I'm Content . . . . Ish

 "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."                                                                 Teddy Roosevelt

If someone suggests that I join the Olympic volleyball team I'd quickly point out that I haven't had the training or developed the skills or even allowed time for this to happen.  I wouldn't assume that I was ready to play volleyball at that level.  I need to remember this ridiculous analogy when I ponder meditation or spiritual growth or the capacity to turn around the Seaweed battleship that has been steaming along for years in total self-absorption and ponder actually giving a shit about anyone else.  All this takes time and practice.  The important thing for me to remember is that I just need to stick with it, keep at it, keep plugging away.  I can't expect to join the Olympics today, and I certainly can't expect to master the work of The Program, either.  Each takes a great deal of time to master the necessary skills.

I should post a GIF of some clod getting drilled in the face with a volleyball.  That's about as close to the Olympic volleyball team I'd ever get.  I'm a tackling dummy.  I'm a punching bag.

Meditation is a microcosm, a model, and a mirror.  Here are some of the benefits of a daily meditation practice:

~I learn how to stay in the moment.

~I practice letting go of judgements.  I'm meditating as best as I can and that's enough.  It's just like exercise - if someone is sedentary and begins to exercise moderately, then the physical gains are significant.  But moving from moderate to strenuous exercise, while providing additional benefits, isn't as important as getting started, as doing something.  I swim and I see too many new swimmers jump in the pool and try too hard to be an Olympic swimmer.

~I become aware of a calm, stable center that can steady me even when my life is in upheaval.

~I become kinder to myself.

~Because I've discovered a source of true calm I'm filled with more energy.

~I've become more self-reliant.  Because I can access this inner source of strength and calm I'm less dependant on other people or external circumstances to feel contentment.  When someone asks me if I'm happy I'm usually say something along the lines of "I'm often happy but more often I'm content."

Peace is This Moment

In my conception of the Afterlife I'm going to get to choose to come back to earth as another life form.   I'm not sure about coming back as a person.  That would be too weird.   I think if I make that kind of request to my Higher Power I'm going to get a "Nuh-uh, not happening.  Pick an animal or a plant or something."  I wouldn't mind being an owl.  That would be pretty cool.  I wouldn't mind being a spider, either.  Spin a web and then just hang out, waiting.  I guess that's what owls do, too.  I wouldn't being anything that lives where it's cold or that has to be worried about getting eaten alive by another animal although I might be okay with eating other animals, an odd mindset for an almost vegetarian.  I do like the idea of being a gorilla.  Gorillas are so huge that they aren't afraid of nothin' - they just lie down and go to sleep wherever they want to.  I might consider being an animal that can run super fast or fly at supersonic speeds.  Maybe I could come back as a wraith or a spook.  Maybe that's on the table.  Maybe that's a possibility.  I wouldn't be a scary, tormenting spook, though.  I'd be one of those spooks that move something from one place to another so you'd think: "WTF?  How did that get over there?" and think you're going insane.  I'd be a Fuck With You spook.  I don't think I can get started on plant life this morning.  There are just way too many cool plants out there.  Venus Fly Trap or a cactus or some kelp that lies beneath the surface of the ocean, swaying this way and that way at the whim of the currents.  A huge tree.  Maybe a bristlecone pine tree.  There's one in California reputed to be over five thousand years old.  That might be too long.  That sounds boring.

Peace Is This Moment Without Judgment

​

Do you think peace requires an end to war?
Or tigers eating only vegetables?
Does peace require an absence from
your boss, your spouse, yourself?...
Do you think peace will come some other place than here?
Some other time than Now?
In some other heart than yours? 

​

Peace is this moment without judgment.
That is all. This moment in the Heart-space
where everything that is is welcome.
Peace is this moment without thinking
that it should be some other way,
that you should feel some other thing,
that your life should unfold according to your plans. 

​

Peace is this moment without judgment,
this moment in the Heart-space where
everything that is is welcome.

Dorothy Hunt

Each and Every Precious Minute

I'm tired and distracted this morning, sleepy.  I tried to meditate but had to break it off half way through.  I even tried to continue while keeping a neutral gaze, an unfocused gaze on a spot in front of me.  Nothing.  Dozing more than meditating.  When I'm attempting to meditate and find myself drifting away weird faces and images start populating my consciousness.  It's kind of pleasant watching familiar faces melt into new forms.  Oh, well.  It's not meditating.

