Two ideas from the Writers Almanac for today, September 26, 2013:
What if the beautiful days, the good
and pacific temperate moments,
weren't just lovely, but everything?
What if I could let it fall away
in the wake, that ache to extract
meaning from vastness?
"Sailing on Lake Superior" by Kirsten Dierking, from Northern Oracle. © Spout Press, 2007. Reprinted by permission.
And...
The one thing you can do is to do nothing. Wait ... You will find that you survive humiliation and that's an experience of incalculable value." T.S. Eliot
"What if I could let it fall away in the wake, the ache to extract meaning from vastness?" As I sailed a little yesterday, this is exactly what I did and why I sail. I never know what will happen, but what happens mostly is relaxation. The best part of that relaxation is my brain ceases to extract or trying to extract. I observe. I chase the wind. I watch the telltales on the jib and the luff of the mainsail and I am lost in the wind. I hope you will find some wake into which "the ache" may fall away....
Wait...that's what I did and I survived humiliation and what a valuable experience....I'm still surviving, still learning, still discovering "ah-ha's" as I receive the gift of each day. Just finished Kurt Vonnegut's, Slapstick. The alternate title is "Lonely No More". And somewhere he has someone say that the "Now What" humans are created for is to "make this lonely world a little less lonely". I'm beginning, in my surviving, to find ways to be an agent of "Lonely No More". What fun!
Talk again soon,
J
