The Speed of Thought

The human mind is an incredible thing. The speed with which our thoughts arise, move, change, transform, and fall away can often astound me. Because of the journey I’ve been on over the last period of time, I have been focusing on simplification, both externally, by purging myself of many of my possession, and internally, by trying to do a better job of focusing on the “here and now” and not letting my thoughts (the monkey mind) run away from.

I won’t kid you, it has been a struggle. If I had to characterize it, I would say that I went from being in the here and now 1 out of 10 moments to, maybe, 2 out of 10 moments. The main difference is that now I am often more aware of when the monkey mind has taken hold and is in the processing of running away with thoughts that are not real.

I got back from lunch a short while ago, and because it has been a quiet and very productive day, I decided to simply take a walk around the building. I was probably a quarter of the way into the walk when I realized that my monkey mind was in a complete runaway state. It was merrily dashing through all sorts of imaginative thoughts, good, bad, confused, and indifferent. I was deep down a tangent when the realization of it came to me.

It was so dazzling I was amazed as the speed and ferocity of that little monkey mind dashing all around. I took a series of deep breaths and concentrated, as best I could, and simply walking down the hallway without the monkey mind getting away from me. In itself that can be a difficult things because, what my mind did, instead of concentrating on being in the hallway, it started to write this article, right there, as I walked down the hallway and tried to focus the monkey mind on being in that moment, my mind was more than willing to skip ahead to this moment.

Like I said, it was pretty dang awesome. I managed to reel it in and get it focused so that I was able to simply walk down the hall, but it took an effort of will and it keep threatening to get away from me again.

Dharma Storms

At the end of a long day here at the office. I have several things that are telling me that. First, I have a pain in the neck – literally, not figuratively. I am sure it comes from either working with my head tilted or sitting on a teleconference with my head tilted for too long. I am hoping that a nice hot shower when I get home tonight will ease it a bit. I have the habit, when I get busy or involved in what I’m working on to let time slip by without noticing it – resulting in sitting in place for too long. I had a couple of those absorbing tasks today and I suspect I am suffering from the consequences of it. Always get up, always move – except when you forget too.

I’ve been following the news regarding the storms that rolled through the south, both from a curiosity level and from a personal level. That was a pretty impressive set of storms. Weather, the hand of nature, is always an impressive thing. On a pleasant day we can easily forget how powerful and destructive it can be on an unpleasant day. The scope of a vast storm-front like that is amazing.

I’ve often said that, having moved to California in my twenties, that one of the things that I consistently miss from the Midwest is the summer storms, their raw power and beauty, sweeping completely across that endless horizon on the great plains, a wall of wind and rain and hail. I don’t miss them in the sense of being battered by them, but I miss them in the sense of their awe-inducing majesty. You cannot help but feel very small when you behold them. South Dakota is the land of impressive thunderstorms and wind storms and the not infrequent tornadoes and they were a frequent occurrence in my youth. I still remember, at around ten or so, laying in bed late at night and feeling the wind buffet the entire house. In order to lull myself to sleep I would always pretend that wind was the little men of the mountains, playing nine pin ala Rip Van Winkle. (The other thing that I also miss is the endless sweep of the stars on a clear night, unobstructed by terrain, unpolluted by light.)

I thought for a while about Zen and storms today – probably because the two of them were on my mind. My thought was basically this – “It is easy to practice Dharma in beautiful weather. It is quite another thing to practice Dharma in a storm.”. Of course, there is no storm and no not storm as far as the Dharma is concerned. For the rest of us though, storms are real, and impressive. To pass through such storms is very much in the nature of our journey on this world.

The Suddenness of Change

Often, change seems to happen very quickly. Even when it is a long time building. I was thinking about that today - my friend T. was fired from his job this morning. It was what I would call half a surprise to him, since he has been going through the process and in and out of meetings and his hearings. (All in all I think it's your basic unlawful termination on several levels, but ultimately that decision with rest with lawyers, a judge and juries.)

It did get me thinking about the suddenness of change though. Even when it is slow approaching, the threshold appears very quickly, often just the blink of an eye as we slip across it. Often, there isn't anything we can do about - things develop their own momentum, they have their weight, they move under their own volition.

Things change. We change. Time changes. Ovid said "tempus edax rerum". (Time, the devourer of all things.) I think that is a pretty apt description of it. The changes that flow along with time are so inexorable they are amazing. Wise men, men far wiser than I at least, say that we should learn to accept, even embrace change. I'd have to agree with that. As difficult as it can be at times, change is inevitable. The sooner we learn to embrace it, to accept it, the sooner we gain the ability to do the best we can and then let it lie, go to sleep, knowing we did the best we could and that the rest of lies in the inevitable flow of the universe.

Confessional

I was thinking about something as I drove into work this morning. I was thinking about the confessional aspect of writing. As a Catholic, Confession is one of our central rituals – it is necessary for the salvation of our soul and our spiritual progress. Writing, as a confessional, holds a similar position in the soul of a writer. It is as necessary for the spirit of a writer to write as it necessary for a Catholic to confess. The main difference is a writer confesses all the gory details in public and may or may not be forgiven when it’s all said and done.

