Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Day 57 Juice Feast -- Breaking Structure

This morning I was at a loss. I've come across this before--I realize I am where I am supposed to be but I am not sure what to do with myself. Although there are always busy things to do--distractions as it were, nothing I really wanted to do or felt right came to mind. I was present, I was not unhappy and I was engaged in questioning.



At lunch I left the office and all I knew I wanted to do was get some sun.  I was listening to my MP3 player and walking when almost immediately I found a tiny area off the beaten path with sun blasting it and a long concrete ledge attached to a grassy area surrounding a huge metal sculpture. I sat down and went to set my MP3 player to a book I'd started a few days earlier when I stopped in my tracks and selected something new. Of course it held exactly the information I was looking for.

The delightful Natalie Goldberg is one of those few authors I would rather listen to than read. In her recording of The Art of Writing the Memoir I was given a definition of memoir I've never heard before. "It's the study of the mind and the way the mind moves." More relevant to my current situation yet equally applicable to her style of writing memoir, she said: "We have to crack open structure to let go of energy." I'm disciplined enough to continue to JF even if it's sometimes done by rote--but another part of me asks why do something just for the sake of discipline (I'm pretty well versed in this and extra training isn't often necessary). As I was breaking a lunch structure I lived her words "Structures get old if they're not revitalized, seeing things the same way--it's never going to be fresh. We've got to keep breaking it open and refreshing." What happened when the energy leaked out?

A new practice. Slowing down. "We're always running after things, we're always going toward the world. This is a chance to let the world come home to us." This ought to be interesting.

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