Humble: Thinking lowly of oneself; claiming little for oneself; not proud, arrogant, or assuming; modest.
At my men's meeting we read Step 7 this week. This is a very good Step. It's good to read it. I personally think that Steps 6 and 7 get kind of shat upon in our main book - humility and willingness are big, complicated concepts and they get reduced to a couple of paragraphs. I understand this as the founders were struggling with explaining why spirituality is the key to recovery - a pretty big matzo ball for a lot of people to swallow - and then were doing some pretty serious detailing of the inventory process - the biggest of matzo balls to choke down.
I'm losing my train of thought here. The point is that the discussion about humility came down to the realization that many of us started to feel some real contentment when we got our arms around the concept of being humble. "Feeling comfortable in my own skin" was a phrase that came up repeatedly. It seems that we feel comfortable in our own skins when we stop trying to pretend that we're someone else - we're not pieces of shite and we're not Commanders of the Universe. It's somewhere in between. What you see is what you get.
I realize today that I'm comfortable with who I am. I don't do a lot of pretending anymore. I don't care that much about what other people think of me - I still have to behave myself but I don't have to be perfect anymore.
Yeah?
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Euphoric Recall of the Jungle Kind
One time SuperK and I repeated a vacation, escaping the cold of The Old City for a nice, warm beach. We explored the area and had a jolly good time, such a good time that we decided to return the next winter. Alas, it was a little boring so we haven't retraced our steps ever again. The good news is that we're rarely bored - the bad news is that we're frequently stressed.
On the plane home I normally start dreaming about the next adventure but this trip had worn me totally out so I was in no hurry to go anywhere anytime soon. This attitude lasted almost a week - all I can remember now is the good stuff and the bad stuff? The best stories, of course.
On one of my other Over The Edge vacations - to the rain forest with Little Westside Jonny - we had to leave our camp, if by "camp" you mean "rat-infested, tarantula-crawling, armadillo-snorting, not enough food or water outdoor shack compound" very early in the morning. The trip was going to start in the dark and as I tried to drift off the night before on my filthy 2 inch thick mattress lying on a wooden pallet, I could hear the people responsible for extracting us from our misery getting increasingly drunk outside, strumming guitars and hooting and caterwauling in a not-reassuring fashion.
LWSJ and I climbed into our motorized canoe in the pre-dawn darkness and began a high speed dash down a winding creek full of logs and tree branches and watery detritus of all shape and form. It's a great story today but I'll tell you this: sitting in a canoe on the move, wondering whether to keep my eyes closed to avoid getting my corneas lacerated with tree branches or to keep my eyes open so I wouldn't whomp my noggin on the fallen trees that were suspended over the creek was not the kind of decision I wanted to be forced into. One of my favorite stories today and I believe most of it is true, not a result to be sniffed at.
Corneas? In good shape. Noggin? Un-whomped.
On the plane home I normally start dreaming about the next adventure but this trip had worn me totally out so I was in no hurry to go anywhere anytime soon. This attitude lasted almost a week - all I can remember now is the good stuff and the bad stuff? The best stories, of course.
On one of my other Over The Edge vacations - to the rain forest with Little Westside Jonny - we had to leave our camp, if by "camp" you mean "rat-infested, tarantula-crawling, armadillo-snorting, not enough food or water outdoor shack compound" very early in the morning. The trip was going to start in the dark and as I tried to drift off the night before on my filthy 2 inch thick mattress lying on a wooden pallet, I could hear the people responsible for extracting us from our misery getting increasingly drunk outside, strumming guitars and hooting and caterwauling in a not-reassuring fashion.
LWSJ and I climbed into our motorized canoe in the pre-dawn darkness and began a high speed dash down a winding creek full of logs and tree branches and watery detritus of all shape and form. It's a great story today but I'll tell you this: sitting in a canoe on the move, wondering whether to keep my eyes closed to avoid getting my corneas lacerated with tree branches or to keep my eyes open so I wouldn't whomp my noggin on the fallen trees that were suspended over the creek was not the kind of decision I wanted to be forced into. One of my favorite stories today and I believe most of it is true, not a result to be sniffed at.
