Seaweed - Philosopher

Philosophy:  A discipline that seeks truth through reasoning rather than empiricism.

When people ask me what I "do" I tell them that I'm a philosopher.  It quashes any further questions.  It chills the interest.

I like the fact that when I'm doing what I believe to be god's will that I feel fairly calm, even when I'm in the midst of a lot of activity.  I try to start my day with a little chat with god, along the lines of "this is what I'm going to be doing today or trying to do - if you have something else in mind maybe you can let me know" and then I get cracking.  If I don't hit any brick walls whilst traveling at a high rate of speed, then I figure I'm doing god's will.  Simple as that.

SuperK's morning reading was about change and how intimidating it can be, that sometimes we stay someplace uncomfortable or even harmful because the change is too daunting.  I know that I usually think that change is going to be for the worse.  This after 25+ years of trying this way of life - I still think that god is going to drop me on my head just for the hell of it, ignoring the fact that god hasn't dropped me on my head yet.  Not once.

If you've never been to a bad meeting you've not been to enough meetings.  I heard a guy last night say this: "If someone asks me to sponsor them I tell them call me in 30 days.  If they're still sober, I say call me in another 30 days.  If I get that call I tell them 30 days more.  At that point I'll start working with them.  I'm too  busy and new people are too frustrating."

I'm glad I wasn't asked to share my opinion on that bullshit.

Philosopher

Uncertainty:  Doubt; the condition of being without conviction; ambiguous.

A little more philosophy today, unfortunately.  I enjoy writing about my car troubles and rampaging drunks and other minor occurrences more than my free-wheeling, wide-ranging, not particularly perceptive or clever or wise observations on life and spirituality, but really, what I'm trying to accomplish here is to work this shit out on electronic paper, instead of in my head, which is a dark and forbidding place.  I do have a great story about falling into the tub in the middle of the night but that'll have to wait.  And I got yelled out on the street yesterday for a parking job that some busy-body found objectionable, and I lost my temper.  That's a pretty good story, too.  It's funny when I act like an ass.

Uncertainty is a part of life that I don't enjoy much, being a control freak and a power driver and a guy who knows exactly how everything should work out for everybody and everything.  Nonetheless, it can be disconcerting.  Not knowing the exactly how I'm going to be denied things that I want or when undetermined terrible afflictions will visit me can be disconcerting.  It's like standing in the dark, waiting for some big dude to punch me in the gut; it's the waiting that's worse than the punch.

There.  That wasn't so bad.

Walking Through a Region of Shrubs

Chaparral:  A region of shrubs, typically dry in the summer and rainy in the winter.

I'm OK with failing today.  I'm not even all that sure what that means anymore.  I'm not afraid to give things a whirl and see what happens.  I can't even begin to figure out where I'll be in a year or two or five, somewhere down the road, assuming I'll even be able to find the road.  I may have driven over the curb and be sitting in the chaparral.  Chaparral, by the way, is my new favorite word.  I did a lot of hiking in the chaparral in Vacation City.  There were rattlesnakes in there.  I kept my distance.

I want to feel like I gave everything a shot.  I  don't want to wonder What If.  The uncertainty can be awful when the outcome is uncertain but the payoff is wonderful.  One of my most memorable memories is stepping off the train in Venice, Italy, with the city splayed out in front of me.  I had seen pictures of Venice, of course, but the pictures were inadequate to the scene.  It was so beautiful and so exotic and so stimulating that my knees buckled.  I had to sit down on the steps of the train station for a minute to breathe deeply and collect myself.  This visit to Italy was my first foreign trip and the novelty of it - not speaking the language, getting on a Vaporetto,  sharing a train compartment with real live Italians - was very stressful.  I know now that walking through that fear made the vista all that more beautiful.

Walking through the chaparral.

Thanks for Your Note!!!

So I did want to give an official tip of the hat to Mitch . . . er, Martin for the great job he did for me.  I'm quick to complain, loath to praise.  The following is the note I sent to Mitch's . . . er, Martin's supervisor.  I made sure I had his email before I left.  I also tipped Hector $5 and I tipped the guy who put the tire on the next day - Raul, I believe, also $5.  I could have tipped them more but their respective reactions lead me to believe that they don't get tipped very often.

