Like meditation, this writing is also a practice.
Like meditation, this writing is also a matter of facing myself.
Yesterday I came across this blog. I came across it on the NYT app, which I mention because I think it makes me look sophisticated and special. Kinda like meditation.
(The article that caught my eye, by the way, was one of the most laugh out loud funny and hopeful things I’ve seen since the election. Why is everything is "Since the election," for me now? But it is. Speaking of which, last night, I woke up in the middle of the night worried about Russia—which is weird and unusual for me – and about that same time, Congress was voting to curtail the office of congressional ethics. I realize this is the opposite of the direction I was going, which was the funny and hopeful article. Here it is. It’s called :Hipsters Broke My Gaydar," and it contains the optimistic sentence “You’re all lesbians now, America.” Not that I don’t love my boyfriend. I do. But I’m pretty sure that if America was all Lesbians, that cheeto wouldn’t be our president and Putin wouldn’t be about to install a bat phone in the oval office. And I like to think that if forced to choose between my keeping-me-very-happy boyfriend and what’s good and right for the free world, I like to think I’d choose the world. I can’t say for sure, in the wee hours, when certain things seem more important than others, but I’d like to think so...)
Well. As I was saying.. Writing and meditation both require a certain amount of self-facing. And the blog that I found through the article was a “I’m back, sorry I’ve been away” post, of the kind that I have written after not wanting to face myself and therefore not writing for a while.
Today I posted for the first time in five weeks. Today I went down to the creek, past the frost-tipped leaves. The beavers have built their damn four feet tall now, and the seventy foot tall tree at the edge of their pond is mostly gnawed through. I can’t wait to see what they make next.
It was nice to be down there. I almost walked past my boulder, because it was really was freezing and also, facing shit. But Sunshine ran down the path toward our place and then looked back over his shoulder with big brown “C'mon baby” eyes.
I didn’t want to go down there. I’ve been away from all the stuff down there for so long. But I stood on the bank and looked and I felt something stir in me. Old magic I’ve been missing, a salmon below the surface, not a ghost but a deep winter thing. I felt it all through me, so strongly that I gasped a little. Oh. And then Okay. I guess I’m doing this.
And I went down and sat on the boulder for ten minutes and looked into the pool. It was cold and muddy and magnificent. I faced the me and I also was cold and muddy and magnificent.
Day two.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/hipsters-broke-my-gaydar.html?_r=0