This morning on the way to classes, I considered that yesterday was such a wonderful day, and I still feel filled with thankfulness. I was not attached to what happened. I knew that today would be its own sort of day. I could feel the slightest tinge of what kind of goodness today would bring, and I knew it would be utterly different from yesterday’s magik. It has a vague roundness to it, and by “roundness” I am assigning a word arbitrarily to a feeling that does not have a name.

I decided to try an experiment and eat something that I knew would not nourish me as well as I like to be nourished. I had a little more caffiene than I prefer, less protein and some sugery bready foods for breakky. I also sat in chem class then had a (very difficult!) lab, which I totally fucked up, and fell behind in. On the way home, I could feel the headache of new glasses, the undernourishment of eating a breakky of nothing but carbs and sugar and tea, and the anguish of spending an hour on a titration only to fuck it all up. Pulsing underneath all of this was a simplicity. I forgive myself for allowing this state to contribute to my decisions. I forgive myself for my mistake in lab. I am thankful for the chance to observe different foods’ effects on my blood sugar and state. I am thankful for all of this. It is still a nice day, and I get to explore it.

Today’s promise is being fulfilled as I continue to revel in willingness to let go of anything, to nurture specific things in my life, and to be thankful for anything I can be thankful for. I began reading Paulo Coelho’s “The ALchemist” today as I sipped afternoon tea. It is a wonderful book, I have cried during almost every page so far. I drank floral green tea and ended up giving most of my tuna steak to the dog, who thanked me sincerely.

On the porch are three spider egg sacks and one large black and yellow spider. This one is of a variety that we’ve had out there before. I called the other one, who was much bigger, “darling.” Darling has layed her eggs and left, and now there’s this new one. I really love these spiders and again today the weather is perfect and I get to sit on the porch and read a book that warms my heart, and sip green tea and the birds and the spider keep me company.

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the best day in the year

I sat in the quad and saw and heard it as it really was. I was filled with thankfulness. People walked by and I got to appreciate them as they were. I found that there is nothing I am not willing to let go of. I feel free and clear and so very peaceful. The day was wonderful. The weather was heavenly.

I chose to meet someone. One of my fellow sociologists. A cute redhead. I didn’t want to wait until next week to see her again. In a school of twenty plus thousand students, that covers half of downtown, running into any particular person is unlikely at best, especially if you don’t even know if they have class right now. Shadow Scouts Rule. I walked to the window of a classroom, just because I wanted to look outside for a minute. I never walk to the back of the room where that window is. I saw her, I walked outside and had some fun flirting with her.

I found the end of the rainbow today on the way home. I never realized before that rainbows appear to be in the sky only because the moisture in the air is normally so thin that the only way you get enough refraction to see one is to have the sheer wide open visual field that you get between you and the sky. Today, I saw four rainbows, and there was enough moisture in the air near me to bring the bow down from the sky, accross the trees and then down in front of my car. Later, after I had turned my car a couple of times and was facing a different direction, it was to my left, all the way down to my car’s window, and below. I put up my hand and held the end of it. I saw lightening in the sky with the rainbows and Vangelis played synthesizer music on my IPod through the whole experience.

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Eagle Eyes

So automaticity can rot in–

a big fat pile of automaticity.

Wide angle eyes and soft eyes are so full of possibilities. All those peripheralities are amazing, outside the repitition, the shoulds, the norms, the expectations and the habits. There is so much freedom to be had in just how I interact with one person, and I never tasted this freedom before because I was reading from the script… and I didn’t know it.

Musashi should have said to enter being awake with soft eyes, and enter being alseep with them also, and eneter each moment in between with them. Because it would be impossible to do them in combat if I didn’t do them every day. I have heard John say, “when home base shifts, everything shifts.” I think that you will always fight from home base, you will always react from home base when the stress gets going. I think my home base is becoming wider, more vast and more full of possibilities. The balance here is that I lose the sense of having a clear “home base.” If it’s everywhere then it’s nowhere special. I noticed I would feel equally at home sleeping in a hostel bed in south Georgia or Ireland as I do in my home right now, or any other home I can remember living in. Even among my parents I have lost much of the automaticity, so how do I understand that they are my parents? I love them like I love other people. So I have home everywhere and nowhere. It’s either one, and it feels disorienting or it feels very warm and welcoming everywhere I go. Mostly it just feels so damned full of possibilities.

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Things to Learn from Kung Fu.

I love the simple precision of it.

Learning to disarm pistols is simple, you have to grab the pistol with your right hand and lock the opponant’s wrist against your chest with your left. The body dynamics are such that it is easy to do on a normal sized human.

What you do not do, however, is flail your hands quickly like your slapping someone in the third grade. Nor do you retract your body during your strike. You have to actually grab the gun and actually strike their wrist with your other hand. I find this beautifully elegant.

My training partner/roommate seems to have a mental block with regards to the precision and simplicity of it. I think if I can get him breathing out on his strikes more consistantly, and noticing what he is doing internally, he will get it.

I would liken it to trying to push a button in a video game very quickly. If you just wildly try to flail your finger on the button as fast as you can, it won’t be nearly as fast as if you deliberately push it at a high rate, gently and precisely. The same is true with trying to get speed in pulsing the PC muscle, I’ve discovered.

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A year ago I finally let go of my centuries-old karmic mistrust of the Japanese. There was this chiropractor fellow, who was so obviously Japanese in everything he did, with his precise and decisive movments, he was like the Samurai chef from Saturday night live, but he was a back doctor. Well, he turned out to be an alright guy, and I was feeling really open and loving that day, so I decided maybe the Japs weren’t all bad.

Last week, though, I learned just how heirarchical Japanese society is. I mean, I had heard that it was pretty strictly organized, but I did not comprehend how serious the notions of superiority and inferiority were to them. My research methods professor, Dr. Kii, described some research he did about the difference in business culture between Japan and the U.S. In Japan, one pays attention to the business card you are given in order to determine who ranks higher in society, and the lower ranking person is supposed to bow deeper to the higher ranking person. Pardon me, but I like our good old American handshakes better. The notion of a codified linear hierarchy of humans that one must acknowledge really puts me off.

So I went to my fav Sushi bar this last weekend and the new guy there, Nick (“it’s a nickname,” he tells me), will speak with me, but the guy ahead of him will not. In other words, there are two sushi chefs and one will not deign to speak with mere customers, and he just tells nick what to do. Nick strikes me as a nice guy. It turns out his father owned a martial arts school in Japan and nick had studied swordsmanship from the age of four or five. He smiles a lot and talks about his family. He’s just a lovely guy. Yet I sat there paying close attention to his interaction with the “superior” sushi man and noticed he got treated like a total bitch. Sad. Sad. Sad. Jonathan didn’t like this.

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The fact that we can dream beautiful possibilities presents a very unique opportunity.

To fulfill this promise that is within the human imagination is a magnificent thing to do.

Unfortunately most people lack trust to do it, in themselves and in whatever they consider Divine.

Trust coupled with vision brings a sense of abundance and peace.

Then it becomes possible.

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