Joshua Tree

Sometimes I've got something to say and sometimes I don't - not that I don't say something even when I don't have anything to say.

We spent a week in one of the desert areas of California, a unique space where the Mojave and Colorado deserts collide.   We did the day hiking thing again, out for three or four hours then back to our primitive campsite at the Westin.  If you've never spent any time in a real desert you owe yourself the pleasure - it is one of the most beautiful places on earth, a landscape where the competition for resources is as fierce in its own way as in the jungles I've traipsed through.  There isn't much rain and the soil sucks so you better bring your A-game or you aren't going to make it.

Did you know a needle is actually a leaf adapted for a hot climate?  I'll tell you this - every single living plant in the desert is well-armed for battle.  You are going to get pierced if you touch anything living out there and most of the stuff that is living looks pretty dead.  There is no looking around when you're moving along.  Eyes are peeled for all manner of needles and spikes.

The great thing about this area is that it's possible to get real remote real quick.  We usually didn't see any other people and when we stopped walking to take a break the quiet was deafening.  We could hear wind and that was the extent of it.  We would talk quietly for a while and then just walk, in silence, the only noise our hiking boots scuffling along in the gravelly sand.  Really cool.  Recharged.

If you're having trouble with the Higher Power concept get out into the wilderness.  It's beautiful and it's harsh and it's quiet.  God is definitely wandering around, suffusing the space with his presence.  

Going to Heaven

I have a tendency to compare myself to other people.  This is OK and very human but I have a tendency to focus on where I'm lacking and not on where I shine.  A couple I know from The Program got burned out of their apartment during The Thomas Incident.  The guy called a man he sponsored who immediately opened up his home to them.

Fair enough - I would have done this, too.  He also immediately offered them a bed for as long as they needed one, and not the spare bed, either, but the master bedroom bed.  Now I see that I'm not comparing apples to apples here - he's a single guy going through a tough divorce so having some company to distract himself from himself is probably a good thing.  We married people always have someone around which is also a good thing - a very good thing - until the other person gets on your last nerve, a common happenstance in the long-term marriage, and this is less of a good thing.  I always laugh at SuperK's reaction when someone asks her if she's going to miss me when I'm off traveling: "HELL no.  Are you kidding?  Are you crazy?"  Now this is tongue in cheek to a certain degree because she knows I'm coming back but the point is that everyone needs some space.

I would not offer someone an indefinite use of my place.  My home is my refuge from other people.  I do not want other people living in my home.  This would be alarming and distasteful to me.  The only thing less admirable than not offering someone who has just lost their home a place to stay would be tossing them out on their ear in the middle of the night - something I can see myself doing.  This would be a very bad thing.  I would have a lot of guilt if I did this.

I grabbed the kind homeowner after the meeting yesterday and had an off-the-record conversation with him, along the lines of "are you OK with this?"  I know this situation would start to bug me and I didn't want him to beat himself up if he was starting to feel bugged.  He was in good shape, happy that he was being of service, giving back some love, and in no hurry to be by himself again.

Good for him.  He's going to heaven.

Seaweed: Soothsayer, Seer, Insufferable

Seer:  Someone who foretells the future.
Soothsayer: One who predicts the future, using magic, intuition, or intelligence.

Over the years I have offered to talk with people in The Fellowship about their finances.  I understand that this is a very personal thing.  In my family you were not permitted to talk about money, sex, or religion with the predicted result being that I was ignorant and naive about these very important topics and I made some fundamentally bad decisions, not out of .  Today I say: Talk away!  No secrets.  Nothing is off the table.  There is nothing to be embarrassed about.  The expert at anything was once a beginner.

I know that people are ashamed when they make "bad" decisions.  They'd rather keep compounding their mistakes instead of digging their way out of the landslide.

My disclaimer is that I'm not a financial expert, just an interested party who is trying to be helpful.  And I don't give a shit about how much or how little money someone else has - it doesn't concern me.  I hope everyone I know has a red Ferrari parked in their garage.  Good on you, I say.

I'm also touched and surprised at how often people take me up on this, show me these most intimate of intimate details of their financial life.  It brings to mind sitting in meetings where we read out of the literature and people who can't read very well grab the book and struggle through their paragraph or two, asking for help pronouncing words they don't recognize.  It's beautiful.  If you don't read very well the only way to get better is to read.  They don't get judged - they get helped.

Anyway, I looked over her expenses and her income.  There were a few really glaring stats that jumped out at me.  I asked a lot of questions.  I didn't criticize or second-guess.  She already knew what some of the problem areas were - she's not stupid.  Very few people are.  And in a couple of instances she simply made some really bad financial decisions - not greedy mistakes but rather uninformed decisions where family members took advantage of her good heart and financial institutions looked after their own interests.

I didn't offer to give her any money.  I didn't tell her what to do.  I always encourage people to get feedback from many sources.  I'm not seer.  I'm a soothsayer, but not a seer.  I'll tell you what's going to happen in the future but I'm not going to guarantee that I'll be right.  My soothsaying has quite the Catch-22.

I try to stay out of social commentary on my recovery blog but the following is an actual chart from the web site of this particular "loan" company.  These numbers are publicly available and apparently totally legal, and this company should burn in a very hot fire.

Try messing around with the math.  Let's use the 84 month term as an example: payments of $565/month times 84 months equal $47,460.  Let's put that in the King's English: if you borrow $7600 from this company and make the minimum payment each month for the full term of the loan you will pay them roughly $40,000.  Forty.  Thousand.  Dollars.

I understand this is legal and overboard, and that some people who aren't attractive risks to normal banks might benefit from this kind of set-up . . . but are you fucking kidding me?  My friend would get better terms borrowing cash from Tony Soprano.  At least the threat of getting your kneecaps shattered would be clearly spelled out before you took the money.  This loan company is fooling around with people who cannot afford to borrow the money.  If my friend gets sick and misses a couple of weeks of work and then misses a couple of payments she's buried.  She would never recover.

Selfish:  Having regard for one's self above other's well-being; holding one's own self-interest as the standard for decision making.  

(Ed. Note: I just put that definition in because it is one of the most devastatingly beautiful definitions I've ever read - both of 'em are.  Holding one's own self-interest as the standard for decision making).

$7,600

	33.00%	89.00%	133.13%	84 months	$565.05
	33.00%	89.00%	133.51%	72 months	$566.95
	33.00%	89.00%	134.39%	60 months	$571.48
	33.00%	89.00%	136.42%	48 months	$582.45
	Loan Fee	Rate	MAX APR	Term	Payment Amount

Harmonizing Forces

In no particular order . . . . 

(Ed Note: That's bullshit - as an INTJ control freak everything I do is in a very particular order . . . )

I'm particularly proud of my community today.  We have endured a tough, brutal week with amazing patience and grace.  I am proud of the way people have rallied around and supported each, approaching all of the destruction with patience and equanimity and a big dose of black humor.

One of my friends - who lost everything - leaned over and whispered: "Well, my wife wanted to remodel our kitchen anyway."  I've got great friends.

I'm going to assume that most communities would pull together in such circumstances but I've only got boots on the ground here - I know what we're doing for each other.  And not just in The Fellowship, either - I check on people I know casually from the club or from my coffee shop, even random people I bump into, and they're checking up on me.  It is indeed therapeutic to talk about what we're feeling and this has been an anxiety-full week.  Burdens need to be unloaded.

Another friend whose house was right in the middle of The Shit, responding to my question as to whether he was now safe: "Yeah, not too much left to burn around here."

I am particularly proud to be in The Fellowship.  If you have something crappy going on it's a great place to tie up your boat.  I've gotten more strength being around people who lost a lot than they've gotten from me.  We do a really great job of allowing people to unburden themselves without letting them drift too far into self-pity.

Balance:  A state in which opposing forces harmonize.

