Wednesday

Fans are like breathing

STORY BASKETS ARE STUPID I don't have to sort out all these thoughts. I don't have to think about all this shit in my life, I'm not gonna solve everything rolling around spazzin on this couch. I can just stop all mental activity - at least for a little while. There's always the compulsion to sort things out mentally. That's just one of the cravings - the craving for order - or some idea of order something that I think is order.

Monday

Just keep asking: What is going through my head? What is going through my head? What is going through my head? And you will see what is going through your head, and these things will diminish like smoke as the breeze of your inquiry nudges these things along...and soon you are asking: What is going through my head? What is going through my head? What is going through my head? - - And there's nothing. Nothing but that question. And then the question goes away. And then you have those perfectly balanced, nothing gaps in brain activity where it's an absolute nothing in your head. Until something else comes and then you again start asking: What is going through my head? What is going through my head? What is going through my head? # # # # # Letting go by actually pondering the definition of 'letting go' and engaging directly in it, as you have just defined it: "Letting go means not holding onto this or that. Not holding on to this or that means your mind is not engaged with something from minutes ago, it is observing what is coming in right now: it is observing the stiffness in the back, it is observing the sound of the car motor down the street, it is observing the refrigerator compressor turning on. Letting go means not hanging on. Letting go frees me to observe what is happening RIGHT NOW. Letting go means your mind is a tunnel that things flow through, things do not become encased, they flow through and are gone, they may cycle back through, but then they are gone again. Define very clearly what letting go is and do it. Sometimes, if you repeat the words "Let go let go let go," the words start to loose their meaning, and your just saying the words and the clutter in your head remains and these words are there with the clutter. If you keep your mind on what letting go is...If you have let go, you are now observing the new things that occur because your mind is not occupied by the thing that you let go of. Whatever that was.

Thursday

Sunday

Lake Marion Boat Ramp Florida

"In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves." - Buddha

Saturday

I've been pretty good at remembering to step back behind the immediate thinking my brain throws at me lately. Actions and reactions play out in my brain and I remember to step back and just witness them. Sometimes though things get intense and I don't remember. Or, I remember, but this remembering does not have the needed effect. There is still the sting or the stink of something infecting me. Then, extra effort is required. I have to bring it back to the breathing. The feel of the hands on the steering wheel. The full immersion in the words I happen to be reading. Attention to every sound that can possibly be heard around me. Count the sounds. Auditory inventory. A bird pretty far away. Traffic noise. A leaf blower somewhere. A compressor on a refrigerator or an air conditioner. Sometimes I just deal with the fact that things are going to bug me. I am going to be bugged for a while. I have to even step out of my 'efforts' to 'deal with'...'troubles.' It feels like it takes effort to be effortless enough to not be affected. It takes effort to throttle the instinct to get snagged by the hooks that hang down in the path. Immerse myself in the task at hand. Multitask by being super focused on each item one after another in rapid succession. Task. Next task. Next task. Tasks complete for the day? Okay. Now peace. Gracefully glide around home or the environment, the store, the gas station, the where ever. Writing seems like a good idea lately. I'm keeping a pen and paper journal lately and it has lots of self helpy tips that I remember from all my reading and video watchin. I feel like I'm doing more than just reciting the words of the self helpy steps. I'm applying them a lot. I want to say more though. I want to discuss more than just how to avoid the negative. There are stories, and while some say the stories are futile and false and foolish and they trap you and they keep you stuck...when you keep the stories, you stay in the stories. Stories are just invented. Stories are substitutes for the present moment. Not good. But the stories are stories. Stories exist. I just don't have to be stuck in them. I can tell them without being them -- without being in them. Stories can be gems. Stories can bring glory.

Friday

Today I saw a guy riding a bike carrying a rake, and because my brain is really racing lately, I flooded this sight of this guy on a bike with a rake...I flooded it with all of this mental activity. My first unfortunate reaction was to make fun of him... like he was a superhero..."Look! It's Rake Man! And he's going to save the day, raking leaves at the house of some unfortunate elderly woman. I think my brain just felt the need to analyze and emote... something... anything... intensely. Plus, when I first caught a glimpse of him, it looked like he was riding the rake... like he was a witch... man witches ride on rakes instead of brooms.

Then I felt guilty... for making fun of him.

Then I felt sorry for him. He's just trying to get somewhere to earn some cash. People don't ride bikes to work in Florida unless they do not have a car. Everything is too spread out.

