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Partly Cloudy

June 20, 2016 //
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Yesterday was a pleasant day with a handful of blue moments. The awareness of Father’s Day jockeying for position with the awareness that my father died some years ago was occasionally uncomfortable. It was a pleasant day, anyway. I spent most of the day at home, in solitude, reading, meditating, gardening, maintaining my aquarium, and generally contemplating life. I drank coffee – but not enough to keep me up late.

Pastel twilight, moon rising.

Pastel twilight, moon rising.

Evening came, eventually, and with it the delight of seeing the moon rise, just beyond the patio. I spotted it as I began turning things off to head to bed, and stayed up awhile longer to watch it rise, white and round like some magnificent pearl just out of reach. Totally worth the time taken to relax and watch the moon rise.

A brief lesson in impermanence when the rising moon disappears.

A brief lesson in impermanence when the rising moon disappears.

I slept mostly well, mostly fairly deeply, mostly without waking – or without waking in any significant way, at least. I woke sometime shortly before midnight. Again sometime after 1 am. My wakefulness was so brief, only as much time as needed to check the clock, it seems unfair to count it as not sleeping. lol I woke at a fairly usual time (if I were working), and after taking my medication I returned to sleep. Sleep really matters; if I am still tired, or not feeling rested, and the planned events of the day will permit it, I go back to sleep. This has worked out pretty well for me. Your results may vary. Obviously. We’re each having our own experience. 🙂

It is another lovely day. Is it wasteful to say so? Is it boastful? I’m not complacent about this delicate peace I’ve found within; like any garden, the work to maintain it is ongoing. So many verbs. 🙂

Later this morning, I’ll enjoy brunch with my traveling partner – the idea of brunch for Father’s Day was appealing (we both enjoy brunch out)…but… Father’s Day. Local bistros and breakfast places were definitely going to be packed. Instead of the crowds, we decided on brunch on Monday, instead. 🙂 I am definitely okay with that, since it is about enjoying my partner’s company over a meal, and not at all what date on the calendar we do so.

My coffee is finally cool enough to drink. The morning sun escaped the reach of the clouds on the horizon and shines a good morning flash into my eyes. The marsh and meadow birds celebrate the morning with song, and I watch a chubby raccoon hurrying across the lawn for a safer location now that daylight is here. The raccoon and the neighborhood cats on patrol at the edge of the taller meadow grass studiously ignore each other. There may be very few such Mondays left in my summer; I anticipate returning to the work force next week, most likely, and back to a routine built around 40 hours that are no longer my own. It often feels ‘too soon’…still… there are a few days left, and they are worth enjoying. Today will be a good day to go and do that. 🙂

...And I'll continue to practice the practices that are most effective for me. :-)

…And I’ll continue to practice the practices that are most effective for me. 🙂

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Art of Being

3:00 am

June 10, 2016 //
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I woke at 3:00 am this morning. No reason for it as far as I could tell. Lately I’ve been feeling very fatigued, and my sleep was definitely disturbed by the recent hot weather. It’s cooler again, now, for the time being. Yesterday I powered through the fatigue of recent days and the headache that I woke with, mostly fueled by the emotional energy of excitement, having accepted a suitable job offer. I crashed hard, pretty early, after enjoying the evening with my partner. This morning, I woke at 3:00 am, after only 6 hours of sleep. I wanted to go back to sleep, but sleep was having nothing to more to do with me, this morning. It was sufficiently clear that sleeping was concluded I simply got up, and made my coffee.

Before dawn the only glow is in the art on the walls, not the sky beyond the window.

Before dawn the only glow is in the art on the walls, not the sky beyond the window.  “Without Substance” 11″x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/glow 2016

So, it’s back to the day-to-day grind of ‘gainful employment’… if I sound less than enthusiastic, it’s only because I don’t define the quality of my life by whether or not I am doing work for someone else in exchange for money. I enjoy my leisure time, and certainly there is enough I’d like to do with my time to fill all of it quite nicely without giving any of it away.  On the other hand, the offer I accepted is a very good move in a new direction, and I am genuinely stoked about that. Balance. I am also not being rushed back into the workforce; I’ll have a couple more weeks off before I get back to commuting.

