Tape

I make a To Do list every day.  Yesterday one of the entries read: "Tape."  I have no idea what it means.  I've really tried to figure it out.  Sometimes I write things down and then can't read my own handwriting but this clearly says: "Tape."  It's written down firmly and confidently and I have no idea what it means.

I crossed it off as successfully completed.  It was the only thing I finished on that day's list.

The Grass is Always Greener

I've been talking to a friend who makes ridiculous demands on life - in other words, a man after my own heart.  Not surprisingly, he gets frustrated by life as a result.  I used to tell him how to counteract this tendency with the results that you might expect.  People love being told how they're doing it wrong and they love being told how to do it right, especially from a guy like me.

I'm a brother in arms with this dude.  I ask a lot of my life, too, and I'm not going to sit idly and watch life pass me by.  I don't think there's anything wrong with that.  I don't think there's anything wrong with being frustrated that I don't get to do it all.  The Grass is Always Greener is a well known aphorism for very good reasons - people wonder what it would be like if they were doing it differently.  

When SuperK and I travel I do a lot of the planning.  I compile a big list of  activities that I want included on our docket and sit quietly while she crosses off half of them with a big, red magic marker.  It used to make me mad when she did this until the one time she didn't and we followed my . . . um . . . ambitious schedule and we nearly killed ourselves.  We got to see a lot while not enjoying most of what we saw because we were rushing off to shortchange the next site.

My dream residence is a spacious, old apartment with lots of character and all new, modern appliances, the front door opening onto a busy thoroughfare in a cool, big city, the back door opening onto a beautiful garden with a nice view of the mountains and the ocean AND the desert AND AND AND etc. etc. etc.

If I felt like telling my friend what to do - which I feel like doing - I'd say make a list of what you want out of life; prioritize it; then cross off the bottom 50% of the things on the list.  You're still not going to get half of what's left.  My eyes are bigger than my stomach.

If I'm not happy with what I've got then I'm not going to be happy with what I want.

Something Else

I recently finished a book by the author James Salter.  It was a story about a young married couple who divorced in middle age, showing how the different choices they made in how to live their lives in the following years played out.  It wasn't especially riveting reading but it did make me think about how my actions lead to good outcomes or bad outcomes - at least in the traditional sense of those words - and how the things we think we want sometimes don't bring us much pleasure and how sometimes they do.  The woman chose a simple life in a rustic cottage, close to the things she had always known, and the man took a more exotic path.  The choices worked and they didn't work.   Each character was glad for the life they had chosen most of the time but were occasionally disconsolate that they hadn't done something else.

Something Else!!  I'm always worried that I'm not doing the right thing.  If I was only doing Something Else!! then I'd be happy.

It made me ponder warm, familiar routines and it made me long for new adventures.  They're both great and I can have both, but I can't have both of them at the same time.  I get myself into trouble when I'm doing one and pining for the other, which I do far too often.  The grass is always greener, etc. etc. 

Part of the trip from which I just returned involved a certain tearing away.  I saw what was and how it had changed and where I was now.  Take the county fair, for instance: it was so cool walking those familiar lanes, between food booths and amusement rides and carnival barkers, seeing how many things have not changed much over the last 50 years.  At the same time, it was somehow tired.  It was something that I had done and I couldn't do again.  I wanted to have walked those lanes every year for the last 50 years while being in a small town in rural France.  I want to take a good book and sit under an old tree, reading the day away, and I want to be on a fan boat barreling down a tributary of the Amazon, strange birds calling to me from the trees.

I want it ALL!

Reflection

Reflect:  To think seriously; to ponder or consider.   

I had some time for reflection yesterday at the connecting airport.  I had a five hour lay-over between flights.  To get to the airport early enough to return my rental car and make the flight I had to get up at 3 in the morning - if by "3" you mean "4."  I think 3 sounds a lot more impressive even though 4 is still pretty early.

I was thinking: "Who the $#!! makes a flight with a $#!! five hour layover, and who gets up at 3 in the morning to take such a flight?"  I didn't pursue this line of thinking very far because generally I make my own reservations. I suspected this was the case in this particular instance.

I did spend some time trying to parse all of the anxiety I experienced on my visit home.  I expected some but was frankly overwhelmed by the amount and the volume of the anxiety, and how difficult it was to dislodge.  

Sometimes I think the length of my sobriety and all of the time I've spent trying to enlarge my spiritual life should protect me from the foibles of the material world.  Ah, callow youth.  I'm a lot better than I used to be but I'm NEVER going to be insulated from problems of money, ego, and sex.  It's not possible.  Ain't going to happen.

In the last two months I've packed up my life and moved 1000 miles away - a wonderful move, to be sure, but a huge sea change.  I've lost a beloved pet.  I've tried to reconstruct my life in a new city.  Then I head home, a trip generally fraught with some nice booby-traps and land mines.  I was on shaky spiritual ground before I left.  Not because I was neglecting my spiritual life but because I had weathered some serious assaults on my serenity by problems of money and ego.  

