“The Sea of Fog” Caspar David Friedrich, 1818. Image Source: images.fineartamerica.com via HERE. I have a minimalist friend who chose this image as his only artwork. Hmm.
Learned: I can drink my coffee black, which is still enjoyable. That I can get in a snit, forlorn and positional, entitled, cunty and self-righteous (on the inside), and come out of it with resolve, greet the world newly, and buy beautiful fruits and vegetables.
Grateful for: the undercurrent of human kindness that I believe is in us all, even in the seemingly cruelest. Corner shop with beautiful fruits and vege. The generosity I am, even when I am not.
Seems: Like I’ve been tricked, or I tricked myself into believing X; like I’ll never win my health game; like I need to “get out of it.”
New Habits: walk-a-block every day (going outside, by the front door), Beets and celery juice. Black coffee (day one is Oct. 11, 2022), plant-based eating and drinking to de-fat the blood (if I can do the black coffee, I can do anything!) Journaling like this (newly, again). Instagramming as artist.
Thinking about: Since it’s been a while, it’s fair to say I’ve been thinking about many things. The top three and most recent are:
1). how strange it is to have this mode of thinking “back” that resembles the pre-SSNRI times. Not as Zen an experience, but with more possibility than the accepting every moment as it was (since there was little I could do about it) way of life. It’s as if things could be important. And that maybe being healthy is possible by accepting drastic measures. I’m thinking about the past decade I’ve spent in a drug-induced stuckness. Not as manic as I was when the drug was wearing off. But a sadness, maybe from what I’m reading and from completing pleasurable habits like coffee with cream.
2). I have work to do. Habit work, mind work. The days will still wash over me, no matter what I choose.
3). Learning re-learning is troubling. I hope some habit-forming takes place that has me wordpressing and such with greater ease. I understand winging it with settings will mess things up.
Listen or View: (A link to a video, so others can see something they never would see or hear some music they wouldn’t find on their own.)
Reading? Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. I have a stack of books like I always have, but I am going to attempt a lifestyle of reading just one book at a time for the rest of my life. That will be new and way less scattered.
This book, a dystopian-future survival story set written in the 1980s about a time around now, is pretty saddening as a story. Now that I have access to emotions again, I am not sure I like the story, but I like the way it’s written, and since it’s an audiobook read by Lynne Thigpen, I am enjoying the performance even though my soul desires to live in a brighter world.
Wildcard: I felt physically nervous while waiting in line at Walgreens. Social distancing seems to be over.