Steady study steady

This morning finds me in mourning and studying to steady my mind. Come ponder with me.


It helped last night, after everyone left, to scrub the coffee pot and the counters like I always did on my first night (or first morning) there.  I put on music, blasted the stereo like he always did, one or two clicks past loud enough, and we cleaned and sang and cried. Chris, Gracie, and I.  And we sang and cried and talked and cleaned.  This is all really hard.  And I am so glad we are staying there.  I'm so glad I can sit in  my spot here and my spot there and wipe this sink or sit in this chair and breathe in the smell of the towels and cigarettes.

Do you know he saved every card?  More on  that later.

I gotta walk now.  Gotta walk.

Here's some of what I was studying this morning.

First, from Plotinus, FIRST ENNEAD, SIXTH TRACTATE: BEAUTY


4. But there are earlier and loftier beauties than these. In the sense-bound life we are no longer granted to know them, but the soul, taking no help from the organs, sees and proclaims them. To the vision of these we must mount, leaving sense to its own low place.
As it is not for those to speak of the graceful forms of the material world who have never seen them or known their grace- men born blind, let us suppose- in the same way those must be silent upon the beauty of noble conduct and of learning and all that order who have never cared for such things, nor may those tell of the splendour of virtue who have never known the face of Justice and of Moral-Wisdom beautiful beyond the beauty of Evening and of dawn.

Such vision is for those only who see with the Soul's sight- and at the vision, they will rejoice, and awe will fall upon them and a trouble deeper than all the rest could ever stir, for now they are moving in the realm of Truth.

This is the spirit that Beauty must ever induce, wonderment and a delicious trouble, longing and love and a trembling that is all delight. For the unseen all this may be felt as for the seen; and this the Souls feel for it, every soul in some degree, but those the more deeply that are the more truly apt to this higher love- just as all take delight in the beauty of the body but all are not stung as sharply, and those only that feel the keener wound are known as Lovers.

That middle paragraph just hits me.

And from The Confessions of St. Augustine, some thoughts on fire and weight and love.  All things I also happen to distinctly enjoy.

Chapter IX

But was not either the Father, or the Son, borne above the waters? if this means, in space, like a body, then neither was the Holy Spirit; but if the unchangeable supereminence of Divinity above all things changeable, then were both Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost borne upon the waters. Why then is this said of Thy Spirit only, why is it said only of Him? As if He had been in place, Who is not in place, of Whom only it is written, that He is Thy gift? In Thy Gift we rest; there we enjoy Thee. Our rest is our place. Love lifts us up thither, and Thy good Spirit lifts up our lowliness from the gates of death. In Thy good pleasure is our peace. The body by its own weight strives towards its own place. Weight makes not downward only, but to his own place. Fire tends upward, a stone downward. They are urged by their own weight, they seek their own places. Oil poured below water, is raised above the water; water poured upon oil, sinks below the oil. They are urged by their own weights to seek their own places. When out of their order, they are restless; restored to order, they are at rest. My weight, is my love; thereby am I borne, whithersoever I am borne. We are inflamed, by Thy Gift we are kindled; and are carried upwards; we glow inwardly, and go forwards. We ascend Thy ways that be in our heart, and sing a song of degrees; we glow inwardly with Thy fire, with Thy good fire, and we go; because we go upwards to the peace of Jerusalem: for gladdened was I in those who said unto me, We will go up to the house of the Lord. There hath Thy good pleasure placed us, that we may desire nothing else, but to abide there for ever.

TV

Gong Washed

Today was my first gong wash or gong bath!  All I knew about gong washes before today was that lots of people said things like "Don't miss it!" "Oh, if you have a chance to go to a gong wash, GO!" I wasn't sure what it was or what to expect, but my experiences at The Studio Cleveland have been great so far, so I had faith this would be worthwhile.  

The set up was like this:

\We all sat in front of it, some lying, some seated, some on cushions.  I felt like a meditation noob for a moment there.  It's always nice to be humbled by inexperience.  Gives me something to look forward to.  Anyway, the wash began with bowls. And then gong master Steev Inglish slowly built the sounds.

As the hour and fifteen minute meditation progressed, I settled in and moved into a supine position.  You are supposed to lie with the crown of your head toward the gongs and your feet away, which helps the gunk flow out of you as you detox.  I tried not to point my feet at Ben.   Heaven knows no one wants my toxins. Yeesh. 

various mallets and a bow

As for my meditation, well that's kind of personal, even for a blog.  There's been a lot on my mind lately, and much of it I don't even have words for.  I did play with putting myself in the sound and disappearing for a while.  It's what I did when I labored with Jones and it's fun to do that when I'm not trying to escape pitocin-labor pain.  Much more mellow, as you can imagine.  Driftier.

