Herding Cats

Intolerant: Close-minded about new or different ideas; indisposed to tolerate contrary opinions or beliefs; impatient of dissent or opposition.  

I was asked to chair the meeting this morning at my home group which is embroiled in a mild "No, you're doing it wrong" controversy.  I should probably characterize it as a series of controversies because there's nothing drunks like to do more than making an mountain out of a molehill.  

I read this passage from the 12 & 12: "Finally, we begin to see that all people, including ourselves, are to some extent emotionally ill as well as frequently wrong, and then we approach true tolerance and see what real love for our fellows actually means.  It will become more and more evident as we go forward that it is pointless to become angry, or to get hurt by people who, like us, are suffering from the pains of growing up.

We can try to stop making unreasonable demands upon those we love.  We can show kindness where we had shown none.  With those we dislike we can begin to practice justice and courtesy, perhaps going out of our way to understand and help them."

My intent was to help some folks who were behaving intolerantly to see the error of their ways.  The results were predictably hilarious.  The folks who took the most out of my brilliant, insightful, illuminating share were all of the people I find intolerable.  I was reduced to laughter.  I was trying to herd cats.

People hear what they want to hear.

Funny How It Works Out

I called up my Old City sponsor yesterday.  He was clearly sick and he didn't want to talk.  He always wants to talk so I knew he was really sick.  I called up today and he sounded a lot better. I think he was glad I called back.  I was checking up on him because he's not a young guy and he sounded pretty bad yesterday.  I sent a note to Little Westside Jonny, asking him to check in as well.  He's like two thousand five hundred miles closer to my sponsor than I am.  It's kind of what we do in The Fellowship - we take care of ourselves and we take care of each other.

It made me think of the difference in the relationship I have with my sponsor and with my own father.  I love 'em both but one of them has a whole hell of a lot of a better idea who I am than the other.  I think of the difference in attitude between the two guys and the sense of responsibility each takes for their part in the world.  My sponsor takes responsibility for his own actions while realizing that he needs help from time to time.  My dad does neither very often.

I'm very much like my father and not at all like my sponsor.  When I first started working with him we quickly found out that we disagreed completely on almost all levels whenever the topics of religion, politics, morality, or sociology came up.  We found out that these were areas best left alone and we developed a deep and effective relationship.  I'm much more engaged with my sponsor than with my father - some of this is my fault but it's mostly because one wants to be engaged with and one doesn't.  I'm not always behaving badly.

Just most of the time.

Entirely Ready

Entirely:  To the full or entire extent.
Ready:  Prepared for immediate action or use.

We read the Step today that contains the phrase "were entirely ready" for god to do something blah blah blah something or the other about removing defects or something like that.  I really don't know.  I don't have much of an attention span so I generally zone out after nine or ten words. I'm definitely a twitter generation kind of guy even though I've never used twitter.  That I'm aware of.

My lovely, lovely wife shares the story about the person who decides to go on a cruise.  This person is very excited.  She has always wanted to go on a cruise.

"Are you ready for your trip?" asks a friend.

"Yes!  Yes, I'm ready! enthuses the cruiser.

"Have you bought your tickets?  Do you have your passport?  Are you packed?" 

"No!  No, I haven't done any of that!" shouts cruiser girl.

This woman is ready.  She is not, however, entirely ready.

High Speed Dental Drills!

The dental work I had done recently involved the demolition of a major molar and the installation of a replacement.  I guess I could have passed on the replacement and left a big gap in my smile.  Might have looked kinda cool.  Probably would have been cheaper, too, but I have enough problems with my wife as it is.

Anyway, the new tooth felt weird.  There was a different feel relative to the surrounding teeth and my bite had changed and, frankly, the damn thing hurt for a while.  I did have a dude with a high speed dental drill excavate enamel awfully close to a whole lot of damp mucous membrane.  How could that not traumatize my mouth for a while?

