The Plot Thickens, Mom

So let's recap what we have so far . . . 

A routine colonoscopy and an elective outpatient procedure.  I can't - or shouldn't - be too upset about either of those.  That would be like complaining that I have to put gas in my car or get the oil changed regularly.  If I want to drive a car I have to do some regular maintenance.

Then I found myself under some pressure to address normal, natural, on-going deterioration in my mouth.  You might know how this situation evolves, maybe over months and years: your dentist says that you should probably redo an old filling because there's a little decay under there or this old crown needs to be replaced - it's been a good soldier but it's time for a new one - or there's some wear and tear on your front teeth that should be built up and repaired . . . and you're all like: "Yeah, OK, let's keep an eye on that and see how it looks next time" because you're too cheap to do the work and you think that the dentist is a money-grubbing, unethical, dishonest piece of shit that should be condemned to the hottest flames in hell for trying to scare you about the health of your mouth for purely monetary reasons, and anyway nobody likes to have someone digging around in their incredibly sensitive mucous membranes with sharp, stainless steel instruments . . . until one day the work needs to be done.  No more watching.  No more "keeping an eye" on it.  Now.  Make an appointment.

I think I had 12 or 14 old fillings replaced and/or cavities filled.  I know I had two crowns redone.  I was supposed to have three replaced but when the dentist removed one of the old crowns he found a big crack in the tooth which required that the services of a root canal specialist be retained.  The root canal guy worked for a long time on this tooth with those high-speed drills that make an unholy whine before he said: "Man, this crack goes all the way into the root.  Even if I fix it the tooth is going to die before too long and you'll have to have the tooth pulled anyway."  He didn't say "pulled;" he used the word "extracted."  It has more of a clinical, sanitary feel.  He didn't show me a pair of pliers and then say: "Get the idea?"  He said "extracted."

Extract:  To remove forcibly from a fixed position.

No one used language like this to explain what they were going to do.  It was implied, sure.  The tooth was in a fixed position and it had to be removed.  Forcibly, apparently.  While I had a sense of what was going to happen there's no real way to prepare for the experience. 

An hour later I was lying there as an oral surgeon took the recalcitrant tooth the fuck out of my head.  The entire tooth and it came out in chunks.  I posit this: there is really no way to simulate a living tooth in your head being cracked into pieces by a man using what indeed appeared to be pliers of some sort.  You have to remember that this molar is like a tenth of an inch from my auditory canal.  I could clearly hear it come apart.

This was another procedure where there were a lot of people in the room.

I was circumspect about the extraction even while it was going on.  I had a ton of Novocaine in my gums so it didn't really hurt that much and it was, after all, partially my own fault for not taking care of the situation earlier.  I was grateful I had the money to pay for the procedure and that the guy doing it was competent.  I was actually thinking these thoughts at the time.  This goddam Program really does work.

Here's where some complications started to arise . . . 

The roots of the molar being forcibly removed were intruding into my maxillary sinus so a communication was opened up between my mouth and this sinus when the tooth came out.  This allowed the bitter gunk that tastes like shit in my sinus to drain unimpeded into my mouth and this went on for about 6 weeks because the area was too traumatized by the extraction to be surgically repaired.

Communication:  An opening or passageway between two locations.

The repair of this passageway involved mining fat and skin from the inside of my mouth and stuffing it in the hole and then sewing the whole mess shut with 23 stitches and I am not making any of that up.  This was the third procedure in my life that required general anesthesia - the previously discussed colonoscopies being the first two.  I couldn't eat solid foods for and it really did feel terrible for a while but it eventually healed just fine.

I have to remind myself there is a point to all of this pointless bitching about my health.  You know how - at a meeting - someone is droning on and on about something that seems to be pointless and you're thinking: "Is there a point to all of this bitching?" and sometimes there doesn't ever seem to be a point or the person who is actually bitching loses track of the point and just seems to be bitching pointlessly?

This could go either way.

Le Colonoscopy

So I'm working on my obsession with my health, aware that - in the big picture - I'm beyond blessed with good genes and a strong constitution.  No family history of cancers or high blood pressure or heart disease coupled with a healthy lifestyle would seem to put me in good stead.

Here's the timeline.  

First on the hit parade was a regularly scheduled colonoscopy.  You're supposed to have one of these done every ten years once you hit 50 unless you live anywhere in the developed world besides the United States where you don't have them done unless you're exhibiting some type of abnormal symptom.  Here we just do it for the hell of it.  I'm assuming a lot of people are making a lot of money . . . 

The general procedure requires that you - and I am not making this up - consume 30 or 40 individual doses of a laxative in a couple of hour time frame.  In other words you drink enough laxative to cause massive bowel movements in a few hundred people AND you take some more laxatives in pill form.  You would imagine that this would produce a pretty dramatic effect.  My GI tract, however, operates on a very regular and very regimented schedule and it does not go quietly into the night when external forces try to control it.  It's a lot like me that way.  

"Don't tell me what to do," my GI tract says.  "I leap into action first thing in the morning about a half an hour after you've had a cup of coffee, and that's my time frame, so get out of my face if you fuck around with this system."

