At the end of one voyage, rejoining another, I'm glad my sails are catching the winds I hoped for.
After a while away, hoping to accomplish the transition, I feel myself catching the momentum of the lifeblood in this city again.
The pulse of this city catches mine for a little longer.
That didn't take long.
A matter of hours to feel again the motion of this river.
another significant set of words on the refrigerator of a friend, it's about time I finally got around to posting them. I've been meaning to since at least last July, and now is certainly a good time.
"
... we must suffer, suffer into truth. We cannot sleep, and drop by drop at the heart the pain of pain remembered comes again, and we resist, but ripeness comes as well.
"
-Aeschylus
Agammemnon
(I also feel like this may have been referenced in I Have Tasted Air Above the Clouds)
"I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships, so will our healing"
I have been meaning to post this quote, found on my friend's refrigerator, for at least since last July. Now is as good a time as any, especially since while in Connecticut, I found the quote within a book. It should be attributed to: William P. Young, The Shack
This hums in me a sympathetic resonance for something I used to want to say.
[...]
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
EAST COKER
(No. 2 of 'Four Quartets')
T.S. Eliot
Someday,
perhaps I will be able to say that I used to expend a lot of effort choosing very carefully exactly what to say for fear of missing my target,
but then I realized that whether or not people understand has very little to do with the content they are given.
People are blind, and will see only what they are prepared to see, regardless.
And when I really understand this,
I will know that however someone responds to something is at least as telling of where they are coming from as it is of how well I spoke. I can only anticipate so much, and then, as much as I wish to be an architect of these things, my half of the bridge is built. Whether I can be met with open understanding is a condition of the hearer more than an evaluation of me as a speaker, although of course I will try to be flexible to the condition of my audience.
When I understand this, I will be able to tell whether corn or pearls are called for. I will learn from the response what the feeding habits are. If that's not what I've got, I will accept retention of the things I cannot express or share. People don't accept what they can't recognize. Of course swine will insult what they can't eat.
And, I won't mind, but I will feel alone.
Discard what you can't use, and keep drawing new cards from the deck. If it's in there, that's the only way you'll find it.
I am not hurt.
But, "Anything dead coming back to life hurts"
This might be true for live things continuing to grow and live as well.
No change without death?
There is a quote that I thought I posted long ago, but now cannot find. It was lyrics to a song I heard called One Art by Elizabeth Bishop (quoted below)
I've thought of this poem a lot over the years, a few of the lines being etched into mind.
But, I feel like I've put in my time on this art (the art of losing). Due partly to its practice, there are others I find myself lacking experience in, such as the art of claiming.
I would like to practice this as well. I'm sure it would be good cross-training.
****
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
I was walking with a friend in New York City when this vertically-scrolling column caught my eye.
Everything seems better when you have a good vantage point to look back from.
This is another good reason to seek good vantage points.
My brother reminded me that this mantra, often delivered by a housemate, really does work. Try it. Play with the enunciation.
" You know, ... I AM pretty awesome..."
I am currently adventuring on the East Coast which I like much more than I thought I would. DC has important stuff all over, Connecticut and people in New York are very nice and helpful. This post is just a time-marker. I'll have more to say in the near future, but this is when it's all going down. I'm in Connecticut now, at the midpoint of my DC -> NYC -> CT -> NYC -> DC journey.
1st)
Remember to continue imagining and moving into a world without fear.
2nd)
Imagine a world in which you are very happy with what you are doing and everything is fine. Move in that direction. It doesn't matter where you're starting from.
These exercises are not just for thinking.
Do them
- totally taken from This Post on An Aspiring Yogi in the West-- because I liked it. --
The Shiva-Samhita (3.16, 18 -19)
Success comes to a person of faith and self-confidence, but there is no success for others. Hence practice hard.
The first sign of success is confidence that [one's efforts] will bear fruit. The second is being firm in that faith; the third is worship of the guru;
The fourth is equanimity (samata-bhava); the fifth control over the senses; the sixth is moderate eating; there is no seventh.
Cesar Millan, appears in a show called The Dog Whisperer
Cesar coaches dog owners in how to manage themselves to the benefit of their dogs' good behavior.
Referring to how to handle dogs with troubled histories, the owners learn,
"What happened [earlier] doesn't matter"
and to proceed by focusing on the question, "What do you want to create?"
To encourage owners to continue with what they've learned, he says, "remind yourself of the things you did well."
I like his attitude towards teaching and learning. When the owners succeed in following his directions with their dogs, he congratulates them, saying "I want to reward you with more challenges".
Some of the advice he has regarding dog ownership is just generally good advice for conducting oneself and being aware of others. Here, he offers some thoughts on Energy as Communication.
From the few cases I saw, it seemed that it wasn't necessarily that extra or special measures had to be taken to counteract the dogs' prior negative experiences, but that the dogs responded very well for having a calm and stable leader that would just handle them and their current situation for what it was, and who let them know clearly and fairly what was expected of them.
