Wait: To stay in a place or remain inactive or in anticipation until something expected takes place.
I'm not very good at waiting for things to happen of their own accord. I'm more predisposed to charge into the future like a rhinoceros on amphetamines. I want to get out there and see what happens, and I want to get out there FAST. Patiently waiting for the timing to be right is not in my genetic make-up. I'm built for speed and impulsiveness and quick action. I'm all fast-twitch muscles. Fast cars, fast women, fast food, fast riffs. Fast, fast. fast.
I find that are meeting rooms are staffed with a lot of the most Type-A-ish of the Type-A personalities. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Alcoholics are talented, motivated people and we get a lot done. If you feel like you have ants in your pants and bugs crawling under your skin and your ass AND your hair is on fire, you get a lot done. The problem is that a lot of the time we try to figure out things all on our own, which is necessarily a bad thing. While we may be good at action, we are not good at thinking. Our thinkers are broke. Our minds are in a bad neighborhood. FIRE! Ready. Aim, is how we go about things.
I will never in my life be someone who can sit around. I like new experiences and challenges and things to do. I want to try new foods and go different places and say whatever comes to my mind to see how people react. I spent my whole life sitting around, drunk and stoned, in bars, in front of TV sets, lying on my couch wondering why things weren't different. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to give life a whirl. Am I going to make mistakes? You bet. I tried stuffed tripe in a seaside restaurant in a little town in France once. It was revolting.
It tasted like pig intestines.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tales of A Thwarting
Thwart: To hinder, obstruct, frustrate, or defeat ( a person, plans, wishes, etc.)
Yesterday I wandered away from the Forest of Serenity. I found myself in the Desert of Annoyance. I have a long and storied history of exploits in this Desert. My path is well marked and heavily traveled. Everybody there knows me. I have a reserved table in the best restaurant, right next to the kitchen, because this is, after all, the Desert of Annoyance. "Right this way, B-Man," the Maitre'd says. "Your money is no good here, B-Man," they tell me. "Sorry about the locusts, B-Man," they say, eyeing the plague of insects darkening the sky with their sheer numbers.
I woke up from a lovely nap, somewhat annoyed. I woke up on the wrong side of the couch. I realize any sympathy I may have generated by the tale of my travails in the Desert of Annoyance has just evaporated with the nap-on-a-workday information but this is a program of honesty, unless of course it's convenient to lie. I drove to a local mega mart to purchase a mop. My present mop has experienced a catastrophic structural failure, prompting me to think: "What a world: we can put a man on the moon, although not recently, but we can't make a sturdy and durable mop."
The mart had a poor selection of mops, favoring models with totally small mop heads. I don't like to mop as it is and it seemed to me that these mops would increase the mopping time, which didn't increase my enthusiasm for the product. There were no replacement parts available to fix the broken mop that I owned. A good thing because I had already slammed the thing on my asphalt driveway, hurting my hand, and broken it into several pieces. "I showed that mop who was boss," I told SuperK as she tried to staunch the bleeding. I'm a bad MF when it comes to dominating inanimate, inorganic products.
Piqued, I made the long trek back through the mart and across the parking lot, dodging all of the cretins who were specifically spending their free time trying to impede my progress. They had it out for me. It was a big conspiracy to thwart my mop work. I drove into a normally congested area devised by people who belong to the Urban Planning and Road Engineering Union of Satan, and got stuck in traffic. I decided to swing into an outer lane to zip right by everyone to the head of the line, and pop into a mega building supply store minutes earlier -- Hooray for me! I'm the winner! - except traffic was heavier than normal and I got shunted right by the mega store. In the not too distant past I just wedged my way wherever I wanted to go. I can't do that anymore . . . as much. So I gave the store a friendly wave as I passed by, and executed a partially legal U-turn somewhere down the road.
You know what? I'm exhausted recounting this story. Mentally exhausted. I spend so much of my time raging against the machine. I forget my friends imploring me to slow down and take it easy. "What are you talking about?" I shriek. "I have to get a new mop!"
