Just Sayin'

Therapeutic: Having a positive effect on the body or mind.

All has been relatively quiet on The Western Front.  There has indeed been a great, massive release from The Anxiety.  It isn't gone but it has receded into the background to a large extent - no strong panic attacks, more of an irritating but not overwhelming background hum, static, radio chatter kind of stuff.  A couple of friends and My Therapist have remarked on a lightness of being that is wafting off my presence, surrounding my person.

Pain is the touchstone of all spiritual growth.  I don't make any changes unless I'm under duress.  That being said I hope all of this pain that I've had to endure helps me comfort someone else at some point.  When I say "I understand what you're going through" I understand what you're going through because I've gone through it myself.  I get more help from a dude who spent some time living under a bush than some dude who is driving a Very Expensive Car.  The bush dude has endured.  He will abide.

And I know I'm tougher.   I didn't drink and I soldiered on.  I mean what I say when I say that I trust The Process.

I'm just sayin'.

I'm Not Going To Do That

Stubborn:  Refusing to move or to change one's opinion; obstinate; firmly resisting.

The topic at yesterday's meeting revolved around the wall of resistance that most of us throw up as soon as someone brings up the concept of . . . you know . . . maybe, just maybe . . . the drinking life is no longer agreeing with us.   We're pretty sure that there's a loophole that we're going to be able to exploit, a very clever loophole that's going to be able to allow us to quit drinking.  We really don't want to quit drinking.

The woman next to me shared an anecdote that mirrored my experience almost exactly.  I was fighting the not-drinking thing vigorously when some kind but frustrated man asked me how old I was.

"Twenty-nine," I said, confidently.  I knew the answer to this one.  It didn't seem to be a trick question.  I didn't see how it could lead me down a hallway without an exit.

"How are things working out for you?" was his devastating follow-up question.

I'm not sure I actually gave a verbal, audible reply to the follow-up question, although I'm sure my body language and facial expressions were pretty clear.  I bet my shoulders slumped.

"Maybe you could try something different for a while," he suggested.

This was brilliant but simple, reasonable without being offensive.

I have a tendency yet today to resist anything that doesn't agree exactly with my assessment of the situation.  Who knows better than me what to do?  Who?  This is, as you can imagine, not one of my more endearing qualities.  My wife, for instance, isn't thrilled that I argue with every fucking suggestion she has ever brought up, ever.

Amplifiers

I got a friend who drinks casually.  He'll have a beer or two at a bar, maybe a couple glasses of wine during dinner, which does not have the effect on him that it has on me.  To wit - he doesn't become an idiot or get arrested or take a swing at someone or throw up on the table, that kind of stuff.  He does, however, become slightly less interesting - sillier rather than wittier.  He is more fun to be around when he's stone cold sober.  It's another one of those perspective-makers for me.  I thought I was fucking hilarious when I was drinking.  I'm pretty sure I wasn't hilarious.  I'm pretty sure I was annoying. 

There was a young woman at the meeting today who shared a story about trying to go out to dinner with several housemates from her recovery home.  She was hilarious and she really wasn't trying to be, unfortunately.  It sounded like herding a whole lot of cats.  Cats on LSD.  All of the herding had the effect of amping up the anxiety that so many alcoholics are prone to get amped up by.  I spoke with her for a bit after the meeting, aware that my recent severe bout of panic and fear made me uniquely qualified to talk to her from a position of experience and empathy.

All in all, I'd rather have been clueless about what she was going through.  Blissfully clueless.  That "pain is the touchstone of all spiritual progress" bullshit really sticks in my craw sometimes.

Rant 1 - Seaweed 0

Rant:  A wild, emotional, and sometimes incoherent articulation.

Because I hate to ruin the narrative of my life - that of a really, really great guy who is kind and loving to everyone and seemingly without any serious flaws - I try not to dip into Rant Mode too often.  It's so . . . anti-Seaweed.

Yeah, well.

