Of Coffee and Breakfast Burritos and Spaghetti and Meatballs

Expectation:  The prospect of the future; grounds upon which something excellent is expected to occur; prospect of anything good to come, especially of property or rank. 

I get myself into trouble when I try to change something or someone into something else.  This is not acceptance - this is an expectation run amok.  Whenever I have problems in my life I can usually trace it back to me trying to remake the world to my own liking.

We walk down to the morning meeting - it's a nice combination of exercise and recovery before the day gets too hot or the commotion gets to intense.  Afterwards we decide "we'll wear ourselves out and make the walk back rather than jumping into a tuk-tuk.  Coffee on the way sounds like a good idea.  We walk some back alleys and some main streets, avoiding a few options because the hygiene looks dubious and a few more that are on busy streets, opting out of a dust and diesel coating on our caffeine.

Eventually we pass a nice looking hotel restaurant with signs advertising breakfast.  We sit down and wait a bit for a server.

"Yes, coffee please?" I say.

"Oh, I'm sorry," says the young woman, bowing.  "We don't serve coffee - only food."

Off we go.  Kind of strange that there's no coffee for breakfast but what the hell.

At our next stop we get coffee ordered and also some food.  There are eight food selections.  The one SuperK orders isn't available.  No problem - she gets something else although this strikes us as a little strange, too, running out of breakfast selections during . . . you know . . . breakfast. My burrito - I know, I know, maybe not the best choice for someone from a heavily Hispanic area who is in Northern Thailand - is salsa and potatoes.  It was good but I'm still hungry.  One cup of coffee, two glasses of juice, two breakfast selections - they come out one at a time.

We eat some lunch in our room, too exhausted by the restaurant selection, ordering, and paying processes which dominate.

Our stomachs are rebelling a little from all of the exotic foods so we choose an Italian restaurant off the main drag for dinner.  Here, I order spaghetti and meatballs, probably the most stereotypical Italian food other than pizza although I do substitute penne for the spaghetti. At 7PM.  On New Year's Eve.  No meatballs.  No meatballs left.  I default to SuperK's selection, figuring that since she was successful in her ordering that I would be, too, not discounting the possibility that she snagged the very last portion in that category.

The meals come out.  Spaghetti, not penne.

I LOVE all of this.   

Jeebus, Save Me!

Gift:  Something given to another voluntarily, without charge.

This morning I look down from our 10th floor apartment onto the entryway of the complex, set in a U shape.  There are a number of tables set up flanking the walkway. Over the course of a half an hour people begin arriving, setting bags of indeterminate merchandise on the tables, then standing behind them.  Uh-oh, I think, some kind of market gauntlet to run later when I want to get out.  This is standard thinking for me - look for any possible bad in any situation.

After a bit a line of orange-robed monks begin to file out of the entrance and make their way down the line of tables.  A group of men with a pile of black garbage bags accompany them.  At each table the monks are given something - I surmise at this point that the items on the tables are the shrink-wrapped bags of food and toiletries that have been accumulating in the lobby of the building over the last week.  Again, I assumed these were impulse sale items directed to the rich inhabitants of the condo.  An annoyance for me, in other words, instead of a gift and a blessing for someone less fortunate.  God forbid I should have something taken out of my overstuffed pocket and given to someone else.

Reminds me of the Biblical story where Jeebus was watching the activity around the offering box at the entrance to the temple.  The wealthy would give large sums of money in a very public fashion, making sure everyone knew how much they were contributing and lingering so that everyone would know they were the donors.  At one point a penniless woman sidles up and drops in her few pennies.

What do you think Jeebus's lesson was?

Anyway, the monks receive enough gifts to fill the back of a small pick-up truck.  The pilgrims then kneel and face the monks who chant a small prayer before heading off.

What a nice way to start the New Year.

 

 

 

Off to Dinner

Back to the 9AM park meeting today.  It's a pretty good group - mostly men - Americans, UK natives, and a few from Australia and New Zealand.  Lots of sobriety, standard percentage of irritating personalities, a few of them on my last nerve already.  

On every trip of any length we inevitably run into a few days where we've done what the area has to offer.  We're unwilling to throw in the towel so we walk around aimlessly, not seeing much with benumbed eyes.  It's OK; a little frustrating but OK and almost impossible to avoid - we want to give ourselves time to see everything without having to sprint through it but don't want to linger too long.  Hard to calculate 8,261 miles away with only a computer and guide books to direct us.

Dinner is an authentic cultural experience for which we don't have quiiiiiiiite enough patience today.  We take a nap, clean up, and head off the busy main road down one of the side alleys or sois.  There's an open air restaurant full of Thais so we take a seat.  There's a dizzying array of menus - we need some help deciphering them, a service supplied by the waitress, who comes over none too quickly.  She's got a full restaurant so she takes KK's order, explains the menus, and says she'll come back.  She does not.  She appears, actually, to be the cook.  KK gets her food from someone else who doesn't speak English and doesn't take orders, waving vaguely to the open air kitchen.  By the time we share her meal and get my meal ordered we're both thirsty.  God help us trying to get someone over to take a drink order - fortunately, we notice bottles of mineral water and bottles of ozonated water piled onto a corner of the table.  We pop the top on one of the ozones and quaff.  It has a vaguely medicinal taste.  We pay and go home.  

It was one of those nights where we both wanted to understand how everything works instead of sitting there like a couple of dumb asses fingering greasy menus.  

It's Raining

I was talking to my Old City sponsor - who lives in Chiang Mai - about my tuk-tuk adventure at the night market.  The one where I screwed myself.  He interrupted to say: "Hey, it's always hard when you're testing out the waters in a totally new culture."  He shared a story about flagging down a driver that he has used many times, a guy who cruises the village he lives in.  He asked the fare and was given a price three times what he normally pays.  When he protested the guy smiled, pointed toward the heavens, and said: "Raining."

A service is worth what the market will bear, right?

This guy always made sure that I wasn't being too hard on myself.  I like getting feedback from multiple Program mouths because we all have a little different slant on things.  He's an old hippie - a REAL hippie - who refuses, to the best of his ability, to be too hard on himself.

Went to a morning meeting today - my third visit.  Dude annoyed me.  Must be getting calmer in my old age.  Took me three meetings to get irritated and I believe that's a record.

Ta-Daaaa!

Chaos: Any state of disorder, any confused or amorphous mixture or conglomeration.

Yesterday our friends hauled our asses up into the mountains surrounding Chiang Mai.  Very nice.  Very, very nice.  It was much cooler and it was very high mountain junglely which was spectacularly beautiful.  And it was quiet.  Chiang Mai - for all of its charms - is chaotic.  One's senses are under constant assault from cars and bikes and people and just noise, all of which must be navigated on broken pavement and non-existent sidewalks.

We get home about 7PM, happy and grateful for a nice day, the eaten ATM card escapade tucked into dark recesses of our minds.

"Let's go get the name of the bank so we can at least try to make a phone call tomorrow," I suggested.  We're wandering around the outside of the building - a Western Union office or so we thought - when a couple of other Anglos smiled at us.

"This machine ate my ATM," I quipped.  "It's on my shit list."

The guy laughed, stood up, walked around a bit.  

"Are you sure this isn't a bank?" he said.  "There's like a bank name all over the building."  (Ed. Note - Thanachart Bank - Thanon Nimmanhemin Branch.  I am not making this up.)

Hmmm.  About this time a young Thai woman working a food truck parked on the sidewalk - where else? - having overheard our conversation, comes over, taps on the window of the closed bank, and has a chat with a nice lady inside who peeks out the closed security gate.

"She's looking," she said.

 A minute later the bank women comes back, cracks open the security gate, and asks: "What is your name?"

"Seaweed the Dumbass," I reply.

She smiles, bows sweetly, and holds up the ATM card.  It was like a magician pulling a diamond ring out of rabbit's ass.  She won't, of course - hand the thing over without a passport and frankly wants to go home.  I sprint to the condo, get the passports, and make it back in short order.  Forms are signed, bows are exchanged, and the ATM is in SuperK's much more adult hands.

The whole bank card caper reminds me of a nimble-fingered adult astounding a young child by seeming to pull nickels out of her ears and then to make them go away.  God likes to have fun, too, for god's sake.

Screwing Oneself

 In the "Screw me?  Screw you!  Oh, I Screwed Myself" Department I offer this up.

Last night we went to the famous Chaing Mai Sunday Night Walking Market.  Perhaps long ago on a distant planet in a remote universe it was possible to walk in this market but last night it was more of a huge mass of clogged lanes punctuated by the occasional bottleneck where no one went anywhere, sort of vibrating in place for a while.  It was a constant struggle not to trod on someone or be trod upon so not much marketing was going on.  Lots of stuff, lots of food, lots of people.

