Reading somewhere else on this site, I came across the quote: “Eventually you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is.” by Gary Zukav.  Zukav's quote made me wonder.

I thought for a long moment, Eventually?  What does Zukav mean by "eventually?"

My immediate arrogant, defiant response was Maybe Zukav ought to speak for hisself like Miss Priss told John Alden. 

Then I started to feel like Miss Priss and thought, What the hell do I care what Gary Zukav thinks?  Or what he says? Why in God's name am I trying to fix Gary Zukav who was once a Green Beret and there fore probably beyond any useful repair. 

As you can see, I have a very active and thought-provoking inner-dialog and I do not use the g-word lightly, even when speaking of former Green Berets.

"Fighting soldiers from the sky" and all . . .

But still . . . that "eventually" bothered me.

There is no "eventually."  "There's no crying in baseball."  "You karate do, or you karate no do.  You no karate try, Daniel-san."  "There is no try, Luke."

There is only now.  Loving "eventually" is like trying to love.  WE can only love now.

A couple, three days ago, I wrote in my Daily EarWorm Report: "I’m hard to punish; I cannot be shamed; I do not believe that shame is useful; also, I have difficulty believing that I am bad, or being unhappy, for very long."

Re-reading that line, this morning I had the brief thought that All of my life there has been someone, or a few somebodies in my life, trying to shame me and make me feel bad.  There's always been some people who seemed happiest when I was in an extended period of misery.  For a moment, I just stood stunned.

Then I thought, Well, why do you keep those people in your life?

My final thought was, RicH, that's just paranoia, My Friend.  You're responsible for your own levels of happiness and well-being.

I thanked my internal-critic, inner-guru, and my infernal-therapist, but I went right on thinking about my happiness and the possibility that I have surrounded myself with people who want to sabotage my happiness and actually want to see me unhappy, miserable, and failing.  IF I succeed, as I have in being sober, my success will be a silent reproach to them, or I might leave them, and not love them anymore.

I got to turn that thought around too: When I succeed, I might lose THEM, or I might betray THEM, or I might be too busy to love THEM.  Or God-forbid, THEY might not love me, and I do not use the G-word lightly.  Whoever THEY, or THEM is, or whoever THEY, or THEM might be in the future.  Why am I even living in the future?

I might; I might; I might.  Aren't I powerful?

There's a John Prine line, "I gotta shake my head and wonder . . ."  Shaking my head in wonder is about where I am right now this first day of the New Year. 

More later today.  I promise.

Earlier on this site this morning, I wrote:

Voila, BIG Epiphany!!   Loving support is what I need now.  Is it okay to ask everyone I know for love and support right now?  And IF it is not okay, what the fuck do I care, cause I'm gonna ask 'em all anyway.

I would honestly rather have a sharp stick in the eye, being careful what Ii ask for, than ask anyone for anything and something so ephemeral as love: What is that?

How the fuck am I gonna ask the people I know and love, especially those who are already carrying me, to give me love and support in any new endeavor.  Even IF the "new endeavor" is one I have been thinnking about and planning for almost forty years.  Better I go off by myself and start over.

My certainty that "I'm gonna ask 'em all anyway" is slipping away, even as I write.  I'm starting to cry, though no tears will come.  I want to run away screaming.

Why does asking for something, that is really pretty easy to give, seem like such a cross to bear?  And who would believe me anyway?

No daffy-assed music when I awoke this morning, but as I was writing a friend invitation to someone, elsewhere on this site, entitled "Sympatico?" and I wrote:

For many, many years, Lawrence of Arabia was my favorite movie and then I saw Groundhog Day and I had to change my mind. I hate changing anything and I hate changing my mind even more, so for me picking a new favorite movie was a BIG thing.

Furthermore, I'm hearing Sly and the Family Stone, or War, singing, "Why can't we be friends?" in the back of my head and thinking that WE very probably have the same plaid shirts hanging somewhere.

So are WE sympatico, or not? I wanted to evoke a picture of Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice jumping on Alec Baldwin's back, but I promise not to jump on you at any time -- EVER!

I don't rightly know whether, or not, I can keep MY not-jumping-on-the-back promise, but the email did raise a lot of EarWorms in my mind.

