Diverting Disappointment

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

It is the fullness of our attention
to whatever is near
that has birds fly out of God’s mouth.

So when confusion or pain seems to tighten what is possible, when sadness or frustration shrinks your sense of well-being, when worry or fear agitates the peace right out of you, try lending your attention to the nearest thing.

(From 16th April)

Saturday was a mixed bag. I'd been very rudely awakened by a phone call after not heading to bed until 5 in the morning. This isn't unusual for a weekend, in fact that only unusual thing was that it was a lot earlier than usual due to the fact of being so completely emotionally tired - one might even say 'wiped out.'

Richard and Kim came to visit and of course asked for a recount of the events of the previous Thursday, of course by that time I was well past 'upset' or 'angry' and into the 'resigned' phase. It was only a few days, sure it was a few days that we wouldn't get back - a weekend we would have had together instead of over an internet connection, but there are times when really, you just have to roll with it or else the aligator drowns you.

I'm skipping ahead though. I was rudely awakened and therefore tired when I did finally get up. The first thing I did was walked to Sainsbury's... never did see Mum there (it's where she does her shopping), so had to walk back as well. Not that I mind at all; it isn't a long walk and it was a beautiful day. The only ting to mar the scenery were the road works on the main A6, that kind of took away from the flowering hawthorne's and other spring trees. Spring trees of course was the reason I was going to Sainsbury's. I suffer from hayfever, but it's mostly tree pollen that bothers my allergies (that and grass), so I figured having some antihistamine tablets would be a good thing, especially as the trailer is in the middle of the wood :)

When I got back I sat at my computer and... sat. Yes, there were a million and one things still demanding attention - pieces of writing that I need to finish, one of which is intended for this market.

And therein kind of hangs the point in this entry... the advice given above is excellent advice, but it's counter to the way frustration, sadness, confusion and pain takes me. Yes, I'd rather be able to focus attention on the nearest thing, but I need to find a way of breaking the 'cycle of funk' as I will call it. The reaction of sinking into the state of frozen inability to do anything at all. It's the "I can't be arsed," petulant reaction to times when things are not going as I'd want. I'm sure though, that if I did throw myself into the nearest thing that needed doing, I'd be fine, it's just jumping that first hurdle...

So instead, I sat fumbling around on the internet, wasting time, until I got called out to eat, and afterwards, when I came back, Mir was online, and so we got to spend out time together, watching TV, typing together and passing another day - hopefully quickly - so that we could be together sooner.

Sometimes, I think, a disappointment is maybe too great to be able to put it aside and divert your focus into something more positive.

I Want To Believe...

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

If you can’t cross over alive,
How can you cross when you’re dead?
-Kabir

-Center yourself and meditate on a chasm of your own making. It might be a trench of stubbornness or pride that no one can cross, or the echo of your own pain that isolates you, or the vastness that builds when you are afraid to tell someone the truth of your heart, or the absence of belief that you deserve what waits on the other side.
-Lean into your chasm gently until the fear subsides.

(From April 17th)

By the time Sunday came around I was getting pretty neurotic. It was stupid really. My mind was latching onto all the things that could get in the way of a successful trip - I know it was all that I was driven by fear - by the scars that had been left from Thursday - but rationalising it didn't help.

First of all there was the scrapyard fire that closed the M1 motoray from junction 1 to junction 4... I obsessed about it, watching the travel report; refreshing it every hour or so, even though I knew - and had remarked to several people that asked - that the coach actually leaves the M1 well before that junction to head onto the M25.

Secondly, while looking at the news report of the closure, I spotted another traffic update that had another slowdown on the M1 this one caused by a coach that had broken down. Of course, that immediately started me off worrying, what if my coach broke down again?

What if my alarm didn't wake me up in time? What if the cab didn't come to pick me up and take me to the bus station in the morning? What if the coach was late? what if, what if what if...

