spiritual prescription

[fflo]

I have just realized I need to exhaust myself physically.

I've been exercising myself to the limits emotionally, and wearing myself out with coffee and not much sleep, and even working the noggin to the point of rubbery brains now & then. But it's been a fortnight since I went & used up the better part of the energy of my plain ol' pure muscles, bloodstream, lungs.

One of the lessons of this stage of my life has been how very good for me that occasional practice can be.

When life is so clearly instructive about something, why do we sometimes have such a hard time learning the lesson?

Comments

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

isn't it strange how sometimes, in order to sort things out, we totally separate our selves from the bodies that carry them and beat them up? i've had that happen several times. usually, a massive flu or some other cataclysm of the immune system, would happen, to remind me that nothing matters if your vessel has a hole in it.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i also need to work on my commas, or at least not to punctuate while tired.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

this particular light bulb flashing on again is something i could have gotten from the dogs, now that i think about it. the vessel wants to do its thing, and i sit it at a desk all day and then some, and sure it doesn't have to get out every day to the point of being completely spent, but if it doesn't do it and doesn't do it and doesn't do it, even to the point of being taken for a good speeding up of the juices, ... well. it's like forgetting that "sleep is good, and food helps," as my friend tom used to remind me and suzanne when we were in need of such basic instruction.

or was it "food is good, and sleep helps"?

well you get the point.

i'm working away on the kacceri scribe stuff here tonight, friday night... craving the weekend but not wanting to miss this opportunity to knock off a hunk of pages. back to't.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

hey, your commas at their worst are nowhere near so shabby as some future academic superstars'... haw

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

if you're not sick of the subcontinent by then, maybe you could come with us on saturday to see "the namesake."

i do get whatcha saying about the vessel. it's strange how it goes, but it looks like, in order to get the "natural" things done (food, sleep), one must resort to a discipline, which will put "nature" back into your schedule. i've certainly had to do it and found the vessel quite satisfied.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

yar yar. no avail there, is there?

on that same note, one found that speaking to one mark sampson, phd, most possibly of the lone star state queer contingent, had potential. one shall return to the office of the same on wednesday, if only to look at the dolly parton poster some more.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

how can you go wrong if he digs dolly? ;) glad it went well. i really like the idea k gave me from that alan watts character, of the practice as a discipline of the mind that actually helps one fight hegemony. you know, put one way.

this morning i was imagining the phone call in which i seek a return to the practice myself. though i grant you that was out of some crashing waves of emotion. "what the hell is wrong with me?" and "you got to get your sh&t together, miss lisa" are examples of my head trying to rope that crazy bull.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

yes, you know my resistance to routine, but i have to hand it to schedule/discipline here. funny i didn't see this comment before responding to the one above with the discipline/practice idea.

the first glimpse i had of something zen-like in ordinary dailiness was an appreciation for tooling along (which i what i use this scout finch icon to represent, sometimes) associated very much with the phrase "takin' care of business" (or TCB, in 70s parlance). too easy to forget the business of the bod' when you grew up as i did, and when there's the business of the job and the business of the dishes and the business of the bills and the business of the laundry and the business of the movies. yeah, the movies doesn't fit in one way, but i have made it fit in a way in a way.

dang, back to the subcontinent. but yeah the movie sounds good. i think bigfinedaddy was interested, and squirrelykat too.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

that's the hard part--which i explicitly acknowledged today--not knowing which parts are real and which ones are not, on any given day.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

forgot to ask--why from the dogs?

[fflo.livejournal.com]

oh, just cuz they "need" exercise, of their simple physical selves, and seem to know it... and we even know that of them, making a point (as we do at the shelter) to try to get them out there regularly, knowing the consequences to them if we don't

[fflo.livejournal.com]

make that "that scout finch icon above" --- or this one here :]

[fflo.livejournal.com]

oh, DUUUuude. there's the rub, bub. oy indeed.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

that's because they don't know they should get a job. live (like a dog) and learn (like a dog).

[fflo.livejournal.com]

it's a dog's life! can't remember what that's supposed to mean at the moment, actually. ya'll got such an expression?

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

sure we do--"pseći život" or "псећи живот" (if you will). a dogly life it is.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

a dogly life! hlada voda, cho-vee-chay (please transliterate)

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

hladna voda, čoveče!

or,

хладна вода, човече!

Лиса (you)

Оливера (me)

Честер (your older cat)
Хамфри (your younger cat)

[fflo.livejournal.com]

kewl kewl!!

just sent B Chapter 2. phew. gotta book or the motion alarm will go off (i think i have until midnight).

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

oh man--i didn't realize you were still at the office! run lisa run!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

hey, look at the left margin of the main page of this (here) blog (mine, that is)---changed the heading to the quotations. :] plus added an Elizabeth Bishop bit I just came across.

занимљиво!