"Dear Mr. Big Shot District Manager:

I wanted to send a note along to express my sincere appreciation that Martin is one of your employees.  My wife and I were traveling on a Sunday when I blew a run-flat tire on my Very Expensive Car.  The totally unhelpful Very Expensive Car Dealer sent me to your store where I got a chance to see how a real service manager takes care of his customers.  Martin didn't have the unusual tire size in stock - offering to have it at his place and installed first thing in the morning - but he did take the time to inspect the tire with one of his mechanics, Hector.  Because the tire was so damaged they brought a couple of similar tires out to try to find a temporary solution before finally settling on one that was slightly smaller.  This allowed us to get to a hotel a few miles away safely.

 

First of all, if I received this service just passing through I can only imagine how well your regular customers are being treated.  This man is going to build your business.  And I was just as impressed with the interaction between the front office guy and the mechanic - there was no "you're just the manager" or "you're just the mechanic" dynamic in play.  This kind of teamwork is going to make for happy employees.  Between the two of them they came up with the solution.

 

Thanks again for a tremendous job  by tremendous employees.

 

Gratefully,

Little Stevie Seaweed"

I received a reply that evening:

"Dear Mr. Seaweed:

Thanks so much for the feedback !!! I will make sure Martin is commended for his customer service!!! It's not often we get to hear when we do something right!!! I appreciate you taking the time and thank you for the business. Mr. Big Shot District Manager" I don't know about the exclamation points.  Am I to assume that he was yelling these things at me.  He could have spoken in a normal voice and I would have gotten the same message. Just trying to be of service.

The Very Expensive Dealership

You think I'm done whining about my Very Expensive Car problems?  Think again, Kemosabe.  Actually, it's not that expensive of a car - a Porsche or a Range Rover or a Ferrari is an expensive car.  My car falls in the category of Not That Expensive Until Something Needs to Be Fixed.  THEN it's expensive.

Anyway, we drove into the nearest town and found The Very Expensive Car Dealership.  You can tell you're going to be treated poorly and overcharged when the waiting area has Starbucks coffee, a big flatscreen TV, and some hipster furniture.  The mechanics - who charge about as much as a good neurosurgeon - do the same kinds of things as the mechanics at Bob's Car Repair, just without the good coffee and comfy seats.

This being Sunday there was no one in the showroom except for a lot of sales people standing around.   They were not helpful.  They weren't aggressively antagonistic - they didn't taunt me or do a little touchdown dance or break into a home run trot -- but they were definitely not helpful, either.  No one offered to look at my damaged run-flat tire, suggest a hotel in the area, or do anything beyond a general milling about.  They directed me to the sales manager, comfortably ensconced behind her desk.  I gave it a whirl.

"Can you set me up with an appointment first thing in the morning?" I asked, in a reasonable tone.
"The sales department and the service department use totally different computer systems," she said.
"That sounds stupid," I replied.  "Any way I can get a loaner car?"  
"We don't have access to loaner cars," she said.
"There's no way I could get a car to get to a hotel and back in the morning?"  I persisted.
"We . . . don't . . . have access to ANY cars," she said.
"I'm not sure the tire is in good enough shape to get to the hotel," I said.  "Could one of the salespeople take a look at it?"
"No," she said.  "They're just salespeople."  
"And we have the dumb ones today," she added.

I wasn't trying to be a dick.  I was a guy from out of town with no place to stay and no car to get there, talking to someone who sold and fixed cars like mine and who lived in the town in which I was stranded.  I was trying to give her an opportunity - any opportunity - to be of service, or to do her fucking job, neither of which she was doing.

She finally did something helpful.  She called a tire company nearby.  Martin.  She spoke to Martin.  That tire cost me $275.  She told me to go somewhere else and get it fixed.  I was a customer in her showroom and she got rid of me, without ever even getting up from her very expensive office chair.

Should I send a note to the general manager of that store?  I bet he wouldn't be pleased to hear about this incident.

I'm mulling it over.

Mitch er Martin

When we pulled off the highway with our ailing car - a fact that annoyed me no end because why should I have problems?  The Great Seaweed?  With car problems?  Not fair - something that should happen to lesser mortals, to people who are not as important as me.  That makes sense.  Problems for me is not a concept I'm comfortable with.

As a practitioner of gratitude - a poor student and mostly an unwilling one but a student, anyway; it's like high school where you have to go even if you don't want to  - I have taken the time to reflect on my years of work travel in the snowy upper Midwest.  I drove tens of thousands of miles in winter weather with never a car problem.  That was a blessing.  Losing a day off when I've got no real schedule to keep is not a problem.

