The wood stove generates waves of warmth as early winter winds furiously squirm under doors, and wiggle through cracks in windows and walls. Gentle music plays on the late night radio. The blue fire of intensity burns within me. My mind is busy thinking, feeling, creating. My being reverberates with awareness. I take an idea, mold it into the shape that fits the keyhole of my consciousness, and I am changed in the transition of a new opening.
That word, competence, came to me after my six-year struggle; it came as an alternative, if not an outright escape hatch, to the daily grind of despair.
The next two hours are the most precious I will ever spend with my father. He is alert and not visibly suffering. Though not a chatterbox, he converses with us all.
This time we’re talking about feeling good — what an elusive state that is. Just when you think you’ve reached it, it’s gone. The advertising and consuming genii would have you believe that happiness/success/love can be found in this bottle or in that shiny car. Why, if it’s so easy to obtain, do we usually feel so miserable? And what does it mean to feel good?
“A veggie restaurant in Raleigh? It’ll never work” was the reaction of most folks who consider Raleigh a meat and potatoes town.
We experience two kinds of violence: the violence done to us by others, and the violence we do to ourselves. The latter hurts more, because it’s of our own making.
You do not have cramps. That’s invented by women who want attention. We don’t go in for that kind of malingering — that’s what it is. You have cramps because you eat too fast. You don’t chew.
Heat shadows dance above the blacktop.
I once thought that the purpose of my life was to answer the question: “What is the purpose of my life?” I tried to fill myself looking for the answer. I have changed; I no longer move through life wondering “why?” I move. The meaning of life is usually contained in an awareness and appreciation of the process of life. The pleasure that I increasingly experience gives me the strength and trust to know I am moving through moments in the right way.
