Season of the nut
I've got another big bowl of walnuts going lately, about a hundred, maybe more. They started falling several weeks ago, and Tater started collecting them and bringing them into the house. I take them away when I find them – they're toxic to dogs when they get moldy, as most of them are by now, and they stain everything they touch. He has brown stains on his chin from chewing the hulls off.
The other morning I rolled over in bed and ground one right into the middle of my back. He sneaks them in at night and hides them everywhere.
These days I am not feeling like being amusing here. I've gone to such effort to clear my life of extraneous stresses that right now it's feeling like not much is left – not much I can talk about here, anyway. I feel quiet and still and open, like I'm seeing everything happening around me but not really participating in it. I still go to work every day of course, still enjoy my rides and my dogs and my relationships, and the beauty of this place. I've also started running – tentatively and not very well, but yeah, running. Yow. Sometimes I feel so full and happy that it almost makes me want to cry. Sometimes I feel this vague dissatisfaction, as if I'm missing out on something I can't quite put my finger on. But that isn't unusual, and there isn't anything specific happening, nothing that seems worthy of mention. It's just my life.
And yet I have this compulsion to document my day-to-day ... and so I keep checking in every once in awhile to write.
Pleasure is a favorite topic – counting blessings, &c. I've been involved in some Slow Food stuff lately and came across this, from some Italian guy connected with the movement: "Those who suffer for others do more damage to humanity than those who enjoy themselves. Pleasure is a way of being at one with yourself and others." That sounds right to me.
One of my main pleasures currently is breakfast – a meal I had not eaten regularly for years – decades, actually – and which I now make for myself every day without fail. It's pretty much the same every time: one egg, one slice of 6-carb flax seed toast, one-half cup of 2% milk. I write it in my book: 1 egg, 1 toast, 1/2 C 2% = 14 carbs. Sometimes I'll have a couple of slices of smoked salmon if there is any, or make a little veggie omelette and skip the toast, or have two eggs, if the eggs are small. I have my whole routine worked out down to the second, so that everything will be done at the same time and I can serve it all up in pre-heated plates and cups and carry my tray and my book out onto the back patio and sit and eat and drink and read and wake up in exactly the same way every day, at more or less exactly the same time every day ...
Maybe that's why I'm getting this unreal feeling of time standing still. Maybe I should shake up my routine a little.
But then, why shouldn't I follow this routine for awhile, at least until it starts to feel like it wants changing? Why does everyone seem to think it's so important to change things up all the time? Isn't life changeable enough already, just as it is? Without me trying to make things happen, or not happen?
Life goes a lot slower when I stick to routines, speak as little as necessary, and avoid electronic appliances (like computers and televisions) as much as possible. There's still the same amount of time as ever, but it feels like more. It feels like forever. I kind of like it. But I do find it disturbing too.
Partly I guess this is because I feel guilty for "wasting" all this precious extra time I've managed to find. I'm producing very little at the moment except for my regular work, and even though I know that's okay, I still somehow feel like it isn't. I don't feel inspired to make or do anything but rest and absorb the light and the air (we had the first real soaking, restoring, nourishing rain of the season the other night and I stayed awake until 4 a.m. just to listen to it and breathe in the smell of all those trees and plants coming back to life – it was magnificent) and it feels very good to do so, but I'm also aware of my own disapproval ... this feeling that I "should" be doing something ... not sure what.
Engaging more with other people, certainly. I do get into these moods where I just don't want to be bothered, and sometimes I feel like it's important to my mental health to let myself withdraw for awhile. But then I have to keep an eye out for the moment when taking a time out turns into hiding and avoidance, which are not healthy and restorative but maladaptive and even, I think, damaging in some ways ... Not to mention, I do have gifts to share, and I want to share them – if for no other reason than that there have been so many wonderful people in my life who have shared with me, and it made me feel good, and I want to spread that feeling around.
Happy, healthy, functioning people don't do evil, incomprehensible things to other people. This is why we all benefit by helping each other be as happy as possible – even, and maybe especially, the people we don't like, people who have done horrible things, people who don't "deserve" to be happy. This is why it's important, maybe even a duty (though I don't like that word or concept), to be willing to engage, to reach out to each other, even when it's more comfortable to turn away, or to turn only toward people we like, people who remind us of ourselves. People we think we understand.
That is my biggest challenge right now, I think. Basically, I feel like I just don't like very many people. Is this because I don't like myself? I don't think so. I don't know. It's something I'm contemplating. But I don't think that's it. I think it's more just that there are so many ... well, just kind of terrible people in the world. What to do with that unpleasant reality? If anything can be done. I'm contemplating that, too. And trying not to let myself back too far away from the world, no matter how much I want to.
This is the kind of vague, nonsensical crap you get from me when I start writing only to scratch my itch and not because I have anything of real value to say.
In other news, I was going to attempt a humorous "fashion" post about a recent trip to REI, during which I confounded the sales staff by trying on every kind of long underwear they had in the place in hopes of ascertaining which type or types, or combination of types, I ought to be wearing this winter along with the rest of my new seasonal uniform ... That post was meant to cheer up a friend who is suffering something that is not mine to write about here. But as information emerged ... it suddenly seemed like I ought not to write anything at all for awhile. Anything I could say would sound frivolous and wrong, unworthy of this thing that has happened. And of my friend's pain.
I did get the underwear though. It's starting to get cold. And winter is on its way.
Though as they say – and I know it's too early to say this but under the circumstances I will say it anyway – if winter's here, can spring be far behind?
The other morning I rolled over in bed and ground one right into the middle of my back. He sneaks them in at night and hides them everywhere.