I did find a model that suited me, in the airplane hanger sized building that passes for a retail establishment these days. I made it home, safe and sound, and put the mop in a dark closet deep in the bowels of my basement. I had no enthusiasm for mopping. I decided to try to passive-aggressive SuperK into trying out the new mop instead. "Boy, these floors really could use a good mopping," I'd say, eyeing her from my spot on the napping couch, still warm from my excellent nap.
"Really could use a good mopping."
Yesterday I wandered away from the Forest of Serenity. I found myself in the Desert of Annoyance. I have a long and storied history of exploits in this Desert. My path is well marked and heavily traveled. Everybody there knows me. I have a reserved table in the best restaurant, right next to the kitchen, because this is, after all, the Desert of Annoyance. "Right this way, B-Man," the Maitre'd says. "Your money is no good here, B-Man," they tell me. "Sorry about the locusts, B-Man," they say, eyeing the plague of insects darkening the sky with their sheer numbers.
I woke up from a lovely nap, somewhat annoyed. I woke up on the wrong side of the couch. I realize any sympathy I may have generated by the tale of my travails in the Desert of Annoyance has just evaporated with the nap-on-a-workday information but this is a program of honesty, unless of course it's convenient to lie. I drove to a local mega mart to purchase a mop. My present mop has experienced a catastrophic structural failure, prompting me to think: "What a world: we can put a man on the moon, although not recently, but we can't make a sturdy and durable mop."
The mart had a poor selection of mops, favoring models with totally small mop heads. I don't like to mop as it is and it seemed to me that these mops would increase the mopping time, which didn't increase my enthusiasm for the product. There were no replacement parts available to fix the broken mop that I owned. A good thing because I had already slammed the thing on my asphalt driveway, hurting my hand, and broken it into several pieces. "I showed that mop who was boss," I told SuperK as she tried to staunch the bleeding. I'm a bad MF when it comes to dominating inanimate, inorganic products.
Piqued, I made the long trek back through the mart and across the parking lot, dodging all of the cretins who were specifically spending their free time trying to impede my progress. They had it out for me. It was a big conspiracy to thwart my mop work. I drove into a normally congested area devised by people who belong to the Urban Planning and Road Engineering Union of Satan, and got stuck in traffic. I decided to swing into an outer lane to zip right by everyone to the head of the line, and pop into a mega building supply store minutes earlier -- Hooray for me! I'm the winner! - except traffic was heavier than normal and I got shunted right by the mega store. In the not too distant past I just wedged my way wherever I wanted to go. I can't do that anymore . . . as much. So I gave the store a friendly wave as I passed by, and executed a partially legal U-turn somewhere down the road.
You know what? I'm exhausted recounting this story. Mentally exhausted. I spend so much of my time raging against the machine. I forget my friends imploring me to slow down and take it easy. "What are you talking about?" I shriek. "I have to get a new mop!"
I did find a model that suited me, in the airplane hanger sized building that passes for a retail establishment these days. I made it home, safe and sound, and put the mop in a dark closet deep in the bowels of my basement. I had no enthusiasm for mopping. I decided to try to passive-aggressive SuperK into trying out the new mop instead. "Boy, these floors really could use a good mopping," I'd say, eyeing her from my spot on the napping couch, still warm from my excellent nap.
"Really could use a good mopping."
Monday, July 6, 2009
Wha?
Present: Existing or happening now; in process; contrasted with past, future.
I think that I'm at a point in my life where I'm pretty happy. It sticks in my craw to have to admit that. Then again, maybe it's acid reflux caused by an as yet undetectable tumor which is malignant, aggressive, inoperable, and fatal. Anyway, a sunny attitude ruins my reputation as a grievously injured party. But there it is: I have been in a good spot. I feel like I'm in the world and not trying to swim furiously through the world. I'm always trying to get somewhere and I'm in a big hurry.
