everything is connected to everything

Let me see: for the past few weeks, I've been suffering from, not writer's block, but from what I think of as Writer's Blah.  Writer's Block seems (to me) to imply that there's something to block.  I've just been blah, had nothing, really -- extremely limited energy, some ideas but execution zero -- and have been sleeping like the dead, which is insane for me.  But today, I'm feeling like I'm back.  And so's insomnia, no surprise, my more-usual companion.  There's a crash coming later on, but for now, I'm enjoying feeling so much more like myself than I have in weeks.

No coincidence that last night was the first time I've been to class in weeks. Literally, weeks.  Which is also super-weird for me.  My rationale was that I was injured and recovering, and also grieving still.  That's all true, but it's also true that it was more of the above Blah taking me over.  It's like a Dementor got me or something, just every drop of joy sucked out of the universe for a bit.

Just in case this is a temporary relapse to normalcy, with a return to Blah imminent, just wanted to get some stuff down on "paper."  Which is also the reason that I got up at 4:05, after 2 1/2 hours of trying to get back to sleep.

If I'm going to write, then I have to practice. 

Class with Laura last night was fantastic.  We did one-minute holds throughout the 90-minute class in our exploration of her theme of finding stillness in motion, motion in stillness.  And truly, finding alignment and then holding forearm plank or handstand for a minute at a time immediately drives home the point.  To hold on, you have to get quiet, go inside, pull in and focus.  Meanwhile, in that holding, so much ricocheting, pinballing motion.  Not to mention the despair of the monkey brain crying out, "is it time yet?"  We worked hard, I dripped sweat all over my mat, I lost my mind and found it again, waiting for me with my sandals in the cubbies by the bathroom.

As soon as I took my seat on my mat, I realized how essential the practice is to my creativity, how it lays down tracks for my train of thought.  It's no coincidence that I suddenly have this urge to write again, that it kept me awake from 1:30 am today.

When I practice, I have more words.  And more words is what I want to be having.  I have been profoundly uncomfortable and unhappy for the past few weeks, because I just was for various reasons but also because I felt so wordless.

Besides practicing and farming, writing is all I really want to do. 

I'm not sure where it's taking me, but I'm sure enjoying writing for this, my own, my beloved blog, writing for San Rafael Patch, writing for Bay Shakti, and now writing and social networking for the San Rafael Neighborhood Team of the Obama 2012 campaign.  Fingers crossed that a recent piece really, really does get crossposted (after ferocious editing, down to 250 words, by the national office, but whatevs, they can do with me as they wish) to the Barack Obama website.

I LOVE all of this and am not entirely sure where it's leading, but it's a source of profound happiness to me to be able to express myself this way.  So I'll keep doing it and see where it leads.  To be clear, it doesn't have to lead anywhere.  It's an end in itself, I suppose, but since I wish that this were all I had to do, that it really were true that this is what I did for a living (as a recent acquaintance assumed, so sorry to burst her bubble), then that does urge me always on to thinking of how to make that reality.  And well before retirement age, if you please.

Oh, and reading.

I've been reading like mad, too, something that's been a smidge worrisome, only because I have taken to using the time I formerly employed in hiking and walking with Jasper to crawl back under the covers with a book.  It has, actually, made me wonder -- what with the ridiculous sleeping -- whether I was depressed.  

Thanks to a new library card, I've been re-living my days of Summer Reading Program at the Eureka Valley branch of the San Francisco Public Library, and making my way through some re-reads and new reads of children's literature.  As a result of which I have now irrefutably established that Great Expectations, though assigned to me and the rest of my 7th grade class, is not a book for 11-year-olds.  Or at least not this particular 11-year-old.  I didn't remember a thing about the book, except for the way Ms. Silverstein's approach to dissecting the book nearly turned me off to reading altogether.  I enjoyed it as an adult, though, I must say.  Oh, Havisham: may we avoid becoming you.

I'll be finishing Graceling by Kristin Cashore this morning before work.  And then it's on to re-reading two E. L. Konisburg titles, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth.  I am thoroughly enjoying this kid lit foray and thinking about this audience so much.  Who knows: maybe there's a book there.

everything is connected to everything

I am adoring a new show on FX, "Wilfred," perfectly weird and hilarious.  [In fact, I was rhapsodizing last night that FX has basically all of my favorite shows, which perhaps says a lot about my TVMA LSV tendencies.]  And yeah, it's just tv, but tv can be awesome, tv can be inspirational, tv can be delightful.

And so it is that I woke up with this phrase, "everything is connected to everything," spoken by the dog, Wilfred, on the show's second episode.  

Which is seeming so true, especially now when I am acutely aware of how connected my practice is to my writing is to my reading is to my writing is to my practice is to my ultimate happiness.  Sometimes it just takes an Aussie in a dog suit to remind me.


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