I breathe, exhale, and relax, and set aside everything else but this view and this moment for one minute. Just one minute of pure beautiful stillness, listening to the wind and the waves. How about it? Can you… not?
Taking just one minute.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
One minute can feel unexpectedly long without any distractions. Why race through life’s finite precious moments at the speed of doom scrolling? Take a minute. Breathe. Slow down. Savor the moment. This one. The next. Each moment is unique and fleeting. Unrepeatable.
… Being present slows that ticking clock…
Another breath, another moment, another beginning. I reread the last few pages of the book I brought with me; I had fallen asleep reading last night, and I felt certain I’d missed something. I wasn’t wrong. 😆
I finish one last cup of coffee as I lay out my work space on the small table in this room. Spending a day painting nurtures something within myself that I can’t satisfy any other way, but there’s no need to rush. I can take all the time I need.
An easel and a view.
I sigh contentedly and take a minute to listen to the wind and the waves, and to gaze quietly out the window before I begin again.
Wind and waves and shades of blue.
I pause my painting to consider lunch. I settle for a cup of tea and a multivitamin, and return to my easel. The ocean has taken on a cloudy gray appearance and the shades of blue shift towards a troubled gray green. The gulls seem to like it, and they drift across my view surfing the invisible waves and currents in the air. It pleases me greatly to stare out at the changing view with my pastels in front of me. I add a hue to my palette. I remove others. I feel relaxed and unbothered and in my element.
… Given the time and resources, I might spend every day at my easel…
I sigh to myself happily, stretching and working the kinks out of my neck and back before I return to creative work. This fragile vessel needs a certain amount of care and maintenance if it is expected to endure hours at my easel, however delightfully those hours may pass. 😆
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I tape a fresh piece of pastelbord to my easel, and begin again.
I don’t much feel like writing this morning. Hell, it wasn’t my plan to be walking this morning. My plan was to sleep in and take it easy, and to spend the weekend taking care of myself. It was my Traveling Partner’s idea.
… Plans? Meet reality.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
It’s a bit later in the morning than I usually write, but only because I simply sat here at my halfway point quietly occupied with my thoughts for so long. There’s no one else here yet, this morning. I breathe, exhale, and… do that a few many more times. I watch the sun rise. I reflect on life, love, mindfulness, and presence. I consider the meaning(s) of words and contemplate the nuances and complexities of communication. I think thoughts. This moment right here? Well-suited to contemplation.
Yesterday went sideways quite unexpectedly later in the evening, and although I don’t much feel like discussing it, it is what is on my mind. Less in a ruminative spiraling way, and more in a gently reflective studious way, seeking to learn what I can that I can put to use to do better later on. Over years of practice, this has become my way. Is it effective? Probably depends on who you ask. I think it is. My therapist has said he thinks it is. What my Traveling Partner thinks probably varies quite a lot depending on what I’m putting him through on any given day. We’re each having our own experience. Differences in perception and lived experience make things kind of complicated. I do my best. So does my partner. Sometimes it isn’t quite enough (of whatever was needed in the moment). The journey may be shared, but we’re still each walking our own path. Individual, separate human beings sharing precious finite mortal minutes.
We become what we practice. Practice is a verb. There’s a ton of practice required to make a permanent change, especially to behavior that developed out of trauma. I sigh to myself.
This morning my head aches. Allergies maybe, but these days it seems like I’ve nearly always got a headache. I remind myself that it will pass. My thumbs ache in the latest edition of “where has my arthritis gone to now, y’all?” Neck… shoulder… knee… ankle…yep, it’s all there, all still attached and functional, but fuck all this pain, though. I double check that I took my medication this morning. I breathe, exhale, and then stretch and yawn, and encourage tight muscles to relax.
Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. Mom has been gone a long time now. 2019? I think that’s right. Her birthday would have been at the end of May. My Dear Friend, too, is gone. It’s been a couple years now. I still miss her, but can’t remember when her birthday was. Instead I remember losing her. No calls to make for Mother’s Day. It’s weird what seems to matter after someone is gone. I reflect on that awhile.
I let a poignant moment of sorrow and gratitude wash over me, and I let it pass without criticism or scrutiny. Emotions are very human. I pause and consider the importance of making room for someone we love to express their emotions and have their own experience of circumstances. That’s not always reliably easy, especially if their experience seems different from our own. I struggle with this, more than a little and far too often. The temptation to explain or correct isn’t generally useful when emotions are involved. Better to listen deeply and understand circumstances from another perspective, and doing so is undeniably difficult sometimes.