I think that life is like a fine fog and I'm just sitting on a bench squinting into the gloaming. I can't see too far. The fog is not too thick and it's not too cold and it's pleasantly damp, like mist on a hot day. Faces drift in and out, most of them pleasant although some scary shit does materialize from time to time. They mostly come and go, or they stay a long time; never can tell, those faces. The fog is OK. I'm just sitting in the fog. I want the big telescope so that I can see for miles and miles but what would be the point? It's foggy.
I've always liked the imagery of allowing my essence to escape my body and drift straight up ten feet or so, like a helium balloon in the shape of a horse head. I do this a lot and I try to hang around up there and keep an eye on myself. It's not awful to watch and there's an appalling lack of drama. I see a person, mostly, who has been given a lot.
If you made a movie about my life, which would destroy all previous box office records, I'd be the character that would make everyone groan. You'd wish that I would simply shut up. "Is that guy whining again?" people would say. "I hate that guy. I'm going for popcorn." I'd still be on the screen complaining when they got back. "Why does she stay with him?" they'd ask. "He's really annoying."
I remember being on a vacation in a city that had a world famous cathedral. We fought the traffic and crowds to see this site, only to find it disappointing. It was noisy, thick with sweating tourists trying to hear shouting tour guides holding up sticks and umbrellas, and expensive. It was crouched on a chaotic intersection, its facade caked with the grime of car exhaust. Some of the structure was cloaked in scaffolding. A few days later we were traveling through a village in the country side and stumbled on a small village church. It was a tenth of the size of the cathedral. It was empty. We sat for a while in a pew and took in its essence. A woman opened the door in the balcony, nodded at us, then sat down and played the organ. We listened for a while. Who knew? I'm sure that church wasn't in the guidebook.
I'm pretty content with what I have and I'm not greedily eyeing things that I don't have, at least not with the runaway greed that typifies most of my past behavior. This is total freak show stuff.
I have no idea who I am.
I think that I'm at a point in my life where I'm pretty happy. It sticks in my craw to have to admit that. Then again, maybe it's acid reflux caused by an as yet undetectable tumor which is malignant, aggressive, inoperable, and fatal. Anyway, a sunny attitude ruins my reputation as a grievously injured party. But there it is: I have been in a good spot. I feel like I'm in the world and not trying to swim furiously through the world. I'm always trying to get somewhere and I'm in a big hurry.
I think that life is like a fine fog and I'm just sitting on a bench squinting into the gloaming. I can't see too far. The fog is not too thick and it's not too cold and it's pleasantly damp, like mist on a hot day. Faces drift in and out, most of them pleasant although some scary shit does materialize from time to time. They mostly come and go, or they stay a long time; never can tell, those faces. The fog is OK. I'm just sitting in the fog. I want the big telescope so that I can see for miles and miles but what would be the point? It's foggy.
I've always liked the imagery of allowing my essence to escape my body and drift straight up ten feet or so, like a helium balloon in the shape of a horse head. I do this a lot and I try to hang around up there and keep an eye on myself. It's not awful to watch and there's an appalling lack of drama. I see a person, mostly, who has been given a lot.
If you made a movie about my life, which would destroy all previous box office records, I'd be the character that would make everyone groan. You'd wish that I would simply shut up. "Is that guy whining again?" people would say. "I hate that guy. I'm going for popcorn." I'd still be on the screen complaining when they got back. "Why does she stay with him?" they'd ask. "He's really annoying."
I remember being on a vacation in a city that had a world famous cathedral. We fought the traffic and crowds to see this site, only to find it disappointing. It was noisy, thick with sweating tourists trying to hear shouting tour guides holding up sticks and umbrellas, and expensive. It was crouched on a chaotic intersection, its facade caked with the grime of car exhaust. Some of the structure was cloaked in scaffolding. A few days later we were traveling through a village in the country side and stumbled on a small village church. It was a tenth of the size of the cathedral. It was empty. We sat for a while in a pew and took in its essence. A woman opened the door in the balcony, nodded at us, then sat down and played the organ. We listened for a while. Who knew? I'm sure that church wasn't in the guidebook.
