begun to move into the next phase - he talked about god, heaven, spirituality, love in a manner more profound than I've experienced before or after.  I really believe I was getting some kind of preview.

And turning 60, in the midst of all of that mortality, really threw me for a loop.  I know it's just a number, no different than 59 or 61, but it is a classic marker of the passage from not-really-old to no-longer-young-by-any-metric.  I'm grateful that I'm healthy and vibrant and mobile but those markers can still pack a psychological punch, especially given all of those in-your-face losses I had.

My mother - god love her - could find the pot of shit hiding the pot of gold under every rainbow.  If I was going hiking in Oregon - she would bring up bears.  If I drove to Utah to hike - no bears - she'd read me something she cut out about someone who died from a rattlesnake bite.  The destination of any of my travels never threw her - she always knew someone who had a friend's brother-in-law's first cousin mugged in that location.  And I was a mama's boy.

A fearful, overprotective mother and a distant, alcoholic father virtually guarantee a fretful child.

I recall a quote that I seem to attribute to Schopenhauer along the lines of "there is nothing so absurd that it can't be inculcated into a small child by solemnly repeating it over and over."  I think he was talking about religion but I like the universality of the idea.   I think often of the uproar that arose when it was suggested that our old coach be invited to our basketball reunion - the lesson was to be careful how you treat kids because they take it to heart.  We remembered a lot of slights and insults that happened 40+ years ago.

The other accelerants in the last year have been a couple of extended bouts with the medical profession.  I have a couple of genetic blood-clotting disorders that I addressed with a series of procedures that basically consisted of a doctor sticking a big needle into my legs, digging around until he found a damaged vein, and then killing it by injecting a cement into it.  After this was done I addressed my neglected mouth - fixed a bunch of small cavities, had a couple of crowns, and a root canal that led to a tooth extraction that opened a small hole into one of my sinuses that had to be repaired surgically that then got infected.

So when I tweaked my back my ability to modulate my reaction was severely compromised. Kind of like how you handled the disappointment when the first stop on your home research walkabout fell through versus your reaction when the last one didn't pan out.  I'm sure it was was easier to look on the sunny side of things at the start as compared to the end

And all of this loss has put some stress on my marriage.  I've been busy and I've been grieving and I'm sure in some form I've pulled away from SuperK because I'm tensing against any more loss.

How's that for a morning screed?

LWSJ Is Smarter Than Me

Worry: To be troubled, to give way to mental anxiety.

Several years ago - when we were younger and dumber - Little Westside Jonny and I took a trip to Ecuador.  It wasn't the going to Ecuador that was a dumb idea but rather our decision to make a three day junket into the Amazon jungle using what turned out to be a bare-bones tour company.  It was one of those trips where you fly up and over the Andes before landing on a small air strip hacked out of the encroaching bush - I still remember how ridiculous our big jet looked on that rudimentary landing strip; hop a rickety, jarring jeep with no discernible shock absorbers for a few hours more, including a lengthy delay while a bunch of teenagers in military fatigues sporting machine guns went over our documents and through our luggage; then blast down a narrow tributary in a motorized canoe for a few hours more, hanging vines winging by at eye level and at high speed.

One night we watched the sun set in our skiffs on a shallow lake.  As we made our way home in the dusk we passed a series of small islands choked in vegetation.  The jungle insects had begun to emit their ghostly whine, sounding vaguely electronic in tone.  The bugs around our huts were so loud that I had to stuff cotton in my ears in an attempt to drown them out.

Out of nowhere LWSJ asks: "Would you spend the night on that island for a million dollars?"

I didn't hesitate: "Absolutely," I said.  A million dollars is a lot of money.  In fact, I began to back the figure down to see if I could get to a more reasonable number.  I assured him that I would do it for $250,000 and I believe I got down as low as $50,000.  I explained how I would clear the brush from around the base of a small tree with a branch that I could sit on - avoiding anything that might be crawling or slithering around on the ground - before beginning to hoot and yell the rest of the night to scare off anything larger.

