Zen and the Art of Phoenix Maintenance

I recently read a little of Virginia Woolf's diary, the "shorter edition" apparently.  I'll leave out the obligatory joke (or will I?) about how I stopped reading it because it was depressing.  I was quite enjoying taking little bites, getting small snippets of what life during the late 1910s was like in England.  I knew, however, that I would never be able to finish the book within the week or so I had left before I had to return it.  Later, I guess.

What I found myself savoring were her entries about being in the country, about taking long rambling walks and reading for days at a time.  I try in vain to remember what it was like before I had internet and cable TV and a cell phone.  Those days used to exist for me, not really all that long ago, but it's like they never were.  I realize that I don't want to zip back in time, I like indoor plumbing and antibiotics and birth control.  I want fewer choices (but only good ones, naturally).

I want someone to shadow me at all times and narrow my choices.  No, you can't have that soda, see - I have your wallet.  Nuh-uh.  Elevator?  Nope, it's stairs for you.  Lunch from home doesn't "sound good?"  Nothing sounds good when it's this hot.  Bring what you packed from home and take a walk afterwards, just walk slowly.  I want something sort of like a mobile detox.  I need me some training wheels, honestly.  I'm leaning so far forward to keep up momentum that my nose is grazing the ground.  I forget to stop and rest, maybe see if pushing would work better than pulling just here, find someone to help, or - radical thought - unload something.

I keep pushing my body for small things.  I'm not striving to be the best athlete or dancer or anything like that.  I just keep myself moving, forward, backward, in circles, doesn't matter as long as I keep moving because I can't seem to come to a dead stop unless it is to sleep.  I'll keep on being five minutes behind, because there's one more thing I want to check on this spreadsheet, one more page of the book, one more online puzzle, one more email, one more something that keeps me spellbound until the last possible second.

I like the idea, explained to me in a meditation "class" I took, that our minds are like wayward horses.  They take off at a gallop at the least provocation.  Meditation helps you gentle the horse, steer it back to an intentional path.  I like the concept of meditation (oh, Phoenix Monitor, where are you to make me do it?), but I'm so twisted around it'd take me the first couple of lives just to figure out if I'm sitting on the horse facing the right direction.  Think, concentrate, focus -- oh, I have a $1.25.  Soda time!