Other

Everyone OTHER than me.  That is how I feel right now.  Like everyone else is doing something I'm not, or knows some kind of secret for happiness.  I don't know. It's really a silly thought.  But that's how I feel today.
Like a step-cousin at a family reunion.  Or a clearance candy after a holiday.
I like purposefully removing myself from the dominant culture.  I don't like sitting around wondering what happens next.
I guess the appropriate step would be to make a good decision and make something happen.

Moment of Profound Clarity

I hoped that in this physical and life detox that in the quiet that came out of it, my thoughts would begin to line up again, and I'd start making some forward progress.
This just happened!
I am meditating on a new story.  The title came to me the other night, when I was sleeping in a room that was once Jack Kerouac's.  To write that sounds somewhat strange, but it is true.  I was lucky enough to be invited to do this and the memories of the night will stay with me.
This new story is very pivotal to my new work. And this work is so vastly complex that to manage it, sometimes I feel so overwhelmed.  I break it into pieces for the time being.  For this story, which is a nice departure from some of what I've lately written, this story explores something beautiful that happens between two people.  It ties into the idea of the periodic table - which elements might bond with others, and the building blocks for everything lined up into rows.  It also deals with the chemistry of a favorite drink.  I am trying now to understand the process of the story, the way it needs to move, and how best to tell what needs to be told about these two people.  It is fun to brainstorm this out.
But I just had a moment where I felt like I was able to explain something about all the body of my work - taking for instance the stance of The Scientist and putting it in conflict with The Poet and as they endeavor to explain everything and nothing, what comes next?
There are so many things that I wonder about, and sometimes I feel like I stare into the very center of all things, and nothing.  This is a strange, wonderful thing. In the center of all of this - life is different than I'd imagined and I am glad to know it.  My work right now is deliberate and I understand a good deal about it, but at best, I stand and hold strings and I know instinctively the strings connect to helium balloons, but the specifics of the balloons I don't yet know.  And I'm glad not to know.

Incrementally Better

The first days of any detox are hard.  I've been drinking and eating sugar and unhealthy food for a few months, hence the physical part of the detox.  My body is trying hard to adjust.  The first two days I was very down.  Without coffee and energy drinks, I actually felt depressed.  It was like the sparkle in life was gone.  Wednesday was better, and yesterday better still.  I didn't find myself so down, and so dragged out.  The sugar cravings are still there for sure! I looked at a recipe for quiona/coconut/agave rice pudding that I have the ingredients on hand for, and then reminded myself, this is not about that.  This is not about replacing one vice for another.  Agave coconut concoctions can be just as bad when overdone.  When eating because we want something sweet so we don't think about what is bothering us, or feel something that hurts.
I'm big on that - not feeling things that hurt.  I don't like it.  I've got a strong protective streak in me, for others as well as myself. I usually guard carefully against things that hurt.  Unless I'm really down, then I go into very negative thought patterns that make everything hurt worse for while.  Maturity gives deliverance from that, to a certain extent.
I have some time to myself this weekend.  I'm going to watch the sunset.  I'm going to study the periodic table of the elements.  And I'm going to walk - really, really far.  I'm going to let go of some of the swirling thoughts I carry.  It should be good.

Ready for Something

I've been quiet the past few days.  It's been a partly jarring and partly calming these last few days.  I made the soup that I hope sustains me for a couple of months, a giant batch.  It tastes good.  I've been drinking my tea, burning my incense, sleeping eight hours, staying very focused, and being gentle on myself.
I've had this fantasy of what my life could be like, theoretically at least, for years.  It would be just me, soup making, tea, and a window to see a beautiful place.  Sometimes I want the view to be a forest, and sometimes I want it to be the ocean.  In this particular version of my life, it is always late fall, bleeding into winter.  I like bare limbed trees.  I also like the Northern Atlantic in winter. I don't want to be alone forever, but maybe mornings into the early afternoon.  My ideal evening is another story.
When I think about it, I start to contrast it to the way life is now.  I am mainly alone, except for work and the various functions I'm going to for writing.  But there isn't the sense of peace I'm looking for.  I'm not sure why that is.  It could be the pile in the corner of the room marked "unresolved" and me trying to ignore the pile.
But this thing i'm doing, not buying things, not eating much, increasing my focus - all of it is to the end of figuring things out.  
What is in the pile? The pile is full of feelings I don't understand.  Or if I do understand, I'm troubled by them.  I've done loads of therapy and I've learned all kinds of techniques for these things - avoidance of uncomfortable things is one thing I know I do.  Internalization is the other.  I don't want to thing about things so I ignore them, then in ignoring them, I make myself angry, and I don't express that anger.  I turn it on myself.
At some juncture in your life, you want to stop making the same type of mistake you've made over and over again.  In the quiet of these upcoming months, when I'm not going to engage in any distraction techniques, I want to get to the root of this.  Why is it better for me to direct my anger inward, why is better for me to avoid things, why is it better to even sabotage myself, rather than risk trying hard to succeed.
I know part of the answer already.  Because to succeed with what I want to do, and to be the person I want to be is so important to me, that to risk trying and failing is devastating.
Today I will meditate on a fear of failure.    