These days I am not feeling like being amusing here. I've gone to such effort to clear my life of extraneous stresses that right now it's feeling like not much is left – not much I can talk about here, anyway. I feel quiet and still and open, like I'm seeing everything happening around me but not really participating in it. I still go to work every day of course, still enjoy my rides and my dogs and my relationships, and the beauty of this place. I've also started running – tentatively and not very well, but yeah, running. Yow. Sometimes I feel so full and happy that it almost makes me want to cry. Sometimes I feel this vague dissatisfaction, as if I'm missing out on something I can't quite put my finger on. But that isn't unusual, and there isn't anything specific happening, nothing that seems worthy of mention. It's just my life.
And yet I have this compulsion to document my day-to-day ... and so I keep checking in every once in awhile to write.
Pleasure is a favorite topic – counting blessings, &c. I've been involved in some Slow Food stuff lately and came across this, from some Italian guy connected with the movement: "Those who suffer for others do more damage to humanity than those who enjoy themselves. Pleasure is a way of being at one with yourself and others." That sounds right to me.
One of my main pleasures currently is breakfast – a meal I had not eaten regularly for years – decades, actually – and which I now make for myself every day without fail. It's pretty much the same every time: one egg, one slice of 6-carb flax seed toast, one-half cup of 2% milk. I write it in my book: 1 egg, 1 toast, 1/2 C 2% = 14 carbs. Sometimes I'll have a couple of slices of smoked salmon if there is any, or make a little veggie omelette and skip the toast, or have two eggs, if the eggs are small. I have my whole routine worked out down to the second, so that everything will be done at the same time and I can serve it all up in pre-heated plates and cups and carry my tray and my book out onto the back patio and sit and eat and drink and read and wake up in exactly the same way every day, at more or less exactly the same time every day ...
Maybe that's why I'm getting this unreal feeling of time standing still. Maybe I should shake up my routine a little.
But then, why shouldn't I follow this routine for awhile, at least until it starts to feel like it wants changing? Why does everyone seem to think it's so important to change things up all the time? Isn't life changeable enough already, just as it is? Without me trying to make things happen, or not happen?
Life goes a lot slower when I stick to routines, speak as little as necessary, and avoid electronic appliances (like computers and televisions) as much as possible. There's still the same amount of time as ever, but it feels like more. It feels like forever. I kind of like it. But I do find it disturbing too.
Partly I guess this is because I feel guilty for "wasting" all this precious extra time I've managed to find. I'm producing very little at the moment except for my regular work, and even though I know that's okay, I still somehow feel like it isn't. I don't feel inspired to make or do anything but rest and absorb the light and the air (we had the first real soaking, restoring, nourishing rain of the season the other night and I stayed awake until 4 a.m. just to listen to it and breathe in the smell of all those trees and plants coming back to life – it was magnificent) and it feels very good to do so, but I'm also aware of my own disapproval ... this feeling that I "should" be doing something ... not sure what.
Engaging more with other people, certainly. I do get into these moods where I just don't want to be bothered, and sometimes I feel like it's important to my mental health to let myself withdraw for awhile. But then I have to keep an eye out for the moment when taking a time out turns into hiding and avoidance, which are not healthy and restorative but maladaptive and even, I think, damaging in some ways ... Not to mention, I do have gifts to share, and I want to share them – if for no other reason than that there have been so many wonderful people in my life who have shared with me, and it made me feel good, and I want to spread that feeling around.
Happy, healthy, functioning people don't do evil, incomprehensible things to other people. This is why we all benefit by helping each other be as happy as possible – even, and maybe especially, the people we don't like, people who have done horrible things, people who don't "deserve" to be happy. This is why it's important, maybe even a duty (though I don't like that word or concept), to be willing to engage, to reach out to each other, even when it's more comfortable to turn away, or to turn only toward people we like, people who remind us of ourselves. People we think we understand.
That is my biggest challenge right now, I think. Basically, I feel like I just don't like very many people. Is this because I don't like myself? I don't think so. I don't know. It's something I'm contemplating. But I don't think that's it. I think it's more just that there are so many ... well, just kind of terrible people in the world. What to do with that unpleasant reality? If anything can be done. I'm contemplating that, too. And trying not to let myself back too far away from the world, no matter how much I want to.
This is the kind of vague, nonsensical crap you get from me when I start writing only to scratch my itch and not because I have anything of real value to say.
In other news, I was going to attempt a humorous "fashion" post about a recent trip to REI, during which I confounded the sales staff by trying on every kind of long underwear they had in the place in hopes of ascertaining which type or types, or combination of types, I ought to be wearing this winter along with the rest of my new seasonal uniform ... That post was meant to cheer up a friend who is suffering something that is not mine to write about here. But as information emerged ... it suddenly seemed like I ought not to write anything at all for awhile. Anything I could say would sound frivolous and wrong, unworthy of this thing that has happened. And of my friend's pain.
I did get the underwear though. It's starting to get cold. And winter is on its way.
Though as they say – and I know it's too early to say this but under the circumstances I will say it anyway – if winter's here, can spring be far behind?
2 Comments:
It's fascinating to me that for you routine seems to make life go more slowly, because to me it seems just the opposite. When my life is more routine, the days all blur together, and time seems to just fly by. It's when there's novelty in my life that time seems to slow down. The times that REALLY stand out to me, when every moment felt different, are the times when I've traveled, say, and almost everything is new and different. I've always assumed that that's why as a child time seemed so much slower than it does as I've grown older.
i would like to know what you are reading in the morning w/your breakfast. how lovely that you have made time to do that in the morning. you are one of the most open and grateful people i have ever met. i still feel lucky to have met you.
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