I am a man who loves extremes.  My tendency when painful things happen is either to pretend that nothing is amiss or to scream bloody murder.  Neither of these techniques is productive.  I get to bitch a little and I get to abide a little but I damn well better not take up residence in either place because someone who knows me a little too well is going to point out the error of my ways, and maybe not too subtly.

"You're still talking about that?"  Baldweenie, fed up with some extended rant I was on.

I have tried to do a lot of listening mixed in with a lot of refraining.  My sense of humor, the sharing of my experience, strength, and hope, is usually tinged with an edge, a sharp edge.  I get away with it because the people I abuse know I love them and because I can take it in equal measure.  Whale away, it's all good.  But this week I've tried to listen more and talk less.  It's one thing to say This Too Shall Pass or Pain Is The Touchstone of All Spiritual Growth when someone is arguing with their wife or having a work resentment - another altogether when everything you own got burned up.

The Slogans are generally great but I can make them really sound shitty.  :)

Ho Ho Ho

It's a nice, clear, sunny day today.  I took some garbage outside, threw it over the fence into my neighbor's back yard - I don't know where it goes from there, just that it's not my problem any more - walked by my gray car which is covered with ash.  Really beautiful ash - that wispy ash that you see in a fire pit after a campfire's embers smolder down to nothing overnight.  The slightest breeze lifts it up into the air where it drifts around in gossamer tendrils.  There is gray ash and white ash and black ash.  I'm looking at somebody's tree and somebody's tire and somebody's dress.

I took some recycling over to the recycling dumpster yesterday - plastic bottles and such, things that are going to end up in the landfill anyway, despite the mild balm to my soul applied when I think I'm "making a difference" - when I noticed a huge plume of smoke rising in the distance.  It seemed weird to be recycling.  There was a picture of guys on a gulf course in the paper with a mountain-sized gray cloud in the distance.  That was a magnitude greater in the weird department.  I've seen pictures taken from downtown LA - fifty miles away - that literally show what appears to be the eruption of a major volcano.  A friend's Christmas card - showing his two smiling boys, in Christmas red - made a jarring appearance in my ash-covered mailbox.  Ho Ho Ho.

The world's burning and you're eating a burrito?  Really?

I have been trying to support some of our downtown businesses the last few days.  Initially, everything was closed because of the curfew; then because of the power outages; finally, the Boil Water order left the doors shuttered.  So I'm sitting at this coffee shop yesterday with the ash drifting down.  It looked like snow flurries from hell.  I did not try to catch any of them on my tongue.  I am convinced that no two were alike.

The week of fire.  Our particular fire - dubbed the "Thomas Incident" and I'm not making that up - continues to churn its way through the wilderness.  This fire has burned 300 square miles of terrain and we've not had one loss of life.  We really do have some incredible public servants.  The pictures of tiny little insignificant men standing a few yards away from a wall of fire are ineffable.

I was a Chicago White Sox baseball game many years ago, sitting in the first row of the upper deck.  Good seats.  The batter fouled a ball off that seemed to be coming my way.  I really had no idea - I have no sense of perception.  I'm amazed that an outfielder will take off - literally at the crack of the bat 80 yards away - and run at top speed very close to the place where the ball is going to land.  I don't know how they do this.  I wouldn't come within 20 yards.  I wouldn't know whether to charge toward the infield or to turn and sprint for the wall.  Anyway, as this ball came slicing towards me it became apparent that it was going to come goddam close.  It was spinning like a son of a bitch - you can imagine the torque that was applied to cause a baseball to leave the bat at a 30 degree angle while elevating 40 or 50 yards.  I could hear it sizzling as it got close, as it twisted in the air.  The ball hit me right in the hands and was gone in a flash.  I didn't get close to catching it.  I watched it drop into the lower deck.

This being Chicago I was booed, of course.  I took some shit when I left to go to the bathroom between innings.  And, of course, I spent the rest of the game thinking: "OK, hit another to me - I'll be ready for it this time."  I've gone to several hundred baseball games and never had the opportunity to catch a foul ball, and I was ready for another one.  This is another, much less traumatic, example of the concept of Very First Time.

I grew up in OH where tornadoes were a common event.  I wasn't afraid of tornadoes, particularly.  I understood what to do and when to do it and how random and rare they were.  SuperK grew up in ND where snow is the only common event.  She was very afraid of tornadoes.  The first time a tornado siren went off she freaked out and went to the basement.  I did not go to the basement.  I figured the discomfort of a cold, damp, concrete basement wasn't worth the risk of dying by tornado, and I was right!

One summer night I awoke to the sound of a fierce rain lashing the windows.  I got up and closed one that was open a crack and heard a curious locomotive-like sound.  I shrugged and went back to bed.  The next morning I found out that a tornado that had snaked its way through several neighborhoods had concluded its route about 100 yards from our home, destroying several industrial buildings in the process.  Again, an event that I was prepared for mentally but not emotionally.

Dashing through the ash,
In a two seat Cayman S,
O'er the hills we go,
Freaking all the way.
Hey!

Going To Hell

SuperK and I occasionally talk about Hell - more specifically, who's going to Hell in the Seaweed family.  At this point her status is no longer in question - we don't even discuss her chances any more because she's definitely going to Hell.  This was confirmed long ago and nothing in her subsequent behavior has changed the facts on the ground.  I'm probably going to Hell but over the years there has been a glimmer of hope, a faint chance, a dying ember (Ed Note: It's enough with the fire imagery already) that I might not go to Hell.  We figure one in a hundred, maybe one in fifty.  Slim but measurable.

So . . . . 

My Very Expensive Car uses oil.  All cars use oil, as far as I know - a car doesn't have to be Very Expensive to do this - but my car measures the oil level electronically, which may or may not be the case with all cars today.  Cars used to have Dip Sticks to measure the oil.  This didn't help me because I don't know what a Dip Stick is or where to access a Dip Stick or why they call them Dip Sticks.  In fact, I'm not allowed to even open up the engine compartment of cars. There's nothing I can do in there except lose a finger or sustain a burn.  Car salesmen are always trying to show me the engine area - I wave them off like I'm diverting a fighter jet trying to land on the deck of an aircraft carrier . . . at night . . . in the rain . . . on a rough sea.

I may even have mentioned that I have never seen the engine in this car.  I can open the back hatch and put groceries there and I can open the front hatch and put groceries there, too.  I assume the engine is in the middle of the car somewhere.  If the car needed oil I wouldn't know what kind of oil to use or where to put it.  I'd probably just pour a little bit on the passenger seat and hope this did the trick.

For some reason the other day I decided to electronically check my oil.  I can do this from the safety and comfort of the passenger compartment.   

"Oil Information Not Available At This Time"

Fair enough.  Over the next few days I tried again and again.  I tried when the engine was hot and when the engine was cold; I tried when I was driving the car and when the car was parked; I tried with the engine running and with the engine off, on flat surfaces and on steep hills; I raged and I wept and I pleaded.

"Oil Information Not Available At This Time" 

My last attempts to check the oil happened as I was driving to my meeting this morning.  It was another pretty emotional meeting because of the fire and all of the losses people had sustained.  Here's the thing: I could barely listen to any of it because I was thinking about the fucking oil in my car.  I knew this was totally self-centered and shallow but I couldn't get the thread to stop.  I stayed outside and talked for a long time afterwards all while I was thinking about the oil.

I drove home, determined to find some information in the car manual about checking the oil.  I couldn't find the car manual, which I immediately blamed on my wife.  Why she would have the car manual is beyond me but she was there and blamable.  My theory is that most people get married for two reasons and two reasons only: sex and to have someone RIGHT THERE to blame for everything you don't want to take responsibility for.  Love and companionship and teamwork?  All bullshit.