We took a little minibus to the old city from our condo - the ride, door to door, cost 60 baht, or about $2.  After being constricted and squeezed and sweated upon for a few hours - a dinner at a Thai restaurant included where we sat just off the main street watching the trodding from a safe distance - we decided to head home.

All of those friendly minibus drivers who are always pulling up to the curb and offering cheap rides anywhere?  Not so friendly.  Scratch that - not so accommodating.  They were out in abundance and still friendly but in the environs of the market they had plenty of potential customers so not one of them was interested in hauling our asses back out to the suburbs for a couple of bucks.  One of them said something that sounded like "No, I'm going to stay parked here until I can load this mother up."  He did offer to help out - in this case hailing a little three wheeled motorcycle contraption.

This guy was happy to take us home.

"How much?" I asked.

150 baht.  Maybe 5 bucks.

"No, too much," I said.

"How much? he said.

I said that I wanted to pay what I did to get down to the market in the first place.  He waved dismissively and drove off.  Fine, you dick.  SuperK and I begin to trudge in the general direction of home.  About a half an hour later - well off the track I had intended to take and with a couple of terrifying street crossings, all kinds of traffic boiling around us thrown in - we finally manage to hire a minitruck to get us home.  This guy makes a stop at a gas station and then pitches us off his vehicle a couple of blocks from home.

I believe that I had what you might call a genuine cultural experience.

Now . . . Where Did I Put That . . .

เพิ่ม Gmail ลงในบัญชี Google ของคุณ

This is the command I got when I logged into to my home page today.  Take that, Seaweed.

And in the "There is a god and he has a hell of a sense of humor department" I offer up this . . . 

We stopped to eat lunch yesterday - stir-fried snow peas, pad Thai with chicken, red chili rice with tofu, two mineral waters for the princely sum of $8.  I pulled out my wallet to try to get my money organized - the highly colored bills with huge numbers on them can be disorienting when one is trying to deal with someone who speaks very little English - when I noticed I was one plastic card short of a full Seaweed deck.

"Where's my ATM card?" I said to no one in particular.  I sat there a minute, going through my very small wallet over and over, hoping that the plastic would miraculously reappear, SuperK sitting there with a blank look on her face.  Both of us are very good partners when we're trying to deal with a screw-up not of our own making - I could see irritation flash across her face before she quickly transitioned into problem-solving mode.  It doesn't help to pile on invective when someone feels bad enough about the screw-up.  And she knows that I handle all of the money exchanges with vendors and cab drivers and the like so I guess that earns me a little capital.

We went back to the apartment and looked through everything we owned about 100 times before deciding that I had either left the damn thing in the ATM at the airport or it flopped out of my wallet during some other money transaction.  I'm sure my Higher Power was in "how about you quit bitching about credit card" mode at this point, and enjoying himself immensely.  I made a few hilarious cultural-experience trips back to two grocery stores I had visited where I had to pantomime losing a credit card to non-English speaking clerks - the technique that seemed to work was to drop my card on the ground and walk away.  "Oh," they'd say.  It made me feel better that both stores had a big stack of lost credit cards for me to shuffle through.

Anyway, we did manage to get through to a customer service clerk in India who cancelled the care, verifying that there were no unauthorized transactions on our account.  The whole thing was frustrating but no harm, no foul, really.

No Credit Cards? Barbaric!

So our trip from Saigon to Chiang Mai takes us through Bangkok.  We're on Asiana Air.  I've never heard of this airline but they had the lowest price which is, of course, the most important thing to consider before getting on a supersonic jet flying at an altitude of seven miles.  I really don't care if they wreck a lot of planes or have like an 85% hijacking rate as long as I don't have to spend too much money to be wedged into a seat fit for a contortionist.

Because we're no longer in Vietnam I don't have any of their money left - the Dong for those of us who think that kind of stuff is funny - and because we haven't got to Thailand yet I don't have any of their money, either - the Baht which isn't as funny but is still pretty funny.  On the plane I find out Asiana is a low-cost carrier.  Whatever.  Don't crash and let me pee if I want to and I'm good to go.  

When the food tray comes around I decide to order some food off of the huge menu they provide. I understand I have to pay for this food.  Cheap seats = buy your own $%## food.  I order some noodles and hand her my credit card.  No credit cards.  Cash only.

"I don't have any cash," I said. "I've been in Vietnam and we're going to Thailand.  Where am I going to get money?  Is there an ATM on the plane?"

"I'm so sorry," the attendant says.

I'm also thirsty but water is not free, either.

We land in the international terminal, shuttle through a maze-like warren of corridors, clear immigration, and are barfed into the domestic terminal for the final leg of the flight.  Short on time, I flash into a 7-11 and load up on drinks, food, and snacks.  The kid runs it all through the scanner, filling two bags up, and then looks at me blankly when I hand him my credit card.

"I'm sorry but we only take cash," he says.

I'm starting to get miffed.  I walk the terminal, stopping in every fucking shop and restaurant in the whole thing - including MAC Donalds, Pizza Hut, and Burger King, food I normally wouldn't feed a dog - and NOBODY takes credit.  This is the domestic terminal of the largest city and capital of an entire country.  Finally, finally, we get to buy two weird mushroom pastry puff things at Starbucks.  These are wolfed.

I want to tell someone about this, that it's stupid.  They undoubtedly want to hear this from me.  They are eager to hear my opinion about why I had to stand in line at immigration for 45 minutes only to hear a very nice immigration agent say: "Why have you been standing here?  You could have just gone through and got your luggage."  They're looking for good reasons to throw people into jail.  I recall the phrase "restraint of tongue and pen."  It is a powerful and useful phrase.  For instance, right now I'm in a comfortable condominium and not in jail.  This is a good thing.

 

Seaweed, Behavior Arbiter

And because I haven't shown the spiritual growth that I would like to be able to show . . . 

There was a group of people on the boat that I didn't like particularly if by "didn't like" you mean "detested."  These were the people that bitched continuously about tipping while dressing up in elaborate costumes for dinner.  On the boat.  Where there was no one there except other similar people.

I was at a gift shop that was stationed right after one of the little handicrafts workshops that we visited.  One of these women had some items she wanted to purchase.

"Eight dollars," said the little man behind the counter, smiling broadly.

"I'll give you five," she said.

"No, ma'am," he replied, smile in place.  "Eight dollars."

She took seven dollars out of her purse, laid them on the counter, and grabbed the items.  The man continued to smile.

"Eight dollars, ma'am," he said.

I took a dollar out of my purse and gave it to the guy.

The woman glared at me.  "It was never eight dollars," she said, forgetting, apparently, that I was standing right there the whole time.  Then she mumbled something about fifty cents and gave the man a buck.

"But thank you," she said to me.

"I thought you didn't have the right change," I said.

Needless to say I didn't talk to her the rest of the trip.

The thing is that this was really not my business.  It's not up to me to be the arbiter of someone else's behavior, no matter how deplorable it is, so I didn't feel that great about what I did.  I felt a little too smug as if I'm a great example of good behavior.

Still glad I did it, the bitch.

Buying Another Yacht

And back in the land of internet access.  Boy, talk about getting used to something then not having it.  Boy.

I'll tell you this after hanging out for 10 days with a lot of really wealthy people: they are some of the most dissatisfied, bitchy, discontented people I've ever been around.  These people are blessed with as much material stuff as anyone in the world and they're consistently no happier than anyone I've run into on this trip, and I've run into some people who don't have very much going for them in the stuff department.  I mean a lot of these folks have money and the casual mention of second homes and boats and high-end travel is tossed out too casually to be anything but calculated.

And then I'll stand there in amazement, jaw slackening in amazement, as they try to stonewall a vendor down an extra dollar on a four dollar pair of elephant pants.  It makes no sense.  It is a disconnect.

There's a guy here who bought something in a market.  "$4," said the vendor.  He handed her a five.  "How about $5?" he asked.  That's what I aspire to.

There's a lot of looking through the staff.  I suspect the company that runs this high-end cruise - an American company - doesn't pay the foreign employees very well and is probably pretty wealthy.  

On one of the days the Federal Reserve raised interest rates.  I try to get as far away from the humdrum of everyday news as I can when I travel and don't have much interest in something that affects very few people, mostly those buying something expensive like a home.  One of my fellow passengers complained to me, a man standing there trying my best to blot out her very existence.

"Yeah, I'm upset," I said.  "Right when I"m in the middle of buying a yacht."

"Oh, you're buying a yacht," she said, clearly impressed.

Earned me some cheap respect. 

$27 or Two Seventy, One or the Other

A Little Westside Jonny story, just to demonstrate that we're all peas in a pod when it comes to matters of money, power, and sex . . . .

