Where I Belong

 I had pre-decided on Saturday that I was just going to listen and not open my mouth.  I talk too often as it is and rarely have anything coherent to say.  It's amazing that when you don't spend all of your time thinking about what you're going to say and preparing your brilliant remarks you can hear some good stuff.  The topic was Gratitude and people shared anecdotes about how grateful they are that they're no longer doing some of the stupid shit they did when they drank.

One guy used to sneak sips of wine and covered up his tracks by putting red food coloring in a glass of water and topping the bottle off until one time he drunkenly used green food coloring so that at the next meal his wife poured them each a glass of green wine.

Another guy talked about doing some research on the medicine that a veterinarian had prescribed for his dog - his dog, for god's sake - and decided that he could maybe, possible get off if he took it.

It made me think of a friend of mine who was a shipyard supervisor who would periodically use a company car to cruise around the site to check on the progress of various jobs.  A friend flagged him down one morning: "Mike, what are you doing?"  Turns out he had his company-issued polo shirt on inside out and that was the best thing about his appearance.  He also had on a pair of glasses that was missing one of the lenses and apparently the night before - when he was driving around in a black out in a company car - he threw up without bothering to get out of the car, leaving streaks of dried vomit running down the side of the car.

Yeah, we were fooling everybody.

It made me offer a brief observance: "When I was drinking if you had told me that my choices were to get up at 6 AM on a Saturday to drive to a 7 AM meeting where we'd talk about spiritual matters or to take some pills prescribed for a dog I wouldn't have hesitated to make my choice."

This is how I know I'm where I belong.

Gall and Bile and Such

Gall:  Rudeness and the quality of being unable to understand that your behavior or what you say  is not acceptable to other people.

I took a phone call yesterday from a dude I sponsor if by "sponsor" you mean "I talk to him sometimes so he can ignore me and feel better about himself."  I'm kidding - he's a good guy and works hard at getting better.  He wanted to talk about a co-worker that he was thinking of garroting and then burying in a shallow grave.  I listened and he talked a blue streak for the better part of an hour.  I could have put the phone down and taken a nap - he wouldn't have known the difference.  I've learned that most of the time people just want to unburden themselves.  They don't want my advice.  I don't blame them.  My advice usually sucks.  I never suggest that anyone take my advice.  Stop someone on the street and ask their advice.  It'd probably work better.

This is how we help each other.  I know my friend and I know that he wasn't lying to me or making shit up.  He was probably exaggerating to make himself look better but that's SOP.  It made me think about the difference between wisdom and knowledge and how wisdom is a combination of knowledge and experience, often earned in painful ways.  When I'm right and the other person is wrong it's awfully hard for me to try to find the middle ground.  The middle ground is that I'm fucking right and you need to back off.

It also made me think about how we all need to strike a balance between being right and respecting ourselves.  As a recovering alcoholic I don't grovel in the mud before anyone anymore.  I stand tall, on my own two feet.  So with each situation I have to ask myself if this is a case where I need to assert myself and protect my own ego (rare) or do I need to be the bigger person, the man with a Program, the man on a spiritual quest (distressingly fucking common).

This guy took a series of aggressive texts from the asshole who was complaining about a minor matter where my buddy was indeed at fault, and they ruined his entire day.  He demonstrated spiritual growth by not responding in kind.  Good for him but he seethed about the unfairness of the situation.  As an older guy I can't afford to have entire days ruined anymore - I don't have enough days left to have any ruined.  I did not suggest this at the end of our conversation that he might have responded like this: "Hey, man, sorry about that.  I know that when I do this it upsets our boss and both of our days go better when the boss is in a good mood.  Thanks for having my back.  I owe you one."

Can you visualize the gall of the other man to reduce my friend to this state, the choking, poisonous bile he would have had to swallow to write that?  He was right and the other guy was wrong!  This is unfair!!  But would he have ruined an entire day so that he could assert his self-righteous prerogative?  Probably not.  I kept this to myself as the situation seemed still too urgent.  He'll figure it out.

This is how we pass the love back and forth in The Fellowship.  We make each other think.  When we have some pertinent experience, strength, and hope we pass it along.  When we need some ES&H we ask for it and honor the other man with the request.