Mark at the Shell station gave us a list of local businesses.  I called a few with no luck, maintaining my composure.  Then I had the bright idea of calling the 1-800-Why-The-Hell-Are-You-Bothering-Me? - customer service line of The Very Expensive Car Company.  They offered to send a tow truck over - for a $120 service charge - and deliver my car to the Very Expensive Car Dealer.

"But they're closed right?" I said, perplexed.  "They're not open, right?"
"Yes," she said.
"I don't understand," I said.  "What would I do that for?  I have a cat and a car full of stuff because I'm traveling.  What would I do at the closed car dealer?"
"I see," she said.
I wanted to say "I don't think you do because you wouldn't have made such a stupid suggestion" but Superk was listening and I didn't want to make any amends.  I was having a bad day as it was.  Instead I asked why I would tow a car with run-flat tires.  I'm not a car-guy but I understood "run-flat" to mean you can run them when they're flat.
"Sir, sometimes Pep Boys carries these tires.  Would you like me to connect you to Pep Boys?"
"Sure," I said.
"In fact, why don't I call them and see if they have the tire in stock.  Would that be helpful?"
"Yes," I said.

She went away for a while.  
"Should I just hang up?" I mouthed to SuperK.  She gets disgusted when I hang up on people and makes me call back and apologize.  Secretly, I think she gets a vicarious thrill when I do it.  She kind of eggs me on because she never hangs up on people, pretending she's better than me, which she is so it's no big stretch.

This went on for a while in a similar vein before I terminated the call. I wasn't getting anywhere and I really did want to get my problem solved.   I love it when service people who have provided no useful service conclude the call with: "Is there anything else I can do for you today?"
I'm always tempted to say: "That sentence structure suggests that you've done something useful for me already.  Which you have not."

Mitch

My lovely wife pointed out that the guy who I'll never, ever forget - ever - was named Martin, not Mitch.

Awright, then.

Run-Flat Tires

Sometimes I don't feel like I'm very . . . very . . . anything mature or stable or calm or fearless.  I don't feel like I've come  very far.  I know this to be fiction, electrical impulses in my brain and chemicals in my bloodstream.  I like looking back over my time in The Program, mulling over how I used to handle things.  I know I've grown; it's just that when I'm in a rage or a grouch or a brainstorm, or going under the waves of Fear Lake I lose sight of the growth.

We left Vacation City today to drive back home The New City.  We were about 2 hours into an 8 hour leg when I ran over a pothole on the highway and totally destroyed my right front tire.  I knew this because a little red light on my dashboard illuminated with a helpful message: "Your tire is fucked."  My warning lights have attitude - they don't pull any punches.  I have a somewhat expensive car if by "expensive" you mean "a car that doesn't do anything that a normal car does but costs more."  Moreover, this car has run-flat tires and by "run-flat tires" I mean 'tires that are easily damaged and very hard to get and cost 3 times more than a normal tire."  They also absolve the manufacturer of adding a spare tire, so I couldn't make SuperK unload the trunk and change the tire on the berm of the highway in 85 degree heat even if I could convince myself this was a good idea. 

We stopped at a service station if by "service" you mean "not car service."  The very nice kid running the counter told us how to get to the Very Expensive Car dealership where I was treated like someone with a venomously contagious disease.  I was from out of town, so they didn't see any future sales, and it was Sunday, which meant their service department was closed.  They clearly wanted me to go away.  The showroom was empty.  Everyone was standing around.  Hey, help a brother out, right?

Anger is one of my big problems.  I could feel the anger that had begun mutating behind both my right and left eye beginning to gain some serious momentum.  I thought about what it means to Be of Service and how I make it into something ephemeral when in fact it's doing little things to help other people out.  These pustules were standing around in a totally empty showroom and they did nothing to help me out.  

We found a small tire dealer where a guy named Mitch and a mechanic named Hector took care of us.  They solved the problem temporarily so that we could get to a hotel to spend the night and ordered the tire to be delivered early tomorrow morning.  It's sunny and hot where I am and rainy and cold at home.  I called my sponsor and we laughed about my problems of prosperity.  I was proud of myself for keeping my mouth shut.  For once.