So I poop but not as much as you would think.  I personally would have assumed that there would be a lot of pooping.  Anyway, I go in and have my colonoscopy - after having endured this very unpleasant colonoscopy prep - and the doctor tells me, as I'm groggily returning to consciousness from the sedative, that "my colon wasn't completely cleared out and I'd have to come back in a year and repeat the procedure."  He was backing away as he said this because I was trying to grab a colonoscope and ram it up his . . . well, you get the point.

I make very few absolute statements but there's this: if some expert in the medical community suspects I have a colon tumor the size of a small orbiting planet I may consider another colonoscopy within the next decade but that's going to be a minimum starting point.  I'm not even going to have a conversation about a colonoscopy otherwise.

I can't really complain too much here as this was a normal, regular medical procedure.  I didn't like it but I can't feel too picked on.  I had my first colonoscopy done when I was 50 so I can't even really slot this into the getting old category.  I can, however, slot it into the really gross and unpleasant category.  I wasn't getting colonoscopies when I was 22 I can tell you that.

Shortly after all of this trauma I decide to undertake another voluntary medical procedure to treat something called chronic venous insufficiency.  It turns out that I have not one but two genetic clotting disorders that may or may not predispose me to a deep vein thrombosis.  The risk here is that a small clot may break loose and either lodge in your brain or in your heart and - not to get too technical here - kill you dead.  While I was assured that this was highly unlikely it did get my attention so I decided to have an outpatient procedure done where a vascular surgeon takes very large needles and probes around in my human leg until he finds a damaged vein at which point he sticks the needle into the vein and injects a dissolvable cement into the vein which plugs it up and kills it so that new, healthy, collateral veins form, veins not predisposed to clogging up.  This is done under no anesthesia.  So I was lying on the table while a big guy dug in my legs with big needles.  It was not cool.  Sometimes he found the vein right away and sometimes he had to dig for a while.  Dig, dig, dig, in my leg, with a stainless steel needle.

Funny anecdote: they offered me a Valium before the procedure.  When I was told that this was to help alleviate anxiety and not so much for pain I declined the medication and for good reason - I'm predisposed to anything that kills pain so I think it's a good idea to be cautious.  In this instance everyone in the room - there were four people in the room which is a couple of people more than you like to see in a freezing cold procedure room where you're the person on whom the procedure is being done  - kind of looked at each other and then looked at me and then looked at each other and sort of shrugged and raised their eyebrows, and then the surgeon said: "OK, well, we offered."  

About four minutes into this painful two hour procedure I remember distinctly thinking: "I should have checked with someone about this." 

Here's the thing: this was the first of like five of these sessions, and they never offered me another Valium.  I was too embarrassed to ask for one at that point.  The good news is that the sessions got shorter and shorter - the bad news is that they kept coming. 

So these two voluntary procedures were my entry into my 60s.

In The Mud Again

I think I already wrote about what I'm going to write about today.  This would mean I'm re-writing something that has previously been written.  By me.  I guess I could find out if I've already written it by going back and reading what I've already written but I'm not going to do that.  If I can't remember writing it I'm going to assume you won't remember reading it.

My Higher Power has a sense of humor that is quite tricky and nuanced and not to be fucked with.  My Higher Power seems to enjoy his own sense of humor although it comes at my expense a little too often for my liking.  It's kind of like being laughed at when you've fallen in some mud that you shouldn't have been walking in.

"OK, fair enough," you think, this IS pretty funny, all the while stewing that someone is laughing at your expense.

Humor:  The quality of being amusing, comical, funny.

I know I've written extensively about my belief that I don't learn very many things unless I'm subjected to a trial AND a tribulation.  One would be bad enough but the two in concert pack a punch.

Trial:  A difficult or annoying experience.
Tribulation:  Any adversary; a trying period or event.

So I've been working The Steps on my mildly pathological fear of injury and aging, trying but failing not to blame my mother for this pathology.  I've wondered if perhaps my Higher Power can't just lift these tendencies out of me, magical-like, without me having to do any work or suffer any discomfort.  I call this the Magic Fairy Effect where a sprite or a nymph sprinkles some magic dust on me and Voila! I'm healed.

Boy, does it ever not work like that.

Mr. Webster

I like words as a general rule.  I also believe - without invoking my inner seance - that our original founders chose the words they put into the literature very carefully.  I think they were parsed and gone over with a fine-toothed comb, massaged and manipulated, added and subtracted, until things were just so.  I pay attention to these words because I think that they're in there for a very specific reason.

Sober:  Marked by a sedate or earnestly thoughtful character or demeanor.
             Unhurried; calm.
             Marked by temperance, moderation, or seriousness.
             Showing no excessive or extreme qualities of fancy, emotion, or prejudice.

Lot of marking going on in those definitions.  Marked by the sign of the beast. 

"We had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing.  God either is, or He isn't."

Defiant:  Full of or showing a disposition to challenge, resist, or fight; showing aggression or independence by refusing to obey someone.

Fightin' Seaweed.

Egotism:  The practice of talking and thinking about oneself excessively because of an undue sense of self-importance.

