Huff-Huff-Huff-Long Wail

I learned long ago that our five senses are so designed so that we pay special attention to changes in our environment and ignore steady-state conditions.  I'm guessing our consciousness understands that we can't be hyper-vigilant all the time so when nothing new is going on we figure that we're safe and secure and that we can zone out a little bit.  The example I use is the Crying Baby.  If you try to ignore the Crying Baby . . . well . . . good luck with that.  My Higher Power, ever the Merry Prankster, installed not one but two Crying Babies on my trip home so I could practice the arcane art of Not Giving A Shit.  I was grateful that these were daytime flights and I wasn't trying to get a lot of sleep but it was still an amazing exercise in the art of Believing My Own Bullshit.  I noticed that the second Crying Baby would wail normally on the out breath but had a staccato four or five step inhalation.  It was mesmerizing.  It made me laugh a few times. 

Huff-Huff-Huff-Long Wail.

The kid was good.  He seemed to be able to do other things while he was wailing.  He was multi-tasking.  He didn't even seem to pay attention to his wailing.  He might have been so bored he put the wailing on auto-pilot.  Maybe he was looking around the plane to see if he could find a content infant to outsource his own wailing.  That way he could happily watch a video while still annoying everyone on the plane, except for his parents, who were so used to this kind of behavior that they just zoned out and ignored the wailing.

Huff-Huff-Huff-Long Wail.

Such problems I have.

Fair Game

I have a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous that I love and that I sometimes like but not all the time.  He has made a great deal of progress in his three years.  And, of course, he has a great deal of progress still to make.  And my task is to remember that the progress he's going to make will take him to a state that is his state, not my state.  I no longer try to dictate the terms of anyone else's life.  This guy has a lewd sense of humor.  Or a risque, edgy sense of humor, anyway.  I don't care for it and I know that a lot of people don't care for it, either, but I don't tell him to stop making suggestive jokes in a one-on-one situation, but I don't laugh at them, either.

I caught up with him on my beach walk the other day and he said that he had just offended another one of our members, a nurse, by proposing some medical advice that is far out of the mainstream of medical thought.  Fair enough as far as the opinion is concerned.  I'm not a physician and there are always going to be contradictory opinions about medical solutions.  Not that long ago we thought that covering someone suffering from tuberculosis with leeches was a good idea.  He then started to tell  me what he had said to the nurse.  This was information he had shared with me in the past, more than once come to think of it.  Today I said: "Anthony, I don't want to hear this.  I don't agree with it and I think it's not good to spread this kind of information around.  I'm not saying I'm right and you can certainly tell people whatever you want but not to me, not today."  Can I say he was pissed off.  When I said my goodbyes and resumed my walk he was looking down and he said nothing.

Fair enough.  I wasn't disturbed by his response.  I think I tempered my firm disavowal with a lot of kindness.  He might have disagreed.  Fair enough, again.  Here's what I did the next time I saw him - I said: "We good?"   We were.  We can disagree in recovery.  We can annoy and irritate each other.  It's all on the table.  It's all fair game

How About I Keep My Mouth Shut?

There's a new guy at our meeting who talks too much.  We have a three minute timer - in an example of my own overriding self-love I'm proud to say the timer has never gone off when I've shared because I think three minutes is a long time to share - and he always blows past the chime and then he continues to talk - often saying "I acknowledge the timer" as if this makes it okay; "I acknowledge that armed robbery is against the law" doesn't keep you outta jail - usually blowing through the one minute reminder timer as well.  Bugs the shit out of me.  Doesn't seem to bug the shit out of the other members but it sure gets my goat - I'd rather hear ten people talk for two minutes than to hear four people talk for five minutes.  As I say to myself: "You are not as interesting to other people as you are to yourself."  The most popular form of writing for aspiring authors is the memoir.  You may think you're fascinating but no one else does.

Anyway, there are a few of us long-timers who feel a responsibility to police the meeting from time to time.  I think we do it reluctantly and with as much understanding and kindness as we can hork up.  I was wondering if I should approach one of the long-timers and say: "Should I tell Sean maybe he could be a little more aware of how long he's talking, or should you?"  As I was pondering having this conversation this guy shared and he blew through the three minute timer and then he blew through the one minute reminder and then he talked for another solid minute.  He's a prime example of someone who tells you how to build a watch when you ask him for the time.

Maybe I keep my mouth shut?  Maybe I keep my fucking, self-righteous mouth shut?  How about I do that?  How about I remember that whenever I think I need to police someone else's behavior I usually manage to keep my mouth shut and it works out great?  How about finding someone who needs a pat on the back and some loving-kindness and try to lift their spirits instead of dropping some little critical, off-hand remark to someone who has a critically injured son?  Maybe I can practice not talking?  I can remember that much of the time silence is better than anything that comes out of my mouth?

Here's another thing - this dude lives near me and he doesn't have a car and I've left my house early  to pick him up and drive him to the meeting.  He never shuts up for one second the entire drive.  He brings a backpack the size of a Buick each day.    I have not offered him a ride since I got back from vacation.  How about I text him today and offer him a ride tomorrow?  And ignore the fact that I have to wait a couple of minutes for him to leave the house and get into my car?

