Softening Around the Pleasure

Today is rest and recovery for me after yesterday's eye exam, which involved three different kinds of drops and bright lights.  This doesn't give me migraines, but I felt the chemical disruption the rest of the day, a certain confusion, a bad stomach.  I could see the yellow stain from the drops still coming out of my eyes onto tissues in the evening.  All this reminded me that I am seventy.

So does my slow arising most mornings, certainly this one.  I slept until my phone alarm nagged me to take my 9:30 a.m. immunosuppressants.  It was past 11:00 when I finished morning things like nasal rinse and practice and made myself the perfect breakfast.  Perfect for this moment.

Supremely digestible Malt-o-Meal with a little butter from our friend, the cow, some Ghiradelli chocolate chips, a few walnuts and maple syrup.  Ah.  Really, it was lovely.  And the sun was out.

I've kept working with the ideas of Phillip Moffitt on handling difficult emotions (a video I posted a while back).  In his book, Emotional Chaos to Clarity, he talks about "softening around the feeling."  I responded to this body-centered metaphor.  Years ago my yoga teacher, Kit Spahr, talked to us about softening around around any specific physical pain that arises when holding a yin yoga pose, and that's worked for me often. It is a way of not slamming the door on the pain, or on fear or sadness, whatever you want to flee. 

This can be hard to do.  So Moffitt makes the interesting suggestion that you can practice softening by softening around pleasant emotions.  I did this as I ate this morning, staying with the pleasure of and gratitude for this just-right breakfast so it quietly expanded and filled me.

I am glad to report that the minor infarction in my left eye had healed.  It didn't have to go that way.  So I am especially appreciating my eyes, being alive and well today, too.

[image: redbud seedpods in May on the ravine.  These colors please me.]

Wise inactivity

Stuck in a vow.  A recent post from a friend about how hard it is for her to write, no matter what she does to ease her circumstance, made me wonder whether writing fiction is really what she wants to do.  We speak of "getting in a rut."  Someone has said a rut is just a grave with the ends kicked out.  That's what happens when we make a major life choice and decide that this is IT!  This will be my life from now on.  I vow to succeed in this. But you can't know what it's like and what you're like until you try.  This is similar to the procrastination problem; people think they have a problem with procrastination.  But my own experience is that if I'm putting something off, I have my reasons, and they need to be looked at. 

This has nothing at all to do with my life right now.  A couple of years ago I gave up my commitments and vows one painful thing after another, and I still haven't been well enough for long enough to get going again.  

Right now all the energy I have goes to minimizing my pain, and otherwise keeping myself as healthy as possible, which involves complex things like managing my GI system, and remembering to take Tussin for the chest congestion that never leaves after the cold this year.  

And relaxing.  Shingles is not just about excruciating pain.  It is a virus that can also cause other symptoms, including fatigue.  Last night, left to myself, I slept twelve hours - !!!

This morning I turned to a book that helps me relax with all this, How to Be Sick by Toni Bernhard.  It was a useful short chapter about being wise in our actions, and how being wise sometimes mean choosing to do nothing.

A friend suggested icing the rash, and that turned out to be helpful.  The pain is at a place right now where anything touching ever so lightly hurts.  Anything, a soft cotton t-shirt.  So I am trying something another friend told me about, wearing minimal clothing around the house.  This is not sexy when you are 69.

My neighbor Cindy has been talking to me about a collage class she is taking.  We thought about getting together to do collage, but I tire too easily, so she and her daughter Lauren came over bringing me materials and inspiration from their collages.  We're hoping I can come with them to the next class.  Getting out a little and around other energies is very good for me.  So is artistic inspiration.  

Another friend and I talked about an author he admires, and that got me to reading The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier.  It's very good, deep characterization, a beautiful command of the language, so you read slowly and really put your attention into it - you have to be a creative reader.  I read some paragraphs twice, because they are so good, and think about them and why they're so good.  


And today made it to church all dressed up in purple earrings Laurie made.  Yes, I wore other clothes too.  Hey, it's cold outside. . . . And the way to get this posted is to just go ahead and do it without a photo, must get ready to watch Downton Abbey.  Love to all.