The Holidays (play spooky music)

Ah, yes, The Holidays.  I like to remind people that this is the time of the year when there are the most suicides, except for the fact it isn't true.  However, when it fits my narrative to lie I'm not averse to the practice.  As someone Great once said: "I never lie unless it's absolutely necessary." 

Amen, Brother.

It does seem like everything is magnified this time of the year.  There is great potential, fraught with great peril.  There is the tendency to try to pack a whole lot of everything into a awfully short period of time.  It can be great and it can turn out otherwise.

I was with my birth family today -- a perfectly lovely bunch of people -- thinking how much more I would be enjoying myself if I were hanging out with the motley crew of guys that show up at my 7AM meeting.  It just seems so much more real there.

Let's Try Something New

Travel.  Travel does not need to involve an epic journey.  A simple trip to the coffee shop can awaken a latent, childlike sense of wonder at the world around us.

Travel removes us from our familiar comforts and security, taking us into new situations, alone and vulnerable, our minds open to the world and its sensations, bringing about an enhanced sense of perception.  It can allow us to rediscover parts of our own selves that are normally obscured by the humdrum routines of daily life.  It allows us to tap parts of the self that are generally obscured by chatter and routine and also to realize how subjective our certainties are.

I lifted that almost verbatim from a newspaper.  It really spoke to me.  Whenever I think about doing something new, getting out of my comfort zone, I start to get revved up and anxious, even when intellectually I know all is well and if it isn't, then it will be anyway.

Something To Say

Vested: In law: fixed; settled; absolute; not contingent upon anything.

Much to my surprise the couple whom I am marrying . . . that doesn't sound right.  I'm not marrying them -- I'm already married.  I'm conducting the service which will conclude with them being married to each other.  I actually get to say: "With the authority vested in me by the State of Ohio, I now pronounce you husband and wife."  Sheesh, our societal structure has to be breaking down if someone like me gets to say something like that and have it be legally sanctioned by anybody.

The point is that they asked me to write a sermon? remarks? barely coherent free association? to be delivered during the ceremony.  I thought I would be reading some brief remarks from a standard marriage template or something that the couple wrote themselves.

"I want to hear what you have to say," the woman told me.

I'm not so sure that will be the case. 

Nevertheless, it made me think about how people pursuing a spiritual life -- in The Fellowship, in a church, however, wherever -- do grow and change as individuals.  When I was drinking no one wanted to hear what I had to say about love and relationships and what it means to live a spiritual life.  They didn't want to hear what I had to say about much of anything.

But when I started to think about what I would say, I found out that I had something to say.   I don't mean to suggest that the remarks are especially profound or anything, and nobody else at the wedding may think so either.  But I know that when I listen to people in The Rooms who have been sober for a while and have put in the work and continue to put in the work, I find that they often have something to say, something meaningful.

This is one of those promise-y things I didn't value when I started this journey.

Blankety Blank

So I begin trying to alarm the bride to be at the coffee shop every morning.  I threaten to talk two hours or maybe two minutes, to flail each of them mercilessly, to encourage audience participation, on and on it goes, straining my imagination, getting more and more outlandish.

She is nonplussed.  "Sounds good," she says.  "Whatever."  I'm not sure why I thought I could unsettle someone who picks me to conduct a legally binding wedding ceremony.

Today I asked if I could use bad words.
"What kind of bad words?" she said.
"Well, let's say I was to call Jimbo a dumb blankety blank." I reply.

She thought about this for a minute.  "I don't know about the blankety part," she said.  "But you can call him a dumb blank.  I do that all the time."

I have great friends.

Let Us Prophesize

Prophet:  A person who speaks for God or a god, or as though under divine guidance.

I spend a lot of time in the best coffee shop in the world, Lookout Joe's.  Too much time, I think.  I have my own personal chair on the patio out front.  A friend from The Program was jogging by one morning and circled back to yell: "I can't even picture this place without you sitting there."  If someone is in my chair when I show up, I ask the manager to turn out the interloper, which she has yet to do.  Apparently it really isn't my chair. 

I have gotten to know the young woman who runs the place and her fiancee.  We share a similar sense of humor and also a somewhat irreverent view of life.  A few weeks ago the guy, Jimbo, called me up and asked if I would meet him one morning.

"What's up?" I asked.
"I just want to go over a few things," he vaguely replied.
"Uh-oh," I thought.  "Cold feet."

When we were seated comfortably outside with our drinks Jimbo mentioned that he wasn't the most religious person in the world.  He then told me that it had come to his attention that it was relatively easy to become certified or authorized or whatever it would be called to perform legal wedding ceremonies in the state of Ohio.  I was already lying on the ground, in hysterics.