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

mucho interesante! :) me like. i like the elizabeth bishop too. in spite is the operative term.

also today

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i liked this nugget from the writer's almanac:

John Fowles said, "Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want."

Re: also today

[fflo.livejournal.com]

hey, i spotted & dug that line too! ah, the human condition (as thought of in this moment)

Re: занимљиво!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

let's see... somethin'-a-n-i-m-somethin'-i-v-o... don't have my cheat sheet here, doggone it. checking other resources... zanimlj(y)ivo?

na vra brda, baby. this to say i'm all tied up, like a tongue twister? when i first saw the "во" & thought maybe it was a zdravo, but it didn't take long to realize there are too many characters. i mean, if anything ya'll are gonna have fewer characters than my eye expects, right?

ne razumem, olivera. (i just decided that's more important for me to know than "pivo" and "čuti bre"!)

Re: занимљиво!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

p.s. what's the operative term? --ignoramus

Re: занимљиво!

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

одлично! (odlično!=excellent!)

не разумем is exactly right! the word is zanimljivo, ie, interesting. same formation as zdravo, meaning neutral gender of the adjectives zanimljiv and zdrav, respectively. the neutral often matches the adverb form, hence zdravo! is short for "budi zdravo!" meaning "be healthy!"

Re: занимљиво!

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

the term on which the whole thing (logic) hinges, the term here being "endurance" (vs. enjoyment, for instance).

colloquialisation

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i think that you should, for the purposes of authenticity, make the tagline into 'ладна вода, as in 'ladna voda, because that's how it would be pronounced by most easy speakers of the language comfortable with the phrase. the h's are very often silenced, and in most cases the silences are a measure of colloquialism and ease.

Re: colloquialisation

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Will do! I decided to take down Elizabeth's insight, too. I dunno. Something like a gesture toward not accepting the inevitability of cruelty too readily or willingly. Since, temperamentally, I don't. Or maybe it's more like not inviting it. I don't know.

Today (Sunday) has been a bit of a non-starter for me. May be as simple as not having had coffee, though I hate to admit it. Am I so emotionally tied to that stuff?

I wonder whether I'm a train wreck waiting to happen. An engineerless locomotive just now realizing fully how there's no one at the controls, and equating that with imminent derailment. Or somethin'. To stick with the train metaphor, and perhaps to pick up something from the flick last night.

Best thing about seeing that movie in the theater was being in that crowd. Where the laughs fell, and how big they were & of what sort, and when the "aw"s came out and how oddly readily in places.

Re: colloquialisation

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

it sounds like one of those days when it's worth pulling out the note-to-self which reminds one that:

1. sundays are the most hideous days of any week, disgusting in their faux liberty and terrifying in the ominous threat of being just once removed from the reviled monday, the shadows of which spill over into one's supposedly "free" day; those religious people had it right (discipline, i tell you!) to ban themselves from doing anything on sunday, at the threat of death!

2. if a day seems particularly bad, it probably isn't! especially if there is no reason for it. chemistry is the science we should all study and how few drops of chemicals we produce ourselves make us out to be people we don't know and the world to be the place we'd never seen before. worse yet, we had seen it and were deceived as to what it was really about! all so true! [not]

if you'd like me to distract you from you, and from me, i'd be happy to do it. to remind you what the note said, or to write a new one for you!

yes, the movie was better with the audience. it was a lesson on the in jokes i didn't catch.

Re: занимљиво!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

hunh. wouldn'ta picked "endurance" myself, but i think you've got it. (and i do know, for the record, the notion of an operative term) ( :] )

maybe it's the deluded/spoiled american who wants or even expects more to be there than a succession of days to be variously endured.

at the moment this line of thought---or more like thought muddle---'s reminding me of how i have (for as long as i can remember) accepted/known that life isn't fair, but have (also for long, though not quite so long) liked to tag on to "life isn't fair" something like "but people can be"---not that we often are, or can always be. but we can be, now & then, just as we can sometimes be kind. when we put our minds to it OR when we've put our minds to it enough that it kicks in on a habitual level.

it IS a luxury to be able to cultivate that habit freely and easily. and one rare among 'my' people: the walking wounded. which i guess does mean it's all the more touching when we pull off our higher moments with/for each other.

lene lovich sings this song "too tender to touch." ("too fragile to lust" is the next line.)

a cloud has just passed over, and the breeze come up of a sudden, after sunshine that, i realize, was depressing me. perhaps tat's my sign i should go out into it.

lotsa little birdies at my feeder toda. one red-headed one i've never seen before. gotta look it up later.

i need a rainstorm to go stand in & be saturated by.

Re: colloquialisation

[fflo.livejournal.com]

i have a feeling i'm going to like what you said about chemistry very much, once i figure out (or am told) what you're saying! haw

i would indeed like you to distract me from me. will you?

want to help me in a small shopping mission? i shall call you in a few minutes.

Re: colloquialisation

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i shall gladly. i am going to see a house i might live in next fall, but that shouldn't take too long.