Stilling the ego

Despite being conscious of my desire to fall on an off-day, despite treading lightly through the vagrancies and maybes and itches, within a few hours there I was falling. Again. Though this time I was somehow a spectatator, chiming with what he said about the concept of allocentricism, the ability to empathise not just with others, but with your Self. I got in the shower and said no, even though it knocked. I put on moisturiser and felt dramatically sorry for myself, checking I was just this side of beautiful though watery eyes. I felt pressured and heavy to perform, an old problem with which I am both held up and bored.

I ate some of last night's stewed red cabbage, with chicken bits dipped into mayonnaise, and memories of warm holidays nineteen ninety eight. A colour came from the food, a reality. Still the ego and start a conscious conversation with the Sage, it said. I liked that bit. Why be so hard on yourself? Why must creativeness be put under historical pressure. Am I not Not Doing This Anymore? Despite the falling, aided by the watching, it shortened, with effort, to a little under four hours. I went to spy on the coal tits and their nest outside my window, learned their call, and felt a conversation begin.

I get overwhelmed. All the balancing that I do and am, when weak, becomes difficult to sustain. History and present and pleasure and reward and work and proper principles, all mixed up in bad quantities on a scale with a duff CR3032 battery. RESET. It won't reset. I'll just guess. I'll read the Review, I'll look at Vogue, I'll get lost looking up non-urgent shit on the internet. Hours will pass plus two breakfasts and no speech and I've inputted thoughts but not done any action. I'm in bed at half twelve because no-one needs me today. Today? And whence starts the next problem...

I liked what she said about not 'being' your feelings. Like on tired days at Monmouth I am almost living the memory of 2009. Like cleaning the bins on my first day back, the desire to fall tapped on my shoulder and I tried to shrug it off but instead it fell rattling into the steel receptacle, in turn making more non-intelligent work. I had spent weeks cultivating the proper principle, awakening the right brain, and here I was being paid to pretend I am all left. Every way has a right but only in the realm of the logical left. Remember that thing I said about we're only brains, she told me, well that really disturbed me. It did me too.

I'm picturing pine cone pineal glands. I'm picturing duvet-cover-dharma-corners. Snap. Come on, you know where you should be. But when I'm even logicalising this act of 'imagination', am I still pretty far away from it? I watched the kids relish in ridiculous plots and wished I could. I watched the puppeteer in anthropomorphic glee and countered my jealously with inspiration. I sifted through the aphorism posters with a too-close jarring. I'm not feeling creative at the moment, I told her. And at least I know this, and am boiling down the episodic spinning. All that's left is to start that conscious conversation.

Proper principles

My stomach still flipped. It was totally annoying actually, perpetrating this sea of calm that I seem to be floating on without any effort. My insides turned inside, like the sneeze-diaphragm-flip. Butterflies. It's almost like a sneeze that didn't happen and then turns into fizz and you get that incredible frustration with the way things should be. You get a grump on as you missed a sneeze just because you were serving a customer. I almost forgot about the Customer today, almost rising to his rile with some retort that would've been so so dangerous. It's funny how I'm paid to annul my humanness, my instincts for what is good and true.

He didn't want to share the eponymous table eight even though there was only four of them on there. He shifted uneasy, pretending to budge but not actually moving at all. Diffuse the situation I thought, but you're a cunt, I also thought, and you're fucking rude, and I'm a person here actually you fucking bastard, you think you have any right over me just because you're having a 'meeting' with a foolscap pad and I'm wearing an apron. But I didn't say any of these things I just moved away and went back to filters because I was as close to thinking as saying these things, a kind of triad of constraint where I could too easily have taken the other plane.

It fizzed down into me and bedded down. I had to internalise the problem because I was getting paid to ssh my humanness. Spend all this time adhering to proper principle, and then have to sit on it because the time so isn't right. My stomach flipped when he came in. I watched him meander along the counter, wishes to all, then he came to the front and before I realised I'd been ignored. My crest had well and truly fallen. Most disappointing. I found myself clawing onto the proper principles, unable to decode which one was the answer to this here question. Compassion remedies Judgment; Attachment requires Generosity. This time is was Resistance. I Let Go. It was two hours later, but as soon as I let go, told her, she's going to help me, I felt fueled for the rest of the day.

Problems are like knots. Sometimes several layers are in play, like a knot out of cotton, knotted over with embroidery thread, bound in tapestry yarn. Each layer has it's own problem. Some things we can only act on the problem in hand, to reveal the further issues underneath. He's not a straight case. I don't interpret that rudeness direct. Told as a story, it doesn't bode well, but we are more complicated than that. I cried in the shower last Monday. My legs were aching like five years ago and it hurt as a memory and as a reality. From then on I got better. Sometimes you have to work backwards, because it's still working.