Saturday, July 31, 2010
dont have to
passing by the garage door and there is the cat sitting there on the other side of the door, sees my body, our eyes meet, she throws an emotion at me and a plea "i want to come in" i am supposed to respond emotionally, to say to myself "aw, gee," to feel the flip of the gut, to feel shame for standing there in the presence of a fellow creature in need, to hate my "self" for my uncaring and selfish attitude, to long for the comforting feeling of giving that creature what it wants, to open the garage door. i am convinced that i know that i dont have to have an opinion of all that and to do anything in particular about it. she wants something, i want something, big fat so what.
restless feeling has put things in my way
peripheral awarenesses - focused looking: like i am at the base of the cone looking toward the apex. it is always moving, i can never see it clear enough, it is too small, look hard enough (brows lower, head moves forward, shoulders hunch) it disappears. atoms dissolve into spin. the "other way" is to place the desire at the tip of the cone and expand the looking outward toward the base. everything is there. hard to maintain. now go forward, observe the layers slide past each other, maintain the balance, the foot relations, torso like blade passing through sweet zone, no wobble. like that. i ended up passing through about 15 minutes practicing single sliding step with other foot follow up and vertical strike. Shomen uchi. maybe 75 reps, fast & slow. had a few better ones in that set. no i can't walk and chew gum at the same time. not well. working on it.
silent walking - trying to make the floor not squeak as i go. there is a map of noise spots on the floor like puddles to go around. sliding the feet forward in the zone between contact and not contact where the turbulence dies down, foot goes through like sword without bumps, every step a poem that doesn't quite hit. keep trying, many more steps to take. i tell my "self."
always return - always the other side, always going away. all ways. where am i? what am i doing? is that what i want to do?
silent walking - trying to make the floor not squeak as i go. there is a map of noise spots on the floor like puddles to go around. sliding the feet forward in the zone between contact and not contact where the turbulence dies down, foot goes through like sword without bumps, every step a poem that doesn't quite hit. keep trying, many more steps to take. i tell my "self."
always return - always the other side, always going away. all ways. where am i? what am i doing? is that what i want to do?
Sunday, July 25, 2010
dessert
i dont deserve caffeine she said. caffeine and deserve dont go together i said. caffeine and want go together. thats what i think.
i get mixed up with the wants and the shoulds, creates dissonance, i feel bad, then i own my bad feeling, then i rationalize that i "deserve" to feel bad, then i can redeem myself through victimhood. i live in my emotional comfort zone, surrounded by my shell of normal thought processes.
i want to go toward the authentic expression. like running in darkness. swimming in darkness. underwater where is the balance? what is the direction? would i recognize a reference point if one presented itself? would i notice it?
i get mixed up with the wants and the shoulds, creates dissonance, i feel bad, then i own my bad feeling, then i rationalize that i "deserve" to feel bad, then i can redeem myself through victimhood. i live in my emotional comfort zone, surrounded by my shell of normal thought processes.
i want to go toward the authentic expression. like running in darkness. swimming in darkness. underwater where is the balance? what is the direction? would i recognize a reference point if one presented itself? would i notice it?
Friday, July 16, 2010
relentless self absorption
i or "i" use the shapes of "my" desire to draw the picture of the thing called "me." i know i like this and i don't like that. the "me." i know the characteristics of desire so i recognize it when it happens to, like, "me." the exact conformation of the "me" is always partially obscure because of structural inability to get "behind" it in whatever dimension that is. wheel does not turn by itself because of its wheelitude. something else has to want it to go. too many words.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
food, clothing, shelter
first comes air
oxygen precedes intention
next comes water
dry up and blow away
oxygen precedes intention
next comes water
dry up and blow away
skimmers
7/7/10
the wanting of the flesh to be touched
we are in a time in which there are only ritual touches allowed to be conceived. some of the rituals of touch are:
1. sex in various mostly ritual configurations (from making out to bd to procreation only in the dark with a sheet between (& doesn't that seem just as weird from the outside as, say, anal?))