Not That Important

 I've got a birthday coming up soon.  Birthdays used to be a cause for celebrating (Or: drinking and using, as if I needed a reason/excuse to drink and use).  Or at least a time to procure some more swag that I didn't need.  Now what I mostly do is make a quick calculation as to how much time I have left on this mortal coil.  Usually I'm quick to point out the downside of anything while ignoring the upside but here's an exception.

I walked about five miles to an auto repair shop to pick up my wife's car.  My recollection is that I was told the car would be ready in the morning.  I don't recollect anyone saying that they'd call me as soon as it was ready.  All of this may be true or some of it or none of it at all.  Which isn't really the point.  The point is that when I got there the car wasn't finished and it wasn't going to be finished anytime soon.   Had I reacted on my knee-jerk action I would have been unpleasant because what I wanted was for the car to be ready.  This was what I wanted and what I want is really the only thing I care about.  

The upside?  I've learned through hard experience to keep my fucking mouth shut when I'm disturbed for any reason.  Restraint of tongue and pen and internet and all that.  And when my mouth is shut I usually arrive at the million dollar question: "How important is this?"  And almost immediately the million dollar answer appears: "Not very important."  And I let it go and my day moves on, without much collateral damage.

O.J.

We have play tickets at a theater about 50 miles from where we live so when we attend a performance we often spend the night so we can visit a museum and eat some unusual ethnic food - it's a cultural night out.  Our last hotel provided free parking but it was valet only.  Frankly, I can park my own car.  I can almost see where they park it.  Instead of waiting for some kid to get my car I could walk down and get it myself and be at the theater before I reached the head of the valet queue.  One of my buy-coffee-for-the-person-behind-me resolutions for the last several years has been to tip like a billionaire.  Actually, I'm probably more generous than that although it sticks slightly in my craw every time I do it.  We were in and out of the hotel twice so that was $20 in tips.  I can afford this and the guys who were fetching and retrieving the vehicle . . . god only knows how they can afford to live in this quite expensive city.  I feel like I'm being of service when I do this.  I feel like some of the money that God has so generously showered on me is meant for other people.  In the moment it's still a weird experience being generous but I know that it's one of those behaviors that makes me a better person.

To continue: I use a hotel booking website that provides some benefits to people that book enough hotels and we have accrued enough good will that we receive a $50 breakfast credit at most places.  I know this sounds like a lot but we're in L.A. so a couple of breakfast burritos with the tip pre-added and a delivery fee and there's your $50.  We had a little money left over so SuperK - ever the thrifty German - got a couple of $6 glasses of orange juice to take us right up to the edge.  We don't leave money on the table, goddammit.  A few minutes later the room service folks called up to say that they had made a mistake, that we had gone over the limit, so SuperK just had them remove the juices. But when the guy shows up with our food he also had the drinks.  I told him we didn't order them while I was tipping him an additional $5.  I changed my mind and said: "You know what - we'll take the juice."  He told me he'd have to charge me for them.  I waved him off cheerfully.  He paused for a minute and then said: "You know what - I don't feel like taking them back" and passed them back over to me.  Yeah, they're sitting on a cart that he's going to wheel back to the kitchen so it didn't look like it was going to be too much work.  I think it was just our whole demeanor and attitude that did it.  And the $5 didn't hurt, either.

Find a Mirror

 I do best when I'm looking inside.  God knows I like to look outside.  It's a hell of a lot easier finding fault in other people, places, and things than it is looking inward and trying to decide if I need to do some work and change something or if I've done all I can and now I need to sit patiently, quietly, and wait to see what's next.  I like working on you.  It's a lot less painless than working on me.

"The Serenity Prayer in your own words."

One of my good buddies at the morning meeting finally fed up with the homeless situation, called me, and unburdened himself, maintaining that we need to ban this one particularly disruptive guy.  He's a well-respected elder statesman in the meeting, not contaminated with the stink of being a grenade-throwing malcontent like me.  I told him I had his back.  I told him I'd stop by a church out in our neighborhood that I know is sympathetic to The Fellowship and when I did this they were receptive to hosting a new meeting.  When I told my friend he was awfully noncommittal.  Uh-Oh, I thought, here goes Charlie Brown barreling toward the football that he's finally sure that Lucy isn't going to snatch away at the last moment and I'm flat on my back again.  Got to laugh at ourselves.