The guy waved to another guy who is on a bike across the street. For some reason, my brain made an association, and I looked to see if that other guy was also carrying some kind of tool. Like maybe these two guys were going to go meet on a job. But the other guy wasn't carrying anything.

Today should be a productive day at work, if I can focus all of this mental activity on something productive that is.

A recent conversation reminded me of my mom and my mom's room. My mom had her own room, separate from my dad. My mom hoarded mail and magazines. There would be stacks of mail and magazines everywhere. Her bed would be covered with opened letters and letters she was in the process of writing. She loved to have candles burning too. It drove us crazy with worry, the fire risk.

She was interested in so many issues, and she was always writing to congressmen and to organizations and to all kinds of advocates. She got herself on many mailing lists and newsletter subscriptions. My mom's internet was all paper. She never got on a computer, she distrusted them (she hated TV too).

After I was old enough to drive, she would often send me out the door with hands full of responses she had written to all of these organizations and officials. Sometimes I would forget to mail them, or I would get lazy about it. Then, we would decide to go somewhere, to eat or something, and she the letters still in the car, and she ...would be a little disappointed. We would drive straight to a mailbox (this was back when it was actually easy to find a mailbox somewhere).

My mom had beautiful handwriting. I love it when I find something she had written among the stuff from the old house. I actually have a bag full of correspondence that my mom and her sister were sending back and forth. I've never opened it though. My mom and her sister were in a major feud for years and years...too many years...and I'm not sure what is being written about in those letters.

Thursday

The humans continue to confuse me.

Saturday

Proof that I'm Not Crazy (almost)



I used to hear bagpipe music at lunch time somewhere in the neighborhood around work. This is the kind of thing that could make somebody wonder whether they're going crazy. I don't really care whether I'm crazy or not. But, when I finally actually saw this person playing bagpipes, it kind of solidified my sense of reality. And it's pretty cool other than that too. Too bad I didn't get a closer shot. She really is there, playing the bagpipe, I swear!
I read and hear a lot of advice about letting go of the stories of the mind, letting go of of this bundle of history we see as our identity. I love my stories a lot though! I used to tell em on this blog all the friggin time. I love my identity way less...but I still cling to it, with a cold dead kryptonite lock. But I guess it's all gotta go, the wise men and wise WOmen say so. This clinging to stories and the clinging to these dopey ideas of self should probably go too, that clinging - it's gotta go. What exactly should stay? Nothing? All of it - let it go - let it flow. I don't know if I'll ever get this spirit thing right or if I should even keep trying. Trying and clinging are the same kind of clinging maybe. I get snagged in a lot of these word tangles. Every thought has a counter thought. Every thought is its own counter thought, because if you let it wind out long enough, it circles back around and bites its own butt like some dumb snake. It's fun trying to figure it out though - finding my balance, my particular blend - it's fun watching what my mind does. Or am I still deriving 'fun' from some kind of struggle. Questioning everything. Until my mind puts the toys down and gets still. Some say a still mind is IT:

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders. Lao Tzu

This guy says it's just another state



Lots of word tangles. Lots of thinkers thinking or trying not to think.

It's really easy to get carried away with all this stuff.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

Friday

I returned from my trip to Virginia and found out my neighbor had been evicted. He is the friendliest and most generous person I've met in Florida. He and I went out and got rip-snorting drunk one night, no lie. We were trashed. His ex-wife had taken the kids that night for the first time in forever, so he was really wanting to whoop it up. So we did.

Anyway, his wife really did him wrong and continues to do him wrong. She cheated on him and left him -- with two little kids. She barely ever takes them when it's her turn. She sends him hateful text messages. She tried (apparently successfully) to sabotage a thing he was trying to develop with a new love interest. She cornered his love interest in a bar and told her all this hateful horrible crap. I would say that the ex-wife is a total freakin loser, but she's a fireman (fire(wo)man), so I guess she pumps some good kharma into the economy.

So his luck wasn't bad enough, so now's he's evicted. He moved into these crummy apartments because he couldn't hold down his house due to the mortgage/real estate bust. He was in construction. The work dried up. His mortgage payment probably adjusted north in a big bad way, so income definitely fell away from the outlay.

How many people are there out there like this? The economy is pinching hard. When will it turn around? A year? Two? I think it'll come back piece by piece. Education, then jobs, then housing, then global. What do I know? Ask an economist. Ask a futurist.