Happy Easter

Well, I am sitting in the living room, the sun has just dropped below the horizon on a beautiful California spring night, and I am watching Friday's episode of Sanctuary on DVR, having just returned from a steak and parmesan shrimp dinner, with fresh broccoli and a baked potato.

It's been a supremely lazy day, during which I did - virtually nothing. I met B. and T. for breakfast at the Hickory Pit, then came home and read the Sunday paper. From there, I watched "The Men Who Stare and Goats" and then curled up reading "Cleopatra: A Life" and napped through the afternoon before meeting Tony for dinner.

If I had to describe the entire weekend I would definitely use the word "lazy". I had a lazy Friday. I had a lazy Saturday. I had a lazy Sunday. Oh, I did things - but they were lazy things and it made the weekend almost perfect. There are times, as we go through life, where we simply need to do nothing. To give ourselves time to just relax, to just...be.

T.R. often refers to such days as "slender days" and I think that is a great description. I definitely had a nice and slender weekend. So, here is to slender days and wishes for a happy Easter.

Isolation's Worth

The other day my thoughts had turned to theme in writing and I've continued down that vein for the last couple of days. As I was processing those thoughts I thought "if I were to have a theme for 2010, what would that theme be". For reasons I am not entirely sure of the thought that immediately popped into my mind - and has stayed there in the subsequent days - was isolation.

Absent the meditations on theme, I am not sure if I would have gone there if asked to describe 2010 in a word - I would have been more likely to consciously choose healing. It was definitely a time of healing. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was an accurate enough description of 2010.

There are a couple of reasons for that. First, I think the process of being ill or injured is always a solitary process, as is an subsequent healing. Yes, other people can certainly make that journey next to us, but essentially, we are there alone - especially when we close our eyes, especially in the solitude of our minds, especially in the dark of the night. There are a thousand small things that we must move through alone, in isolation, when we are healing. The love and support of the people around us may very well mean we are not alone - but it is quite possible to be isolated in a crowd. The steps on the journey of healing are steps that we have to take - no one can take them for us. Healing is result of isolation's worth.

Second, 2010 was "The Year of the Great Purge" where nearly three quarters of my "stuff" was donated or trashed or moved on to it's next home. Ultimately, that was work that was done in isolation (though with the constant encouragement of T.R.), even though other people physically helped (my friend B. was invaluable in the simple task of hauling things up and down stairs, especially since a lot of it was done while I was on crutches). The process of going through the things, of reviewing them, sorting them, and psychologically purging them is largely a process that must, of necessity, be solitary.

Those two threads lead me to the term "Isolation's Worth". You see, when the term popped into my mind, it was absent any of the connotations our modern, over stimulated society, absent anything negative. It is isolation in the sense of being alone, in the sense of being still, in the sense of being unfiltered. If I look at the events of late 2009 and 2010, when I consider all the things that happened, on the small and intimate scale, on the large and grand scale, I think of it as a time of necessary, healing, healthy isolation. I have come through that time with a clearer, stronger sense of self and direction than I have had in a long time.

Book Review: Shadows At Dawn

My brother recommended this to me a while ago and it seemed interesting enough that I downloaded it to my Kindle. I spent the last week or so reading it. It is a history book (non-fiction) and, from the standpoint of story-telling, I personally found it jumbled for no apparent reason other than to make it longer.

The author tells the story of the Camp Grant Massacre in Arizona from four different points of view – the American’s, the Mexican’s, and two tribal groups – the Tohono O’odham Indians on the side of the attackers and the Apache victims of the massacre. It would have been interesting except for what I considered to be technical problems – the author first establishes that he is going to write it from the four POV’s and then promptly proceeds to routinely disregard the framework he established.

The result, though interesting, in thematically jumbled.

That said, it is an interesting book and it does reveal the “intimate violence” of the frontier and has a moment or two of brilliance. I think it would have been a better book if the author had kept to his self-imposed narrative framework more rigorously because he kept representing things he had already presented (which it was lead me to the conclusion that he was padding the book). If you are unfamiliar with the Camp Grant Massacre however, it is worth a read.

On the tail of this book I have started another one that have been looking forward to – “Cleopatra, A Life” by Stacy Shiff.

Waking Into A Memory

I had an interesting experience last night.

I did not dream, but rather I woke in a specific set of memories. There wasn’t a dream associated with them, since often, I will dream of something and then wake thinking about the subject of the dream. Rather, I woke right inside the memories of 1981, when I was a student at the University of South Dakota, Vermillion.

I went to school there for about two years, worked a variety of part time jobs, lived in a couple of different places, and just generally have fond memories of the experience. The memory set was both the place (Vermillion is a nice little town, typical of small college towns in the Midwest) and the people (I went to school with a cluster of people that I had grown up with, as well as making new friends and acquaintances while I was there).

I lay awake in the darkness and just let my mind wander through those memories, most of which were very good (and nearly thirty years away). I grinned a lot, there in the darkness, as I remembered people and places and events.