The funny thing is that I had a sore tooth and I really did keep touching it with my tongue.  "Still hurts.  Wonder if I touch it again?  Still hurts.  OK, I waited 30 seconds, let's give it another try."  Ad infinitum.

I really enjoy  trying to make the worst of everything.

Judge and Jury

Judge:  To sit in judgment on; to pass sentence on.  

I have a couple of groups that I attend regularly.  I like both of them but that doesn't mean I can't find plenty to dislike as well.  It's what I do: find fault with things.  These things don't have to have any faults to uncover, either.  I can manufacture faults out of air.  It's a lot more fun than showcasing merits.  Who does that?  And why?

Today's meeting is my nominal home group.  The meeting has a lot of strong personalities, a fact that I like and that I hate.  Sometimes I wonder how we get anything accomplished at all.  We're opinionated and passionate and full of beans.  I'm not the only fault-finder attending meetings, either, I'll tell you what.  We're a prickly crowd.  We're people who would not ordinarily mix.  I've always liked the analogy of a lifeboat launched from a sinking ship - nobody looks around the boat, sniffs at the quality of the folks he sees, and slips back into the frigid, shark-infested, boiling ocean, even those who know that sharks don't hang around in frigid oceans.  Sharks are the beach bums of the large predatory fish.  You can either freeze to death in a frigid ocean or be eaten alive by a shark in nice, warm tropical waters - you can't do both.

This morning some of the more trying members talked and they talked too long.  It can be irritating.  There are some people I like to hear from and some I don't.  I try to remember that the meeting is a life preserver for the new person.  The meeting primarily exists to help the struggling newcomer.  The meeting isn't there so that pompous blowhards like me can dazzle the crowd with my wit and intelligence and wisdom.  I wasn't in danger of drinking today - I'm not sure that was the case for some of the people who talked, so I kept my mouth shut and tried to listen, as difficult a thing as that is for me to do.  I let people get things off of their respective chests.

And I have to remember that when I first showed up I was hip, slick, and cool.  I never acted like a pompous ass and everyone was thrilled when I raised my hand to talk.  They never wanted it to end. They hung on my every word.  They were saying: "Oh, please, Seaweed, keep talking about how bad you got it."

I thought there was a little not-so-subtle judging going on this morning.  Judging is another one of my favorite pastimes because I do it perfectly, whatever It happens to be.  My sponsor never listens to me bitch about another person.  Ever.  "Principles before personalities,"  he says.  And if I can't stop the bitching he'll tell me to go find another meeting or, better yet, start my own.  "Most meetings start with a coffee pot and a resentment," he says.  

There was a meeting in The Old City that I attended every week as did this woman who drove me completely, absolutely batshit.  It was like having a root canal every time she spoke - I could almost hear the whine of the high-speed dental drill start up.  One Saturday I got the bright idea to go to the bathroom and stand in there until the muffled sound of her voice ceased and desisted.  I enjoyed it so much I did it every week.  Until the Saturday  Little Westside Jonny waylaid me: "I know what you're doing," he said.  "I think you should stay in your seat and listen when she talks."  I ignored him, of course, because another one of my hobbies is ignoring good advice.  When I got up to pee the following week, if by "pee" you mean "go hang around the men's room," he caught my eye, tapped both of his ears, and jabbed his finger at his chair: "Sit down and listen."

I'm not sure I ever followed his advice but I never forgot it.

Up On My Soapbox

Soapbox:  A crate for packing soap, or, by extension, and inexpensive crude platform raised above the surrounding level to give prominence to the person on it, especially when used for speeches.

I don't say The Lord's Prayer at the end of the meetings I attend.  Here in the States it's very common to say this prayer when our festivities conclude although I understand, from correspondence with our Central Office, that it's rare in almost every other country.  I don't dislike the prayer.  I don't care if other people say it.  I'm just not going to say it myself.

