bell - a verbalization of consciousness

On death...

“Ultimately death must triumph, for by birth it has already become our lot, and it plays with its prey only for a while before swallowing it up. However, we continue our life with great interest and much solicitude as long as possible, just as we blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although with the perfect certainty that it will burst”

~Schopenhauer, TWAWAR, Vol. 1, Book 4, Section 57

———————————
ahhh… that Schopenhauer really knows how to lay the pessimism on thick. But why not? I’m not trying to live so as to forget that death is in my future. I want death right out in front of me… right out where I can see it — at all moments. Sure, it can mock me, and meddle with my decisions, but for the moment I am on top; I am championing the game of life. I fear not, and deny not, and this becomes my fuel… I stay motivated. I dare death to come, and in the meantime, I got stuff to do. Why? Because I am the pure and rich embodiment of life — capable. progressive. striving. aware. I will not live in a way that I forget or deny that death is around the corner, and this sentiment gives each moment significance, a significance that musn’t be taken for granted or overlooked. These aren’t just words, damnit. This isn’t just something to be said and to be agreed to. This is a way to live, don’t you see? This is my mantra.

PS: I scored this Bows CD at the close-out sale of “Face the Music” for $1, and it’s revolutionalized my cognitive instability, at times, especially while staring out from the porch on warm and sunny afternoons.

Ultimate and "The Price is Right"

This is one of the funniest posts I’ve ever read on Rec.Sport.Disc, and so I decided to share it.

Pema Chodron -- on Tonglen meditation

“We must be willing to open ourselves to all the obstacles… What we’re looking at here is the human condition. When you’re willing to relate with your anger, say, your own addictedness, your own incompleteness, then you’re relating to everyone’s anger, everyone’s addictions, everyone’s insecurities. What we find in ourselves helps us to see others.

You’d be amazed how powerful this genuine compassion is. You’d be amazed how this perspective of not being caught in your own private sense of burden helps you realize it’s your link to humanity. We identify so much with our ‘problem.’ But if we can have some kindness toward this ‘problem’ and realize it’s the human problem, that it’s your kinship with other people, then very interestingly we discover that we’re very attached to that problem…We don’t realize how identified we are with this problem. It’s familiar. And it hurts, but there’s a lot invested in our sense of being the one who’s screwed up. And the method is to go into it. Go into it.

Suffering is as much a part of life as happiness. And it’s not to be feared and it’s not to be avoided. But we put so much energy into running away…And that’s what’s called neurosis, psychosis…And all that is like a defense mechanism against not wanting to feel [the pain]. This practice is about kindly holding pain and working at not running away… This is where the real humanness comes from.”

-Pema Chodron
on Tonglen meditation, 1994

On Religion... (pt. II)

Again, from Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, Volume I, book IV, Section 58:

I’ll sub-title this: “On Superstition and on Man’s Double Need”

“Now however much great and small worries fill up human life, and keep it in constant agitation and restlessness, they are unable to mask life’s inadequacy to satisfy the spirit; they cannot conceal the emptiness and superficiality of existence, or exclude boredom which is always ready to fill up every pause granted by care. The result of this is that the human mind, still not content with the cares, anxieties, and preoccupations laid upon it by the actual world, creates for itself an imaginary world in the shape of a thousand different superstitions. … Man creates for himself in his own image demons, gods, and saints; then to these must be incessantly offered sacrifices, prayers, temple decorations, vows and their fulfillment, pilgrimages, salutations, adornment of images and so on. … Intecourse with then fills up half the time of life, constantly sustains hope, and, by the charm of delusion, often becomes more interesting than intercourse with real beings. It is the expression and the symptom of man’s double need, partly for help and support, partly for occupation and diversion … and this is the advantage of all superstitions, which is by no means to be despised.”

[self note: reference purple rag and white rag; ‘Quest of Life’ and ‘Philosophy of Life’ respectively… ahhh, the alarming power of coincidence!]