2. violence also in various somewhat standard flavors (like American ghetto style, or Latin narco, or triad, or Nigerian, or American rural meth, or Central African hackery)
3. the "small touches": handshake, touch forearm or elbow, air kiss, quick hug, etc.
4. therapeutics: massage in various flavors. therapeutics has become heavily professionalized and monetized since i was a young buck. guys don't impress girls with their prowess in making their shoulders and neck feel better, and feet, and inner upper thighs, and piriformis, haha, etc. now they buy them a day at the spa where girl can get it from a licentiate. sad sad sad the day, when he took back his hand and went away.
cs lewis actually discussed this development in "That Hideous Strength." Everyone does their business on screens, their pleasure too, the pleasure becomes business, nothing is left, we don't care, we're plugged in. How is that different from the stuff in the plastic bag?
Gotta have a reason to touch someone else. maybe a good reason, maybe a bad one. the basic state is alone. effort required to bridge the gap. things to do. way up in the snow they used to do breathing games to get high, there were no drugs to be had. i've done them. they work. an enhanced and altered state is obtained, emphasis on hilarity.
the wanting of the flesh to be touched
we are in a time in which there are only ritual touches allowed to be conceived. some of the rituals of touch are:
1. sex in various mostly ritual configurations (from making out to bd to procreation only in the dark with a sheet between (& doesn't that seem just as weird from the outside as, say, anal?))
2. violence also in various somewhat standard flavors (like American ghetto style, or Latin narco, or triad, or Nigerian, or American rural meth, or Central African hackery)
3. the "small touches": handshake, touch forearm or elbow, air kiss, quick hug, etc.
4. therapeutics: massage in various flavors. therapeutics has become heavily professionalized and monetized since i was a young buck. guys don't impress girls with their prowess in making their shoulders and neck feel better, and feet, and inner upper thighs, and piriformis, haha, etc. now they buy them a day at the spa where girl can get it from a licentiate. sad sad sad the day, when he took back his hand and went away.
cs lewis actually discussed this development in "That Hideous Strength." Everyone does their business on screens, their pleasure too, the pleasure becomes business, nothing is left, we don't care, we're plugged in. How is that different from the stuff in the plastic bag?
Gotta have a reason to touch someone else. maybe a good reason, maybe a bad one. the basic state is alone. effort required to bridge the gap. things to do. way up in the snow they used to do breathing games to get high, there were no drugs to be had. i've done them. they work. an enhanced and altered state is obtained, emphasis on hilarity.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
knees, quads for chairsitters
tottering up here at the top of legs so we can see farther & where do we look? down bcause we are afraid of falling right?
the hams sit there contracted but not tensed. the quads sit there stretched forever but nothing to do. so the obvious counter-thing to do is to get up. the quads tense which is what they want to do, the hams stretch halfway. getting up is the actual remedial exercise. to know what it feels like do it 25 times in a row, slow or fast. then you will know. We sit for about 500 minutes working, then we go home and sit another couple hundred. We get up about like 2-3 minutes every day. balance between getting up and sitting down is obviously impossible until we change like everything but some is better than none so some gratuitous getting up out of the chair can be considered a good thing to do.
this morning was all kneeling and crouching, turning in down low, knees burning, ankles want to do one thing mind wants to do other. keep back straight in down low. down quad goes into oooh stretch as knee approaches floor. practiced sliding, moving foot whisper contacts through the movement. practised going down stairs backwards, sliding feet to get the map, eyes at infinity looking at where the body wasn't going. looking for the balance. now its here now its gone. that was interesting.
the hams sit there contracted but not tensed. the quads sit there stretched forever but nothing to do. so the obvious counter-thing to do is to get up. the quads tense which is what they want to do, the hams stretch halfway. getting up is the actual remedial exercise. to know what it feels like do it 25 times in a row, slow or fast. then you will know. We sit for about 500 minutes working, then we go home and sit another couple hundred. We get up about like 2-3 minutes every day. balance between getting up and sitting down is obviously impossible until we change like everything but some is better than none so some gratuitous getting up out of the chair can be considered a good thing to do.
