Category Archives: meditation

Today is February 19, 2018. I am alive and okay.

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I try to put my heart on paper.  –Osama Alomar

I’m actually a little depressed today. No reason…unless it’s because I’ve been silent and absent in my writing. I haven’t blogged for a couple of months. The young adult novel I’ve been working on has been quiet for a month. I miss my characters but not enough to really visit with them.

A friend asked me why I write. I had to think about it for awhile. While thinking, I thought of socks in the winter and flip flops in the summer. Writing is the best meditation and link to God that I know of. I think most people have entered the zone at some point in their lives. It’s a place of complete freedom from self. There is no depression. There is no schizophrenia. There’s a feeling of floating on my back in water during the night, the stars ablaze, the moon, large in its friendliness.

Granted, when I’m in the zone there is no human contact. After coming out of it though I am a better friend. Both my parents are dead so I’m no longer a better daughter. Why am I better in my relationships? I think it’s because my soul has rested. I’ve been imbued with God.

Writing is like having all the cherries line up on the slot machine. It’s like using a hand to lift a fork and feed myself chocolate cake with an outlandish fudge frosting. Writing is scribbling on paper writing in joy even when creating an evil character.

As I’m certain someone has already said, I live to write and I write to live. Without a pen, without paper, I flutter in the wind never landing squarely on my feet.

This blog has fueled me. My depression is a little less. I’m reminded that I don’t have to be silent. I don’t have to be absent. I wink with my friends in mind and am offered peace.

 

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Today is May 22, 2017. I am alive and well.

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I miss clothes shopping. There is no money in my budget to do this with. The truth is I own 17 pairs of jeans, 2 pairs of dress pants, 5 blouses, several shirts and several jackets. I don’t need anymore clothes. To think I can wear a different pair of jeans everyday for a week and a half is mind blowing. And I don’t grow out of them. My weight is stable.

People think I’m naturally thin. This is not true. I work at it. If I had my druthers, I would eat cake with butter cream frosting on a daily basis. I love butter cream frosting. I always go for the flowers. If a cake has whipped cream frosting I am disappointed. Cake is an elixir. Cake is a joy. At Safeway Grocery there is four different kinds of cake, single serving of all, in the same container. Whoever thought that up is a genius! And yes, I would eat it all at one sitting.

I also exercise a great deal. I’ve been lifting weights and walking on the treadmill for years. Guy, my ex, is a personal trainer and set me up well with this. Currently, I weight train with Christy for an hour four times per week and walk on the treadmill six times per week for 50 minutes. Believe it or not, I don’t like exercise. I wish I could send my body to the gym and leave my mind at home reading books.

I’ve been thinking about homelessness a great deal, lately. My sister did telephone me. She is homeless. I asked her where she slept, hoping she would say a shelter. She didn’t; she sleeps on the street. Maybe there’s a park nearby. There is a big park by the library where I work. People commune in the grass. People sleep in the grass.

I wonder about little things being difficult. Where do you charge your phone? You’re on FaceBook…where do you use a computer? How do you shower? How do you maintain your clothes? I mean, c’mon, I have 17 pairs of jeans and they’re all laundered.

I have a full refrigerator, a stove/oven combo, and a dishwasher. I don’t use my dishwasher, but I do have one. I also have a microwave I use to heat water often in order to make coffee. I have coffee, by God. No, God has nothing to do with my coffee, but God has given me life; I’m talking spiritually. I say in respect to my sister, “there but for the grace of God go I.” I spend time in the hope of growing my spiritual condition. If I were on the streets, would I do this? Probably not. Where is God in my sister’s life? Maybe that’s not a question for me to ask.

I love easily today. I love my life today. Any problem today is a luxury problem. And have I mentioned?…I have two cats who curl up to me as I write in bed. Heaven.

Today is April 8, 2016. I am alive and well.

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My mind rests in my lap. I have just come from doing an hour of cardio on a tread mill and 45 minutes of weight training legs at the gym. My mind is suspended while I am there. I don’t like exercise, although I do it daily. Why? My body craves it like a dog does a bone or a cat, birds. I say my mind is suspended because I don’t feel my mind is in my body. Movement is like pretending I’m hooked up to a remote control, a helicopter in a young girl’s hands.

I believe working out for me is a form of meditation. It differs not in the sense of empty mind, but in the sense of active body. My body motors around at the gym, sometimes with difficulty if the weight I chose is too heavy.

A friend once said to me, “I like how you move around the gym.” I’m not certain what she meant by this. Maybe she was speaking to the comfortability I feel in the gym; I started weight training at eleven. Maybe she sensed my confidence as I worked my bicep up down, up down. One, two, three and four, five, six, to a total count of twelve.

I am happiest when my mind rests in my lap, suspended once again, but attached to the page, the pen, or the key board. Being in the zone is better than a chocolate cupcake with coconut icing. It is almost as good as the smile the two-year-old gives me when I tell her I like her princess shoes.

I love being suspended. When my mind comes to rest in my brain, it is with a weight like a tug of the string of a flying kite. But it is here, in the brain, that I’m able to work and make out bills; here that I grocery shop for avocados; here that notes when it’s time of go to bed.

It is good to love both, the suspension and the weight. I feel solid. I feel complete. I stand in the grass radiating with the rays of the sun, or on the sidewalk radiating with the glow of the moon. Pretending I’m in the sky is as good as pretending I’m in the gym. Both rock my world.