Wand waves, wafts magic on me.

Hook’s sword slices air.  I’m too swift.

Ship’s net ensnares me now.

GET UP! GOOD MORNING! WAKE UP!

It has been so long since I last wrote a blog entry.  Long enough to sink into a slothful state of un-spiration.  “Un-“ what?  OK, I do not have a word that means the opposite of “inspiration.”  It certainly isn’t ex-spiration.  Maybe comatosity would fit.  Comatosity: noun, the label for the mental/emotional state of being comatose, being zombie-like. (definition from Tom’s Dictionary of Invented Words)

Rather than just continue to avoid writing, I have carefully drawn the following story out of my bag of fruitful memories.  Here it is.

I wake up the other morning with a bad case of the wishes.  You know.  I wish I had something fun lined up to do that day.  I wish I had written the blurb to invite other would-be writers to get together for coffee and discussion, the blurb that would go in our local community newsletter, the same blurb I have put off writing for the last three months.  I wish I didn’t feel depressed this morning.  The wishes.

I can sit and think about my wishes a bit more, I guess.  I have the feeling that there are a lot of sources for those wishes, sources that I just haven’t taken the time to ferret out. 

Frequently when I feel depressed or get caught up in feeling bored and wishful, I philosophize it away.  I put the feelings and thoughts into a broader context.  Like, for example, I might think that this was really the first week in many months when I was not fairly busy.  I might say to myself that I have been   teaching classes in a foreign country.  I have been travelling too much to worry about anything other than packing clean clothes for the next destination.  I could think that I have been working on a consulting project with a looming due date.  I could even use the rather far out rationalization that I have been caught up in pre-presidential campaign nuances.  And then comes the good part of philosophizing.  Finally, I can say to myself, it is really quite understandable that I would feel a bit at loose ends after all these other preoccupations.  I can say it is understandable that I would feel a bit down.  Ergo, it is understandable that I would wish for something more stimulating to grab my attention and to divert my thoughts.

Such philosophizing stretches the feelings out enough so that they do not pinch and ouch so badly.  Still no matter where I look in that stretched out philosophized landscape, the feelings are the same and Iam still preoccupied by them.

Next part of the story.  Instead I go for a walk.  It is a chill morning here in the Chicago region.  The remnants of Hurricane Gustav that gave our parched lawn a good soaking the last two days have passed eastward.  A white egret glides in toward the pond near my pathway even though I am passing close beneath the bird’s flight path.

Maybe you have had this experience too.  The walk gave my body and mind the chance to become aware.  The walk gave me a chance to own the emotional/psychological state I was in.  It gave me the chance to see that I was fully engaged in feeling sorry for myself and wishing things were different.  And, such a moment leads to the possibility of a choice. One can choose to continue on with the current train of thoughts and emotional reactions, or one can choose to step back into a quieter space and to refocus on a different flow of experience.

I am grateful to meditation.  Over time while meditating I have come to recognize that there is a cycle in meditation.  The mental attention is focused on something – could be just observing what is passing through my mind; could be a mantra.  Then at some point my mental attention gets hijacked by a different train of thought.  But, there is that moment of awareness at which I do become consciously aware that my attention has been hijacked. That moment of awareness leads directly to the empowerment to choose where I want to focus my mental attention – the mantra and beginning a new cycle in the meditation or continuing on with the interesting train of thought that has hijacked my attention.

The story I am relating here runs in the same kind of cycle.  There is the part of my everyday life – like waking up with a case of the wishes -- in which I am really caught up in the emotional confusion and psychological consternation of trying to figure out what some new event in my life is all about.  I am hijacked by coping with life.  Fortunately, a moment of conscious awareness does occur.  I become aware that I have immersed myself completely in the nitty gritty of manipulating reality to get what I want out of the situation.  With that awareness comes the choice to step back from the grip of my emotions, step back from manipulating life to meet my desires, and the choice to become quieter and more balanced. 

There now, I have broken the long silence.  There are some electronic ink marks on the screen of your computer monitor.  Maybe we can just lie back, light up a cigarette, and ask each other, “Was it good for you?”