I had figured out the talking about myself too much part - it's "the undue sense of self-importance part" that's pretty amusing.  All of us have been in situations where we're nervous or uncomfortable with dead air so we talk too much.  This appears to be OK.  The problem arises when I'm talking about myself because I think I'm far more important than anyone else in the room.   This appears to be kind of shitty.

Will:  A person's determination, choice, or desire.
Willpower:  Control exerted to do something or restrain impulses.

These are interesting words, too.  The Book talks a lot about the proper use of willpower.  It talks about trying to align my will with the will of my higher power instead of trying to bombard my problems in an attempt to remake the world to my own liking.

Norovirus V Seaweed

I started writing on this forum to talk about recovery.  Ostensibly.  It quickly morphed into me talking about myself while trying to figure out how to connect what I was writing to some vaguely recovery-themed reference.  I fail often but I try mightily.  I show up.  I get my cuts in.

That paragraph was a prelude.  A prelude to me talking about vomiting.  Vomiting is a funny topic when it's happening to someone else, less so when you are involved personally.  Some son of a bitch didn't wash his hands and then touched a door knob that I then touched while not washing my hands and I ended up vomiting.  This is not fair.  Someone else's poor hygiene always trumps my poor hygiene, making it their fault that I got sick, not mine.  I should add that I always have a couple of cookies out of the cookie container at the morning meeting - the same cookie container that the homeless people use to paw over every cookie to find the one that they like best.  I don't think they're washing their hands very often.

Most bouts of nausea and vomiting are caused by a simple norovirus which produces a toxin that your body expels double time.  I did note with some amusement that other possible causes are cancer, brain tumors, heart attacks, and in the early stages of pregnancy.

Vomiting is the forceful discharge of the stomach contents and it involves the small intestine and the esophagus as well.  Hell, maybe the gall bladder is involved.  Let's go ahead and throw the kitchen sink at this thing.  Seriously though, the physiology is that the stomach and small intestine contract powerfully while the esophagus remains tightly shut.  Then suddenly and all at once the esophagus and the esophagus only relaxes and allows the clenched stomach to discharge everything.  

There.  It doesn't sound so bad when it's presented clinically like that, now does it?

The sound effects of vomiting are not to be missed.  While I was actually hanging over the toilet I kept thinking: "Where are those growling wolf-like noises coming from?"  I don't think I could reproduce that sound.  I think there was a wolf in the bathroom while I vomited silently.

I have had two pieces of toast and four crackers in the last two days.

I realize this is a topic that is beneath me.  But, you got to admit, it's pretty funny.  I was giggling a little bit as I was writing about ME vomiting.

Seaweed Shatters A Record of 35 Years ,

Gruesome:  Repellently frightful and shocking; horrific or ghastly.

As a general rule I'm not a gross person.  In my 9 years writing this blog I can't remember telling a single fart anecdote.  I'm hindered in this regard by the fact that I can't remember a single fart anecdote.  I'm not implying that a good fart joke isn't funny just that I don't think it's funny.  I am many distasteful things but gross is not one of them.  In fact, I'm quite prissy.  SuperK and I have been watching a series about some of the more disastrous battles in the South Pacific during World War II.  There are these horrific skirmishes where people are being killed and maimed, corpses littering the muddy ground, and all I can think of is where are the showers?  You're filthy.  You can't go to bed in those clothes without cleaning up a bit.

Anyway, I broke one of my longest standing records today, a streak that hit 35 or 36 years, a streak that has been intact for my entire sobriety and then some: I threw up.  I went swimming this morning - to my credit not hitting any older ladies in the face - when I began to feel a little queasy.  It got worse as the day progressed and nothing seemed to give me any relief.  SuperK and I were actually discussing the mechanics of throwing up prior to my shattering this much cherished record.

"I don't even know how to throw up," I remarked, with no irony.

SuperK - who throws up a normal amount, not frequently but sometimes - replied, in her typical understated way: "I think you'll know."

I threw up not long after this and she was right - it was time and I Knew.  Unfortunately, I had a glass of red Diet Cherry 7UP right before this so . . . well, let's say I thought I was bleeding to death.  The word "gruesome" gets tossed around a little too freely but it applied here.

Enough of this?  Me, too.  I'm getting nauseous.

Many, many years ago I was traveling in Syria with Little Westside Jonny.  We had a guide named Mohammed who made me look easy-going, a man who lives on in our memories with a crystal-clear consciousness.  One day we took a drive through the countryside to see the ruins of an old church, stopping along the way to visit an agricultural area where Mohammed picked some delicious cherries for us, cherries that were probably fertilized with livestock waste, cherries that went into my mouth and down my gullet unwashed.  Let's say I got sick and I got sick fast.  We were driving back to the hotel when I told Mohammed that it was time for me to go to the bathroom.  He mumbled something about a place coming up, leaving to state quite bluntly: "No.  I need to go NOW."

So there I was . . . my pants down around my ankles, box of tissues in my hand, 25 yards from a busy highway from which I was openly visible, leaning up against a building - rough-hewn concrete block in my memory and an unoccupied agricultural building, I think, but it didn't make any difference at the time - thinking: 

"This is as bad as it gets."  

