While I was meditating on my intention and on what I appreciate most in my life right now, I felt this (brief) sense of purpose around connecting my life (all the history, all the little bits of it), and also – for some reason – I thought of my sluggishly-running computer, whose main browser seems cursed and zombie-like. And I thought of “clear history,” using that command to clean out the browser’s history. But also, I thought of it as clear history, a history that’s clear, not muddled and confused, or fragmented. And that brought me back to connecting my life, except now also in a computing analogy, in the sense of defragmenting my life (my hard drive) and clearing (en-lightening) my history – connecting all this stuff up so my mind runs better. I felt deeply appreciative of this insight, which all kind of came together in seconds, so that the thing I appreciate most in my life are (at this moment) these insights and the feeling of comfort they bring, as if I had a map which is getting better, more improved and detailed, the longer I sit with questions and reflect. Yes, I want to defragment my life – another way of saying I want to connect my life – and I want to clear my history. Not in the sense of forgetting it, clear-cutting it, or anything like that. Not wiping it out, but, yes, clearing it so it’s visible (to me, for starters), deleting the junky cookies and third party directives and intrusions.
Today I look out my window here and I wonder about the continuing unseasonable warmth. It might rain tonight, but no snow. There might be a storm tomorrow, but no snow. It’s cooler today than yesterday, but not freezing. Yesterday late in the afternoon after a big grocery run I went to the YMCA at 5:30, and when I walked home an hour later, it was dark, but also so warm I slung my jacket over my arm as I felt too hot actually to wear it. And I thought, “This is great winter weather for insects.” I could just imagine them all, larval, undead, not killed off by cold, waiting to spring back into life and swarm through the coming summer heat. I walked home wrapped in that thought, feeling like a summer night had come early and that it was perhaps really already 10p.m., the town’s shop lights twinkling, the churches – some of them – creatively lit. It makes such a difference, lighting.
After dinner last night, A. called, and I told him what I had told W. over dinner: I want to live in a forward-thinking place. If I join [xyz-organization], or do anything around here, it will be an inundation of history and heritage, which easily becomes a backward-looking thing. As if the past is the future. Circularity. Sure, to an extent the past is the future, but I want a more “yang” approach and place to live, not so much “yin.” I want to be able to walk out my door and feel alive, feel like I’m stepping into an energy, a forward-oriented energy, not a backward energy, not something semi-stagnant. So, defining that need or desire puts an interesting twist on the [B.place] question (stay or leave). And also on the beauty question: does beauty pull backward or forward?