I prayed.  I prayed a chanting and listening kind of plea.  God seemed to answer me back in gong-voice.  But I'm not fluent in gongspeak, so I'll have think more about what those answers and reverberations mean.  Praying seemed to come easier when I was wrapped those sounds and harmonics.  Like they drowned out the chatter that usually distracts me when I pray.  Something felt more pure in those moments.  

And, while this is may not be the right way to do things, I also allowed my mind to see its thoughts.   I just let thoughts drift in, stay as long as they wanted to without me speaking to them (well, this was the goal), and then go.  No conclusions. No realizations or plans.  Just letting them float through and rest for a moment.  It was nice to see where my thoughts wanted to go.  And the gongspeak was funny, too, because when certain thoughts came, CRASH CRASH SSSSSSSHHHHHHHHRRRRIIIIIHHHHH  Other thoughts got a thunderswell, some got space whale sounds, others cacophony.  I honestly can't remember well enough which thoughts got which reactions.  Now that I'm out of the meditation, I'd be inclined to analyze for patterns.  Ruminate.  But it's already fading away.  I think I'm thankful for that.

Oh, and I was able to meditate on the different physical sensations I experienced as a result of sound and vibration.  I am not sure of the extent to which I'm detoxed, but I will say that I physically felt different parts of the meditation in different parts of my body.  Sometimes my teeth, a few times some internal organs in the right side of my abdomen, sometimes in my head.  I was cold, so that was a distraction, but if I had put on my sweater and some socks, I think I would have gotten a lot more out of this aspect of the wash.

After the meditation ended, I did feel different.  I still do.  The pores in my face feel more open.  My mind is quieter.  I don't really want to talk or feel like I need to (both pretty shocking).  I just want quiet and peace.  One's easier to cultivate and control than the other.

And the twilight sky gave us a show on the walk to our car.  I'll definitely do one of these again, but I'll make sure I have some alone time with a journal immediately afterward.  You can come with me if you're okay with post-gong-wash- blissed-out-quiet writing.  Have you ever been to a gong wash or gong bath?  What was yours like?

A crooked I-have-my-hands-fulla-yoga-stuff style cityscape

Ah, my city!  Ah, night!

To My Dirty White Gloves

I like this 500 words a day challenge.  This is day five for me-- I missed a day (thanks, stomach flu), but other than that, I've been writing more in my journal and here.  If I had fewer obligations, I'd be writing even more because it's kicked my writer's brain into gear.  If only I could just stop what I'm doing and write whenever the ideas came.  Some day....

Today, I just wanted to write a regular old post about my gloves, but it came out like this.

To my dirty white gloves:

Ambiguous mittens

Gray and gritty, the grime of ropes and coils

Chipped paint from playground metal

Caught between your fine-knit fibers

Your fingerless hobo state

Derailed if my bluster-hardened fingers can just

Gah just

Hang on

Get a grrrrasp of the

Uuuahhh cold little

White loop of elastic

That,

There,

Frees the mitten top to warm the

dancingest parts of my hands.

Dirt where you’ve made contact

With fences and handles,

Pressed pedestrian signal buttons,

Drummed on metal bleachers,

Scratched a nose,

Brushed hair away from eyes,

Sloshed coffee.

No longer crisp and ladylike,

You’ve taken on the dust-and-wind smell

Of all my coats.

I bought you to transform me into

A creature more ladylike and refined.

Instead, you have become slightly frayed,

Unmistakably soiled,

Broken in,

perfect.

Read a better ode to an inanimate object here.  Because Pablo Neruda is divine.  

Read the last poem I wrote here. 

Other reflections:

On Ellen this week, Jennifer Gardner referred to her post baby body as her "everlasting baby bump" and she called it by her three children's names.  I think that's pretty awesome.  Love me a little celebration of healthy women's bodies and all the changes they go through.  Full disclosure, I read about this on some news website while I was looking for Ebola articles.  I didn't actually watch Ellen.

This morning the wind was coming from the north -- not the first time this school year, but today was the first time the air smelled arctic.  Summer's been lingering in tree smells.  I picture it lurking in the shade of the oak trees in front of Sts. Peter and Paul.  It tucks itself up under the low branches, which are still a good twenty feet off the ground, and it curls up its feet, letting fall blow around beneath it.  I know the summer is waiting there, looking for the right time to leap down on us one last time before it blows away til next year.

So yeah, fall smells have been trading days with the tail of summer.  There have been a few salty, southern smelling mornings, too.  But today was barren, windswept plains and the grey of geese, snow snakes slithering down highways, and tall grasses bent under the weight of hard frost.