There are a few reasons for this.  Mostly, I associate the prayer with my formal religious upbringing.  For the longest time this upbringing really burned my goat and stuck in my goat's craw, causing the goat to choke dangerously from time to time.  It really wasn't fair to the goat.  I objected to the rules and strictures of this organized religion.  I couldn't make myself go to church for the longest time and when I did I got really angry.  And this from a kid who attended church and a religious book study after I left home for college.  There weren't a lot of other college kids in attendance.  I was pretty religious.

A few years ago a group I attended decided to vote on whether we should close meetings with The Serenity Prayer or with the Lord's prayer.  Holy shit, were the grenades flying on that one.  People who never came to meetings were up on their soapboxes (soapbox: a crate for packing soap, or, by extension, and inexpensive crude platform raised above the surrounding level to give prominence to the person on it, especially when used for speeches) giving impassioned speeches that would make a country preacher proud.  The Lord's prayer supporters won and their behavior further irritated the Serenity Prayer advocates.

I wonder how those of us who support this prayer would feel if we had to attend all of our meetings in countries were the predominant religion is Islam or Hindu or Buddhist?  I wonder how we would feel if specific gods were brought up in the concluding prayer and if this prayer was unfamiliar to us?  

Here in Vacation City the meeting leader asks someone to close the meeting with a moment of silence followed by the prayer of their choice.  That's nice.

Scrupulous Seaweed

Honest:  Scrupulous with regard to telling the truth; not given to swindling, lying, or fraud; upright.  .

The topic of yesterday's meeting was honesty.  

I shared with a great deal of authority.  Everyone could tell that I was walking the walk, not just talking the talk.  I'm the Real Deal.  My voice is the Voice of Reason.

The people who live behind me have a tangerine tree which is loaded with tangerines.  The people next door have a series of small orange trees.  The woman right behind me has a tree that is full of ripening something or the others.  I'm not sure yet but they look to be spectacular.

Nobody in these houses appears to be interested in the fruit.  They fall off of the trees and roll into my yard, and I toss them into my compost pile.  One day I picked a couple of fresh tangerines and we had them for breakfast.  They were really, really good.  A few days later I picked several of them and a couple of oranges.  I had too many to eat at one sitting so I filled my vegetable crisper with the overflow.  I didn't take any of the mystery fruits but I have my eye on them.

I know some of my neighbors but not these particular neighbors.  Citrus fruit is no exotic specialty here and I'm willing to bet that if I knocked on their doors they'd cheerfully give me access.  I mean, the stuff is falling onto the ground.  I mean, it's going to waste.  It's almost a sin to see that beautiful fruit feeding the wasps.

The topic of yesterday's meeting was honesty.

Totally Unnecessary Meditations

So here's the deal: I've self-published a book.  It's available on Amazon for use on Kindle e-readers.  It's called "Totally Unnecessary Meditations" and it's a book of pretty much totally unnecessary meditations.  I thought about a title with all kinds of hidden meanings and subtle word play and clever references and then I asked my friend Spandex what to call it and he pretty much came up with this name right away and I said: "Eh, that's not too bad" and I slapped it on the cover.  It was better than any of the names I came up with.  I've decided to pay him 50% of the total commissions earned on the sale of the first three books which adds up to pretty much nothing. The great thing about Amazon is they'll publish your shit for free - the bad thing is that they pay you shit as the publisher.

Hey, I'm pretty much totally tickled anybody reads this crap.  I'm saying this: you people are the best.  I'm also saying this: don't you have anything better to do with your time?  I didn't do this to make money.  I did this to try to weasel my way into the minds of everyone and pretty much become Total Ruler of The World.  If I wanted to make money I wouldn't have quit working so I could sit out on my porch, drool dribbling from my slack-jawed horse-faced visage.