Also, I was thinking, Does bugging out in my own mind about my wife feeding the dog my macaroni-and-cheese amount to an EarWorm? 

This complaint about my wife is not something I heard with my ear, exactly, but it is something that has been rolling around in my giant, empty, head since last night, when I chose to go to bed, pouting, without any dinner, because my dinner got passed on.  It wasn't like it was a gourmet dinner.  It was store-brand boxed macaroni-and-cheese, which has very little to do with macaroni and nothing at all to do with cheese, but I was looking forward to eating it when I got home.

All this, after saying, as my very last words to my sponsee, who has been struggling with his own expectations, "No expectations!  Period!  Is that clear?" 

What agony to have my Mac-and-Cheese Expectations dashed upon the dog's dish and to be too pouty to make something else to eat. 

How heroic I am!!  And long suffering!  Although my suffering was somewhat ameliorated by scarfing a left-over donut from breakfast that I left on my altar.

When exactly is an EarWorm an EarWorm? 

Is pouting about someone, who gives your somewhat less than gourmet dinner to the dog, too neurotic to write about here?  And does a left-over donut constitute a healthy dinner?  Not that the mac-and-cheese was gonna be healthy, at all.

PS: Do my comma-splices annoy any English teachers, or editors here?

"Love," sprang immediately to mind.  Then I thought, WOW!!  RicHie, you are like a river of love, Man.  You are a mother-HUG-ging love tsunami, MY Brother.  You been a little love -machine ALL of your life, MY good and loving Friend!!

The second thought made me doubt the first, which is sort of the story of my life. 

Also, I knew that there was no defensiveness in my second thought and that both thoughts were valid, real, and true.  The Little Voices inside my head seemed to be in a real quandary.  So I paused, which is what I always do when I doubt. 

When in doubt, wait it out!  Musta learned that one in Marine Corps leadership school.  Or it could have to do with power tools!

Then I thought, Love is hard to give because most people have such a hard time accepting love, especially from a throwback such as MY-Self.

Then . . .  just like in junior high skol, I thought, Perhaps, IF I were one of the popular ones, or one of the dainty ones, or one of the Other ones, giving love would be easy for me too, and maybe, just maybe, people would love me too, Doggonnit. 

Then I read the posts here and I saw that a great many people just have trouble accepting love no matter where it comes from.  Does that mean that Gaia is the "Real World," or that Gaia is just like junior high skol?

Or maybe . . . the whole World WE got now is just like junior high skol?

On Having No Head by Douglas Harding. 

As I read and read, spellbound, it's a very short book, I suddenly realized that the concrete, freshly-painted reality inside my head didn't exist, except in my mind.  I was eighteen and reading Harding was the beginning of the end for being a Marine.  I was discharged as a Conscientious Objector soon after, but that is another story.

Back in the day, I got myself into some real tight jams now and then; I can clearly remember being down and out, busted flat in a lot of places.  But in all those times I still felt kind of hopeful about things turning back up.  I've always thought that the wheel would take another turn and I would be on top again.

I seem to have lost that youthful optimism somewhere.

I had a miserable day at work; I made a BIG costly mistake that I have to clean up and I'm not lookinig forward to the work.  It's only my second costly mistake in nine months and I'm not getting fired; but MY Boss was extremely rude and when I got home, feeling like a little wounded boy, MY Missus wasn't much help either.

I'm okay.  Just pouty and hurt.  I don't normally make mistakes of any nature; I see myself as a very conscientious worker, someone who is competent and skilled enough to see trouble coming and avoid it; this describes my approach to a spiritual practice, as well.  Your best block: No be there, Daniel-san.

Earlier in life, I took enough risks for several people and survived.  Nowadays, I look before I leap and when leaping I use my Jedi powers to land safely and softly.

In defense of MY Missus: She did come home from work and make US a nice dinner with fresh string beans, couscous and turkey burgers.  And in defense of MY Boss: He didn't fire me, though he probably wanted to.

The simple truth is that I do not like my JOB; I am not happy and my work reflects my unhappiness on every level.  I need to find a satisfying livelihood.

Probably going to have to create it, which is just the kind of unseen risk that I have become an expert at avoiding since I got clean and sober.

