2018.03.25 - Day 11

Morning :)

Setting my intention early today, contemplating our ways with time and mind. I've often noted myself as on a delay, where 'retrospect' can be clearer than my experience in the moment. I've tried to collapse this distance by being aware of it, but am not sure whether that is apparent to others in my life, including here. I appreciate things deeply, and for a long time. With the shifting practice, zooming through step 2 a lot, can be similar to that collapsing of distance.

This is something the logs have helped me to see better; one benefit of posting so many logs, both my own and others, is that I experience most sessions at least twice. I see so many missed lines or important questions, and a lot of the time try to follow up later in some way, which is only 50% effective at best.

Dream practice is similar. It helps me to 'see' what I don't see, helps blind spots come forward, which is both enlightening and unnerving at times. Writing the dreams is like posting the logs. Smiling at Riddle's recent dream posts.

In a recent dream I was arguing with an energetic and charismatic figure who didn't seem to be taking my limitations very seriously. I said to him, “I love the idea of 'leaping and the net will appear', but there have been at least 3 disastrous attempts at that, and that's why my adviser says not just anyone can be a professor!” edited 13:10, 25 Mar 2018

Funny to have never thought of the available instant off switch. Like the SciFi, movie and Star Trek robots have an off switch. Only this one is buried in a brain.
Well, it is not really an Off switch, more a non-maskable interrupt momentary switch (a button)
Many times have thought and wrote about Context switches (which it really is).
The 15 minute break is that.
The gong has trained that.
Like in hypnosis, a post-hypnotic suggestion has been left behind for the sound of a gong to instantly produce a trance.
One Riddle has programmed a timer NMI to interrupt any other Riddle to go Off into Being for one breath.
And importantly assure all others that they will be returned to the present context.
Wonder why never thought of it that way before

It took until early evening today before I could carve out a sliver of time to do my reading practice. For a change, I started reading a chapter from Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek". The chapter is titled "The Present", and the first line is "Catch it if you can." I marvel at her mastery of the descriptive power of language. I used to do a fair amount of writing, but I have done hardly any over the last several years. Maybe that will be the subject for a future 99-days practice. For now, I'm content to take in the words of others and let them work in my awareness.

Signed the contract and sent the check for the studio in Paris next June for attending the Poetry Market. A new neighborhood, near Palais-Royal. Will be fun to discover. Will be doing my 10k steps in the Tuileries garden, wow!