The Ebb and Flow of the Human Heart

“It is really incredible how meaningless and insignificant when seen from without, and how dull and senseless when felt from within, is the course of life of the great majority of men. It is weary longing and worrying, a dreamlike staggering through the four ages of life and death, accompanied by a series of trivial thoughts. They are like clockwork that is wound up and goes without knowing why. Every time a man is begotten and born the clock of human life is wound up anew, to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations. Every individual, every human apparition and its course of life, is only one more short dream of the endless spirit of nature, of the persistent will-to-live, is only one more fleeting form, playfully sketched by it on its infinite page, space and time; it is allowed to exist for a short while that is infinitesimal compared with these, and is then effaced, to make new room. Yet, and here is to be found the serious side of life, each of these fleeting forms, these empty fancies, must be paid for by the whole will-to-live in all its intensity with many deep sorrows, and finally with a bitter death, long feared and finally made manifest. It is for this reason that the sight of a corpse suddenly makes us serious.

“The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy. For the doings and worries of the day, the restless mockeries of the moment, the desires and fears of the week, the mishaps of every hour, are all brought about by chance that is always bent on some mischievous trick; they are nothing but scenes from a comedy. The never-fulfilled wishes, the frustrated efforts, the hopes mercilessly blighted by fate, the unfortunate mistakes of the whole life, with increasing suffering and death at the end, always give us a tragedy. Thus, as if fate wished to add mockery to the misery of our existence, our life must contain all the woes of tragedy, and yet we cannot even assert the dignity of tragic characters, but, in the broad detail of life, are inevitably the foolish characters of a comedy.”
[Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World As Will and Representation, Volume 1, Book IV, Section 58; Translated from German by E.F.J. Payne]

I say, engage the quote how you like, but do yourself a favor and read the complete text.

Copycat II

You’re blue! You care a lot about people - that’s a good thing.

Everybody’s doin’ it on anize.org; Here’s the site

Shaun Gallagher Colloquium

This is a thought caught in its infant stage, no pun intended… but I wanted to jot it down, and this lab computer was the closest pad of paper. I’ve just left a very interesting philosophy colloquium titled, “Phenomenology and the Theory of Mind Debate” presented by Dr. Shaun Gallagher of the University of Central Florida. The general issue at hand was on ‘how we are able to understand Others’, or rather, how we understand intersubjectivity.

I came away with two thoughts. The first was quite unrelated, but stemmed from his talk of mirror neurons. Earlier today, three other students and I had lunch with Shaun and we addressed the challenges that free will is facing in many heated debates around the globe. This was the first of the discussion that I’ve been privy to, but there seemed to be a challenge that our bodies engage in some many preparatory processes that what is to be the ‘free-willing’ of consciousness is actually a secondary ability, and what secondary function can have free will. Throughout his presentation this afternoon, he made reference mirror neurons again and after considering the research method (or what I assume to be the research method), I’m very suspicious of the primacy of mirror neuorons; especially in the discussion of it as a challenge to the notion of free will. I’d like to think that there is a state of basic recognition of objects that comes FIRST and can occur without/before the activation of mirror neurons. I think mirror neurons are activated by the intentional nature of reflective consciousness, if even on millisecondal scale. I think there is an element of basic, pre-reflective consciousness that enables the visual system to scan numerous objects in a given moment, and do nothing but recognize. For example, I may be looking across the room in one quick glass and see paper on the table, a pen on the floor and mug on the windowsill, amongst other things, but I don’t believe that my recognition of these objects necessarily engages mirror neurons. Part of my reluctance to accept that mirror neurons are always engaging for every visual stimuli is partly because the psychological research (i assume) is based on showing patients one object at a time, which necessarily encourages a focus, and also because if every object in perception engaged mirror neurons the amount of neural signals would be SO much traffic occuring simultaneously. Anyway, this being said, consciousness could retain its primacy as the component that directs intention and activates mirror neurons, and thus, we might be able to salvage our notions of free will.

The second thought is one based on a question raised at the end of the colloquium. On Merleau-Ponty’s notion of “corporeal schema”, and based on Gallagher’s explanation of Primary and Secondary Intersubjectivity, we are to recognize that the subjective nature of infants is undifferentiated in regards to it separating its sense of self from the selfhood of Others. This is a pre-personal, unreflective, purely original state of subjectivity where the infant-person has yet to distinguish itself as an individual, and therefore frames experience on the basis of a group-subjectivity; this disallows the baby from recognizing a difference between it and the world around it —- it’s all one, all of the world is felt as one sense of self, as one being. As the baby grows older, and subjectivity becomes more prominent (12 months?), intersubjectivity starts to become a contemplative issue (4 years)… this process continues and the separation of self from all other things becomes hyperbolically drastic, and as older adults we find ourselves at a very skewed disposition: believing we are SO far removed from all other things, and completely individual to the point of cognitive demise and anguish. How and why do we lose touch with our oneness? All because of the self-righteous meddlings of our subconscious?