Alcoholic Destruction

"To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face."

I've always absolutely loved that line.  Bill could be a pompous preacher one minute, then kindly, beautifully understate a harsh fact the next.  It reminds me of the old joke about a member talking to a new attendee: "Here's your choice: you can keep drinking, blotting out the details of your miserable existence to the best of your ability, doomed to live a painful, solitary existence, wracked with mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual torment, until you die alone and bereft on the mean streets.  Or you can accept spiritual help for your disease."

The newcomer thinks for a minute:"Can I get back to you tomorrow on that?"

Nobody ever accused us of half-assing our drinking.  Everything else, sure, but not our disease.

"Lack of power, that was our dilemma.  Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions.  In this respect alcohol was a great persuader.  It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness."

Alcoholic destruction beating me into a state of reasonableness.  Very little nuance there.

I needed a good beating.

Seaweed: Transcendentalistic Agnostic

"The chances are that he has become convinced that he has more problems than alcohol, and that some of these refuse to be solved by all the sheer personal determination and courage he can muster."

I'm skeptical of anyone who is cocksure about anything.  I'm talking to a guy right now who thinks I've got some kind of idea what's going on with The Steps, god help the poor man.  He's a pretty committed atheist or agnostic or something along those lines.  As I understand it an atheist doesn't know if there is a god or not while the agnostic claims proof of the non-existence of god.  Whatever.  I'm going to toss the agnostic in the same hopper with all the evangelicals burning with a certain knowledge of god.  None of y'all know shit for sure. 

Transcendentalism:  An idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths.  It taught that divinity pervades all nature and humanity.

I don't know a thing about this philosophy.  I downloaded books by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau to give it a look-see.  It would appear that one of the most fundamental precepts of transcendentalism is the belief that everyone must use their middle name.  David Lee Roth and Lee Harvey Oswald are other prominent transcendentalists.  I'm impressed that it contains the idea that god can be found in nature.

I'm letting some of the stuff that I read in the aging book sink in.  I'm not all in with the ideas but it has got me thinking about how easy it is to slot a person into a random category.  As in: you're too old - you're a boring idiot.  Or similarly: you're too young - you're a boring, stupid idiot.

It goes on like this for while.  I won't bore you with all of the categories of idiots that aren't me.

But I do want open myself up to the wisdom of The Elders and the enthusiasm, the optimism of The Young.  It's all good stuff.  

Flight of Fancy Seaweed

Challenge your limits as opposed to living a life that is safe, quiet, and predictable.  I don't even know what that means.  I wish I knew what I was talking about.  Maybe I should think before I write.

I've been musing a bit on a few of the old-timers at my regular meeting although I now understand that the PC variant for a lot of sobriety is long-timers.  I called on a woman the other day with 30+ years, referring to her as an old-timer - as an expression of respect - but it didn't go over that well.  I learned my lesson.  Don't call people old.  Maybe we should call them wise-timers.

How do we look at the very old, anyway?  It's remarkable to me how our culture has evolved from one that respected the village elders, looking to them for guidance and advice, to one of total youth culture worship.  It has been interesting to ponder the fact that the young used to come to the old to mine their experience and knowledge, and now the old are coming to the young for help programming their fucking cell phones and getting their fucking streaming services to work.

If you are looking at your cell phone during a meeting you should be banned for a week.

If you share at a meeting and then leave early you should be prohibited for speaking for a week.

If you arrive late that's OK - just don't share.  If you do share you should banned for 3 days.  If you start your share by saying "I got here late so I didn't catch what the topic was but . . . " then everyone in the meeting can hoot like baboons while you're talking.

If the meeting has a timer and the timer goes off and you keep talking you should have your mouth washed out with the used coffee grounds after the meeting.  No rinsing, either.  First of all, if there's a timer that means the meeting has had trouble with people talking too long.  Second of all, the time allotted for the timer is about twice as long as the time people are listening to what you're saying.  They're irritated at how long you're talking way before the timer goes off.

Seaweed: Literary Thief

"This, of course, is the process by which instinct and logic always seek to bolster egotism and so frustrate spiritual development."

Egotism: A tendency to talk excessively about oneself; a belief that one is superior to or more important than others.

You got that right.  Who's better than me?  You?  You're better than me?  I don't think so.

"How persistently we claim the right to decide all by ourselves just what we shall think and just how we shall act.  We are certain that our intelligence, backed by willpower, can rightly control our inner lives and guarantee success in the world we live in.  This philosophy of self-sufficiency is not paying off.  Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut whose final achievement is ruin."

God, I love Bill W and his often florid, over-the-top language.  A bone-crushing juggernaut . . .  Who comes up with that kind of shit except a guy with an out-of-control egotism?

Juggernaut:  A literal or metaphorical force regarded as unstoppable, that will crush all in its path.

That's an impressive force.  Not sure I would characterize my self-sufficiency - powerful as it is - as a crushing - a bone-crushing - force.  I can't imagine what it would take to crush a bone.  