We were on a somewhat stressful trip together to the Middle East that began in Istanbul, Turkey.  As opposed to Istanbul, Montana, of course.  We were on our first day after a long trip. We were jet-lagged and culture-shocked.  Our first little outing was to descend below street level to visit some ancient Roman baths, which did end up being pretty cool.

LWSJ paid the entrance fee and we entered the site.  Turkey is one of those countries where inflation has left the money with denominations in the hundreds of thousands and even millions, permitting the casual traveler to quickly enter the ranks of the very wealthy.  Suddenly, he started to suspect that we had been overcharged.  He began a rant: "That guy screwed us.  He charged us twenty-seven dollars to get in here" and other complaints on an epic scale."  Being easily influenced I felt my dander rise and I, too, began to get upset.  

After a minute or two we figured out that the guy had collected two dollars and seventy cents. We were off by a factor of ten.  We were eager to be outraged and tired enough to be susceptible to paranoia.

I can hear Kenner laughing and laughing.

Off the Hook - Temporarily

Early in each trip the money conundrum rears its personal head and strikes down my serenity.  I think I need to do an inventory on this . . . again.  Our tour company recommended packing light suggesting that we use our hotel's quick and efficient laundry service instead.  Well, we did this - in our ridiculously expensive 5 Star hotel - and wracked up a $35 bill for a few items.  I mutter about this, not caring that much about the money itself (remember the $20 tip at our first hotel?) but objecting to the high cost of a pretty routine service.

SuperK doesn't care for the muttering, rightly pointing out that we're spending so much money on our trip and then letting a small amount become large in my head.

I protest that I don't care that much - suspecting that I do - and partially defuse the situation, skating away relatively unscathed, much to my relief.

After our tour ends, tired, we decide not to go to the streets to look for a dinner place, punting to one of the hotel's restaurants and what did I expect would happen?  I open the menu and am appalled at the prices.  I'm getting ready to suggest that we bolt when SuperK - who knows me too well - exclaims: "What:  You're not thinking of leaving?"  I freeze, caught, exposed, found out, and endure a tongue lashing, well-deserved.

Chastened, I let go of the money.  For a while.  Temporarily.  On the bus today the tour company begins to update the tipping guidelines, and off I go again over the matter of a few more bucks.  I get annoyed that in these poorer countries tourists end up paying for the services that I think I'm paying too much for to the tour company.  I'd rather they pay their people and tell me what it's going to cost up front.

Plus, I bit down on something hard at dinner last night and I'm sure I destroyed a tooth.  Worrying about weird health matters always trumps trivial money matters.

Ha Ha Ha

I have been in the habit of greeting my mother and my old sponsor Kenner every morning to start off my Quiet Time.  It has been a helpful way to ease into and through the pain of their loss.  My loss actually.  The sting of the deaths has ebbed but I soldier on with the good mornings.  I wonder how long I'll do this? 

Anyway, I was worrying about something stupid this morning and I thought of all the times I'd call Ken and tell him what was on my mind.  He never judged; he never gave advice; he laughed a lot.  Uproariously.  He was a silly guy with a big belly laugh, almost shouting.  So I'd come up with something stupid and he'd laugh and laugh and laugh.  I got the point.  I think I started to make stuff up just to hear him laugh.

I'm not going to say what I'm worrying about today. I can hear him in my mind's eye, laughing and laughing.

The Anxiety Gene, Beefed Up

I don't know what it is about me and money.  I spend it like a drunk - like an active drunk - and then I go apoplectic over the littlest things.  Today was Move to a New Hotel Day, a day fraught with all kinds of useless anxiety over the smallest things.  First of all, I was pretty sure the hotel wasn't going to acknowledge the fact that I had prepaid my bill.  Second of all, and third of all and many, many more of alls the move required a few taxi rides.  I'm obsessed with getting screwed by unscrupulous taxi drivers despite the fact that I don't think I've ever . . . you know . . . gotten screwed by a taxi driver.

Worst case scenario - really the only kind of scenario that I envision - is the whole screwing and non-acknowledging would cost me a few bucks.  Not that I like to get screwed, mind you, just that the amount of angst and anxiety worrying about the few dollars far outpaces the pain of the screwing over.  If you said: "Seaweed, if you give me this amount of money I'll remove all angst from your mind" I'd knock you the hell over getting out my wallet.

So the sidebar is that I asked the hotel manager if I could add some extra money to the bill so that he could parcel it out as he saw fit to all of the staff: bell hops, front desk personnel, room cleaners, cooks, etc.  I thought he was going to break my arm shaking my hand.  He really seemed a little flustered at an amount of money not much larger than the amount I was going to lose in a full-on fleecing.  The day door kid said: "Sir, I'm going to miss you."  I think he teared up a little bit.

So it's not the money per se, I don't think.  I don't know what it is.  It's a microbe living inside my head that has totally beefed up my anxiety gene.

The bill, of course, was copacetic.  I took three cabs that day where I was treated honorably for fares that averaged about $4.  I tipped like a hundred percent.

Tomorrow, however, it will all be different.

Mr. Head, Troublemaker

As we made our way through security at the airport our carry-on bag was pulled aside for a more thorough inspection.  Fair enough - there are so many rules as to what you can and can not take on the plane, and they seem to change every time I fly and they change according to destination and airline, that I mess something up every time.  The agent roots through our stuff, eventually opening my toilet kit and extracting Mr. Head.  She looks at him for a minute, turning him this way and that, feeling his heft, all with a bemused look on her face.

"What is this?" she asks.

We try to give an abbreviated history of Mr. Head, World Traveler.

"Where did you get it?" is the follow-up question.  We don't go into the particulars of stealing him from a cabin we rented in Northern Michigan 25 years ago but give her a sketchy background check.  She's openly laughing at this point.

"Can I show my supervisor?" she says.

Absolutely.  Mr. Head is a bit of a diva.  He loves the attention.  We see her talking to her manager, other travelers paying attention to the commotion at this point.  Someone asks the security guard about him as she returns him.

"Well, thanks, I'm never going to see that again," she says.

On we travel.  First time that Mr. Head caused a ruckus at security.

No More Middle Seat!

So I'm always in this existential battle about the correct way to pray.  I know that I need to pray - and I do - but the technique can be quite the mystery to me.  I used to pray for specific things - usually to get something I wanted or avoid something that I didn't.  My Higher Power - Joker Extraordinaire - always seemed to corrupt these self-serving prayers, granting me some of what I wanted but warping the whole thing so that the result was just kind of . . . off.  I felt like I needed to keep calling back to the Help Desk to clarify the specifics of the prayer.  For an omnipotent, omniscient being to require this level of detail was really quite vexing.

So I got a lot more generic with my prayer.  While this may have been a touch more noble - praying to be of maximum service to my fellow man and other useless bullshit - it wasn't as satisfying as asking for a big, fat, juicy steak for dinner.  I figured the golden loophole - laid out in wonderful detail in our Book - was to add the qualifier "if thy will be done."  Still, it seemed a little shaky to ask for a red Ferrari or the winning number in the lottery and make it right by tacking on this otherwise noble phrase.  Shallow generosity.  My Higher Power probably has more pressing problems than to consider my requests for Italian supercars and it would be more productive for me to pray less selfishly in the pittance of time I dedicate to prayer and meditation.  Plus, I should probably buy a lottery ticket if I want to win the lottery.

But, you know, the MIDDLE SEAT!  I really didn't want that middle seat so I went full-blown selfish on my morning prayer today.  I kept asking my god to handle the seating situation for me and - if possible - get me out of the %$!! middle seat.  I had been stung enough by the not winning the lottery while not buying a lottery ticket that I knew I had to do some work.  I lept into action at the airport by asking the nice lady at the ticket counter if she could possibly arrange things to that SuperK and I could sit together.

She smiled sweetly - really - and said: "The flight is full. But I will pass your names along to the gate agent in case someone doesn't show up for the flight.

Yeah, right.  Reminded me of the time the cop who investigated the violent and unauthorized removal of my car stereo system told me that he'd get in touch with me if anything turned up.

"Does anything ever turn up?" I asked.

"No," he said.

I even waved off a middle seat - window seat combination if one became available.  I wanted the aisle.  Bad.  We made our way to the gate, cheerfully, resigned, no hard feelings against anyone.  I mean it's not like I was asking my Higher Power to get me a seat on the plane so I wouldn't have to row to Hong Kong.

After a short bit I heard our names being paged.  I made my way to the check-in counter and gratefully accepted our new seat assignments - together and on an aisle.  I'm still not sure what to make of the mechanism of prayer in this instance.  

My kooky god, anyway.

The MIDDLE SEAT!

I do confess to amusing myself.  I have been rigorously, tirelessly trying to figure out the loophole in the middle seat tragedy.  I am going to ask my seat mates to switch seats, well aware that no one is going to vacate an aisle seat and occupy a middle seat; if there is any hesitation, I'm going to offer money - maybe a young kid who's going to screw with his pc would rather have cash, begging the question as to how he could afford to fly to Hong Kong; I'm going to work the stewardesses; I'm going to go to every help desk and reservation counter I see; and I am STILL GOING TO BE IN THE MIDDLE SEAT!

