Little Prayer

A little prayer I made up almost exactly two months ago, to say in the morningtime:

I pray that - Grace allowing - I may walk this day in the pureness of Love. 

Moon Phase

I have always thought that full moons and crescent moons were the prettiest types of moon.  Today, I think that the gibbous is the best. 

The fact that it's almost - but not quite - a perfect circle, on this day, that is what I like about it. 

 

Like I read somewhere about some type of people who would make these intricate designs (tapestries, perhaps?), with patterns and symmetries of color and shape.  But they would make one element the wrong color.  On purpose.  It was supposed to be that way.  

I have no idea if this post is supposed to mean anything at all. 



*Unfortunately, for me, on this day, the gibbous is past and we're somewhere around full right now. 

Past, Present, Future

No, as far as these things are concerned, there is just today, beautiful, perfectly, joyfully, tragically unfolding, however it may.  Everything else - yesterday, tomorrow - is simply a story we tell ourselves.  They are powerful stories, to be certain, stories which inform our choices and our emotion and awareness, but really the only thing that truly exists is this moment we've been given. 

From my journal Monday 5 October 2009. 

The end of that journal got really spastic.  As in, of the last five entries, I wrote the word UGH at least eight times.  The final entry even consisted of only that single word, 31 December 2009: UGH, and then nothing else for the rest of the book.  I had to move on to the next notebook with seven blank pages remaining, just because I needed a fresh start (and what a coincidence it aligned perfectly with the calendar year this time!).  Anyway, though, I was looking back through for something profound that somebody had said that I thought I'd recorded, but I didn't find the profound statement.  Instead I came across the above little nugget, which is also profound, in its way.  It is nice to go back and re-read and surprise yourself that maybe you can sometimes write things that are a little bit wise or beautiful, even if you have pages and pages filled with UGH UGH UGH in large childish scrawl. 

Like Ju-Ju Pup always has at the bottom of her emails, that uniquely human marriage of the infinite and the mundane within each of us...

Art Project

So, I have been dreaming up this art project for awhile, and finally I think I've decided how it's going to go.  It will be a book, with different chapters of the same sentence over and over again.  Well, the beginning of each sentence will be the same, but each one will be completed by a different person, so the ending will be different.  They can be serious or silly, happy or sad, honest or completely made up!  And they will be handwritten, because I love how everyone has such different writing form.  It is probably one of my favorite things ever, actually. 


Here are the sentences I have so far (if you think of one you think might be good, post it in a comment):

• The first thing I do each morning is...

• The last thing I do before I go to sleep is...

• I keep finding myself thinking about...

• Today, my joy looks like...
  

• Today, my sorrow looks like...
  

• My greatest power is my ability to...
  

I really want to get lots of different people's writing.  If you are interested in participating, please send me an email at wild-dot-tomatoes-at-gmail-dot-com or my other email address, if you know that one.

 

 

Making It Fit (a story with no words)

Zen System

Today marks a week of trying this new "zen" approach to life, living very deliberately and focusing on the moment. I had recently been feeling so much chaos, so much wad-ness, and - while I think elimination of ALL chaos is unrealistic and actually quite unhealthy - too much chaos is also unhealthy.

I think my life was too polarized in terms of chaos and structure. My time was insanely structured (between commuting, working, sleeping, and outside commitments) so that in my remaining, limited free time, I became the utter embodiment of chaos, barely able to scrape myself off the floor, prepare food for myself, think about anything fun - i.e. abstract. Yes. Too much structure AND too much chaos. So, even without fully realizing consciously that this is what I've been doing, I have tried to reduce structure AND chaos, to allow time for pure being - a term I stole from Caterine Vauban and applied to something else - that harmonious welding of order and disorder. Here are the small changes I've begun to implement in my life, hopefully long-term ones.  I have a slightly different set of small changes for while I'm at work. 

• wear retainers each night
• wake up between 6:30 and 6:45
• return things to their place when I am done using them
• don't make plans if I don't want to; limit commitments

Zen?  That is not zen, you think. Well, in a weird way, I suspect it might be.  Bear with me.

Rising early and wearing my retainers at night helps me to begin and end each day purposefully. I have a few moments, just to myself, in the morning: I can prepare for the day with focus and intention. And, at the end of the day, by setting up the conditions in which I’d actually wear my retainers (carefully brush and floss, wash face, etc. – essentially go through a full-out evening ritual) I have a time to refocus and reflect and let myself just be.  The rock just sits and is. 

Making an effort to return things to their place helps me to be more aware of each action I do, the impact of my choices, etc. etc., and gives me a more ordered physical space as well. 

Limiting commitments has created more space for reflection, meditation, just existing, the psychological space for my soul/spirit to breathe, move, rest, renew…

It seems I have had more awareness and control as a result of these small lifestyle changes, though I'm wary of too much control.  I think I am going to go through another week of living like this (I called it "de-tox" to Bubber) and then re-evaluate and see if it is actually what I need to be doing or if I just end up spending so much of my attention on living deliberately that I actually miss the things that I'm supposed to notice or maybe if it's some sort of short-term thing where I just needed to get back into some sort of balance by swinging in the opposite direction first.

Wants

That which we want with our deepest of yearnings is truly the most terrifying of all.  To claim it is to take the risk of naming it as our own.