process

The wave of indifference that washed over me yesterday receded throughout the day today, but I still feel a little numb. I realized that my diet hasn't been all that great - not necessarily my food diet, my mental diet. When I first got up here, I was inspired to better myself in all ways, including intellectually. More recently, I think the balance has shifted resulting in some bad habits. Yes, like South Park. It is horrifically funny, but I don't need to watch it every day (or 4 in a row like I did on Saturday on Netflix). Comedy can take up a small portion of my diet, but it's the dessert to more nutritious forms of infotainment. (That's apparently a word.)

Today, I had some coffee, did some writing, and went for a walk. Writing things down is so helpful to purge your mind of them. All those niggling thoughts just want to get out, and once they are, you can focus on more important matters. Unfortunately, while walking, I was bothered by Sarah Palin. The quotes they have from her speeches were just so trite and unhelpful to the national political dialogue. She's more of a comedian delivering one liners about Hopey Changey stuff. It's a distraction to what is more important, just like South Park is to Nietzsche. But the news media, the so-called liberal media, obsesses over her. What they should focus on is how the U.S. has rested on its laurels for too long, getting fat and lazy on the post-war surpluses, how China and the rest of the world has caught up and is overtaking us as we speak. But I hate politics. It doesn't have to be easy, but we should spend all of our mental and emotional energy just making the goddam country work. If we realized that our opinions are just opinions and that compromise is the only way to live in community with other people, then maybe we could set up a system that works pretty well, freeing us to pursue our personal goals.

So I took a walk to the lake, to see how violent it was. I can hear it roaring all the way from the cottage. From the I tried to walk to the edge of the second ridge of ice, but the ice wasn't solid between the first and the second, and my left foot broke through, getting all wet. Fortunately, my boots kept the water out. So I walked back, getting so warm from all the trekking through snow, up and down stairs, that I had to take my coat and hat off. I made a resolution to sweat once every day so that I can avoid that pins and needles sensation that you get when your pores forget how to sweat.


For me, in my creative process, I really think that if I can just get my head into the right space, I can make great things in a short time. If my head is in the wrong place, I can work and work and only come up with stuff I'll despise later and throw out. I'm still not quite in the right space, but I worked on music during the afternoon into the evening. I didn't invent anything but worked on an old piece.

I had more of the soup from yesterday for lunch, and smoked salmon and spinach salad for dinner. Eating well these days. Taking vitamins and acidophilus. To feed my brain, I read some of Also Sprach Zarathustra and did some serious journalling. And now, I just signed up for Netflix so I can watch movies on my computer at will. It's only 9 bucks a month. Now I can be more in control of my own infotainment.

Here's your moment of Zen: