Get The Aliens Off The Moon!

There's a famous short story by Ursula K. LeGuin about a man who wakes up each morning to discover that his dreams have become reality.  He meets with a psychiatrist and they decide to use subliminal methods to try to shape the man's dreams for the betterment of mankind.  There intentions really were good; the results?  Eh.

They started by trying to solve the world's overpopulation problem - the dreamer dreams that  a terrible plague kills ninety percent of all the people on earth.  They try for world peace - aggressive aliens land on the moon and prepare for an apocalyptic attack on earth, a threat  which binds all nations together in self-defense.  Frustrated, the psychiatrist screams: "Just get the moon off the moon!"  They launch their attack.  It goes on like this for a while.  The results are always a little skewed off center.

I think of this story often when my praying gets a touch too specific.  My HP has a great sense of humor.  For instance, if I pray for my work life to get better I might get fired.  It never comes out quite the way I want.  I'm always getting burned by some weird loophole when I try to tell god what god should do, something that god does not find helpful being as that god has been in god's position for a very long time and is quite happy with how things are working out.  

SuperK and I have our home for sale.   This is a situation that I did not envision when I was 28 years old and waking up penniless in my childhood bedroom.  It definitely falls in the BMW Flat Tire category, which is not an especially rough category to fall into.  Anyway, someone looked at the place twice and we were hopeful that they might make an offer to buy the place so that we can do . . . we're really not sure what we're going to do.   Something else.  Something other that what we're currently doing.

My understanding of prayer is that the problem isn't the praying for specific things but the praying for specific things without attaching the caveat "if it be your will" or something in that vein.  The problem is insisting on a certain outcome.  My wise mama tells me that I can pray for a safe trip or a favorable interview if I add that crucial, crucial addendum.  And I have to be careful that I pray only for myself and not for others, unless I'm praying for something good to happen to them.  It wouldn't be good, for instance, to pray that someone who cut me off in traffic contract bubonic plague.  That would be a selfish prayer even if the person really deserved to be struck down.  Today I don't pray for someone to get the Black Death although I confess to wishing a nasty case of stomach flu - with The Diarrhea and projectile vomiting - on the odd driver or two.

Anyway, I decided to pray for an offer on the place, quickly adding "if that's what you want to happen."  And guess what?  An offer came through, although the buyer's agent has warned us that "it isn't perfect."  

Damn it.  I KNEW I should have prayed for the perfect offer.  See what happens?  God gets it all twisted up and I don't get exactly what I want and if I want it, then it surely must be good for me.  Right?  Right?

Annoyable Seaweed

Annoy:  To disturb or irritate, especially by continued or repeated acts; to bother with unpleasant deeds.

As I exited my Starbucks today, full of over-priced specialty coffee, I found myself face-to-face with a scruffy guy holding a cardboard sign: "Backpack and Sleeping Bag Stolen - Anything Helps."  I gave him a buck, wished him good luck.  I don't doubt his story.  I've run into enough people in The Fellowship with similar stories.  It can be tough out there - crime falls disproportionately hard on those who can least afford it.  And frankly, I don't care anymore if I'm getting scammed out of a buck - I don't think it happens very often and guys drinking $3 lattes can afford the odd scamming.

I certainly bore no ill will to the blameless folks who annoyed me yesterday.  Trust me, I've been plenty annoyed plenty of times by well-dressed old-timers droning on and on sanctimoniously about how humble they are while managing to work in how long they've been sober, where they live, and what kind of job they have.  I can work up a good, strong annoyance towards just about anyone when I'm In The Mood.  I'd rather hang around people who don't care what I think about them than with people who are trying to influence how I think about them.

I'm constantly reminded how big the little things can be.  There's a young Hispanic woman who works as a cleaner at my pool.  SuperK has spent some time getting to know her and I don't think that's common at the club.  I think most people look right through her.  The other day this woman asked SuperK for a job reference.  My wife isn't going to get a medal for this but she should - that's service in action.  Today I swam alone and the young gal asked after SuperK.  I trotted out my terrible Spanish and I could see that it was appreciated.  I try to remember to concentrate on these little things because they're important and when I ignore them I put my own spiritual well-being at peril.