"So it is by circumstance rather than by any virtue that we have been driven to A.A.  Chances are that the alcoholic has become convinced that he has more problems than alcohol, and that some of these refuse to be solved by all the sheer personal determination and courage he can muster.  A dependence on a higher power was their chief source of strength."

Dependence:  The state of relying on or being controlled by someone or something else.

So the only thing worse than a writer throwing in the towel and just copying some shit that someone else wrote is to take the quotes and add and subtract words and ideas, cram it together or tease it apart, so that it says what he wants it to say which may or may not be the intent of the original, plagiarized writer.

Harrumph.

Hunker in the Bunker

I do like to read.  I prefer fiction - appropriately so for a man-child living in a fantasy world of his own making - but I always have a non-fiction read in progress as well.  Sometimes I'm exploring an issue or event or person that interests me and sometimes I'm trying to learn more about something that has a particular relevance in my life.  The stuff in italics below is from a book I'm reading that is discussing the phenomenon of aging.  My wife gets a worried/annoyed look on her face when I tell her what I'm reading - she's suspicious of my motives, believing that I find scholarly texts that support whatever I want to believe.  Previously I read books on anxiety and on grieving.  Because my wife is smarter than I am I suspect that her suspicions have some traction so I have been careful to read these books with an open mind, trying to learn a new perspective on something, uncover a different way of looking at an issue, instead of just getting ammunition for when I hunker down in my bunker and defend my point of view to the bitter end.

This book is relentlessly cheerful which annoys the shit out of me; however, it does show me a positive way of looking at an issue that I view so negatively.

Aging brings wisdom that is essential to the unity and progress of both the spirit and the community, and one forsakes it at his or her own peril.

Quite the contrary: aging is not about getting weaker, but is a journey of finding greater value and enlightenment or wisdom.  Buddhist philosophy teaches us to respect, appreciate, and care equally for young and old lives.

Time brings us an accumulation of knowledge, experience, and skills.  We learn lessons from trial and error that enhance our judgment and force us to persevere in the face of adversity.  Failure leads to humility, gratitude, empathy, and healthy dependence on others.  Ambition and a desire for legacy motivates us to build, and compose.

A pivot point is a period of time in which an event or situation prompts a significant disruption in our initial ability to understand and cope with it.  It exposes a gap between the challenges or demands of a life event and our existing strengths, values, skills, and connections.  A pivot point might begin with a moment of crisis, trauma, or even terror, and causes us to feel temporarily stunned or paralyzed, and uncertain about what to do next.  We may want and need to respond, but we don’t know what will be effective to resolve the situation and regain our balance.  Even though a pivot point exposes a weakness, it is also loaded with the potential for tremendous growth if we can navigate the two sides of the gulf and create a bridge to link them together. Resolving a pivot point makes us into more developed and capable aging adults.  The greatest challenge of a pivot point is having to give up previous notions, identities, and ways of doing things in the service of a solution.

Three components to success in life: avoiding or minimizing the risk of disease and disability, maintaining high mental and physical functioning, and actively engaging in meaningful life activities.

In the face of decline, we engage in a process of selection among various pursuits so as to focus on the ones most relevant, accessible, and meaningful; we work on optimization of our abilities through extra rehearsal or exercise; and we adjust our activities or performance to allow for compensation in the face of certain deficits.

Matisse articulated so well: “I have needed all that time to reach the stage where I can say what I want to say.”  This is a powerful statement that every aging person should be able to embrace.

When we denigrate aging and only see it primarily as a time of decline and weakness, we rob ourselves of one of the most influential and powerful forces in our life. The antidote is simple: look at aging people and ask about their reserve, learn about their resilience, and marvel at their resiliency.

Defiant Seaweed

Defy:  To refuse to obey; to renounce or dissolve all bonds of faith or obligation with; to reject, refuse, or renounce.
Rely: To trust; to have confidence in; to depend.

"Belief meant reliance, not defiance."  Some book I've read . . . .

Pivot:  (Noun) Someone or something having a paramount significance in a certain situation.
            (Verb)  To turn on an exact spot.

I like the concept of pivoting.  I'm moving quickly in one direction and then I'm quickly moving in another direction.  The key is not blowing out your knee when you make this abrupt change.  A lot of change is gradual, incremental, something that happens slowly and steadily over a period of time and some change is Boom! you're going another way and in a hurry.  You know the feeling: sitting in the passenger seat of a car looking at porn on your cell phone and the driver makes a hard turn left and you bang your head against the window kind-of-change.

I prefer controlling the change in my life.  I like being in control.  The book I'm skimming about overcoming the perceived challenges of aging in a nice, pretty non-bitchy, not-too-terribly-whiney manner is dealing in a peripheral way with how to best handle the trauma of the hard left turn bang your head on the window kind of change: serious illness, death of a loved one, loss of an important job, the big things that happen suddenly.  You have a small sore on your thumb so you go to the doctor and Malignant Cancer of the Thumbnail!  which you definitely did not see coming.

