Day 11

Happy Birthday PaB!
Today I seem to be standing still, not moving in any particular direction. I sway imperceptibly and come back to centre. Becalmed, like the ancient mariner. Perhaps there is nowhere to go.

I am such a slave to my routines that I feel guilty if I neglect them. But I am driven to make these routines so that I can accomplish things. Today is Easter and it is supposed to be a holiday but yet I had to force myself to go to the PAB party (which I enjoyed) instead of working at my writing course. The older I get I more and more realise how little actual control I have over what I do. I am driven this way and that by obligations and influences and my limitations. Especially, I notice how my physical limitations are changing my lifestyle and life. I do things and justify my actions to myself later.

We had an accident today... the typical kind of accident a teen has when learning to drive, of pushing gas instead of brakes while not wanting to hear guidance or concerns from mother saying "Um...". Thankfully, we were not on the road (we'd taken a successful drive and were landing in the driveway when the accident occurred), but confidence is battered and it is hard to get through with assurances that this is normal and the best way such a thing could have happened. I can only keep saying so.

Actually, what I feel is thankful for the humility that wasn't there before, which in the big pictures may be a very good thing. I was in a terrible accident about a year ago and it changed the way I drive entirely... hard price for that kind of expanded awareness, yet I note that it never recontracted. There are far fewer moments where I notice my attention is not where it should be while driving now. Also, thankfully everyone was okay in that case too, though at first it seemed they wouldn't be.

The reason I write about it here was that I can't say for sure what my own responses would have been at some point but I can say that this time there came a very strong slowing attention to allow openings between the three of us involved to be filled with patience and perspective... just breathing a bit more intentionally and making room for calm to take place and the next steps to arise. edited 19:46, 1 Apr 2013

Druth and I went for what was to be a little walk to the hairdresser only to find them closed. So we let the wind, which is gusting up to 60 km, push us along the road :) Stopping and starting as the wind slowed and gusted :) laughing and stumbling along.
After turning down a side road we noticed someone else walking, she was coming up our way. After she passed Druth decided to turn around and follow her :)
Back at the main road she went one way and we went the other back towards home with the wind pushing in our faces. Still laughing as we now pushed against the wind :)
Changing directions as we came into town, taking the back streets home :)

Happy Birthday PaBlings :)

Happy to hear that all is well Liz - please always be careful or ....you know what I mean ...<3 Your note reminds me again of being more aware - which is important in SA.

So true what Zenji says about being so used to a program that one follows.

Since I do a kind of work that is "never finished" - there is always more things to do...it feels like - I just can't "not do anything" and be totally random...and do whatever the moment brings.

After the PaB party - I relaxed a bit - spent time with the boys. Then went out in the backyard and just followed wherever Jigsaw was going. Dogs can teach us lots about being in the moment. When its dark - he seems even more alert. So I was just following him in the dark ...when he heard noises ...he stopped and opened his ears ..... stood a little - then started walking or running towards the source of the noise. Then it was all over ...and he listened for the next noise or smell.....

Wow, Eliza! Inbreath, let go. Precious basket of people here.

Went downstairs to the kitchen, thinking it was time, but still 2 minutes before the oven beeper is to beep. Ah, an opening! instead of rushing away or on to something I let myself be there. Current edition of Shambhala Sun on the café table. They always have a good poem at the end. I read Don McKay's "Waking at the Mouth of the Willow River":



Sleep, my favourite flannel shirt, wears thin, and shreds, and
birdsong happens in the holes. In thirty seconds the naming
of species will begin. As it folds into the stewed latin of
afterdream each song makes a tiny whirlpool. One of them,
zoozeezoozoozee, seems to be making fun of sleep with
snores stolen from comic books. Another hangs its teardrop
high in the mind, and melts: it was, after all, only narrowed
air, although it punctuated something unheard, perfectly.
And what sort of noise would the mind make, if it could, here,
at the brink? Scritch, scritch. A claw, a nib, a beak, worrying
its surface. As though, for one second, it could let the world
leak back to the world. Weep.



~ from Night Field (McClelland & Stewart, 1992)

http://www.sharonsinger.ca/poem.php?poem_id=252

Resistance is a place where opening is possible. It's just hidden.
Change does not always imply there was an opening. It's possible to do exactly the opposite from what you did before without allowing the situation to open up.