2015.07.23 _ 1

:)So I'll go first...

Last night I experienced several nightmares - something that hasn't happened in a long time and is also rare for me. I woke with residual anxiety and weirdness that took a little while to let fall from my shoulders. Maybe still a little there.

Actually, I think it took longer because I was thinking in the background, "first retreat day!" So i wanted to be peaceful. :) What I've planned for these days is pretty simple: added quiet time. I've let myself become someone who reaches for music, or TV, or a snack, or phone (to text and take photos mostly), or laptop way too quickly. And it isn't that I want to give up any of those things or deem anything unhealthy; I just want to extend the quiet between everything... slower steps on the way to the kitchen... breaths before answering emails.

Like right now, I'm typing slowly and really hearing the thunder that I'm so thankful has returned to our normal July in Miami pattern. These are the little shifts that cultivate continuity of appreciation. edited 20:55, 23 Jul 2015

finding quiet time to be with myself. Hard to do because of summer social obligations....

Started day with 9 minutes of sitting openly. Little dips throughout the day into the space within which everything floats (so to speak), edged with the sense of other participants world-wide - you! :-) Friend support for "sketching edges", which seems more evocative than trying to speak openness itself.

My days are already pretty much as in a retreat, meditations two times a day for about or over an hour; studying Buddhism; working on pavilion and guardian meeting. Since I have a chronic fatigue, this is actually all I can really do.

Became very emotional in an unexpected way. Memories of the Intensive Care I have been on last year came suddenly back as well as the feeling that the result of the operation doesn't 'fit' me, mentally rejectign the alterations which has been made in my body (I have been operated in which they took the esophagus out and replaced it with my stomach; I also got a severe complication which resulted in a stay in the IC for over 3 weeks).

Oh, Darren. I knew you had been ill but had not realized how seriously until now. How difficult. :(

When we are in sessions and keeping in touch lightly through various avenues, it can create an impression that we know about one another. Sort of strange to think that in daily life there are prob. many people who know more about us than know us (as in desires, interests, appreciations), and online, it can be vice versa.

I want to develop a Java project that hopes to tie together (or, at least, to align) several themes I'm currently exploring --- what 'proprioception' might 'mean' in the Way of "no-self" and "no-mind"; what meditation's "return to the method" might mean (monitor/modify) in a semi-autonomous computer program; what "dependent co-arising" might mean in a program stuffed with so-called "random" values and recursive functions. I am inspired to attempt writing such a Java program by the work of Harold Cohen and his "AARON" -- http://aaronshome.com/aaron/index.html -- and am now fueling my motivation [even more] with this quote from Cohen himself:
"...I happen to believe, for example, that typically creativity arises when the individual starts to question the unquestioned assumptions of his field and to act out the scenarios that present themselves as a result. What if an image didn't need to reflect the appearance of the world from a single viewpoint? (Cubism?) What if we didn't have to use only the colors we find in nature? (Matisse?) What if one could discover the rules we use in making art and then have a machine act out the rules? (Cohen?) What if?..." edited 17:06, 24 Jul 2015

I opened day one by studying various definitions of "continuity". Even the medical one which has importance I didn't realize since I never saw/heard the word used during my time in that field. I'd hoped to set some intention (s) related to the theme, but the word defeated me. I checked to see if anyone else had caught a good fish with it, but no one had posted yet in day one. Didn't want to be the first. Maybe on day two something would come to me, just looking/thinking about the word had been more fruitful than I'd expected. Some of the dictionaries made me laugh because they added a second definition related to film/tv. It made me laugh because one of the ice-breakers I use when leading discussions with a group where a lot of people attending already know each other is "tell us a fact about yourself that you suspect few people might know." I start the ball rolling by saying that few people know that my college major was radio/tv/film with an emphasis on tv production. I can do any job in a tv studio, it's a lot easier now that you don't have to actually get up on catwalks or ladders to physically move the lighting which was how we did it in the old days. I see though that they still have to "pull cable". lol I was glad to find something funny as it's so relaxing to laugh. Lastly I felt happy to realize that no one every calls for the "continuity GIRL" anymore! YAY.

Too funny, Raffi. Nice to see you here. I've been musing with "continuity" also, also wondering whether "momentum" might be a better fit. Not sure. Glad it is a light theme. :)