In the end some part of me stepped in and said ENOUGH! It would be all right. I would get there and I had to stop obsessing. I closed down the browser, set my alarm and went to bed, only around a half hour later than I had intended. I had to be up early the next morning, so I needed the sleep.

In the end I got about 4 hours.

Coming Home

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

This is the ongoing purpose of full attention:
To find a thousand ways to be pierced into wholeness.

Once giving full attention, you will come back - one drop at a time - into the tide of the living.

(from 18th April)

Every part of the long day was in focus both emotionally, as well as physically and even spiritually. It was really quite a strange experience. To Explain... usually when travelling the 12 or so hours door to door (it's probably longer than that actually, around 16, give or take), I zone out... doze on the coach, walk around in a daze in the airport lounge, sleep on the plane... and so on, but this time it was not so.

I was too on edge on the coach, and that made me unable to sleep. I could have plugged in the computer (there were ac outlets on the coach!) and read, but I worried I'd get travel sick if I did. Instead I watched out of the window, watched the misty fields, the rising sun, and was struck by the tranquil beauty of it. I wished I could have taken a picture of the sun rising over the misty fields, but my phone doesn't take good pictures through the glass, and my camera doesn't work any more.

At the airport I was struck and noticed the other people in ways I had not before; the families, the children driving their parents mad, and all of the other things that were going on around me. And on the plane, even though I had the whole of the centre section to myself, even thought I lay down and tried to sleep the time away, I couldn't. So I watched the movie, I watched the people, I read my book (until the battery on the computer ran out), and then just existed for the rest of the time. It made for a long flight, but... nothing to be done.

The one time I did zone out and miss something, ironically, was the time when the cab arrived to deliver me to Mir's work, and I failed to notice the steeple of the church, lying on the ground - the only damage in Chapel Hill from the storms before - totally missed that.

When we got home, after unpacking and everything - because I do hate to be living out of suitcases, especially for so long - I was able to enjoy the wonderful meditation garden that Mir's made for me. Before I came, she told me she'd been planning it, but hadn't actually admitted to having made it, planted the seeds, and even put a stick into one of the pots so I could bring out my butterfly windcharm and balance the one of the other side.

Being out there, and being the first time I've actually done something like this in a long time - in far too long - everything was so special. I just sat and soaked up the sense of being there on the deck of the house in the 'garden' that Mir had made for me. It was a moment of homecoming that was deeply spiritual, extremely comforting. I hope to be able to spend a lot of time out there in the garden... perhaps sharing some of the insights into what comes to me as I do... in the coming days.

Living With Scepticism

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

The bud in half-bloom
outwaits the cloud.

If we could only suspend our judgment when clouded in the heart. For many skepticism are born from conclusions drawn while unable to see...

(From 19th April)

Tuesday was such a busy day... and after the tiredness of travel, I kind of managed to frustrate myself with being so busy and therefore not really getting down to the kind of busy that I wanted to be... Oh, it's all relaltive, the kinds of things I was doing were things that needed to be done. We need to eat, (actually I kind of like eating food, it's good for me), so I don't actually mind having been so busy, I suppose it was just lingering tiredness that has made me actually wonder if I will achieve my goal while I'm here and get a good portion of the novel actually written, or will I find other ways to keep myself busy. Will I become lost in the domesticity that I fold around myself while I'm here - I always do it, I want to be a good wife after all, so I set myself lots of things to do around the house, and then end up getting mad at myself because I've not done the other things I want to do. It's a stupid spiral to end up stuck in, so I intend to try and nip it in the bud right away.

What needs to be done, can still get done even if I give myself time to do what I want to do as well. Of course, to look at it another way, since school is closed, the things I want to do are actually those things that might help to supplement my income. Must, should, could become all kinds of intermingled that way.

Life Lived Slowly

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Birds don’t need ornithologists to fly.

So wake me by accepting me, and the world will sprout us up like grass.