Day 3

My 500 are going on paper tonight, friends.  But I'm posting for accountability's sake.  Happy writing!

Teddy Roosevelt, Greatness, Haters, We Got This.

Today's musings were inspired by a story I heard on NPR about why there are so few great presidents.  Interesting stuff, though contestable.  The haters had a field day leaving comments (oh, the internets... I imagine the internets as some version of Hades and all the haters share one body, sort of like a mutant Cerberus, yapping away at all who try to enter).

We are the haters of the internets.

So what does it take to be great?  And more importantly, can’t we all be great?  I think so.  Fo’ sho’!  But how?  If you’re a president, according to Aaron David Miller, you need to face some big ol’ crisis, wade through it in a way that extracts some sort of positive change for the country, and then, after some time goes by, you have to be embraced by your supporters and adversaries alike.  My current history crush, Teddy Roosevelt even lamented not having a crisis “worthy of his mettle” through which he could prove himself. 

Now this I can get behind!  It is so true that slogging through crises are what make us great.  But it’s not just facing hard times that make us great.  We’ll all face hard times.  Some of us have larger giants to slay than others, but they’re all giants.  And some of us have more to slay than others, but fighting any number of giants is damn scary.  The greatness in our own lives comes from learning from those battles.  And it can’t stop there because you can’t learn without making a change.  This is where a lot of us fall short.  I mean, how many times have I faced some problem, often of my own making, only to face the same kind of problem again (also of my own making).  Did I learn something from the battle?  Yes.  Did I learn it hard enough to make some sort of positive change?  Ehhhhhnope.  Or, this is perhaps more common, we learn it enough to make a temporary change, but then we slip right back to the same mistakes again.  Not great.  So all we have to do is stop doing that.  Easy if you open your eyeballs!  While I still dig myself into holes sometimes, I’m getting better at noticing when I’m picking up a shovel so I can put it down.  I’m also getting better at climbing out before they are too deep.  It gets easier, for all of us, once we start paying more attention.

Then there’s that last part, being appreciated for what you've done by supporters and adversaries alike.  At first, this might seem easy to reject.  All you have to do is look at those Cerberus-heads of all the haters to say, “Yeah, well there’s always going to be someone to pull you down and detract from your achievements.”  But if you really live up to your values and your standards, the haters won’t have much to say.  And the supporters will be there, happier than ever to support.

Now this doesn't seem so bad.  Doable, in fact.  Let’s do it, friends.  Let’s go out and be great.  Maybe even the greatest.

Every intention

I am starting a 500 words a day challenge.  Good luck to me.  So far, I began by "writing" but what happened was that I read an article on Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath.  And now I have a hot date with folding laundry and re-watching select episodes of Walking Dead.  Oh, life.

I'm not going to publish this post, though, until I get these words out.  =)

And I'm back, dedicated to you words.

So the last few months of my life have been forcing me to look harder and push through muddy thoughts to articulate my thoughts, my emotions, and my struggles.  It’s been impossibly hard, good, terrible, uplifting, and humbling, like all periods of growth tend to be. While some things are not resolved, I am beginning to get some clarity and one thing I’m more and more clear about is my need for connection.  Lately, the goal has been to not just sit on that clarity and keep it locked away into a journal.  Oh no, friends, you know how much this little Helenka likes to take action.  So I’ve got some friend dates on the calendar and am making the energy and time and effort (ahem, as in bumming a ride off someone) to go hang out with work people on Fridays after quittin’ time. 

I’m still working on backlogged emails and letters.  I’m still in that odd state of avoidance for some things – you know, like when it’s been so long that you don’t want to say something unless it’s good or unless you have the time to be there to respond.  I used to hate that excuse in other people.  I hate it in myself, too.  Doesn’t stop me from using it, I guess.   Ha.

But this has been good for me.   It’s good for me to see how just great the friends in my life are.  And it feels right and comforting to put some more time into them than I have been.  You know, I’m incredibly blessed to have a surplus of good people in my circle.  And there are so many of them I’d like to spend more time with and know better.  There are so many who energize me and make me feel joyfully alive.  And there are so many I want to be there for.  I need to be mindful of engaging with people when I can honor them with time and attention to let a conversation go where it needs to.  It’s hard to do that at work when there are so many bells, interruptions, things to do right at three…. All the more reason to hang out outside of work. 

And all of this extends to my children, too.  This weekend was so nice in terms of connecting with them.  It could be longer, sure.  There are things we never got to do.  But it was good. 

Alright, well, I’m learning about these five hundred words.  I need to be more awake when I sit down to write them!  Goals! Goals! Goals!