Changes and then more changes

Everything is falling into place.  Woke this morning, burned incense, and listened to chanting, then to Bach.  By Wednesday I think I will be in full tilt with this plan.  Ready to do the work I need to do, and ready to move ahead with life.
Early this morning I walked outside in my bare feet, to the sidewalk.  Fallen leaves were yellow, and blowing a little - a rare deciduous tree in Florida.  I smelled the leaves going back to dirt, decomposing, and I felt glad.  It is a season of farewell.
Will remained focused on listening to the universe, instead of talking.  

New and Old

So these are the last days, before everything changes, and my new monasticism goes full force.  I'm planning.  Researching even.  Maybe binging a little - why yes, I will have the grilled cheese at the diner because come Monday, no more diners. . and that's how I'm thinking.
But, everything is changing.  I've had constant company for weeks, and that is going away.  On Monday.  I've been living and enjoying it, but the time for that is passing.  I don't know an apt metaphor.  All I think of come up short.
I'm trying to imagine how my life will be, come Monday.  I already know, partly at least. I know it will be quiet here, very quiet.
I'll have everything I need in, so I won't have to buy anything, or go anywhere.  Think of the time that a person spends running errands of that sort.  I'm also doing little things, like making sure I have financial stuff planned for, like bills added to the online banking site I use.  I want to be able to track all of that.  But I don't want to spend any energy on it during this new phase.  I want all my available energy for this concentration and purification.  I'm making lists again today, and a calendar.
I'm hoping that by the end of the year, that mentally and physically I'm in a new place by Jan 1, 2011.
Components to work on, upcoming meditations about new, virtue-driven life:
Concentration
Cleanliness
Transcendence
Obligation
Organization
Slowness/Peace
Spiritual components of philosophical studies

Meditation: "Authentic"

I don't find monasticism that compelling, but I guess sometimes it is necessary. I suppose I need to figure things out for myself, because I'm a little lost.
What are we trying for, here?  To be a real person, doing real things?
Last week I had this conversation, and everything lit up, "And show her what she's won . . ." -game show Technicolor blinking illumination.  I felt like a fraud.  It was the first time in a very long time.
I try to be "authentic" as in, accurate in the representation of the facts.  It isn't even hard for me.  I am honest to a stupid degree.  I share too much.
But last week, this conversation has lingered for me.  The person I talked to seemed to think I had a very high level of dissatisfaction with my life. Also, that I wasn't doing my work in the best possible way.  Maybe even, that I hinder my own progress.  Maybe even, inauthentic.
Really?
I was mad for a few days.
Then thought about it more.
Then a little more.
I know how I feel about my creative pursuits, and my life to that end.  I know what I put into it.  The outward expression of that has to be real.  Maybe the disappointments I have had on this quite long road of trying to be better at what I do have made me seem, I don't know, less exuberant about the prospects.  Who knows?
All I know is I try.  I try and try and keep trying.
Then I got this idea - what if I stripped away everything in my life that wasn't part of the process of my creative life?  What if I subtracted everything?  What if I committed myself fully, completely to my work until the end of 2010?  What if I worked every second of the day that I wasn't working my day job?  What if I secluded myself, took away all distractions, rejected purposefully the dominant culture all around me?
What if I didn't go into a store from now until the end of the year?  What if I didn't buy anything except the gas to get me back and forth to work?  What if I instead of worrying about turkey and gravy and Christmas lights I kept myself on the path?
What if I didn't really drink? Or dance?  What if I didn't worry about anything or anybody extraneous?
I can do these things, you know.
I made a list of all the supplies I need to take me into the New Year.  I thought about being the change I seek.  I thought about being myself.  I thought about being real.  
What is my aim?  I know that.  To craft work that resonates, that provokes, and that endures.  That's what I am trying to do.
For the foreseeable future, everything I do will be for that purpose.  Nothing else.  The well lit moment of seeing myself as somebody else did, as a person that sabotaged, that was more talk than action - it disgusted me.
And from this point on, unless it is for reasons of development, I am not talking about what I do, I'm not making a point of conversation.
I'm making myself into a kind of monk.  I'm taking a vow of silence.  This will be my forum to explore the process, and to see myself change.
From now forward, the work and the living are inseparable. The work isn't a python that is squeezing me.  It isn't the weight of gravity pressing into me.  It is now my bones, my skeleton.  It is holding this whole pile of flesh up, and goddammit, that's that.    
Slipping on the robes.