Something I have noticed about myself

I think most people like to feel like they have some control over their lives. There are different ways to accomplish this. Some people are very regimented in how they live. Precise time tables, specific ways of doing things, etc. Some people do the opposite- they have control by rejecting order and embracing chaos.

Sometimes, I try to order my life my making rules for myself.

I will:

Do zazen every day.
Eat meat only once a day.
Be on time to work and appointments.

And so on.

One rule I've been following for about a year is driving without listening to the radio (or CDs or podcasts, or anything.) It's an attempt at being more mindful when I  drive. Before I started this, I was almost compulsive about what I would listen to when I was driving to and from work. Every Monday, I would listen to the weekend's "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me." Then the rest of the week I would listen to "Penn's Sunday School." If I still had driving to do after that point, I would listen to an interview from "The Nerdist."

I really enjoyed those programs. I still do. But I realized that I was using them to distract myself from... myself? It has been almost a year since I started driving in silence. I've gotten used to it. I can't say that I don't get lost in my thoughts, or sing out loud sometimes, but at least I feel like I don't need to be afraid of being alone with my thoughts for that period of time.

Happy New Year

I was watching an online video of all the New York City New Year's ball drops from 1976 through 2012, and it occurred to me that the idea of the "New Year" is completely arbitrary. Why at midnight? Why January 1? (It hasn't always been.)

Many people place such significance on that one moment as the old passes and the new arrives. But it isn't really more significant than any other moment. Does that make the New Year less special? What if every moment felt like that? How exhausting.

Here's a poem I composed last month

Post Mortem

In high school, we were taught all about poetry.
How to carefully lay a poem on the table
and with steady hands, slice it from top to bottom with a scalpel.
Removing visceral verbs and weighing them, 
Thinly slicing phrases and examining cross-sections under a microscope,
Poking and prodding for hidden metaphors - 
That was how we revealed the author's intent.
For the living, we would carefully reassemble the pieces before burial.

What a joy it is to briefly hold a living poem,
feels its breath on your cheek,
and let it run free.

Putting the Cart Before the Horse

Lest any readers are scared off, thinking all my posts will be serious, or political, here's another thing that has worked its way through my head:

Most people have heard the phrase "That's putting the cart before the horse."

It means, of course, not having your priorities in order. But why does it mean that?

For a long time, I used to see it literally. The cart was in front of the horse so it had to be pushed rather than pulled. It is backwards, but a little silly.

 

Then I got older and tried to see it in a context of priorities. If you buy a cart before you have a horse, it's just going to sit there and take up room until you get a horse that can pull it. If you buy a horse first, at least you can ride it while you are saving up more money to buy a cart.

Recently I was thinking about language shifts and came back to this old saying. Then I had an "a-ha" moment. What if "putting the cart before the horse" means taking care of the cart first. If you put all your energy and time into repairing and maintaining the cart, and ignore the horse, the horse is gonna die. The cart can wait for a long time. Horses, not so much.*

So now that I have confessed this in a public, though as of yet unread, forum... Do most people understand this one automatically? Or have I just put too much thought into it?

*I can't think about caring for horses without remembering Black Beauty getting colic from drinking cold water given to him by an inexperience stable boy.

Who could DO that?

I have not, until this moment, stated anything online about the school shooting in Connecticut last Friday. My Facebook newsfeed was filled with prayers, pictures of lit candles, NRA bashing, and gun-rights assertions.

I understand the urge to recognize the horror and tragedy of the event. I have 2 young children. I even work in an elementary school, and yet I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like for the community of Sandy Hook Elementary School. I just felt that for me, putting my thoughts and reactions on facebook or anywhere else for that matter, would not make me feel better, or do anything other than demonstrate to some friends that I had been affected. I did make a donation here because I wanted to do something, even if small and anonymous.

I honestly don't know if taking away all the guns is the answer.  It's certainly easier than trying to treat mental illness. I'm not trying to sound glib, but my first thought when hearing that someone had broken into a school and shot young children was, "Who could DO that?" The only answer I could think of is someone who is so disconnected from society and from a sense of right and wrong, that they can't fathom the consequences of their actions. Maybe someone who feels otherwise powerless. If we could help those people, it wouldn't matter who had a gun.

Naive and over-simplistic. This is a complicated problem for society. But where and how we focus our attentions and efforts does make a difference. Incarceration has not helped the "War on Drugs."  "No Child Left Behind" and "The Race to the Top" have caused many excellent teachers to retire. The Health Care Act deals with how to get more people insurance, but not how to make healthcare more affordable. (I believe there is a difference.) I am increasingly frustrated with the lack of vision, compassion, and leadership in our government. I'll probably write more about that in a future post.

That's one thing that has been on my mind today.

Inception

Where did the address "Projective Complexity" come from? Literally, a random word generator. I asked for an adjective, and kept pressing the "New Word" button until I found one I liked, then did the same with a noun. Perhaps I will come up with a better title some day. One would think it wouldn't be too hard.

I have a livejournal blog that I use to chronicle events that are important to me. This blog is where I can put down the things I think about  that are unrelated to day-to-day life. It's a canvas for me to paint my thoughts, then examine them.