As I write this late-night missive, it occurs to me that I have not been MY best Self for several days now.  Just feeling out-of-sorts, not fully MY-Self: Not loving, spiritual, connected, though I hate those words to describe Self, or Oneness.  Those words feel like vanity creeping in to me, not that I oppose vanity; I just like to keep vanity and my other feeligns of Self-centeredness separate. 

I know that I am One in/with the Unified Field.

I remember recently, I wasn't feeling all of my little self, and you Gaians leaped to my rescue just sitting by.  But the last few days have been different, sort of like I am not being true to MY-Self, which I know is impossible. 

I'm in some flakey kind of change thing and I won't know what the change is going to be until I get it.  I know that part because life gives the test first and the lesson second.

Couldn't sleep, which almost never happens for me.  Supposedly worried about work, but not actually; I have a leak at work.  A BIG leak: but I've fixed a lot of leaks.

I have vertigo of the Spirit.

Every thing, Everywhere AND NO-Place.  Me and you and the chimpanzee.

Tired.  Lonely.  Frightened and in pain. 

Now!  Is that any way to start the day?  Luckily, those feelings didn't even last for a minute.  By the time I got my glasses on, stood up shakily and limped toward the door, I was breathing deeply and being grateful just to be alive.

Woke up with David Bowie and Modern Love though.  Waking up with David Bowie cain't be a bad thing, though it don't outweigh waking up in pain.  I coulda been imaginative enough to wake up giving David Bowie pain.

Now there's a thought!  Yum, yum, yum!!

"No religion.  No religion.  No religion.  Never gonna fall for . . . ," but for the life of me couldn't think of the words, "modern love," so ended up wondering what it was that I am not going to fall for.  Like I would fall for just anything.

As the Adult Child of grifters, I don't fall for much and I stopped falling for love in about the sixth-grade.  Although, I kept pretending to fall for love, well into my late twenties: Apologies to Yasmin Sabur and Kathy Burger.  Love wasn't what I thought.

A BIG ice storm this morning. 

MY Wife, who is much more sensible than I am, is not going to work, even though she is a teacher and one of the most conscientious people on the planet.  She could just be guilt-ridden, of course, but who am I to judge? 

I am 99% that our recent leaks at work, had little, or nothing to do with me now that I have opened up the ceiling and can see where the leaks originated.  I felt much, much better, almost immediately; even the most super Super cain't stop the weather, or malicious tenants.  The freezing in the apartments on the floor above was almost certainly caused by the skylights in the apartment being open and the cold.

Which only raises new issues.  I use the word, "new" here loosely.  Now I am just in pain and heading out into the ice storm to go to work, although I cannot say, "Why?!"

What's money?

Man, I need a real JOB.  You know what I mean?  I am educated, experienced, and incredible.  I mean it: I am incredible.  I am one of the very best on the planet at what I do and I cannot get a JOB.  I go to interviews with people who I wouldn't hire and I immediately know that the person that I am speaking to is threatened, about three decades behind the times, and out of his depth.  I know that I will not be hired. 

 Later, I will find out that clueless young women who I tutored in college, and who can barely read and write coherently, will get the JOB that I was refused.  And honestly . . . on some of those days, I do feel like refuse.

The social sciences could be so much better.  WE could be helping ever-increasing numbers of people to actually get well and to heal their own lives.  I have exactly the same problem with employment in the social sciences that I did with the grad skol thing; I can't get the people involved at the top to live up to their pormises.  I need to be training these people and OUR culture needs me to be training these people.

 I know I am different, but most often different is good.  Different is especially good when you consider that the system we have is not working very well at all and that there are simple soloutions available to US. 

 What am I gonna do?  I sit here day-after-day with the pistol in my mouth, don't get excited, it's a metaphor, and I think, Jesus, what do I got to do to catch a break? How come I won’t just give these people what they want and expect?  Nothing could be simpler, or more wrong!

Sorry to whine, Brothers and Sisters, but I am sometimes bugged that I am not working at the right stuff.  I have a fair-to-middling JOB doing building maintenance, but I am not in any shape to do it any longer and I don't want to be doing it.  I can always get work fixing things, but I am so tired of cleaning up other people's shit for not enough money.  I need a real JOB so that I can pay back them skol loans.