Anyway, the car will give you the oil level when the engine is at operating temperature, the ignition is turned to the Off position, the car is on a level surface, and Black Sabbath is playing on the CD player after one minute.  I'm not sure why this is but it definitely worked.  Begging the question of why I didn't listen at the meeting and solve this solvable and not that important "problem" when I got home.

Hell?  Or Heaven?

Jimi

I took a walk on Friday, Day 5, while listening to an IPod full of all my old rock and rolls songs, transferred from analog records several years ago.  I shit you not this song from Jimi Hendrix came on.  Can't get it out of my head.

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Look at the sky turn a hell fire red
Somebody's house is burnin' down, down, down, down,
Down, down, down.

Well, I asked my friend where is that black smoke comin' from?
He just coughed and changed the subject and 
said oh I think it might snow some.
So I left him sippin' his tea an' I jumped in my chariot
And rode off to see just why and who could it be this time.

Sisters and brothers, daddys, mothers standin' 'round cryin'
When I reached the scene the flames were makin' a ghostly whine.
So I stood on my horse's back an' I screamed without a crack
I say oh baby why'd you burn your brother's house down?

Quit Yelling In There, Please

It is fucked up when you don't feel safe in your own home.  Fucked up.  Makes me ponder how awful it would be to live in a place ridden with crime or controlled by a corrupt government or where the rule of law is so shaky that someone unscrupulous could come in and snatch away your well-being.

Go to Syria or watch a fire the size of Long Island rip through your backyard?  Shee-it.  Give me my passport.  I have the tools to handle Syria.

Today I'm going to take our suitcases back out to the shed.  I am going to put away my little pile of valuables and documents.  Maybe.  Unless I see a new tower of smoke being constructed upwind.

These firefighters around here are amazing.  I know that putting out something burning is always dangerous but in this part of the country, in the dry season, with humidity in the single digits, with the wind whaling, the fires are explosive.  If you've never seen a super-heated house suddenly explode into flame . . . .  It looks like an incendiary bomb detonating.  A wall of fire blows out.

Backdraft:  A phenomenon in which a fire that has consumed all available oxygen suddenly explodes when more oxygen is made available, typically because a door or window has been opened. 

Where I grew up leaves fell from trees and - if you didn't rake them up - they'd still be laying . . . lying? . . . done lied? . . . where they landed come . . . came? . . .  did comed?  . . . Spring.  It was damp and wet and snowy and leaves would clump together, mat up, could hang on for years.  The forest is covered in a thick humus of dead organic matter.  Here, in a few days, a leaf is baked -  in the low humidity and relentless UV light - to the consistency of . . . an extremely dry leaf.  I can take a handful of leaves in my hand, crumple once or twice, and they are literally gone, in a shower of tiny leaf bits.  They fracture.  They shatter.  They don't bend.  They're brittle.

I tried making a compost pile here my first year.  I'd throw orange peels and banana skins in, hoping that they'd rot into nice, heavy compost.  What happened is that they turned into hard shards of weaponry.  I could take an orange skin that had been roasting for a few weeks and cut flesh with it, and I'm not kidding.

Firestorm:  An intense and destructive fire in which strong currents of air are drawn into the blaze, making it burn more fiercely. 

The city of Dresden was bombed with 4,000 tons of incendiary bombs during WWII, killing tens of thousands of people.  The fire was so intense and so relentless in its pursuit of new oxygen that it moved faster than people could run.

SuperK has her own office.  She has the tendency to yell "Goddammit!" or "Omigod!" some other expletive, usually when she can't open a web page or a politician annoys her.  I've asked her to refrain for a little while.  My mind instantly leaps to "fire has started in the next block" or some such awful shit.

Clueless Seaweed

Seminal:  Highly influential, especially in some original way.

I find my mind, mesmerized, drifting back to relive the feelings I experienced when I saw the hills above my home engulfed with flames on Day One.  It is seminal.  It is one of the five most amazing things I have ever experienced and I've taken too much LSD.  I can't get over what it was like to incorrectly process visual information.  It literally made no sense.  I knew it was a fire beyond massive but I couldn't understand what that meant.  I didn't know what to think.  In 60 years of living I had no frame of reference for what I was seeing.

I saw a pickup truck lose control on the freeway in front of me once.  It swerved, in an increasingly large parabola, back and forth, before flipping over and rolling many times, eventually leaving the road and bouncing down an embankment before coming to rest against a fence.  I had my window open and I'll never forget the Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! that big piece of metal made as it was hitting concrete.  It, too, was oddly beautiful.  I couldn't process the sight of that big thing moving through space like that.  I got down to the kid who was driving before anyone else and I was much more in control of my actions and my thinking than I was on Day One.  I took my time getting through the tall grass on the verge.  I stopped about fifteen feet from the truck - I could see someone sitting behind the wheel.

"Hey, are you alright?" I yelled.  I had the self-awareness to stay fifteen feet away.  If this guy was all messed up I didn't want to see it and I couldn't do anything to make it better, anyway.  He said that he thought he was.  I told him to turn off the engine, which was, amazingly enough, still running.  I had the self-awareness to do that.  I then told him to get out of the car.  I had the self-awareness to realize that there might be gasoline or oil leaking out, coming into contact with hot metal.  If I was too worried about the sight of blood to approach the wreck I don't think I would have wanted to try to pull some injured person out of a burning car.

What did I do when I saw the hills above my home alive with fire?  Went to bed.

Clueless:  Lacking knowledge or understanding; uninformed.

That was something.  9/11 was also one of those events.  The first time I had an orgasm was pretty major - something that deserves its own category.  That's four things.  I'm not sure that I didn't just experience one of the four most major things I've ever experienced.

We'll probably have an earthquake tomorrow.

Embers, Well-Flinged

One of my friends from The Fellowship was jolted out of bed about midnight on Day One and told his apartment complex was under mandatory evacuation.  He and his wife fled with their dog, computers, and a change of clothes.  I sent him a note this morning, checking in.  His terse reply: "We lost everything." I spoke with him later in the day and he was philosophical about this.  He was upset - stunned, even - but I could hear him cycling through the tools that we're given, that we practice every day, sometimes well and sometimes not, but always diligently, trying to right himself and be strong for his devastated wife.  He sounded like a cornerback, a breed of football player who has to have absolutely no memory of defeat.  Their mantra must be "You just got burned but you're not going to get burned again."  You just won't admit it.  Every play is a new play.  You forget about the last play, especially if you've gotten burned very publicly.

I know that when we're under duress - like the first days of sobriety - we say words that we may not feel.  Fake it 'till you make it.  I suspect there is some lack of feeling underneath the words my buddy is saying, but it's good that he's saying them.  Fake it until you make it, we say.  Pray even if you don't know who or what you're praying to, we say.

I went to my meeting downtown today.  It was well attended, including four or five people who lost their homes.  There has been a curfew since Monday and most of downtown - a few hundred yards from the sweep of the fire - has been without power.  Moreover, once the power was restored most public places were hampered by a boil water alert.  Sort of hard to cook food with no water.  Or make coffee.

450 homes in a smallish city are gone.

A few of us went out for coffee and rolls after the meeting.  I wanted to do a little bit to support my hometown businesses after all of the turmoil and to spend some time with other rattled folks.  The day was sunny when I left - downtown ash was raining down like snow.  It wasn't ash from active fires but ash stirred up and lifted into the air by the slightest breeze, fibers and bits of the lives of my fellow citizens - I could have been breathing in a tidbit of someone's couch or toilet, or leather upholstery from a vintage car.  At 9AM the day had the feel of twilight.  Most people are wearing masks to keep large chunks of particulate out of their lungs.  I figure if all the LSD I did in college on top of the 40 cubic yards of weed I smoked, all of this washed down with 100,000 cigarettes or so didn't fuck me up bad then a little toxic fire debris, well-inhaled, wasn't going to be a problem.  I felt like one of those bad-ass football players who insist on wearing short-sleeved jerseys in sub-zero weather.