"You're insane," he stated flatly.

"A million dollars," I said.  "You couldn't handle the physical discomfort for a million dollars?"

"There is no amount of money on this earth that would convince me to stay on that island for one night," he replied.

"And it's not the physical part that worries me," he added.  "It's the mental part.  I'd have to be taken off in a straight jacket the next morning."

You know I get what he's saying.  The worrying about something, the anxiety that the worrying causes, is always much worse than the thing I'm worrying about.

Maybe not on one of those jungle islands, come to think of it, but most of the time.

Relentless, Tireless Seaweed

Direct: To manage, control, steer.

If there is a central tenet in my overall spiritual development it is this: god is an idiot.

For me to assume that god is not an idiot I would have to believe that god knows what is best for me when it's obvious to everyone that he clearly does not or I would be getting everything I want to get and avoiding everything I would like to avoid.  This isn't happening often enough so I must also assume that god wants my input on how things should run.  It's quite likely that he wants me to actually run things.  This is the only natural progression arising from the facts on the ground: I'm not getting everything I want!

I can just picture it: "Ah, I'm screwing things up - maybe I should let Seaweed call the shots.  THEN everyone would be happy."

The actual central tenet of my spiritual life . . . or practice, at least . . . is this: I will do everything that I can possibly do to get things the way I want them and only when I've failed and failed and failed and lie exhausted and demoralized on a sterile stainless steel table, bathed in cold fluorescent light, will I turn my life and my will over to my higher power.

Wait, wait . . . I'm lifting my head up one more time.  There's one more thing I can try . . . 

My Brethren and Sisterren

Project:  To make plans for; to forecast.
Projection: A forecast or prognosis obtained by extrapolation.
Extrapolation:  An inference about some hypothetical situation based on known facts.

I'd like to write something today but I don't have anything to say.  I certainly don't have anything new to say.  So I'm amusing myself by looking up words.

I think about myself more than anyone else in the world.  Except for The Big Tangerine - I'm not even in the same class as that joker.  This tendency is one thing but another altogether is that I don't seem to be doing anything to change that.  One of my mildly amusing jokes is to remind my brethren and sisterren in recovery that if they want to have a good day then they should go off somewhere and think about themselves.  Perhaps I should start taking my own insightful advice.  Not only do I dedicate all of this time thinking about myself I would like you to dedicate a big part of your day to thinking about me as well.  There are only 24 hours in each day and I've got to sleep sometime.  Do your part - think about me.

I have too much time on my hands.

I am going to be taking a series of classes to learn how to be a hospice volunteer when I return from The UK.  I like to think I'm steady and empathetic.  Then again I may look at someone dying from cancer and say: "You think you've got it bad?  You should try living in my head for a day."

I've made an inquiry about becoming a reading tutor.  I can't imagine living a life where I couldn't read.  Unimaginable.

"When you worry, your body responds to your anxiety the same way it would react to physical danger.

To help you cope with the physical demands you are about to ask your body to perform, your brain releases stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol into the bloodstream.  They trigger a range of physical reactions that will equip your body for action.

Your heart rate increases, your breathing becomes heavier and you may sweat more.  You may also become pale as the blood moves away from the skin towards the muscles to help them prepare for the 'fight or flight' situation your worry has created.

The 'fight or flight' response is your body's instinctive reaction to danger.  Unconsciously your body prepares itself to either run away from danger or becomes very alert in order to fight predators.

But many of the things we worry about today cannot be dealt with by fighting or running away. Credit card bills, bad relationships, or stress at work cannot be dealt with physically, so our body remains in a state of anxiety, ready for action.

This means the stress hormones are still circulating in the blood stream.  Over a prolonged period of time, raised levels of these chemicals can start to have a toxic effect on the glands, nervous system and the heart, eventually leading to heart attacks, increased risk of stroke and stomach ulcers.

