9:34 AM
I’ve started meditating.
I'm not new to it. In fact, I've gotten pretty good at it in the past.
I used to think of it as slowly cleaning out a corner room in the hoarder house that is my mind.
I used to do it and imagine I was sitting in a boat in a small underground cave lake, completely unaware that Carl Jung had identified that very scene as a symbol of the human psyche decades before.
But I try not to get too far out in the weeds with it.
I've gotten good at sinking in, focusing on breaths and keeping the monkey mind (mostly) still. Reining in grey matter that wants to live 20 minutes into the future, pulling it back into the couch where I sit and breathe and try to think about not thinking.
But things come up...
Thinking about a country that peaked in high school.
Thinking about the utter cynicism of using the tenets of a free society against itself until it breaks apart.
Thinking about all of this - the writing and the recording and the project backlog - and wondering if it's irrelevant now with all that’s going on.
But on the other hand...
Thinking that imagination is one of the things that’s going to get us through. The ability to see things how they could be. Or remembering how things used to be. Like romantic old sea shanties that yearn for countries that no longer exist.
Thinking that I think too much while I meditate.
Or maybe it's ok as long as I think about one thing at a time - taking back my hijacked attention as an act of rebellion.
Thinking about family.
Thinking about my parents who are at the age where I've begun to say goodbye a little each day, even if they don't know it.
Thinking about my son and his mother, that she and I haven't been together for well over a decade, and have in fact both been married again since.
After all the shit we've been through, the fights, the arguments, the moments we seemed to despise each other, it turns out there is light at the end of the tunnel of chaos.
We grew up.
We come together to support the son we made.
We save seats for each other.
This is what family feels like.
Thinking (again) that I think too much while I meditate.
Thinking about that which I love, and that which I lost.
That which could be, might be, or never will be.
Is this praying?
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What I’m reading: Burn Book (Kara Swisher)
What I'm listening to: Night Time (Killing Joke)
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