I know it’s not good to start by moaning about my aches and pains, but my bum isn’t getting any better. My daughter says I should go to the doctor, but what can they do, except maybe give me painkillers? As long as I keep sitting on it, I guess it will take a long time to heal. And sitting in meditation posture is the worst.
This morning before I started meditating I knelt on the sofa and stared out of the window for a while, listening to the wood pigeons and watching a blackbird hopping over the lawn and under the shrubs. I wondered if it would be better for me to get dressed and go for a walk on these mornings, at least round the garden, rather than trying to sit and feel loving kindness towards myself.
I thought about passion. Someone wrote a poem once, he never said it was about me but it wasn’t a difficult connection to make, implying that my life was empty of passion. He of all people should know that this isn’t true, but what can you do with passion that has no outlet, that is refused by its object, that bounces back, or, rather, falls on the floor between you with a thud and just lies there. It turns in on itself, it stays inside my head, inside my computer. Wherever I try to send it, the outcome seems to be the same. And so I conclude that maybe he’s right, maybe the problem lies with me, maybe it’s the walls of my bubble which are impermeable, that there’s an invisible force field around me, an enchanted castle, that I can look through to see the world outside, but my pleas and cries and screams and battering fists can never get out.
Whatever.
I’ve been finding it hard to concentrate this week. Probably at least in part because I have had to go out every day. Partly because I am trying to catch up with little jobs which have been left to one side while all the big ones took priority, and now there doesn’t feel any sense of urgency (although there is, really, because it could be that after the next couple of weeks there will be more big stuff than I can get my head round, and so I should be focussing on taking care of all these other things to clear a bit of space.)
I should really think about the presentation of my paper next week. I don’t have to do a Powerpoint – they are actively discouraged, there is no digital projector, just an OHP, and although I’ve used that in the past, they prefer it if you don’t. I should make myself some notes to work from, though. The paper is only slightly different from what I’ve presented before, the same material for a different audience. But I need to go through it and make sure I can talk about it fluently. I always live in terror that I will dry up and not have a clue what to say, though apparently from the feedback I get I come over as a very relaxed and fluent speaker – HAH! – if only they knew!