Corneas? In good shape. Noggin? Un-whomped.
Monday, February 9, 2015
Suicide . . . er, Travel . . . is Painless, It Brings on Many Changes
Change: The process of becoming different.
Back home in lovely, lovely Vacation City, enjoying the comfort of my home and the peace and quiet of the area, I find myself returning again and again to the Why? of travel. Why do I do this? Why do I put myself though this nipple wringer?
To me it's like this: when I'm in my routine, going to meetings, exercising, reading, meeting up with friends and family, I have to admit that it's pretty pleasant. It's not a painful existence that I lead and I enjoy doing these things. I'm not going to stop doing them, either, which would be counterproductive for a drunk who's entire raison d'etre is to feel physical comfort and avoid physical pain, and I'm not slighting emotional, mental, and spiritual pain when I say that.
That being said after a month of these activities I'm more or less the same person I was when the month started. I'm not being stretched by any sense of the word. I go to India and Nepal - which, by the way, is still kicking my ASS even though I've been home for 3 days - and I come back very much changed.
That's the thing about change - it's not always the easiest thing in the world
Back home in lovely, lovely Vacation City, enjoying the comfort of my home and the peace and quiet of the area, I find myself returning again and again to the Why? of travel. Why do I do this? Why do I put myself though this nipple wringer?
To me it's like this: when I'm in my routine, going to meetings, exercising, reading, meeting up with friends and family, I have to admit that it's pretty pleasant. It's not a painful existence that I lead and I enjoy doing these things. I'm not going to stop doing them, either, which would be counterproductive for a drunk who's entire raison d'etre is to feel physical comfort and avoid physical pain, and I'm not slighting emotional, mental, and spiritual pain when I say that.
That being said after a month of these activities I'm more or less the same person I was when the month started. I'm not being stretched by any sense of the word. I go to India and Nepal - which, by the way, is still kicking my ASS even though I've been home for 3 days - and I come back very much changed.
That's the thing about change - it's not always the easiest thing in the world
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Safe and Secure
All of our hotels provided small safes for our valuables. At our last place I found the safe and gave it a test run with no valuables inside - the last thing I wanted to do was lock up all of my best shit and then find out I couldn't get it back out again. Although this would have been par for the course for me I was on thin ice with SuperK already.
Everything went well so I put in our passports and locked the thing up. I did notice, however, that the safe seemed to shift ever so slightly. I gave it a shove and it moved a lot. I reached in and picked the whole goddam thing up - it was surprisingly light - and simply walked out the door with it. The weight got a little tiring at the end of our 6 hour tour but at least I had the peace of mind in knowing that our stuff was safe and secure.
Ever so briefly I thought that I'd mention this to the hotel staff.
Naw.
Everything went well so I put in our passports and locked the thing up. I did notice, however, that the safe seemed to shift ever so slightly. I gave it a shove and it moved a lot. I reached in and picked the whole goddam thing up - it was surprisingly light - and simply walked out the door with it. The weight got a little tiring at the end of our 6 hour tour but at least I had the peace of mind in knowing that our stuff was safe and secure.
Ever so briefly I thought that I'd mention this to the hotel staff.
Naw.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Should Be Very Likely
Should: Will likely (become or do something).
Very: To a great extent or degree; extremely; exceedingly.
On our last night in Kathmandu the tour coordinator stopped by our table at dinner, and we chatted a bit. As he got up to leave I mentioned that our passports didn't get stamped with the requisite visa when we entered the country. It was a typically hectic experience dealing with customs in a foreign country - jet-lagged, a foreign language coming at you fast and furiously, different requirements and procedures every time. I figured I was going to get stung for another $50 visa fee but I knew I could live with that.
The guy paged quickly through our passports looking for the visa stamp, brow furrowed somewhat.
"Is this bad?" I asked.
"It's very bad," he said.
He jumps on his cell and makes a series of calls.
"OK," he states. "I made some calls to friends I have in immigration and at the airport, and we should be good tomorrow."
