Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine... Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery.
Buddha
On the road again today – down to Geismar for a voice lesson (for Elizabeth). It seems Geismar was a small community between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that burgeoned because of the Crescent City exodus caused from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.I have driven nearly two hours and Elizabeth will have a 2 hour lesson from someone worth the time of this trip. Anyway, here I am sitting at an unfamiliar dining room table for the duration of the lesson – an opportunity to write. This entry will be directed towards me (if you choose to read it, I hope something is there for you). I am away from my house so all I can do is write and think – I can’t jump up at the sound of a buzzer to fold clothes or run to the kitchen because the pasta is boiling over, or say “I’m not interested” to the telemarketer on the landline or the Mormon at the door; I can’t pick figs ahead of the crows or pull weeds from my unkempt garden; all I can do is write.
I want to build on a thought I had early this morning – I was thinking of all of those years of abruptly springing from bed – snatching myself out of the elusive alpha state – and beginning my day without that creative connection. I am understanding why I chose to put my art in a dormant state for those years of intense, hands on, 24/7 parenting. My creative efforts were all channeled into my children then and I am very happy about that. Now, now that I can, I am enjoying immeasurably the time I have in the morning to explore my alpha state – I can see my life so clearly here. I understand, I recognize the right paths and the “big picture” here in the very early morning when there is no alarm or disturbance from the awaiting world. The more I know , the more I understand how we are hard wired to solve our own problems , it’s all there, we just don’t sit still enough to hear ourselves, we look everywhere for answers, every ” wrong where”, - the TV, magazines, society, everywhere but inside ourselves. Listen, listen. We can’t all physically go to Walden Pond, but, still, it can be a place we can “go”. I see my life better there in the early morning place, I see the beauty and I lessen the “issues”; I understand that my life is wonderful simply because it is “my” life – this is where I belong, right here in the smack middle of it – up to my elbows in the good stuff, the muck, the grime, the stuff that makes it mine. It is so important to reconnect with it to look at it from a distance, a spiritual look, a look at the bigger scheme of things. And in looking this way, all the little things go away, sort of like looking at the planet earth from space. The little annoyances that society says are important – ha – that’s so wrong, so wrong to be filled with propaganda and falsehoods, and illusions, this stuff that we get bombarded with daily is not true – don’t believe it, don’t let it into your life – it’ll mess you up, it’ll make you feel less than you are and that is not what the universe intended – we need to feel good about who we are so we can do good for the world. There, I’ve said it, I expressed how I feel. I suppose this entry is more of a rant than anything else, but it annoys me so much the way outside forces motivated by money are constantly trying to tell me what is right for me and emphasis what is “wrong” about me and how “they” can fix it. At 57, I don’t fall prey to this gobbledygook (love this word – had to use it!) but I think of how many, mostly young, do. It’s all an illusion – smoke and mirrors – someone trying to sell you something, consumer driven society. Ok, got to go - I have an hour left and I want to put down some thoughts on something else I’m working on. I am where I need to be. We are the authors of our lives.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.” Henry David Thoreau …Walden
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