Thoughts from the Ether

Around the Fire

"YOU SIT"

tap tap

"YOU SIT"

I look down at his face. Expectant. Hopeful.

A little ... insistent.

"YOU SIT"

He taps again on the little stone wall next to him and quickly pulls his hand back.

That smile.

I grab my lunch and my drink, and join him.

"Its juuuust It's juuuuuust"

He's thinking of the right words to say.

"Its juuuuuust lunshtaym"

Yes. Yes it is lunch time.

We sit for a few minutes in the warm sun. He kicks his feet a little bit off the stony ledge. Munches on a piece of bread.

It's quiet.

Except for the birds, the wind through the trees. The bees are busy in the field of little white flowers.

Yea, this is pretty good.

I really don't need to go back to work.

He smiles, and pops down. Scurrying off to find ... something.

Sometimes,

I just need to stare and think.

Like I'm sitting in a fog with my hands out waiting for the thing I'm searching for to come grab MY hand. Sitting in a strange turbulent calmness.

I both want to write, and don't.

I'm searching for a particular sense of what I really want and need to be doing now. I have a logical answer.

I have reasoning.

But the logical answer keeps hitting a wall. I don't want to go into the details, that's not the point of THIS here right now.

The point of this here right now is practicing what has turned out to be my most reliable barometer for deciding what to write ...

Just sit down and deal with whatever is there.

And what's here right now is my immense desire to NOT deal with any of the threads and seeds I've started ... except for one which I am now questioning ...

And that leaves me with this.

Staring.

Into the fog.

Waiting for the thing I'm searching for to actually just find me.

Kind of begs the question, why am I even searching?

I think what's making me search is this little kernel of doubt. A little pebble in my shoe in just the wrong place. I have to stop, take my shoe off, and get the dang pebble out of there.

But now that I've stopped to get the pebble out, I'm looking at my shoe wondering if I'm wearing the right shoes.

(There's no way for either of us to know exactly what I'm talking about with that metaphor, so I'm not going to try - it just showed up)

Then the real lesson comes about.

The shoes don't matter.

I can walk without shoes, with these shoes, with different shoes.

BUT

Maybe they do a little bit. Because while I'm headed on a path towards something ... how I walk that path is what matters more to me than where I end up.

Maybe they do ... a little bit.

Oh yea, let's keep going with this strange line of thought.

You ever wear barefoot shoes? Or get into the nuances of the many different views and ideas on the kinds of footwear are most healthy?

Years ago, for a brief time, I got super into five fingered shoes.

There was a whole trend.

But I didn't think much of it, I just thought they were neat and it was interesting to walk around in them. Very minimal sole, almost like walking barefoot.

(Some would argue, no shoes are the best, but in my view that's disregarding our modern life)

Anyway,

Without going down too much of a rabbit hole, the shoes you wear arguably have a huge impact on your overall health. Because the shoes you wear affect how you stand and walk, and that impacts your limbs, joints, alignment, flexibility, blah blah blah.

I'm not a huge nerd on it, but having spent waaay too much of my life in an office chair, I'm a bit invested in sitting less, moving more, and healing alignment and stiffness related issues caused by such restriction.

Point of all that is ...

The shoes matter a little bit.

Because the shoes on THIS journey, just like any, impact more than they appear to.

I think I'm done with that metaphor now.

Where was I?

Oh yea, in the fog.

As I've been writing this I've brought myself constantly back to that fundamental writing ... concept? ... which I apply to myself. The one that gets me writing no matter what.

It's, write what's there.

This thing here, was there. And it was there because something ELSE was there. Maybe it's the new shoes.

(Dammit, I was supposed to be done with that)

Point is, I had a friction between what I really want and felt like I need to be doing, and what I could arguably say I'm already doing and is in front of me (but ... which I'm not really actually doing ... might be a reason for that).

Conclusion is ... just do what's there, and stop trying to not do what's there, even if doing what's there might not really work out.

Is this weirdly vague?

That's fine.

Fine to ME anyway. Might make this a strange and frustrating reading experience for you.

If you understand that none of this was about shoes ... maybe you can see the winding threads through the caverns of my thoughts.

Maybe you'll take something completely different from what I said.

Won't that be interesting.

Now, about that sunny day ... where's my boy?