There's that fucking word: should. I hate that word, especially when it's combined with very.
I should point out that when we entered Nepal we were given a receipt for the visa charges and a couple of other pieces of paper, customs forms and crap like that. I had lost those promptly - I didn't know when, either, unsure whether one of our guides had kept them or the hotel staff picked them up or I just lost them, the latter the most likely eventuality given my history of losing stuff. We realized how wonderful it would have been to have some more supporting documentation at this point, maybe even a slip with the visa stamp. To say that my existence on this planet was not seen as favorable by my wife would be a huge overstatement.
Our coordinator moves up our pick-up time from 11 to 9 the next morning to give us time to jump through some hoops. At 9 he calls and tells us it'll be 9:30 as the immigration office doesn't open until 10, then shows up at 9:45. This is all par for the course. We head off around 10 which, as I have pointed out previously, puts us in the maw of rush hour. It seems to be the most popular time to leave - we always leave then.
We arrive at the immigration office where our dude talks to a kid at a window, who points out a woman at a desk with a twist of his head, after a long stream of furious dialogue and much shaking of a large sheaf of papers we had given our dude - flight tickets, tour itineraries, hotel vouchers - ostensibly to prove we hadn't slipped into the country illegally over the Himalayas, pulling our suitcases on wheels, and then were trying to leave the country via the international airport in the country's capital during rush hour. More of the same with this woman, who directs us upstairs where we talk for a while with another woman who inevitably points next door to a couple of guys. This lady had her own private office - indicating a more influential buck-passer, we hoped - but she stood the whole time, in a somewhat confrontational pose. Our guide goes at it with the two guys and then speeds off back downstairs as we struggle to keep up.
"OK," he says. "We have it sorted out - we just need to make the application online. Then when we get to the airport it should be OK."
He points out the one automated visa application terminal - a long line of people queued up, mostly grungy backpacker kids - then gets on his phone and takes off, still holding our passports. SuperK and I look at each other confusedly - she stays put and I leave in hot pursuit, unwilling to let our one remaining piece of important documentation out of my sight. Outside, in a typically chaotic neighborhood of dirt roads and careening cars surrounding the nice, new immigration building, I find him in the door of a small business talking to the proprietor.
"This guy is very fast," he tells me, turning to go back into the Kafkaesque immigration building, one of the few places in the world that I had hoped never to enter ever again. "But it's very expensive."
"What's expensive?" I ask, increasingly concerned that these psychopaths weren't going to let me out of their country.
"500 rupees," he says. "Apiece."
$10.
"Yeah, let's do this," I say.
At this time I fumble in the little man purse that I've carried absolutely everywhere in Nepal for a solid week and the sheaf of papers I had been given at the airport fall out of a kind of hidden outer pocket.
"SuperK," I say, handing the papers to her without comment and IMMEDIATELY moving back out of punching range. The woman lifts weights. She looks at the papers, looks up at me - holding the glance an uncomfortable extra beat or two, admirably saying nothing - then talks to our guide.
"OK," he says. "We can go to the airport now."
I toss the equivalent of a buck to the guy who started to work on our very fast, very expensive application, and we pile into the car and head to the airport. When we arrive a dude in a tie jabbers with our facilitator dude and we're handed off. The airport guy takes us quickly and efficiently through what seemed like 719 different offices, line, queues, and obligations. I'm throwing money at everyone at this point. I do not see how it would have been possible to do this without help. It did not seem doable.
So we get through the maze. Our payoff was a 2 hour flight with a 7 hour lay-over; a 16 hour flight in a plane seat the size of a shoe-box, surrounded by ill, screaming children; then a 7 hour flight to Vacation City Near; finishing up with an hour bus ride home.
I slept good.
Very: To a great extent or degree; extremely; exceedingly.
On our last night in Kathmandu the tour coordinator stopped by our table at dinner, and we chatted a bit. As he got up to leave I mentioned that our passports didn't get stamped with the requisite visa when we entered the country. It was a typically hectic experience dealing with customs in a foreign country - jet-lagged, a foreign language coming at you fast and furiously, different requirements and procedures every time. I figured I was going to get stung for another $50 visa fee but I knew I could live with that.
