Thursday, July 19, 2018

What's What

Lately, my days are packed with work. My head can start spinning if I begin to think of everything that needs to be done.

I get disoriented - a feeling akin to vertigo - from looking at a small screen for any length of time. As a result, I am on social media far less these days, which is probably for the best.

I am thinking of my son.

I am thinking of the young ones in cages removed from their parents.

I am thinking of Chris Mavronikolas.

I am thinking of my mom and dad.

My goal in this life is to live as fully in the present moment as possible. I have a long way to go.

It requires great discipline to sit still and quietly, allowing thoughts to pass through the brain without attaching any energy to them. The goal, I think, is not to attempt to make the brain free from thought, rather to allow your thoughts to pass like clouds on a sunny day. I believe that if we all sat still and quietly in this manner, for even a short while, the world might become a different place.

On Saturday, I am to perform improvisational movement and spoken word to accompany a phenomenal bass player, Vattel Cherry. I asked Vattel if he had a theme or a quality he wished to convey. He suggested that I look up Bacon's Rebellion. This incident, and the series of conditions leading up to it, explain so much about this country that we call the United States. My eyes welled up with tears as I read about it. And so I offer the following:

People are people. If they look different from you, they are still people with feelings and thoughts valid to their experience of the world. We do not own other people. We do not control other people. We are in charge of ourselves. And we are barely capable of that. We cannot even manage sitting still and quietly for a few minutes with our thoughts floating by like clouds in an endless sky. Try to be in a state of calm and peace. It's harder than you think. And, it is the simplest thing in the world.

Give it a go. Give yourselves some downtime.





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