It would seem advantageous to keep your consciousness out in the open as oft as possible, so as to keep engaging other consciousnesses, and the outside world. At the very least, this may ease the painful suffering of feeling alone in the world, and tormented in our brains.

GU Energy Gel and Me

My friend, the famous Bil Elsinger, took a picture at Regionals this summer, and it’s become an advertisement for the company. Check this out… click on the customer image. (Apparently, the picture has been ‘helpful’ numerous times!?)

Welp, that’s my minute of fame, and I gotta go.

Matisyahu - The Hasidic Reggae Superstar

I did it. Or rather, the cosmos aligned and I found myself at the Matisyahu show - with thorough company at that. Ira calls mid-week and is like, “Bell, listen, there’s this dude, he’s a jewish-rapper that raps to reggae beats. He’s philthy. He’s dope. And he’ll be in Eugene Saturday night — you gotta go.” So, I take the advice, start to rally the troops: I email some kids and get the word out. There was a time where 6 to 7 cats were down to go to the show with me and I was lookin’ forward to it, hard core.

But Saturday came around, and it was one of those days. That’s pretty much all I can say. We all have those days where you just want to be. ‘Where’ doesn’t matter, and words like “should” or “next” or “later” have no real significance. Your body’s tired, maybe a little sick. It’s slightly chilly outside. It’s the first good rain in weeks. Laying on the floor is appetizing, and being in good company with no real plan seems pleasant. Time is slipping, but you can’t feel it. I don’t know, it’s just one of those days. Slowly, my posse dropped like flies. Kids were goin’ to this BeerFest that was being put on by Rogue Brewery down at the fair grounds, and other kids were hangin’ out with their significant BF’s and GF’s. It’s that time of year I guess. So, I’m chillin’ at Susan’s, after watching 2/3 of Scarface; she wasn’t down to see the show, and I was steadily losing motivation. I put in a call to my man, Ira, he understands the situation, and I hang up feeling no real obligation to check out the show — which is chill. I mean it’s a bar scene, and lots of people all swirling around,.. I just wasn’t up for it, you know what I’m sayin’?

So, we get a call from Sam, John Meyer’s special someone who relocated to Eugene on Thursday. She had just moved into her cute little house, with her cute little dog, and was down to chill. On the way to her house, Goodwin and I make a pit stop at the show around to see when Matisyahu will be on stage. It turns out the dj is my guy Pete who works at the market around the corner, and I’m let in without forking over the $10 cover. On assignment, I ask Pete when Matisyahu will be on. He says around 11pm. I think to myself, “Chill… that’s plenty of time from now”. So, we show up at Sam’s with some wine, some beer, and do the whole housewarming thing. Sam makes a push for this Keller Williams show that’s happening on Sunday at 8pm. It’s tempting, and I throw-out a “we’ll see” and after an hour or so, I make a push for home.

On the way back, we decide to poke our heads into the John Henry’s Pub to see if Matisyahu is still playing and if we could get in without giving up the $10 cover charge. I mean, this is Eugene here people - $10 is a chunk of change. The guy at the front remembers me. To make a short story longer, I’m not really in the mood to watch the show so I explain that we just want to sneak in to grab a CD and that’s all. There’s kids behind us in line, and the pressures on… the dude is chill, asks for our ID (for collateral) and lets us in. Not more than 10 feet from the entrance do I see my roommate, Jake, and his friend Charlie about 20 feet from the stage. I spoke about the show with him earlier, but it didn’t seem like he was too down. But as luck would have it, they were at Max’s Pub, got bored and thought they’d check out the show. That’s when I turn around, looked up at the stage, and fell into instant harmony. There, on the stage, was this Rabbi lookin’ guy… full beard, curly sideburns, yamaka, and a mic. He was rockin’ hard.