The guy paged quickly through our passports looking for the visa stamp, brow furrowed somewhat.
"Is this bad?" I asked.
"It's very bad," he said.
He jumps on his cell and makes a series of calls.
"OK," he states. "I made some calls to friends I have in immigration and at the airport, and we should be good tomorrow."
There's that fucking word: should. I hate that word, especially when it's combined with very.
I should point out that when we entered Nepal we were given a receipt for the visa charges and a couple of other pieces of paper, customs forms and crap like that. I had lost those promptly - I didn't know when, either, unsure whether one of our guides had kept them or the hotel staff picked them up or I just lost them, the latter the most likely eventuality given my history of losing stuff. We realized how wonderful it would have been to have some more supporting documentation at this point, maybe even a slip with the visa stamp. To say that my existence on this planet was not seen as favorable by my wife would be a huge overstatement.
Our coordinator moves up our pick-up time from 11 to 9 the next morning to give us time to jump through some hoops. At 9 he calls and tells us it'll be 9:30 as the immigration office doesn't open until 10, then shows up at 9:45. This is all par for the course. We head off around 10 which, as I have pointed out previously, puts us in the maw of rush hour. It seems to be the most popular time to leave - we always leave then.
We arrive at the immigration office where our dude talks to a kid at a window, who points out a woman at a desk with a twist of his head, after a long stream of furious dialogue and much shaking of a large sheaf of papers we had given our dude - flight tickets, tour itineraries, hotel vouchers - ostensibly to prove we hadn't slipped into the country illegally over the Himalayas, pulling our suitcases on wheels, and then were trying to leave the country via the international airport in the country's capital during rush hour. More of the same with this woman, who directs us upstairs where we talk for a while with another woman who inevitably points next door to a couple of guys. This lady had her own private office - indicating a more influential buck-passer, we hoped - but she stood the whole time, in a somewhat confrontational pose. Our guide goes at it with the two guys and then speeds off back downstairs as we struggle to keep up.
"OK," he says. "We have it sorted out - we just need to make the application online. Then when we get to the airport it should be OK."
He points out the one automated visa application terminal - a long line of people queued up, mostly grungy backpacker kids - then gets on his phone and takes off, still holding our passports. SuperK and I look at each other confusedly - she stays put and I leave in hot pursuit, unwilling to let our one remaining piece of important documentation out of my sight. Outside, in a typically chaotic neighborhood of dirt roads and careening cars surrounding the nice, new immigration building, I find him in the door of a small business talking to the proprietor.
"This guy is very fast," he tells me, turning to go back into the Kafkaesque immigration building, one of the few places in the world that I had hoped never to enter ever again. "But it's very expensive."
"What's expensive?" I ask, increasingly concerned that these psychopaths weren't going to let me out of their country.
"500 rupees," he says. "Apiece."
$10.
"Yeah, let's do this," I say.
At this time I fumble in the little man purse that I've carried absolutely everywhere in Nepal for a solid week and the sheaf of papers I had been given at the airport fall out of a kind of hidden outer pocket.
"SuperK," I say, handing the papers to her without comment and IMMEDIATELY moving back out of punching range. The woman lifts weights. She looks at the papers, looks up at me - holding the glance an uncomfortable extra beat or two, admirably saying nothing - then talks to our guide.
"OK," he says. "We can go to the airport now."
I toss the equivalent of a buck to the guy who started to work on our very fast, very expensive application, and we pile into the car and head to the airport. When we arrive a dude in a tie jabbers with our facilitator dude and we're handed off. The airport guy takes us quickly and efficiently through what seemed like 719 different offices, line, queues, and obligations. I'm throwing money at everyone at this point. I do not see how it would have been possible to do this without help. It did not seem doable.
So we get through the maze. Our payoff was a 2 hour flight with a 7 hour lay-over; a 16 hour flight in a plane seat the size of a shoe-box, surrounded by ill, screaming children; then a 7 hour flight to Vacation City Near; finishing up with an hour bus ride home.
