So, what I was thinking... I mean these are the questions we keep asking ourselves, right? In the middle of the night when we really need those beauty hours:
1) What am I doing that I love?
2) What am I NOT doing that I would love to do?
Question number one is easy, usually. I'm a hedonist, albeit a responsible one, after all. I follow my nose, etc.
Question number two beckons in weaker moments. Although I don't feel particularly weak at the moment.... I've figure out the parameters later.
What I know is I feel compelled to fly to Korea and trim the grass on my grandparents grave, or I will not be happy. I feel I need to do this relatively soon.
And I know that I need to enact the (intellectual) decision I made years ago that at least one day a month be given over completely to gratitude. It's such a chore to bring the intellect into the body, it takes such a long time.
I'm thinking Fridays. As in: every Friday I shut the door to my office and spend the entire 8 hours writing thank you notes to people. People who helped me that day, that week, that month, or at any unspecified time in my life. Just touching bases. Touching.
I wonder how certain of my co-workers would take it? That I shut my door on Friday morning and spend the day writing notes and emails and cards and making grateful phone calls... not really doing any "business" at all. It seems like a good, pro-active idea: spending one day a week thanking everyone who has helped you--one that might increase the level of happiness...
... and thus suspect. Hey, how much insurance are YOU paying for? We're a rather fear-based society, as much as that chaps my hinds.
I've been obsessed lately at how many of us there are doing so much--in ever increasing numbers and amounts--and feeling so little reward for all that effort. How, the more of us there are in America, the busier and unhappier we seem to be.
Seems we brilliants could have realized a four-day work week, decent health care, and secure futures for the elderly by this point, doesn't it? With such big brains and hearts as we have. Are we so far behind the Norwegians?!
Maybe devoting one day a week to the pure and simple practices of gratitude would help. Not dressing up and going to church to thank the white guy with a beard (followed up with poker and multitudinous rum & Cokes in the basement), but rather, an entire day of deeply meditative, deeply apprehended, pain-stakingly overt acts of gratitude: i.e., one handwritten letter to my 12th grade English teacher for introducing my 17 year-old self to existential angst (so that I could find a cure) and complimenting her on her recently ghost-written biography of the Soviet spy; one quickie note wiht smilie to the guy who saved me a brochure about the Seven Cities of Cibola mural at Wells Fargo Bank; an email to the lady who wrote to thank us for making sure the world is safe for art; one of my great-aunt's notecards to thank Tiffany, Megan and Robin for being such great hosts and enclosing a small donation to Sacramento Taiko-dan; one phone call to the research librarian who referred an old lady who needed help finding info about a Hank Bos oil she bought at a yard sale; a moment to consider ordering a singing telegram for the man who repaired our gutted computer network, an instant deciding not to order the telegram but rather to leave flowers on his doorstep; a postcard to an old college buddy who bothered to send me her new phone number....
And one day to sort through the hundreds of emails I get so that I could find the three or four that tell me my life is worth something: "I decided to splurge and buy my husband and myself the expensive tickets to your fundraiser."
I've fantasized that one day I would have the discipline to dedicate one day a month to this sort of activity... and yet have never managed to make it so.
I remain an optimistic.
8/21/2003
So now there's this sense of Blog-bligation, because if you tell someone you have a blog and don't write something new for over a week, they notice. Not that I'm complaining, I love a readership.
My friend Joan is compiling dreams, or interviews... where the interviewees talk about their dreams, for her new radio/sound art project called "The Taboo Box." She says it can be about "anything you deem not quite right: sex, of course, is a big subject; but there's also taboo violence, words spoken, things seen or overheard, places you're not supposed to be in, people you're not supposed to be looking at, etc." I volunteered to be part of this, you know me: can't keep my hand down. But I'm wondering if I should write the stuff down first, or just let her turn the recorder on and try to remember.... There's the recurring dream in which I'm a spectator at some huge event, there are dreams towns and dream landscapes I keep returning to... but I'm not sure much of what I dream feels taboo. I'll pay more attention now.
I don't know. Guess you'll hear more about that later. Here's a list of things that jazz up my days lately: the possibility of taiko at the Tucson marathon; local arts activism; a particular redhead; the idea of rain, of cold, and large bodies of water; taiko on the UA mall, taiko at the Botanical Gardens, the possibility of taiko compositions, taiko taiko taiko, good beer, the forthcoming Two Towers DVD. I'm rather simple these days.
