Formless Masses and Great Confusion and Other Wonders

Chaos: Any great confusion or disorder (see "confusion").

In the realm of the Earth People, chaos is not the general goal. Earth People prefer to avoid chaos; alcoholics nurture it. We are in our element when the entire building is crashing down around us. Earth People flee in terror; alcoholics take a seat, dodging the occasional flaming timber, and throw some more gasoline on the fire. Our lives have been so marked with great disorder that we have kind of grown used to it. We still gravitate toward great disorder, even in sobriety. We can't help it. We're chaos junkies.

Confusion: Suggests an indiscriminate mixing or throwing together of things so that it is difficult to distinguish the individual elements or parts.

SuperK and I like to garden (by "garden" I mean "grow a variety of plants, flowers, and vegetables as food for the deer, rabbits, chipmunks, and squirrels that inhabit my incredibly urban yard"). My preference would be to have everything in neat little rows, organized by color and height, planted so that there would be an orderly progression of blooming. This is because I'm a control freak. I need to make everything buckle under to my demands.

SuperK prefers a style that we affectionately call Chaos Gardening. She buries shit in the ground and sees what comes up. Stuff is growing all over the place. Some areas look neglected and some are a riot of plant life. "If it blooms it stays," she says, when I point out that a particular corner of the garden is, in reality, weeds. This is my legacy. This is my reality.

"When God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was at first a shapeless, chaotic mass, with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors."

That's what I'm talking about.

The Frighteners

Frightened: Implies a sudden, usually temporary seizure of fear.

I was talking with my friend Jack last night about the trials and tribulations of being self-employed. The best thing is that no one gets to tell you what to do. The worst thing is that no one sends you a paycheck. In the straight commission world that we inhabit this is called "eating what you kill," which is a strange turn of the phrase for a vegetarian. You should see me stalking the deadly turnip in my back yard, dressed in full camouflage, face blacked out, crossbow at the ready. Those turnips haven't gotten a chance against a fearsome vegetable hunter like me. Carrots, rutabagas, parsnips, none of the root vegetables stand a chance.

We were laughing about how easy it is to project doom and failure and how difficult it is to believe that things will work out well. This despite the fact that most things work out just fine and, when they don't, we handle it OK. We learn from setbacks. We get stronger. Is this a curse of the average alcoholic, this certainty that we are going to die a horrible death tomorrow? Or are other sinister forces at work?

I don't watch the news too much any more. I think most news organizations peddle fear. Right now the crisis du jour is swine flu. Apparently 25 or 30 people in the United States -- out of a population of 300 million - have contracted this disease. My cheap desk calculator doesn't have enough decimal points to tell you what vanishingly small, statistically insignificant percentage this works out to be. What did I glimpse on the national news on a major network last night? Graphics of the states where people have contracted swine flu, with blood pouring out of them and fire consuming them and animated Satans spearing infected humans and roasting them on ovens stoked with hell's brimstone.

It's not all us.

Fantasy and Reality

Testify: To profess or proclaim publicly, as one's belief.

I listened to a lead recently given by a friend of mine. As a general rule I'm not a big fan of listening to one person talk for the better part of an hour, unless it's me. I can listen to myself talk for hours and hours so I'm assuming that every one else is just as interested. This is why I talk to myself so much. It's very interesting.

Part of the problem is that most people aren't nearly as interesting to others as they are to themselves. And I'm guessing that given the amount of bullshit and misdirection and exaggeration that I reel out when I'm talking that everyone else does the same thing, which probably isn't true. The main obstacle for me, of course, is that I just don't have a very long attention span any more. All of that Colt 45 must have burned out a lot of crucial circuitry.

That being said it is fascinating to me watching the light come on in some one's eyes when they unravel the entire thread of their drinking before a group of people. I remember the first time I shared "what it was like." I always considered myself a High Bottom Drunk. I liked to tell people stories of my tragic exploits when I was drinking. I dressed them up, made them funny and clever. You can do that with one story. But after 50 or 60 tragic exploits in a row it starts to get depressing. I had a lot of good reasons to stop drinking. What I said to the cop when he was arresting me for a DWI was funny; sitting in a jail cell, sick and frightened, was not funny. No way to make that funny.

I had an image of myself and the world had an image of me. Their image was more accurate. I saw myself as the captain of a big yacht. There I was on the bridge, drink in hand, cigarette dangling from my lips, hat tilted at a jaunty angle, enjoying the company of the supermodels and rock stars partying with me. The world saw an ashen and sickly guy in a ball cap sitting in a row boat which was slowly disappearing beneath the waves. The boat was on fire, pirates were boarding it from the rear, and it was really a slab of waterlogged cardboard and not a boat at all.

I Wouldn't Change a Thing

Change; Denotes a making or becoming distinctly different and implies either a radical transmutation of character or replacement with something else.

There sure are a lot of ways to look at change. I don't like any of them. The idea of change is not comforting to many of us. We like things just the way they are, even if they totally suck. My experience is that I would rather sit in my own muck than get up and move somewhere else. I like where I am. My muck and I have an understanding. The muck gets in my eyes and hair and mouth and makes me totally miserable and I'm OK with that. I'm used to it. It's amazing the amount of abuse I'll take because I'm afraid that I may end up somewhere even worse.