I slept good.
Monday, February 2, 2015
The New and Improved Seaweed
Last day of an exhilarating, frustrating, marvelous, intense, wonder of a trip.
I'm looking forward to going home despite the 36 hour transit time. I'm looking forward to a little routine, a little control, a little familiarity.
That being said I know that the last 30 days have caused me - forced me - to change a lot. I can look at any random 30 day period in Vacation City, filled with pleasant, comfortable, enjoyable routine - I really do enjoy my life a great deal - and understand that I'm usually going to come out the back end more or less the same person I was when the month started. This is not the case here - there have rarely been days that looked anything like one that came before. They have almost always been totally new.
36 hours transit time. Yikes.
I'm looking forward to going home despite the 36 hour transit time. I'm looking forward to a little routine, a little control, a little familiarity.
That being said I know that the last 30 days have caused me - forced me - to change a lot. I can look at any random 30 day period in Vacation City, filled with pleasant, comfortable, enjoyable routine - I really do enjoy my life a great deal - and understand that I'm usually going to come out the back end more or less the same person I was when the month started. This is not the case here - there have rarely been days that looked anything like one that came before. They have almost always been totally new.
36 hours transit time. Yikes.
Step Two? Step Two!
The soap here in Kathmandu smells like airplane glue. I shit you not. The first night I started to lather up and I thought that the maid had sprayed some industrial cleaner on the bars. Still standing under the water I tossed them in the garbage and fumbled with my wet fingers to tear the paper off of a new piece. It smelled like airplane glue. I lathered, rinsed, and exited the shower.
SuperK and I had a meeting last night where we read Step 2. When we were traveling early in our sobriety to places where we didn't have access to meetings we would do this more frequently than we do now. Shame on us, I guess, but it is understandable - it takes a little more chaos for our asses to fall off. Anyway, we had a good meeting and like most good meetings I heard a few things that surprised me, a few things that I wouldn't have suspected coming out of a meeting on Step 2. This is why we go to meetings. It isn't a formulaic thing. It comes at you at strange angles in unpredictable times.
She brought up the excellent, excellent point that she could reconstruct every single day of our 30 day trip in exact detail, including the food we ate at every meal. One of the reasons that I like new experiences, challenging ones especially, is that it really makes you get into the minute. At home I have trouble remembering the day before yesterday let alone what I ate 3 weeks ago but I had to admit - I was right there with her. I could recite the itinerary myself.
The second excellent, excellent point was that we have found ourselves in a situation for which we have no frame of reference - it is that new. So like good drunks we try to jam the experience into the template of an experience for which we have some frame of reference. This is not The States or Europe or South America, and we're going to suffer the more we try to make it understandable. We can prepare but we can't predict.
I, on the other hand, had nothing particularly interesting to say.
SuperK and I had a meeting last night where we read Step 2. When we were traveling early in our sobriety to places where we didn't have access to meetings we would do this more frequently than we do now. Shame on us, I guess, but it is understandable - it takes a little more chaos for our asses to fall off. Anyway, we had a good meeting and like most good meetings I heard a few things that surprised me, a few things that I wouldn't have suspected coming out of a meeting on Step 2. This is why we go to meetings. It isn't a formulaic thing. It comes at you at strange angles in unpredictable times.
She brought up the excellent, excellent point that she could reconstruct every single day of our 30 day trip in exact detail, including the food we ate at every meal. One of the reasons that I like new experiences, challenging ones especially, is that it really makes you get into the minute. At home I have trouble remembering the day before yesterday let alone what I ate 3 weeks ago but I had to admit - I was right there with her. I could recite the itinerary myself.
The second excellent, excellent point was that we have found ourselves in a situation for which we have no frame of reference - it is that new. So like good drunks we try to jam the experience into the template of an experience for which we have some frame of reference. This is not The States or Europe or South America, and we're going to suffer the more we try to make it understandable. We can prepare but we can't predict.
I, on the other hand, had nothing particularly interesting to say.
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