I used the nom de plume of "Horseface Steve," the origin of which would be manifestly obvious if you saw me.  Think Secretariat or Seattle Slew on a bad mane day.  Think Brad Pitt wearing a horse-faced costume.  Think . . . OK, that's enough mildly amusing analogies.  Nom de plume means, literally, Name of Zee Pen, even though the origin of the word is Latin and not French. Mercenaries in France preferred Nom de Guerre, or War Name, which allowed them to go out and maraud through the countryside anonymously.  You wouldn't want anyone saying: "Hey, isn't that guy with the blood soaked mace Stanley from over on Thornton Drive?"  The British changed it to Nom de plume because they wanted a cool sounding name for pseudonym and also because they really hate the French and don't want to borrow anything from them

I'm already at work on my next book.  It's called "Bow Down, Everyone, and Worship Little Stevie Seaweed!"  Horseface Steve is so played out.

I'll let you know when it's up and running.

Tape

I make a To Do list every day.  Yesterday one of the entries read: "Tape."  I have no idea what it means.  I've really tried to figure it out.  Sometimes I write things down and then can't read my own handwriting but this clearly says: "Tape."  It's written down firmly and confidently and I have no idea what it means.

I crossed it off as successfully completed.  It was the only thing I finished on that day's list.

The Grass is Always Greener

I've been talking to a friend who makes ridiculous demands on life - in other words, a man after my own heart.  Not surprisingly, he gets frustrated by life as a result.  I used to tell him how to counteract this tendency with the results that you might expect.  People love being told how they're doing it wrong and they love being told how to do it right, especially from a guy like me.

I'm a brother in arms with this dude.  I ask a lot of my life, too, and I'm not going to sit idly and watch life pass me by.  I don't think there's anything wrong with that.  I don't think there's anything wrong with being frustrated that I don't get to do it all.  The Grass is Always Greener is a well known aphorism for very good reasons - people wonder what it would be like if they were doing it differently.  

When SuperK and I travel I do a lot of the planning.  I compile a big list of  activities that I want included on our docket and sit quietly while she crosses off half of them with a big, red magic marker.  It used to make me mad when she did this until the one time she didn't and we followed my . . . um . . . ambitious schedule and we nearly killed ourselves.  We got to see a lot while not enjoying most of what we saw because we were rushing off to shortchange the next site.

My dream residence is a spacious, old apartment with lots of character and all new, modern appliances, the front door opening onto a busy thoroughfare in a cool, big city, the back door opening onto a beautiful garden with a nice view of the mountains and the ocean AND the desert AND AND AND etc. etc. etc.

If I felt like telling my friend what to do - which I feel like doing - I'd say make a list of what you want out of life; prioritize it; then cross off the bottom 50% of the things on the list.  You're still not going to get half of what's left.  My eyes are bigger than my stomach.

If I'm not happy with what I've got then I'm not going to be happy with what I want.

Something Else

I recently finished a book by the author James Salter.  It was a story about a young married couple who divorced in middle age, showing how the different choices they made in how to live their lives in the following years played out.  It wasn't especially riveting reading but it did make me think about how my actions lead to good outcomes or bad outcomes - at least in the traditional sense of those words - and how the things we think we want sometimes don't bring us much pleasure and how sometimes they do.  The woman chose a simple life in a rustic cottage, close to the things she had always known, and the man took a more exotic path.  The choices worked and they didn't work.   Each character was glad for the life they had chosen most of the time but were occasionally disconsolate that they hadn't done something else.

Something Else!!  I'm always worried that I'm not doing the right thing.  If I was only doing Something Else!! then I'd be happy.

It made me ponder warm, familiar routines and it made me long for new adventures.  They're both great and I can have both, but I can't have both of them at the same time.  I get myself into trouble when I'm doing one and pining for the other, which I do far too often.  The grass is always greener, etc. etc. 