The slow change is more manageable.  It unspools in a way that allows you to make adjustments so there isn't such a strong line between Now versus Before.  You adapt.  You see it happening.  The jarring change requires, I think, some work so that we can understand that things are never going to be the way they were.  One of the categories in the Five Stages of Grief concerns this belief that we can somehow, if we only manage well, get things back to the way they were.  Getting through these emotions can be hard.  Hard as hell.  

I hate change and I love change.

Wisdom V Knowledge, A Medieval Morality Play

Wisdom:  The quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the knowledge that is gained by having many experiences in life.

Wisdom: The ability to apply relevant knowledge in an insightful way, especially to different situations in which the knowledge was gained; the ability to make a decision based on the combination of knowledge, experience, and intuitive understanding.  

"Knowledge is really about facts and ideas that we acquire through study, research, investigation, observation, or experience.  Wisdom is the ability to discern and judge which aspects of that knowledge are true, right, lasting, and applicable to your life."

For instance, understanding the meaning of the phrase "Restraint of tongue and pen" is an example of knowledge acquired.  Conversely, when a discussion I'm having with my wife begins to veer into the contentious and it becomes apparent that there will be no winner but only losers, and I've got one more, one last comment queued up, a comment that won't go over well and will cause me pain, and I don't let it out, THAT'S wisdom.

"Aging is not about getting weaker, but is a journey of finding greater value and enlightenment or wisdom.  Buddhist philosophy teaches us to respect, appreciate, and care equally for young and old lives."

I'm always comforted when I see that the basic building blocks of a spiritual existence can be found everywhere.  The idea that adversity has value comes up over and over and over again.  The idea that we take the set-backs - what we think are the set-backs - and turn them into a positive . . . well, that's a hell of an idea.  A lot easier in theory than put in practice in the real world, but ubiquitous in our theology and philosophy. 

"Time brings us an accumulation of knowledge, experience, and skills.   We learn lessons from trial and error that enhance our judgment and force us to persevere in the face of adversity. Failure leads to humility, gratitude, empathy, and healthy dependence on others.  Ambition and a desire for legacy motivates us to build and compose."

Any idiot can be happy when they're getting what they want.  The trick is to grow through adversity.    The ultimate act of dignity is success in the face of adversity.

"We will all experience eventually an event or situation that prompts a significant disruption in our initial ability to understand and cope with it.  It exposes a gap between the challenges or demands of a life event and our existing strengths, values, skills, and connections.  An age point might begin with a moment of crisis, trauma, or even terror, and causes us to feel temporarily stunned or paralyzed, and uncertain about what to do next.  We may want and need to respond, but we don’t know what will be effective to resolve the situation and regain our balance.  

Even though an age point exposes a weakness, it is also loaded with the potential for tremendous growth if we can navigate the two sides of the gulf and create a bridge to link them together.  Resolving an age point makes us into more developed and capable aging adults.  The greatest challenge of an age point is having to give up previous notions, identities, and ways of doing things in the service of a solution."

There's a lot of experience, strength, and hope to be found in our world that show us what happens and how to behave when we have a loss.  I'm obsessed with aging right now - my loss du jour -  but a death of a loved one, retirement, a move to a new city, a child leaving home for good, illness, divorce - these are all great examples of big, painful, life-altering events for which we almost certainly don't have tools on hand.  If we struggle for a bit until we find out way it's OK.

Special Seaweed

I always wanted a cool Fellowship nickname, one bestowed in awe and gratitude by my adoring admirers.  You know - Big Book Seaweed or Serenity Seaweed.  An honorific.  A degree from an institution of higher learning bestowed despite the fact I hadn't attained any of the knowledge or done any of the work.

Instead I get Half-Measures Seaweed - as in: a dude looking for all available loopholes - or, my favorite, Special Seaweed - as in: I don't have to obey the rules because I'm special or this painful thing shouldn't happen to me because I'm special.  

Sometimes I expect the universe to treat me like the mama's boy that I am.

Some Step Two stuff . . . 

This one wonders if we mayhaps aren't looking too closely at ourselves when we're criticizing other the faith of other people . . . 

"Self-righteousness, the very thing we had contemptuously condemned in others, became our own besetting evil.  This phony form of respectability . . . "

For those of us who think we have some kind of powerfully effective faith but can't manage to quit drinking . . . 

Defy: To refuse to obey.  (Ed. Note: Short and sweet and unambiguous.)

"No man, we saw, could believe in god and defy him, too.  Belief meant reliance, not defiance."

And The Rooms are full of the tragically brilliant . . . 

"Knowledge was all-powerful.  Intellect could conquer nature.  Since we were brighter than most folks (so we thought) we could float above other people on our intellect alone."

Who wants to look closely at their own defects when time is much better spent investigating the defects of someone else?

"In belaboring the sins of some religious people, we could feel superior to all of them.  Moreover, we could avoid looking at some of our own shortcomings."

Summing it all up . . . 

"The minute I stopped fighting or arguing, I could begin to see and feel.  Right there, Step Two gently and gradually began to infiltrate my life.  I had only to stop fighting and practice the rest of The Steps as enthusiastically as I could."

Fight:  To try to overpower; to fiercely counteract.

Them's fightin' words.

Deranged Seaweed

Sane: Being in a healthy condition; not deranged; thinking rationally.