I think that a big part of my general sense of annoyance at the world in general is a pretty deep frustration with the state of affairs in my country.  I totally get that we fiercely defend our personal liberty and the right to do what we think is best individually but after a while it just seems to me to be boorishly selfish.  I continue to go to my morning meeting and I continue to be irritated - not profoundly irritated but definitely irritated - and I suspect that I feel the absence of the people who left and I'm nurturing an indignation that they broke all kinds of laws and ignored the pleas from the medical community to avoid large gatherings is still alive and well.  The stuff that goes on in the meeting I attend isn't significant enough to explain my severe self-righteousness.

Find a mirror.  Look at the mirror.  See the problem.

Shuffling Off This Mortal Coil

  Relaxed:  Free from tension and anxiety; at ease.

Whoa, those are bullshit words, man, and not in my lexicon.  You'd think that this would be internalized into my machinery after 65 years shuffling around this mortal coil but it's never easier for me to go slowly, quietly into the night.  I have been applying tension to my person for my entire life and while I've learned over the years - through diligent, exhausting practice - how to torque the tension down a great deal it's still a big part of my make-up.  The status quo is meant to be pulverized is how I see things.

So I get a lot done.  I do a lot of things.  That's great if I could let it be but there's always more to be done and this attitude can lead to frustration at the end of the day.  In my work life I looked at a lot of machinery with a lot of moving parts.  The designers were always trying to balance tension with life span - the more tension that they applied the more power and speed the machine could deliver but the more tension placed on the equipment would lead to shit breaking.  It was fascinating looking at some of these systems, marveling at the violence of the operations.  I'd watch, expecting something to break every time a big piece of metal would index.  Fascinating stuff and I'll tell you I keep my hands and feet and face way the hell out of the way.  I was quite careful about moving through those environments.

So this is inside my head.  Big pieces of metal clanging together at high speed.

More, more, more!!

"Shuffling off this mortal coil" is from Hamlet should you be interested.  I looked this up after hearing it in an episode of Bosch, if you can believe that.  And Bosch's first name is Hieronymus or Harry for short.  Look up some of that dude's paintings if you want to see how an apocalyptic mind works.

Free Coffee!

  I took a walk today to the local hardware store to pick up an odd, circular fluorescent light bulb that I had to special order.  I didn't need one, mind you - I just felt like buying something weird.  A light bulb in the shape of a circle.  I had to have one of those.  I might put it in my Discarded Items Garden which is currently populated by old cell phones and camcorders, little chess pieces molded in the shapes of Simpson's characters, a wooden electric clock stuck at ten past five - A.M. or P.M is anybody's guess - and other pieces of flotsam and jetsam.  There are also a bunch of cactus and palm trees that are defended by an impressively vicious array of thorns and needles and stickers.

Anyway, I stopped in for what I used to call my Overpriced Specialty Coffee Drink with my tongue firmly in my cheek but now - Jesus! - these drinks really do cost too much.  (BTW, tongue-in-cheek originates from the idea that one is biting one's tongue to keep from laughing as one tells a whopper although I'd say tongue-between-teeth makes more sense).  As I do from time to time, as the mood strikes me, I ordered my coffee and turned around to the next person in line and said "And whatever she's having," hoping the next person isn't ordering drinks for the entire office.  I do this primarily to see the look on people's faces.  I'd say the look is akin to tossing a live hand grenade back or releasing a particularly toxic fart.  People freeze.  I can see the thought process: "OK, what's the game here?"  They don't process the idea that it's a few bucks out of my pocket and often look a little wary.

The woman thanked me again, ordered something ordinary, and froze again when I said: "No, that's too expensive."  Alright, that was one extremely dry and weird quip too far but I had to give it a whirl.  The woman behind the counter said: "Well, that was sweet."  It all makes me ponder the very real possibility that this just never happens.  When did we get so self-absorbed that buying a coffee for someone unbidden is such a shocker?  I know half the reason I do it is that it forces me to quit thinking about myself for one fucking minute.  Yeah, and the shock value is way up there, too.