I'll never forget Mitch and Hector.  That's a fact.

Train, Train Take Me on Out of This Town

It's amazing how easy it is to veer off the track and lose total sight of what's important, what I have to be grateful for.  I have a tendency to veer off the track into anxiety.  I have a tendency to veer very far off the track.  A lot of the times I can't even find where the train station is.  I'm not very bright.

But I'm a good mudder.  I love the mud.  I love the slop.  If you give me a dry track on a sunny day my horse wanders off into the infield and starts to eat oats.  But if it's raining and cold and the wind's blowing then I know what to do.

Sometimes this is a walk in the park and sometimes it takes a lot of grim determination.

I still haven't taken the printer back to the Drunks Across The Street.  I may leave it in the rental house.  I'm can't figure out what the scam is.

Instinctual Drunks Investigating a Rampage

Drunks are smart and drunks have good hearts and they act like their brains are disconnected half of the time.

A few weeks ago the Drunks Across the Street were in a tizzy.  They noticed that a couple of birds had gotten inside the house next door.   This had happened once before and the owners had driven up and freed the trapped fowl.  The Drunks tried calling the owners and texting the owners but this time didn't get any response.  They didn't know what to do but that didn't stop them from doing something.  They sprang into action.

I went outside to view the commotion and saw one of the Drunks standing on the second floor balcony, shooshing the birds out the windows from which he had removed the screens.  I thought this was pretty strange but was reassured by the fact that it was daytime and they were all being pretty open about the burglary.  I mean, I personally wouldn't break into a house with the intent to steal in the middle of the day while shouting and screaming and generally calling attention to myself.  I didn't know the name of the particular Drunk who was committing the Class 2 felony so he paused and introduced himself, as he stood on the second floor of the house that he had just broken into.  He was in a great mood.  He smiled a lot and took some time to chat with me about nothing in particular

The house was alarmed, of course, and the police came.  They gave The Drunks a pretty thorough grilling, to great outrage from The Drunks.  Their intentions were good and this justified their unreasonable actions.  They thought the cops were being real hard-ass about it.  They were special so they got to do what they wanted.  They didn't mean any harm.

I never meant any harm.  I just did what I wanted to do.  I didn't let any stinking laws get in my way.

Drunks Rampaging on a Balking Investigation

Risk:  A possible, usually negative, outcome; e.g, a danger.

The drunks across the street think things are funny - very, very funny.  They laugh a lot.  They laugh so loudly the pictures rattle on the walls.   I thought that I was in the middle of an earthquake the first time one of them told a joke.  I personally wouldn't call what they do laughing - it's more of a scream-laugh.  The louder the scream the more you can be sure that they're really, really having fun. People having fun laugh all the time.

I must report that the things I overhear aren't that funny.  I cringe when they tell me one of the funny things because I have to plaster this fake smile on my face.  I'm tempted to say: "That's not funny."  I don't have the guts to say that but I really, really want to.

SuperK has decided that I should go into Risk Management.  She thinks I should be a Risk Management consultant.

"What about a Senior Risk Management consultant? " I asked.  "If I'm going to do something that I don't know anything about why not have a extensive experience?"
"What kind of risk am I consulting on?" I asked, after a minute.
"All kinds of risk," she said.  "It doesn't really matter.  You're the expert of risk and it's your job, your obligation to help these people mitigate it. You're always talking about being of service - why not do something about it? "
"OK," I said.  "How about this: 'Mr. Client.  This is very risky.  This, too, is risky.  This is not that risky.  This isn't risky at all but it could become extremely risky.' "
"That'll be a hundred thousand dollars," she said.

I threw a penny into a fountain today and made a wish.  The fountain tossed the penny back out.  That wasn't a good sign.  I don't think that wish is going to come true.  I think it was the "Ferrari" part of the wish that was problematic.

Investigating Rampaging, Balking Drunks

Early in our stay I peeked through the blinds to check out the particulars of that night's cacophony, what with the yelling and laughing and loud music.  It was dark but what I saw was this: one of the women in her underwear, gyrating to the music - I know for certain that she had shed her jeans and I'm fairly certain that she was topless.  She would pirouette and her friend would smack her on the ass.  The boyfriends stood nearby, talking and drinking, clearly not as enthralled as I was.  Familiarity breeds contempt, to quote the Bard.

