guys, how are we. it's the official dead middle of summer ladies and gents. What are you doing? Where are your lives going? Why are we all happy, or sad, or inbetween? I could tell you my stories, for sure.
For example, I am now on my third week of solicited work from Shakespeare Santa Cruz. What's interesting about this stuff, this time around, is that my recent work has literally been the most physically demanding and laborious 9-hour days of my life. Halfway through these weeks, I realized something, similar to the discussion about bike-riding Heather and Amy were having in the previous post: there's a distinction to be found between feeling high off of thinking and feeling high off of being physical. Two very different paths leading towards that same wonderful and strange feelings of living satisfaction. Say, you just finished an invigorating discussion that lit up all your senses about philosophies on life or work or passions, etc. There's this feeling of satisfaction and trueness that follows, that leaves you kind of high. The next day you go on a bike ride, difficult, sweaty, tiring, and aerobic. You finally stop, and are filled with exuberance! What joy! Now compare the two, the two joys. There's the intellectual joy and there's the physical joy. Both joys feel as good as the other, but require completely different experiences to achieve.
What brought this up is that lately I have been reading/writing very very little. I hate this. I love nothing more than to jot all my thoughts down in a blog or read a sweet book about crazy things. Only lately I have had no desire to be this way, no craving for these things. Since I firmly believe in listening carefully to your cravings, I wanted to understand what was going on. I decided it is because I have been reaching my same places of satisfaction in new physical ways (heavy lifting of lumber, lots of landscaping, carpentry, exercise of all sorts). This tiredness I wasn't getting before and felt instead i needed to vent my energy through words and thoughts.
The dilemma stands then: would you rather enjoy physical satisfaction through simplicity, or intellectual satisfaction through complexity?
I guess my answer ends up being the easy way out...I'll take both. I want to live a life that puts the two together in equal shares, because I love balance and evenness - it's the way I live and love and resolve.
So there, there's some mikie thoughts for the evening. I'm pretty freakin tired, so this might seem pointless or scattered. Forgive my child-looking face for this. Later dudes
A Moment in the Sun - a literary journey
2 years ago
4 comments:
I feel the same way. Just this very morning I was telling Matt what a louse I've been, because I have not been writing lately. It's very upsetting.
mikie i totally agree that you should go with your cravings and it has something to do with what is going on in your life and surroundings, not just inside you, and you are storing up every experience to become part of your later even-more-complexity, so it is all part of one and the same anyway. i go through phases too, although i never really focus much on the physical, but sometimes i get "high" from reading, other times i get obsessed with music and i am not reading so much, or watching awesome documentaries, so not reading as much. lately i am doing a little reading and a little writing and a little bike riding and a little sweating in the turtle pool in the sun getting my books water-damaged. it's a pretty good balance.
oh that completely leaves out running around my work being a SERVANT - which is totally physically exhausting in a not nearly as pleasant way. sometimes though, it lifts me right up. sometimes.
i think that also, say on a bike ride, those two realms of natural high combine and mix in pleasant turmoil. like the pumping and pounding of the pedals making your thighs and calves ache, and the ocean and ancient pines and redwoods and lumpy lands of monterey make my brainwaves ache.
Very profound thoughts. I like to get high off life itself without any stimulants. Like running into the ocean, into the freezing cold water. You could probably never imagine me doing that, but I have. I'm so glad you've discovered the glory of hard labor. Both mental and physical exhaustion are so worth the reward of knowing a job has been well done. I am so proud of you and all you have accomplished. Love you so much, Mom
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