I'm pretty content with what I have and I'm not greedily eyeing things that I don't have, at least not with the runaway greed that typifies most of my past behavior. This is total freak show stuff.
I have no idea who I am.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Fowl Tails
We discussed the Third Step this morning. You know the one: comes right after the Second Step, precedes the Fourth Step, number three in the orderly progression of twelve steps. This Step talks about god and finding god and all of the ways that god can piss us off. Fortunately, the Third Step doesn't bring out a big self-righteous stick to whack us if we have some trouble dealing with god, which most of us do. It encourages us to just hang in there. Due diligence is a phrase that comes to mind.
I tend to over think things and I can get mired in a thick mud of rationalization if I try to conceptualize god and what it means to turn my life over to his care. I become confused. I don't know what the will is, either, so I couldn't cede control of that if you paid me. I've always liked the advice to stay in the minute. I can't do it too good but the instructions are pretty clear. If I'm doing what's in front of me and not what I think may be in front of me in the future things seem to work out OK.
Anyway, I was sitting in my porch this morning watching this baby bunny bounce around. He appeared to have ingested more coffee than me and he was also damn cute. Tomorrow morning after he and his brethren have ravaged my vegetable garden and SuperK's flowers once again, I'll be dreaming of baby bunny stew, but I'm trying to live in the moment. I'd really feel like a piece of shit if I nursed a grudge against a bunny.
The bunny would eat a little then take a few big jumps. It looked to me like he was doing it for the sheer joy of jumping. At one point he exploded forward and landed right on the tail of a mourning dove who was foraging in the area. The dove fluttered briefly and settled back down, no doubt saying: "What the fuck?!?" although he didn't appear to nurse any resentments.
The bunny had blasted a few yards away but came back to stare at the dove, who tried to ignore him. I wasn't sure if he was being apologetic ("Sorry about that"), confrontational ("You looking at me? You looking at me? Well, there's nobody else here"), or issuing a challenge ("OK, on the count of three: Mississippi one, Mississippi two . . . "). Suddenly, he made a big charge right at the dove, who flew away. Enough is enough, apparently, even if your protagonist is young and cute. The bunny made a big leap and disappeared into the thicket that passes for my neighbor's garden.
I am totally roaring at this point at this stupid rabbit. I wanted to go outside and play with him. Scare the bird, leap into a big, soft thicket, hide in the cool darkness, find mama, take a nap.
Be the Rabbit. Be one with the Rabbit.
I tend to over think things and I can get mired in a thick mud of rationalization if I try to conceptualize god and what it means to turn my life over to his care. I become confused. I don't know what the will is, either, so I couldn't cede control of that if you paid me. I've always liked the advice to stay in the minute. I can't do it too good but the instructions are pretty clear. If I'm doing what's in front of me and not what I think may be in front of me in the future things seem to work out OK.
Anyway, I was sitting in my porch this morning watching this baby bunny bounce around. He appeared to have ingested more coffee than me and he was also damn cute. Tomorrow morning after he and his brethren have ravaged my vegetable garden and SuperK's flowers once again, I'll be dreaming of baby bunny stew, but I'm trying to live in the moment. I'd really feel like a piece of shit if I nursed a grudge against a bunny.
The bunny would eat a little then take a few big jumps. It looked to me like he was doing it for the sheer joy of jumping. At one point he exploded forward and landed right on the tail of a mourning dove who was foraging in the area. The dove fluttered briefly and settled back down, no doubt saying: "What the fuck?!?" although he didn't appear to nurse any resentments.
The bunny had blasted a few yards away but came back to stare at the dove, who tried to ignore him. I wasn't sure if he was being apologetic ("Sorry about that"), confrontational ("You looking at me? You looking at me? Well, there's nobody else here"), or issuing a challenge ("OK, on the count of three: Mississippi one, Mississippi two . . . "). Suddenly, he made a big charge right at the dove, who flew away. Enough is enough, apparently, even if your protagonist is young and cute. The bunny made a big leap and disappeared into the thicket that passes for my neighbor's garden.