The beats were pure. The reggae started to carry me. Matisyahu started to spit like a Beastie Boy-Bob Marley. There was a hip-hop flavor like i’ve never seen. He started to beatbox, and was just cuttin’ it up. The drummer started to mimic the beats, and after a brief soulfull hasidic chant, he broke into the DOPEST flow. I was there. It was fresh, on every level… an appeal to my soul, to my mind, to my heart, to my being… it was all there. Matisyahu was prophetic. He had a message. He was for the Jewish, what Marley was for the Rastafari. He could share the message through a medium that people could Feel, you know what I’m sayin’, that people could understand. And then he would hop in the crowd and get us all jumpin’. There was a bonding goin’ on in that place last night. Everyone was brothers and sisters. Everyone was one. One spirit. One soul, rockin’ together. My fist was up the whole time.

30 minutes later, I realized that time had passed, and that the dude at the front was probably wondering what was up, and how long it could possibly take to buy a CD. I mean, this is what I thought, but given the context, I knew he didn’t care. We were all in our element that night. During an instrumental interlude, I grabbed a CD, and went to talk with the man at the front, with no real intentions of leaving. I said, “hey man, I got the CD, but this show is everything and then some… there’s no way I’m gonna be able to turn my back on this. Do you think we could stay through the end of the show without throwin’ down for the $10 cover?”. He smiled, and gave me our ID’s and nodded with approval. “Chill,” I thought. And with that, we rocked out, hard, for another hour or so. The show was sensational.

Matisyahu is real. And will blow up. You heard it hear first. Check him out Live, if you can.

We’ve needed a voice like this for some time. His CD, Shake Off The Dust…Arise is bomb too. Your CD is in the mail, Ira. And I’m off to the Keller Williams show tonight. Should be a good time. (But no Matisyahu, that’s fo sho.) Oh, yeah, “upon further examination” this entry was super colloquial, but that’s just how it gots to be sometimes. You feel me on dat, ninja?

Word. (keepin’ it real).

What Happened to "Playing"?

Today, I found myself sitting on the floor with Sam, Susan, some Oregon-grown Pinot Noir, and an evening to shoot the breeze. Again, it was one of those days. The three of us all don’t know eachother very well, and consequently, our conversations had so much free reign. We could chat about virtually anything. I’ll trace the lineage of thought as far back as I can, but the important thing has to do with ‘playing’ - or lack thereof.

Maybe it was the great city of San Francisco that started the ball rolling, or maybe it was our difference in dress and wardrobe that did it, but somehow we got to talking about how John Meyer and Sam dressed up as Tinkerbell and Captain Hook for their Halloween weekend gettaway in San Fran. They went over the top on this — spending like a $100 each and making the most elaborate and expressive costumes possible. They roamed the San Francisco streets like it was their job, and partied like family honor was at stake. I think this brought up fairytales and children stories.

I remember talking about the movie, “princess bride” and the “wizard of oz”… we spent some time talking about sequels and prequels to that movie, but I wasn’t really into the conversation at the point - at least, not-in-it-to-win-it. I came back when we began talking about “Gooines” and the “Neverending Story” and the flying dog-like thing therein. It was one of those movies I remember really enjoying, but I cannot remember what the movie is about, for the life of me. The same goes for the “Smurfs.” I can’t remember any episodes, but I remember enjoying it, and remember watching it. Ahh, the early 80’s. And that’s just where our convo took us.

The next thing I know, we’re conjuring up old memories of days on the playground, and we were singing jump-rope songs. It started with that antagonizing song that went something like, “Michael and Annie, sittin’ in a tree, K, I, S, S, I, N, G. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby with the baby carriage…” All of a sudden, between the three of us we could carry on the entire song, “… suckin’ her thumb, and wettin’ her pants, tryin’ to hula-dance…” It was great. We were like three nine-year-olds singin’ and clappin’ and laughin’. It was awesome. And it didn’t stop there…

Miss Susie has a steamboat, the steamboat has a bell
Miss Susie went to Heaven, the steamboat went to
hell-o operator, please give me # 9,
and if you disconnect me, I’ll kick you from
be-hind the ‘fridgerator’ there was a piece of glass,
Miss Susie sat upon it and cut her little
assssk me no more questions, and tell me no more lies,
the flies are in the city the bees are in the park,
Miss Susie and her boyfriend are kissing in the
D - A - R - K, D - A - R - K, dark! …

Aww, man, it was so fun. We remembered all the days of sitting in circles and clapping, and singing and keeping in rhythm. It was at this point that Susan asked, “yeah, why did we play those games anyway? What was the point?” To which, Sam replied, “It was playing. That was the point. Just to play.” There was a brief pause and I think all of us thought the same things. We thought about all the games we used to play — all the games we really loved. And then we all came to the same realization:

We’ve stopped Playing.