this morning was all kneeling and crouching, turning in down low, knees burning, ankles want to do one thing mind wants to do other. keep back straight in down low. down quad goes into oooh stretch as knee approaches floor. practiced sliding, moving foot whisper contacts through the movement. practised going down stairs backwards, sliding feet to get the map, eyes at infinity looking at where the body wasn't going. looking for the balance. now its here now its gone. that was interesting.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
didact 2
everyone will have a vice. if we don't like the normal runofthemill vices we will make vices out of virtue. if we didn't have vices to distract us we would be here all the time.
rub it in:
the vice of prayer
the vice of contemplation
the vice of charity
the vice of compassion
bcause our god is a joking god, we are the jokes, hahaha.
vice like salt. couple of grains I like the food better, lot of it I get anxiety, blood pressure, too much kill I dead.
Where I go to practice they are always talking about people in the org trying to impose their version of right ways and wrong ways, the normal critique sequences wherever a "canon" has developed, kept going by a bureaucracy of obsessives bcause what normal person would go there and do that. PICK YOUR CULT CAREFULLY and then don't join imo, just tag along. peripheral male on the edge of camp, edge of outer darkness where the life is, in the cracks, seed of mes, in the chlorinated hydrocarbons, the acid clouds, waiting for its chance to be born.
rub it in:
the vice of prayer
the vice of contemplation
the vice of charity
the vice of compassion
bcause our god is a joking god, we are the jokes, hahaha.
vice like salt. couple of grains I like the food better, lot of it I get anxiety, blood pressure, too much kill I dead.
Where I go to practice they are always talking about people in the org trying to impose their version of right ways and wrong ways, the normal critique sequences wherever a "canon" has developed, kept going by a bureaucracy of obsessives bcause what normal person would go there and do that. PICK YOUR CULT CAREFULLY and then don't join imo, just tag along. peripheral male on the edge of camp, edge of outer darkness where the life is, in the cracks, seed of mes, in the chlorinated hydrocarbons, the acid clouds, waiting for its chance to be born.
Friday, July 2, 2010
setpoint 1.1
setup 1.1
1. I used to think static all the time, take the position & live in it, hatha approach as it were. I took the position this morning. Deeper bend than yday. So, he didacted, I spend most of my waking time sitting down, then the rest of the time lying down. Even though I am thoroughly exercised, I am not up in the hills with the goats on a desertification project. Most of the day in a chair interacting with a screen. Major weakness of quads, correspondingly powerful and contracted hams. I've been addressing that by taking the stance(s) in an exaggeratedly bent-knee version, keep pelvis properly plumb ("tucked" maybe), chin tucked, relax they keep telling me. (Arm twisted over behind my head, me close to the ground, pain on one side, roll on the other, relax they keep telling me.) I want the quads to burn. I want to stand there and do my mind-eye-head roms while they burn. The burn gets too much, rise up, wiggle a bit, reset the feet etc. as appropriate, go back down. The burn I have trained my"self" to call it fun.
2. The name of the game is non-recruitment. The eye wants to follow the mind. (Terminology fuzzy: am I meaning the "attention" or the "will" or something. My current formulation is that the apparent "thing" that is apparently different from "all that stuff" out there commonly referred to as "me" is a construct of a bunch of "pieces" that don't work that well together.) Head wants to follow the eyes, shoulders want to follow the head. When the head turn is done right in any direction I feel it deep down under the shoulders. The muscle in there screams omg, then it starts to moan. (If you leave it there the poor violated muscle may go into a cramp and scream again. Is it pleasure or is it pain? Some people like to cramp their muscles, its like well you know. I heard the guvernator give a riff on that long ago. Then sometimes it will calm down all on its own, relax, start smiling, start to feel really good, want to do it again right away, or sometimes I have to stroke its hair, give it a hug, wipe away the tears, make it a cup of tea, there there, it'll feel better, you'll see, and it smiles weakly and says "I'll try to learn to like it, I love you so much". But we know we're going to do this again.) This is the meaning of "deep down inside."