(Ed Note: 100,000, written numerically, has a much bigger punch than one hundred thousand, which seems kind of sterile and not that impressive.  This is a reasonable estimate, I think: 20 buttes a day, 365 days in a year, 12 years, and I'm not going to do the math for you).

 One of the large apartment complexes that burned was five or six blocks up the hill from the meeting place.  Those brave SOBs who were at the meeting Tuesday morning watched the thing go up in flames as they were walking in to fellowship.  There was nothing but smoldering rubble when the meeting let out.  THAT'S some meeting dedication.  I personally would have been in my car getting the fuck out of there.  Maybe not - all of this was happening at such lighting speed that very few people had a handle on it.  Try this - get in your car, accelerate up to 50MPH - 80MPH - and stick your hand out the window.  That's what the wind was like all day and all night.  It's no wonder flaming embers were being flung - flinged?  done flung? - great distances.

When I wake up during the night to pee I still peek out my blinds, still tensing against black smoke or rosy glares.  I still step outside and walk around the house many times during the day, looking east, west, north, and south, looking for new glows or plumes of smoke.  I now know that black smoke is very bad - this is shit that is burning - and white smoke is less bad - this is fire that has been hit with water.  Brown smoke is a grey area - usually organics going up, trees and bushes and such.

Over the last few days we've had clear weather, sunny and everything; we've had, during calm periods, great smoky clouds lower down and blanket the area; we've had monstrous columns of smoke, of all colors and hues, rising straight up like funeral pyres or blowing in any direction, sometimes gently angled, sometimes in ferocious horizontal columns.  I hate to see something new, especially when it's blowing towards me.  I don't know if it's near or far, fresh or stale, coming to get me or letting me know that it has been victorious somewhere else.  

Grateful for my stuff today.

Crap! Stuff!!

Stuff:  Miscellaneous items; things; personal effects.

On the second night with the sky still a fiery red we decided - even though our house was not in a mandatory evacuation zone - to put together a few piles of things that seemed essential to us, things that could be grabbed in a minute and tossed in the trunk of a car, things that would help us reconstruct some kind of life if everything else was gone.

It was a weird, out-of-body experience.  It was also not as difficult - in a purely practical sense - as you might think.

Dopp Kit: A term particularly in use in America for toiletry bags.  The name derives from the early 20th century leather craftsman Charles Doppelt, whose company designed the case in 1919.

A Dopp Kit with medical essentials - the one medication I take, glasses, contact lenses, very expensive mouth guards.
A small wooden box with passports and credit cards.
Jewelry, watches, rings.
Two big armfuls of manila file folders which contain all kinds of practical financial and legal documents.
A smallish box filled with 28 years worth of photos, videos, travel mementos.

You know - as incredible as it might seem - after that it was kind of "Meh."  When you ponder it you see how ephemeral and transient everything is anyhow.  Most of the financial docs are online and easily duplicated.  Same thing with credit cards and passports.  Jewelry is stuff.  The pictures would seem to be irreplaceable but the truth of the matter is I haven't looked at any of them in 25 years - I'm sure someday I'll look again but - really - is my daily life going to change?  

Health.
Wife.
Family.
Friends.
Pets.  

What else is there after that?  Stuff.

I guess if I had a somewhat controlled evacuation I'd grab a couple of big armfuls of clothes and toss 'em in the trunk.  I walked around, looking at all the other things, reassured.  I don't mean to say it wouldn't be a Class One Trauma to lose all this stuff but it doesn't seem like something that should ruin my brain.  I'm not going to try to collect certain decorations or ornaments to save in a quick run to safety.  

It's funny how this pondering makes me sit up straight and take notice of weirdness.  I swam this morning, came home, and pulled an old T-shirt out to wear, scattering a couple of nicer shirts to get to it.  You know - don't want to wear out something good for a home lay-about.  Seemed ridiculous in light of a possible burning.  I can seem myself saying: "Why didn't I wear that cool T-shirt from China?"  I've enjoyed seeing and touching all my crap the last couple of days - hard to take something for granted that you think you might lose.

I was texting with a friend from The Fellowship this morning, a guy who was in the path of the fury a day or two later than we were.  I asked if his little town was out of danger: "Yeah.  Not too much left to burn," he replied.  He attached some photos of areas that I hike frequently - so frequently that I know every turn and dip and rise: terrain scorched right down to the dirt.  I plan on getting back out there as soon as it's safe - I've made up my mind that it's going to be a different kind of beautiful, and I'm not going to let it bring me down.

This morning was the first time I woke up and felt relatively safe.  Now the winds are blowing big again and have shifted direction so huge plumes of smoke are blowing back over our area.  It's hard to tell if they're old fires or new fires or close or far away.  It's goddam hard to relax.

Day Two

Last night I knocked on the front door of my neighbor's house.  They're lifelong CA residents and are very calm about CA tragedies.  When I was in OH I never worried about tornadoes - I had been through a few of them, I knew what to do, and I understood that the likelihood of direct personal tragedy was pretty low.  I was reassured and felt better after hanging out with them for 15 minutes - so reassured, in fact, that I made my somewhat more skittish wife head on over for a reassurance session as well.  As night fell and the sky darkened things seemed more ominous.  The parade of helicopters has been relentless.  One chopper kept making low passes over our house in a continuous loop that took it to the east, downwind.  I don't know why it made this circuit but it was easy to imagine that the fires had kicked up and were being blown in our direction.

I sleep like a rock.  I'm not sure I would wake up if someone was pounding on my front door.  I'm really counting on SuperK to save me.

Made it through night two OK.  I woke up a few times, once with a wet T-shirt - there was obviously a lot of internal stress going on that was determined to make its presence felt.  You gotta go through what you gotta go through - acting cool when you're soaked with nervous perspiration is not going to fool anyone.  Each time I woke up I crept over to the window and peeked out the blinds, tensing against red glows or tendrils of black smoke, each time relieved to see neither.  When I looked to the west, where the fires were still raging, I could see the evil brightness and knew some shit was still going down.

I woke up this morning and laid in bed for a half hour.  Listening.  Sensing.  Looking.  Everything seemed calm and indeed it was.  I got out today and went for a swim at the club and to the grocery store afterwards.  It was good to be around people.  There were some conversations about The Troubles but not as much as you would think - I guess people were trying to maintain some normalcy in their lives.  I talked to people who were in the middle of the shit and some who were miles away, happy for the equanimity.  The market was crowded but not excessively slow.  Everyone was patient.  The store sent a young woman around, handing out cookies, a nice touch.

I confess to some guilt.  I confess to thinking: "Flames, go elsewhere and leave me safe.  Burn up someone else."  I know this is probably normal.  I have said prayers for those affected, heartfelt prayers, but I still don't want to get burned up.

I think we've got a little more spine after making it through what we've made through so far.  That first night we were out of it.  No electricity, no way to recharge discharged electronics and no internet anyway.  We just went to bed.  We have a travel charger which you can use to recharge phones or electronic readers on the fly - say if you're on a plane and run down your battery.  The first night SuperK plugged in her fucking Kindle instead of her phone.  The next morning, desperate for information, we had a discharged phone but a fully charged reader.

Night three is approaching and the winds are supposed to begin howling again.  We had a calm day in that department which hopefully gave the fire people a break in putting out the flames.  When the wind is blowing with purpose it's hard to stop the embers from traveling.  The sunset is incredible.  All of the material in the air is making for a red, red sun.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  Sometimes it kills you, though.  That's what you gotta watch out for.

Fire!

Here's a note I sent to a friend this afternoon in response to his inquiry about some wicked, vicious, venomous wildfires sweeping through my area . . . where I live . . .  where all of my shit is  . . . .

Fire:   The occurrence, often accidental, of fire in a certain place, causing damage and danger.

