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.

Huff-Huff-Huff-Long Wail

I learned long ago that our five senses are so designed so that we pay special attention to changes in our environment and ignore steady-state conditions.  I'm guessing our consciousness understands that we can't be hyper-vigilant all the time so when nothing new is going on we figure that we're safe and secure and that we can zone out a little bit.  The example I use is the Crying Baby.  If you try to ignore the Crying Baby . . . well . . . good luck with that.  My Higher Power, ever the Merry Prankster, installed not one but two Crying Babies on my trip home so I could practice the arcane art of Not Giving A Shit.  I was grateful that these were daytime flights and I wasn't trying to get a lot of sleep but it was still an amazing exercise in the art of Believing My Own Bullshit.  I noticed that the second Crying Baby would wail normally on the out breath but had a staccato four or five step inhalation.  It was mesmerizing.  It made me laugh a few times. 

Huff-Huff-Huff-Long Wail.

The kid was good.  He seemed to be able to do other things while he was wailing.  He was multi-tasking.  He didn't even seem to pay attention to his wailing.  He might have been so bored he put the wailing on auto-pilot.  Maybe he was looking around the plane to see if he could find a content infant to outsource his own wailing.  That way he could happily watch a video while still annoying everyone on the plane, except for his parents, who were so used to this kind of behavior that they just zoned out and ignored the wailing.

Huff-Huff-Huff-Long Wail.

Such problems I have.

Fair Game

I have a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous that I love and that I sometimes like but not all the time.  He has made a great deal of progress in his three years.  And, of course, he has a great deal of progress still to make.  And my task is to remember that the progress he's going to make will take him to a state that is his state, not my state.  I no longer try to dictate the terms of anyone else's life.  This guy has a lewd sense of humor.  Or a risque, edgy sense of humor, anyway.  I don't care for it and I know that a lot of people don't care for it, either, but I don't tell him to stop making suggestive jokes in a one-on-one situation, but I don't laugh at them, either.

I caught up with him on my beach walk the other day and he said that he had just offended another one of our members, a nurse, by proposing some medical advice that is far out of the mainstream of medical thought.  Fair enough as far as the opinion is concerned.  I'm not a physician and there are always going to be contradictory opinions about medical solutions.  Not that long ago we thought that covering someone suffering from tuberculosis with leeches was a good idea.  He then started to tell  me what he had said to the nurse.  This was information he had shared with me in the past, more than once come to think of it.  Today I said: "Anthony, I don't want to hear this.  I don't agree with it and I think it's not good to spread this kind of information around.  I'm not saying I'm right and you can certainly tell people whatever you want but not to me, not today."  Can I say he was pissed off.  When I said my goodbyes and resumed my walk he was looking down and he said nothing.

Fair enough.  I wasn't disturbed by his response.  I think I tempered my firm disavowal with a lot of kindness.  He might have disagreed.  Fair enough, again.  Here's what I did the next time I saw him - I said: "We good?"   We were.  We can disagree in recovery.  We can annoy and irritate each other.  It's all on the table.  It's all fair game

How About I Keep My Mouth Shut?

There's a new guy at our meeting who talks too much.  We have a three minute timer - in an example of my own overriding self-love I'm proud to say the timer has never gone off when I've shared because I think three minutes is a long time to share - and he always blows past the chime and then he continues to talk - often saying "I acknowledge the timer" as if this makes it okay; "I acknowledge that armed robbery is against the law" doesn't keep you outta jail - usually blowing through the one minute reminder timer as well.  Bugs the shit out of me.  Doesn't seem to bug the shit out of the other members but it sure gets my goat - I'd rather hear ten people talk for two minutes than to hear four people talk for five minutes.  As I say to myself: "You are not as interesting to other people as you are to yourself."  The most popular form of writing for aspiring authors is the memoir.  You may think you're fascinating but no one else does.

Anyway, there are a few of us long-timers who feel a responsibility to police the meeting from time to time.  I think we do it reluctantly and with as much understanding and kindness as we can hork up.  I was wondering if I should approach one of the long-timers and say: "Should I tell Sean maybe he could be a little more aware of how long he's talking, or should you?"  As I was pondering having this conversation this guy shared and he blew through the three minute timer and then he blew through the one minute reminder and then he talked for another solid minute.  He's a prime example of someone who tells you how to build a watch when you ask him for the time.

Maybe I keep my mouth shut?  Maybe I keep my fucking, self-righteous mouth shut?  How about I do that?  How about I remember that whenever I think I need to police someone else's behavior I usually manage to keep my mouth shut and it works out great?  How about finding someone who needs a pat on the back and some loving-kindness and try to lift their spirits instead of dropping some little critical, off-hand remark to someone who has a critically injured son?  Maybe I can practice not talking?  I can remember that much of the time silence is better than anything that comes out of my mouth?

Here's another thing - this dude lives near me and he doesn't have a car and I've left my house early  to pick him up and drive him to the meeting.  He never shuts up for one second the entire drive.  He brings a backpack the size of a Buick each day.    I have not offered him a ride since I got back from vacation.  How about I text him today and offer him a ride tomorrow?  And ignore the fact that I have to wait a couple of minutes for him to leave the house and get into my car?

Trying to Take Some Responsibility Some of the Time

"Call on God, but row away from the rocks."

Indian Proverb

I'd be an idiot if I sat in the room and complained about the darkness when all I needed to do is go flick a light switch.  I reflect on the times when I call on God to help when I can really help myself.  This Being doesn't exist for us to make request after request for things I can do myself.  I try to limit myself to for safety and guidance but I still need to take responsibility for my own safety and well-being.  I need to make sure I'm taking responsibility.  God is working through me, not for me.  He's not my employee.

It's quite difficult wrapping my limited human consciousness around the ideas of eternity and vast endlessness.  It's not possible to logically understand "forever" or the idea of another existence in a different dimension.