3. Layers - I got this from Bates. If you stand outside and look at something far away in a landscape that has "stuff" preferably vertical stuff at various distances, and you rock from side to side without moving your eyes you will see the nearer things appear to "move" relative to the things in back of them. Layers. My goal is to focus on infinity as a standard because I get the widest spread of payable attention out of it. (I want to look "through" the close things, meaning there would be a double image of close stuff.) (Do this every now and then while in front of the screen why doncha.) (Time to get up out of the chair, move the pelvis, standing up relaxing for me, I go to meetings stand in a corner, don't mind me I tell em, I fall asleep at meetings if I'm sitting down.) I want to find the farthest layers to see them move against each other. Not watching, seeing. Mind wants stuff, wants to follow, dog sniffs, finds that which it seeks. If mind does not follow more stuff is noticed I notice. Birds are coming to the feeder as I do these moves about 5 feet away. A hummingbird while I was playing with my sword.
1. I used to think static all the time, take the position & live in it, hatha approach as it were. I took the position this morning. Deeper bend than yday. So, he didacted, I spend most of my waking time sitting down, then the rest of the time lying down. Even though I am thoroughly exercised, I am not up in the hills with the goats on a desertification project. Most of the day in a chair interacting with a screen. Major weakness of quads, correspondingly powerful and contracted hams. I've been addressing that by taking the stance(s) in an exaggeratedly bent-knee version, keep pelvis properly plumb ("tucked" maybe), chin tucked, relax they keep telling me. (Arm twisted over behind my head, me close to the ground, pain on one side, roll on the other, relax they keep telling me.) I want the quads to burn. I want to stand there and do my mind-eye-head roms while they burn. The burn gets too much, rise up, wiggle a bit, reset the feet etc. as appropriate, go back down. The burn I have trained my"self" to call it fun.
2. The name of the game is non-recruitment. The eye wants to follow the mind. (Terminology fuzzy: am I meaning the "attention" or the "will" or something. My current formulation is that the apparent "thing" that is apparently different from "all that stuff" out there commonly referred to as "me" is a construct of a bunch of "pieces" that don't work that well together.) Head wants to follow the eyes, shoulders want to follow the head. When the head turn is done right in any direction I feel it deep down under the shoulders. The muscle in there screams omg, then it starts to moan. (If you leave it there the poor violated muscle may go into a cramp and scream again. Is it pleasure or is it pain? Some people like to cramp their muscles, its like well you know. I heard the guvernator give a riff on that long ago. Then sometimes it will calm down all on its own, relax, start smiling, start to feel really good, want to do it again right away, or sometimes I have to stroke its hair, give it a hug, wipe away the tears, make it a cup of tea, there there, it'll feel better, you'll see, and it smiles weakly and says "I'll try to learn to like it, I love you so much". But we know we're going to do this again.) This is the meaning of "deep down inside."
3. Layers - I got this from Bates. If you stand outside and look at something far away in a landscape that has "stuff" preferably vertical stuff at various distances, and you rock from side to side without moving your eyes you will see the nearer things appear to "move" relative to the things in back of them. Layers. My goal is to focus on infinity as a standard because I get the widest spread of payable attention out of it. (I want to look "through" the close things, meaning there would be a double image of close stuff.) (Do this every now and then while in front of the screen why doncha.) (Time to get up out of the chair, move the pelvis, standing up relaxing for me, I go to meetings stand in a corner, don't mind me I tell em, I fall asleep at meetings if I'm sitting down.) I want to find the farthest layers to see them move against each other. Not watching, seeing. Mind wants stuff, wants to follow, dog sniffs, finds that which it seeks. If mind does not follow more stuff is noticed I notice. Birds are coming to the feeder as I do these moves about 5 feet away. A hummingbird while I was playing with my sword.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
setpoint 1
like she said in a porno from the good old days (they had lines back then, plots sometimes): if i don't get (in my case) a setpoint every day i just don't feel right.