My thoughts are interrupted by a cat complaining outside my window. I don’t have a cat, myself, so I know it isn’t mine. The plaintive wails are not those of pain or suffering as much as a call for companionship. I am on the edge of the park, and there is a lot of wildlife. It isn’t unusual to see a neighbor’s cat patrolling along the edge of the tall grass that separates the residential community from the park itself, but less interesting than the other visitors. Occasionally, raccoons wander up to the patio at dawn, or at dusk. Possums, too. Squirrels are plentiful, as are rabbits (though I don’t see them as often).  There are nutria, and beavers. The beavers are reclaiming trails and swaths of park, marsh, and meadow, by damming the creek here and there, causing flooding in areas that were once planned around human traffic. I’ve heard coyotes, but haven’t seen any. I spotted a young bob cat a bit less than a year ago, but haven’t seen it since construction began and ended in that area. There are herons, cranes, eagles, and hawks, and all manner of small woodland, marshland, and meadow birds. There are crows by the dozens, and woodpeckers are common. I smile, recalling happy hours sitting on my meditation cushion at the patio door, watching a sunrise, or the birds at the feeder. I yield to the bliss of this moment of contentment and contemplation. Right now, in this one singular moment, I don’t need more. This is enough.

The sky is beginning to lighten. The clock counts off the minutes, and the day advances. No headache this morning. No back pain for the time being. A rare pain-free morning? An unexpected bonus. It’s even a Friday without plans, aside from one new-job-related errand I will run later today. I feel myself relax, really relax. Was it stress that woke me, finding me wide awake and alert, so early? I yawn. 4:30 am? Why am I even awake? As I relax, sleepiness creeps over me. Seriously? I just finished my coffee…! I turn the idea of going back to bed over in my head… no reason not to…although I am already awake, already caffeinated, and already alert and active…Am I really sleepy, or tired enough to sleep more? Puzzled over the wave of sleepiness that hit me as I finished my coffee, and unsure what to do about it, I decide on meditation, next. Regardless, it’s a day with a pleasant start. That’s enough. The rest of it I’ll fill out with verbs, and see where it goes. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Art of Being

Some Days More Than Others

June 9, 2016 //
1

This morning I woke wanting very much to write, while also feeling quite… directionless. Uninspired. I considered that awhile, and spent some time thinking over the events of the previous day. It’s still quite early. I slept well, deeply, and dreamlessly. I woke with a smile. Since then, anxiety has come and gone, and also a bit of queasiness, a headache, and restlessness. I’m not ill, and there’s nothing actually wrong; this is often what I put myself through when I am excited about something, and yesterday’s interview went that well.  A couple years ago, the end result would have been the complete destruction of a lovely day, more than likely, fueled by excitement I didn’t realize was excitement, and carried forward on the back of raw – if misinterpreted – emotion. I’d have been on edge, unaware of why, and prone to over-reacting and taking things personally. This morning, I am grateful for the improvement in emotional resilience and the reduction in volatility that I have experienced since I began practicing meditation, and practicing more mindfulness, more often.

It’s a cool gray morning, as if the sky would like to just ignore all the recent hot weather and pretend summer has not yet arrived. In this part of the country, at this time in Earth’s life, this is what summer is like. I am smiling, enjoying the cool morning, cloudy sky and all. I pay for the pleasure in a small way; the cooler weather aggravates my arthritis, which hasn’t been bothering me while the weather was quite summery and hot. I think about Fresno, and other hot places – life is very different in hot places, and I pause to really understand for a moment that in choosing this lovely climate as a full-time resident, I am also choosing to endure more pain. Choice is a funny thing, isn’t it? I think I am making one sort of choice, but often the choice I am making is also other sorts of choices bundled together… there is benefit in being more aware of that, more of the time. 🙂

Change is a verb - and also an outcome. Where does the path lead?

Change is a verb – and also an outcome. Where does the path lead?

My thoughts take a new direction. I’m okay with that. I’ve the day ahead of me to explore my thoughts, to meditate, to study, to paint. I may be back to work fairly soon – these days of leisure are incredibly precious, and this morning I am appreciating their value greatly. Today is a good day to take care of me, to invest in the well-being of this fragile vessel and the creature of light residing within. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Summer, The Art of Being

So Many Verbs

April 27, 2016 //
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I’m sipping my coffee and staring at a blank page, waiting for my brain to kick in with actual thoughts. So far… nothing. It’s not a lack of thoughts lurking in the background waiting their turn to be given a moment, or a lack of living metaphors, or whimsy. There is surely no shortage of photographs of this and that, out and about, useful for illustrating some point…or just being a lovely image or image of a lovely moment. Quite the opposite; my head is full of things to do, thoughts, notions, observations, yearnings, fleeting illustrative imaginings, and some of the best poetry I’ve never written, too… It’s a noisy mess in here, and frankly some tidying up is in order!

