Slogging Seaweed

The mild weather I get to enjoy in SoCal allows me to open a window in my meditation room most days.  It's early when I first sit down so it's quiet outside.  Then some particular kind of bird begins to stir and makes this repetitive chirping noise.  Chirp, chirp, chirp.  The cadence and rhythm changes from time to time, getting faster and more strident, slowing down.  Could be the alarm on an old clock radio.  Next, another different kind of bird starts up with kind of a whirring noise.  Brings to mind a big, flying cricket creature.  So those two guys are welcoming me to the day.  It's quite dark at the onset and I really enjoy seeing how the light slowly changes.  It's pitch black - depending on how big the moon is in its waning and waxing cycles - and then the day starts to brighten up.  Slowly, very slowly.  I can perceive a change in the light.  Initially it's more of a suggestion of brightening.  It's a little brighter . .  .  . kinda . . . sort of.  There are road noises coming from outside the community or there are not.  This changes based on the wind direction, I think.  We get fog often overnight and this can deaden the noise completely.  Some days I hear every truck and car hissing by my window and some days there's nothing.

How weird is the concept of giving?  I still don't get it intellectually.  It seems like a win-lose situation.  I give.  You get.  I haven't completely shaken off my zero sum mentality.  There's six pieces of pie and if I grab three of them .  . .  well . . . tough shit for you.  Snooze ya lose.

SuperK and I spent a couple of hours yesterday in a room off the local ER sitting with Detox Girl.  She was through the worst of the detox but she was still shaky.  My sober daughter was there most of the previous day as Detox Girl was in the worst of it.  Vomiting, shaking, that kind of shit.  A room off an ER isn't that great a room.  The chairs suck.  The ambiance leaves a lot to be desired.  The traffic in the hallway consists of sick and injured people going to and fro.  There is not a lovely aromatic smell wafting about.  I'd rather be somewhere else if I'm talking about my own personal comfort which is the only comfort I care much about.  At least I wasn't rubbing the back of someone upchucking.   But I understood in my bones that I was putting money in my serenity bank.  I was not thinking about myself, I was not pondering the return on investment.  My sober daughter has two small children at home and I told her that I knew she wasn't jotting down in a ledger every nice thing she does for her kids so that sometimes in the future she can whip it out and say: "Hey, you were acting like a brat so I made you pancakes even though I was tired so you owe me."  I know love doesn't work like that.  If it's not freely given . . . well . . . it's not really love, is it?

And on the other hand I have to be prepared for the very real possibility that I breathed in hospital smells trying to be helpful to someone who very well may be drinking the day she gets out of the hospital.  Alcoholism works like that.  I still cannot believe that I sobered up lo these many years ago.  It's a slog.  Most of us are poor sloggers.