I have always liked the tendency of alcoholics to surrender only after they have exhausted every other opportunity.

Here is some advice I've gotten from friends over the last few days, all of it comforting:
LWSJ: "You'll have Kenner and your Higher Power with you every step of the way," and replying to my comment that I was at the point of the trip when I was getting really worked up: "I know it well."  It made me feel less alone.

Spandex: "LAX stands for reLAX."  That was a good one.  Just relax.  Just fucking relax.

One of my grouchy, dear friends from Vacation City Fellowship, agreeing that he gets all worked up, too.  And why, pray tell?  "I don't know - it's just the way we are."

Next stop: SE Asia.

Definitely at That Point

Definitely the point of the trip where I'm saying: "Why the $%#!! am I doing this anyway?"  It was pointed out that the late, great Kenner would have said: "This, too, shall pass."  I hated that expression when things were going my way but found it more soothing at times like this, when I'm nervous and jumpy and edgy.  Prone to anxiety, as LWSJ would say.

I can tell that the anxiety is getting free-floating when weird stuff leaps to the forefront.  For instance, both SuperK and I get injured and sick right before a big trip bad backs, head colds, and the like, none of which ever seem to be . . . you know . . . real.  A few days ago I must have bumped the big toe on my right foot - it got sore, a little red and swollen.  Infection!  Bad infection!!  I imagined myself in the jungle in Cambodia watching a witch doctor hack off my gangrenous foot just above the ankle with a saw fashioned from the bones of a water buffalo and I was not going consider the fact that I'm going on a pretty nice tour and staying in pretty nice hotels and I have antibiotics and my fucking toe isn't infected, anyhow.  I never let facts get in the way of what I want to believe.

Another thing that was gnawing at me was the possibility of getting stuck in a middle seat on a 15 hour flight in a plane where the internal space was designed by the Marquis de Sade.  I'm an antsy guy, I'm a tall guy, I hate the lack of control and claustrophobia of being trapped in a small space.  Because I'm cheap I got a great fare where one of the drawbacks was not being able to choose my seat earlier than 48 hours before the flight.  Guess what?  Middle seat.  I was moderately freaked for a while before transitioning into the "It is what it is" phase of my mental preparation.

I can hack it.  I can hack it.

Restless, Restless Seaweed

Squander:  To waste, lavish, splurge; to spend lavishly or profusely. 

The Free-Floating Anxiety Syndrome is alive and well this morning!  I'm so proud to report that - it shows just how far I have progressed in my quest to become a Spiritual Giant. Indeed, more of a Spiritual Giant than I already am, and I am massive as it is.  The fact that I actually have an upcoming experience that may be the reasonable cause of the anxiety is cold comfort to me.  I spent some time looking back through my Anxiety List this morning, reviewing what exactly has made me anxious over the last two years.  It is a whole lot of the same stuff, I'll tell you that.  While there are a few things on there that seem justified it's mostly mundane things that I turn over and over and over in my head, seeming to enjoy the discomfort.  

That being said I do have to remember that anxiety is pretty common in society - it's we alcoholics who have taken it to an art form.  "To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while."

There's a line somewhere in our literature that suggests that the amount of time we spend in self-pity, worry, remorse, and self-seeking introspection is the exact amount of time that we've squandered in our quest to be of service to our fellow man.

Restless, restless Seaweed.  I admit to possessing the knowledge that I could evade some of this discomfort by hunkering down and doing the same, safe, comfortable things that I always do.  

Not happening.  Climbing back onto my Conestoga wagon again in a few days, and dragging my poor wife with me.

WTF Am I Doing This For, Anyway?

I took a call from Little Westside Jonny yesterday.  He has decided to leave The Old City for a four month stay in sunny, sunny Arizona - a wise move, I think, for a guy who dislikes cold bones as much as I do.  I got the sense that he was a little keyed up about the trip.  He's going to be working which will take up a lot of his time; moreover, he's already been in touch with the local Fellowship office to pre-schedule some meetings and also found a place where he can exercise, and has some day trips lined up.  

The fact that the planning is exquisite doesn't free us from the anxiety about facing something new. SuperK and I are getting ready to head back to Southeast Asia for an extended stay in about a week.  Right about now is when the nerves overwhelm the planning and I begin to mutter: "Why exactly am I doing this again?"  Just staying put and indulging my familiar, much-beloved routine is, today, my choice of action.  I start to plot to see if I can figure out how to extricate myself from this ridiculous web of my own making?  

Personally, I have to do these things so that I stretch and grow.  It isn't for everyone.  Some of us are more comfortable maintaining that routine, and there's nothing the matter with that.  Some of us need to strike out for the territory ahead.  But it doesn't help my nerves to hear people say: "Why are you going there?  Why are you doing that?"  And it doesn't help that I can't really come up with a good reason for doing a lot of the stuff that I do.

I'm always struck about what people get all jazzed up about.  For the longest time SuperK has worried about losing her luggage while I've worried about getting murdered.  And getting screwed by an unscrupulous taxi driver.  Well, I haven't been murdered yet, to the best of my knowledge, and if someone has bilked a few extra dollars out of me I'm unaware of the particulars. We started to make a pact - I take care of the luggage logistics and she fends off the murderers. 

Right now I'm worried about getting stuck in a middle seat in and having gas on the plane. SuperK rolls her eyes: "We're going to Vietnam, you idiot, and you're worried about gas? And why do you care about where you're going to sit - you sleep the whole trip."  Good points, all.  I'm too afraid of her to point out that we've never lost our luggage, either.

I'm too embarrassed to ask what she's worried about this trip.

See Jane Run - Run, Jane, Run

Before I went home I stopped by to visit with my neighbors.  Dick and Jane are the central pillars in a large immigrant family that is so tight that it leaves SuperK and me speechless. I'm not insisting it's better, just so different from our family dynamics that we barely have a frame of reference.  Jane is one of those relentlessly positive people that never seems to slip into self-pity or adopt an attitude of passive-aggressive pique.  Yet she's pretty tough - she doesn't take crap from anybody but her stance is so positive at it's core that I find myself sharing a lot of crap about my family, something I rarely do outside the confines of The Program or of close friendships of long-standing.

I wanted to thank them for continually knocking me back onto the tracks of somewhat acceptable behavior.  Were I ever to err I would like it to be on the side of kindness, tolerance, and understanding.  I don't want to be aggrieved, as if I were a politician running for President, bemoaning the horrible state of affairs that have left me a multimillionaire.  I want to hitch up my britches and be positive.

Not easy for me.

Friends and Family From AT&T

I'm going to stick to my guns here for a while on my new Friends and Family policy which sounds like a new plan from AT&T.  Not forever, quite likely, but temporarily at least.  I think it's in my best interest and by extension, in the best interest of everyone involved.  So it's hands off.  Engaged, but disinterested and dispassionate. 

Live and Let Live, to coin . . . er . . . steal a phrase.

Diss - Functional

Dysfunctional:  Functioning incorrectly or abnormally; especially, designating of a family or social group with strange or abnormal behavior.

I've had conversations over the years with friends in The Program who have had to deal with dysfunctional family members, and I mean dysfunctional with a Capital D.  My family is minor league dysfunctional.  Not crazy in their craziness - more annoying than anything.  One of my friends had a brother who would drop off the radar from time to time, resurfacing in various states of chaos, finally stealing my buddy's identity and thus severing all ties in perpetuity.  Another friend had an alcoholic brother move in with their father, causing so many problems that they had to boot him from the premises.  He hears rumors about his brother's whereabouts but not much else.

The point is that these guys finally decided that nothing was better than the something they were being offered.  They decided that their best means of contact was no contact at all.  It wasn't always comfortable but it was easier than the frustration inherent in dealing with someone who had run off the rails long before.

I'm slotting myself into this category with my dad right now.  Like these guys I've finally gotten to the point where I'm not mad at dad but I don't want to deal with the crap.  I'd rather not know, you know?  I'm not entirely comfortable with this at the moment but I'm getting there.

Petty Seaweed

Petty:  Narrow-minded; small-minded.

The big take-away for me regarding the last trip to The Old City - in my opinion, because really, who's opinion would it be if not mine? - was along the lines of Live and Let Live. The first time I saw this slogan it appeared to be a stupid slogan that applied to lesser people than me. Now I think it's a pretty good slogan.  It keeps my nose out of your business.  I don't know exactly where my nose is supposed to go but it's definitely not in your business.