Because your body has tensed ready to respond to the threat you are feeling, this muscle tension can turn into aches and pains causing headaches, back pain, weak legs and trembling.  This tension can also affect your digestive system triggering bouts of constipation or diarrhea.

You may also become more prone to infections. It is widely accepted that stress and anxiety can lower your immune system, making you more susceptible to picking up colds or more serious illnesses." 

Creative Bullshit

There is a lot of information out there about the solution to fear, depression, anxiety.  I'm really dipping in to the resources even though I have a skeptical Germanic viewpoint on some of this stuff.  The material can veer into the somewhat implausible.  For instance, I listened to an audio book called "Creative Visualizations."  I was impressed with the opening chapters which were centered on the idea that You Are What You Think.  This makes sense - the more time I spend imagining pain and disaster the more negative my outlook becomes, a tendency of mine that has been pointed out to me by multiple sources.  I think the power of a positive attitude can't be underestimated - there is a lot of research out there exploring the connection between your attitude and your physical health.

Then the author or shaman or seer or whatever she is starts to dip into the curing cancer arena or getting what you want if you just visualize it in an overwhelmingly positive manner.  You know: "I'm strong and attractive and fun, people like me a lot, and I'm going to find a fucking parking space right outside my building!"  I'm not sure you can change the universe by wishing that it be different but what do I know, really?  Maybe you can.  I'm open to everything.  Almost everything.

Another famous PhD started to riff on the trauma being trapped inside of each of us and that to feel centered and grounded it needs to be released.  That makes sense, right?  I'm jotting down some notes, keeping my mind open, when he starts in on the exercises to help you get a sense of the boundary between your insides and your outsides, the idea being, I guess, that if you don't know the difference then you can't release your inner demons.  He suggests that you stand under a shower and tell yourself: "The water is striking my skin.  This is the outside.  Etc Etc." I tossed that book in the bin.  I'm not going to take a long shower.  This isn't hydrotherapy.

Next on the hit parade is a book by Carl Jung called: "Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections."  I've got that one slotted in for wide-awake, fully-caffeinated periods of my day because it doesn't have a frothy, light feel to it.

Some of the resources draw heavily from the ancient fields of meditation and mindfulness, fields  embracing concepts that admittedly can get pretty far out there all by themselves.  Again I say: what do I know?  I'm trying to keep my trap-like mind wide open, speculating that something that people have done for thousands of years might have some value.  

One of the exercises asks the disciple to imagine a beautiful place to live - safe, comfortable, located anywhere in the world or under the ocean or on a distant planet, whatever you want, make it your own sanctuary.  Then, imagine a spirit guide walking down a path, emerging from the distance, a kind, loving presence to hang out with and learn from.  Maybe even imagine a famous person that has the kind of knowledge that you're seeking.

Who is that I see emerging from the fog?  Ozzy?  Could it be true.

Sounds nice, doesn't it?  Here's what happens in my mind . . .   I'm sitting on the deck of my sanctuary house on the planet Endor, not a care in the world, when some mutant sociopaths in a stolen canoe steal onto my island, sneak into my house, and kill me in a horrible fashion.  The whole exercise of sitting peacefully in my safe sanctuary space fills me with dread.  I'm shaking with anxiety.

I go to some dark places.

Boy

"If you bring forth that which is within you, then that which is within you will be your salvation.  If you do not bring forth that which is within you, then that which is within you will destroy you."
THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS 

My behavior with caffeine and sugar and salt is the behavior of an addict or an obsessive-compulsive.  I plan on behaving differently when I'm lying in bed at night, recapping all of my day's great successes and wonderful behavior, and then I get up and have a cuppa, and I'm anxious.  Crazy.

My wife has been a real partner to me through all of this.  Now, she is justifiably suspicious.  She is quite reasonably moving forward thoughtfully, cautiously.  She has lived with my behavior for a long time so I understand that I can't simply turn on a dime and Presto! everything's OK, especially when some of my behavior is falling under the "act as if" category.  I'm not completely buying into it myself so I sure don't expect people around me to buy into it, either.

