I guess I’m going to have to accept that I’m going to skip days blogging now. I have more time to write but less to write about. Turns out that material is the limiting factor. Maybe I should start news in review posts discussing the day’s major stories. I’ll think about that. If I could do a Daily Show take on it I’d be much sooner to go that way. I’m not ready to do that yet and I don’t want to just list all the streaming concerts I’ve watched or what I ate. Well OK, I screwed up last night and overcooked my chicken breast. That’s unusual enough to be worth noting. It tasted like everyone else’s dried out chicken, not juicy as is my norm. I’m not a cook but I know how to not overcook chicken, a rare skill in my experience.
In general, I like people in my building but as in any large group there are some problem children. I opened my door to get an Amazon package left in front of my apartment and noticed broken glass right by it. Somebody dropped a drinking glass in the hall, or perhaps the shards of a drinking glass as it was right in front of the trash/recycling room, and just left the broken glass there for people to cut their feet up on. I immediately got a broom and dustpan and swept up what I could find and dropped it in the recycling. What kind of person has so little community spirit as to do that in the building in which they live? I find that disheartening. Like Anne Frank,” I still believe in spite of everything, people are truly good at heart.” I always remind myself this was a misdeed by one person, most people I meet in the building are fine. The person who did this might be truly good at heart and had a moral lapse.
I have to make sure to call somebody today, I didn’t talk to anyone yesterday. I was busy so much with streaming shows and I did talk to Katrina via FB messenger. The night before I had a great conversation with Allison on the importance of Persephone to Sicily and how Christians co-opted the pagan rituals. Everyone has conversations like that right? This conversation started a little before midnight. Who I was talking to, what we talked about, and when we talked says a lot about me. I have always noted my defining conversations.
In two streaming concerts I watched the performer saw my name being mentioned and wanted to know why everybody knows me. I’ve become the Kevin Bacon of streaming concerts. I picture people meeting me and thinking, “You have such cool friends, how can you be such a potato?”
I had two things I was considering writing about today; one would make me uncomfortable and make others uncomfortable and perhaps upset with me. Those are reasons to both write it and not write it. I want to challenge My Gentle Readers. I need to get more desperate for material before I take that plunge. While meditating last night I came up with what I want to write about, meditating.
Meditating is a paradox; it is literally doing nothing, yet it takes effort to do. Thinking about writing about meditating while meditating is counterproductive. I had to force myself to stop it. The effort required is the reason I don’t mediate more often despite the fact that I love having meditated. I usually do it to get to sleep. My mind has always raced and meditating puts on the breaks.. I remember as a kid my best friend told me that he has trouble sleeping because he can’t turn his mind off. I was shocked. Not that he has trouble turning his mind off, but that he doesn’t think everyone has trouble turning their minds off. I knew I did and figured so did everyone else. I was often surprised that he didn’t realize that things he was telling me about himself were also true of me.
According to my therapist I’m good at meditating. I get in the zone quickly. Do other people experience it as I do. I feel a distinct moment when my body relaxes. No matter that I felt relaxed before, it’s like the sinews of my bones loosened up and I melt into lowest energy state. That’s the money moment. If after that my mind picks up on something, like writing about meditating, then I have to start over again to reach it. The reason I like to meditate myself to sleep is then I don’t have to consciously stop meditating. I will meditate before doing something that causes anxiety. It’s often the only way I can get myself to do it.
Most people focus their eyes on something when the meditate. I can’t do that. My mind sees it and doesn’t shut down. I have to close my eyes and look at the colors and ghost images on my eyelids. The thing that really snapped me out of last night’s meditation was thinking about the moment on the TV show Daredevil where Stick says to young Matt, “You know when I meditate?” And Matt replies, “You mean when you pretend to not be asleep?” Marvel TV shows are a black hole I have to avoid when sleeping. I pulled out of the dive and made the effort to get back in the meditating groove. This time I succeeded.
Today’s expedition was to my inner world. We’ll see where my fingers take me tomorrow. I might even leave the house and let my feet take me someplace. I thought of a path where I might not encounter people. It means getting up the energy to do so and not have surprise streaming shows stop me. Today I watched one by Our Native Daughters. How can I not watch Rhiannon Giddens and Allison Russell? They weren’t all tonight, they performed one after the other from their homes. That was a two-hour show. Tomorrow I’ll get out of the house. I hope it’s cold or cloudy so there will be fewer people outside.
Wise Madness 