a bit more mindful
‘Mindfulness’ day, picked it Sunday or Monday, drew a sign last night and saw it right away this morning, and have I been mindful every moment?, nah, not close – and have I been more mindful of my particular moments so far today (8:44 am)?, yowser, yes indeed, and I feel not well, I don’t know how much I’d say sick, but clearly not well, and not so much the Covid wondering as possibility late yesterday, or even some degree of bronchitis, but not well, and the treatment plan includes vitamin C’s up the ying yang and Ibuprofens prn and more than my share of coffee, though if I buy it and make it and drink all of it, quite likely it’s exactly my share for the day, maybe the adjective ‘rightful’ slips in front of ‘share’ or not, don’t-know mind.
And the walk earlier took me around the golf course loop which has many moments of stark beauty and provides endless (nearly) space for birds and their songs and twitters, their flying and bobbing all about, and at one of those spacious view and aural spots I stopped and stared at what I believed was a hawk circling in a farther-away sky, and as I did it made what might be accurately called a bee-line toward and directly right over me, crossing the road behind me and over into the golf course, and it was gone when I turned to look, and right then I believed with all my heart it flew so close over me to let me appreciate its grace and beauty and the wonder of flying and floating on all the breezes because it could feel my heightened degree of mindfulness. And there were many times I was aware of my footfalls – this one, this one, this one, this one – and of the many thousands of yellow flowers everywhere I looked, of course me bowing to the sacred tower in Balboa Park maybe a mile away across the roads and hills and build-ups of humans, and some of the walk around that loop is on dirt and sand and crushed organic materials and I felt those specific walking feelings, oh thank you Great Spirit that my legs remain working, my knees and my feet and toes, all the muscles which do at times spasm upon waking in the dark, but keep me keeping on as a devoted walker. And there are spots here and there which require the mindfulness of stepping into a safe space when cars go rushing past on the slanted tar and come very close to what can be called the ‘walkway’.
Which is all amazing, I wake up on time and sit in this chair – when it serves as meditation cushion – for 24 minutes today, and then I taste very clearly the sweet richness of two cups of coffee flavored a smidge with heavy cream (oh Keto devotion) and read, this morning it was from two different books, both about Zen Koans and working with them, maybe it’s better described as being worked by them, and what’s made crystal clear over and over about how it works is to be a hundred percent all in all the time, live with the Koan, be the Koan, and the kid (yours truly) isn’t close yet, though, like I wrote in my Morning Pages after the coffees and reading, all with more mindfulness than most mornings, like, oh, now my left leg is crossing over my right leg, and while I’m consciously as silent as a skinny mouse for the housemate’s sleeping sake, and possibly it’s the ‘certifiable’ who slide out of bed at 4:35 every morning, including on ‘sick’ days, so I wrote in the Pages that a window has been opened before me, and like Alice with her “Drink me” potion encouragement, I’m on my way through and the way is, in fact, ‘the Way’. It means I have pledged to myself to give everything I can to the magic and just the plain as everyday stuff which is this life, includes the funky small blue recliner, my 20-buck still-hanging-in coffee pot, licking and keeps ticking, how many cups of coffee have I brewed in Milwaukee, OR – when gone from Susan’s basement – and in Encinitas and here in San Diego, oh man, doesn’t the clock race around all the time? There went another year, and my life always includes the never-changing me and, simultaneously, is so vastly different from what it was a year ago and 10 years ago and 40 years ago,
Hmmm, 40 years ago I was renting a second-floor apartment in Salem, MA and was driving back and forth 25 miles each way to cover high school sports for the Newburyport Daily News, and I had a roommate from back in college time and I was not especially graceful with and pleasant to him, drinking an awful lot, driving and drinking, clueless about who and what I was then, building up for yet another cruise out to California by Greyhound Bus to live there permanently (stayed some six months that go-around), crashing a while once in CA with my high school pal Nicky DeMesa and his wife in their spare room at graduate housing at UC Irvine, where Nicky was in the Master’s Program for electrical engineering and I was borrowing their spare car and covering, part-time, high school sports for a daily in San Clemente and working morning hours at a McDonalds just down from the newspaper’s office. I was not real mindful then, I’m guessing nearly never, and it showed and my life sputtered along and even way back then my life was filled with the kindness and generosity of others, which I have only the last year come to see so well as golden, and truly human, kind-hearted.
And this morning I got up with the alarm on the phone and looked at the ‘Mindfulness’ sign on the scrap paper, and I’m trying for it.
And, rather mindlessly missing the chair wheel in this photo.