The next morning I overheard the strip-teaser berating her son and a few of his friends who had spent the night.  They were lined up on a bench facing her - 3 little boys.  She was laying down the law, this breaker, this shatter-er of all kinds of laws, civil, criminal, and moral.

"I don't know," she said, said she.  "Maybe you can get away with this at your house.  Maybe you don't have as many rules as we have in our house.  I just don't know."

Kids aren't stupid.  They do a better job of watching someone's actions than listening to their empty words.  I'm willing to bet all of her words bounced off their little foreheads like bullets off a brick wall.  I bet they were peeking through the curtains like I was.

I have gotten a lot of gratitude watching the disconnect between what an active drunk believes and the reality of the situation. 

Drunks on Rampage Balk at Investigation

The drunks are at it again.  It's Sunday night - why wouldn't they be knocking back a few drinks in colored tumblers?  It's 6PM - I'd say they're probably trying to squeeze the last little bit of fun out of the weekend before heading back to work on Monday but they don't seem to have to head anywhere very often.  I never liked work - it got in the way of my drinking.  One of the couples has a little boy about 5 or 6; the other one has a teen-aged daughter.  I wonder where the kids are when this is going on?  They're not usually outside.  That would be a hindrance to the parent's drinking and an embarrassment for the kids.  And we think that we aren't affecting anyone else when we're drinking.

 Drunks like to "party."  When a drunk is "partying" all manners of behavior is allowed.  If I'm "partying" I can turn up my music as loud as I want; I can scream and yell at the top of my lungs; I can make as much noise as I want because I'm having fun.  If this bothers someone, tough shit - you need to relax and have some fun.  I was always so surprised when someone yelled at me for blasting AC/DC at 2 AM.  I felt bad that I made someone mad.  I didn't do it on purpose - I simply didn't give a shit that it bothered them.  I didn't think about them.  I didn't have a frame of reference for someone trying to live an adult life.

The drunks live 10 houses from the beach, from the ocean, but I've never seen them go down there.  I don't see them go anywhere.  I'm hip to the reasoning - when I was at home drinking I had easy access to the bathroom and to cheap alcohol and I didn't risk the dreaded DUI.  After I got sober I went back to places I had lived for a few years when I was still drinking and was stunned to see parks and shopping centers and restaurants right around the corner.  I left work, stopped at a constantly rotating group of liquor stores and mini-marts and pony kegs and corner markets to buy alcohol - I didn't want anyone to figure out I was a regular - and then right home to plop on the couch and pound some brewskys.

What a great life.

The Drunks Across The Street

I'm really enjoying watching the Drunks Across The Street.  They're annoying but they're also entertaining, and a great reminder of what I used to be like and how my behavior impacted other people.  They spend a lot of time outside.  They drink and they lay in hammocks and they wander around, waving furiously at me when I come outside.  They invite me over - "Come and join us!"  I smile and wave back and keep moving in the opposite direction.  I've talked with them a few times and it's frankly not that interesting.  They repeat themselves and blow the hair off my forehead with the brute force of their exhalations.  I check for spittle on my sunglasses when I come in the house.

They don't want me over there, anyhow.  I'd be a disruptive force what with all of the not drinking.  In polite society, in business situations, I deflect an invitation to have a drink with a polite misdirection.  It goes well because people who don't drink too much don't think at all about someone not drinking anything.

"Seaweed, c'mon over and have a beer," one of them shouted a few days ago.

"Not since 1987," I said.  "But thanks anyway."

"You don' drink?" he screamed in my face.  "Why the hell not?"

"I got tired of getting arrested," I lied.

"Wha'cha get arrested for?" he shrieked.

"Mostly DUIs," I said.  I was on a roll.  I started piling it on.  Once I get up a head of steam on a good lie I go with the flow.  "A couple of public intoxications, one drunk and disorderly, and an assault.  That was my one felony.  Apparently I took a swing at a cop."

"You took a swing at a cop?" he asked.  He wasn't screaming anymore.  I had his attention.

"That's what they told me the next morning.  I woke up in jail, didn't have any idea where I was.  I had a busted lip and there was blood all over my shirt and my shoulder hurt like hell.  I don't remember any of it.  Cost me $7000 to plea down to a misdemeanor endangerment, plus time served."  I was smoking this guy.  I was tearing it the fuck up.  I was pleased when I see that my ability to lie had suffered no serious consequences of years of trying not to lie, some of the time, on occasion.

