Har Har de Har

I went to a Men's Retreat this weekend.  I attended a couple of retreats a year in The Old City and found them to be surprisingly helpful.  I'm not too good at joining in or joining groups, preferring to stalk the darkness at the periphery of the campfire to singing round-robin campfire songs.  I went to this retreat a couple of years ago and didn't really care for the dynamic but decided to give it another try as I'm pulling every lever and pushing every button in an attempt to process The Lost Year.

Alas, my instincts were correct and I didn't really care for the dynamic again.  It seemed to be more like a Fellowship camping trip than a spiritual retreat.  There were lots of meetings and lots of bullshit sessions but not much else.  I'd say that fellowship was the theme, not spiritual growth. Despite a ridiculously beautiful setting on a bluff overlooking the ocean I didn't see a single person taking advantage of the solitude to write or meditate or quietly stroll the grounds.  There was often the sound of loud talking and laughter, people bellowing into cell phones, that kind of stuff.  It wasn't unusual for me to have to be chased out to one the more remote benches if I wanted a little peace and quiet.  The guys sharing the room next to mine would come in after the evening session and play videos on their computer - action videos at a high volume.  I actually had to put in foam earplugs to read at the end of the day although, in their defense, they didn't go too late with the movies.  I know I could have gone over and said something and that they would undoubtedly have taken it well but I felt like the outlier and not in the mainstream of the retreat intent.  It would have felt like going over to someone's house for a Super Bowl party and asking them to put on the basketball game.

My original retreats were in a town with a heavy religious influence, something that often annoyed me and served as a target for my snarky observations.  I'll say this - religious people often have a history of quiet reflection and some sense of deep-seated faith.  I ran into people by themselves all the time at the Old City retreats - when there were small groups of people the conversations were quiet, reserved. 

There were a lot of guys at this retreat and most of them seemed to be enjoying themselves - it wasn't a bad retreat, just one that doesn't really interest me.  Which begs the question as to why I went again.  Perhaps I'm not as smart as I think that I am.

30 - 40 - 50 - 60

Thirty hit me hard.  I got sober; I got clean; I quit smoking; I got in shape; I got serious with SuperK.

Forty hit me hard, too.  I didn't like the kind of work I was doing so I got busy and started interviewing for all the different kinds of jobs that sounded good and fun and fulfilling to me, that promised more joy or satisfaction than what I was doing, and I took some classes at the university level.  You know what I found?  That I had it pretty good - the new careers required evening or weekend hours or promised less money - a lot less money - or more schooling - a lot more schooling - or threatened me with relocation.  I was glad I interviewed even though it went nowhere.  I had to know.

Fifty leveled me.  Fifty was the "holy shit personal body things are starting to hurt or break or quit working" revelation.  Moreover, I found that I wasn't able to stretch or exercise my way through the aches and pains like in the past.  Gutting it out turned into injuring something.  And even the shit that didn't hurt wasn't working that well anymore.  I began to get a real sense of my own mortality, that I don't inhabit a perpetual motion machine.  That the machine I do inhabit is going to break, that it's going to give out eventually.  As unbelievable as this sounds I didn't see it coming.

So here comes sixty.  I guess when you see a handful of people who came before you disappear into the gloaming you sense that there really is an end game and shit is going to end.

I mean the average life expectancy of a male in The States is 78 years although to be fair if you make it to 65 then you have a good chance of hanging in there a good while longer.  I would imagine that all the drunks dying early drags down the average.  Then again that's no guarantee that the quality of life is going to be great.

I don't want to sound morbid.  I'm not thinking of death at all and I'm surely not worried about it.  And while these numbers ending in zeroes are just numbers and not anymore significant than the on immediately preceding it or the one that immediately follows, they are markers of sorts and I think I laugh them off completely at my own peril.

Never Bring a Knife to a Gunfight

Compete:  To seek or strive for the same thing, position, or reward for which another is striving.  

More musings on the payment schedule for my bounced check . . . 

Never bring a knife to a gunfight.  The question is this: who is holding the knife here?  I don't feel like I've got a gun on me.