I called my dear father - back on the Vodka Train, according to my sister, despite her refusal to buy him any more Vodka, prompting me to share my deeply-held belief that I could be dropped from an airplane, in the middle of the night, on Sunday, in a dry county in a dry state, without my wallet or any identification, and I'd have drugs and alcohol within two hours - a couple of times in the last week.  No answer, even though he never goes anywhere and has caller ID and an answering machine, and no return of the calls.  

"I think I'm done with my father," I told SuperK, without any emotion at all.

She nodded.  "OK," her mouth said.  "It's about fucking time," was implied.

I don't mean I'll never contact him again rather that he really doesn't want to talk to me right now so it's enough with the calls already.  Leave the old guy alone.

Then, I get a text from an Old City friend - one of those guys that I love dearly who never, ever makes the slightest effort to stay in touch.  I've droned on ad infinitum about how irritating this is before finally, finally deciding that it would be better to back off the expectations and slot him into the category of people I love dearly but will lose touch with. The text regrettably, was to let me know of some good news he got regarding a family member and to let me know what kind of new car he bought.  He promised to follow up with a phone call over the weekend.  

"I don't think I'm going to take that call," I told SuperK.

She nodded.  "OK," her mouth said.  "You're really dim sometimes," was implied.

I feel a little petty here.  I'm happy the health scare is over and if I was still in The Old City I would have spent a couple of days riding around with him to the car dealerships.  I LOVE new cars.  However, I lost my mother and I went to Scandinavia for a couple of months and I heard nothing.  So, frankly, in my book, stay engaged or stay silent.  When I thought I might hear from him my feelings were hurt - when I don't expect to hear from him my feelings are nice and robust.  I don't want to take a call where he talks about himself for a half an hour.

I'm really trying here.  I really am.

One of the suggestions that I've learned over the years which still retains an incredible amount of power - it would contain an incredible amount of power if I bothered to heed its wisdom from time to time - is to "Love people for who they are and not who you want them to be."  Intellectually?  Makes a lot of sense.  Emotionally?  A little hard to swallow when all of the idiots who are clogging up the path that I want to take won't get out of my way.

It's not fair to anyone to have that load of expectations heaped upon their furrowed brows.  People are fallible and flawed and they're inevitably going to fail us.  I shouldn't put that pressure on anyone.  I know I'm not doing it right in the eyes of millions.  When I disappoint someone simply by existing I think: "Hey, I'm doing the best I can."  I don't like it when someone is pissed that I'm not falling in line with what they want me to do.  I try to change my behavior if I can make someone else's road a little wider but I'm not going to have much luck changing who I am.

We had a cat that didn't like to be held.  She'd hop up on your lap if she was cold and wanted to warm up but even then she'd do whatever she could to stay just out of reach of your grabby hands - I swear that animal had a tape measure somewhere.  Otherwise, she was fine curled up on the carpet.  Every now and then I'd pick her up and try to forcefully hold her in place.  She stayed put - she wasn't stupid, she knew who was the bigger of the two animals - but it felt like sitting with a coiled spring in my lap.  I knew that the instant I released any pressure that she would be out of there.

That's what it feels like today when I try to make someone into something that they're not.

Delusional Seaweed

Delusion:  A false belief that is resistant to confrontation with actual facts.

I'm a typical guy.  I have a typical totally delusional impression that women view me in a certain light.  I'm delusional but not stupid - I realize that I make my best impression when the lights are turned off, leaving me in complete darkness.  I know that I'm invisible to any human female who's under say 35 if by "35" you mean "45."  Fair enough - I'm old.  I get it.  I was pretty much invisible to these women when I still had black hair and a lot less wrinkles and liver spots and such than I do now.

Still, I'm pretty sure that when I blow into a room I turn some heads.  I'm just sayin'.

One evening at my dad's retirement home - where the average age, the average age of the residents appears to be one hundred and forty-three - I was joined at the banks of elevators by a woman who lives there.  We had some time to talk - the doors on the elevators are programmed to give a little more time to the little less spry.

"So . . . are you a new resident?" she asked at one point.

I did laugh out loud.  I take myself way too seriously but not nearly as seriously as I used to.

The Pivot

Pivot:  To turn on an exact spot.

I've been mulling over . . . well, just about everything.  I mull at great length and with great passion.  It's more fun mulling than actually doing anything.

Anyway, my trip home has me considering moments of great influence and import in my life, when things changed in a big way, a permanent, earth-shattering way, for better or worse, never to be the same ever again.

Let's take a look at these pivots or should I say PIVOTS!

1.  Leaving home for college 650 miles away.  A major pivot, a huge pivot.  Probably number two in the pivot countdown.  Let's call it the AC/DC of pivots.  I was never the same after leaving my safe, loving, conservative little Cape Cod house where I could sneak upstairs and smoke dope undetected.

2. Getting kicked out of optometry college.  Excuse me, "resigning" from optometry college, after a long, slow, inexorable slide into alcoholism.  The few governors that I had on my drinking and using were released - to the great glee of my parents - and I roared into oblivion for the next 8 years.  A total loss.  A total waste.  I can remember sitting in the dean's office - Dean Hubbard, a caricature of what you would imagine a dean to be - when he finished up his "ok, we're done here, you can go away" speech.

3.  Getting sober.  THE pivot.  The Black Sabbath of pivots.

4. Getting married to SuperK.  A monstrous pivot that was followed by 20 years of slow, steady, pleasurable growth - nurturing a relationship, advancing a career, getting soberer and soberer.  This was really more of a period than a pivot, when you think about it.  It wasn't like the other pivots which were more along the lines of stepping off a cliff where  I went from Here to There in a blink of an eye. 

5. Leaving The Old City.  Our stuff was in a truck somewhere when we boarded a plane, leaving for good.  Probably number three in Pivot Lore: the Judas Priest of pivots.  

Now, my latest trip back.  It felt different, you know?  Final.  I'm wandering if it's another big pivot.  I feel like I'm Here now and that I'm no longer There.

Hard to tell in the heat of the pivot.

Seaweed: Visitor

Seems like this is what I was supposed to do this trip.  It hasn't been fancy - sit with dad, mostly in silence when the TV wasn't on, tuned to a sports contest that didn't hold my attention, a few comments passing for conversation; lunch with my sister; meals with The Big Four, the guys that I'm still in regular contact with; walks in my beloved, wooded, childhood park, glorious in autumnal splendor.

I didn't force the meetings.  Didn't force the marginal folks, the ones who are still loved but not active in my life anymore.  Not going back to Vacation City with any simmering resentments or boiling disappointments.  Didn't try to make anyone be someone that they're not and didn't feel bad when I didn't live up to someone else's expectations of who I should be.  Didn't try to make The Old City into something that it mostly definitely is not.

It was a pretty good trip.  I'm glad I finally approached it as a visitor and not as an ex-pat - it kept the frustration level way down, as in: "Why do I care so much about this place anyway?  I don't live here anymore."

I think this low-key approach really helped me with my family interaction.  Dad enjoys it when I'm there although to me our interaction is insipid and shallow.  The helping part is just being there.  He actually concluded our final day by saying: "Well, Seaweed, this was fun." Yowser.  The man is not doing anything to me.  He just doing what he knows how to do.

Love people for who they are and not for who you want them to be.

The Smell Test

I'm actually somewhat impressed with my efforts this trip - not controlling the world is a pretty good idea.  Not trying to get to certain meetings to "see" everyone - most of the meetings have turned over almost completely and the people that I recognize . . . well, it's only for a few minutes, anyway.  It's just too hard to catch up on six months in a crowded, noisy room in a few minutes.

I'm happy to say mid-trip that I'm usually not unhappy with myself when I crawl into bed at the end of the day.  Don't get me wrong - I have plenty of defects still in place that need plenty of attention.  They manifest themselves often.  But I give it a shot, a good, honest effort.  I think my behavior passes the smell test most of the time.  I think my speech is somewhat commendable a lot of the time.  My thinking?  Yeah, well, the phrase "some of the time" comes to mind.  Much better but much improvement needed.

Stuff Drifting By

Acceptance:  A receiving of something offered, with approbation, satisfaction, or acquiescence; especially, favorable reception.  

I believe that I'm doing the best job yet of not running the show on this trip, and I'm referring to The Show, as in: everything!  Just sitting in mu canoe, rolling down the stream, watching stuff go by, not judging, not commenting, not controlling, and - most importantly - trying not to talk at all.  That talking with my mouth stuff just gets me in trouble.  As a general rule people aren't interested in listening to me talk.  It irritates them, for some reason.

It's not good stuff and it's not bad stuff - it's nothing more than stuff drifting by.

I'm making a few plans and breaking a few plans but mostly I'm trying to handle whatever drops in my lap.   Lower the expectations, raise the level of acceptance, and life rolls by a lot more smoothly.