"Welcome the guests even if they're a crowd of sorrows."

Rumi

When I was failing out of Optometry College I lived in an apartment with a small kitchen.  On my refrigerator I would occasionally tape up stuff that amused or alarmed me, most of it negative and edgy.  I was trying to release something into the atmosphere.  I was trying to be more dramatic than events warranted, not unusual in a young person.  Two came to mind recently, both newspaper clippings.  One of them showed a Cadillac with a huge tree lying crosswise right across the passenger compartment.  The driver was killed instantly when this tree blew down in a big thunderstorm and he was exactly in that precise spot.  Another was a grainy photo of the grandstand at a race track.  You could see a wheel in mid flight, flying over the people sitting in the stands, at a hundred miles an hour, a wheel assembly weighing fifty pounds if you can believe ChatGPT.  Apparently there was a crash on the track, the wheel was torn from the car, and its momentum sent it bouncing, flying up over the crowd until it struck a spectator who was sitting in the very last row, killing him instantly.

Negative Seaweed, grasping for instances that prove life is cruel and meaningless and random, took a morbid pleasure in these pictures, magnifying the cruelty of circumstance a hundred times.  Perspicacious Seaweed would, I hope, use them as a reminder that life is here one minute, gone the next.  The chances of a tree falling on my car are slim.  The chances of me wasting one precious minute worrying or raging about unimportant things, things I cannot change, are much better.  I'm not going to drive around today keeping my eye out for falling trees or supersonic tires but I am going to try to grasp the preciousness of life.  Don't waste one minute.

Part of this phenomenon can be chalked up to the fact that the young tend to overdramatize everything.  Some more can be attributed to the fact that alcoholics tend to take things that are overdramatized and then dramatize the shit out of that overdrama.  Today, as I muse on the memory of the picture, I realize that I wasn't the guy unlucky enough to be in the exact, fatal spot when a tree fell - I was the guy parking my car next to a huge tree, positioning it just so, then using a chain saw to cut the tree almost completely through, gauging angles and timing and the depth of the cut, then running back to the car, jumping into the driver's seat, and waiting for the tree to fall right on top of me.  Sure, there are random, unforeseen forces out there but the real enemy is me.  If it's between a wound and a self-inflicted wound, I'm the guy shooting myself in the foot.

Reading the Words

It's very difficult wrapping my limited human consciousness around the idea of eternity and vastness, limitless space, endless time, the actual size of one trillion of anything.  Don't believe me?  A trillion seconds is almost thirty one thousand years.  30,800 years!  It's not possible to logically understand the concept of "forever" or to logically picture what life in another dimension might look like.

I pray for calmness and engagement.  I pray for a release from restless energy, from pure restlessness.

The dude who led the meeting yesterday read the line in The Big Book that included the word "conviviality."  He could not pronounce the word and, as I was sitting next to him, it was difficult for me not to jump in and help him out, and not in a desire to show off my vocabulary skills but to ease his path a little.  He actually looked the word up and read off the definition.  It made me think of a couple of members I've known who couldn't read very well but sat in their chairs and labored through a paragraph or two when it was their turn at a literature meeting.  I was so impressed by this.  I mentioned to Mr. Conviviality that Bill W was an arrogant pain in the ass half the time.  He never passed up the opportunity to use a five syllable word when something simple would have sufficed.  The flip side of the coin, of course, is that we needed a man brimming with self-confidence to promote the fledgling A.A. Program.  Someone who couldn't read would have not made the same impact talking in front of a group of wealthy professionals.  

Still . . .  I think I'll  buy him a copy of The Plain Language Big Book.

Distracted Seaweed

I have a tendency to get lost in my own thoughts.  This tendency makes me inattentive to others some of the time.  It's not that I find others uninteresting.  It's that I enjoy thinking.  I enjoy the process and the state of thinking.  This is a perfect example of "It's not you - it's me."  This can be hurtful some of the time because it can make me seem distant or arrogant or emotionally uninvolved.  Of course, if I'm being honest with myself - which is something I do from time to time, believe it or not - I should confess that this is sometimes true.  My mind just goes places, goes off on its own.  Part of this is me, pure Stevie, and part of is human nature, natural protective egotism, a scanning of the environment for potential problems, planning ahead for all eventualities.  And part of it is selfish, me wanting to think about what I want to think about rather than pay attention to something or someone outside of myself.

"One never notices what ha been done - one can only see what remains to be done."