Staying mindful and compassionate and open to understanding someone else’s experience is seriously one of the most complex practices among a long list of communication and relationship practices. I need a lot more practice. Even knowing these things, I still get it wrong…a lot. Very human. So beautiful and worthwhile when I get it right (and I often do, after years of practice, but I also fuck it completely far too often to be complacent about my limited successes).
I breathe, exhale, and relax. The cotton fluff of some tree or another is blowing about on the breeze. I eye it with a measure of annoyance; it’s one of the few plant things that I’m definitely allergic to. My sinuses are pretty clear for the time being. I took my morning allergy meds as soon as my feet hit the floor this morning, which turns out to have been a good choice. Probably best not to linger in this strip of trees though. I get to my feet to begin again.
Ordinary day. Ordinary Spring morning. Overcast skies, mild temperature, still air heavy with the scent of flowers, grass, and tilled soil. The tall oaks along the start of the trail are green now. The visible patches of snow on the distant hills are dwindling.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
I enjoy this bit of solitude in the mornings, rain or clear skies, fog or a brilliant sunrise, winter, summer, Spring, or fall. This is beautiful quiet time well spent. Vita contemplativa – maybe not achievable for every moment of every day in every lifetime; we don’t all have it like that. I’m grateful for the precious moments I can devote to solitary contemplation, or art, or just daydreaming as the minutes tick past.
Yesterday evening I looked around the house with some amazement. In the short time since the Anxious Adventurer returned to his familiar life and routine in Ohio, we’ve moved things around a lot, reclaimed a lot of space, done some spring cleaning, and generally gotten things more organized. It’s nice to see my Traveling Partner so capable once again, and improving every day. It’s hard to keep up with, though, and I had worn myself down a lot during the most demanding 16 months or so of caregiving. I’m still recovering. This morning I’m feeling the efforts of recent days in the form of an aggravated rotator cuff injury, aching knees and hips, and simple fatigue. (It still beats the hell out of the headache I had yesterday!)
My beloved suggested to me that I take off for a couple days the weekend after payday. (He’d go himself, and give me some alone time at home, but he’s in the middle of a job, and can’t just wander off for a weekend.) The idea is appealing. Would I go to some usual place? Somewhere new? I think it over without coming to any conclusions. It’s an appealing “maybe”.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I repeat as needed. It’s an ordinary work day. I have limited time for daydreaming. (It nearly always feels that way, and I always find it time well spent in spite of that.)
I remind myself gently that there is no pressure, no urgency, and that most seemingly stressful things are likely blown way out of proportion by my aggressively concerned primate mind. I imagine an ape with a laptop frowning at a calendar and chuckle to myself. Yeah, that seems pretty apt. A robin hops past my feet, more attentive to whatever is in the grass than to anything to do with me. I’m reminded that my thinking will be informed by whatever I put my attention on. Choices. I can guide the quality of my experience by choosing what I put my attention on. Useful.
Another breath, another moment, and a new day filled with new experiences. A chance to begin again. What will I do with it?
I got well along on my way this morning, heading for my favorite local trail for a morning walk, before I realized I’d somehow forgotten to put in my hearing aids. I didn’t pause or reconsider my plan; generally speaking, if I am alone anyway, I don’t really need them. The chronically vexing tinnitus isn’t improved by the hearing aids in any notable way, and my hearing impairment is limited to a handful of voice frequencies, mostly. It’s fine. It’s human and I’m okay with it.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
…AI doesn’t “hear” sounds, “see” sights, or actually think about anything at all. It’s a very elaborate Mad Libs completion tool. I smile as I walk. I am having this experience. I see the gray stormy looking sky and wonder what the weather will be like. I don’t check and I’m not looking for an answer. I’m just having this experience and enjoying this moment. It’s enough. I walk on, grateful for this messy weird human life wrapped in a fragile, fallible, meat suit with an unknown expiration date.
A slime mold in my garden.
This morning I spotted a slime mold in my garden. There’s not much more to say about that. There it was, yellow and a little gross looking, but harmless as far as I know, and it will live out it’s life over days and be gone. It will live its own moment, and have its own experience. I wonder, as I walk, what the life of a slime mold is like from the perspective of the slime mold?
