Bronchitis

There's a reason that everyone says you must be disciplined if you ever hope to be a good writer. Because taking extensive vacations away from your pen and expecting to return to the craft with instantaneous brilliance is just about as absurd as being a couch potato for seven years and expecting to wake up one morning and run a marathon.

Discipline and continual productivity is what builds your voice and your ability to deliver good ideas and stories in a compelling way. I think of discipline as a preventative medicine. It keeps you fresh, and ensures you'll be present and prepared when that brilliance decides to pay a visit.. but if you neglect your medicine, you begin to lose your voice, little by little. It's not necessarily irretrievable, but perhaps more like the bronchitis of the art of writing. Trying to form sentences slows to a hacking cough.. spitting up fragmented bits, it feels forced, uncomfortable, leaves a sour taste in your mouth. I used to speak through the written word so fluidly, but now it's feeling hoarse and scattered..

Ideas stack up in my mind and, without giving them proper release, they become trapped pressure and my head begins to swell. Now I've got bronchitis of writing and a sinus infection of ideas. Fantastic.

I wish there was a magic pill to cure what ails my stuffed up, congested writing, but it turns out the only way to reverse the condition is to sit down and commit to the process, over and over again. Because to regain your voice as a writer, you simply need to use it more often..

“Understanding, as well as truth, comes not only from the intellect, but also from the body. When we begin to listen to our bodies, we begin to listen to reality through our own experiences; we begin to trust our intuition, our hearts. The truth is also in the 'earth' of our own bodies. So it is a question of moving from theories we have learned, to listening to the reality that is in and around us.” 

-Jean Vanier-

A paper I wrote for my philosophy of movement class this past semester incited a great deal of thought about my understanding of, and relationship with, my physical body. To come up with my position on the topic of aesthetics and identity in movement experiences, I confronted questions like "what constitutes perceptible beauty?" "what can our bodies teach us?" and "how do our bodies reflect our identities?" ..some complex questions with unclear answers..

Without having come to any conclusions, I became much more attuned to the value of the body, and the profound relationship I ought to have with it. The body is not just a limiting container we've been forced to occupy, it is the very medium of self-expression, the means of showing others who we are, visibly reinforcing or refuting our spoken claims about ourselves. 

As our bodies carry us through every lived moment, we too carry the body- proudly, shamefully, aggressively, meekly... we are given these shells and then elect to wrap, shape, color, and manipulate  them in myriad ways. How we perceive ourselves influences how we care for and represent ourselves, and what contexts we place ourselves in, but the reverse is also true; what we do with and to our bodies impacts our self-perception. 

I have a tendency to view my body as an opponent. It looks different than I wish, and we are often at odds because of this. But the older I get, and the more in tune I become with this physical shell I'm bound to for better or for worse, the more I understand what a sacred space it really is. The body is a home, and amidst all the changing cities and houses I pass through, this is the constant home I travel in. And though I still struggle to accept all aspects and limitations of my physical self, I'm trying daily to acknowledge the extraordinary abilities of the human body and to be thankful for the function it affords me. Though it binds us and limits us, the body also gives life to what is inside and unseen.. and for this, we ought to respond with deep respect and care. 

J. Sarano says it beautifully in his piece "The Meaning, or Dimension, of the Body"...

It is in and through our bodies [that] we ultimately witness to that which we are 

and that which we want in our most profound verity. 

It is in and through my body that I bear witness. 

It is in and through the body that one sees the man.

Gratitude or not?

As Americans, the vast majority of us are part of a highly privileged population. Although some of us may feel we are lower or middle class, this is perceived in reference to supposed upper-class Americans. But by world standards, we are most certainly privileged. So why, then, is it so easy to focus on what we do not have? I continually remind myself how important it is to remain grateful. Gratitude is critical, and despite its seeming simplicity, it's also inevitably layered with impressions of culture, social norms, and personal perspectives. Though there are countless reasons to be thankful, it's also, unfortunately, easy to be clouded by insecurities or social pressures or a slew of other factors that make us forget to be grateful for what we do have. Among the most powerful of these factors is comparison. Consider a most innocent example- a kid gets an ice cream cone and is thrilled. Then another kid comes and sits next to him with twice as many scoops; suddenly kid #1 is disappointed with what he was just excited to have. This is a prime example of gratitude being shrouded by comparison.

I think of how prevalent this dynamic is in our society, and in my own life. Any time I find my mind wandering to the things I wish I'd accomplished, the resources I wish I had, or the way I wish I looked, it nearly always seems to be heavily influenced by what I've seen others possess or do. After all, how could I feel 'less than' unless I've seen examples of what I consider 'more than.' Though it's subconscious 99% of the time, it's still a tendency that needs repair, and I believe genuine gratitude is the most powerful opposing force to such discontent.

I've written before on this topic, about how one makes gratitude a personal lived truth, rather than a mere statement. I've talked about how it is a chosen perspective to be thankful, despite being aware that there may be something 'better' out there. What I wonder today though, is this concept of comparison and how it taints gratitude altogether. I assume nearly everyone has experienced this train of thought, whether deliberately or not- "I wish, I want, I need... etc." followed by "there are people much worse off, I should be grateful it's not THAT bad for me, at least I have a home, a car, a job, whatever..." We live in society surrounded by the possessions and behaviors of others, so it's natural to be aware of what you have in reference to others, indeed it's often what causes discontent in the first place. But does bringing yourself back to a state of gratitude based on the awareness that others have less constitue genuine gratitude? To determine this, I suppose we would need an operational definition of 'genuine gratitude,' and I believe this can only be done subjectively, if it can be done at all. For me, I don't know that I'm able to define it, and for that matter, the dictionary can't either. They liken it only to thankfulness or appreciation, but lack any further description of what it reflects, where it comes from, and where it is directed. 

For me, in the absence of a definition against which to qualify my gratitude, I know simply that it reflects thankfulness to something, namely, the God I find responsible for creating the earth and everything within it, myself included. Based on this, I don't find gratitude-by-comparison to be sufficient. I feel it's somehow inauthentic or incomplete, and I wonder if it's even valid. For as I've previously written, I think gratitude should exist regardless of what's around you, be it supposedly 'better' or 'worse.' 

I wonder how others would define or at least frame gratitude, how vital it's found to be or not be, and whether gratitude by way of recognizing 'I could be worse off' constitutes real gratitude at all.... 

Source: http://blog.iamalwayshungry.com/ 

Cuando estamos ante una perdida, 
no vale de nada recuperar lo que ya se ha ido, 
es mejor aprovechar el gran espacio abierto, 
y rellenarlo con algo nuevo. 

-el aleph-

graffiti + green is good:

Eco-Graffiti!

One climbs, one sees.  One descends, one sees no longer.  But one has seen.  There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. 
– Rene Dumal