I’m not sure why I woke in that memory set – it may be related to the twelve boxes, since there were definitely items form that time frame in the boxes, including a copy of my college transcripts. It’s possible that seeing those documents stirred up those deep memories. It is also possible that something else touched them and caused my subconscious to recall them. The thing that was the most interesting to me though was waking directly into the memory set, that was an unusual, but cool, experience.

A Meditation on Theme In Writing

I love to write. Writing is an essential part of me. I’ve done it for a very long time. (I still have a copy of an early attempt at a short story, type-written, on the back of a form from my father’s construction business – it is one of the things that I keep as I went through my purging.) I was weaving my way in and out of work today and thought of the challenge of theme in writing. http://www.novel-writing-help.com offers up that theme is “what a novel’s story means”. I like that definition – it is more finely nuanced them the subject (Oxford dictionary says theme is “the subject of the piece of writing”).

Anyway, I was walking down the hall, weaving my way through the afternoon, and starting to slow my brain down a bit form the hurly-burly of the working world and my wandering mind turned to questions of theme in writing. Specifically, what I was contemplating was whether or not I was missing an overall theme in my creative writing. I have plenty of subjects, but what I seem to be lacking is a central theme (or even more than one). It is an interesting though to me and I might mull it around for a while. Looking backwards, at times when I have been highly prolific in creative writing, I’m pretty sure that I can see overarching themes.

It feels to me, as I sit here at my desk this afternoon, taking a brief break, right. It feels right. It feels like a lot of what I’ve been writing lately has been words without a theme. I get a feeling that there are some answers nestled inside meditation on theme, so I am going to focus on that this week and see what comes out of it. Often, when we write, we feel the need to tell a story – whether we are telling it as prose or poetry. But, it is not so much the story (the subject, the characters, the details) that we need to address, but rather the theme that underlying the story, that gives it life.

Relative to that, theme is also what makes a character leap to life on the page. The characters theme is what the character means – not who they are, not what they are, not how they are or the hundred small details that vividly draw fictional characters, but rather the theme of the character – what that character means in the context of the story. Good characters (or perhaps easy characters) come rushing at you fully equipped with their own themes. Characters like that seem to grab you and say “tell my story, tell the meaning of my story”. They are inspired, and they are inspired precisely by that theme.

Or, at least, that is what I think about theme on a Monday afternoon.

Sunday's Song of Simplicity

It was a very pleasant Sunday. I slept well, with a dream about an office building, where I was going to some sort of meeting. It was a futuristic dream. I was driving some sort of electrical car, which I pulled into the big glass and stone lobby and then the car itself drive into a hidden niche in the wall where it automatically coupled with the charging device. I rode a big stainless steel elevator to an upper floor (I got the sense that the building was five or six stories tall) and then, when there, I met with someone in a very nice glass and steel conference room where we sat on low couches surrounding a holographic display. I don't remember what the conversation was about, but I do recall that I was meeting with one person who was presenting something to me. I am not sure I would classify it as work dream, given the science fiction elements of it.

On Saturday afternoon, I went out and saw "The Conspirator" at a matinee over at the AMC 14 in Saratoga. I liked the movie. It was stately and well done, definitely worth the price of admission. It managed to tell the story of Mary Surrat in a straight-forward fashion, with solid performances across the board. The casting was excellent, especially in the principle roles - Robin Wright, James McAvoy, Tom Wilkinson, and Evan Rachel Wood. It definitely has my recommendation if you are in the mood for a solid drama.

I had a quiet Saturday evening and home and then once again slept well and deeply last night. I took today as low and slow as I could. I met Tyrone for breakfast over at the Hickory Pit, then circled over and took my car through the car wash, then stopped at Barnes and Noble on Steven's Creek for an hour or so of browsing. I came home for lunch, then circled back out to go for a three mile walk the length of San Tomas Aquino Park, up and down, in the beautiful sunlight under the blue sky. From there, I circled back home and took an hour and a half nap during the afternoon. Dinner was a cream of mushroom soup and grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches followed by episode's of "Bones" and "Sanctuary" on the DVR.

There are times when the simplicity of an easy day is exactly what we need. Just the ability to take a deep breath and move easy through the day, accomplishing a few things, doing a few things, but none of them under pressure, none of them because we are compelled to do them. Today was one of those days. The evening is falling now, the sun has just set, there is a cool breeze rising and falling. My plan tonight is simple - some time with T.R., a little television, a little reading, and then snugged into bed for another good night sleep.

I continue on my path of simplicity - I spent part of the weekend just doing a sort of survey and considering what items are available for my next purge. It always seems to amaze me that as I have less, I need less, and as I need less, I have less. I often joke that my path to simplicity is going to end with me sitting in the middle of the living room, wearing a bathrobe, eating from a bowl, while watching my 46" Sony. (Because that TV is going to be the last thing to go.) That is an exaggeration of course, but I continue to shed things and as I shed things, I find it easier to shed other things. By freeing myself of the clutter of stuff, I am freeing my mind - to think, to contemplate, to study, to read, to watch, to meditate and yes, to write. Like I said, it is a great feeling.