Lost power about 10 PM last night.  Figured it was because of the strong, very dry Santa Anna winds that blow hot from east to west this time of year, supplanting our normal ocean breezes.  Powered off my Kindle and walked outside to silence an escaping garbage can - the sky behind my house, to the north, was lit up with a fiery red glow like it was Las Vegas, thick plumes, evil tendrils of black smoke trailing over my house.  It was like a scene from Apocalypse Now, complete with sound effects from the choppers going back and forth at low altitude, dropping water on hot spots.  No TV, no internet, no way to get updates.  It was a profoundly uncomfortable night.  I don't know how I fell asleep but I do know I woke up a few times to peek tentatively out the window to see if the glow was marching my way.

Today the fire is walking along the Topa Topa mountain slopes, currently moving away from our dwelling.  The homes on the slopes are typical SoCal mansions, up there to catch the nice ocean breeze and see the sea.  The struggle isn't with burning vegetation but with an ember from a being flung fifty yards from a conflagration and landing on someone else's roof.  It isn't at all unusual to see homes with no damage next to homes burned to the ground.  I never understood how this happened, figuring fires would systematically mow down a row of houses.  It's weird seeing the fire personnel, in the bright sunshine, in calm looking neighborhoods devoid of people, watching a nice house fully engulfed, choosing to let it go and try to protect the house right next door.  There was lawn furniture sitting on a patio while the burning house fucking burned.  I half expected someone to walk outside with a glass of iced tea and a book.

Hopeful the winds don't shift back our way.  We have some idea what we'd toss in the car if they make us evacuate.  Reminds me of the few tornadoes I've lived through - front yards with nary a leaf out of place, rubble across the street.  Also reminds me of the tragedy that was 9/11 - this disconnected sense of out-of-place, looking at something and trying to make sense of it, trying to connect vision with understanding.  My eyes are seeing but my brain isn't computing.  Most traumatic things - a fall, a car wreck, dropping a glass - are a quick, decisive event.

Night is falling and it gets scarier.  No red skies at the moment and the winds are calmer.  I went next door and got a pep talk from our lifetime-residence neighbors.  They're a lot more even-tempered than I am at the moment.  They did say that - when they woke up in the middle of the night and joined all of our neighbors walking around with flashlights - they couldn't believe we were asleep.

"Those Seaweeds can sleep through anything." 

Weird scenes inside the gold mine.

Sanctimonious Seaweed

Sanctimonious:  Making a show of being morally better than others, especially hypocritically pious.

After the meeting yesterday a guy asked if I wanted to join him for coffee.  I didn't but I did anyhow, and I really like this guy so you can imagine how I might react to people I don't like - which is almost everyone -  and I'm not trying to be funny here.  As you can imagine this puts a crimp in my interpersonal relationships.  Sometimes the coffee dude implies that I'm his sponsor, sometimes he doesn't.  I'm going to assume that this is largely dependent on whether or not I'm telling him what he wants to hear.

The meeting had 65 people in attendance and it was not a Tag Meeting.  I was happy about this for a bit because I figured it would save me the embarrassment of not being selected as one of the more popular members for two meetings in a row but then the same irritating people who always share began to share and this was, believe it or not, even more egregious than being publicly singled out as unpopular.

My buddy surprised me by saying that he thought the meeting was looking at some troubles in the near future.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.  "It was SRO in there this morning.  The meeting was huge."

He said that some of the Old Timers were frustrated with the way the meeting was being run.  The trigger, apparently, was that a panel of our local district set up some guidelines to ensure that women feel safe, un-hit-upon, in the meetings.  In fact, we had to ban a guy from the morning meeting because of his behavior towards some of the women.  And lest we forget SuperK sponsored a woman who was murdered by her estranged husband in the parking lot of one of the clubhouses in The Old City, so there is some precedence here.

"Which Old Timers?" I wondered aloud.  Remember I spent most of this still young day being Pissy Seaweed.  I grumbled something about Bleeding Deacons, I think, the term found in our literature to describe people with a lot of sobriety who begin bitching about everything.

He listed a group of men.  I have good relationships with all of these guys.  I'd even call a couple of them friends.  But most of them are jerks, basically, more or less.  One of them is a racist, sexist pig who once casually used the most offensive racial slur imaginable while speaking to me, in an unbidden, off-hand manner.  I shake his hand if he sticks it out but I've not spoken a word to him in the intervening couple of years.  I still marvel at what he sees in me that convinced him that I would be receptive to that crap.

I began to . . . well . . . opine openly about these guys, figuring that describing running someone down behind their back as giving my honest opinon.  I understand all of the theories that apply to people I don't like.  That they may be sick people who need my understanding.  That it's not my business to criticize god's handiwork.  That defects I despise in myself glow like neon lights when revealed in others.  I felt a little sanctimonious while I was doing it but I also think it's a Great Truth that there are some real assholes out there.  Vacation City is such a relaxed, open, carefree place that people have a tendency to accept behavior that I think is unacceptable.  Acceptance is great but there's got to be a limit.  If I see someone whaling on a child it's not right to say: "Everything is exactly as it should be in god's world."

I'm calling bullshit on that interpretation.

Pissy Seaweed

So I lived through and survived what was quite literally the worst six month period I have endured in sobriety with the exception of my first six months.  I felt like I was being fed through an emotional meat-grinder, a psychological wood-chipper, a mental sausage-maker.  I stayed the course because I believed I would come out the other side.  I knew I would survive. 

Remember: What doesn't kill you can still fuck you up pretty good.

Part of my epiphany has been an ever-increasing sense that I'm at peace with the past.  I've been pretty peaceful as far as my past is concerned but the meat-grinder, wood-chipper, sausage-maker period helped me to look at a lot of relationships - with people, with places, with The Dead - that were troublesome, in ways that I didn't fully grasp.  There were some endings, some remembrances, some rekindlings.   I often forget to appreciate the helpful nature of pain, motivating me to do the work to get better.

Remember: It's always the darkest right before it goes totally black.

Here I am in lovely Vacation City, with a lovely life and a lovely group of friends who are DRIVING ME CRAZY at the moment.

Remember: When you shut the door on an old way of life you're kind of stuck on the other side of the door that you just shut, maybe impulsively, a little irritated even, so make sure you want to be in the next room before you exit the room that you're currently in.  It may be a perfectly good room.  The grass is not always greener in the next room.  There may very well be no grass at all in there.

I had a Pissy Seaweed moment today.  In most of my old recovery life the phone was a big tool that I used every day.  I had lots of guys that I called and a bunch of them called me regularly, too.  I made more calls than I received but that's OK - that's part of who I am: Phone Guy.  I will say that people returned my calls without exception.  I'm an ex-salesman who has absolutely no patience with people not returning my calls - I put up with that bullshit from prospects and I'm not going to put up with it from friends.

Vacation City is not a phone city.  Maybe people don't use the phone as much as they used to.  Maybe they use the phone a lot but they aren't calling me.  Maybe they say: "Jesus Christ, when is that guy going to get the message and quit calling me?"  It's not unusual to leave a voice message and get a text in return.  People seem to be comfortable with not returning calls. Texting is sort of bullshit in my book - it's fine for letting someone know you're going to be late or to add something to a shopping list but it's a bullshit form of higher communication.  

Remember: The light you see at the end of the tunnel might be the locomotive coming at you.

So I got some minor resentments working right now, directed at people who aren't behaving badly at all.

Remember: Don't go to a football game and bitch that they're not playing baseball.

I have this little group of friends that kind of hangs out together as a little group.  I call them but they don't call me and are a little dicey about returning received phone calls.  They like to do things face-to-face.  So do I but not all the time and you still gotta return phone calls, for chrissake.  So at the meeting this morning they approached me about going to dinner tonight, including one guy who texted a response to a phone call I made last week so he was already on a low-grade, minor shit list of mine.  They all live near downtown and I live on the eastern periphery so most of the time we eat dinner downtown, but tonight we decided to eat at a really nice little Japanese restaurant right down the road from me.  

