my settled mind

It’s before 9:30 this Monday morning, so nearly five hours of thoughts, images, goofy ideas, visuals, memories, yearnings, songs I love, the chatter of crows, daydreams, and the longing to quiet it all down – all that’s accumulated and more, including what can find its way into the Blog today, and a couple of times I thought I had it and it seems I don’t, therefore, here are some of the thoughts which have taken me for a ‘drop-in’ this morning:

How many different ways to drive from my hometown of Wareham, MA to my birthplace of New Bedford, Ma, which the direct route is the 15-16 miles of Route 6, downtown to downtown, but I got thinking of other ways too, it was about there being more than just one way. And the Buddhist vow which goes, “Buddha’s Way, however lofty, I vow to attain.” And then yesterday or the day before I came across that vow written just a smidge differently – “Buddha’s Way, however unattainable, I vow to attain.” Which knocks me out entirely, so one thought in the recliner was what if someone said to me, “I bet you can’t win the “Eddie” surf contest at Waimea Bay”, and while we all are pretty darn sure that’s never going to happen, it’s not impossible. Not impossible. Not unattainable. So someone says, “I bet you can’t climb to the top of that mountain,” and I train for three years – even now, and eat right and get lots of sleep and don’t drink bad stuff or eat sugar, and – damn skippy – I try and do get to the top of that mountain. Then, they say, “You can’t climb to the top of that mountain,” which if you’re paying attention like I was, is a little different, and it becomes something else entirely when they explain that 1000 yards from the summit is a perfect circle of wolves, shoulder to shoulder, the whole circumference, and each one is insanely ravenous and so, yeah, I can’t attain that. Which is why the second way I saw the vow written is so cool for me, vowing to attain the unattainable, because, since I have made that vow – and, kids, vows are wicked serious – I get to find out who or what or where or even how the wolves are. My wolves.

And then out on the walk I heard myself singing the Talking Heads cover of Al Green’s “Take me to the River”, which I love, the Heads version, I sang it for a while, and later on the walk out of the blue comes a phrase, suggestion, rule-to-live-by, a check this out that I first heard very long ago, dozens of years, and there it was heading down Fern Street – “Don’t push the river.” And if there was a connection between David Byrne and friends and ancient wisdom, I don’t know about it, I think it came to mind when thinking about being lonely and ways I could address that and where does trying and possibly even desperation end and pushing the river begin. And also, earlier, I remembered that line from the Red Queen in “Alice in Wonderland” – “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

So, paying more attention to my mind these days, I notice there isn’t the width of a blade of grass between each one of these thoughts and their before-and-after cousins. Though I’m still not clear what the Blog is hoping for today.