Walking. In cool water from Lake of Memory.

1040 (not your tax return), 1040 consecutive (almost) days on this Cove Island morning walk. Like in a row. 

But for the wind and the light rain, it would be a pleasant, 35° F morning in March. Ah yes, but for the wind and the light rain…it feels like 26° F, and the hood is up to protect this morning’s erratic ruminations. Diane Ackerman: “the brain’s genius is its gift for reflection. What an odd, ruminating, noisy, self-interrupting conversation we conduct with ourselves from birth to…,” no, i can’t say the word, let’s just say whatever comes after the End.

My weather app flashes an alert for a Coastal Flood Warning. With heavy rains overnight, the park, and its paths, are splotched with puddles. My boots are caked with mud from yesterday’s adventures, and rather than step around the puddles, I step through the center of them hoping the water line falls short of my boot tops. There is something ever so soothing about the clop clop clopand racing barefoot through puddles during rainy summer days in August as an adolescent. The body light, floats like a feather, B.A., Before Adulthood, and the accumulation of the Heavy. My body veers towards one puddle and then the next, clop, clop, clop.  Give me quickly / the cool water flowing from the Lake of Memory inscribed on a fourth-century-B.C. Greek tablet.

I walk. [Read more…]

Sleep, Harris. Rest from Yourself.

Rest…

leave behind fear, hope, anger, spilled milk.

Take silence only.

Sky, wind. Sunrise after the rain.

Forget the rest.

Sleep, Harris.

Rest from yourself.

— Reverend West (Vondie Curtis-Hall), Raymond & Ray (Apple TV+, 2022)

 

 

A coloured cloud

As I wash the dishes I am filled with an invigorating emptiness and amuse myself with the soap bubbles. The water comes out of the tap with a rhythm that demands music. I accompany it with bursts of whistling and a phrase from a nondescript popular song. I play with the lather, which is like a cloud in which seasonal colours gleam then fade. I grasp the cloud in my hand and distribute it over the plates, glasses, cups, spoons and knives. It inflates as drops of water run over it. I scoop it up and make it fly through the air and it laughs at me, and my sense of having time to spare increases. My mind is blank, as indifferent as the noonday heat. But images of memories descend from afar and land in the bowl of water, neutral memories, neither painful nor joyful, such as a walk in a pine forest, or waiting for a bus in the rain, and I wash them as intently as if l had a literary crystal vase in my hands. When I am sure they’re not broken, they return safely to where they came from in the pine forest, and I remain here. I play with the soapy lather and forget what is absent. I look contentedly at my mind, as clear as the kitchen glass, and at my heart, as free of stains as a carefully washed plate. When feel completely sated with invigorating emptiness, I fill it with words of interest to nobody but me: these words!

Mahmoud Darwish, “A coloured cloud” in “A River Dies of Thirst


Notes:

Monday Morning

The slow overture of rain,
each drop breaking
without breaking into
the next, describes
the unrelenting, syncopated
mind. Not unlike
the hummingbirds
imagining their wings
to be their heart, and swallows
believing the horizon
to be a line they lift
and drop.

Jorie Graham, from “Mind,” in Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts.


Notes: Poem via The Vale of Soul-Making. Photo: pan xiaozhen @zhenhappy via Unsplash

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

Here are some key attributes of the voice in my head. I suspect they will sound familiar.

  • It’s often fixated on the past and future, at the expense of whatever is happening right now. The voice loves to plan, plot, and scheme. It’s always making lists or rehearsing arguments or drafting tweets. One moment it has you fantasizing about some halcyon past or Elysian future. Another moment you’re ruing old mistakes or catastrophizing about some not-yet-arrived events. As Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.”
  • The voice is insatiable. The default mental condition for too many human beings is dissatisfaction. Under the sway of the ego, nothing is good enough. We’re always on the hunt for the next dopamine hit. We hurl ourselves headlong from one cookie, one promotion, one party to the next, and yet a great many of us are never fully sated. How many meals, movies, and vacations have you enjoyed? And are you done yet? Of course not.
  • The voice is unrelievedly self-involved. We are all the stars of our own movies, whether we cast ourselves as hero, victim, black hat, or all three. True, we can get temporarily sucked into other people’s stories, but often as a means of comparing ourselves to them. Everything ultimately gets subordinated to the one plotline that matters: the Story of Me.

In short, the voice in my head—and perhaps also yours—can be an a**hole.

