Creating My Own Hell

One day I was in a lousy mood. You know the feeling, I felt like my stomach was filled with rocks and my head with heavy sand. Of course, it was because there were things in the past and future that were gnawing at me.

Things did not turn out as I had hoped. What lie ahead in the future was worrisome also. The more I imagined the future, the worse it seemed.

Tigers and Bears and Snakes on Every Path

My thinking went something like this. If such and such thing number 1 happens

then two other things might result… In the case of thing one, such and such is my horrible fate In the case of thing two, well that would be even worse

because many more bad thing could happen. By the time I got finished imagining all the possible disasters,

I was a mass of twitching nerves.So then I thought of the philosophy I had been reading. I was supposed to ask myself,

“What is there at his moment in this place that is so frightening?”I looked around the room.

No growling lions or bears……No fires to burn me. I checked under the couch -

Sure enough – no poisonous snakes

Safe for Now

My immediate situation was safe right now. I knew if I could just use my willpower to focus on the present moment

in the present location , I could relax for a little while.

It took a tremendous amount of effort.

I used my senses and looked at where I was.

I know a person can not say “I will not think of snakes.” because in doing so, he/she is thinking of snakes.

I knew I had to replace the thoughts with just paying attention to the powerful, concrete and obvious here and now.

First I forced myself to smile and even that had an effect. I pretended to laugh.Even though I was pretending, even that had an effect

Just the very act of pretending to smile and laugh made me feel better. Try it right now.

Works, doesn’t it?

Replacing Thoughts with Perceptions

I purposely looked around hoping to get distracted.

I decided to change my surroundings hoping to replace my stinking thoughts with some new perceptions.

I needed to do something - anything just something that involved activity , moving aroundI decided to take a walk.I saw things I had always failed to see along the route that I had take many times before.

– the type of trees and their shape, the grass and the occasional dandelions.

I paid attention to the feeling of my legs moving. I felt myself breathing. I experimented with a springier step. I walked slower and then faster.

I was like a little kid walking for the first time.

The most important thing was that it made it easy to stop thinking about past and future.”

I wrote the following that traced one of my bad moods - what I went through from beginning to end. It starts out with the situation of my bad mood and tells the story of how I got out of the bad mood.

My Mood Right Now

I am so sick of living.The repetition of it all.

I shake my head No, No , No. I look back at the past and say

It is such a farce , a joke.

Life as Archeology

Sometimes I laugh at the nonsense of it.The souvenirs of the past are relics to me now.The writings are hieroglyphics I can’t decipher -

I find a pressed dried pressed flower in a book that says, “JP - Forever.”Who the hell was JP?

I can’t even remember - and I said “forever” ?

“Forever” and I can’t even remember her name.

The Moment of Truth – The High School Year Book

Here’s my high school year book – photos of strangers with notes scribbled next to the pictures.

“Moments that will live forever in out memories….”“Friends forever…..”“We will never forget the good times ….”

Guess what Billie or whatever your name was? I forgot.

The Momentous Accomplishments

Then I see my framed college diploma.It was the ultimate to me then…

but now employers just want to know how well I know MS Excel or Word or some other specialty.

Hey - I mean the diploma is pretty but it doesn’t really do much anymore.

It was a good mountain to climb …I didn't realize that beyond it were more mountains

and then there was the desert with no waterand then the river with too much water.

Moving to a New Home – What to Save?

I just went through a move from one home to another and when you move,

you have to decide what is important to you and what is valuable.It is a moment of reckoning…

It is a cause for a re-evaluation of all that your life has been.Oh yes - the books - another moment of truth - which ones to throw out - … Can’t renounce everything so

you keep some of your favorites of the past - one or two on philosophy -

a few on religion, a few novels,

none on how to program that old appliance,none on how to operate a reel to reel video player.

Throw out Vonnegut and Mc Kuen; keep Steinbeck and e.e. cummings.

As far as all the books that were so meaningful in the past - can’t keep them all.

Reminder Lists of the Past

I find a reminder list from long agoI read:

Paint bedroom[Of which house?]

Phone J M Layton about car insurance.[That car was melted into the steel of a bridge long ago.]

Buy Robin’s wedding present. [Oh my God. I can’t even remember her last name!]

Get steak and mushrooms from A+P.][That store doesn’t even exist now. They built a 12 story office building on the site.]

Buy Laser Photonics stock.[Lost every penny of that one.]

Fix bracket on shelf.[No recollection…]

A picture of people at a party[Who were these people? ]

Saving Old Clothes like Saving Old Moments

Out go the bell bottom pants and the thin tiesalthough I should save them cuz they will be back

if I have the patience to wait - such are the tidal tastes of life. But at my age, I may be the same temperature as the ground

before the style resurrects.

Dumping the Once Priceless Trash

Throw out all cigarette lighters…. Into the can with the campaign buttons. Tear up the ticket to a Rudolf Nureyev ballot - Big deal - I thought then.Throw out the high school physics books - It’s all been changed by now

All the immutable principles have mutated since thenOh, the history books!’

Toss ‘em.They have been rewritten - there were so many lies

regarding the past that research has uncovered.(Americans did murder native Americans, didn’t they?)

Why didn’t someone tell me that truth was time sensitive?

You Can’t Do the Same Thing Twice

The next time you read a book, after you read a page,

tear each page out of the book and throw it out.You can not read the same book twice.

(After all, you are a different person the second time.)And if you think about it, you don’t have time to re-read a book

any more than you have time to re-live the past.

Freeze It and Eat It later

Throw out your cameras.I and most of the people I know take pictures to save the moment.

(It is such a momentous moment it must be saved!)The pictures sit in the camera, but there is no time to look at them.We say, “Someday, I will sit down and look at all those pictures.”

But we seldom do.Let it go It was meant to go…..But rather in your life

- Create a new present moment worthy of saving but don’t bother trying to save it.

You can not bottle the sensations and feelings of a kiss.You can not cryogenically freeze and store the experience of holding a baby

Shred and Dump

When you clean grain , you save the grain and you throw out the stems.The columbine sucks up, shreds and dumps the chaff

to go back to the ground from whence it came.Well I am done with the sucking up part

and now I am trying to decide what to shredAnd what is the important part.

My Children – I Can Count On (?)

I thought - Now there are only two thing=, two lives meaningful to meand those are my kids, Ross and Maurade.

Two - that is all.I thought they were the immutables.

But they have their own lives now and have their own reminder lists.And I am seldom on their lists

The Good News - The Ridiculous Makes Sense

Ironically, the only thing that never changeis change!

You and I can count on change.You and I can count on every moment being different from the last.

If you don’t like the moment, wait a second.

Look Out of the Window

Take heart I say to you; I say to us.It can be done.I/We can do it.

You and I can fasten our seat belts and on this ridiculously fast moving ride… We can always look out of our windows and see a new world whizzing past.When we do,it will slow to a relaxing speed.Then We can feel the powerful beauty of the obvious and omnipotent present

as long as we are not hung up on looking down and staring at old pictures andReading old reminder lists….

If ….., no, not if …but when ….when we can avoid getting in bad moods that fuzz up and blind us to the huge blaringly glaringly obvious intricately detailed

happening newness all around us,Then we will be safe and secure … home free.

Though the past is definitely dead;We are not dead yet.

You Can Only Freeze Frame the Moment for An Instant

You can’t defrost the past and expect it to taste the same.You and I and the present moment are constantly reborn…

if we can just direct our eyes and focus our attention …To here….To now…..

You know that it ain’t easy….but try…and if you and I succeed ….It does get easier and easier.

May we eat slowlyLet us chew well, taking time to taste what is here and now.