Marie Curie

Am I thinking about tomorrow or a week from now?  There are many things left for me to do.  But for right now, I can look at what I have accomplished in my life, in my career, with my family and friends.  I've done so much!  I need to pay attention to that.  I sleep a lot better when I can take the attitude of "Meh.  I did the best I could today."  That and no coffee after four o'clock.  That's big, too.

Beer In Vending Machines

Here's a little bit of irony to top off the Kevin Klammerman sundae . . .  As we were waiting for Kevin to show up I was amused to see a display of liquor and beer and smokeables displayed in a glass case that was visible from both the inside and the outside of the parking garage.  There was a restaurant in the vicinity so it may have been connected to that establishment.  Maybe there was a store around the corner.  I didn't investigate but I did find it amusing that whenever I'm angry or frustrated I seem to find alcohol in the weirdest places.  It's hard to escape.  If you want to drink it's there for the taking and especially so in foreign cultures where alcohol isn't treated as if it were radioactive heroin.  I guess the responsibility for instilling in young people a healthy respect for alcohol begins in the home and is generally societal in nature.  In Japan vending machines for cold drinks were everywhere - and I mean in odd, remote, poorly trafficked areas - and they usually had beer available for purchase.  So a ten year old could pop in some coins and get a beer.  A cold beer.  Holy Shit, I would have pitched a tent next to that pop machine.  In Spain we walked by a table of young teens drinking beers in a restaurant.  Right out in front, right next to the street.  Not everyone had a glass of beer but some of them did.  It looked strangely adult and they seemed to be drinking it moderately.  Alcohol is more a part of the culture and not something to be feared and restricted.

That alcohol display in the parking garage, though.  I was all "WTF? Are you kidding me?" for a minute before I started to laugh out loud. 

The Kevin Klammermann

I should tell everyone that I left The Tony Morgan in a closet in Lausanne, Switzerland, by mistake.  May he rest in peace.  May I add I also left two long-sleeved shirts and two short-sleeved shirts.  May they have long and prosperous lives in Switzerland.  

At one of our stays the apartment didn't have a assigned parking space so we had to use a public garage.  I purchased a week-long pass because it was heavily discounted and I'm all about saving a few bucks.  When we returned to the garage for the first time I absentmindedly took a second ticket instead of using the weekly pass.  I'm an idiot for sure but in my defense the instructions were in German.  The next time we tried to leave the machine wanted us to ante up for another couple of days.  We backed up because we couldn't get out, certainly annoying the people in the cars behind us, and tried to explain our situation over an intercom system to a parking garage dude - Kevin Klammermann - who spoke very little English.  He clearly was becoming more and more frustrated and eventually said: "I'm coming to you - five minutes" and hung up the phone.  Kevin shows up on a bike and after some Google Translate interactions we get everything sorted out - he gives us a one-time pass so we can get out and emphasizes what we should do when we return to avoid this situation in the future.  We thanked him profusely.  Being a Swiss German he'd didn't come off as warm and fuzzy.  Who knows?  Maybe we interrupted his lunch.  Maybe he's responsible for more than two garages and he's tired of dealing with clueless tourists.  We were as kind as we could be given the language barrier - effusive in our thanks - and off we went.

So a few days later we show up at the car and it is completely, totally, irrevocably dead.  Dead.  Dead dead.  I have to use one of those emergency half-keys to even get inside.  No lights, no nothing.  What is it about this cursed parking garage, anyway?  I'm really starting to get an attitude about this parking garage, this inanimate, random location with no consciousness to accommodate the errors of one client.  Luckily, I had rented from one of the major car agencies so they dispatched a service van quickly and jumped the battery and we were good to go.  As we were thanking the fluent-in-English kid who was helping us who should walk up but our old buddy Kevin Klammermann.  He gives the kid a pass so he can get out, too, and they speak in German for a minute.  "Left your lights on," the kid tells us, clearly relaying a Klammermann comment.  I'm sure I did.  It was a rental car that I was unfamiliar with and I bet that there was some kind of warning dinging as I left and I'm just as sure I figured it was not that important.  Why would I figure that a dinging car alarm was not important, you might ask?  This is a good question to which I offer no reply.  I choose not to answer.

Kevin Klammermann, of course, was as friendly and polite as he could be.  Very helpful in all regards, Kevin Klammermann was.  In tribute I bought a new vest in Switzerland which will be known now and forevermore as The Kevin Klammermann.