I'm sure I'm going to repeat myself but here's the SuperK Playing A Game story again.  When we were first married my wife - who enjoys playing games - was always badgering me to play a game with her, any game, she didn't care.  I protested and I protested, aware that a game for me was a contest to win, not a leisure activity.  Finally, I relented and we picked up some harmless board game.  I won the first several games - not because I'm smarter or more talented at games than she is but because I was dialed in to the activity while she was chatting and talking and looking around.  Just enjoying the game and the company.  Then she started to get the better of me in one of the rounds.  Seeing almost certain defeat I went into my Bloody Last Stand mode - you know, delaying the defeat as long as possible in the hope that I could pull out a miraculous, Hail Mary finish and walk away with an improbable win.  I'm like one of those suicidal guerrilla organizations that's so entrenched in the jungle that only total annihilation can convince them that the jig is up.

The look on her face when she realized that I was draining every possible ounce of pleasure out of her victory as I possibly could.  It wasn't personal at all - it was victory or it was defeat.

Anyway, do I pay $2.07 or do I pay $30?  Massachusetts Dud has suggested that I pay the full amount less one penny.  I'm seriously considering this technique.

Ghost in the Machine

Here's the update on the people who wouldn't remove a 100% surcharge penalty thing on a bill that my father owed . . . 

The facts:
The bill is legitimate.
I stupidly bounced a check in an honest attempt to discharge this debt.
There is probably something in the 47 page standard legal boilerplate that my father agreed to when he arrived at the emergency room unconscious that permits the pricks administering the bill to tack on 100% surcharges.
I called the pricks administering the bill - explained that my father had died, I was sorry about the bounced check but that things were a little unsettled, I'd be happy to pay the bill, would you remove the 100% surcharge.
The pricks declined to remove the surcharge which is their right.

As you can see the facts are lined up against me.  Is it fair?  Is it kind?  Or understanding?  

No, no, and no.

Here is my game plan.  I will pay the surcharge . . . probably.  I will send in small, odd, random amounts each month by check.  I think I'll start with $2.09.  I may go as high as $4.17 but probably not.  I'll choose the amount to send in each month at a time of my choosing.  I like a dollar amount and then a zero and then another number.  Like: $3.01 or $1.01.

I realize that this will cost me far more in postage and envelope cost than if I just paid the amount but I want to make it absolutely as painful for these pricks as possible.  I want to fuck with their system.  I want someone to have to open the envelope and process the check.  I can't imagine that they are able to process a check for less than $2.09.  I want it to cost them like $100 to collect this debt.

As you can see I have a ways to go.

Good Grief

Grief:  Pain of m ind arising from misfortune, significant personal loss, misconduct of oneself or others, etc. (Ed Note:  I'm not sure that it's fair to add an etc to an definition.  This is where we're defining something - tell me what the etc is).

I've joined a Grief Support Group.  And I've started to page through a book about how to effectively deal with grief that SuperK's sponsor - a great reader of all things written - passed along to me.

I'm still up in the air with the group.  I'm not much of a joiner-upper when it comes to stuff like this which probably explains why it took 18 months of meeting attendance before I actually figured out I had to quit drinking if I wanted to stay sober.  And I'm not much of a believer in things I can't quantify, logically explain, or scientifically prove so this psychological investigation into emotions doesn't come to me naturally.  Still, I'm going and I'm committed to continuing to go despite my sense that it's total fucking bullshit.  SuperK is surprised that I'm sticking with it.

"You never want to try anything new," she pointed out, adding  "Outside of traveling," defusing my one good argument.  While this isn't completely accurate it's accurate enough to piss me off a little.

The book is even more problematic because it's been penned by a couple of people who founded something called the Grief Recovery Institute.  I'm going to speculate that they're going to have a LOT to say about grief.  I'm guessing that if they just say "eh, give it a couple of months, you'll get over it" they probably wouldn't sell too many books.  But that doesn't mean that there isn't some good stuff in there.

The one theory I've found helpful so far is understanding that there are a lot of different kinds of grief besides mourning a loved one - retirement, moving, losing a pet, suffering an injury or serious illness, hearing that an ex-spouse is getting remarried.  I've found that some people who profess great grief make me mutter "oh, brother" and others make me wonder how they can get out of bed in the morning.  And the old adage of Time Takes Time comes up here, too, a reminder that grief is not linear.  It doesn't have a time frame that one can strictly adhere to.