(Ed Note: Deranged would be an excellent name for a hard rock band.)

A breaking news story update coming out of The All Seaweed, Every Day, Every Minute Network . . . . 

I did see the lady I clocked at the pool today while I was talking to the bobbing/thrashing/splashing class instructor who was playing some Lynyrd Skynyrd, an act that cried out for a conversation.  We comported ourselves with grace.  I apologized again, and for the last time - I'm not an over-apologizing, groveling, begging-for-mercy kind of guy so two I'm Sorrys are enough - which she graciously accepted.  In fact, she took the blame for the clocking and the instructor pointedly agreed: "It was her fault," she said flatly, pointing at the clocked attendee.  The teacher is mindful of the fact that her class should let the lap swimmers do their thing until the class starts, but sometimes it's hard to get the herd going in the same direction.

"At least you hit her in the head," she added as I was walking away.  "It's not like you grabbed her boob."  

I am not making that up.

In another, less urgent vein I've been doing some Step Two analysis on my health and well-being obsession.  As a reminder: "Came to believe that a Higher Power could restore us to sanity." Even though I've read all of The Steps many times I'm continually amazed at how I hear voices that for some reason didn't speak to me in the past.  Maybe they spoke once, then fell silent for years, before piping up again.  I'm also amused at the fact that the founders tend to repeat the same basic instructions over and over again, sometimes in the same Step, using language that is only slightly different.  They're not even trying to disguise the fact that they're plagiarizing their own shit.  They figured, rightly so, that a bunch of antsy alcoholics who can't pay attention for two minutes and resist the most fundamental suggestions need to have them repeated over and over and over.  And over.

"At no time had we asked what god's will was for us; instead we had been telling him what it ought to be."  Then, two paragraphs later: "We had not even prayed rightly.  We had always said 'Grant me my wishes' instead of 'Your will be done.' "

This made sense to me today: "The minute I stopped fighting or arguing, I could begin to see and feel.   Right there, Step 2 gently and very gradually began to infiltrate my life.  I had only to stop fighting and practice the rest of The Program as enthusiastically as I could."

I'm not even going to get into the part today where they slip in, right at the very end, the implication that I'm insane.

Lie, Lady, Lie

I believe that for most of us whenever you think that you're making some progress on your character defects go and visit your family.  You'll see how much further you have to go.  For me it's the pool.  Weird, I know, but there it is.  I behave pretty well until I get in the pool where I'm transformed into Mad Max.

I was swimming laps today before the 9AM Aqua Fit class.  I've expressed my ire at Aqua Fit before.  This is the water-based exercise-like program where a lot of lovely, overweight, older ladies clog up the pool for an entire hour in a simulation of exercise.  I'm glad they're showing up and pretending to do something physical but 9AM?  C'mon, they're all retired.  Can't we do 10AM?  The 9AM means I have to get there earlier than I want or I have to wait until the class is over at 10, a time that's later than I want.  As you can see 9AM is an irritant in my chlorine-red eyes.  I understand that the irony in that if you would like to swim say at 10, then moving the class would not be to your liking and you would like to maintain the status quo, to which I say: Tough Shit.

I've learned to adapt.  So there I am swimming today - not at all irritated that I'm swimming earlier than I want - in the lane closest to the wall, the lane that has the stairs that all of the nice ladies use to get into the pool.  At about fifteen minutes until nine some of them start to make their way into the water.  A few cross through my lane and head for the middle of the pool while some of them begin to clog up the half of the lane closest to the wall to which I say: Fine, just stay out of my fucking lane, even though I am wondering why they can't wait another 10 minutes and clog the pool up for an entire hour, an hour where I'm prohibited from entering the pool, at a time that I would like to be swimming.  And my resentment gently simmers . . . 

So I'm dodging these large, bobbing, non-exercising, pool-clogging human beings, weaving in and out, making the turn for my last length - my LAST LENGTH - when I see one of them has moved into the middle of my lane, and she's standing there, talking to someone in the next lane over.  I start to swim, assuming she'll . . . you know . . . get the fuck out of my way as I approach, which she does not do.  I pull up a couple of feet from her, give her a withering glare, and then continue my lap, deciding to brush as close to her as possible to let her know she's in my fucking lane.  I get too close, apparently, and fucking clock her.  It felt like a shoulder but I wasn't sure - it might have been a head strike - but I got her good.  And I didn't stop.

So I finish the lap, pop off my goggles, and look back down the lane to see her there rubbing her forehead.  Sigh.  I dog paddle down to where she's standing with another woman.

"You OK?" I ask.

"Yes, it sort of stings, though," she said.  

"Didn't you see me there?" she asked.

"No," I lied.

"I was trying to get over to the other lane," she lied back.  

So I saw her and lied about it and she said she was moving away, clearly a lie as she was standing there talking to someone.  Lie, lie, lie.  I should go back and read my post of a few days ago where I was giving the business to my neighbor who lied about smoking weed in the clubhouse.  It is a lot easier criticizing someone else than taking a look at myself.

I popped her good though.  I wish I felt worse about it than I do.  I bet she stays out of my fucking way next time.