Part of the trip from which I just returned involved a certain tearing away.  I saw what was and how it had changed and where I was now.  Take the county fair, for instance: it was so cool walking those familiar lanes, between food booths and amusement rides and carnival barkers, seeing how many things have not changed much over the last 50 years.  At the same time, it was somehow tired.  It was something that I had done and I couldn't do again.  I wanted to have walked those lanes every year for the last 50 years while being in a small town in rural France.  I want to take a good book and sit under an old tree, reading the day away, and I want to be on a fan boat barreling down a tributary of the Amazon, strange birds calling to me from the trees.

I want it ALL!

Reflection

Reflect:  To think seriously; to ponder or consider.   

I had some time for reflection yesterday at the connecting airport.  I had a five hour lay-over between flights.  To get to the airport early enough to return my rental car and make the flight I had to get up at 3 in the morning - if by "3" you mean "4."  I think 3 sounds a lot more impressive even though 4 is still pretty early.

I was thinking: "Who the $#!! makes a flight with a $#!! five hour layover, and who gets up at 3 in the morning to take such a flight?"  I didn't pursue this line of thinking very far because generally I make my own reservations. I suspected this was the case in this particular instance.

I did spend some time trying to parse all of the anxiety I experienced on my visit home.  I expected some but was frankly overwhelmed by the amount and the volume of the anxiety, and how difficult it was to dislodge.  

Sometimes I think the length of my sobriety and all of the time I've spent trying to enlarge my spiritual life should protect me from the foibles of the material world.  Ah, callow youth.  I'm a lot better than I used to be but I'm NEVER going to be insulated from problems of money, ego, and sex.  It's not possible.  Ain't going to happen.

In the last two months I've packed up my life and moved 1000 miles away - a wonderful move, to be sure, but a huge sea change.  I've lost a beloved pet.  I've tried to reconstruct my life in a new city.  Then I head home, a trip generally fraught with some nice booby-traps and land mines.  I was on shaky spiritual ground before I left.  Not because I was neglecting my spiritual life but because I had weathered some serious assaults on my serenity by problems of money and ego.  

It was tough sledding.  I could have handled it better but I probably did about as well as could be expected.

Musings

I try to practice the ABLs of recovery – Always Be Learning.  Just when I think I have it all figured out I discover that I have almost nothing figured out.  In fact, I’m totally in the dark.  There are no lights anywhere.  There are no matches.  There are not two sticks to rub together to get the dimmest, most ineffectual light.  You know the part where god said: “Let there be light.”  I’m in darkness roughly equivalent to the darkness right before that light came on.

 I’m in an airport halfway home and I’m damned glad to be there.  My trip, in my opinion, was effective and consequential but not very pleasant.  I couldn’t get passed some of the dynamics of old family relationships that trigger some pretty crappy behaviors.  Actually, I think my outside behavior was OK – it was what was going on inside my head that was so disturbing.  Think: Genghis Kahn and his Mongol Horde with automatic weapons.  If one could be arrested for what one thinks one Seaweed would be in a deep, dank dungeon somewhere far, far away.

I’m glad I made the trip.  I got to see a bunch of dear, dear friends that I miss a lot.  I spent some time with my family and I think it was something that needed to be done.  My parents have deteriorated significantly in my absence and the next 6 months could – should – see some big changes.  I wouldn’t know how to be a steward of these changes without being there for 10 days.  My sister, who is doing the lion’s share of the caretaking, probably doesn’t see the extent of the changes because they’ve happened so slowly over such a long period of time.

I found the whole thing upsetting, to be honest about it.  These family members love me and it’s hard to see the deterioration and it’s hard to feel so uncomfortable with my outlook on the relationships.  I’m  very much a guy who doesn’t often care what people think of me but what these people think is incredibly significant.  Stuff that I brush off with a laugh coming from almost anyone in the world sticks in my craw when it comes from my family.

I think my folks appreciated what we got accomplished.  I think my behavior was OK – it’s not like I’m known for my tolerance and calm demeanor and patient, sunny disposition.  Most people see it as a good visit if I don’t throw a TV out of an open window.  I realize – even before the trip – that I have plenty of work to do on my spiritual insides.  I know that there are always going to be people, places, and things that I’m going to have trouble with.  I’m a human being, after all – trapped in the material form of a god on earth, of course – so I can expect continuing problems with money, power, and sex.