“Emotion and Reason” 18″ x 24″ acrylic on canvas w/ceramic and glow. 2012
The Spring air smells of flowers. Roses and other sweet grassy and floral scents mingle. The air is still. Feels like it might rain today. Another thing AI doesn’t have; emotions and sensations. “Feelings”. I feel the possibility of rain in the specific type, location, and intensity of arthritis pain in my body. I feel a complicated mixed emotion of mostly anticipation, annoyance, and discomfort. Very human. This whole “human” thing has a lot of potential for profound joy (and sorrow) and feelings have to be felt – experienced – to be understood. Anything else is a facsimile (or, not even that). I can, for example, talk about the experience of motherhood, but without having experienced that myself, my words have little to offer, really. (This is also true of men writing about being women; without the lived experience, they are only observers.)
I walk awhile with my thoughts. Pretty random stuff on a Tuesday morning. I am in more pain than usual and distracting myself with my musings.
What a strange world. We don’t know what we don’t know. We’re each having our own experience. We all seem to assume everyone around us understands the world based on the same lived experience we ourselves are having. Super weird. Very human. Even the very green blades of grass along this trail may look quite different to us as individuals, and we somehow manage to share an understanding of “grass”. We are such complex and beautiful creatures. I sit with my thoughts awhile.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I have a vague sense that I was going somewhere with this, at some point… Now I’m just sort of indulging my wandering mind. I’m okay with that; the daydreams and the flights of fancy of a wandering mind are often the spark that sets ablaze an inferno of inspiration, for me. Maybe for you, too? When was the last time you simply sat with your thoughts? No phone, no screen in front of your eyes, no music playing, no “content” being consumed – just you and your thoughts and your lived experience? Worth doing.
I let the clock tick on for a little while, listening to birds and peeping frogs, and somewhere in the distance the hum and whir of HVAC. I sit considering the far distant future. If AI were to outlast humanity by some bizarre circumstance, and was asked to describe humanity…it would get so much so very wrong; it would have no lived experience by which to understand us. I hope our books and our art survive. I hope we do, too; we’re messy and weird, and violent and sometimes stupid, but we live and love and make beautiful art… I’d like to see us endure and grow into something better than we are.
I sigh to myself and get to my feet. I’m grateful to live this human experience, flaws and fears and pain and mistakes and all. I’m grateful for the opportunity to feel and experience love. I’m grateful to taste delicious food and to smell the flowers in my garden. I’m grateful to feel the trail under my feet and the breeze in my hair. I’m grateful to see the many hues of green and even to wonder if you see them as I do. I’m grateful to love and to feel my beloved Traveling Partner’s arms around me. I’m grateful for this moment, and I’m grateful to begin again, every morning, with a new day, a blank page.
The morning feels a little rushed and also a little… uphill. I slept well and deeply and woke one minute ahead of my alarm. I was at the trailhead with the sun just peeking over the eastern horizon, the western sky streaked with peach and pink hues. Sunshine was already lighting the treetops when I really got started. (My allergies hit hard as soon as I stepped out of the car.) It’s certainly a beautiful morning, and a beautiful moment.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
But for the allergies, this morning is as nearly perfect as most mornings can hope to be. My calendar feels full though and this feeling seeps into my awareness as “busy”. It’s not, actually. I’ve got a short work day ahead of a long weekend celebrating my anniversary with my beloved Traveling Partner (still a playful mischievous charming man after 16 years of sharing life and love as partners). I adore him. It’s a milestone worth celebrating. We’ve successfully exceeded my next longest romantic relationship, ever, and I think that may be true for him also.
The short work day feels a bit busy. It’s always busy as the month ends. It’s not actually a big deal. Coffee with a friend I don’t see often… A manicure… It’s not really “all that”, it’s just more stuff that shows on a calendar, and most of it weekend fun! I chuckle over my ridiculously variable sense of the flow of time. A lot of our stress as human beings is created in our own minds, and not really a true accounting of circumstances.
… I find myself thinking again that I’d like to return to a pen and ink to-do list, and “feeling busy” definitely reinforces that…
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I listen to the noisy robins and watch the squirrels play. I’ve got time for this moment, and I let myself slow down and lean into it. Presence is also a practice. This moment is enough, and making a point to savor it makes the recollection later much clearer and also more likely to positively influence my implicit sense of “how things are”. Handy. Useful.
We become what we practice. I definitely want to be a person who enjoys a beautiful moment, without rushing through it. I sit awhile longer, enjoying the sights and scents of a Spring morning.
It is a short work day, though. I sigh to myself, glance at the time, and prepare to begin again.
Evening Light 