(from 20th April)

Coming home for a good length of time means being able to live day to day as we would if we were living together all the time. Mir and I had talked a little bit about the way that, when we're more relaxed about being together, and not rushing to fit everthing in an sever or ten days, our time together is of much better quality than when we're rushing to cram in as much as we can. Today that meant staying home while Mir went out to babysit for a couple of our friends.

It was another one of those comforting moments - although I managed to give myself the willies watching Ghost Hunters - knowing that Mir was out babysitting, I was home babysitting, because after all our rats still needed their playtime, and that when she came home everything would be done and we could go to bed and not be too tired in the morning.

It was a good contrast to the morning, another busy morning, and a missed phone call that meant that I hadn't taken the mouse when I called in to Mir's work. What she said on the message that was on the answering machine when I got back made sense, with gas so expensive, driving back and forth didn't make sense - but I would have done it anyway.

Made me wonder though, in hindsigh, how much my willingness to make the second journey with the mouse was driven by the desire to be seen as being good to make an impression, that honestly, I don't really need to make. Mir knows that I would do it... but in this instance, I shouldn't, (and didn't). Instead I stayed home and finished off making the ratties clean and comfortable.

Couth or Uncouth?

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Another name for God
Is surprise.
-Brother David Steindl-Rast

It seems that any moment of interest or pain or adversity can surprise us into the larger totality of life, breaking our current limits and allowing us the chance to redefine ourselves in regard to the larger sense that is upon us.

(From 21st April)

I was finally able to sit down and finish the treatment for Use'ara: Thirteen Stars today. In actuality I set myself the challenge. There would be no getting online until after I had done it. It had been 'almost finished' for far to long and today it would be finished.

I was stalling, and the reason I was stalling is that the ending, as I had currently had it set out through the outline, felt a little too much like Deus ex Machina to me... and that just wouldn't do. I mean I know (because I know the backstory of what happened 'off camera' so to speak in the original outline) that it wasn't even approaching anything close, but... because it happened 'off camera' the reader was not privvy to that information. I decided that it needed to be told as a part of the ending, but worried that this would a) further complicate matters and b) make the story too damn long. Surprisingly, far from complicating matters it allowed for a much more ordered approach to the climax and denouement of the novel, although it does add quite a chunk of story. As it's sci-fi/fantasy, this isn't necessarily too much of a handicap, but we'll have to see how it all turns out now that I"m in a position to start writing.

The second 'surprise' of the day came in the form of another 'germ' of an idea, which I've put into the 'development' file. It came in part because I was thinking of Option C the short that I had thought to send to Daily Science Fiction. It provides a key point of the premise behind the backstory for one of the characters... a woman being punished for her continuing use of a forbidden faculty - her imagination. What happens to this woman after that revolves around the future of humanity, and the 'help' (or hindrance) of an immortal (be that angel or demon is up for debate right now), but anyway, the working title for the project is In Humanity, yes, a play on words, and we'll just have to wait and see what comes of it.

Lastly, Mir and I went to see Black Swan today. Actually we went out on a date (a really nice date with way too much chocolate cake and popcorn), but the last part of the date was a trip to the Varsity to see the movie... and while it was a good movie, and one I enjoyed a great deal, I'm afraid I just don't see what all the fuss was about. I found myself getting proufoundly irritated at the mother, but that was about the most visceral reaction I had through the whole of the film. It was well acted, though a little too 'arty' in some places for my taste, but I certainly don't understand, or didn't experience, the deeply disturbed or thoughtful experience it gave to others. Does that mean I lack couth?

Hmmm.

Seeing Behind

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

If you can’t see what you’re looking for,
See what’s there.

Time and again, we are asked to outlast what we want and hope for, in order to see what’s there. It is enough.

