The season change has prompted thoughts of dancing, you know, dancing to change, dancing to the joy of warming weather, rising greenery, leaves on trees, and blooming flowers and buds. A lot of good dance songs exist but I turned to “Dance, Dance” by Fall Out Boy. It came out in 2005, fourteen years ago, so does that make it an oldie? How long must a song be out before it’s an oldie, a golden oldie, and a classic? Any thoughts?
Nesting Dreams
I dreamed my mother was sitting at a table and telling me of her dream, in which I was telling her of my dream, in which I dreamed she was saying, “Michael is gathering his energy and purging his disciplines.”
Don’t know what it means, but I dreamed it before. I recall thinking, what an unusual nesting dream. What are the Russian dolls called? Matryoshka dolls?
That stream triggered a search of old dreams, and there it was, December 7, 2016. I didn’t share the bit about Mom in the post, but posting about other dreams (which used the title “Matryoshka Dreams”) enabled me to do a search of my dream entries, where I found it.
I dreamed Mom and I were sitting at a table. She was telling me about her dream, which was a dream about me telling her about my dream. In my dream, she said, I told her, “Michael is gathering his energy and purging his disciplines.”
I don’t know what she/I meant about ‘purging my disciplines’. That doesn’t make sense to me.
I don’t know what Mom was wearing in that first dream, but in this dream, she wore a light blue shirt and was thirty years younger. She was the only person seen or heard in the dream, but I knew she was talking to me.
After I meditated about the dream’s meaning while traveling, I decided this was about thinking deeper and drawing deeper energy. It’s an intuitive leap. I can’t explain the intuition, except that it’s because the dream is about layers, and about both male and female energy, and mother and son energy. Now, writing that, I think, it’s also about balancing deep thinking and drawing deeper energy. Purging disciplines is about re-shaping paradigms vis–à–vis effort and expectations.
Or maybe I’m just tired.
Confloofcius
Confloofcius (catfinition) – a wise cat who is said to have reached Furvana. Many cats follow the teachings of Confloofcius, which requires cats to meditate significant parts of the day. They sometimes meditate with their eyes open, but often with their eyes closed. Many people mistake meditating cats as sleeping cats. This gives rise to an erroneous perception that cats sleep many hours of each day, when they’re meditating, and trying to reach Furvana.
The Energy
Hey writers, Ever experience one of those days when small matters happen and escalate in your head? People and animals seem to act unreasonable. You spill something, clean it up, only to spill something else within a few minutes? And the news makes you want to take the vacuum cleaner and suck your brains right out of your head. Then you discover, look at the time, you’re well behind what you’d planned and now you need to rush, but things keep happening to detour and divert you, fueling greater exasperation and frustration.
No?
Well, I’ve had that sort of morning. It’s only minor things, but it’s distracting, enervating and debilitating. In fact, it’s downright degenerating.
Tell you what I’m going to do about it.
I’m taking all that frustration, bitterness, anger, resentment, despair, exasperation, well, all that negative shit spinning me around like a food processor on frappe, and I’m channeling it. I’m putting that crap into my own box and converting that energy into something helpful.
To do it, I have an imaginary bucket. Metal, painted purple with bright blue and yellow trim, it holds about five gallons. Rebel is written in orange cursive writing on its side. I scoop all that negative energy out of my aura and the air around me and put it into my imaginary purple bucket. Then I mime washing that crap clean, because I’m going to re-purpose it, but I want it clean.
Next, I have an imaginary red plastic funnel. I connect it to the imaginary port on the the side of my head. (Note: the head is real.) My imaginary port is up on the right side of the rear of my rear skull, above and behind my ear. (Note: the ear is real.) The port isn’t easily reached but my hat — which is real — covers it so people don’t stare at it, so I like it there.
Holding the funnel connected to my port up, I pour that bucket of negative energy into the funnel. The port has an imaginary tube inside my head. The tube leads to my energy transmogrifier. Originally invented by that amazing scientific team, Calvin & Hobbes, the transmogrifier can turn anything into anything else. Today, I’m changing that negative energy into positive writing energy. Once the transmogrifier has done its work, I press an imaginary button on an imaginary panel. The panel has a wireless connection to the transmogrifier. Once the button is pressed, the transmogrifier releases that fresh writing energy into my bloodstream and nervous system.
It feels great. It feels like I’m sitting on a warm, comfortable beach being courted by a wide aquamarine sea that teases me with a balmy, fresh breeze. An cloudless, azure sky acts as an umbrella against the world’s evil, mundane, and hate. I sip an icy cold IPA, just because, close my eyes and sigh with contentment.
Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Thinking
Tucker, one of the household cats, has a sweet quiet nature that hides multiple insecurities. He’s needy and anxious, shadowing my activities, sleeping on the desk beside me, seeking my lap. His other dominant trait is that he’s a fighter. He loves attacking and fighting other cats. They know this and avoid him but he’ll seek them out. So I end up segregating them. He often ends up locked up in the office. He has food, water, a litter box and windows. It’s a warm and cozy space, and the primary place my wife and I spend our time. Yet, he wants out.