During my recent Midwest walkabout I saw some truly great friends, I revisited some old haunts - scenes of some of my greatest victories and most spectacular defeats - and spent some time doing some things and seeing some people, things that I felt a need to do for a variety of reasons even though I knew some of them were going to be less than pleasant for me and it is - as you know - all about me.

So my brother-in-law Not Rex . . . 

I really can't stand the guy.  Over the years I have progressed from sort of liking him; to not really liking him and arguing with him incessantly; to ignoring him 95% of the time until I couldn't stand listening to him talk for one minute more, resulting in a somewhat heated argument that left me feeling worse than if I had kept my mouth completely and fully shut; to my present state: just not paying any attention to him.  During my trip I tried to edge away from him as often as possible.  I did not do things that would put me in close proximity to his moving mouth, such as breakfast time and lunch time and hike-up-the-mountain time.

I realize the searing quality of the irony - that I'm too much like him for my own comfort.  If you want to see how annoying your shortcomings are hang around someone who has a lot of the same defects.

The other issue, in my opinion, is that Not Rex is sort of a professional student type.  After college he went to work for a big manufacturing company who paid for him to get a master's degree in accounting.  He left a few years later to go to law school where he did very well.  After graduation he went to work for a big law firm and progressed there, well on his way to making partner which is when, as I understand it, lawyers quit working 80 hours a week and begin to make serious money.  He left a few years later to take a corporate law position at another different, big manufacturing company.  He did very well there and was very unhappy.  He came home about a year ago and told my sister that he had quit his job.  He had no other job lined up.  He isn't working now and doesn't appear to be looking for employment with any intensity.  I think that the fact that I was more successful in the business world has always grated on his nerves, and he's too tentative and not nearly as aggressive as one needs to be to achieve a lot of success in the business world. 

I try to be compassionate and understanding, to go the extra mile to be the bigger person.  I have this amazing Program, after all.  I have this amazing Program behind me and I'm still an asshole most of the time.  I have no idea how people adrift in the world, no spiritual, bigger-than-me foundation to stand on, make it through the day.

That being said - I don't take more shit from anyone than I think is fair.  You can give me some shit, just not an unlimited amount of shit.  

I'm going to go stand over there.

Retracing Some Ancient Steps

This is kind of a hybrid trip diary/blog post report - I visited Chicago where I really got sober although I had quit drinking a few months earlier and Columbus, current home of my sponsor and Willie.

It was a good trip.  Frankly, the big draw was seeing my three best friends from high school in the flesh and blood.  It was far, far too long for a couple of them - maybe next time it will be on a sun-kissed beach, escaping a NE winter.  I'm grateful for these friendship that have lasted forever - I'm aware how rare they tend to be for middle-aged American men.  I love these guys.

Evanston and The Gold Coast were really, really great, too.  Wonderful to poke around my old stomping grounds in a city where I felt more at home than anyplace but vacation city and sincity.  That being said the short experience confirmed quickly that it is not the place for me.  And it's not just the cold, dark winters, either - it looked brutalized and beaten up, worn-out, dirty, vaguely brutish.  The nice areas like Evanston had a vaguely fake feel to them - new and sanitized, sort of a theme park Chicago.

Mrs. G, mother and aunt to my buddies,  was a marvel.  Huzzah.  And . . . that guy whose name I've already forgotten . . . is, I think, a blessing.  Old people lose so many of their family and friends that they can feel isolated, so a good companion can be a wonderful thing.

Stepping off the plane in Columbus was a revelation.  Why this surprises me I no longer know.  The first restaurant I saw was a Bob Evans Express.  Give me some biscuits and gravy, fast!  If I live here for the rest of my days - and this I plan to do - I'll never really be a local.  I fit in just fine but I'm still clearly The Other, what with my dress slacks and suit jackets and brisk, dry Midwestern sarcasm.  I'm more at home in the Midwest but I stand out there, too, but not as starkly.  I'm the guy in a suit with green socks and a pork pie hat.  Vaguely out of place.