All the information of how to proceed, even from a difficult situation, is right there in the present for someone who can interact, listen, and move.
This post will probably only make sense to myself.
I am posting anyway because I need to process it. Perhaps someday I will find more readily human-intelligible words.
I need to remind myself to be entirely myself rather than assembling myself from various chosen categories (although, it is helpful to consult previously-established categories in creating myself).
I don't need to dig up my history in order to determine my present or my future.
I don't need to apologize, but to absorb, grow, and adapt.
Sometimes, I think that the way I try to be reminds people of categories that I didn't intend. And this sometimes concerns me when I realize that the way I choose to conduct myself can affect other peoples' categories as well. Some walls are good to cross, but sometimes walls are there for a reason. Some walls divide, others organize, others are practical. Some are wise, others are temporary.
I know that I sometimes draw lines in sands that didn't need to be divided. And, when waters meet over walls I thought I saw, and two categories seem to contradict, the only thing I know to do is learn.
and yet, this is the year of the Tiger, not the year of the Stingray.
a small basket of what I hope is helpful sanity:
A similar and helpful thought from Sam
I've come a short ways from my status as a bottom-feeder (in the aquarium of reality). I thought I would begin putting words to some of the structures I think I've gathered and understood and would like to implement and manage further in the ways I choose to live.
Inevitable and must be accepted / incorporated
In my Origins of Western Morality class, we talked about the Epicureans and their ideas.
The Epicureans thought of the world as consisting of atoms, tiny particles of every sort that fall and swirl, and void, the nothingness that separated the atoms. They tried to apply this model to determining why it is that some things, like horses, have an agency to choose to move and run while other things, like rocks, do not move.
I have been wanting to write about the Epicurean reasoning of how a horse begins to run.
The idea deals with the event that must occur between the before of a still horse and the after of a running horse. They considered that running was caused when an atom for running fit into the right place like an ignition key, causing the horse to begin running when previously, it was still.
The desire to run shapes the horse's mind in a way that is able to receive atoms of running. All things on earth are constantly bathed in a stream of all kinds of invisible atoms, so if the horse positions its mind properly, it is only a brief matter of time until a running atom finds the place prepared to receive it.
Once this running atom fits into the prepared place, this ignites the running ability, and the the horse runs.
I think I believe this.
Things happen because a place has been prepared to receive it.
Sometimes it is said that things are 'for the best' because 'something good will come of it.' I don't agree with the thoughts of good things coming from bad things (to the extent that such a judgment is reasonable). But, I do think that good things will find those who are able to keep their heads up enough to see them.
I must continue to choose open windows.
I was attracted to this video by its convenient juxtaposition of English, 中文, and pinyin, delivered both visually and audibly.
After watching it several times, I was reminded of things like this:
And these are just funny:
The following question posed by one ethan rafal:
he demanded to be sent 'one word (nouns best) that best describes the last decade as you see it.'
Thinking about this question gave me a passing sense of vertigo.
Not only do I have over 10 years of consciously-functioning life to look back on, but so very very very much has happened in any interval of it (and yet, things are not so different now). It is revealing too, I think, that as I searched for a word, I was thinking mostly about the changes I had desired and developed in my own person. This is in contrast to real knowledge or ability to consider what the rest of the world was experiencing as I moved through high school and into college. The aspects of the last decade that I considered as I contemplated my word revealed what had been important to me and what I had thought important enough to mentally document.
I don't have a satisfying answer (yet).
But the answer's not the important part. It seems like one of those questions about trees falling in uninhabited forests where the answer is not the goal, but rather, the side-effects of considering the question. Further, any answer is meaningful because it is something you produced and reflective of the way the thinker thinks.
Try it.
What have you been paying attention to over the last 10 years?
(ethan chose ponzi-scheme )
A thought that has been in my head for a long time (months, at least) as a mantra of sorts that I may as well give letters to:
I am nothing if not adaptable
Sshh, sshhh.
Just let the colors move. Even if they don't spread and blend the way you hoped or thought they might, it's still a beautiful aurora now.
And besides,
they just might spread and blend in a way you didn't know to hope for.
I have a new time and place to look forward to -
I did not leave earlier partly out of feeling that I needed to incubate a while longer in a conducive and familiar environment. I chose to stay in my city, Portland.
Like most things that are helpful and good for me and that I find characteristically special, I'm growing to love this city.
Like many things that contribute to my growth, although I am indebted, I find myself preparing to move on, exploring the future and what I can grow into next.
And so again, more concretely, I have in mind to leave this place.
In my former years, I had a pattern of distancing myself from those I knew I would have to let go.
But, I think I will continue falling in love with Portland to the sweet and timely end.
Maybe I will come back, but I won't make any promises. My preferences now are no indication of the future.
From Lili's.
First, a scone, then an AVOCADO MELT with a surprisingly awesome combination of lemon and salsa.
(with a side of really good soup ... I forgot which kind...)
is a sequence (series?) of decreasingly long journeys, each journey beginning with a single step, and each journey one step shorter than the last.