Oh, sad sad day! What a realization. We just don’t play anymore. I instantly thought that I’ve always had camp as a place that kept my playing, but I’ve moved on from that place… and I can’t remember the last time I just played, for the sake of playing.

I like to think that ultimate is my playground, or reading is where I play — but come on, let’s get real… these are metaphores that became reality. There’s something fundamentally different, and something fundamentally lacking in trying to term these engagements as play. What is it like to just ‘Play’? And what happened to “Playing”?

A link for the Playful.

An Analogy for Consciousness

I’ll present my operating analogy for consciousness. This is how I, metaphorically, associate my relationship with Experience:

Imagine a room. Four walls. A floor. A ceiling. There’s nothing metaphorically gained by imagining a door or windows, so erase them. Just picture solid walls, on all sides of you, top to bottom. Every single millimeter of wall space is what I will call “Noumena.”

Noumena is what is available to perception and/or sensation on any level: your foot hurting, the bird chirping outside, the music on the radio, the boy on his bike across the street, the piece of spice stuck in your tooth, the light breeze coming in from the open window above the kitchen sink, your heart beat, your breath, the painting in your bathroom, the leaves twisting on the trees - anything - be it visual, olfactoral, auditoral… you name it. That is, anything happening within a given moment.

The walls of any room are made of millions of tiny bumps, and for sake of analogy, we might as well imagine that each tiny bump represents some potential fragment of noumena. And what a perfect representation! Quite literally, an entire room’s wall space would provide billions of potential bumps to examine, and our real life experience, at any given moment, affords us just shy of an infinite amount of things/feelings to experience.

Consciousness, then, is like a flashlight in the center of the room that whisks around highlighting and focusing on only a fraction of the room at a time. Consciousness can only experience a small part of the Noumena that is available to it. The catch, and there’s always a catch, is that your conciousness, is of a certain light (here, a certain flashlight). He necessarily shades the view with the light it emits. For example, the yellow beam will refract the experience, and shade it with its light yellow hue. Hence the actual wall, the Noumena, is shaded by consciousness, so what we experience isn’t quite pure “Noumena”, things-as-they-really-are, but what I will call, “Phenomena”, things-as-perceived-by-us.

Regardless, there is more. Through practice and self-awareness, we can begin to foster a secondary aspect of consciousness that physically directs the flashlight itself. Our habits and routines often keep the flashlight shining on the same section of the wall, but with focus and awareness one can physically grab and direct the beam of focus - so as to take charge, and consequently, responsibility for all (more?) experience. It’s really a beautiful thing if you think about it. How to grab onto the light is another thing.

This analogy goes on, but if I wrote any longer, I fear no one would read it (which is chill, I guess. I write for me, right?). I shared this analogy with some friends the other night, and Sam said this:

“So, meditation then, is turning of the light.”

‘Nice thought,’ I thought. And approximately 2.35 days later, Susan said this:

“I think meditation is more like taking the roof off, blowing down the walls and dropping away the floor. removing all confinement and opening it up to the light of everything — pardon, EVERYTHING” Again, nice thought. Nice thought, indeed.

The 3 Gunas of the Mind

372) Sri Bhakta-Manasa-Hamsika

— The Female Swan in the Mind; dwells in devotee’s mind.

Sri Lalita Sahasranama
(Sri Lalita Sahasranama, C. S. Murthy, Assoc. Advertisers and Printers, 1989.)

“The Human Mind

In Vedanta, the mind is regarded as a conscious force which manifests itself as intellect, will, ego and memory. The mind is called intellect, when it is concerned with discrimination, decision or bringing knowledge. The mind is called will, when it, via the nervous system, forces the body or senses into activity. The mind is called ego, when it identifies itself with the body and senses and takes part in their troubles and pleasures. The mind is called memory, when it recalls earlier wishes, thoughts, actions, events etc.