I walked around OSU for a while.  Man, 40 years has made a big difference.  So many new buildings - the money must be pouring in.  I heard they had a billion dollar fund-raising campaign that they exceeded by 10%.  Hard to believe that it's rated as one of the top 15 public universities in the US (most of them are either in CA or in the Big Ten).  One of my old homes was still there, looking pretty much the same, and one was gone, replaced by a big, new University complex.  I did not go by the College of Optometry - site of the most massive and painful defeat in my adult life - for purely one-way street logistical reasons and not out of any sense of shame or fear.  And what a good thing in retrospect - the circumstances of that profession have changed radically over the years and would have not made for a pleasant career for me.

I enjoyed my time with my current sponsor, a guy who was my original sponsor in Indy 30 years ago and who I last eyeballed in 1992.  It was, I think, important for me to make that physical contact again even though the emotional bond sprang back to life almost immediately when we began to communicate a year or so ago.  The second most important reason for my trip.

I also got to spend an afternoon with my oldest and dearest friend from sincity who now lives in C-Town.  Another musician.  Three of my best buddies here?  A professional bass player who toured with Frank Zappa; a consultant for the LA County water district who is a Ben-like intellectual, capable of playing Mahler on a French horn; and a hydrologist engineer who owns a store that sells guitars and repairs anything with strings.

I ate Skyline once.  It was transcendent.  I had a 4 way with onion and a coney with andouille sausage instead of the standard rubber dog.  This was a mistake but not a terrible one.  I did not grace the inside of a Frisch's.

On to Lancaster, home of the Fairfield County Fair, an event that I have probably attended 40 times in the last 60 years.  My sister has that streak beat to hell.  There I ate a mountain of shit food - a Riblet sandwich (think something you'd get at McDs), a braut, and an Italian sausage sandwich slathered in green peppers, onions, and red sauce - desserts were coconut creme pie, peanut butter bars, and confetti cake (homemade by booster organizations trying to raise money for a variety of county high schools), a sugar waffle, a sugar waffle dipped in chocolate, and an over-salted giant pretzel.  It was disgusting and it was great.  All the food was served by carnies in open-air food trailers of questionable provenance, dusty air blowing around, drifting in from the cattle barn and dirt horse track. 

I got to walk around animal barns and see a demolition derby (think: Loud).  The people were not of my clan concerning politics and morality in general.  I've developed a real mean streak of intolerance with these folks which is unattractive and needs to be addressed.

I climbed to the top of Mt. Pleasant three times and looked down from the 250 foot summit to the fairgrounds below.  The trees had not changed color one whit, odd for this time in October.  I clambered around all of the old trails, memories flooding to the surface.  I shed an old dress shirt and hung it on a tree in one out of the way spot - leaving a little bit of my spoor in an old haunt.  I remembered climbing to the tip in the dark with dad year after year for an Easter sunrise service in all kinds of weather, including one trip in freshly fallen snow where we trail-blazed our way to the top.  I remember dad slinking into the woods to take a crap once.  My hope was always that this would count as my Sunday church-going experience but it usually didn't work.  The mountain gets a little higher every year.

It was good to see my sister - not great, but good.  It was definitely not good to see my brother-in-law Not Rex and my niece.  The family is trying to live a certain kind of lifestyle while trying to pretend that they're not.  Everything is Wyoming this and Wyoming that.  At one point Not Rex talked to a woman from a little town who was in Lancaster for her daughter's soccer tournament.

"We're from Wyoming," Not Rex said while the woman looked blankly on.  

I don't believe that a single comment was directed to me from Not Rex or my niece and the upwardly mobile, social climbing bullshit talk doesn't interest me at all.  Poor Not Rex is a lawyer and a sharp guy but not especially successful.  He doesn't possess the aggression to go far in business - one has to be willing to compete just like you're playing a football game.  I made more money than he did and didn't care as much about it while working a lot less hours, and I sense this has really stuck in their craw.  Not Rex  isn't as clever or witty as he thinks he is so he often comes across as snide and condescending in an almost bullying tone.  Hell, I've never liked the guy while being grateful that he's been a good husband and father and a stable presence in his family's life.  I have progressed from unsuccessfully trying to be his friend to openly bickering with him to just kind of ignoring his presence.