Dan Harris, from “Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book


Notes:

  • Dan Harris Bio: Dan Harris is a co-anchor the weekend edition of Good Morning America on ABC News, as well as a correspondent for such broadcasts as Nightline and World News Tonight. He is also the author of 10% Happier, a #1 New York Times best-selling book about a fidgety, skeptical news anchor who stumbles upon meditation. Recently, Harris launched an app specifically designed to teach meditation to doubters and busy people. This ancient practice – too long associated exclusively with hippies and robed gurus – has been shown by modern science to boost resilience, focus, creativity, emotional intelligence, and overall mental and physical health. With meditation and mindfulness now being embraced by executives, athletes, educators and entertainers, Harris has become a leading voice for pushing for the practice into the mainstream, using plain English and dry humor.

I’m only now starting to fully understand is that this is an inside job. It only works if I believe.

But what I’m only now starting to fully understand is that this is an inside job. It only works if I believe. I’ve always been confident, positive, doggedly determined; but doubt is beginning to mitigate my conviction. Who am I to think I can accomplish this, when so many have struggled with similar setbacks; some with Parkinson’s, some with the aftermath of spinal surgery? I may be the only one who has taken on this particular two-headed beast…

I have to learn to walk again; to reclaim my mobility, remaster my motion. I consider this fundamental to my therapy —  for me, it all starts and ends with walking. And I understand that it’s more complicated than that. So many tiny disciplines have to be observed, and neglected muscles and ligaments need to be restored. I’m exhausted by the effort I’ve already put in at Johns Hopkins, and daunted by how much work I still have to do. It’s like being nibbled to death by ducks.

Back in the days of carefree ambling, I would have considered the topic of walking to be rather pedestrian. Now the acts of stepping, strolling, hiking, and perambulating have become an obsession. I watch Esmé gliding through the kitchen, grabbing an apple while opening the fridge door for a coconut water, closing it with a quick shift of her hip and pirouetting out the swinging door at the other end of the room. Down in the lobby, my neighbor and her daughter are quickstepping to catch a taxi. I spy on a man walking with a slight limp, which he counterbalances with a bag of groceries. I secretly watch the way they all move. Easy, breezy, catlike, or with a limp, every one of them is far better at it than me. It may be that the most difficult, miraculous thing we do, physically, is to walk…

It’s tough. With PD and the aftermath of the surgery, something as simple as remaining upright is often sabotaged by a rogue army of misfiring neurons. I try to stay organized. I have memorized a litany of admonitions, not unlike my golfer’s list of swing thoughts: Keep my head centered over my hips; hips over my knees; no hyperextending; stay in line with my feet; eyes forward; shoulders back; chest out; lead with the pelvis. All of this kinetic vigilance can dissolve in a nanosecond of panic, or come apart with some other distraction. A tiny nervous jolt or spasm, and like a house of cards in a sudden gust of wind, the only messages that make it through the debris are: Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Don’t fall

—  Michael J. Fox, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality (Flatiron Books, November 17, 2020)

All My Friends

This book is dedicated to the voices in my head, the most remarkable of my friends.

And to my wife, who lives with us.

Fredrik Backman, the opening dedication to his new book titled “Anxious People: A Novel” (Atria Books, September 8, 2020)


Notes:

none of us can bear too much reality

Thinking about swifts has made me think more carefully about the ways in which I’ve dealt with difficulty. When I was small I comforted myself with thoughts of layers of rising air; later I hid myself among the whispers of recorded works of fiction. We all have our defences. Some of them are self-defeating, but others are occasions for joy: the absorption of a hobby, the writing of a poem, speeding on a Harley, the slow assembly of a collection of records or seaside shells. ‘The best thing for being sad,’ said T. H. White’s Merlin, ‘is to learn something.’ All of us have to live our lives most of the time inside the protective structures that we have built; none of us can bear too much reality. We need our books, our craft projects, our dogs and knitting, our movies, gardens and gigs. It’s who we are. We’re held together by our lives, our interests, and all our chosen comforts. But we can’t have only those things, because then we can’t work out where we should be headed.