I am totally roaring at this point at this stupid rabbit. I wanted to go outside and play with him. Scare the bird, leap into a big, soft thicket, hide in the cool darkness, find mama, take a nap.
Be the Rabbit. Be one with the Rabbit.
Early Morning Conversation
"What are your thoughts about a murder suicide pact?" I asked SuperK. They were my first words of the morning.
"Well," she said. "Who's doing the murdering?" Always thinking, that woman.
"I really hadn't thought about it," I answered. "I could go either way."
"I thought that if you committed suicide then you went to a bad place," she pointed out.
"That's true," I admitted. "Maybe I should be in charge of this operation. Do you have any preference of how you want to go?"
"I don't think so," she said. "I think you could go through with the murdering part but then would bail on the suicide part."
She had me there. I gave her a big hug and went out and dug around in the garden. The deer and rabbits and squirrels and groundhogs and possums and chipmunks have to eat, too.
"Well," she said. "Who's doing the murdering?" Always thinking, that woman.
"I really hadn't thought about it," I answered. "I could go either way."
"I thought that if you committed suicide then you went to a bad place," she pointed out.
"That's true," I admitted. "Maybe I should be in charge of this operation. Do you have any preference of how you want to go?"
"I don't think so," she said. "I think you could go through with the murdering part but then would bail on the suicide part."
She had me there. I gave her a big hug and went out and dug around in the garden. The deer and rabbits and squirrels and groundhogs and possums and chipmunks have to eat, too.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
It's STILL All About Me
I was at one of my regular meetings last night. I shared, and I was brilliant. I guess at this juncture that I don't have to point that out any more. I'm always brilliant when I share. My remarks are cutting, insightful, humorous, deeply profound yet accessible to even the simplest of minds. I help everyone. It no longer bothers me that no one has ever told me these things, but I know them to be true, and I am not often wrong. If I think it, if it exists in my mind, it must be fact.
Anyway, there were some friends at the meeting that I wanted to talk to and there was also a guy who looked newish: arrived a little late, sat by himself, passed on the reading, typical new guy stuff. I remember approaching my first hard-ass sponsor in Indy after a meeting to complain about something that if I had been talking to him on the phone regularly he would have already known about. I had a few months clean and sober at that point.
He spun me around. "You see that man over there?" he said. "He's brand new. Go talk to him." This was code for "Get away from me -- the meeting is for me, too." The message I learned is that the new guy is the main guy. Even the rookies among us have something to share.
The Book suggests that we will run into people that we'll need to encourage to talk by sharing our own story, and that there will be people who need to talk. This guy needed to talk, god bless him, and he wasn't very interesting. He didn't come up for a breath once in 2o minutes. I didn't have to pay close attention to what he was saying. I tried to interject a comment from time to time but could see that he was taking a break to formulate what he wanted to say next: he was not listening to me. We're all like that when we come in. None of us are interesting. We have all done the same things and they aren't nearly as interesting to other people as we think they are.
There's a story of a man coming into a club house and sitting down. He turns to the right and asks: " How long have you been sober?"
"30 years."
He turns to the left: "How long have you been sober?"
"30 days."
He thinks for a minute, then looks at the guy with 30 days: "How did you do it?"
How, indeed.
Anyway, there were some friends at the meeting that I wanted to talk to and there was also a guy who looked newish: arrived a little late, sat by himself, passed on the reading, typical new guy stuff. I remember approaching my first hard-ass sponsor in Indy after a meeting to complain about something that if I had been talking to him on the phone regularly he would have already known about. I had a few months clean and sober at that point.
He spun me around. "You see that man over there?" he said. "He's brand new. Go talk to him." This was code for "Get away from me -- the meeting is for me, too." The message I learned is that the new guy is the main guy. Even the rookies among us have something to share.