"Oh, absolutely," I screamed.  "Absolutely I'll do this."

I figure a few minutes in front of a captive audience that's in a good mood, with a microphone and carte blanche to say whatever I want?  What's not to like?  I've never been one to shy away from the absurd.  It takes a lot of energy to locate the absurd so I'm not going to run away when the absurd is dropped right on my lap, gift-wrapped.

So I am now ordained.  I am a Prophet.  There were a lot of titles to pick from but Prophet seemed best.  I also liked missionary and evangelist but SuperK nixed those.  We didn't consider minister or pastor or any of the more traditional choices.  Probably I could have made up any title I wanted but Prophet seemed to be pretty good. 

Really, I have a business card -- a laminated business card so it has to be real -- that says I'm a Prophet.  Business cards really lend an aura of respectability to the position.  I bet there that the church that ordained me doesn't have too impressive a building.  I bet it doesn't have a building at all.  Probably a couple of guys in a garage somewhere.  But, really, how is this any different that some guy in an Elvis jump suit in Vegas performing a marriage?  Or a part time mayor in some hick town in Arkansas?

I'm really going to enjoy this.

Real Men are in My House

There have been some guys in our house, fixing things.  Apparently, this is what people do: they put up with broken, worn out, unattractive things for years until they're ready to move, then they fix everything up.  It would seem that the smart thing to do would be to fix the stuff up when it needs fixing up so that you get to enjoy the results.  This is especially true for someone who takes absolutely no joy in the pleasure of others, especially people enjoying things that I paid to fix up.

I find it very upsetting when men are working on my house.  Real men, not just biological men like me.  I'm sure that subconsciously I feel emasculated.  A dull-witted chimpanzee with a hammer would be more productive fixing up things than I would.  It would have more success accurately identifying different hand tools by their silhouettes than I would.

"Is that a monkey wrench or a ball peen hammer?" I think.  "Damn." 

Part of it, I'm sure, is the loss of control.  I don't understand what's happening and it's not happening fast enough and it's costing me money so I'm afraid.  I never behave very well when I'm afraid.

"You again?" I say when the men show up the next day or not, depending on which way the wind is blowing.  8 o'clock means just that to me.  Not to these guys.

Anyway, one of the more irritating of these guys did something that I found especially irritating, and I lost my temper.  Not vintage drunken Horseface, with the yelling and swearing and throwing of things, but I was ticked off, and it came out.  I've learned that I need to talk to a friend or two and one wife to see if an amends was in order and an amends was in order because that's always going to be the case when I don't feel good about how I've behaved.

So I approached this guy and made an apology, which he graciously accepted, which I didn't like much.  He had behaved badly and I wanted to hear him say that the whole situation was really his fault and I shouldn't worry about it and I didn't do anything wrong, anyhow.

Something is coming to mind.  Something about sweeping my side of the street.

Nowadays, Anon.

Egocentric:  Viewing everything in relation to oneself.

I'm so self-absorbed that I can't even contemplate how self-absorbed I am.  I can see when other people are riddled with character defects but have a strange blind spot when I'm similarly afflicted.  It's against my nature to accept the blame for anything.  And as always criticism of others is more enjoyable than trying to find my part in things. 

I have always associated egotism with noisy, outgoing people who have a big need to be stage center, playing to a packed house.  While that's a very recognizable form of egotism, it's by no means the only kind.  Cheerful extroverts can be as humble as the next guy.  As a life-long introvert, I harbor a secret resentment against those outgoing types.  So needy, so hungry for attention.

Today I think that it's more about the mind set than the actions.  I can sit quietly in the corner, in a trench coat, behind a potted plant, hat pulled down over my ears, lost in my own thoughts, thinking furiously about what I want or don't want, oblivious to the rest of the world, humble in appearance only but in reality consumed with myself to the exclusion of all other life forms.

Oh, the curse of the outgoing, self-absorbed introvert.

"Self-centered -- ego-centric, as people like to call it nowadays."

I Was Hoping For Something a Little More Expensive

Whenever I hear someone in The Program talk about how their life has improved since they got sober I'm often surprised at my reaction to what they say.  I guess somewhere deep in my white matter I'm programed to want stuff, to base my happiness on standards that are dictated by our physical, material world.  My instincts always shout out: "More Money! More Power!! More Sex!!!"  These desires don't elevate me much beyond the common yard aardvark. 
I hear people talk about a calm acceptance of life.  I listen to people who are comfortable in their own skin, grateful for what they have.  Life makes sense to these folks.  They care about other people and they have a connection with something or someone greater than themselves  They aren't consumed with fear.  They're so calm and peaceful they seem to be sedated.  They move through the day one step at a time, always moving forward but never rushing.

I wouldn't have asked for those things when I was drinking.