He wants out because he has other places he enjoys sleeping in the other rooms, but he also wants out because he knows the others are out there. I frequently talk to him about all this as I pet him, explaining that I don’t blame him, because this is his nature. While explaining this to him two days ago, I experienced an epiphany about the part of the novel I was writing. It was a eureka moment.
I couldn’t help but think of this yesterday. I subscribe to Delancey Place. They post excerpts of non-fiction books. The featured book was ‘1666: Plague, War and Hellfire’ by Rebecca Rideal. The book excerpt was about Newton and his thinking on gravity, along with the apple falling from the tree to the ground.
“Whatever he was contemplating as he sat under the apple tree on this autumnal day was brought to a sudden halt when, above him, a stem holding one of the plump apples strained and snapped. The speckled red fruit thumped to the ground and, in a flash, Newton had a groundbreaking epiphany. It became clear to him that the fruit had been drawn to the ground because gravitation worked to pull things together and hold everything onto the Earth, and that its gravitation must extend beyond the sky, into space, and to the moon itself. Following where Galileo and Kepler had led, and Einstein would later follow, in 1666, Newton had started:
‘… to think of gravity extending to the orb of the Moon … and deduced that the forces which keep the Planets in their Orbs must be reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centres about which they revolve …'”
Chuckling, I compared my contemplation with Newton’s. Mine pale by magnitudes, of course, but I love the natural comparison and realization about how our minds work to evolve insights and furnish ideas. So cool.
A Chair
It begins with the chair. I’ve always preferred a hardback chair. We have none in our house. Sometimes I see old chairs for sale for a few dollars and think that I’ll buy one to have for this purpose.
But our dining room chairs are okay for my meditative purposes. I began meditating while stationed in the Philippines in 1976. I was very regular and disciplined about it for several years before drifting away from the practice. Sometimes, though, the urge to sit quietly in a chair in loose clothing in a silent room and followed the process comes to me. The practices are familiars and comforting. My mantra, established for me by my guru decades ago, still resonates with my core.
Meditating cleanses and focuses me, relaxes and calms me. It lets me listen better and think more clearly. It instills patience and distills my angers and frustrations while reinforcing my will and determination.
I only meditate for twenty minutes any more. Upon emerging, colors are brighter and softer, more vibrant but more separate. I see and hear more clearly. I usually meditate after making my coffee but before drinking it, as I like that smell swirling around me as my breathing deepens.
I’ll sometimes have an out-of-body moment. The first time it happened, six months into meditating, startled me, as I was suddenly looking down on myself from above. More often, my body will do small corrections, and feeling them will bounce me into conscious thoughts and out of the meditative state.
I always end by standing up and stretching. I always feel renewed. It’s not unsurprising to end a session and discover one of my cats contemplating me, just sitting and watching. I feel like the process attracts them.
Or maybe they’re coming over to see why I’m not moving, and are trying to determine if I’m still alive.
My Personal Cycles
I’ve long adhered to a few basic ideas. I want to think them out, so I need to write about them.
First, I have basic cycles. Yes, this is the basic emotional, intelligence and physical bio-rhythms. I know, and can feel them, waxing and waning.
I can tell when they all plummet together; at those times, I can’t get my shit together. It feels like I’m on the verge of spiraling out of control as I bounce through near-calamities, barely avoiding disastrous results.
It is not a good time.
I’ve become more aware of these cycles as I’ve aged. I don’t think they’re increasing in strength but that, as I’ve become aware of them, I’m paid greater attention to them, and from doing so, can sense their changes.
I can tell when they all come together; I feel fantastic and optimistic when they all rise and converge.
But, besides those cycles, I’ve recognized a few more energies within me: dreaming, social, writing, memory and creativity.
After observing my dreaming cycles for the past few months, I saw the pattern today. While I’m a veritable dream machine, the intensity, number and ability to remember them fluctuates. A pattern has emerged of going up and down through several weeks.
Social energy is harder to define. I think it has a pattern as well, but I have a naturally low social energy. Another blogger pointed me toward a post that queried, “Are you empath?” Of their thirty points, I was nonplussed to see how many seemed to apply to me, or that I applied to myself. One of the aspects identified was how being around others drain me. I’ve always known that. I find being with others hugely taxing. I find corners and the edges, where I can avoid the rest and shield myself from their energy and guard my own.
Which ties in with my creative energy. I’ve always been aware ‘on some level’ of my creative energy. I feel it most powerfully when it surges, and have always felt it. There is a cause and effect relationship inherent in it; I enjoyed being creative as a child. Being creative was encouraged in school and by the family. Drawing, painting, musical instruments, writing short stories, they lived it all, so I did it all. Besides that, creative activities could be done in solitude and solitude was accepted for these activities. Pursuing them allowed me to avoid socializing, which drained me. I ask myself, though, if I hadn’t been creative, encouraged to be creative and then pursued being creative, would I be more social? Perhaps so, but in reflection, exercising creativity has always been a joy. I think being creative is my natural path.