He didn't ask me to come over for a beer after that.

Tomorrow's Good

Crossing the Rubicon:  Making an irrevocable decision.

I didn't bring a printer to Vacation City - a computer printer, not an actual person printer, although I didn't bring one of those, either.  This left me in a bit of a pinch because I needed to print out some tax forms.  You got to love the government - you can mail in your taxes for free or they'll charge you a bunch of money to file them electronically.  I guess they want all of the paper piling up in a warehouse somewhere.

I asked one of the drunks across the street if she had a printer I could borrow.  She did.  

"If you need anything - Anything! - just ask," she shouted in my face, confirming my belief that she thinks I'm hard of hearing or that I don't speak English.  I'm assuming that if I ask her to ratchet back the noise the request won't be well-received.  Still, I appreciated the gesture - drunks have good hearts, by and large.

I had to make an appointment to go get the printer.  She lives maybe 20 yards away from me on the ground floor of an apartment building right across the street.  I can see into her living room from my front porch.  I had envisioned walking across the street and picking up the printer.

"Now's not good," she said.  She was sitting in a chair drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette.  We agreed to meet the following morning at 9AM.  I had my executive assistant call and confirm the appointment, get directions to her place, and arrange for other logistical support.

I got the printer and hooked it up.  The ink cartridges were as dry as the Sahara.  I called up one of my buddies in The Program and took my PC over to his place, printed out a few pages.  It was a lot easier dealing with a sober adult.

Today I saw the drunk.

"Can I bring the printer back over?" I asked.  She was sitting in the chair again, drinking something colored out of a tumbler.

"You can keep it until you leave," she said.

"I'm done with it," I said.

"How about tomorrow morning?" she replied. 

Frankly, I'm a little intimidated now.  I don't know what kind of head games she's playing with me.  Why can't I just bring the printer over?  I can bring it over and set it on the table next to the chair.  She didn't let me in her apartment when I picked up the printer so I assume she's not going to let me in when I bring it back.  If I put it on the table she can take it inside whenever she wants.  Maybe this is some kind of insurance scam or confidence game.  I just don't know

It's not often that someone can shut me up.  I can come up with some kind of response to just about anything, no matter how weird or hostile or confusing but she's got me stumped.  I backed away and slunk into my house.   It reminds me of an incident a few years ago when I showed up at the security desk of a company to meet a customer.

"I have an appointment with Mr. X," I said.

"Appointment!?" the guard said, a little too loudly, in an aggressive, accusatory tone.

I froze like a deer in the headlights.  I didn't know how to respond.  It was a simple, frequently used word and I assumed he encountered a lot of people who said exactly the same thing in the course of a day.

He looked at me for a moment, then picked up the phone and called my contact.

Obsession!

I confess to being a little obsessed with meditation at the moment.  For a guy who is obsessed with just about everything this isn't a bad obsession as obsessions go but I think it kind of misses the point of meditation.

That being said I'm recognizing how all of The Promises come true for people who are diligent in the application of The Steps in their lives.  I see it in old timers but I also see it in people who are working The Steps.  That's what we do in our Twelve Step program to get better - we don't think it's the only way to get sober and have a nice life but it is what we know.  I have been very aware of the suggestion that "we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us."   That used to be all situations for me - they all baffled me.  I had no idea what the hell was going on ever.

Obsession:  A compulsive or irrational preoccupation; an unhealthy fixation.

Anyway, I find if I spend that time each day trying to meditate that my life runs more smoothly.  And I find that it makes very little difference whether or not I think I'm doing it right - it's taking the action that brings the benefit.  Even if I sit down for 20 minutes and can barely get my head to stop spinning for one single breath I still feel better when I'm done.  It's the trying that's important.  It's like exercise for me - when I wasn't exercising I decided that I wanted to run a competitive marathon.  I knew this was total bullshit so I didn't get off the couch to walk around the block, even though that would have been better than lying on the couch drinking malt liquor and smoking dope.  Today I'm in pretty good shape, but I still couldn't finish a marathon if you strapped a jet engine onto my back.  It took awhile to get to this point - I had to start, I had to make the effort.