—  Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights (Grove Press, August 25, 2020)


Photo Salvi Danes, (Barcelona) (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)

Lightly Child, Lightly

Like a bird with a broken wing
that has traveled through wind for years.
like a bird unable to endure
tempest and wind
the evening falls…
Now I long for a little quiet
all I want is a hunt on a hill
or near a seashore
all I want in front of my window…

The evening would fall
the flocks would echo descending to their fold
like some quiet simple happy thought
and I would lie down to sleep
because I wouldn’t have
even a candle to light,
light,
to read.

George Seferis, from “Five Poems by Mr. S. Thalassinos” from “Hampstead” in George Seferis: Collected Poems, 1924-1955


Notes:

  • Poem: Thank you Make Believe Boutique
  • Photo: Lesley Mattuchio with Black Skimmer. “This is the Skimmer’s version of the “broken wing” act to draw you away from their young.”
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

Lightly Child, Lightly

We are looking for new spaces, but what we are really looking for is retreat, clarity, to escape our internal chaos.

For the days not to feel glued together.

— Kate ZambrenoDrifts: A Novel (Penguin, May 19, 2020)


Notes:

  • Photo: Image source here. (via Mennyfox55)
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

Truth


Source: Hartley Lin (formerly known by the pseudonym Ethan Rilly) is a cartoonist based in Montreal, Canada. Young Frances, the first collection from his ongoing comic book Pope Hats, won the 2019 Doug Wright Award for Best Book. He has drawn for The New Yorker, The Hollywood Reporter, Slate, Taddle Creek and HarperCollins. (via thisisn’thappiness)

Lightly Child, Lightly.

1 a.m.: Lie here then. Just lie here. What of it? It’s just lying here. Think of good things… Try to calm the banging heart.

 


Notes:

  • Photo: Katia Chausheva (Plovdiv, Bulgaria) with Ariel amoureuse (via Mennyfox55)
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

 

 

T.G.I.F.: Truth


Source: Thisisn’thappiness

 

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

It is astonishing how violently a big branch shakes when a silly little bird has left it.

~ Katherine Mansfield, from “Alors, je pars.” in Delphi Complete Works of Katherine Mansfield


Photo of Common Redpoll (male) by Larissa Datsha

Workin’ WFH. With Yiyun Li.

WFH. (Work From Home). No shoes. No socks.  Chained to the desk. Lower back groans.

HBR: “The risk is substantial. The lines between work and non-work are blurring… (those) who feel “on” all the time are at a higher risk of burnout when working from home than if they were going to the office as usual.”

I pause for a few page turns of Yiyun Li, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life:being caught by the mesh of one’s mind.”

Friday Night. 11:30 pm. Everyone in bed – but me. I’ve shifted positions, from desk to couch.  I’m clearing out a swollen email box. 214. 210. 198. 175. 143. 138. 117.  18 hours. Calls. Conference Calls. Conference Calls. Conference Calls.  110. 108. 106. 104. 101. 99.

Get up to stretch. Walk to the kitchen. Grab a ramekin. Scoop out 3 heaping tablespoons of Talenti, tamp it down, lean in on the spoon again, add another scoop.  Today, Talenti for late breakfast, for dinner, and again, now, at midnight. Mint Chocolate chip. Close eyes. Gelato slides down throat, soothing. The only thing that is.

88. 85. 84. 83. Losing focus. Re-reading same email 2x.  Replies are littered with spelling mistakes. Autocorrect, correcting incorrectly. F-** it. I send it anyway. Does it really matter. Lose. Loose. Lose.

81. 79. 64.

Back to Yiyun Li. “Even the most inconsistent person is consistently himself.”

63. 62. 59. 57. 56. 54. 53. Li: “Wanting nothing is as extreme as wanting everything.”

50. 47. 43. 41. Li: “Did we ever ask ourselves: Why are we so lonely, so proud, and so adamant about perfecting our pretense?”

40. 39. 38. 37. 34. 32. Li: “we are, unlike other species, capable of not only enlarging but also diminishing our precarious selves”

30. 29. 27. I’m closing in on clearing my cue, but like Sisyphus, the closer I get to zero, the steeper the hill seems to get.

26. 25. 24. 23. Neck aches. I mean aches.  I turn, twist to adjust my position. 23 left. Come on. Bring it home.

I stare at the remaining cue. And stare. And stare.

And quit.

I gently set my iPhone on night stand. Twist in the earbuds, skim to find Chill Playlist, and hit Play.  But Yiyun Li can’t help herself, and lip syncs over it.