The mind works from five different levels — the unconscious, the subconscious, the conscious, yoga-nidra and the superconscious level. Of these the first three reside in the chitta (or mind-stuff) which is a certain fine manifestation of the kundalini energy. The chitta is the reservoir for all impressions and the mind must always refer to the chitta to recall earlier wishes, thoughts, actions, events etc. The conscious level corresponds to the knowledge that can be recalled without deep thinking. Any active wish or thought leaves an impression in the chitta at the conscious level, but if not repeated the impression sinks down to the subconscious level. Here it remains for a while and can be recalled by deep thinking. If not recalled here, the impression sinks further down to the unconscious level, where it remains in a causal form. In the normal, awaken state the mind cannot recall impressions from the unconscious level but they may be recalled in dreams, instinctive actions, under inspiration or by certain unconscious habits. According to Vedanta, the two remaining levels, yoga-nidra and superconciousness, can only be (intentionally) accessed by those who have practiced the techniques of yoga and meditation. (Yoga-nidra is a state in which one is asleep but nevertheless is fully aware of the surroundings).

Like everything else, the mind is composed of the three gunas and is caused by their interactions. One guna always dominates the other two, and it is the dominating guna that determines the general state of a person’s mind. A person, in which the tamas-guna is dominating, is confused and lives in darkness — tendency to anger, greed, hate, laziness etc. is prevailing. If the rajas-guna is the dominating, the person is very active and possesses a mixture of positive and negative tendencies. The rajas-guna person may lie, swindle and commit murder but for each such deed, he or she will feel deep regret and guilt. The rajas-guna either works towards tamas-guna suppressing sattva-guna, or works towards sattva-guna suppressing tamas-guna. When the sattva-guna is the dominating, the person is calm and peaceful and has a pure, powerful and concentrated mind. A sattva-guna person is always unselfish, truthful, fearless and wise.

Now, since the play of the gunas is a dynamical affair, it is always possible to change ones general state of mind. Actually, the various mind improving techniques — be they of ancient Eastern or modern Western origin — are essentially aimed at getting a hold of the rajas-guna and consciously ease it towards the sattva-guna — regardless of whether the originators and practioners may know it or not. — On the next couple of pages, the classical techniques of Eastern origin will be introduced. We shall not postulate that these are superior to the techniques of modern Western origin, but they certainly do have at least one great advantage — they have been developed and thoroughly tested for millennia by numerous practioners.”

Steen Ingemann, Guide to Ultimate Reality (www.rishi.dk/guide/)

——————-
the above found at: http://www.adishakti.org/book_of_enlightenment/sri_lalita_sahasranama_301-400.htm

School

Everything is school if you’re doing it right.
-the great ajm

All My Days.

Fruit. Water. Vitamins. Ice. Reading. Paper. Floss.

Shedding Stories

A post from Ashley’s blog that I needed to share:

“A passage from A Heartbreaking work of Staggering Genius:

‘These things, details, stories, whatever, are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see. What does he care where it is, who sees it, this snake, and his skin? He leaves it where he molts. Hours, days or months later, we come across a snake’s long-shed skin and we know something of the snake, we know that it’s of this approximate girth and that approximate length, but we know very little else. Do we know where the snake is now? What the snake is thinking now? No. By now the snake could be wearing fur; the snake could be selling pencils in Hanoi. The skin is no longer his, he wore it because it frew from him, but then it dried and slipped off and he and everyone could look at it.’

posted by Ashley @ 1:51 PM”

[..talk about positive cognition, among other posts, and still others …!]

Balance.

I’m all over the place. In just a matter of days, I realized I’m all over the freakin’ place. There’s no rhythm. There’s no order. I’m not satisfied. I’m behind in some areas, and too far along in others… and school just keeps on ticking — in all good ways, I must admit.

However, language is not doing it for me. And ultimate isn’t expressive enough. I just need to get out. Or stay in. Or do something. Change is what I’m lookin’ for. Not sure how though. Lately, I’ve been dreaming of setting Club Ulty on the back burner, and kickin’ it around this summer. Just to really take some time for myself. Who knows. It could be with good people, or not. At this point, it doesn’t really matter. The body feels good these days, but the mind is restless, and that’s not balanced. I’m meandering through my days without intention … and that needs to change.

It just needs to change.