The rain is beautiful to watch fall on the rooftops. My view has a new glossy coat of varnish. I have been enjoying my last few precious drops of solitude, even without gratitude lists, meditation, or weed.
I'm not quite ready to give up my peace for chatter and noise. He'll be here for a couple weeks which sounds like an eternity but hopefully won't feel that way once he's here. I'm usually stoned until he leaves. It's easier that way for now, but two weeks is a long time for that. I might miss my mind. But I'll allow it until solstice, because winter is an appropriate time to rest. My mind can thaw in spring.
Been thinking about how "happiness" isn't the end goal of meditation, or journaling, or life, and shouldn't be.
An artist I admire said something very important recently:
"I was thinking a lot about the rigid patterns we find ourselves in sometimes. Some are mindless and some are intentional but even the patterns you consciously choose might eventually stop serving you. I think elasticity is the name of the game. Try new things, stop doing old things, maybe start doing even older things — just be fluid and don’t get mindlessly stuck in grooves you forgot were there." - Swampy
Swampy is a train hopping photographer and graffiti artist I really connect with, maybe because I come from a train hopping family, and those family members' stories were deeply inspiring. They maintained their sense of adventure into old age and it kept their spirits young and their minds wise. I feel them in my blood when a freight train rumbles by with that hypnotic earth shaking rhythm, and when I hear the ghostly train horn at night back home in nowheresville I still run to open the nearest window to breathe that haunting sound deep into my lungs. Maybe I'm a romantic, but some quantum remnant of them still exists on those train lines, great grandpa sounding the horn at 3am, papa and uncle waving to me from a train car before slipping back into nothingness. When I hear their signal, if I open the window fast enough, for a brief moment, I can feel them.
8:40 a.m. - 2021-12-12