…the worst kind of fidgeting is that of one’s mind…I wonder…—not that one has known…but that one knows…This ceaseless effort—

 


Notes: Photo – Shibari & Photo Geoffroy Tako Baud. Model Lafille Delair (via Newthom)

Driving I-95 South. Baptized without God.

5:33 am. Friday morning.

Google Maps signals 17 minutes to destination. Smooth ride, cruising down I-95 South. Truckers, insomniacs, and DK listening to Audible, his book on tape. More Terry Tempest Williams, her new book, Erosion: Essays of Undoing.  Terry’s way in my head, and beyond, and yes, we’re on a first name basis now. “Our undoing is also our becoming. I have come to believe this is a good thing.”

The Heads-up Display on the windshield flashes alert: Object ahead on highway. It flashes an alert again. I tap the brakes.

A wind gust blows leaves across three lanes. I exhale.  Wonders of technology. Car warns you about objects on highway, or if you veer outside your lane. I’m listening to books on tape, beamed from the cloud. GPS tells me how long to the office. And I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

The car wobbles over uneven pavement. 4000 pounds of car, wearing grooves into the asphalt, with my back and forth 4-5 days a week.

Read somewhere from a survey that 85% of us wished to travel more.  And that one in 10 Americans surveyed say they have no interest in going anywhere.  Welcome readers, to Me, I’m on top of this stack of 10. [Read more…]

It’s been a long day

I remember, I remember … I closed my eyes. Eyelids are really just flesh curtains. Your eyes are always “on,” always looking; when you close them, you’re watching the thin, veined skin of your inner eyelid rather than staring out at the world. It’s not a comforting thought. In fact, if I thought about it for long enough, I’d probably want to pluck out my own eyes, to stop looking, to stop seeing all the time. The things I’ve seen cannot be unseen. The things I’ve done cannot be undone.

~ Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.


Photo: Mulholland Dr. 2001 (Naomi Watts) via i wanna see your eyes.  Related Posts: It’s been a long day

Lightly child, lightly

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:

  • Poem – Thank you Karl @ Mindfulbalance.  Photo: Moon gazing at Max Patch, North Carolina by Paolo Nacpil
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

It’s been a long day

Someone’s life,

their attainments

(forgetting that nine-tenths of it is lived on the inside)…

~ A. K. Benjamin, Let Me Not Be Mad: My Story of Unraveling Mind (Dutton, June 11, 2019)


Photo by Jamie Schafer via (aberrant beauty).  Related Posts: It’s been a long day

(Sleep) Walking. Into Saturday Morning.

Friday night. Netflix movie. Two handfuls of shelled pistachios. Heaping bowl of Nacho Cheese Doritos. 3 scoops of The Fixer, Talenti’s Mint-Chocolate Chip gelato.

Full shot? Or half shot? After effects: Groggy to semi-groggy. I bite down on the smooth, egg shell blue Tylenol PM pill, snap it in half. Toss one half back and place the other half on my tongue.  I cup hand under the running water, scoop it into my mouth, throw my head back, and chase it down. Do your thing Girl, do your thing.

I flip through blog feeds, Apple News Feed, Google News feed and RSS feeds. A quick peek at work emails. And then on to Kindle.  I wade through the last two chapters of A. K. Benjamin’s Let Me Not Be Mad: My Story of Unraveling Mind. Turn the last page of the book, and pause. Why this book, this title, at this time, out of the millions of Kindle options. Benjamin’s words: “Words never surpass the bliss of breathing. Place hand through head: no brain, no mind, no hand” and “I could walk over London Bridge in rush hour, faces thronging around me, and diagnose each one in an instant: Psychosis … Depression … Lewy bodies … Panic … Depression … Sociopathy … OCD … Cynophobia … Panic … Guam’s … Everybody has something.” 

Everybody has something

Just give me 7 hours, 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

And then this somebody will deal with that something, and that everything.


Notes:

  • Inspired by: Michael Wade in his post: “The Day” …”Firm Ground Rule: Do Everything Slowly.
  • Inspired by: “Recreation, love, spirituality—each turned into work: This is how we cope …A current darling of neuroscience research—the cultivation of default-mode networks—indicates that our brains need mindlessness, unemployment, f*$king about, eating mental crisps, in order to thrive. ~ A. K. Benjamin, Let Me Not Be Mad: My Story of Unraveling Mind (Dutton, June 11, 2019)
  • Photo: Wes Sumner (San Francisco, CA) (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)

 

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