Bitch 'N' Play

Bitch:  To criticize spitefully, often for the sake of complaining rather than in order to have the problem corrected.
Complain: To express feelings of pain, dissatisfaction, or resentment.

Yeah, I bitch.  There's no complaining going on in Seaweed's world - I'm not in it to find a solution.  I'm in it for the sheer, unadulterated joy of bitching.

Kenner - literally on his death bed - did neither.  He would not do it.  There were a few times when the pain was severe enough that he politely ended the conversation and signed off; other than that his demeanor was cheerful and upbeat.  I marveled each time I got done with the call - I was sure I was seeing the results of a true spirituality.  Taking what was given in a spirit of gratitude.  It was a remarkable performance.  Or maybe he really, really, really liked the morphine.  Naw, it was the spirituality.  No doubt about it.

This is the last joke I ever told him.  It's not classic Little Jonny  but it sufficed.

This dude is in bed when he's awakened by his alarm clock.  He reaches over to turn the thing off and the knob comes off in his hand.  After he manages to get the alarm silenced he walks over to the closet to get a pair of pants, and the door handle comes off in his hand.  He's shaking his head by now but figures that maybe a cup of coffee would get things headed in the right direction but when he picks up the pot the handle breaks off.

"Wow," his wife laughs, bemused.  "Now what are you going to do?"

(Ken is roaring already: "I can see where this is going," he shouts.)

"I don't know," the dude says.  "But I don't think I'm going to go to the bathroom."

I always wondered what people were thinking as they walked by the room of a patient dying of prostate cancer and heard the sounds of a grown man giggling.

One Foot in This World and One Foot in the Next

Kenner was diagnosed with prostate cancer several years ago.  He underwent treatment, sending the cancer went into remission, and all was well for a while, but at a subsequent appointment he learned that the cancer was back and that it had spread aggressively.  Kenner pursued some treatment options to try to arrest the growth; alas, to no avail.  Through the black and white lens through which he saw the world he decided Basoof! which I thought was a German word meaning "enough" but at a subsequent appointment I found out it's only made-up gibberish.  Ken believed that he had lived a good, blessed life and that was enough for him; he was satisfied with his journey and at peace in his mind.  He wasn't one to question his god when he was convinced the message was coming in loud and clear.

"It's time to come home."  This is what god told Ken and that's an explanation that's good enough for me.

While Ken was still well enough he was able to close up his household, giving his stuff to his kids or to charity, putting his financial affairs in order, taking his leave with his many friends.  SuperK and I were in India when this was going down so I was only able to talk to him sporadically.  Then . . . radio silence.  No Kenner.  Many messages and no return calls.  I finally reached out to Little Westside Jonny who lived nearby - he could find out only that Ken was still alive but the facility wouldn't release any more information than that to non-family.

Eventually, through some diligent detective work on the part of Jonny, we found out that Ken had moved into the skilled nursing facility on the grounds of his retirement community where hospice had begun to deliver end-of-life care: pain management and that sort of thing.  While he was bedridden - or nearly so - most of the last three or four months of his life I was able to talk to him almost every day.  I was at peace with my relationship with him so I made the decision not to travel back to see him in person, aware that my chances were rapidly vanishing and that I might not make it back in time on one of my trips to see him alive.  We talked about this and he agreed, worrying that seeing my face one more time would only hasten his death, and make it painful to boot.

So when we spoke he would invariably ask me how I was doing.  I'd like to remind you that he was bedridden and dying of cancer, in a lot of pain, but this did not hamstring my boundless capacity to talk about myself, mostly complaining about unimportant things, usually mild pain or discomfort in my remarkably healthy body.  I understood that the distraction was probably good for him.  Still, it was a fine demonstration of my self-absorption.  

As he got sicker and sicker it seemed that he was beginning to move back and forth between this world and the next; either that or the morphine was making him a little weird and he was sharing his hallucinations with me.  Never a man to talk about his personal life he nevertheless began to share some deeply private thoughts and memories about his marriages and children.  Then, he started to hypothesize on the nature of love - and that's Love with a capital L - on what was coming next, on the reality of god.  It got a little eerie from time to time - I began to feel like I was talking to someone who could see things that my human eyes were unable to see, that he had one foot in this world and the other foot somewhere else.

The calls would end on his terms.  He was usually laughing.  His voice would get less and less distinct, quieter, fuzzier, and he would tell me that it was time to address his pain and that he was releasing me for the day.  I could tell he was getting frustrated - he was ready to die and a little perplexed as to why his god wasn't calling him home.  One day he didn't pick up the phone.  That afternoon I got an email from a mutual friend in The Program who told me that Ken informed the staff that he was no longer going to eat or drink anything.  He lapsed into a coma and died shortly afterwards, his family in the room, held in the arms of his god.

So we talk about how our pains and troubles and travails fit us to be of service to our fellows.  Mom died quickly, so quickly that I never got to speak to her; dad dissolved in an alcoholic mist; and Kenner showed me some really wild, really important things.  His pain was one of the greatest gifts that I ever received.

Three years later and I still miss talking to him.