it being fall break, and not having much else to do, i have been driving through my routines more quickly. don't get me wrong. there have been things to take care of. for example, i had to really help my son with his algebra 2 assignment (overdue). and in the process, i had to recall a lot of my math stuff. it was actually nice to work with my son on math. it felt like we were working together on something, which is not something that happens very often. i tend to give my son his space. i'm not sure why. well, maybe i do know why. i think, at this age, that kids want their own space. i mean, i can literally feel it when they start to switch off, when i get too passionate about something, or when i start droning on and on about my own experiences... kids their age, they really are almost physically averse to that kind of droning lecture. and, to be honest, who wouldn't be? so i try not to say too much. i try to keep my talks with my kids brief and to the point.
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i have been meditating and doing zhan zhuang more regularly. i've noticed a few things. for meditation, one of the biggest obstacles is this feeling of losing focus. my eyes literally blur and probably go cross eyed or something, and my thoughts just get foggy. and next thing you know, i have to snap to. it's sort of like when you are struggling to stay awake in a really boring class, i suppose, only, it's a bit different. i can literally feel my thoughts jumbling up, and sort of accumulating like a cloud... and that's when it all gets vague. the only way i piece it apart is by a continual process of awakening... by noticing this thought or that song or that image or whatever. it's funny. i think most of consciousness is composed of these associations, rational or not. i remember charlotte joko beck talking about this... how "thoughts" are basically just a mental phenomenon often linked to either other mental phenomena or to physical sensations. even traumatic events are just links between a memory (in whatever form it takes) and the physical sensations that were burned into you. so a lot of meditation for me, at this point, is just noticing these. i don't actively seek to "tease apart" these knots. i just notice them. and notice them. and notice them. and eventually, i think from the constant noticing, the associations start to wear down. or maybe they just become really apparent. and through being seen, paradoxically, they disappear.
in zhan zhuang, i've also been noticing things. you can start to feel tension. it is as a pain. but it is also a shape. you can almost "see" the shape of the tensions in your body. for me, i have a ball of tension in my right shoulder, and in my right calf. i mean, there are definitely other places that i notice and release, but those two places are particularly stubborn and resistant to change. it's funny, but i always remember holding tension in my right calf. i used to think it was cool (this was probably in elementary school or something) when i would lean the ball of my foot against the bottom of the chair in front of me, and then "vibrate" my leg... i could do this because there was always this residual tension in my calf muscles... but only on that side. as for my shoulder... well, i have been noticing it clicking a lot. when i do exercises that involve my shoulder, there is a kind of grinding of the humeral head (accompanied by clicks). for that matter, i have something similar going on with my right hip as well. i guess i'm kind of falling apart in that way. but it's strange. at first, when doing zhan zhuang, i couldn't do anything about some of that tension, especially the tension in my calf. so by the end of a session, it got so that i almost had a hard time walking. and as, in my routine, i would play the piano after doing zhan zhuang, i literally could not use the damper pedal very well, because my foot would keep vibrating from the residual tension... but today, i had no problem. i just kept feeling the shape of the tension and telling it to open, relax, and sink...
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on sunday (in two days), i will be participating in some sort of writer's workshop. i'm actually very nervous about it. for one thing, most of the other people in the workshop are actual actors. i definitely am not one. i also feel like i don't have stories in my head right now. and conversations (which i feel this may emphasize, because it seems as though a lot of the writing will be dialogue based) constantly elude me. i know that my characters don't speak "realistically." i tend to be a conceptual writer, even in dialogue, unfortunately... so there's a lot of self-doubt. but, whatever...
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