 It’s the nature of the package.

The Teased

Gossip:  To talk about someone else's private or personal business, especially in a way that spreads that information.

I'm fascinated by how itchy my trigger finger is when it comes to my family.  I pride myself on at least working on my tolerance and understanding with people in general but, man, does that go out the window when it comes to my blood relatives.  I think that part of the phenomenon is that there's such a large body of work that I can access.  When someone I know doesn't treat me very well I'm pretty good at giving them the benefit of the doubt.  Even when my toes get trampled more than once I find that whatever anger and pissiness and desire for revenge I hork up evaporates like mist in the morning sun when the opportunity presents itself for me to deliver a crippling blow.  It isn't worth my peace of mind.  I take a lot because I don't get the satisfaction that I used to with silly little emotional victories, often over people I barely know or don't care that much about.

But with my family I have the patience of a shrew.  If you step on my toes a couple of times or a couple of dozen times I can default to patience but if you do it a few hundred thousand times I wise up.  The problem for me is that I almost never feel good when I do the retaliation thing even if I deserve to do it and the family member who is the target of my witty barbed witticism deserves it richly.  I hate that I've developed a conscience, however weak and vestigial it might be.

One of my blood relative families has it awfully good in our material world.  This is really neither here nor there and none of my concern - it certainly isn't any of my business - but they seem to think that this affords them a higher position in the human pecking order.  Again, none of my business but they trot out this opinion in my presence far too often.  My belief is that if you're talking about other people behind their backs then you're talking about me behind my back.  I play it close to the vest with gossipers - I don't want to give them any more ammunition than I have to.

A lot of the time people that engage in mean-spirited teasing are very thin skinned about getting teased themselves.  And I notice that they hide behind a veneer of innocence and tease and tease and tease, exclaiming: "Hey, why are you getting upset?  I'm just joking!" when the teasing becomes too much for the teased.

I may be too far gone to do much beyond cope with these relationships.

Crazy Train

Here's the truth: I am thinking of blowing something up if I have to spend one more minute with any member of my family.  I mean guns, big guns, machine guns.  I do a pretty good job with a lot of my relationships but my family presents problems that I have trouble transcending.  Buttons, buttons, and more buttons.  Big buttons, buttons with "Push Here" on them, buttons flashing with bright neon lights.  Most of the things that bug me aren't a big deal but I react vociferously.  I can't seem to help myself.  I'm around people who are far more irritating all of the time and I barely break a sweat but these people drive me CRAZY!

Part of the deal is that I have a lot of history with these people.  

Seaweed's Crystal Ball

I haven't been back to The Old City in about a year and a half.  I haven't seen my father in that time - I saw my mother a bit last winter when she visited us in Vacation City.  Holy shit, what a sea change has occurred in that time!  Holy shit!  Being very old must be like being very young - stuff changes fast.

Like a lot of people my parents don't want to leave their home.  Fair enough - they've been there 55 years.  My sister keeps an eye on them to make sure that things aren't getting too out of control and we're trying to be careful to respect their wishes.  Nobody likes to be told what to do, especially by their children.  In "The World According to Seaweed" - a very, very bad, scary world - they should have moved to a retirement home about 10 light years ago and, yes, I know that a light year is a distance and not a time, but it just sounds so impressively long.

I've spent a lot of time with them this week and they're clearly way past the time when they would have benefited from some help.  My dad is almost too physically feeble to move around and this terrifies him, and my mom is drifting mentally.  They aren't eating well; they aren't bathing regularly; the house is getting messy - it's not what I would want for them.

