3/20/2000
I took a walk today. Julia Cameron in her book Vein of Gold: A Journey to Your Creative Heart suggests taking a twenty minute walk each day plus a one hour walk once a week. She feels it stimulates creativity. I believe her. I always feel better after taking a walk. Sometimes I get mad at Julia though. Doesn't she know I live in the Chicago area and it snows, blows, sleets and ices in the winter? She lives in California. Big difference.
She says "Walking is the most powerful creative tool that I know. Although it has fallen into disuse in our hurried time, it may be the most powerful spiritual practice known to man. Because, for the purposes of this book, creativity and spirituality are indistinguishable, we will walk for inspiration and integration." (Vein of Gold, p. 25)
A year or so ago, I was doing the twenty-minute daily walk. During that time I could feel myself become stronger, become more me. I felt younger as though my feet on the sidewalk had memories. I remembered walking on my block when I was four years old. I remembered walking to grammar school and high school. I remembered walking on Rainbow Beach at Lake Michigan on the first day of spring.
Today, I walked around the park in the middle of our neighborhood. I watched girls training for the spring soccer season. The geese strolled around, enjoying the sprouts of new grass. Junior high kids sat and talked in the pirate ship shaped playground equipment like it was their secret hideout. A few runners sped past. I wasn't even power walking. Just movin' along, trying to be right there in the moment.
3/24/2000
In the car, I am listening to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. I have the book in print but I was fortunate to come across the audiobook read by Peter Coyote at a library's used book sale for fifty cents (love to brag about my book bargains).
Peter Coyote's voice is so natural and neutral that Suzuki Roshi's words come through clearly. As a matter of fact, it's so soothing and calming that it's almost too relaxing for driving. But it's also filled with the wide awake wisdom of Zen.
"The teaching which is written on paper is not the true teaching. Written teaching is a kind of food for your brain. Of course it is necessary to take some food for your brain, but it is more important to be yourself by practicing the right way of life." (p.28)
I like the thought of spiritual books as food for my brain. There are so many good books that sometimes I feel an overwhelming guilt for not having read and digested them all. But I don't have to read them all. I just need to feed my brain good food on a regular basis.
Here's a paragraph I especially like (note: zazen is zen meditation practice):
"Our Soto way puts an emphasis on shikan taza, or 'just sitting.' Actually we do not have any particular name for our practice; when we practice zazen, we just practice it, and whether we find joy in our practice or not, we just do it. Even though we are sleepy, and we are tired of practicing zazen, of repeating the same thing day after day; even so, we continue our practice. Whether or not someone encourages our practice, we just do it." (p.72)
Books
that nourish my brain, regular meditation, and mindfulness in everyday
living.
Just
do it.
3/28/00
Scanning the outer binding on their fiction shelves for "SF," I pulled out There and Back Again by Pat Murphy. The title should have instantly struck a familiar note, but at that moment it was just another shiny treasure in the book hunt at my library's "New" section last week.
Just a few pages into it, the narrator explains that the humans of the future have colonized our solar system and parts of the galaxy. Those living in our solar system's asteroid belt are called "norbits" and they living in comfortable underground homes in hollowed out asteroids. "Hmmm, I thought, this seems rather derivative, let's see where she's going with this."
When Gitana, a mysterious adventurer show up at Bailey, the Norbit's asteroid, followed by one spaceship after another of the Farr Clones, and his pantry's raided for an impromptu lunch, I'm thinking, "This is exactly familiar. She's ripping this scene off The Hobbit. Didn't her publisher recognize that?" Apparently, Tor thought "The Hobbit" as space opera was a good idea.
I soon realized that this was an homage rather than a plagerism and I was able to relax and have a couple evenings fun reading. In the afterward, Pat Murphy referenced Tolkein and Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey. Perhaps we're referencing Joseph Campbell a little too much (God bless him). As much as I liked Star Wars (I've seen it over a dozen times), I don't want SF to turn out one Star Wars after another. My favorite science fiction is original, thought-provoking, mind expanding, and complex in theme and characters.
If you're a Tolkein fan you'll either be entertained or totally horrified by Bilbo's transition to Bailey, the chubby, five foot tall, asteroid miner turned unlikely hero in There and Back Again.
(c) 2000 Marcia M. Sacks