Boy, do I spend a lot of time thinking about myself.  Boy.  Can you believe that there are people out there that naturally think of others before they think of themselves?  Scourge of the earth, those people.

I am dipping into some real New Age shit here.  I'm a technocrat so all of this experimental stuff that has not been verified in a rigorously monitored test study can be hard to swallow.

Saying It May Make It Come To Pass

Fear: A strong, uncontrollable, unpleasant emotion caused by actual or perceived danger or threat.
Anxiety:  An unpleasant state of mental uneasiness, nervousness, apprehension and obsession or concern about some uncertain event. 
Stress: Emotional pressure suffered by a human being or another animal.

Interesting the main difference between fear and anxiety is that one is real and one is not.  Yet both of them are unpleasant.

I release my anxiety into the universe.

My anxiety is not my enemy.  It has something it wants to say and I'm trying my best to hear it talking.  I'm not going to get mad or curse or belittle it.

Don't deny the anxiety.  Don't pretend it isn't there and don't try to banish it into the outer darkness.  Sit there and look at it without judgment.  The more I try to make it vanish the more power it attains.  It's like trying to ignore some idiot in a meeting who bugs me - I hear every fricking word he says.

Kenner, mom, dad - I'm open to the grieving process in whatever form it takes.  I'm open to weeping.  I'm going to research weeping as an educational opportunity.  I wonder if my local community class offers Weeping 101 or Weeping For Alcoholics.  One of my Program buddies related a story by Gunther Grass where a grief group would get together and cut up onions to stimulate water coming from the eyes, or "tears" in common parlance.  This would usually result in one grieving person actually weeping real grieving tears, and the rest of the class would fall like dominoes; sort of like wanting to vomit if you're in the vicinity of someone else who is vomiting or about to vomit or has just got done vomiting.  This sounds ridiculous but I'm really in that zone where I'm open to anything.

I'm 60.  I want to acknowledge the fact of my aging without succumbing to an excess of caution. Sometimes I bitch about it too much but I have a tendency to dismiss this as mere bitching - and I admit that maybe it's more than that - because I still do a lot of things even if I'm a little slower or less forceful in the doing.  I'm aware of some limitations but I'm not overwhelmed or intimidated by them.  I hope that if I decide that trying to climb Mt Kilimanjaro wouldn't be a smart long term move even though I may be able to do it in the short run that this falls under the category of "appropriate caution" rather than "excess fear."  I no longer run because I don't want to subject my 60 year old body to the pounding that running entails.  I'm not doing this because I think I'm old - I'm doing it because I believe I'll be able to do other things for a longer time if I keep this fairly jarring exercise out of my exercise routine.  I guess I'm saying I want to keep pushing forward with the caveat that it be common-sense pushing.  But I do have to be careful - I had an anxious, over-protective mother and this has led to a . . . ahem . . . healthy preoccupation with all carnal matters Seaweed.

Positive Affirmations - you become what you think.  Well, maybe.  I'm going with this one but it has a strong touchy-feeley New-Agey vibe surrounding it.  But then again if you tell someone over and over how stupid they are - especially children or adults with the emotional maturity of children, like me - then after a while they may start to take this to heart.

It's enough with the back already.  The back is uncomfortable but it's not debilitating.  My back feels tighter and stiffer when I'm anxious.  Quit thinking about it.  This is a Negative Affirmation.

Jesus Christ I sound like a panelist on Oprah.

Fo' Seems Like Fitty

So I've had four sessions with a therapist.  It feels like 50, I'll tell you what - 2 of them were uneventful, the other 2 quite stressful.  It's not always easy for me to allow someone else to dictate the terms of a conversation and it's definitely not easy when the surprise direction is down an unknown path that I didn't know existed, a path that can be painful.  In some ways I feel like I did when I came into The Program when I was a man with all of the answers, a man who had no interest in any information that didn't neatly fit into my world view.  The fact that my worldview was apocalyptic and dystopian (Ed Note: I really like these words so I jam them in whenever I can) didn't cause me to pause for a minute.