The Book suggests that we will run into people that we'll need to encourage to talk by sharing our own story, and that there will be people who need to talk. This guy needed to talk, god bless him, and he wasn't very interesting. He didn't come up for a breath once in 2o minutes. I didn't have to pay close attention to what he was saying. I tried to interject a comment from time to time but could see that he was taking a break to formulate what he wanted to say next: he was not listening to me. We're all like that when we come in. None of us are interesting. We have all done the same things and they aren't nearly as interesting to other people as we think they are.
There's a story of a man coming into a club house and sitting down. He turns to the right and asks: " How long have you been sober?"
"30 years."
He turns to the left: "How long have you been sober?"
"30 days."
He thinks for a minute, then looks at the guy with 30 days: "How did you do it?"
How, indeed.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
BoxMan
So I get a call today from my buddy BoxMan. This dude has some stuff going on right now that he wanted to talk about; heavy stuff that is going to require some heavy lifting. I personally don't like heavy lifting. It implies that something is going to be heavy and that I have to lift it up. I prefer light things that someone else has to lift. And I want the whole process to be quick and painless.
My first thought when someone asks me for my advice -- which I give readily even when I know the advice to be bad or incomplete, preferring to hear myself talk as if I'm an expert on topics about which I know nothing rather than admit my ignorance -- is that this individual must be in a world of bad hurt if he thinks I know anything relevant about almost any topic. I haven't done the best job running my own life. I can't imagine I'd be any better at running your life.
My inclination is usually to tell someone what to do about impossibly complicated situations about which I have no training, qualifications, and precious little experience. I'm a Fix-It Guy, as long as it doesn't require fixing anything wrong with me or the broken thing is at all difficult to fix. Then I'm not so good. One thing I've learned in my recovery is that when I talk I can only make things worse. I've started walking around with a sock stuffed in my mouth. Not surprisingly, my days go better.
Another thing I've learned is that most people aren't looking for advice. They just want to get things off their chest. I think BoxMan made a good decision, unless he didn't. Maybe he made a terrible decision. What do I know? I'd throw up blood and blame it on the pizza, not the 24 cans of Colt 45 I consumed.
We make decisions to the best of our ability and then live with the consequences. Sometimes things don't go the way we want them to go but that doesn't mean it's a bad decision. Maybe they're going the way god wants them to go. Maybe god wants us to get stronger by working through a tough situation. I'm used to the 30 second rule -- shot of whisky, two quick bong hits and I feel better.
Life ain't that way.
My first thought when someone asks me for my advice -- which I give readily even when I know the advice to be bad or incomplete, preferring to hear myself talk as if I'm an expert on topics about which I know nothing rather than admit my ignorance -- is that this individual must be in a world of bad hurt if he thinks I know anything relevant about almost any topic. I haven't done the best job running my own life. I can't imagine I'd be any better at running your life.
My inclination is usually to tell someone what to do about impossibly complicated situations about which I have no training, qualifications, and precious little experience. I'm a Fix-It Guy, as long as it doesn't require fixing anything wrong with me or the broken thing is at all difficult to fix. Then I'm not so good. One thing I've learned in my recovery is that when I talk I can only make things worse. I've started walking around with a sock stuffed in my mouth. Not surprisingly, my days go better.
Another thing I've learned is that most people aren't looking for advice. They just want to get things off their chest. I think BoxMan made a good decision, unless he didn't. Maybe he made a terrible decision. What do I know? I'd throw up blood and blame it on the pizza, not the 24 cans of Colt 45 I consumed.
We make decisions to the best of our ability and then live with the consequences. Sometimes things don't go the way we want them to go but that doesn't mean it's a bad decision. Maybe they're going the way god wants them to go. Maybe god wants us to get stronger by working through a tough situation. I'm used to the 30 second rule -- shot of whisky, two quick bong hits and I feel better.
Life ain't that way.
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