(Ed Note: in the interest of not being caught lying I do have to say that we're talking about a ten minute drive instead of a twenty minute drive.  Not a significant chunk of time for people like me who literally don't have anything important to do).

"I don't mind being called a liar when I'm lying or about to lie or just finished lying but NOT WHEN I'M TELLING THE TRUTH!"  Homer S.

During the course of the day the location of dinner was changed to accommodate one of the guys who lives and works downtown, the new location being downtown.  Well, this pissed me off unduly and I passed on the meal, like the small, petty, churlish child that I am.  My history to screw myself - either by foregoing something pleasure or ladling something undesirable onto my plate - just to make some vague point that no one picks up on anyhow, unable to comprehend that I'd pitch a bitch over something so insignificant, but at least I'm listening to my own twisted inner self, goddammit!

It's hard to believe that I've made a ton of progress in not being as intolerant, impatient, aggressive, and prone to fits of anger that I used to be.  I'm better now than I've ever been!

"It angries up my fists!"  Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel

Rapacious Seaweed

Rapacious:  Given to taking by force or plundering; excessively greedy; subsisting off live prey.

"Alcohol, now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands.  . . .  Then, and only then do we become as open-minded to conviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be.  We stand ready to do anything which will lift the merciless obsession from us."  12 & 12

First of all, Bill W, who wrote most of this book, is such a ham-bone.   What a flair for the floridly dramatic that guy had when he was writing this stuff down.  Thank god we also had humble Dr Bob to offset his rapacious attention-seeking.  Truthfully, they made a good team - without Bill's relentless salesmanship the word would have struggled to travel far and wide, and without Bob's quiet reflection Bill would have pissed everyone off.

"Alcohol - the source of and solution to all of my problems."  Homer S

And let's not pretend that alcohol was our friend.  Alcohol was trying to kill us.  Alcohol was trying to eat us.  Alive.  That is no friend.  Maybe a friend will kill you and then eat you, but eat you alive.  I guess that's why florid Bill adds the expression ". . . as willing to listen as the dying can be."

I did not enter The Program to quit drinking.  I liked to drink.  I came around because I was tired of feeling like shit and I hoped to be shown some kind of loophole that would allow me to drink while escaping the consequences that were becoming increasingly dire.  It was the consequences that sucked, not the drinking.  Or the drug use.  I maintain to this day that if I could have the quality of life that I have now and drink alcohol and smoke drugs that I'd be typing this while driving to the liquor store.

Loophole:  A method of escape, especially an ambiguity or exception in a rule that can be exploited to avoid its effect.

Yes!  I wanted to exploit an ambiguity to escape the effect of the alcoholic bludgeoning.  

I always laugh when I hear the phrase "half-measures."  As in: "Half-Measures Seaweed."  I came into The Program and I did a bare minimum of work until I drank.  Then I did a teeny, tiny bit more work, and drank again.  I kept adding little, minuscule bits of work onto my scrawny agenda, but never adding enough, always drinking, eventually drinking again.  Finally, I came in and said: "Whatever I gotta do."  I just did everything I was told - I bitched privately but I did what I was told to do.  I was finished.  I was cooked.

Sharing Seaweed

We had a "tag" meeting this morning.  For the unwashed and uninitiated this is a process where an individual calls on someone else once they've finished sharing.  It was a great meeting because we heard from a lot of people who don't normally share.  The only drawback was that no one called on me, probably because I talk all of the time and constantly recycle the same small selection of tired, fairly obvious observations.  I've quit saying "stop me if you've heard this before" because I'm offended when people stop me.  I have to assume that they've heard this before.  

There were maybe 50 people at the meeting and I'd guess that 25 people shared which means that I was in the bottom 50th percentile in popularity.  This galled me despite my inner resolve that it really would be better for me to listen than to talk, although I say this with no conviction and a wry, sarcastic tone.  Obviously everyone would be better off if I shared.  I notice in the tag meeting that most people look at the ground, believing that eye contact invites an invitation to share.  Maybe these people really don't want to talk or they're being falsely modest like me.  Sometimes I stare daggers at the person speaking, daring them not to call me.  This general technique of looking away, with a vaguely menacing air, reminds me of how I dealt with cops and parents and other people I was lying to when I was drinking - namely, if I can't see you then you don't exist.  Sort of like hiding your face with your hands when an infant is around and suddenly pulling them away.  The infant is like: "Wow, he was gone and - just like that - he reappears!  Amazing!" This was my general mindset as a grown adult dealing with law enforcement. 

Share:  To give part of what one has to someone else to use or consume.

I'm not sure what I'm doing is "sharing."  I think I'm just talking about myself.

Anyway, a lot of people who don't normally speak spoke.  It was great.  I don't know people who people who usually talk think they have such great things to share and why the quiet folks stay quiet.

Still, I can't believe no one called on me.

Everyone Is Above Average

Service: An act of being of assistance to someone.  (Ed. Note: And possible loophole.  I'm someone, technically, so if I act to assist myself then that qualifies as Service.  Note to self: check with sponsor).

I've been thinking some more about the concept of service, the idea of giving back instead of using my grubby little hands to seize additional stuff for my own personal use.  It's such an amazing concept.  It's as fascinating to me as someone asking if they could stop by to show me their new flying car.  I see myself standing outside saying: "Dude, that is a fucking flying car."  This is roughly equivalent to me giving of myself.  Maybe it can be done but it's so outlandish that it strains credulity.

"Let me get this straight," I say, struggling to maintain composure, choking back peals of laughter, tears of joy.  "You want me to do something nice for you with no guarantee that you'd do something at least as nice - preferably a lot more nice - for me?"  At this point I'd collapse in a paroxysm of guffaws.  I might not survive, unable to get enough oxygen down a windpipe totally obstructed by laughter.

Surveys of people often show that most of us feel like we're giving more than we're getting.  This, as you can easily see, is not possible.  It violates the laws of nature.  As an example . . . one of my favorite surveys attempts to quantify how we view the act of driving a car - the result is that most of us think that we're very good drivers while simultaneously holding the belief that almost everyone else sucks.  Again, statistically not possible.  

Let's go to Vacation Town, where everyone is above average!

Part of my trouble is that I'm a Big Splash Guy - if my actions aren't amazing, earth-shattering, universe-bending, then why bother?  It has to be huge or I'm not interested.  No one will notice if it's not huge and the whole idea of doing good things is to be noticed.  It's like those people who give money anonymously.  WTF?  Really?

Go Big or Go Home.

So there I am, breaking my arm patting myself on the back as I wheel my shopping cart back to the cart corral at the grocery store, making life a little easier for someone that will never be able to acknowledge my part in this act.  Pick up a piece of garbage and toss it in a can.  Say hello to every service person you run into.  No glory, no acclaim, no notice, not doing it.

Taker Seaweed

Take:  To seize or capture; to get into one's hands, possession, or control, with or without force.
(Ed. Note: I like the implied threat of violence that hangs about the definition with the inclusion of "force." I'm coming to get your stuff, man - you can give it to me or I'm . . . going . . . to . . . take it).

Today is jury duty day, a day where the pride of civic duty, of doing my best to support the excellent structure of our society, mixes with the outrage that someone as important as me has to waste his time sitting in a stinking jury corral.  No one is very happy about jury duty and it's only the threat of a big ass fine or arrest that compels us to be there.  I'm sure if I had suffered some civic wrong or alleged criminal violation I'd want an engaged group of my fellow citizens to step up and do their part.  The irony that I can expect this engagement from others while simultaneously groaning at having to spend my precious time just being considered for such service for someone else is not lost on me.