So . . . do I try to make them do what I think they should do,  given my track record in doing things not in the best interests of anyone?  Or do I try to be of service when asked, keeping my nose out of their business, risking a fall or a fire or something like that?  Sometimes when failing people leave their home and go into a retirement place they really thrive and sometimes it's the death of them.  Let me get out my crystal ball and see into the future. . . .

Normally my crystal ball is used to help me find my car keys or a glass of drinking water.  It's not a high end crystal ball.  I don't pull it out for big projects because I don't have a good track record of getting things right with this particular crystal ball.  It's more of a reverse crystal ball. It's good if you want to know what not to do.

I definitely don't know what to do here.

Large and In Charge

I am not in charge.

No one is interested in having me run their lives.  They're fine making their own decisions.  They believe that they're better qualified to manage their own affairs than I am.  My persuasive arguments don't sway them.  They look at the state of my affairs and they're not overly impressed with what they see.  They figure that they're better off taking their own chances.  And this is just about everyone, not only people who seem to be on the upswing in the world.  I'm talking about children, the homeless, and guys in prison.

God is not interested in my plans for his world.  God is comfortable in his position.  God has had this particular position for a long, long time.  It doesn't bother him that I'm constantly sticking suggestions in the suggestion box - which leads directly to a paper shredder, by the way - but it doesn't change his mind.

I'm not that smart is the main issue here.

Accept . . Accepta. gack . . . Acceptance

I heard this from a man who doesn't have as much going for him as some of us by which I mean me.

"Today I can accept people for who they are - not for who I want them to be."

Where do these people come from?  Where can I find these people?  And how come they're so much smarter than me?  I pray and meditate and write and still I can't duplicate the simple beauty of a statement like that.

I can only hope for that kind of wisdom.  But not content with projecting my bullshit template onto someone else I actively try to force them into said template, with predictable results.  It's bad enough that you're not who I want you to be so I try to force you to change and then I get mad at you when you don't make the change.  Arrogance at an advanced level.

Accept someone for who they are.  Can you believe that shit?

Dude Says

I was at a meeting yesterday wearing my typical garb: old suit jacket from Goodwill, pork pie hat clamped down on fly-away hair, Simpson's T-Shirt, dress slacks, clogs.  Dude shows up late, reaches over the guy sitting next to me to shake my hand enthusiastically when I return from my second cup of coffee, two more than I actually need.

Dud approaches me after the meeting: "It's great to see you!" he exclaims.

"It's great to see you, too," I say, somewhat warily.  I hate it when I've spoken with someone but can't remember a thing about the conversation.  It's not rare when this happens - I've definitely got some circuit damage up there, compounded by the fact that I don't generally listen to other people when they talk.

Willie told me the first thing he does when he reads my posts is to skim the text to see if he's mentioned.  I admire that level of shallowness in my friends.

Anyway, dude says: "Will I see you back at the house?"

Ah.  Dude thinks he knows me from a rehab or detox or some other sober living arrangement. I can't imagine he thinks I'm homeless but SuperK isn't so sure. 

Most people would be offended.  I fell in love.

Pew! Pew!!

I've come to the conclusion, after an extended, vigorous session of future-tripping, that everything will go better for me if I can keep my head down and my mouth shut during my upcoming trip.  I suspect this is what I'm supposed to be doing all of the time.

"Seaweed," my sponsor used to whisper in my ear, seductively.  "Do me a favor and try not to talk today.  Whatever comes out of your mouth is just going to make it worse."

I've been told that army men used to practice for the fear and terror of actually being shot at by actually being shot at during basic training.  The exercise was to crawl across a field while machine gun bullets whistled over your head.  I guess the bullets were aimed well above the ground so that the exercise was being shot at and not being actually shot.  Keep your head down, keep crawling, keep moving forward.  If you get up you might be able to get across the field more quickly but you also might get plugged.  