Trying to Take Some Responsibility Some of the Time

"Call on God, but row away from the rocks."

Indian Proverb

I'd be an idiot if I sat in the room and complained about the darkness when all I needed to do is go flick a light switch.  I reflect on the times when I call on God to help when I can really help myself.  This Being doesn't exist for us to make request after request for things I can do myself.  I try to limit myself to for safety and guidance but I still need to take responsibility for my own safety and well-being.  I need to make sure I'm taking responsibility.  God is working through me, not for me.  He's not my employee.

It's quite difficult wrapping my limited human consciousness around the ideas of eternity and vast endlessness.  It's not possible to logically understand "forever" or the idea of another existence in a different dimension.

This Moment, Right Here, This Is the Moment

It's okay to plan and problem solve but, please, not at the expense of the present moment.

"He lived a short distance from his own body."

James Joyce

This always makes me laugh.  I have to reflect on how often my body is sitting in one place while my mind is across the room, across the country, around the world, inhabiting the entire expanse of time, living virtually through things that will likely never happen.

I'm doing what I'm doing.  I'm not doing anything else.  This is it.  This is what's happening.  Enjoy  this moment because you're never going to have it again.  Planning is okay but not if it takes me out of the moment for more that a . . . well . . .  moment.  I'm missing everything if I'm not present.  Things can go wrong, go sideways - they will go wrong or sideways - and tasks may not be completed - many of them won't be completed, but worrying won't change this fact of life.  Planning, okay, but not always trying to finish something perfectly.  Things that may or may not come to pass.

I hate to do the same thing twice.  I'm not a fan of routine.  I have a friend who rereads favorite books but I never do this and it doesn't make me sad.  I want to read the next book on my list.  Do you know how many books there are!  I'm never going to get through all the books that are on my list which grows more quickly than it recedes.  One of the places we visited in Switzerland was a Medieval library housed in an ancient monastery.  It contained books that are 1,000 years old.  I got to look at books that had carved ivory covers.  

I was going to ask the docent if I could borrow a couple of the books but SuperK told me not to.

How short my time on this planet really is!  How can I tolerate not being present for even one of the few minutes I have left?

R.I.P, Hope-Dog

"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it.  Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it - but all that had gone before."

Jacob Riis

Stay at it, man, stick with it.

"I observe myself and so I come to know others."

Lao-tsu (widely considered to be the father of Taoism)

"Whenever I have a problem with another person I go and find a mirror."

Little Stevie Seaweed (widely considered to be completely filled with bullshit, right up to the top, and bursting at the seams)

"It's not them - it's you."

Attributed to an unknown sponsor in what may be an apocryphal incident but is so good it bears repeating.  This sponsor allegedly got fed up with a sponsee bitching about his family that he answered the phone, uttered that memorable line, and hung up without waiting for a response.  I've confirmed this anecdote with the man in the know but still have trouble believing it really happened.  We do try the patience of those around us.

My neighbor's dog was euthanized last night after a brief struggle with a wicked autoimmune disease.  My heart is broken.  I loved that animal with a ferocious love.  Animals . . . Dogs . . . Every time they see you they respond as if they were never going to see you again.  They feel terrible if they do something wrong but if you act like a dick they forgive you immediately.  Has a dog ever felt a resentment?

"Be courageous and stop to face your fears.  Once the fear is identified, you will find it is about  some future event, as all fear is."

The Toltecs

I like that fear is characterized as always connected to some future event.  That's a powerful thing to say.

This Moment . . .

The mind always wants more than it has.     

Sitting in the moment . . .  with everything that is . . . all of it is welcome.

This moment . . . This heart space . . . 

The statute of blaming your parents for anything has expired.

There was a guy who attended meetings regularly with me in sincity who was rough in appearance.  He was missing most of his upper teeth. His front upper teeth.   I considered him with some dismissive arrogance and then found out he read more than I do and I read a lot.  I was judging a good book by its cover.  That dude taught me a lot about humility.  MY humility and how deficient it was.

One of the apartments we stayed in had shutters you could lower at night.  I love those shutters.  They make the bedroom as dark as a tomb and who wouldn't want to sleep in a tomb?  One of the windows had a placard warning the user not to completely raise the shutter because it wasn't working properly.  The shutters were operated by turning a crank and part of the way through the operation the handle just came off in my hand.  It looked like something that could be fixed easily but not by me.  I have the mechanical aptitude of a rock.  Before we left I messaged the host about the handle and she replied a few days later with pictures of the broken handle and a message that I would paraphrase roughly along these lines: "Hey.  What the fuck?!"  Defensive Seaweed plays defense by ginning up a big offense.  I wanted to point out that the shutters had some existing problems and she had better not fuck with me on getting this thing fixed.  Or something demonstrating a similar level of spiritual growth.  Instead, I apologized for any upset and asked how I could make it better.  It's a great convenience to be able to stay in an apartment with a kitchen and extra room for stays of a week or so.  I believe this defused the entire situation and she followed up to say that it had been a quick and easy repair.

Wasn't this nice?  This was a lot nicer than it used to be.  I always made things worse.