Heavy Mettle

Mettle:  A quality of endurance and courage; good temperament and character.

I hit the road for the Downtown Meeting today, sheets of rain threatening to rip my hat off my head and fling it over some highway overpass.  I was not in my usual fine morning mettle.  I had some mettle but it was not well organized and it faded as the morning preceded.  I don't have a great idea as to why my mettle is fine sometimes and completely lacking in others.  My mettle was out the window today and coffee - normally a powerful mettle-enhancer - did nothing in the mettle-boosting department.

I'm in the corner of this old church basement, the Undercroft so to speak  - big room, high ceilings - and there was a woman sitting catty-cornered to me.  She's often there - doesn't talk or join in at all, which is fine.  She's not on my Irritation Radar normally and it is goddam easy to get on my Irritation Radar.  Today she started to rub at her eyes.  She took a little compact mirror out of her backpack - an odd item to be hauling around on your back - and used it to really inspect what she was doing.  She rubbed ferociously and for a long time, switching eyes, peering into the mirror.  It really got on my nerves.  I can normally ignore stuff like this but in my mettle-less state I was drawn to it like a drunk to lager.  I couldn't see how it was possibly helping the state of her eyes.

Then a guy sat down on the other side of me.  He's usually at the meeting as well.  He pulled a little tiny chocolate cupcake out of his backpack and started to eat it.  The problems for me started almost immediately as he did a lot of lip-smacking and loud-swallowing and Adam's Apple-bobbing.  It took him several bites to consume this tiny one bite chocolate cupcake: a pop-it-in-your-mouth, chew-twice, and swallow cupcake.  Moreover, he had an apparently endless supply of these cupcakes in his backpack which he ate in a deliberate, noisy fashion. 

While I did appreciate the distraction from the eye-rubber the lip-smacking started to get on every single one of my easily irritated nerves.  He might as well have taken out an amplified bullhorn and aimed it in my direction on full volume.  I was focused on the smacking and the rubbing at the expense of the people who were sharing their experience, strength, and hope, allegedly the reason that I walked down to the meeting in the first place.  I have little idea what any of the speakers said what with the smacking and rubbing noises reaching a Niagra Falls crescendo of wet, mucousy sound.

I projected into the future – one of my all-time favorite things to do – and holding hands with these two good folks during the closing prayer was dancing at the periphery of my vision.  Normally projection doesn't do me any good but today it had its benefits.  I left a few minutes early and headed to the bathroom, where I washed and washed and washed my hands, using a concoction of lye, bleach, anti-microbial cleanser, and soap, which I applied with some steel wool I had in my bag.

A guy that I knew but had never spoken to came in.  We started talking about the weird mental blank spots that all drunks seem to have from time to time concerning alcohol.  He had shared this great story in the meeting about a visit to one of his customers who was an employee of a microbrewery.  His customer had a full mug of beer with a head of foam sitting on his desk.  It got in my friend's head. He couldn't keep his eyes off of that beer.  He knew he couldn't drink it but he thought maybe he could just smell it.  He leaned over and took a deep whiff of a novelty candle in the shape of a mug of beer.

We laughed about that for a while.  '

I didn't shake his hand.

Guy Talk

I received a catalogue today that was geared for the tastes of men, a category that I fit into obliquely and begrudgingly.  I never walk through the women's clothing section of department stores - I'm a little too close to trying on silk stockings and a dress.  This particular catalogue is full of stuff that makes you think: "Wow, that would be so cool to have" even though you realize that if you got that thing you'd say "What in god's name did I want this thing for?"

I didn't really see too much in there for a guy like me.  Tools and sports stuff and very expensive work things.  I have always wondered why someone would need a $200 pen - Bics seem to do the trick for me.  I'm often unsure of the location of my wallet and car keys; if I had a $200 pen the first thing I'd do is throw it down a storm sewer.  That way I'd know what happened to it.  This is more calming to me than reaching for my pen and having no idea where it is and then lying to SuperK about it and then forgetting what particular lie I told and having to come up with a whole series and network of contingency lies and back-up lies and supporting lies.