Doesnt this sound like bullshit?  Maybe I saw it in a cartoon or as part of a hallucination in an LSD fugue state.  I can see Foghorn Leghorn losing tail feathers to an errant round more readily than I can see actual kids getting strafed.  Anyway, it's a great visual for me.  SuperK and I were discussing how I should handle a potential series of conversations with one of my relatives.  She kept making solid, reasonable suggestions that made a lot of sense, all of which I had tried at least 30 times in the past with the result being a round right in the middle of my forehead every single time.  I'm not smart but I'm old - I've tried everything more than once.  I have a bullet-riddle helmet to prove it.

I'm also not in the mainstream in my attitudes about political, religious, moral, and social attitudes in The Old City.  Like most places these polarized days no one is interested in hearing anything but their own opinions aped back to them and when the aping doesn't go down the default position is yelling out those non-reciprocated opinions more loudly.

"I'm not deaf," I say.  "I just don't agree with you."

The final insult is to be repeatedly insulted for having the non-aped opinion.  I don't think The Old City is particularly unique in this regard but that distinction doesn't make the insulting any funner to endure.

Whenever SuperK made another very reasonable suggestion I would pretend to be crawling on the ground.

"Pew!  Pew!  Rat-a-tattattat," I'd say, making my best gun sounds.

There's a great scene in the Simpson's where Homer has to connect a wire to a live electrical circuit.  He has two choices: blue and red.  He tries red and gets the shit shocked out of him.  He tries blue then with the same result.  "Hmmm," he says.  "Maybe I'll try red."

That's me.  That's what I do.

F.F.A.

Free Floating Anxiety:  Prone to anxiety over nothing at all.

I told SuperK today what I had been in free float about the last few days.

"You need to find some other things to worry about," she said.

I told Willie what was going on.

"You're going home?" he said incredulously.  "I visited home last weekend and my mom was on vacation and I still got about half-freaked out."

I told California Tom what was going on.

"Yeah," he said.  "I'm not the guy my family wanted me to be, either."

I mentioned it in passing to Jimi Hendrix.

"Rainy Day, Float Away.
Lay back and groove on a rainy day."

Into The Void

Vacuum:  A region of space that contains no matter.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

I've been learning a lot of good stuff about prayer in Vacation City.  I've not been a big fan of prayer historically for a variety of reasons, mostly because I suck at it.  I spend way too much time praying for help in getting the things that I want or in avoiding the things that I find objectionable.  I'm also big on praying that other people, places, and things help me get the things that I want or avoid objectionable things.

This is crappy praying.  I've found that god has a technique for people like me.  God provides the things that I ask for; however, god is quite literal and pretty creative in answering my self-serving prayers.  If I pray for a better relationship with my boss I get fired, that kind of stuff.  It's funny as long as it's happening to someone else.

People here are not as overtly religious as some of the other places I've lived.  This, in a general sense, is not good or bad but it does fit well into my world view.  I was told exactly how to pray when I was growing up - the exact words that I should use - and I don't do anything anybody tells me, often to my detriment.  Here the praying is more along the lines of the loose garment theory.  One old-timer tells me that the nature of prayer is not to change the world but the person doing the praying.

Meditation is a little trickier.  When I try to sit quietly I find that my mind fills up with a lot of noise post-haste.  It sucks in more voices and general cacophony than one person has the ability to endure.  It has gotten better over the years but it's still a low-grade riot in there most sessions.

I feel better when I do it.  I don't understand why, exactly, but I end up calmer.  I feel better even when I have a session where the voices have stormed the ramparts and sacked the castle.  It seems that the effort is the thing.  I'd love to hear god talk directly to me in a lovely baritone with a hint of an Irish lilt but I'm good when the Mongol horde is in control, too.

Void:  An empty space; a vacuum.

My favorite Black Sabbath song is "Into The Void."

Rocket engines burning fuel so fast,
Up into the night sky they blast,
Through the universe the engines whine,
Could it be the end of man and time?

This is probably symptomatic of my trouble with meditation.  I'm just sayin'.