I also see that grief is expressed in different ways by different people.  The reactions run the gamut from depression to anxiety to extended weeping.  It's all good - none of it is right and none of it is wrong as long as you're talking and trying to process what's going on.  Pretending that you're OK when something bad has happened is not OK.

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation."  Herbert Spencer

Look Out For The Locomotive

There's a saying in The Fellowship warning about the danger of the first drink - it proceeds along the lines of "it's not the caboose that kills you."  It's very popular to blame a long night of drinking for the fact that most of your front teeth have mysteriously vanished when the problem is that at some point you've decided that a drink - just one drink - would be a good idea.  It's not the last drink that gets you.

Something for me in the last few months was the Last Straw.  I feel like I've been standing in the ocean and I've been hit by several big waves.  While they're all the same size there have been a lot of them.  Still, it's the last wave that swept me out to sea.

There's another story about a guy whose cat really pisses him off first thing in the morning.  Admirably, he refrains from booting the cat through some distant goal posts but the irritation stays with him, building over the course of the day as more minor instances take on an out-sized importance.  Eventually he does something really stupid.

"Should have kicked the cat," his wife says.  

Don't let stuff build up.

The Big C

In some ways I simply want to know what's what.  I don't care if it's good news or if it's bad news as long as I know what the news is.  I believe it was W Churchill who said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - one of the wisest things I've ever heard.  Unless of course there's a big bear running right at me at which point the bear would be the cause of the fear and not the fear itself.  Being the fear.  Or something.

Let's say my thumb hurts.  Quickly I come to the conclusion that I have thumb cancer.  The best thing for me to do is to go to my thumb cancer specialist for testing and an accurate diagnosis.  We're on a first name basis as thumb cancer is one of my more popular cancers.  

"Give it to me straight, doc," I say.  "Is it the Big C of the thumb?"

Sometimes it is.  But that's OK.  I just want to know.  I can deal with about anything as long as I have the facts.  It's that weird, imprecise, free-floating angst that eats up guts.

Suffering V Pain

Suffer: To feel pain; to undergo hardship.

I was listening to a guided meditation tape where the leader asked me to imagine four individuals: myself; someone I love; someone I see regularly but don't know personally; someone that I really, really . . . would rather go stand somewhere else.  Then repeat these simple statements: "May you be happy.  May you be healthy and well.  May you be free from mental and physical suffering.  May you live without fear and experience peace in all ways."

One time Little Westside Jonny and I were sitting in a canoe on a brackish lake in the jungle - deep in the jungle - on the Colombian/Ecuadorian border.  We were drifting by a small island covered with dense jungle shit.  LWSJ began speculating on how much money someone would have to pay him to spend a night on the island.  I got it down to fifty thousand dollars - for fifty large I could hack it.  I was trying to explain how I would hack out a little clearing and stomp around, shouting, causing a ruckus, scaring off whatever the hell would be living on the island.  Or I would climb up into a tree and sit there, safe.  This was before the guide handed me a pair of binoculars so that I could see a snake the size of a Buick curled up in the nook of a similar tree. I digress.

He waved his hand as If I was a gnat he was trying to shoo away.  Not happening.  He firmly stated: "There is no amount of money on this planet that would convince me to stay there, by myself, in the dark."

"You don't think you could handle the physical pain for one night?" I asked. 

"It's not the physical pain I'm worried about," he said.  "They'd have to lock me up in a padded room when they took me off there."

Physical suffering versus mental suffering.  I get that.  If I had to choose between a repeat of a physician digging around in my legs with a large needle or some of the weird mental obsessions that get lodged in my head . . . 

Withering Machine Gun Fire

Just to continue the theme of "My Problems Are of My Own Making" I offer up this exchange. . .

One of my executor tasks was to set up an Estate Checking Account - this is money set aside to take care of any of my father's residual expenses.  This was the starting point for yet another descent deep into the world I descend into so often, the chaos world of Fucking Things Up. Normally the idea is to try to make things better, not worse.  That's my intent, anyway - the results are open to interpretation.