One of the judges comes in and takes ten minutes to explain the theory behind a jury trial, emphasizing how rare this kind of open legal system is in the world.  It made me proud to be there but unfortunately didn't do anything to lessen my annoyance at having to be there.  I spent the entire day hoping that I didn't get selected.  When I received my jury summons the first thing I did was request a deferment as far into the future as was allowable.  When my reminder summons arrived - the one reminding me that I wasn't getting out of this - I specifically selected the day before Thanksgiving, calculating that if there was a day when most people wanted to get the hell out of a government building that would be one of them.

In retrospect this was a brilliant move on my part - there were 23 potential cases requesting a jury trial and precisely none of them moved far enough down the system to actually impanel a jury, resulting in a dismissal two hours early.  When the jury coordinator announced this, a big cheer went up in the room.  I was appalled and overjoyed.  I took my Proof of Jury Service paper and got . . . the . . . hell . . . out of there.

One jury summons from the ages of 18 to 58 - two jury summons in the last three years.

Not In My Backyard.

Tramping and Stomping and Such

Pivot:  Something or someone having a paramount significance in a certain situation.

Tell me more about this "certain" situation.

In retrospect I see that my trip back to my home region was a huge pivot point in my life.  Well, maybe not huge - but pretty big.  Larger than small but not so large that it's monstrous in appearance.  Anyway, I was moving in one direction and then I changed direction.  At this point, obviously, I was moving in a totally different direction.  Not radically different, but the direction change is definitely noticeable.  You can see it from pretty far away.

Funny how many varieties of pivots that there are.  I was able to re-establish myself in a few relationships of long-standing importance to me.  I love the friendships that spring back into shape immediately despite long absences - these are real friends and I treasure them.  The kind where you feel like you're continuing a conversation that began yesterday, as if years and years hadn't passed.  Sometimes we need to see people face to face, I think.  Even a voice over a phone wave isn't enough - the person has to be seen and touched, but not torched.  

These were powerful, strengthening experiences for me.

I saw some people and was able to confirm a status quo in those relationships.  You know, sometimes we're just done with someone or we see that a comfortable, agreeable distance is fine.  This is okay.  We don't have to be best friends with everyone.  Relationships can fade away without leaving a sour taste in your mouth.  They were good and now they're in the rear view mirror.

I made a bunch of tramps through old stomping grounds.  I enjoyed the memories and was pleased that all of the tramping made me even more certain that where I am is where I'm meant to be.  No regrets.  I've moved into another phase and it's a good one.  This is tremendously reassuring as was the joy I took in reliving past memories associated with the tramped upon places.  These places were good and appropriate for the time and now they aren't and where I'm making memories now is really very nice.

All of this moved my brain around in a good way.  It wasn't as if I was walking in the weeds far from any path - more like I was wandering down a path slightly oblique to the one I need to be on, and now I'm on that path.

Pretty cool.

ODAT

I was pondering the idea of One Day At A Time during my Quiet Time this morning.  I am on - for the time being anyway - the sunnier side of the dark time that bedeviled me for a good five or six months.  This morning I was sitting there, relaxed, content, grateful that the heavy pall of anxiety has drifted away.  I enjoyed the lightness of being, the freedom, the optimism.

It is much easier staying in the minute when I'm feeling fine.  I believe that staying in the minute is a great idea no matter what kind of mood I'm in but it's a lot easier when I'm in a good one.  It's probably better for me to learn how to be with myself, quietly, when things look dark.  Nonetheless, it's more unpleasant.  I hang on to shit.  When I'm in a good place I want it to last - when I'm in a bad one I want them to change.  And I don't get either of these with enough regularity to suit myself.

An alcoholic is someone who changes his goals to accommodate his behavior.

Living in reality 24 hours at a time is the most bad-ass act we will ever accomplish.

The Jesus Nut

Humility: Commonly used to mean modesty or lack of pride.
Pride:  Inordinate self-esteem; an unreasonable conceit of one's own superiority in talent, beauty, wealth, rank, etc., which manifests itself in lofty airs, distance, reserve, and often contempt of others.

Wow, that pride definition is a bitch.

The 10th Tradition is commonly referred to as the one that establishes that humility is the spiritual foundation of all of our traditions.  Everything is predicated on humility.  That, my friends, is a heavy load to carry.

Foundation: That on which anything stands, and by which it is supported.

Wow, that's one hell of an important concept.  Capstone or cornerstone or linchpin are other interesting sounding words, of unclear origin, that come to mind.

Linchpin:  A pin inserted through holes at the end of an axle, so as to secure a wheel.

Wow, you don't want a linchpin failure when you're driving a Very Expensive Car at 97 MPH.  It would seem that the wheel might come off.  A very bad thing.

Helicopter pilots call the linchpin that holds the rotor to the helicopter superstructure a "jesus nut."  That sounds important, too.  I would imagine that it would a very bad thing to have the rotor come off when flying a helicopter.

The Jesus Nut would be an excellent name for a hard rock band.

I'm constantly amazed at how often humility comes up in our Steps and Traditions.  I take it to mean that humility is an important concept.  Being an alcoholic I only absorb a concept if it is screeched at me repeatedly, at high volume.  Italics are nice, too, as is putting the concept in the title of the Step or Tradition.  I have a short attention span and a thick head so I need things to be emphasized.

I guess when if I'm anonymous I'm not drawing attention to myself.

Try giving someone money anonymously.  It is not easy.  There is no glory in anonymity.  In The Fellowship we are learning not to strive for glory.  One drunk - one vote.  You and I are no better or no worse than anyone else.  There is no perching atop a soap box.

"We try to give up our own desires for personal distinction."

It Is, Of Course, All About Me

Anonymous:  Of unknown name; whose name is withheld.

Today we read Tradition Eleven, the one that reminds us that anonymity is the spiritual tradition of . . . well, just about everything.  My sponsor always told me to place "principles before personalities" whenever I started to gripe about someone else.  I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn't know what that meant.  It took me like fifteen years to screw up the courage to explain to me what the hell he was talking about.

Some people talked about anonymity - the kind that adheres to us personally and the kind that pertains to others.  I always have to laugh when I ponder my own anonymity - I used to come home at three in the morning, all of my windows down, summer or winter, didn't make any difference, with the hope that the fresh air would keep me awake while I was driving . . . weaving down the road . . . , Black Sabbath blasting at Volume Eleven, then park up on the grass or four feet out into the street, depending on my mood, but god forbid anyone know that I was an alcoholic.  When I started making my amends I expected to hear people say: "You?  An alcoholic?  Get outta here."  What came out was more along the lines of "Thank god you're finally getting some help."

But I think we all need to be respectful of the anonymity of others.  Admitting that we're in recovery is a personal matter.  Some of us have good reason to protect our anonymity - society can indeed be a harsh judge when they find out someone is a drunk.  I get this.  I can see some folks might be uncomfortable hearing their open-heart surgeon say: "Hey, today is my first day in recovery!  Feeling a little shaky but I'm really going to do it this time.  Now . . . breathe deeply into the mask and count backwards from ten . . . ."

I've gotten to the point where I don't hide my membership any more.  I did when I was working - I saw no need for customers and colleagues to know this very personal information, although I got more and more open the longer I was sober.  But today?  Who gives a shit.  I don't lead with my sobriety - although sometimes I even do that - but I bring it up all the time.  I don't think it shocks anyone.  Most people are not that interested in the excruciating minutia of my life.  I could be saying that I'm going to take a walk.  And a lot of people are supportive.  A lot of them have some connection to recovery, either personally or via a close friend or relative.  I got tired of saying I "know someone from church" or some such bullshit.  I was at a cocktail party recently - I appreciate the irony here but I had a pretty good time and cocktail-free - when the host complimented my writing in the presence of someone I didn't know.

"Oh, what do you write about?" she asked.

Too much work and too great a chance that some elaborate deception would come back to confound me so I just told her what my general topics are.  

Actually, that's not true.  If I was brutally honest I'd say: "My topic is ME!"