On two occasions I've made comments that caused this woman to pull up sharply.  I think I tried to slip 'em in real quick-like, off-hand and unconcerned.  This has led to an extended series of questions - flowing from her to me - signaling that I was no longer in control of the conversation, that it was heading in what appeared to be an alarming direction.  I've got a smug sense of my own self-knowledge - I like to anticipate solutions whenever I can.  I love saying: "Yeah, I've read about that" or, better yet, beating her to the punch with some insightful comment that shows I know what kind of insightful comment she's about to make.  You can't tell me shit, in other words.   Except when you can tell me shit.

The first time was when I mentioned that I was not too familiar with the concept of crying.  The second was yesterday when I recounted a remark that SuperK made when we were discussing the general tone of one of my sessions - an alarming comment that indicated she had entertained the idea of leaving, and I mean leaving leaving, not leaving to take a walk or go to the bathroom.  Part of the problem was that I mischaracterized the comment which was more along the lines of "maybe it would be better for you if I left" rather than "I'm thinking of going elsewhere."  I have no doubt that my anxiety-infused persona has not been a breathe of fresh air in the Seaweed household for her.  When you say good morning and the reply is: "I'm having a panic attack" it sets an unwelcome mood for the day.

This revelation did NOT cause any more anxiety in my life.  Yeah.  A couple of days before that I got a note from Google saying someone in Maysville, KY, tried to log onto my account using my actual password.  That was a lovely, calming cup of tea as well.

Anyway, she and I hashed some of this stuff out in a halting, probing kind of way.  Strong emotions always look better when they're out in the sunlight instead of percolating around in the slimy, dark mess of hyperactive, raging cortical matter that is the Great Curse of my life.  The reality of a situation is almost always better than whatever apocalyptic, dystopian vision that I hallucinate up.  I could sense a great lightening of her mood in the subsequent few days.

Through pain comes release.

"Someone who knew what he was talking about once remarked that pain was the touchstone of all spiritual progress."

That was me.  That's my line.  I came up with that one.  I once knew what I was talking about.

Textual Context

Patient:  Willing to wait if necessary; not losing one's temper while waiting. 

When I was trying to get sober and struggling with the bad-ass man-god of my childhood religion I decided to find another cooler god.  So I read all kinds of books on religion.  I read and I read and I read.  And - of course - I found that most religions and spiritual philosophies are pretty similar.  I haven't yet found one that says: "Be a dick to everyone."  Love is not overrated and thinking of others is recommended and attaining a greater knowledge of a Higher Power is very popular - these are ubiquitous sentiments.  

I've mentioned dipping back into the main text of my childhood and doing some reading.  I've been underwhelmed - some of it is a little preachy and it can be repetitive - but I also haven't been at all outraged.  Generally it comes across as very nice and pleasant and OK.  I enjoy the reading the most when the emphasis is on those universal kinds of suggestions such as "Don't be a dick to anyone."  Whenever I run across some theme that I like I make a note of the page for future reference.  I confess to spending too much time looking for ammunition to use against the Holier Than Thou set.  For instance, I've run across a lot of passages telling us to take care of the poor, give away all of our money to charity, obey the government, etc.  I don't hear these emphasized as much as some of the more controversial social statements.  But I'm sure that's on me - I'd do better if I listened for the good instead of trying to ferret out the bad.

There have been a few about dealing with our troubles that stuck with me:
"We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials for we know that thy are good for us - they help us learn to be patient.  And patience develops strength of character in us and helps us trust god more each time we use it until finally our hope and faith are strong and steady." 

What the hell is the matter with that?

In a similar vein . . . 