I slept well last night and rested deeply. I even ‘slept in’ some, having not set the alarm and waking at the time my eyes were most inclined to open and face the day (still quite early in the morning, sun not yet up). But what is there to say about sleep, besides noting the obvious value in being well-rested? Certainly it is worth taking the time to go to bed early enough to get a needed night’s sleep; no late night programming is truly worth passing up sleep. I’ve already used more words than needed on the topic of sleeping. Waking well-rested is an excellent start to any day that may have verbs in it. 🙂

There’s the thing, right? There are so many verbs from which to choose! I could meditate – and tidy up the mess within. I could do some housekeeping and tidy up the mess that surrounds me (it is limited to my studio, and is both inconvenient, and an impediment to working creatively). I could finish getting moved in – which tends to have a tidying up effect both internally and externally (it’s just that sort of process). I could ‘mix it up’ and spend some measure of time on a variety of tasks, ‘getting ahead on things’ in a more generalized way. I could choose to do something less obviously useful, like going for a long hike, or having an at-home “spa day” and really taking care of me on a whole other level, or spending the day bird-watching from my patio, or catching up on my studies by reading (and finishing) one or two exceptional reading selections I’ve been finding highly useful and haven’t yet finished… The point I am making (for me as much as anyone else) is that there is a fairly large variety of verbs I can choose from – in most any moment, on nearly any day – and the day is only begun. I am unlikely to make ‘relaxing’ and ‘sipping coffee’ last for the whole of the day, and not only are there more hours ahead of me (as far as I know) there is ever so much more to be done…

It’s down to choices. Choices and verbs.

I sit awhile, sipping my coffee and looking at those words, “choices and verbs”, and giving myself time to consider my choices and the verbs required more fully. I open my “to do list” and my “list of things” (which is a willy-nilly ‘as it came to me’ unsorted vast sort of list of all the many things I might like to have or ‘need to get’ to improve my day-to-day quality of life, or to resolve some small household issue or another), and make an addition here or there. I continue to sip my coffee. I consolidate the two lists into one, for convenience. I continue to consider the options – and the opportunities. As I review the list, add to it, and remove items that have been completed, I find myself feeling more organized, more aware, and less at loose ends. I feel more purposeful, and more mindful of my long-term needs. I remove some things from the list that are no longer relevant; needs and plans change. Change is. This individual day facing me in this moment is mostly unaffected by the changes I make to my lists, but I feel more organized, more clear-headed, and more present in this moment, being less burdened by the lack of ‘sense of direction’ that had occurred as planning broke down in the face of change. Change is – that much is entirely unavoidable, and fighting it is an unworthy use of precious limited life force, particularly when harnessing the power of change can be such a powerful ally on a much longer journey.

It’s still about choices and verbs, and my coffee is down to one last, cold, sip. It is a rainy day beyond the window, and the sun is apparently giving all the light and warmth it can. The gray rainy day nudges me in the direction of indoor choices, limiting the list just a bit. It’s still plenty to choose from. I pause, and notice a serious omission from my list, and make a point to add it… “Enjoy the day and take care of me.” I smile. I’m eager to check that one off every day, and recognize the value in making it a priority, and taking the time to fulfill my obligations to myself.

...Making a list... checking it twice...

…Making a list… checking it twice…

Choices. Verbs. The day won’t wait for me to keep up… Today is a good day to embrace change, and to take care of me… I’ve got a list, and I know how to use it. 😉

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Perspective, solo hiking, The Art of Being, Words

Strangely Difficult

April 26, 2016 //
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This morning is a pleasant one, if a bit…odd. I woke at my usual weekday time, although had I chosen to or been so inclined sleeping in was totally an option. I dithered a bit over my morning ‘routine’ – nothing feels entirely routine right now. I am in the midst of change. I made my coffee, started the dishwasher, and sat down to write… an hour ago. Since then, I have been quietly sitting here sipping my coffee and not doing much of anything else. Just… sitting here contentedly sipping my coffee, and watching the dawn slowly develop on the other side of the window. No words.

I have an item or two on my list of things to do today. None of it seems discussion-worthy or out of the ordinary in any way.

My appointments yesterday were that combination of concerning and reassuring that doctor’s appointments so often are, and those too seem generally lacking in interest and not especially share-worthy.

On the horizon, a vast realm of choice, change, chance, and opportunity… and I’ve only begun to attempt to sort it all out. Discussion, at this point, would be a bit premature.

The first wild roses of the spring.

The first wild roses of the spring.

So. Here I am this morning. No words. (It took me a bit more than 200 of them to say so…) Today is a good day to be present for each moment, and to live them – before I discuss them. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Spring, The Art of Being, Words
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