5:15 a.m. Traffic flowing. 16 minutes to the office.
Long day yesterday. Whaddya remember? What Stuck?
In bed. 9:40 pm.
ZzzQuil slow drips.
Mind whirring, but in slower revolutions.
Right ear bud pumping in “The Daily Podcast” with “The Anatomy of a Warren Rally.”
Words drift in and out, sleep meds seeping deeper. And then Mind stops, and locks on. [Read more…]
On one end – excellence, ambition, discipline, defining what you want to be and working towards it, goals, decisions, structure, control, action, obsession (hold on)
On the other – acceptance, peace, polymorphous selfhood, beingness, letting it flow, spontaneity, appreciation of what is not what you want it to be, release (let go)
In this tension – a life.
Notes:
Here is how I spend my days now.
I live in a beautiful place.
I sleep in a beautiful bed.
I eat beautiful food.
I go for walks through beautiful places.
I care for people deeply…
I cry easily, from pain and pleasure, and I don’t apologize for that.
In the mornings I step outside and I’m thankful for another day.
It took me many years to arrive at such a life.
~ Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen: A Novel
Notes:
We start out wanting everything, never imagining how much everything weighs. Then we can’t swallow things that eat at our gut. We call this integrity. Then one by one, we’re forced to put things down in order to go on. Like a bird dropping food three times its size in order to fly.
~ Mark Nepo, from “How to Empty” in Things That Join the Sea and the Sky: Field Notes on Living
Notes:
Let my words become like a skilled
Potter’s hands,
Quieting,
Smoothing your life
With their knowledge,
Reaching into your tender core
And spreading you out
Like the morning …
~ Hafiz (1315-1390), from “Your Shape of Laughter” in “The Subject Tonight Is Love. 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz”
Photo: katrinauld. Poem via finita–la–commedia
Don’t you wish they would stop,
all the thoughts swirling around in your head,
bees in a hive, dancers tapping their way across the stage.
I should rake the leaves in the carport, buy Christmas lights.
Was there really life on Mars? What will I cook for dinner?
I walk up the driveway, put out the garbage bins…
Does the car need oil, again? There’s a hole in the ozone
the size of Texas, and everything seems to be speeding up.
Come, let’s stand by the window and look out
at the light on the field. Let’s watch how
the clouds cover the sun, and almost nothing
stirs in the grass.
~ Danusha Lameris, from “Thinking” from The Moons of August
Notes:
You must learn to stop being yourself. That’s where it begins, and everything else follows from that. You must let yourself evaporate. Let your muscles go limp, breathe until you feel your soul pouring out of you, and then shut your eyes. That’s how it’s done. The emptiness inside your body grows lighter than the air around you. Little by little, you begin to weigh less than nothing. You shut your eyes; you spread your arms; you let yourself evaporate. And then, little by little, you lift yourself off the ground.
Like so.
Notes: Quote – Thank you Whiskey River. Photo: Jacqueline Green, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Photo by Richard Calms. (via Mennyfox55)
The curtain
In the August quietude and the silence
Of the tranquil morning,
Moves gently in the wandering air . . .
Beautiful moment.
–Juan Ramón Jiménez, from “Lightness” in The Selected Writings of Juan Ramon
Notes:
A nothingburger during a nondescript morning commute a month ago.
Not a Vuong nothing Moment that changed everything after it.
But it changed Something.
Why this particular Moment among the billions?
Why is it called up when it is?
And here IT comes again this morning.
This Moment. It’s pulled forward, to the front. Taking its right hand, sweeping aside the incessant swing of the Hammer on the searing molten metal, of not enough, not good enough and Now.
And it’s exactly at this Moment, when the Hammer rests, and Vuong’s luminescence offers its cooling respite.
It whispers listen, pay attention to This. And it hangs around until I do.
The pre-rush hour traffic on I-95 was detoured onto Exit 2. GPS routes me through Port Chester. I pull up to a stop light, and there they are.
Father and Son. Son, maybe 4 years old. Dad is wearing an overcoat, much too heavy for the season. Son looks up to his Dad, Dad bends over and picks him up, hugs him tight, then sets him down.
And they walk. Dad’s lunch box swinging in his left hand, his Son’s hand swinging in his right.
Let’s play it again Vuong. One more time.
The Hammer rests, for this Moment.
Photo Credit
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