Look Left - Go Right

A great tearing away is in process at the moment.  A shift has occurred.  I no longer am anything but a visitor and I finally feel content with this.  At peace with this, anyway.  I don't want to come back and make people uncomfortable.  My in-laws are totally at a loss and/or uninterested in engaging with me.  I got stuck with my brother-in-law for a few minutes and neither of us knew what to do.  Check that - I knew what to do.  Clam up and get away.  The time to make an effort is in the past.  A couple of times I just lied so I could get away from them so all of us could do what we wanted to do which was get away from the other person.  It felt like a kindness, not a deception.

Of course, on one of the evenings I said that I was going to stay in my hotel room and watch a football game instead of joining everyone at the country fair for a demolition derby.  I waited for everyone to clear out and then drove over by myself to buy some crappy but delicious fair food to eat and wander contentedly around, taking in the sights, enjoying the autumn evening.  Not five minutes into my jaunt, in the middle of this large, jam-packed fair, I hear someone say: "Seaweed.  You decided to come anyway."  

My brother-in-law.  

Irrational Seaweed

Preposterous:  Absurd, or contrary to common sense.

The deal with other people is that their reaction to whatever it is I'm doing is none of my business.  That's the point.  I'm not supposed to do things with the expectation of a certain kind of reaction.  This isn't tit for tat.  I do it for the right reasons, not because I'm going to reap a reward in kind.

It's frustrating.  I've never understood why anyone does anything nice unless there's a guarantee that the favor will be returned.  Give and not get?

Preposterous!

Delayed Response

I've attempted to call my father every day - sometimes a few times a day - for the last week, and gotten no response.

Okay, what does that mean?  Does he want to hear from me but not talk to me?  Does he not want to hear from me at all?  Is he in the hospital?  Is he dead?  I have to write all of these down because none of them are too ridiculous to consider, although I think my sister would at least get in touch with me if something momentous happened.  But I'm not even sure of that.  I thought my email was pretty thick stuff and it fell flat, with a thunderous silence.

The easiest thing to do is to ascribe some devious, aggressive motive to everything that rubs me the wrong way.  This is the fiction.  The fact, of course, is that no one else is thinking about me.  They can't even come up with the energy to crap on my a little.  They're not going to waste their energy.

I finally sent a text to my sister because I need keys to get into my dad's apartment when I arrive very early in the morning - if he's not there I'd rather find out about it sooner rather than later.  I wasn't not communicating with her to be venomous, just to be considerate. 
She responds, telling me he's in a different room.  I wouldn't treat someone like this because I think that it is, at best, rude and inconsiderate. 

I'd like to say that, too.  I don't think that I will.

Reflections From A Guy Who Never Thinks About Anyone Else While Believing That Everyone Else Is Always Thinking About Him

Rampage:  A course of violent, frenzied action.

As I work through another pile of a seemingly endless pile of irritation at people who aren't doing what I want them to do I usually end up at the spot where I realize that nobody is doing anything to me.  They're not even taking the time to think about me - at all - let alone coming up with some complicated plans to make me uncomfortable.  It's a paradox of unimaginable futility on my part.  We talk about egos-on-rampage all of the time in The Fellowship - sometimes I get complacent and think that my ego is  . . . not rampaging, exactly, more like some mild, uninterested pillaging.   

I'm guessing - and I'm probably pretty accurate here - that my sister isn't thinking about me at all.  I'm not that important to her day to day life.  I sent an email to her and she had a reaction to it - likely an uninvolved reaction - and then she moved on with her life.  But me? I think she has plotted out an elaborate scheme to punish me for something I've done or left undone.  I don't spend any time on other folks but I think they're obsessed with me.

I clearly have a long, long way to go.  Luckily, it's a long, long journey.

In Control (And I'm Sure I've Used This Reference Before)

Different:  Not the same; exhibiting a difference.

When I find something unacceptable in my life I do everything in my power to change it into something that I find acceptable - I mean every, last, little fucking thing that I can do - before I consider maybe asking my higher power for help and direction.  I very rarely start with the premise that my higher power has a better plan.  I start with the premise that my higher power is going to fuck things up.  Consequently, I need to take charge.  I need to BE IN CONTROL.  If not me, who?  I'm serious here - who better than me to control the world?

I believe that this string of incidences with my sister and my father has been the catalyst to push me through and into a different mind set.  Other old people are likely familiar with the Charlie Brown, Lucy, and The Football story.  Lucy holds the football so that C. Brown can kick a field goal.  He makes a big run at the ball, winds up for a mighty kick, and ends up flat on his back because Lucy jerks the ball away at the last second.  But she always convinces C. that this time it will be different.  It's never different.

Why in the world did I think that this time it was going to be different?

I don't want to be mad at these people who I love but I don't want to be on my back, on the hard ground, looking up at the twinkling stars, either.  I hope I can push through to a new sense of acceptance, to a more realistic reality.  I'm doubtful here but this time it feels different.

Guide To The Proper Fertilization of Garden Variety Resentments

Compassion:  Deep awareness of the suffering of another, coupled with the wish to relieve it. 

And then when I think about all of the conversations I've had with people over the years about family difficulties - intense, focused conversations -  the response, usually delivered with a resigned sigh, is along the lines of: "Family can be hard."

That's it?  Those are the great words of wisdom accumulated over years of sobriety and diligent spiritual work?  Family can be hard?

Behavior that I wouldn't tolerate with potential friends and colleagues can be tough to reconcile when it comes to blood relatives.  If I don't like how I'm being treated I can find a new job or hang out with someone different, options not available with family.  You can't pick a new sister or a new father.   There are advantages to these long-term relationships, of course - we're forced to work through things with some diligence and that helps us learn to compromise, effort that can lead to relationships that are incredibly strong and resilient. 
It's pretty hard to jettison family relationships.  That takes some resolve. 

But drunks aren't known for hanging in there and working through things.  Drunks are known for packing up a car and driving off.  Drunks are known for taking a slight - real or imagined - planting it in good soil with plenty of sunlight and excellent drainage, fertilizing it, pruning it when necessary, watering it but not watering it too much, a common problem with most resentments, resulting in a stunted and unattractive resentment which I think we can all agree that nobody wants.  I mean if you're going to have a resentment do it right. Don't half-ass your resentment.

You can pick your nose but you can't pick your parents.

I Surmise I'm Not Too Bright

Surmise:  Thought, imagination, or conjecture, which may be based upon feeble or scanty evidence. 

I surmise that the best thing I can do for these people is to leave them alone.  Nobody is asking me to come back, for god's sake - when my sister needs help she usually speaks up. And when she speaks up she basically says "deal with dad however you want - I'm taking the week off."  She doesn't complain about all the work she does; she isn't a martyr; she isn't passive-aggressive - I know exactly where I stand, which is pretty far back in line.  What's the matter with that scenario.

I'm helping people as I think they should be helped, praying that they be cured of this or that irritating character trait.  Which they seem to be fine with, by the way.  I go to an Eleventh Step meeting every Saturday where we emphasize how stupid this kind of behavior is.  Not sticking with me, apparently, which is why we read the same fucking things over and over.

I'm taking a little trip north of The Old City to my parents' childhood home to attend a much beloved and highly nostalgic county fair.  Because I'm not sure when I'll next be back I got in touch with some peripheral second cousins and great-uncles to see if they'd be around, and they were thrilled to hear from me.  We've gone back and forth several times.  THESE are the people I should be in touch with.

Clearly, I'm not too smart.

Into the Ring of Fire

Heading off to the Old City in a week or so.  This won't be Scandinavia, that's for sure.  I'm wondering if this will be my last trip back for a while?  I've said this many times but I may finally mean it.  I sent a big note to my sister discussing a variety of weighty matters - which took me quite a while to put together, included a few revisions and rewrites, and caused me some mental anguish - and 3 days later I get nothing back.  

Dad is dad - uncommunicative, angry, discontented.  He's doing dad things - I suspect that when I'm there that he appreciates it more than I know but . . . it's not as if I'm doing anything to make his life better.  He doesn't want to talk.  Really - he's always been a pretty selfish man.  He did a decent job of handling family responsibilities, setting a decent religious example, but not a lot more than that.  And my sister and I have never been close - never been remotely close - so this behavior is very consistent on her part.  Am I not the guy who prides himself on behaving consistently?  That's all I can ask of someone else - do the best that you can and behave in a consistent manner.  That way I know what to expect and can adjust my expectations accordingly.

I'll see a few friends and I'll leave some more alone - I do myself a disservice if I make it a priority to see them.  If I leave it all be then they become people who are simply dear old friends that I love a lot who live far away.  I can hardly get upset - if I want to be reasonable about it and I do not - with people that I never spoke with on the phone when I lived there or with people that I made uncomfortable when I gave it a shot.  Some of us don't like the phone.  Or texting.  Or email.  