I got a bill for $30 from someone who had already been paid an exorbitant amount from Medicare and dad's supplemental insurance, but still wanted more money.  My suggestion to these people would be to do a primary instincts inventory, concentrating perhaps on the money end of things. As to the bill - fair enough: a legitimate and minor expense that I'm obligated to pay.  

Unfortunately, I wrote the check well before the money transferred into the estate account was actually . . . you know . . . in the estate account, ensuring that the check was of the very rubber variety.  This is why I don't have access to our personal checking account - the first check I have written in like 20 years and I bounced the mother.

A corrected bill arrived: the original $30 plus an additional $30 for their inconvenience.  I didn't think that they had been that inconvenienced but I guess you can tack on whatever additional charges you want to if you're the ones in charge of printing the bill.  They could have added $130. What am I going to say?  You can't do that?  Clearly they can do that.  They did do that.

So, you say, it's $30, right, split equally between my sister and me.  You, sir, would be incorrect because it had already evolved the Principle of the Thing.  I called the billing organization and explained that my father had died and things were a little disorganized, that I was sorry and I was sending the replacement check today.  Oh, and would they remove the 100% service charge?  No, they would not.

I got dinged by my bank for bouncing one of their checks and that seemed reasonable.  I thought it was kind of shitty for this overcompensated group of greedy bloodsuckers to keep piling on with the charges.  It was a bill for an ER doc who had already been paid $1000 for what was probably an hour's worth of work.  Again, he can charge whatever he wants - that is not disputable.  My paying these charges is highly disputable.

"We just can't remove that charge," the clerk said, bluntly.

"Well, I'm not paying that," I countered, miffed.  "I'm happy to pay the bill and I'll mail the check today but I'm not paying a 100% service charge."

"I'll note that on the account," she replied.

"So you won't remove the charge?" I said, soldiering on through the billing office equivalent of withering machine gun fire.  You always hear about the hero who makes it through the withering machine gun fire to blow up the tank or pillbox, knife the enemy machine gun guy in his foxhole - you don't often hear about all of the guys who are cut in half with 50mm machine gun bullets.

"No, sir, we can't remove that," she said, clearly used to dealing with people like me.

"Sure, you can remove it," I said.  "You won't remove it, which is an entirely different thing.  It's your bill - you can add or subtract anything you want."

I was smack dab in the middle of one of those situations where I was getting pissed while trying to refrain from acting badly.  You know: stress - when the mind overrides the body's basic desire to choke the shit out of some asshole who desperately deserves it.  Anyway, my voice gets lower and lower, more growly, sort of like the weird keening noise a cat makes right before it lunges at another cat.

She stood her ground.  I refused to yield.  I am currently annoyed enough to never cede any territory.  She can send it to a collection agency.  She can hire a lawyer.  I'm not paying the %$^!! thirty dollars.

I have considered sending in small amounts of money over an extended period of time.  That might work for me.  $2.17 here, $1.38 there, weaseling the amount down but never giving them the satisfaction of clearing the account.  They'll spend hundreds of dollars of customer service time and data entry time and never see a zero.  I'll leave the last 80 cents open forever.  Contemplating this line of defense gives me an inordinate amount of pleasure.

This is why I'm going to hell.

Linch

Linchpin:  A pin inserted through holes at the end of an axle, so as to secure a wheel; (figuratively) a central cohesive source of stability and security; a person or thing that is critical to a system or organisation.

Linch:  A right-angled projection.  (Ed. Note: I had to look up linch after leading with linchpin.  I fail to see how such a major concept as a linchpin is tied to a vague, almost worthless word like linch.  It hardly seems fair.  I mean think about it: a linchpin holds the wheel on your car to the axle.  I'd hate to have my linchpin fail as I was driving 100MPH).

I've been thinking a lot more about some of my more peripheral relatives in the light cast by the departure of my parents to bigger and better things.  Cousins and their children or their new spouses, shit like that.  I vaguely understood how my folks' relationship with their brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts were the glue holding the family dynamic together but didn't grasp the full power of the connectivity.  These titans were the sun around which we little people orbited.  The fact that so few people stay in a small geographical area doesn't help this cohesion, either - it's not like I can plan a quick barbecue on a holiday and expect folks to cruise on over for a few hours.  They're all hundreds or thousands of miles away.  When I was growing up we were all within a hundred miles of each other, a quick car trip to events nicely coordinated by family-centric adults.