Prickly Seaweed took offense many, many times . . . 

The ass-juice story.  I took one of the last rooms which was a handicapped accessible room.  It had a large walk in shower - no tub - and there was a shower chair sitting off to the side.  As a joke I turned on the hot water, dragged the chair into the shower, and let the water pound on my head, something I'd never do in water-precious SoCal.  Not Rex and the niece were immediately appalled, repeating the word "ass-juice" over and over.  They seem to be on the germophobe bandwagon, actually walking around with little bottles of hand sanitizer in their pockets.  I didn't care enough to point out that they had spent the previous day eating food out of open-air trailers that had been prepared by carnies in what was basically an agricultural zone.

The someone stealing a flat-screen TV story in Wyoming after I made the correct comment that thieves are looking for money, drugs, and guns, not large electronics.  Frankly, I think he made this story up.

The snide comment about Becky and me sitting down while he and my niece were walking around the arts and crafts barn, no doubt making fun of the efforts of small children to produce arts and/or crafts.

We also made a stop at the cemetery.  It was good to see the graves.  Maybe it was important to me to see the graves as I'm trying to process my grief at all the family losses.  I took some pictures of the graves of our extended family.  Maybe I'll do a little genealogy work, see where my people came from in the Old Country.

It seems to me I had a good, important, occasionally irritating trip.  As it should be.

The Big Machine

When you think about it the body is really just a big complicated machine.  Parts are chugging along, more or less agreeing with each other as to what needs to be done.  Sometimes parts go haywire and malfunction, and sometimes bad things get in the body and screw around with the lovely ballet that the parts are dancing.  Sometimes parts are injured by unwanted foreign agents, also screwing up the ballet.

I say this: maybe they should try some other art form?  What is it about ballet that they find so compelling, anyway?  Maybe a symphony would be better.  Maybe the cellos would always find themselves in harmony with the oboes.  Injuries and unwanted foreign agents be damned.

A couple of days before I left on my walkabout I could tell I was coming down with a cold.  So be it, I said - a certain number of colds are inevitable and, as colds go, this one hasn't been bad, slowing me down but not stopping me.  It has, unfortunately, led to a sinus infection which I suspect is one of the ongoing curses of all of my oral cavity surgeries.  I'll say this: there is nothing that will pique one's appetite like the slow drip of infected mucous into said oral cavity.  Why that stuff turns yellow I'll never know, and it's not an attractive shade of yellow, either, but more of a sickly, off-color yellow.  When I become a fully accredited, fully functioning god I'm going to do something about that.  I don't think I'll simply stop the infections - as a god I suspect I'll take some small enjoyment in watching people suffer with sinus infections as I'll no longer be subject to them, as a god - but I can make the effluent less objectionable.  That seems fair.

In my non-god wisdom I decided that it would be a good idea to take some decongestants to see if I could flush the yellow effluent out of my infected sinuses as quickly as possible.  Get that shit out of here, I say.  While this has produced the desired effect it has also fucked up the normal functioning of my bowels, an organ system that struggles with travel and time changes during the best of times, often taking a few days to get back on track.  So I'm constipated.  Great.  I'm swallowing bitter sinus infection juice and I feel like I weigh about 20 pounds more than I actually weight.

The poor people I'm staying with are downstairs whipping up a breakfast omelet.  The smell of the food cooking is making me mildly nauseous but I don't see a socially acceptable way of avoiding the meal.  I'm going to be an engaged breakfast companion.  Eating breakfast with other people isn't at the top of my list when I'm in fine mettle so you can imagine how I am when I'm not feeling that great.

