Month: June 2022

Feeling comfortable in your own skin

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duck feeling good in its own skin

I find myself spending more time on exercise and meditation recently. I am reading an interesting book, The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk, MD. There is a lot in it, and a good amount of unpleasantness. The same can be said about life on Earth. I cannot speak to other planets. The thing that keeps sticking in me as I read it is that humans (all animals?) store a kind of emotional physical memory of trauma in our bodies when trauma occurs. And our reactions to future events are often dictated by the same feelings and physical sensations which were first brought on by the environmental stimuli of the past event, but which are then re-felt (as in “to feel again”) at the future event. The most classic example of this is a war veteran. Say the soldier developed a strong affinity with the other guys in his unit, and then one day in the field … Read more

Cold Mess

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Bunch of fragments: poetry and butterfly raving in the breeze Because wife and I started doing Tai Chi and they have allusive flowery names for movements and what they call “posts,” what in yoga they call poses. Like White Crane Cools Wings is a “post.” It doesn’t have to be white, or a crane, but there it is, they say that and we know what we’re supposed to do with our bodies. Butterfly maybe has an opinion about the wind. Poetry in prose. Observation in action. Step with left foot lift left hand at same time. Ooh, that was a good one. I remember I spent hours at a time writing Faith and Foolishness after 9/11. Where are those hours now. Comprehensively not available. Too many things on the list. Too much to do. Too busy to get anything done. In Praise of Factions/Doctrines/Movements/etc. They tell the same storyThey went and did this and thatIn this situation or thatAnd the same … Read more