All my friends tell me that I should be grateful for what I got, wrongly implying that I am not grateful.  Most of them just wanna stay where they are and sit in their own warm shit.  I wanna help.  I wanna change things.  I have changed myself, and helped to change a few others, but I could do so much more.  I know what to do and I know how to do it.  I just need a chance.

Sitting here with my finger on the delete key again.  “Resistance is futile.”

 I have written this same whiney tome a dozen times and deleted it.  I think that I am ashamed to say these things publicly.  Real men don’t have problems getting a JOB, or any other sorts of problems, do they?  I have to tell someone though.  I have to make it real.  I have to get this voice out of my head and stop letting it paralyze me as a personal complaint.  Maybe then . . . I will do something about it.  Maybe not.

Woke up with a cross between Can I Get a Witness by Marvin Gaye and Love Machine by The Miracles rolling back and forth in my head.  Listening to that old Motown, I lay quietly in the dark and took a personal inventory and decided I really ought to stay in bed.  Got up anyway and got into the shower.

In the shower, I realized that I was much sicker than I thought.  I let the hot water run over me and the steam try to open up my chest and sinuses and berated myself like an old sargeant for being a natural-born sissy.  I apologize to those of you, who Identify as sissies and I do not use the "S-word" lightly: I really am a BIG Sissy.

Anyway, I got out of the shower and my wife told me not to go to work.  This led to my near complete demoralization: Now I felt like a sissy being bossed by his mother, though the actual situation couldn't have been different, or more loving.  Filled with a stubborn, defiant, new determination to go to work at whatever cost, I went into my room to get dressed and to ruminate that I am turning into a BIG wussy.

And I couldn't get dressed . . .

I couldn't physically put on the clothes that I laid out last night, just like I do every night and have been doing since 1969.  I honestly decide that I am fucked-up and need to go back to bed.  This however, does not stop the little voice in my head telling me what a pathetic whiner I have become as I have aged.  But then I have another voice that says, in the voice of one of my least favorite sargeants, "You ain't becoming a pathetic whiner, Boy!  You always been a pathetic whiner!!"

I am shooting the sargeant and going back to bed . . .

Well, I am feeling a lot better, partially because of the pain medication, and partly because I found out what was wrong. 

The news wasn't good, but it could have been a lot worse: I have a blood-clot in my right leg and it was extremely painful.  I've had two clotting-incidences in the past, so it is on the permanent warfarin list for me.  I've been giving myself Lovenox shots in the stomach for the last three days and the pain in my leg is about half of what-it-was.  I can bend my leg and stand on it without grinding my teeth and grimacing.  Using both legs, without pain, is such a relief!!

You got to love that Lovenox name, though.  Am I right?   Who don't love at least one BIG dumb ox?  Raise your hands, please!  Let's get a count.

I want to begin by apologizing to everyone for not being here.  It's almost unbearable for me to go out in public when I am thinking that I am less than perfect.  I despise my own neediness and I can remember being taught to hate that perfectly normal, and sometimes, hugely valuable, and beautiful part of MY-Self.

One of the things that I said I wanted to resolve and to work on here was asking for help and letting someone help me.  Letting someone help me has always been massively difficult and asking for help is almost as bad.  I was that kid who ran from the room sobbing, "Leave me alone!  I'd rather do it myself."  Sometimes, doing it "by myself" actually worked.  Or at least I thought it did.

I put "by myself" in quotes there because I know now that no one ever really does anything by themselves.  Many thankx to Mom and Dad and apologies to all those "self-made" knuckleheads, myself included, who wrongly, and falseheartedly, believe that they "did it" by themselves. 

Even Frankie was wrong: Nobody ever did it their own way either.

For me, clinging to the survival-of-the-fittest myth shattered just about the same day that the myth of Marines fighting for freedom and democracy turned into delusion.

That was a very tough period.  Makes having a little old blood-clot look like a visit to an ice cream parlor without cherries and nuts.

OUR one human-family is a cooperative venture, not a competitive one, and this has ever been true: ALL that blood-covered-claw-crap was propaganda from the start.