"Dear brothers, is your life full of difficulties and temptations?  Then be happy, for when the way is rough, your patience has a chance to grow.  So let it grow, and don't try to squirm out of your problems.  For when your patience is finally in full bloom, then you will be ready for anything, strong in character, full and complete."

What the hell is the matter with that?

One, Two, Three, Four, Five

In chronological order and not necessarily in order of importance . . . .

The Lizard was old and failing when we subjected her to what must have been a traumatic move - a new place with a few long drives stuffed into a cat carrier in our trunk.  She lasted about a month in the new place before she refused to eat or drink and we had to have her euthanized.  I wrote at length about the experience of watching an animal receive a lethal injection of drugs and die in my arms.  Because she was a constant presence in our house her death caused the most continuous, immediate trauma, with due respect to the people in the list. I would feel that I was being disrespectful even saying this but I hear it from a lot of other people, the hold animals can have on us.

My mother was, for the most part, fine.  Getting a little drifty but content and happy when she had a few strokes and died peacefully.  I was not able to get home before she moved elsewhere and did not get to speak with her for the last few weeks of her life.  I have some regret that I didn't bust ass home when she took a turn for the worst but it wasn't clear to anyone that she was going to die so quickly - a frequent family joke was that given her constant fear of The Nursing Home that she would live to be 117.  This was also an unsettling loss because I did speak to her often.

Kenner was a special case because of our connection through The Fellowship.  As long as the topic of the government didn't come up he was a relentlessly cheerful man, even at the end, when cancer left him bed-ridden and in a lot of pain.  I never heard him complain about anything . . . ever . . . and I am not making that up.  He was constantly reminding me that "this, too, shall pass."  I had to argue with him when he insisted on seeing how I was doing those last few months.  The guy was in a hospice bed and he was checking up on me.  That's a powerful indication of how good a man he was - either that or how sick I am.

I was privileged for several weeks to be able to talk to him every single day although the morphine made it a hit-or-miss proposition, and the duration of the calls varied depending on how alert he was.  He had always been a very private man, rarely talking about the circumstances of his life or dipping too deeply into some of his closely held beliefs.  He told me stories of his upbringing, all of the events surrounding the death of his first wife, what he believed love was and heaven and god.  I'm sure some of this was Ken The Earthling and some of it was the morphine talking shit and maybe, just maybe, some of what he was relating was a glimpse of what was going to come next.  I like to think that he was dying a connection began to open up into The Beyond and he was beginning to sense things that didn't have temporal content.  Maybe I was getting a sneak preview into heaven.  It was one of most moving, most special things I've ever experienced.

My dad took a few alcohol-related falls after mom passed and was admitted into a skilled nursing home.  He had begun to freely indulge his alcoholism once the restraining influence of my mother was gone - eating very little, rarely leaving his apartment, isolating himself from everyone, drinking vodka constantly.  He rarely took my calls and he never returned them, either.  Our conversations lasted less than 5 minutes.  I did travel back to The Old City at my sister's request after a series of especially serious falls, no doubt caused by his drinking and weakness exacerbated by his refusal to eat.  The scene when I arrived was grim - I had to fight back the urge to gasp when I first set eyes on him.  I was there for a few days, often in his room, before he died in his sleep.  I was glad I was there.  It was not a happy time but it helped me to conceptualize or internalize the difference between life and death.  He had no interest in anything after mom died so I'm happy to imagine him in heaven, in his new body, free from worry and fear.

And I turned 60 right in the middle of this cluster.  I've waxed poetic about this crossing of a threshold, aware that most of the impact is emotional and not physical.  It's not like a switch was flicked on my birthday but I felt like something significant was going on.  A changing of the guard so to speak.

It helps me to write all of this down and sit with it for a bit.  It is a lot.

I have signed up to be a hospice volunteer.  It's time to get busy.  I've indulged myself long enough.  I know that getting past my feelings isn't as simple as that but I also know that it's a powerful first step.