I'm not flawless in my intuition but I'm in the game.  If I'm in the hall and it's dark and I open a door and a blast of heat hits me and I'm nearly deafened by the screams of some really horrible demons, I close the door and move further into the blackness.  And if I open the next door and there's a Donovan tape on and I see butterflies and a mountain of ice cream sundaes I think: "OK.  OK.  Maybe I'll go into this one."  

Yeah.  Ice cream sundaes.

Drunks

The place that I'm renting is right across the street from a couple of beat-up apartment buildings full of drunks.  I can tell - I can spot a drunk from 100 yards away.  They're always drinking, for one thing.  They're drinking at odd times of the day - in the morning, during work hours, late on a weeknight.  These are not times that normal people drink.  Normal people haven't started drinking yet or they're at work, where they can't drink,  or they're going to bed.

Drunks are loud, too.  Jesus, are they loud.  I was sitting in my backyard today right across the street from the drunks, who were outside drinking, and I had earplugs stuffed into my ear canals.  Otherwise I could clearly hear everything the drunks were saying.  This was not talking - this was shouting, this was yelling.  I can't imagine what it must have sounded like sitting right next to someone yelling like that.  I went to the front of the house once to see if they were using amplified bullhorns.  I can't recall losing my hearing when I was drinking.  I think my hearing was just fine.

Drunks assume that everyone else likes the kind of music that they like, and that they want to hear it played loudly all the time.  Maybe the drunks were shouting over the music.  Maybe if they turned down the music that I didn't want to hear then they wouldn't have to shout.  Maybe that's not it at all.  Maybe they're all afraid that no one else wants to hear what they're saying.  I didn't hear anything interesting being said.  They keep inviting me to join them but I can't come up with a good reason to do so.  Drunks aren't very interesting but they think they're very interesting.  It's quite the conundrum

One of the drunks yelled at me to come on over.  He was drinking one of those Australian beers that look like it comes in a 55 gallon drum.

"Seaweed!" he yelled.  "How the hell ya doin?  I'd give you a beer but I don't have another one."  Drunks never have an extra beer.  They're always looking for an extra beer but they don't have one to give.  I didn't stay long - the guy was drunk and he was yelling at me at the top of his lungs, even though I was standing right there without any apparent ear damage or hearing loss, and he wasn't saying anything very interesting.  I barely bother to smile in these situations - this guy couldn't have cared less who was in front of him.

These drunks are always yelling hello and telling me, very earnestly, that if I need anything - anything at all - I just have to ask.

"How about turning the fucking music off and lowering your voices?" I'm tempted to say but I don't.  What would the point be?  

On another topic entirely I went to a farmer's market here today and bought some strawberries right out of the field that made my knees buckle.

Have A Nice Day Elsewhere

Grasp:  To grab onto tightly with the hand; grip.

My lovelier than ever wife chaired the 11th Step meeting this morning.  She often mentions the futility in grasping onto things; any things.

One thing that has happened to me as I work The Steps is that everything seems to get simpler and slower.  I've been reminded by a few of my crueler friends that some of this is because I'm getting older and I understand less at a slower rate.  Some of them suggest that I substitute "old" for "older" when they're doing it, god bless 'em.

When I was drinking I took very simple matters, complicated them with all of my drinking and drugging and general chaos-ing, then got busy trying to solve them FAST!  REAL FAST!!  And I didn't let insurmountable obstacles or a total lack of knowledge as to how to repair the damage get in my way.

Everything that I say is a crisis is not a crisis.  Lack of planning on my part does not constitute an emergency on your part.

I was the guy in a burning airplane, flinging myself out the emergency door without bothering to put on my parachute, because I wanted to solve the problem FAST!  Either that or I was still in the burning aircraft when it slammed into the ground, taking my time to study The History of Parachute Manufacture before feeling confident about the efficacy of parachute wearing before putting on my parachute.

When I should have been doing it, I wasn't; and when I shouldn't have been doing it I was sure as shit doing it.

Will Rogers, Bombarder

Bombard:  

1. To attack something with bombs, artillery shells or other missiles or projectiles.
2. (figuratively) To attack something or someone by directing objects at them.
3. (physics) To direct at a substance an intense stream of high-energy particles, usually sub-atomic or made of at most a few atoms.

You gotta love our Founders and the language they used.  It's so . . . colorful.  Descriptive.  The idea that I use my Will to bombard my problems with it instead of trying to align it with whatever I believe the plans of my Higher Power are.

