Snow shoveling

When I was 6 or 7, and we were living in Fairfax, we got a huge amount of snow. I don't remember how much, but to me it felt enormous. Maybe 2 or 3 feet all at once, which is pretty intense for Virginia. I have a distinct memory of going out in my snow suit and shoveling through the drifts in the back yard. I went for what felt like a long time, and was really impressed with how much I'd done. Then I just lay down in my little snow canyon and stared up. The walls of snow around me were high enough that all I could see was sky. I was very comfortable, and very content, and very tired.

And that's what I remember.

Memories

The dajadaddy asked me to start writing down my memories. I'm so scatterbrained these days but I'm going to put down little vignettes and anecdotes as I remember them.

Online Me

Havi's post about talking to the Director was, as usual, amazing. And it also gave me the latest moment of hmm. I need to do some more thinking about it, but I am realizing that there's a Physical Me and an Online Me. And I'm going to work on listing the qualities of each, and think about ways I can bring them closer into alignment (or possibly alliance). Maybe like Jodi Foster in Nim's Island, but not quite so extreme. This bears more thinking and writing to become a full post, or even a full thought. But if I don't write it down, extensive research has shown that the white noise of everyday life will drown it out.

The symmetry, the surety

How long has it been since I bought the Dance of Shiva CD from Havi? Months and months at least. I have never stuck with an exercise program this long. And I don't even think of it as exercise most of the time, even though it really can be. But I think the reason I have kept with it, or one of them, is the numbers and the patterns. Not the patterns of behavior that it reveals, but the patterns within the movements. The mathematical beauty of it. The symmetry.

Maybe also because I really don't think of it as exercise most of the time. Hmm.

Sleep

A new pattern: when something unpleasant or stressful is upcoming, I stay up entirely too late in some bass-ackward attempt at making it take longer to arrive.

Patterns

Hello, pattern of feeling forgotten and unloved. Come on into the library. Here's a cup of cocoa, and a big bowl of fresh popcorn. Snuggle up on the window seat. I'll get you a blanket and your favorite novel.

Hello, pattern of compulsive eating when I'm tired. Let's go for a walk in the Japanese garden together. We'll sit in the machiai for a while and let the peace fill our hearts.

5 possibly random but probably related things

• I was doing Shiva Nata in my head last night and it started turning into a flamenco dance. I may just have to try that for reals sometime. I was even feeling the swirl of skirts against my legs! In my head! Legs in my head! Brain: officially scrambled.
• I went to listen to the recording for the Art of Embarking and accidentally started the recording for the Shiva Nata sneaky snack call. I'm now glad I did.
• Pattern pattern pattern, everything's a pattern.
• I couldn't come up with a proper image for my metaphor of flow. That is, I have that great image for my stucknesses, of a leaf pushed up against a rock (although sometimes I'm wondering if I'm the rock?). But for my image of how I want the destuckified me to feel, I was really struggling. So I wonder if maybe I need something more 3 dimensional (or 4 dimensional) than a stream, perhaps flying like a bird in the air currents? Although just now I thought of a tree by the riverside. Hm. Why is that less stuck than a rock in the middle of the river? Anyway. That's still progressing at least.
• TRUST. That was the word I kept in my head while listening to the call. And EQUANIMITY is the word I'm going to try and keep in my head for the rest of today.

I had so many other thoughts and ideas and epiphanies and moments of hmm while I was listening. But I was on the exercise bike and I didn't write them down, and I've forgotten most of them. But I'm hoping they'll come back next time I listen. Also? Even if they don't, it's OK. Because I still remember how it felt when I had them and that feeling is still here. It's like waking up. The good kind, with the sleepy slow smile, and the luxurious stretch, and the feeling that you really rested, and the knowledge of a good day ahead. That's how my brain feels right now. Probably doesn't help that I was exercising at the time...go go endorphins!

I'm a little bit manic at the moment, I'm going to take a shower and get centered. Equanimity is the word of the day.