i find my"self" getting up out of bed where i was in some position for many minutes, i'm going to pass most of my awake in one position more or less because work is pretty much doing the same thing over and over again. i have found that i want a few minutes in the morning to move all the parts. So: not a routine except in some larger sense, but something. this is what i want to do:
1. the mind - put it through some paces
2. the attention - move it around, put it places
3. the eyes - because we humans care more about what we see than any other sense we like lead with our eyes, we think we can "see" farther than any of the other senses, maybe that's true, anyway, fix the eyes the others will start to emerge. i decided that i had been "using" the eyes all wrong for my entire life. change is hard until it gets done, then it was easy.
4. the muscles - starting with the neck, then everything else, each system (leg, neck, etc.) move in every direction, find the weak and sore spots, work em a bit.
5. some freeform movement, maybe something new turns up for consideration. Like just now, going down stairs backwards at speed, no hands, how to. no i didn't figure out like "how," i considerded some aspects of the situation, how the knees might bend, favorable angles of approach, etc. like, um, in a castle tower in the dark, fighting blind with swords. use of senses in different way haha.
to for the day set the attitude, a sensory base line, a physical base line of feeling relatively better, so 2 hours later i can remember and then at break maybe i can do a 2 minute set to refresh the body so the mind can sing.
i present a journal of a training sequence:
the eye exercises
to the yoga eye move exercises i added: keep the eyes still and move just the mind
i went looking for what there really is to see
i saw myself looking at what i thought was interesting
there is stuff all around but i only went for what i thought was interesting
the other stuff wasn’t interesting but how would i know, i didn’t notice, I only
looked at what was interesting to the “me”:
boobs, lizards, noodles
i found that the bottom edge of the circle of attention i was drawing around the edge of my visual field
went flat in line with my lower lid. as if the attention did not want to bother with the arc of reddish black at the bottom,
had to “make” the attention do what “I” wanted it to do.
Hard.
The where to put the focus seems to turn out to be infinity
If I want to get the fullest picture all the way to the edges. The beautiful or dangerous object
Is up close and directly in front of me and I am not looking at it, I am focused on infinity to get the best
Look at everything.
Ha ha rd
There was another habit. Looking “off into space” turned out to mean focused on a spot about 5 feet in front and down if I was standing up and up to the left if I was sitting down. I used to run with that head position and gaze set, major contributor to falls.
So, then to the regular yoga eye movement exercise. Standing it is a balance thing, to take the eyes to a limit and to keep the balance, bent knees, pelvis-spine-neck aligned, center of gravity, weight evenly distributed between feet and between toes and heels. Past the limit black spots appear, not dangerous for short periods I imagine. Also to not recruit (neck muscles for example) at the end points. Also not to move the head. Also where is the focus: close, far. Also is the movement smooth?
I used to do this exercise and my attention would go away from the visual and into the movement, the focus would go to one of my standard gazes while my attention would concentrate on the actual movement of the part. I might as well have been eyes closed. I wasn’t looking at anything. Or the opposite, I was looking at the beautiful female human or the shiny pebble. If I keep my focus on infinity than my eye movement smoothes out and becomes more linear, even the complex diagonal motions. Vision like a sword cut.
Keeping the focus wherever I might want it to be. Seeking a more comprehensive vantage point. Out at infinity things move slower, relatively. More ”time” perhaps for the training to pay off.