Writing energy is a bit different from the others. I’ve coaxed and nurtured my writing energy to develop. It seems like it resides in me but it’s a latent energy that needed to be brought out. Writing energy is harder to maintain because it is even more solitary than creative energy. I’ve learned a few tricks through the years to identify and maintain my writing energy but it seems to have sudden rises and plunges. I’m still learning to see and feel the rises and plunges coming on, and I continue to probe myself for the cycle.
All of these energies, however, are dependent on having enough sleep, eating properly and exercising. When these areas are taken care of, then I’m able to maximize an energy when it rises. Conversely, if I don’t take care of these areas, I’m not able to maximize them. Worse, when I’m in a trough, I feel it more acutely.
Writing and creativity energy are waxing now, so I blame them for this post. See, I’ve been intensely writing and creating. I woke up thinking about Hendrik Lorenz and Chi-particles.
Then it all went from there.
Each
Each day brings a new requirement to re-balance priorities, needs, desires and the rest.
Each week brings an increasing gentle awareness of time.
Each month brings a new assessment of what’s been done, what needs to be done, what hasn’t been done, what you hope to do.
Each season brings new requirements for clothing, repairs, vacations, work and celebrations.
Each holiday brings a new influx of decorations – ghosts, Santas, elves and reindeer – and renewed promises to clean out the previous collection of decorations. Each effort bring renewed efforts.
Each departure brings thoughts and reflections. Each arrival brings anticipation.
Each year brings fresh nostalgia and growing awareness of mortality.
Each morning brings a new hope.
Each hour brings a new beginning.
And each thought brings a new perspective.
Each time, it’s not the same.
And each time, you wonder how has it changed?
Endless Good
Mucking through the morass of memories, moods, and meditation, I sought other directions. I wondered about my surfeit of wild dreams, trying to gauge, do others dream so much? It was like the Dream Network – Dreams, 24/7. (Your dreams on the eights.) Or is it that I’m just remembering more dreams? Maybe others remember but don’t talk about their dreams, citing their upbringing: “Mom always told me it’s not polite to talk about your dreams.” That needs modernizing: “Mom texted me it’s not PC to blog about yr dreams.”
Out of the meditations and meanderings, I remembered Florence Scovel Shinn. Following a whim, I duckduckgo’d her and found a website devoted to her. (What we can google but not duckduckgo? Yeah, it’s not as clean, is it? I predict it won’t catch on.)
On FSS’s page is an opportunity to do a random affirmation. I clicked the button, and this came up:
“The four winds of success now blow to me my own. From North, South, East and Wet comes my endless good.”
A pleasant sentiment, and apropos for a windy day. At the least, I read it and smiled before urging myself, “Come on, believe.”
The Fork
There is a book called ‘The World According to Garp’.
It’s not an obscure novel so you might know it. Written by a guy named John Irving, who has written and published several pieces of interesting fiction. Some have even been made as movies. I think this one was made into a movie, and had several major actors star in it.
In the book I reference, the main character is TS Garp. TS Garp is an author. His mother, Jenny, a nurse, also becomes a writer. But her process irritates Garp (as I remember it) because she never seems to indulge in the silence of thinking and editing. She’s always hammering the typewriter.
I often think of that because I love that silence, when I drop a still bomb on my existence, cross my arms and stare out the window to think, where do I go today?
That summarizes my situation. I just finished a major piece of the pirates’ tale. Today, I’m thinking, do I continue writing the pirates’ arcs or do I turn to Pram and his team’s activities, or back to Brett and his role? Each have beginnings and middles to further develop in the push toward climax and denouement. The arcs all seem equally easy and difficult to write, that paradox of writing tension where you’re on a peak, trying to capture the lightning. But I’ve been spending so much time with Handley and her captain and crew, I’ve really enjoyed their company and know them so well. I wonder, how important is that? I know Brett very well, too, but he is a more complicated person, in a complex situation, and yet is the novel’s largest cog. But Pram’s POV offers a major twist and I’ve been sitting on the edge of that for several weeks, letting it brew.
So I sit in personal silence amid the coffee shop’s music and conversations, meditating to a degree about which story to take up. That’s actually a lame description of the process. I open the book in my mind and return to each arc’s place where I paused. Consideration of where they’re stopped and what’s to happen next is studied. From that process, one aspect gathers a stronger brightness, a sharper focus, a more immediate presence. My mind takes up its mental pen. I begin to see and hear words. Words become sentences. Scenes flower.
Then I know where to go, what to write, and I begin again, to write like crazy, at least one more time. Often it’s the middle of a scene. It may not even be ‘connected’ with what’s already written. I know I can write such bridges later. I’m interesting in writing down the bones. I’ll add verisimilitude and substance in the immediate edit. The immediate edit is the stage I conduct after completing a scene, just part of building continuity and managing pace and story.
In that marvelous way that brains can work, my thought processes are segregated and compartmentalized, and while I’ve been thinking about this post and my process and writing, I’ve been thinking about the novel and the aspects I’ve described. From these ruminations have arisen the next piece to write.
Here I go again. It is such a wonderful high, the sort of moments that you hope will never end….
Michael Seidel, writer 