This stuff seems to be held in a common understanding by those of us who have lost our parents.  A buddy in The Fellowship said: "Yea, I understand the business about your father.  Whether good or bad, our fathers occupy a giant part of our psyche.  I found that my dad's departure certainly took a long time to process.  And it didn't seem like I was in charge of that schedule . . ." I also saved a note from a few months ago from the huge and legendary MoMan: "We only get one Dad - imperfect, heroic, frustrating, lovable, and much to be missed."

It a lot to sort out and it's still in the sorting phase.

Can You Hear Me?

Self-image versus public perception.  

Who do YOU see when you look in the mirror?

Many years ago I participated in a sales training were the instructors videotaped staged sales encounters as a torture . . . er . . . training tool.  I did not look or sound like I thought I did.  Hip, slick, and cool were not adjectives that came to mind.  I was twitchy and creepily insincere.  I was leaning in during the sales encounter like I was going to tip over into my cup of coffee.  It looked vaguely threatening, like a polite bully calmly suggesting that some indeterminate but bad thing would happen if things didn't go his way.

I was at a bookstore a few days ago, trying to track down some old Pulitzer Prize winners.  I politely declined an offer of help from the saleslady when I entered the store, preferring to poke around on my own, confident that I'd uncover a gem or two even if I was unsuccessful in my targeted search.  I uncovered no gems which was OK, too.  As I was checking out this woman started to explain that they had a back room in the basement where a lot of out-of-print books were kept.  She was talking - I was attending.  She stopped suddenly and raised her voice.  A lot.

"Can you hear me?" she said, slowly and distinctly and loudly.

Bemused, I said: "I can hear you fine," thinking: "What the fuck is this woman's problem?"

"You had this intense look on your face," she said.

Trying hard not to laugh I replied: "I was listening intently."

"Yes, you surely were," she remarked.

I wish I had a videotape of that encounter.  I felt quite relaxed.  I did not, apparently, look that way.  I found several books in the hidden room.

The Crappy Year

Empathy:  Identification with or understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or emotional state of another person. 

Every now and then, when the anxiety is waxing, I take the time to write down the events that have contributed to the kind of year I've had.  It has been a crappy year.  Or, at least, a trying year, a painful year.  For someone who drones on and on about "it's not a good thing and it's not a bad thing - it's just a thing" I do a crappy job of putting my own advice into practice.

I look at the list and think: "Wow.  This really has been a crappy year."

I started to go - on the recommendation of a friend - to a grief group.  I've been twice and I'm going to keep going even though I'm still a bit skeptical.  I'm not much of a joiner and I'm not much of a suffer-in-public guy, either.  I'm not much of a suffer-anywhere guy, actually.  I find myself drifting into the somewhat cold and clinical"just get over it" train of thought.  There are some people there who have experienced sudden, traumatic losses and a few lonely hearts who really seem to me to be hanging onto something for the comfort that hanging onto something can bring.

As you can see I need to work on my empathy.

AC/DC Again? It's Enough With The AC/DC

I've been thinking my processing powers; as in, how I maneuver through various feelings associated with various events.  I do OK a lot of the time; sometimes, not so good; from time to time I suck.  I'm doing the best I can do, I believe.

I left a message on Willy's VM today.  It was along these lines: "Whenever you don't pick up on the first ring I ask myself: have the authorities finally taken you away in handcuffs, never to see the light of day ever again,  or have some other authorities tossed you into a softly padded room, peering in occasionally through a frosted glass window?"  He got it.  He knows he's right on the edge of insanity.

I was meditating and an image of myself, in the day, came up: driving 100MPH down a two lane highway, high and drunk, AC/DC at an ear-splitting volume, with my eyes closed, in a blackout.  Or . . . appropriately dressed, calm in demeanor, politely listening to some boring-ass relative at a family gathering.  I could easily see the first Seaweed.  I would have clear memories of doing something like that except for the blackout part of the equation.

So . . . however I'm handling whatever life throws at me is built on that version of Seaweed, deeply embedded in my being.  It's a long way up to normal from there.