Maybe I'll take a few drives through downtown; see the house, recently sold, that was in the family for 55 years; check out my old neighborhoods; then call it quits.  Go back when someone dies.  It isn't like people are pounding on my door to stay in touch - and this is the exception rather than the rule, so whose fault is that?  Go find a mirror.  I'm the dude who fled.  If I wanted things to stay the same then I should have stayed put.

All Matters Family

Yesterday I rang up Shorty, my go-to guy in all matters family - I haven't given him the chance to tell me to go to The Fellowship For Those Who Know Alcoholics for a while.  I figured his time was nigh.  He needs to feel like he actually knows something from time to time.  This is my opportunity for passive-aggressive service work.

I need my friends to help me look at difficult situations from all possible angles.  I don't need people to agree with whatever it is I'm doing - I'm not in a bar drinking anymore.  I want to see stuff with a new perspective because my inclination is to think that whatever stupid thing I'm doing is, in fact, not stupid at all but a very smart, very appropriate thing.

I want to balance my responsibility.  I'm the guy who has a powerful spiritual program - I need to go the extra yard, to be the bigger, better, badder human - and I'm also the guy who should know enough to keep a low profile when I'm not needed, or wanted, a tough task for someone who knows everything about everything.

My family percolates along.  I try to stay in touch.  I try not to stay in touch too much.  I try not to get angry or judge.  I try not to tell god what it is he should be doing or not doing.

Seaweed: Aribiter

Arbiter:  A person who settles a dispute or who has ultimate authority in a matter.

As an arbiter of everyone else's fate I confess to wondering if things wouldn't be better for my father if he went and met my mother up in heaven.  That's a euphemism for wondering if he would be better off slipping into the next world in his sleep.  Another euphemism, of course, for death.  I feel awful even thinking that but not as awful as I feel imagining what it must be like being in my dad's place: broken body, loss of spirit, now deprived from the one thing that might have given him some solace - brother alcohol.

Like I know what's best for anyone.  Like I know who should be alive and who shouldn't.

To be clear: I'm not wishing that my father would die.  I'm wishing for him to have some peace of mind and I don't see that as an eventuality in the current state of affairs.  It's painful for me to imagine what a day must be like for him now.  I can't imagine that it's pleasant.

Judge, Jury, and Executioner

I returned from my trip to a father in decline.  He has fallen every couple of nights the last week, each time necessitating a trip to the emergency room.  The last fall was a big one - he may have broken a bone in his back, another bone - so at the very least he's going to end up in a rehab unit for a few days.  Probably he'll need to move from his independent living apartment into as assisted living facility.  It just doesn't seem practical for him to be there alone anymore.  I have no frame of reference for how shitty this must make him feel.

The whole thing is complicated for me by the almost complete coin of silence that lies over The Old City as far as my family is concerned.  My father has spent maybe a total of 67 minutes on the phone with me - and has never contacted me first - in the 4 years that I've been gone so no word from him now is hardly a surprise.  My sister has contacted me unbidden . . . I'm trying to be fair here, difficult because I'm prone to lying and justifying and exaggerating when it makes me look good . . . maybe 5 times in that period?  Certainly not double figures, and she's very casual about responding when I reach out to her.  Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn't.  Also not very surprising.

I'm in this weird space where I feel like I should be making an effort to get updates and offer suggestions but no one is contacting me or asking me any questions or responding when I get in touch with them.  So . . . I'm not checking in and I'm feeling guilty about it.  Naturally.  Of course.  Most people - when treated a certain way for years and years and decades - get the drift.  They don't keep doing the same thing over and over.

To top the whole shit sundae off I'm battling the temptation to be judge, jury, and executioner about the whole sorry, preventable mess.  My dad hasn't moved from his easy chair in 20 years; doesn't eat and I don't mean properly, I mean at all; and he drinks.  So the fact that he's unsteady enough on his feet to fall repeatedly pisses me off and I have to fight the urge to make snarky, passive-aggressive comments.  This doesn't help anyone and it makes me feel terrible.  Maybe this is why these people don't talk to me.

Mostly I'm OK with it.  I believe that I act consistently and kindly to the best of my limited, human ability.  I believe that the way I act is just fine while having empathy and trying to show patience for those who think I act like an ass.  To Thine Own Self Be True is a treasured phrase of mine.

In one of my favorite Simpson's episodes Homer, trying to get free cable service, climbs a pole outside his house to see if he can hook his TV into the cable feed.

There's a red wire and a black wire.

"Hmm, only two choices," he says, hooking onto the red wire and receiving a blast of electricity.

"Must be the black, then," he reasons, receiving a similar jolt when he hooks onto the black wire.

He pauses, looks at the two connections, and says: "Maybe it's the red wire."  This time the shock is so powerful that he's knocked clean off the pole.

That's me.  That's what I do.  It'll be different this time.

Maybe I should call my dad.  It's the right thing to do.

Doing A Thing

I've done a bit of a drift here the last week with my writing.  That's what a month of travel with all the newness and routine-destruction will do to you.  Honestly, it has been pretty nice - we're tired, we saw most of what we came to see, no big agenda left, so we've just cruised.  The result of all of this not trying to bend the world to my specifications is that we spent a lot of very pleasant days and we uncovered a lot of hidden gems.  Big recommended sites and experiences do that to me frequently - they disappoint, collapsed under the weight of my unreasonable expectations.  So I go to less well-known places, manageable both time- and distance-wise, and have a ball.  I do one thing, slowly, deliberately, completely, and I make space when I'm done with that one thing before starting the next thing.  It's harder than it sounds, in my brain, anyway.  I'm usually taking a step into the next thing before I'm done with the thing I'm doing, thereby ruining the thing I'm doing which is what I'm doing, after all, not the next thing.

Wait! I Need Somebody!

Wait:  To delay movement or action until some event or time; to remain in readiness. 

I am intermittently grateful for what I have in The Fellowship vis-a-vis the ability to talk to other men who are often as whacked as I am.  Not always grateful, of course, but it strikes me from time to time.  As I consider more carefully my Director friend - the talented control freak - who has no release mechanism for outrage and frustration that can remotely compare to what I have in recovery I'm struck by what a blessing it is to be able to walk the fine line between action and inaction.  So many situations in my life resolve themselves when I stop trying to resolve the holy shit out of them by myself.  It's not in my nature to wait - it's in my nature to force the square peg through the round hole even if I have to break out the trusty sledgehammer to make it fit.

The only tool I need is a sledgehammer.  It cures all ills.

Arrogant Asses All Around Me

I'm in the habit of exchanging messages with a lot of people.  Frankly, I'm a lot better at it than most people are - the curse of the introvert who is in a Program that stresses not thinking about myself all of the time.  I suck at this but I work at it, too.  Every now and then I run into a friend or two - often people that I love dearly and with a great intensity - that gets my competitive juices running in the "I know more than you do" department.  This is a shitty department.  They should close this department and transfer everyone to Customer Relations or something, a department where they might be able to do some actual good.

From time to time I delete people from my phone's saved-people list.  If a name is on the list I'm tempted to interact with the individual associated with said name - I forget how irritated I was when I actually deleted the name from the list.  I think: "It will be different this time."  This has almost nothing to do with the person, regrettably, and a lot to do with me.  It's not even a bad quality, per se, staying in touch with people who aren't as good as staying in touch as I am. Hey, maybe they don't want to stay in touch with me; but I prefer to think that they're on to other things.  It's less malicious that way.

I had a furiously passive-aggressive interchange with a dear old friend recently.  This is not unheard of with this guy.  He's another example of the kind of people I meet in The Fellowship all of the time - talented, smart, tireless, someone who has a long history of setting goals and then achieving them.  While this is another good thing it can also be a bad thing.  SuperK accuses me of never saying "I'm sorry."  I think that it's more a case of me having made my mind up that I can solve some problem or arrange some situation to my liking, and I'm loath to divert from this path.  It can be a terrible path.  I'd be better off on another path but I have it in my head that this is the path.

He is having some problems that are entirely of his own making, in my opinion.  He has a situation that isn't to his liking and he's trying to arrange everyone and everything so that it IS to his own liking.  Good luck with that.  I'm 6,000 miles away and I can see that he's not going to get his way.  He disagrees and somewhat dismissively, being an arrogant ass like me.  I really had to bite my tongue. 

It hurth when I bite down.

Blame, Blame, Blame

Blame:  To assert or consider that someone is the cause of something negative; to place blame, to attribute responsibility (for something negative or for doing something negative)

One of the things that I try to remember on a daily basis - and forget on a daily basis - is that I'm the only person responsible for how I feel, this despite my ceaseless efforts to blame someone else when I feel bad or when I don't feel as good as I want to feel, and I really want to feel good.  Poor SuperK, of course, is a convenient target, being close at hand much of the time and a person who has an out-sized influence in my life.  I say this with no shame whatsoever because I'm sure I'm a reciprocal target, and deservedly so.  Now, all of us are going to be affected by circumstances and the behavior of others from time, and we're going to be riled about these things.  That's inevitable.  But it's up to me and me alone to take responsibility for how I feel.

