Tag: zen

Lamenting the Practice of Good Habits

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It’s hard enough to form good habits, especially in lieu of bad ones. But sometimes it seems virtually impossible to form good habits in a good way.

I find myself lamenting the practice of forming good habits. While doing my morning breathing scattered thoughts race through my mind, I thought what’s the point of going through the motions. I realized that I can go months forming a habit that is good in nature, like taking the time in the morning to Just Breathe. This is good but if I get in the habit of just letting thoughts run away with me then I’m not in the habit of taking time to breathe, I’m in the habit of letting my mind race. Which then furthers the habit of letting my mind race when I’m doing my normal daily meditation. So the original intention is not supported by this deterioration in effort.

And although I lament, its totally worth it. For it’s the practice to notice the deterioration, to see it and start over again and refresh the intention, so that one day the practice may become good. It’s like looking at a chart we see the summit and the steep valleys and we say that is the path of progression, but we forget that each chunk of that path, each micro fragment of data is a moment when we practiced in a good way; even if we have five minutes of mostly poor, mind racing breathing, if just ten seconds are pure fully concentrated breathing, or a moment of understanding and accepting the poor practice, it is a micro fragment which with persistence and understanding will build on itself until the path of progression is on a steep incline.

It’s nothing new here. Just the same thing as told for generations in perhaps a slightly different way. Words are no substitute for experience. But it’s always nice to read a little inspriation!

Cedar River

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The glint of cottonwood leaves

and helicopter seeds

spiraling down

like

the underbelly of the osprey

that circles above

above the Cedar river

above the moss laden and

bare maple crowns.

Rushing river.

Splunk of rocks.

We held each other.

I closed my eyes

to realize

everything is spinning

in some secret way.

And I’m wired to

not even notice.

Cottontail clouds

emerge beyond the treeline

move with the wind

and make abstract shapes

which my mind insists

is a dragon head.

Now my head is spinning

and my heart beats faster,

and I just want this moment

to last forever.

Old Man Tree Frog (A Poem)

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Took a walk to visit with the frog that lives in the tree.

Gambel oak to be exact.

But he had turned in as we were walking up.

The branches thick with fuzz, leaves turning crispy and yellow and brown, green splotches and spindly spines.

The earth moves in a post drizzle dance

we wait under the canopy for the old frog to come back out

and croon in the night.

He sings:

I’m sorry sweetie, it’s time to say good-bye.

I’m going back to killing my time

faded, in my memories, telling myself ev-ery thing’s

gonna be alright.

randomly rambling

Im just trying to be genuinely

present, here with you.

And that’s when I realize, I gotta live the moment before I write about it.

Memory

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I subscribe to leading a life directed by a knowledge that memory is not only some place in your brain, that memory is stored in the muscles, nerves, and cells of your body and that when you learn to trust that memory you can live poetry.

Carried Away (A Poem)

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Carried Away

Scattered leaves,
various shades of chrome-yellow, and currant,
stream endlessly, carried away by the current
over and over again leaves pass, not
too dissimilar to discern the difference.
However, without the underlying knowledge that
there is change, there would only be insanity –
Still, the water, seamlessly drifts –
flashes of silver and white water rush to
the surface, rippling wakes
that never completely dissipate,
but eventually reach the shore.
It’s like this.
BNSF thunders and howls,
trees thrash,
wind ripples molecules
and you sit, sturdy enough to
not fall over, though on the edge
of some kind of breakthrough
that just gets missed and
carried away like the

breath on the wind.

Drowning

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Drowning
in a mirrored reality
an old ghost
looks back at me through the touchscreen.
cracking
wrinkled and tobacco stained
slowly being erased,
faded
from a mass memory.
I hear the grumblings
of an old man slowly

bubbling
to the surface
of thoughts,
releasing dopamine
to cope like a dope.
Perhaps the tides
of time
sweep us away
faster than ever before
grasping
to the sandbanks
clinging
to an ever changing shore.

Drowning*

*I’m not sure why but anytime I upload a poem from google docs the formatting always seems to get lost in the publishing portion and so I thought I would include a link to the poem in a pdf format, if that sort of thing interests you.

It’s not often that I feel ready to take on the process of aging, rarely do I get to adjust the lens of reality and stand defiantly. Usually only when looking at my relationship with technology can this happen. Sometimes the fantasy of aging slowly, without any major diagnosis or emergencies clears and the raw knowledge that something is inevitable, someday I’ll have to tell the story that starts something like, one day I woke up and… and life is changed forever, this, though is what provides the impetus to move forward, with great effort to deepen my relationships with loved ones.