On to the head movements. Balance in movement. Avoiding recruiting the shoulders, keep them level. Eyes I’ve been keeping level and forward at infinity. That demonstrates to me that when I rotate my head “all the way” it is only about 45 degrees and if I then continue with my eyes “all the way” until I reach on one side the bridge of my nose I only gain about another couple of degrees or so of field in one direction and lose it in the other (and I can go on to do the “attention” exercise while my head and eyes are in that position with interesting results). So I’ve been practicing keeping my eyes ahead and focused on infinity while doing the head movement exercise and its been interesting and hard.
tbc
i find my"self" getting up out of bed where i was in some position for many minutes, i'm going to pass most of my awake in one position more or less because work is pretty much doing the same thing over and over again. i have found that i want a few minutes in the morning to move all the parts. So: not a routine except in some larger sense, but something. this is what i want to do:
1. the mind - put it through some paces
2. the attention - move it around, put it places
3. the eyes - because we humans care more about what we see than any other sense we like lead with our eyes, we think we can "see" farther than any of the other senses, maybe that's true, anyway, fix the eyes the others will start to emerge. i decided that i had been "using" the eyes all wrong for my entire life. change is hard until it gets done, then it was easy.
4. the muscles - starting with the neck, then everything else, each system (leg, neck, etc.) move in every direction, find the weak and sore spots, work em a bit.
5. some freeform movement, maybe something new turns up for consideration. Like just now, going down stairs backwards at speed, no hands, how to. no i didn't figure out like "how," i considerded some aspects of the situation, how the knees might bend, favorable angles of approach, etc. like, um, in a castle tower in the dark, fighting blind with swords. use of senses in different way haha.
to for the day set the attitude, a sensory base line, a physical base line of feeling relatively better, so 2 hours later i can remember and then at break maybe i can do a 2 minute set to refresh the body so the mind can sing.
i present a journal of a training sequence:
the eye exercises
to the yoga eye move exercises i added: keep the eyes still and move just the mind
i went looking for what there really is to see
i saw myself looking at what i thought was interesting
there is stuff all around but i only went for what i thought was interesting
the other stuff wasn’t interesting but how would i know, i didn’t notice, I only
looked at what was interesting to the “me”:
boobs, lizards, noodles
i found that the bottom edge of the circle of attention i was drawing around the edge of my visual field
went flat in line with my lower lid. as if the attention did not want to bother with the arc of reddish black at the bottom,
had to “make” the attention do what “I” wanted it to do.
Hard.
The where to put the focus seems to turn out to be infinity
If I want to get the fullest picture all the way to the edges. The beautiful or dangerous object
Is up close and directly in front of me and I am not looking at it, I am focused on infinity to get the best
Look at everything.
Ha ha rd
There was another habit. Looking “off into space” turned out to mean focused on a spot about 5 feet in front and down if I was standing up and up to the left if I was sitting down. I used to run with that head position and gaze set, major contributor to falls.
So, then to the regular yoga eye movement exercise. Standing it is a balance thing, to take the eyes to a limit and to keep the balance, bent knees, pelvis-spine-neck aligned, center of gravity, weight evenly distributed between feet and between toes and heels. Past the limit black spots appear, not dangerous for short periods I imagine. Also to not recruit (neck muscles for example) at the end points. Also not to move the head. Also where is the focus: close, far. Also is the movement smooth?
I used to do this exercise and my attention would go away from the visual and into the movement, the focus would go to one of my standard gazes while my attention would concentrate on the actual movement of the part. I might as well have been eyes closed. I wasn’t looking at anything. Or the opposite, I was looking at the beautiful female human or the shiny pebble. If I keep my focus on infinity than my eye movement smoothes out and becomes more linear, even the complex diagonal motions. Vision like a sword cut.
Keeping the focus wherever I might want it to be. Seeking a more comprehensive vantage point. Out at infinity things move slower, relatively. More ”time” perhaps for the training to pay off.
On to the head movements. Balance in movement. Avoiding recruiting the shoulders, keep them level. Eyes I’ve been keeping level and forward at infinity. That demonstrates to me that when I rotate my head “all the way” it is only about 45 degrees and if I then continue with my eyes “all the way” until I reach on one side the bridge of my nose I only gain about another couple of degrees or so of field in one direction and lose it in the other (and I can go on to do the “attention” exercise while my head and eyes are in that position with interesting results). So I’ve been practicing keeping my eyes ahead and focused on infinity while doing the head movement exercise and its been interesting and hard.
tbc
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