(from 22nd April)

I had a moment of frustration. Actually I had several moments of frustration, thanks to a little girl that kept insisting on licking at her tummy where she had her stitches, that she needed to leave alone, or trying to chew on her armpit where the other stitches were, but this wasn't the moment of frustration which led me to voice it... in pique. To answer pique with pique as a matter of fact - not that I'm proud of that at all, just that I admit to it. I love the rats, and I do spoil them a little bit from time to time, but I don't spoil them a lot... I'll do anything for them, I don't want to see them hurting or unhappy. What kind of ratty mommy would I be if I did?

Samantha had her surgery today, to remove her mammary mass, and also to be spayed to prevent its recurrence... and so after a morning of worry, we were relieved when the vet called to say that everything had gone well and we could come and pick her up in the afternoon. When we got her home at first she was fine, probably still to sore and sleepy to be bothered with messing with her stitches, but as the evening wore on, she began to take more of an 'interest' in the stitches... and while she didn't manage to pull them out or open herself up again, she did make herself bleed a little bit, through licking.

So Mir and I were taking it in turns to keep an eye on her while the other either rested or did whatever they wanted. Fine in theory until your patience wears a little. Now, I'm not a cruel person, and I love the little ratties as much as anyone in this family. I'm saying that right from the offset... but I also know my own limitations. I can't kneel up beside the couch to keep her sisters and cousins able to be with her and still keep her safe from herself and from them, but I also feel guilty for taking her away from them, to a place where I can better watch her. So yes, I got a little bit frustrated when I was told that it was obvious I didn't want to look out for her and care for her, because nothing could be further from the truth. Had I wanted to spend the evening constantly intervening and moving Samantha's mouth away from her stitches? No, not really, but did I mind? No of course not. I love my little Samantha Despereauna, and want her to heal quickly.Tired and uncomfortable, I snapped - for which I apologise. I think we were both tired and frustrated, and of course worried about her, which didn't help... but the truth is that she needed us to look out for her, and we were there for her. So that's what we did, each in our own way. That's enough.

I did, in the end, move her away from her sisters and cousins... I wish I didn't have to, but they (especially her mother) had started trying to groom around the surgery site. Keeping her distracted with food seemed to work okay, and then, thankfully, she got to be sleepy. She has the annoying habit of sleeping curled up though, and that makes it look like she's licking when she's not. Once I figured that out, it was a lot easier.

We took her into the bedroom with us when we went to bed, and she seemed to settle down okay. Mir did check on her a few times in the night, but it seems that she's just fine this morning, and still stitched up... so that's good. We might be past the worst of it.

To Speak... Or Not To Speak

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

There will never be an “us”
If I play small.
-Sharon Preiss

...fearful of what might happen if I actually voice my concerns and needs...

It's a constant battle back and forth with myself, to speak or not to speak. On the whole, I'm getting better, but it still doesn't come as naturally as it should. Like last night, I had to be hurt and frustrated in order to actually voice what I was feeling, and it came out all wrong, making me sound (and feel) like a harridan.

When I'm here though, sometimes things go to the other extreme... it's 'whatever I want to do' and that's not any healthier than never saying what I want or need. Sometimes I just want to be surprised, or for whatever happens to be spontaneous, not planned out, and not always down to me.

Granted, a lot of the time what we want actually coincides with each other - we tend to both want the same thing, so does it matter who actually voices what we want and need?

When it comes down to voicing concerns, worries, etc, I'm terrible. It's not that I don't want to talk about how I feel, what worries me, what scares me or whatever, just... comes down to it and the fear takes over and I shut down and don't speak. I know I do it and it frustrates me to no end... and yet, I can't do anything about it - not comfortably at least. I know I should, and I want to... the only one stopping me is myself.

I get all that.

So what do I do... Open up and speak. Sounds simple right?

I'm not scared of anyone elses reactions to what I might think and need and feel - at least not those people that are the ones I love and who I know love me, I think my problem is in accepting myself for my needs, for my weaknesses, accepting that I have them at all, and that's just plain stupid, if you ask me.

But then again, calling myself stupid isn't going to help either is it? I need to just speak.