I like to lie.  I'm good at it.   I have an natural ability to lie and many, many years of practice doing it.  I'm pretty sure I could beat a lie-detector machine.  I would have been a good spook, drifting in and out of the shadows in the dangerous world of international espionage.  The only reason I don't lie today is that I hate making amends when I get caught lying.  I hate it when someone calls me a liar except when I've just told a lie, am currently lying, or preparing to lie sometime in the near future.

What the hell am I talking about here?

Accept

Accept:  To endure patiently.

The topic at today's meeting was acceptance.  I need a constant reminder of the power and beauty of this concept, the ability of acceptance to help me navigate my days, full of challenges and blessings.  I wonder if the opposite of acceptance shouldn't be War or Blitzkreig or Holocaust or Armageddon given all of the troubles I run into when I fight against the way things are.

It's a fool's errand to struggle against the vicissitudes of life.  They're unavoidable and the fact of the matter is we don't know how things are going to work out in the long run.  Or the short run.

Move forward - with purpose - open to all possibilities.

Seaweed Steve: Sage and Seer and Soothsayer.

Advice:  An opinion recommended or offered, as worthy to be followed; counsel.

And after the meeting I met with a guy that I sponsor to talk about the 10th Step.  I really like this Step - not doing it, of course, but telling someone else how to do it.  I'm good at that - telling you what to do, but don't you dare tell me what to do.  That is a firing-squad offense.  The 10th Step lays out the famous "restraint of tongue and pen" concept, and it suggests that anger isn't our best friend and that maybe we can look at all of the millions and billions of people who are irritating us as people who are struggling along sometimes just like we are.  I know I want some understanding when I mess up - why is it that I'm so averse to giving any to you?

This good man is sober about a year and a half; he has come a long way in his program.  In my opinion, however, he is kind of foundering in his outside-the-rooms life - he needs to shake things up or he's going to keep getting what he's gotten, which is boring and frustrating him.  Sometimes we need to sit quietly and enjoy what we have and sometimes we need to burst through the bubble and try something new.  Take a chance.  Not a rash, idiotic one but maybe something that frightens us or makes us uncomfortable.  

I had my speech all ready to go, only to hear him declare that he had decided to make a commitment to the area and to his work.  I stifled a chuckle.  Once again, I'm booted out of the advice business.  I try to dole out honest-to-god, this-is-what-you-should-do advice sparingly - I'm baffled as to what I should be doing most of the time which disqualifies me from telling anyone else what to do.  I always encourage people to ask some other people what they should do and not just rely on my expert advice

Downtown Again

I'm definitely grooving on the Downtown Meeting right now.  I'm a big fan of attending a lot of different kinds of meetings - I won't thrive on a strict diet of new sobriety - but my expectations are in line at this particular meeting right now.  When I go to meetings with a lot of sobriety present I notice a certain amount of back-slapping, aren't-we-fucking-unbelievable?, self-aggrandizing kissey-kissey.  The new people are keeping it simple, not drinking one day at a time, and grateful for just that.

I was stuck in a corner with a few homeless guys who don't have access to a regular shower.  One of them was called on to speak.  He's only recently on the street and he was very articulate - I could tell that he was making an effort to be as presentable as he could be despite his circumstances.  There was a quiet dignity about him that I found appealing.  My favorite attendee was the guy who read The Daily Reflections.  I noticed him when I chaired the other day - he's a wild looking old guy with an Einstein hairdo, uses a walker, and he was nodding off while I was speaking - not unusual when I'm the Main Attraction.  It was mesmerizing - his head would slowly, slowly, slowly tilt forward, and then Snap! he would jerk it upright.  I had trouble concentrating.  He read confidently and quickly, not stumbling once.  He sounded like a college professor.  I loved it.

When I keep my expectations in line good things happen.  When I pre-judge - when I say I'm better than or I'm not as good as - then I miss the magic.