The only constant in life is change. The only thing that I have to change about myself is everything. There are a whole lot of irritating sayings about making things different. My sponsor reminds me that change saved my life a while back. I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't made that big change and quit drinking.

I assume that if things change they will change for the worse. My experience is that, with well thought out change made with the counsel of people who know me well, good things happen. Of course things didn't work out well when I was drinking. I made foolish decisions -- stupid decisions -- based on selfish motives. I was impetuous and short-sighted and narrow-minded, eager to benefit myself, unconcerned about the well-being of others.

The times, they are a'changin.'

Complications

Complication: A complicated condition or structure; complex, involved, or confused relationship of parts.

I love to make things difficult. I can make anything really, really complicated. My specialty is to complicate simple things. I don't believe that simple is good. Anybody can do simple. It takes a profound mind to sweep away the detritus of a thing and discover its true inner essence. It takes a specialness that people like me have in abundance.

They say AA is a simple program for complicated people. That's why we avoid long suggestions. One day at a time. Let go and let god. Live and let live. If we go longer than five words then some idiot starts in with the analyzing and the explaining and the modifications. Don't drink, go to meetings, read the book. There's not much wiggle room there. I can't misinterpret those instructions. Those instructions are idiot proof.

I don't know why I spend so much time thinking about things that have no relevance in the Big Scheme of Things and so little time appreciating all of the simple gifts that are really important.

I'm going to go look at the flowers in my front yard.

Stuff.

Stuff: Worthless objects; refuse; junk; foolish or worthless ideas, words, etc.; nonsense.

No good deed goes unpunished. Isn't that an old saying? Maybe it's no good dead goes unrewarded. That sounds like bullshit, too. I've done some good stuff over the years and haven't received any earthly rewards. I keep an Excel spread sheet listing all of the times I've done nice things that weren't properly reciprocated. I keep score. I don't do nice things just for the sake of being nice. Tit for tat. Tick tack toe.


So I call a local half way house for men recovering from drugs and alcohol and offer to donate some furniture that has been collecting dust and mouse droppings in my basement for a long time. I'm too cheap to give anything away. I think I may need it some day. The director accepts my magnanimous offer to get rid of a bunch of crap that should have been put out on the curb years ago. He sends out a couple of guys in a pickup truck. One of the items was a large TV cluttering up the back bedroom on the second floor of my house.

While these guys were big boys they probably weren't in very good shape. What did I expect? They're trying to kick drugs and alcohol, not train for the Olympics. The TV made the trip from floor two to floor one in a barely controlled manner. I should be grateful they didn't drop the thing and let it bounce all the way down. Suffice it to say my walls and wood floors didn't fare too well.

After they left I sat in the stairwell assessing the damage, upset. My stuff got messed up. Now my dining room ceiling has a huge, circular stained area with paint flaking off, courtesy of a leak in a bathroom upstairs. I haven't fixed the leak, preferring to just turn off the water to that bathroom instead. And I haven't gotten anywhere near that water damaged ceiling. That would require a ladder and tools and effort. I just don't look at it anymore.

I called Shorty, who rushed over with a bunch of tools to repair the damaged stairs, which was way too damaged to easily fix. Guys trying to help other guys fix things is the total pinnacle of guy-like action. Nothing ever gets fixed -- there's just a lot of huffing and puffing and flashing of implements. The important thing is I picked up the 1000 lb phone and made the call. I'm writing about it. I called my sponsor. The unimportant thing that had the potential to upset me for days is mostly gone, although my eyes are drawn to the damage like nobody's business.

I try to never get upset about stuff.

Rules Do Not Apply to Me

Exempt: Freed from a rule, obligation, etc. which binds others.

On Monday night I went to an AA meeting. I got there a little later than normal and, unbeknown to me, parked firmly in the middle of a bus stop, which apparently does not fall into the category of permissible legal behavior. The City of Cincinnati, which permits drivers to move up and down my busy street at speeds far exceeding the posted limit all day long and with no threat of repercussions, graced my windshield with a parking ticket. A $50 parking ticket.

My initial inclination was to call the mayor and raise Cain. My arguments were sound. It was raining. It was darkish. Do buses even run that late at night? It's a fancy schmancy part of town and I've never seen anyone, ever catch a bus at that location, unless it was some rich person's maid. I was going to an AA meeting, for god's sake, to seek a cure for a deadly disease. I MADE A MISTAKE!

Luckily for me, I ran through an exercise that I subject lesser mortals to when they are bitching about something they can't change. Was I in a bus stop? Yes. Is it legal to park in a bus stop? No.

Closed case. Pay the ticket. You are not special. The bureaucracy isn't cutting you any slack because you're a good guy. You have to obey the rules just like everyone else.

Several years ago I was in my college town and parked on a street that had in the ensuing years changed to permit only parking. I practically ran over the No Parking sign but still didn't see it. I walked around for 20 minutes to look at all the bushes that I used to throw up in and returned to my car, which had been ticketed. The traffic guy got me not five minutes after I parked. This was obviously a money making exercise for them.

I paid the ticket. I also have refused to buy anything in that large town that I visit for business since. No gas, no meals or hotels, not a fucking cup of coffee.

Does that sound like a resentment? I'm really not angry about it. I thought their rules were unfair. I didn't try to change their rules or ignore their intent. They got $50 from me for a mistake. I'm sure I would have paid twice that in taxes over the years.

I'm a man of principles. Twisted, sick principles but I'm honorable about them.