It was tough sledding.  I could have handled it better but I probably did about as well as could be expected.

Musings

I try to practice the ABLs of recovery – Always Be Learning.  Just when I think I have it all figured out I discover that I have almost nothing figured out.  In fact, I’m totally in the dark.  There are no lights anywhere.  There are no matches.  There are not two sticks to rub together to get the dimmest, most ineffectual light.  You know the part where god said: “Let there be light.”  I’m in darkness roughly equivalent to the darkness right before that light came on.

 I’m in an airport halfway home and I’m damned glad to be there.  My trip, in my opinion, was effective and consequential but not very pleasant.  I couldn’t get passed some of the dynamics of old family relationships that trigger some pretty crappy behaviors.  Actually, I think my outside behavior was OK – it was what was going on inside my head that was so disturbing.  Think: Genghis Kahn and his Mongol Horde with automatic weapons.  If one could be arrested for what one thinks one Seaweed would be in a deep, dank dungeon somewhere far, far away.

I’m glad I made the trip.  I got to see a bunch of dear, dear friends that I miss a lot.  I spent some time with my family and I think it was something that needed to be done.  My parents have deteriorated significantly in my absence and the next 6 months could – should – see some big changes.  I wouldn’t know how to be a steward of these changes without being there for 10 days.  My sister, who is doing the lion’s share of the caretaking, probably doesn’t see the extent of the changes because they’ve happened so slowly over such a long period of time.

I found the whole thing upsetting, to be honest about it.  These family members love me and it’s hard to see the deterioration and it’s hard to feel so uncomfortable with my outlook on the relationships.  I’m  very much a guy who doesn’t often care what people think of me but what these people think is incredibly significant.  Stuff that I brush off with a laugh coming from almost anyone in the world sticks in my craw when it comes from my family.

I think my folks appreciated what we got accomplished.  I think my behavior was OK – it’s not like I’m known for my tolerance and calm demeanor and patient, sunny disposition.  Most people see it as a good visit if I don’t throw a TV out of an open window.  I realize – even before the trip – that I have plenty of work to do on my spiritual insides.  I know that there are always going to be people, places, and things that I’m going to have trouble with.  I’m a human being, after all – trapped in the material form of a god on earth, of course – so I can expect continuing problems with money, power, and sex.

 It’s the nature of the package.

The Teased

Gossip:  To talk about someone else's private or personal business, especially in a way that spreads that information.

I'm fascinated by how itchy my trigger finger is when it comes to my family.  I pride myself on at least working on my tolerance and understanding with people in general but, man, does that go out the window when it comes to my blood relatives.  I think that part of the phenomenon is that there's such a large body of work that I can access.  When someone I know doesn't treat me very well I'm pretty good at giving them the benefit of the doubt.  Even when my toes get trampled more than once I find that whatever anger and pissiness and desire for revenge I hork up evaporates like mist in the morning sun when the opportunity presents itself for me to deliver a crippling blow.  It isn't worth my peace of mind.  I take a lot because I don't get the satisfaction that I used to with silly little emotional victories, often over people I barely know or don't care that much about.

But with my family I have the patience of a shrew.  If you step on my toes a couple of times or a couple of dozen times I can default to patience but if you do it a few hundred thousand times I wise up.  The problem for me is that I almost never feel good when I do the retaliation thing even if I deserve to do it and the family member who is the target of my witty barbed witticism deserves it richly.  I hate that I've developed a conscience, however weak and vestigial it might be.

One of my blood relative families has it awfully good in our material world.  This is really neither here nor there and none of my concern - it certainly isn't any of my business - but they seem to think that this affords them a higher position in the human pecking order.  Again, none of my business but they trot out this opinion in my presence far too often.  My belief is that if you're talking about other people behind their backs then you're talking about me behind my back.  I play it close to the vest with gossipers - I don't want to give them any more ammunition than I have to.

A lot of the time people that engage in mean-spirited teasing are very thin skinned about getting teased themselves.  And I notice that they hide behind a veneer of innocence and tease and tease and tease, exclaiming: "Hey, why are you getting upset?  I'm just joking!" when the teasing becomes too much for the teased.

I may be too far gone to do much beyond cope with these relationships.

Crazy Train

Here's the truth: I am thinking of blowing something up if I have to spend one more minute with any member of my family.  I mean guns, big guns, machine guns.  I do a pretty good job with a lot of my relationships but my family presents problems that I have trouble transcending.  Buttons, buttons, and more buttons.  Big buttons, buttons with "Push Here" on them, buttons flashing with bright neon lights.  Most of the things that bug me aren't a big deal but I react vociferously.  I can't seem to help myself.  I'm around people who are far more irritating all of the time and I barely break a sweat but these people drive me CRAZY!

Part of the deal is that I have a lot of history with these people.