The question I'm plagued with lately is: why are there more and more of us, but we keep having to work harder and longer? It seem illogical and offends my sense of social justice.
My friend Joan is compiling dreams, or interviews... where the interviewees talk about their dreams, for her new radio/sound art project called "The Taboo Box." She says it can be about "anything you deem not quite right: sex, of course, is a big subject; but there's also taboo violence, words spoken, things seen or overheard, places you're not supposed to be in, people you're not supposed to be looking at, etc." I volunteered to be part of this, you know me: can't keep my hand down. But I'm wondering if I should write the stuff down first, or just let her turn the recorder on and try to remember.... There's the recurring dream in which I'm a spectator at some huge event, there are dreams towns and dream landscapes I keep returning to... but I'm not sure much of what I dream feels taboo. I'll pay more attention now.
I don't know. Guess you'll hear more about that later. Here's a list of things that jazz up my days lately: the possibility of taiko at the Tucson marathon; local arts activism; a particular redhead; the idea of rain, of cold, and large bodies of water; taiko on the UA mall, taiko at the Botanical Gardens, the possibility of taiko compositions, taiko taiko taiko, good beer, the forthcoming Two Towers DVD. I'm rather simple these days.
The question I'm plagued with lately is: why are there more and more of us, but we keep having to work harder and longer? It seem illogical and offends my sense of social justice.
7/25/2003
I went to Park Place to see "Pirates of the Caribbean;" you gotta love Johnny Depp. Afterwardsm we walked around looking at the Ponies. I always feel like a bit of an alien at the mall. It was crowded, bustling, bright. The people were... well... "diverse": all kinds of old people and young people and hip hoppers and nature children and young professionals in golf shirts and gangsta wannabes with the rag head and big baggy shorts. Outside, a storm had brewed up and the sky, even now, is about as happenin' as the sky gets. Whole sections of sky glowing with lightening strikes, across the clouds, and long, lingering shots down at the earth, the silhouettes of clouds in the high foreground. And it's cool enough to sleep tonight, just with the windows open. Damn my winterizing. I suppose I should take that plastic down one of these days... but it helps keep the dust out. Ho hum.
7/22/2003
Just a note before I fall asleep, I think. It's possible this blogging will ramp up into a daily practice, but I honestly feel I'm a bit too busy to have any thoughts that might approach "profound." Hardly any worth typing out, actually; no "time to name the hills."
I don't suppose blogging need be profound, however.
I figure I'll just chip away a little each day, and maybe it'll become a practice worth keeping, and maybe the blog will go the way of the Sweat or archery or walking up Tumamoc Hill. Just not a part of my life.
Hot. The monsoons are still teasing some. After several good late afternoons or midnights of torrential downpour for an hour or so, tonight there's nothing but heat lightening and an oppressive humidity. I feel like I should be in one of those movies in the Congo, with the shadowed ceiling fan turning ominously above.
I'm going to bed early this evening, hoping I'll sleep and wake up at the crack of dawn and feel clear-headed and ready for about 14 hours of work. I need to do that much.
If all else fails, I guess I can pull out the old Daybook from years ago, and just type those in again. We shall see. I did remember to call the Poetry Center today, to see if they would like my books. I'd really like to give just about everything away right now.
I don't suppose blogging need be profound, however.
I figure I'll just chip away a little each day, and maybe it'll become a practice worth keeping, and maybe the blog will go the way of the Sweat or archery or walking up Tumamoc Hill. Just not a part of my life.
Hot. The monsoons are still teasing some. After several good late afternoons or midnights of torrential downpour for an hour or so, tonight there's nothing but heat lightening and an oppressive humidity. I feel like I should be in one of those movies in the Congo, with the shadowed ceiling fan turning ominously above.
I'm going to bed early this evening, hoping I'll sleep and wake up at the crack of dawn and feel clear-headed and ready for about 14 hours of work. I need to do that much.
If all else fails, I guess I can pull out the old Daybook from years ago, and just type those in again. We shall see. I did remember to call the Poetry Center today, to see if they would like my books. I'd really like to give just about everything away right now.
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