So yesterday I'm on the can, straining to evacuate my bowels, and I think I tweaked my back.  My back is balky today - whether this is due to my toilet experience is open for debate but you have to admit that it makes for a better story.

When I left home I felt great.  This is not how I envisioned things playing out on the walkabout.  This is probably why a lot of people don't like to travel as they get older.

I'm going to type a random sentence here as I can't think of any wisdom to share that would sum up this experience.

$$$

So I'm on my Midwestern walkabout.  I blow into Chicago O'Hare late at night without a worry in the world because they have a shuttle and I was on the ball!  I called earlier in the day to verify that they had a shuttle.  I didn't want to take a room at the airport if they didn't have a shuttle because that's the whole idea of staying at the airport.  One doesn't choose an airport hotel for the ambiance.

"Hello," I said, quite reasonably.  "I'm at baggage claim and I'd like to arrange for the shuttle to pick me up."

"No shuttle tonight," the guy replies.

"But I called earlier and was told that there was a shuttle," I said, again quite reasonably.

"Take a taxi," the guys says.  "We'll pay for it."

One of my big things over the years has been to worry about getting screwed by taxi drivers, especially when I'm in traveling in a foreign country, and trust me on this - engaging a taxi driver in any major city is pretty close to traveling in a foreign country.  The fact that I've never been screwed in a foreign country - ever - hasn't lessened this fear much.  This guy was pretty nice.  He drove me to my hotel in about 10 minutes.  The meter said $12.50.  What did I care, right?  

"$14," he said.

I laughed inwardly.  I didn't ask about the price discrepancy.

I gave him a twenty dollar bill.  He fumbled around in his wallet for a bit before giving me three ones.  He looked at me expectantly.  I laughed inwardly some more.  I have gained the ability to distance any negative thinking that I may have from what is actually going on in the world, and sometimes I'm able to apply this to real world situations.  I didn't point out this blatant theft and exited the cab cheerfully, even tipping him a couple of bucks. 

Inside I encountered The Desk Clerk at the Hilton.

"Name," he said without looking up.  He took the information and worked on the computer for a bit before handing me a key.

"Here's the receipt for the cab," I said.

He peered at the slip of paper.

"What's this?" he asked, pointing at my $3 tip.

He gave me three fives and a one.

"We don't pay for tips," he said.

Screwed twice in the first 15 minutes in the city.  Yee Hee.

The Girl From Ipanema

Patient:  Willing to wait if necessary; not losing one's temper while waiting.
Wait:  To delay movement or action until some event or time.  

Boy, I don't like to wait.  I like to go.  I like to get things done.  I like to finish the fuck up.

Do you know those people who are always happy and optimistic?  They have big smiles on their faces and they tell you to have a nice day?  Where do those people get off, anyway?  Who the fuck do they think they are?

My diet is sort of a mess right now, especially in the areas of sugar and caffeine.  My wife gets mad at me when I use the "old" word around her; then she tells me that I've lost my mind when I behave in ways that suggest I still think I'm 12 years old.   I'm drinking too much caffeine (read: any caffeine at all) and I'm eating too much sugar (read: shut the fuck up about the sugar - touch my sugar and you are in a world of hurt).   My body isn't responding very well.  There are many things we can get away with when we're very young and very stupid and some of these things become increasingly problematic the older we get.

I am an addictive person.  I do things to excess that make me feel better through chemistry.  The drugs and alcohol are obvious winners in the Excess Sweepstakes.  I smoked for many years, loving the sense of well-being that nicotine produced in my body.  Sugar and caffeine - please see above - but fat and salt aren't anything to be sneezed at, either.  I have at times used sex and exercise - both lovely things in moderation - so that I can suck on the endorphin rush.

With most of these substances there is the problem of decreasing sensitivity - the more we use the more habituated we become and the more we need - and cumulative effect - the more we use the harder it is on our bodies and the longer it takes to purge the detritus from our bodies.

I don't like the sound of any of this.  :(