Liisantaku Street

The topic at my Finnish meeting on Liisantaku Street was emotional sobriety.  Although I shouldn't have spoken I did - I never let lack of knowledge about a subject put a damper on my desire to speak at length about said subject.  I am, after all, a tremendous liar.

One dude there talked about reading the opinion of a mental health professional that the normal human condition, on average, is a state of mild anxiety.  This makes sense to me as it confirms my inability to accept the fact that I am, after all, a mildly anxious man.  The soothing thing is that my mild anxiety is comforted by the knowledge that other alcoholics are also mildly anxious, and that's if they're really working a Program.

It's funny to walk into a meeting 5,800 miles away from my home and recognize almost everyone.

Just being somewhere else is the changing thing.  It makes the routine of being nowhere else palatable.

Beer Braised Beef

I'm kind of tired of the whole eating thing on the ferry - the crowded buffet, people jostling about or just standing and gawping at the food, everything managed and arranged around mealtimes.  There are some people who are focused on what they're doing.  I mean they move from Point A to Point B with a singleness of purpose that's outstanding.  I weigh 180 lbs and I get out of the way when some of these dowagers are on the move.  They are not to be denied.  I'd end up on my ass in a head to head collision.

A little lessening of the tolerance after 7 days on the boat, eh wot?  There's a kid on the the small observation that I think of as My Small Observation Deck for no reason other than that I control the world, and he's playing a video game with loud warfare sound effects.  This is irritating me.  His whole family is there and they're from a country that annoys me for reasons that are incomprehensible even to me, a man fully aware that I live in a country that annoys almost everyone else from time to time.  And there are two people sitting right next to me eating cherries - apparently the 3 open buffets where you can eat for a couple of hours isn't supplying enough food for them - and spitting the pits into plastic cups where they land with an audible click.

Today SuperK noticed that the main course for tonight's fixed menu dinner was something called Beer Braised Beef.  Mindful that I had quite the experience in France a couple of years ago when I bought Rum Raisin Ice Cream that turned out to be 45% rum as in real fucking rum, I spoke with the attendant about this.

"Don't worry," this lovely lady said.  "All of the alcohol is cooked out.  It just tastes like beer."

"Yes, well," I said as diplomatically as possible.  "I don't want it to taste like beer.  I don't want any beer in it at all."

She disappeared for a minute, spoke to the head chef, and cheerfully told us that we would still get the beef but that it would have a different sauce on it.  I thanked her profusely.

That evening the waiter who was delivering the meals to our section blew through and put two blue triangles of paper on our table.

"Alcohol free beef, yes?" he said quite loudly.

When the meals came out he sat them down proudly and said: "Beef.  Completely alcohol free," again, quite loudly.

I bet they ladled my beef out of the same pot as everyone else's.  Tasted pretty good.

Preposterous

So here are two observations for me - I don't really care about anyone else as I've made abundantly clear - that I will note as true then either ignore or forget.

Number one is that I hate getting lost.  Which is another way of saying I hate to lose control.  And the first day in a new city, in a new culture, is THE day to get lost.  It makes me mad.  It infuriates me.

Yesterday we took a mental health day, a rest-the-feet day, to recover from all the traveling yesterday, the ultimate out-of-control day.  The only thing on the schedule was buying some groceries - and I got lost finding the grocery store, where things only cost $41, not $50, in cheaper Helsinki - and make a 3:30 meeting, an option not available to us on the ferry at some cost to our mental health.  Leaving plenty of time to get lost, I confidently march us out the door, point us in a direction 180 degrees from the direction that we . . . you know . . . actually need to go, and we stride purposefully away from the meeting for a good 20 minutes.  Knowing we were going to be late, I piss out and head for home - SuperK, calmer, suggests we find the meeting place anyway, lateness be damned, because there are several English speaking meetings held there.  We show up 1/2 hour late and enjoy half of a fine 8th Tradition meeting.

The other thing I hate is to be tired.  I want to feel fresh and rested all the time.  This is ridiculous when I'm in my home, fresh and rested and in control of a lot of stuff.  Enduring some stressful travel to-and-from days, battered by the extreme novelty of an alien culture, driven to see and too too much in the short space of time you have in a place you'll likely never see again?

Preposterous.

Musings

Expectations are the bane of the serene mind.

Do less - enjoy it more.

Things are what they are and my trying to make them different will accomplish nothing to change them into something else.

When I was India I tried to make it like The States.  Easier to control that way.  When I'm in Scandinavia I try to make those countries like India.  New!  Exciting!!

Zen Serenity

I'm tootling along in Norway, trying to stay out of my own way, decided to check into my rarely visited FB page and I see a post from a friend from The New City along the lines of "12 Steps to Zen serenity."  I like Zen Buddhist stuff because there is such an emphasis on slowness and completeness.  The list was along these lines: 

1. Do one thing at a time.
2. Do it deliberately and slowly.
3. Do it completely.
4. Leave plenty of space between the things that you're doing.
5. Make time for sitting.

Man, why do I forget this stuff in my rush to move 1000 miles per hour?

The Zen Steps continue with suggestions like Live Simply and Be of Service.  You know, stuff your English teacher used to say: Better to do one thing well than many things poorly.

It isn't rocket science this serenity stuff.  It wasn't invented yesterday.

From Here to There

So lest you think this is easy, here's the leaving Copenhagen run-down . . . 

Twenty minute walk to the train station, pulling fifty pounds of luggage over cobbled streets.

Ten minute struggle with the ticket machine - helpfully translated into English, to no avail - with a one kroner assist from a very nice local woman.  I had 71 of the required 72 kroners.  The machines take Visa - but we don't have a pin number for ours - and they don't take AmEx - which doesn't require a pin.  We could have overcome this whole pin obstacle by standing in a long line at the ticket counter.

Ten minute train ride to the airport, hoping we're going the right direction.  

THE most brutally efficient security apparatus at an airport that I've ever seen.  Strangely enough, we don't have to show our passports all day along, except to the clerk at a 7-11 where I buy a couple of $50 sandwiches with my pin-less Visa card which he apparently found disturbing.  Maybe the state police would have tracked me down if I welshed on my sandwich debt.

One hour flight to Oslo in an exit row.  I threw in the towel on pre-selecting our seats and was rewarded for my sloth with the best seat in the section.

Twenty minute extremely high speed train into the city which cost about $50.  It took some time figuring out the ticket machine as we ate our $50 sandwiches standing up.  There were no seats at the airport which was very weird.

Ah, then the hang-up.  An attendant directs us to the #12 tram, our tickets secured at another 7-11.  The 7-11s are everywhere.  They are, for some reason, ubiquitous in Scandinavia.  We're almost there!  The old #12 stops literally right outside the station.  We stand there for a bit, watching #12 trams go by in the wrong direction, before noticing that our tram no longer stops at this spot.

Thirty minutes later, hot, bedraggled, frustrated, we find the tram stop, somewhat discombobulated.  Every one I ask for help is eager to speak English and most helpful even when they don't know shit about anything.  They're SO good looking, though, that I don't mind asking.  I'm a committed heterosexual of long-standing but some of these guys are tempting me.

Thirty minute standing outside the huge wooden door of our apartment before receiving a note that the key is at a nearby Shell gas station.  On Frognervein Street.  We try to imagine walking over to a gas station in Ventura, staffed by a rotating collection of minimum-wage, teen aged clerks, and giving them a key to our house.

Six hours door to door.  An event.

In Retrospect

Retrospect:    Consideration of past times (official definition).
                        Looking back at what I've worried about and realizing what a colossal waste of                             time it was.

Traveling really re-emphasizes the importance of being on the winning side of the ancient alcoholic existential battle between Acceptance and Expectations.  The foe battling peace of mind is worthy, strong, and relentless.  It wants to disappoint me.  Quiet Acceptance is every bit its equal but it doesn't waste much time shouting to make itself heard.  It needs to be nurtured. Expectations doesn't need any help at all.

I'm a guy who really likes to pack a lot of accomplishments into a day, to see and do everything, and to have it all be Fantastic! and to have it all run smoothly and without a hitch.  I want to do it Right!

And then I maneuver the trains, trams, planes, streets, ticket kiosks, and security apparatus of 3 or 4 different countries.  What I want to see and do often disappoints and what I stumble across unexpectedly thrills me in equal measure.  I don't have to see and do everything or anything in particular.  It all works out fine in the long run.  It is always a waste of time worrying about the future.

I'm going to stand out on my balcony this morning and throw $50 bills into the street to get ready for my day.