The Wheeze, Reprised

I'm not sure how this story pertains to recovery but I'll wedge it in somehow.  I'm a master with a hammer.  There is no problem that can't be fixed with a good hammer.  There is no hammer that can't be fixed with a big sledgehammer.  And don't get me started on jackhammers . . . 

I really embrace the idea that pain is part of life, that loss is part of life, that death is part of life. Most people aren't exactly thrilled with the concept of pain but are still understand that it visits everyone from time to time.  Alcoholics, however, are on an eternal hunt for a pain-free existence.  It's a fallacy that alcoholism and drug addiction center around a pursuit of pleasure.  In my mind it's much more about the avoidance of discomfort.  I don't care if I feel good as long as I don't feel bad.  At the end of our drinking and using most of us weren't having a good time - we were trying to keep the demons outdoors.  We were watching TV by ourselves, in a blackout.  That isn't fun by anyone's measure.

Anyway, we took our cat to the veterinarian today and the good woman agreed that it was time to set the animal free.  She wasn't doing well and the treatment plans weren't providing anything but a temporary fix.  Sometimes animals get old.  Getting old is different than getting injured or sick.  A doctor can set a broken leg or cure an infection - a doctor can't make an old cat young.

Whenever The Wheeze (and you can bet that's the last time I get to name a pet) would falter SuperK would tell her to let us know when she wanted to go.  She'd been pretty sick the last few days - not eating, not drinking - and we figured she was getting close to the end.  This morning she pushed open the screen door and wandered outside, into the sun and fresh air.  She walked down the front steps and started off down the street like she had someplace important to go - not in a hurry but walking with purpose.  I followed her all the way to the end of the road.  She would stop from time to time and look at me or wander off into a side yard before I corralled her and got her back on track.  This was an indoor cat, mostly afraid to be outside so the whole trip had a strong sense of finality.  I could hear her say: "You're still here?  Go back inside - I've got it now."

I picked her up and took her to a park near our house that has a small pond with a fountain in the middle.  She hadn't been drinking anything at all so she walked falteringly to the edge of the pond and lapped up some water.  I wasn't all that sure was a good idea but figured it was better than her dying of dehydration.  Then, she stepped into the water, front paws first, finally submerging all four feet.  She moved into water deep enough that her belly got wet.  Every now and then she would pat at something that she saw on the water's surface, or maybe a minnow on the bottom.  She never looked back - she looked out into the water.  I was transfixed.  When she was a kitten I would punish her by flicking water in her face.  I had never seen her get anywhere near water.

"I've got 50 feet high neon lights here," she was saying.  "I've got shills with amplified bullhorns screaming at you.  You're aware that I can't talk, right?  Can you please open your eyes and see what's going on?"

After a while I carried her to the path leading back to the house and set her down - she stopped and laid down in the dirt.  I moved her a few yards onto the concrete; again, she flopped down. She was done - she was out of juice.  I brought her into the house, dried her feet, and she snuck behind a piece of furniture.  I know cats like to hide when they don't feel well.  I've heard they like to go someplace to be alone when it's time to die, but I was still resisting the message.

I could almost hear her say: "OK, how about that piece of performance art?  Tell me you're going to forget my last day?  I went wading in a pond, for chrissake.  Now will you PLEASE leave me alone because I feel TERRIBLE."

At the vet's office - once we had made the decision to euthanize - we had about 20 minutes with The Wheeze while the staff prepared the drugs that would anesthetize her and then stop her heart.  She sat quietly in my arms.  She seemed to know.  No fidgeting, no crying, no purring, eyes half-open.  She seemed to be letting go a little already.  I expected her to say: "Are you guys going to be alright?  Because I'm ready to do this thing."

We told her we loved her.  We told her she was going to be missed, that she had been a good pet.  We thanked her for being with us for almost 19 years.

SuperK was holding her chin as the vet injected the first syringe of anesthesia.   Her whole being relaxed almost immediately and her head sank onto the blanket, her eyes widening.  She looked . . . like my cat.  She no longer appeared to be grimacing in pain.  The second syringe held the medicine that stopped her heart, and it worked quickly.  I could almost feel her soul being released.  There was a spark of life and then there wasn't, just like that, just like flicking a switch.

"OK, mom and dad," the vet said.  "Her heart stopped beating.  She's gone."  The vet called her "little friend," which I thought was a good touch.  We appreciated the fact she agreed it was time for our cat to pass into the next dimension.  She excused herself and quietly closed the door.


I was struck by the incredible stillness in the room.  Death seemed to me to be characterized by a lack of motion so profound that it was hard to understand.  It looked like she could get up and move at any time.  It was disconcerting.  I had to fight back an urge to ask the vet to come back in and make sure that the medicine had indeed worked.  We sat together for a while and looked at her lying there, slumped in a beautiful posture of repose.  She was beautiful and she was resting comfortably - it was clear then how much pain she had been feeling.  We could see, in death, how free she now was.  It was a good feeling.  It made us feel like we did the right thing.  She looked like a sleek, antique racing car, sitting quietly - we could almost hear the engine roaring and the whine as the car flashed by.  Her eyes were wide open, but cloudy, opaque.  Her fur was flat and she looked groomed.  Her ears stood upright.  She looked like she was beat and it felt so goddam good to lay down for a while.

Here's the thing about love and companionship: it's wonderful but it's going to end.  I'm so afraid of pain that I'm tempted to forgo years of wonderful times.

I WAS tempted to do that.  Not any more, my brothers and sisters.  Not any more.

Here's another thing about death - it makes you sit up right straight and ponder your relationships with the non-dead.  Not zombie non-dead but those who are still, at this point, technically alive.  I get pissy about people not doing exactly what I want them to do exactly when I want them to do it, and I end up irritated.   When I'm mad at my friends and family it's usually about the most inane crap.  Whatever I'm mad about is not worth it.

Here's another thing about me: I don't learn shit about shit when I'm getting my way.  I don't learn anything valuable when I'm on vacation - the best lessons come when I shoulder my way through some unpleasantness.  At my Step meeting yesterday we read Number 9 - the direct amends Step - and a lot of people talked about how scary the amends process is and how wonderful the results are.  We do it because we need to do it - it's the right thing to do - not because it sounds like a lark.  The famous Promises come into play after we're well into saying we're sorry.  We get 'em when we do the hard stuff.

After our cat had gone to The Big Sandbox in the Sky we sat with her for a while.  I couldn't get past the stark beauty of her corpse.  It was like looking at one of the space capsules that had actually been on the surface of the moon, reconciling the stillness with what had gone before. We were able to think: "I know she isn't going anywhere ever again but, man, where she has been."

The vet offered a personalized cremation service which we declined.  Neither of us are particularly sentimental so the thought of The Wheeze's ashes on our mantle was unappealing. I have trouble walking through the house without knocking something off a table so we both knew where an urn of ashes was going to end up.  I felt guilty making the decision - I spend a great deal of time worrying about whether or not I'm acting the way I'm supposed to be acting, whatever that is.

I had my camera phone with me. 

"Would it be weird to take a couple of pictures?" I asked my wife.

"Oh, god, yes," she said, clutching my arm.  "I was hoping you were going to suggest that."

They're our favorite pictures.  They're better than shots of our failing cat stumbling around.

So we turn on an old sitcom last night.  The episode centers around two brothers - one tasked with delivering the eulogy, the other with disposing of - you guessed it - an urn of ashes from an aunt who had passed away.  In the scene that was sent to us from above, the eulogy brother is in the car, discussing his speech with his father, while the ashes guy is in the background, struggling to get the lid off the urn so he can spread the ashes.  He twists and turns, he bangs it on a tree and against a rock, he falls into the bushes, and when the lid finally releases with a jerk, the remains fly out and cover both of the brothers.  

A message from god delivered by a 20 year old episode of "Frasier."  Priceless.