I spend a lot of time pondering the use of the Will.  I've got a hell of a Will that I use like a Medieval battering ram to get what I want.  My Will is a bulldozer with a deranged operator who carries out an order to move a pile of dirt by driving over seven houses, eight cars, a whole bunch of people and animals, and a cliff or two just to get to the pile of dirt.  We're not going into what I do after I get the dirt picked up.  I'm lucky if I don't lose focus and walk off, leaving the 'dozer idling in the street.

I do like the emphasis on the proper use of the Will versus the improper use of the Will.  I like that we're reminded that we are not aware of any cases so far where an individual has been able to completely eliminate his instinctual drives for sex, money, and power.  My New City sponsor is always saying: "Well, sounds like you're a human being."  I have to remember to set my sites on a lofty goal while remembering to give myself a break for falling short.

The problem isn't the bulldozer - the problem is the bulldozer operator.  I can operate it properly and I can operate it poorly: the choice is mine.  The bulldozer isn't going to cause any problems all by itself.  Today when I get confused I can turn the thing off and make a few phone calls, see if I can get some suggestions that don't involve running over shit.

Nah.

Check Your Motives

Flail: To thrash.
Thrash: To beat mercilessly; to defeat utterly.

To make sure that my flailing about is normal flailing - acceptable flailing - and not wild flailing I check in with my two sponsors.  I like to check in although I don't always like the results of the checking in.  Calling my sponsor is like a pee test for my mouth.  That doesn't sound right.  It's like a pee test where I don't have to pee into anything.  Maybe it's more like being hooked up to a lie detector test.

Anyway, my Old City sponsor is a very religious, very conventional man.  I'm frequently reminded to spend some solid time in prayer and meditation, taking my questions and concerns to my Higher Power, listening carefully, trying to discern the small signs and small nudges to go in this direction or that direction.  He puts a lot of stake in the consequences of behaving selfishly.  The world has rules and when I break them I get consequences.  It's not that I'm being screwed or punished or picked on, but that my actions lead to results, good or bad.  It reminds me of the story of the mother telling the child not to put his hand on a hot stove; the kid (me - I'm the kid) puts his hand on the stove and gets the $#!! shit burned out of his hand; the kid gets mad at the mother, for chrissake.  It took me a long time to understand that I didn't break my mother's rules - I broke the rules of life.  

Anyway, the point here is that my Higher Power is a good source of advice.

Coming at things from a totally different direction, is my New City sponsor, a bit of a hippie.  I'm a good church boy so I frequently battle feelings of guilt when I'm pursuing happiness or something that brings me pleasure.  It's the old Heaven vs. Hell battle - am I doing something that will get me to Heaven or am I doing something to avoid Hell?  There was a lot of black and white shit in my church, as you can see.  New City guy isn't big on guilt.  He asks me this: "Are you hurting anyone else with your actions?"  It's a good question.  Today I believe that when I pursue my own interests at the expense of others then I'm applying my will improperly and nothing good will come of it, even if I get my way.  It totally harshes my buzz when I get what I want after walking up and down the backs of my fellows.

Don't try to do this stuff alone.

Wheeeeee!!

SuperK and I have made a decision to move from The New City to Vacation Town.  We're a little embarrassed about it frankly - "new" is in The "New" City for a reason after all.  As a guy who  is totally addicted to change I have to be careful when I want to change things.  I have to subject my desires to a rigorous analysis to make sure that I'm not flailing around for the sake of flailing around, as pleasant as that may be.  I'm the guy halfway down the first, biggest, most thrilling hill of the baddest roller coaster in town thinking: "God, I am SO bored."  Making matters worse, I can often draw SuperK into my wildly flailing mosh pit of conflicting and ill-conceived desires by the sheer force of my enthusiasm.

Making a decision to move is kind of like making a decision to turn my life and my will over to the care of a higher power.  It doesn't mean I'm already doing it or close to doing it or may ever do it - it means that I've decided to do it.  I have to remember that.

I'm not a huge fan of settling for something.  I'm not great at making do or making the best of something.  This is a blessing and a curse.  I have to be careful that I'm not being restless for the sake of being restless - it's a fool's errand to constantly look for the next great thing, the next best thing, the next big hill on the roller coaster.  By the same token, I don't want to be the dude sitting in the motionless roller coaster, at night, in the rain, holding my arms up in the air, yelling "Wheeeee!"