Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
morning photos
i took this series of photographs yesterday morning on the 8:20 ferry between langdale and horseshoe bay. right now, i mostly don’t see the beauty of this journey because i leave and arrive home in the dark, but come march, that will slowly start to change as the days become long enough to enjoy sunrises and sunsets from the deck. i had trouble deciding which of the 10 or so pictures i liked to post, but i managed to narrow it down to four to share (it’s really all about the colour i think…..)
choices, choices
if you had to choose – would you pick, wretched stomach aches that last for hours after eating or constant mid-level pain that make you sleepy and stupid?
i have chosen the latter over the former today, though i’m not sure if the better choice would have just been to stay home in bed…
bleah.
as simple as building a fire
so i’ve been pretty depressed all week… some combination of pain in the nerve canal of my jaw and painkillers and being in my house all alone and not feeling motivated to do much more than a little walk down to the post office. people who were supposed to come visit either flaked entirely (don’t know what happened there) or had to cancel because of the snow (entirely understandable – it has been snowing now for two and a half days) – so the reprieves from my own company i had expected didn’t come as planned leaving me pretty glum by last night.
just before bed, i worked to stave off a full-blown anxiety moment with some brief cognitive therapy and a taoist breathing exercise – both things i should have been working with all week, but i am bad at routine therapy exercises when i’m actually in need of them….
today, i decided, should be different, i should relax a bit more with this pain thing and give myself space to do what i needed…. so this morning i relaxed in bed with a new novel, got some studying done over breakfast, called a friend for a chat this afternoon, made a fire for the first time this week (i have been really lazy, thus my house has also been cold as the electric heat doesn’t do a good job), and cooked up some chili-spiced rice and beans for dinner. even though as i write this i am in some pain (ibuprofen wore off and the stuff i took with dinner hasn’t kicked in yet) – i am feeling much lighter of spirit today than i have been all week – and i’m pretty sure that the cheeriness of the fire on a snowy evening has a lot to do with it.
i also updated my ical today with a todo list and the next two months of dates – which helped me to realize that my life isn’t totally out of control and i have more time to get things done than i was telling myself on the verge of my anxiety moment last night. being someone with control issues, list-making has the power of instantly soothing me in times of despair….
oh what simple creature – a todo list, a chat with a friend, a fire and a bowl of rice and beans – i have to remember this remedy for next time.
the fourth practice
illness frustrates me to no end – the seeming uselessness of lying in bed while the body goes through its healing contortions – the total lack of power, lack of ability to speed up the process, the reminder we are mortal wrought each moment we can not sleep because of the pain emanating deep from the bone. mostly for me it is the inability to *do work*, the feeling i am wasting time that nags at me – even though logically i know being unwell is a perfectly good excuse to do nothing except read novels for a week.
last night satish kumar, someone whose blend of spirituality and politics i really admire, was interviewed on cbc radio. during the interview he spoke about sleep as a spiritual practice and then told the following story (which is also in his book You Are Therefore I Am).
once the emperor of persia asked his sufi teacher, “what can i best do to recover and renew my soul?”
“my lord, sleep as long as you can,” came the reply.
“what do you mean? i can’t neglect my duties! i have justice to deliver, ambassadors to receive, taxes to determine — so much work to do, i have no time to sleep,” said the emperor.
“but my lord, the more you sleep, the less you will oppress!” came the sufi master’s blunt reply.
kumar then goes on to say “much of the time when we are active, we oppress other people and damage the earth, which damages our souls. therefore sleep is an act of tapas [the self-replenishment necessary for achieving spiritual growth]” – which was the point he was driving home in the interview last night – that when we rest we are at a state of non-harm, a state as humans we are rarely at.
it was obvious to me during this past week of healing process my body wanted rest, and yet initially i fought that impulse as though to sleep was to betray my mind, my drive to get work accomplished. turned around, in the framework of kumar, not only does my body need rest to physically replenish, but also for the purposes of spiritual restoration. here is a practice i obviously need to spend some time working on – although the practice of sleep seems to come naturally, the practice of adequate sleep or restful time is really more elusive than ever in modern society.
(the other three practices of tapas are humility, service and study)
in the home stretch
i am feeling wretchedly ill from the painkillers these past couple of days…. unable to do much except lie about and read and do the occasional stitching between naps… here is the latest installment on the rug… i’m in the home stretch now.
Red Cedar 