
It is taking all my discipline to sit at the keyboard and type this post. The pain of not making a post outweighs the pain of sitting here right now and doing it. I think that is what habits are for. They get you through the tough days by automating the responses to sensation.
It has been a good but extremely challenging week. My mother had to admit to herself and to me that the burden of caring for my dying father is too much for her. More help in the home is needed and I spent many hours each day at my parents house. It is a force of habit to help.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t time ill spent. In fact yesterday my son and I went over and we put on some Irish music and had a wee dram of Jameson and a toast to celebrate St. Patrick’s day. It was hard for my son, but I watched him pull through and recognize the significance of that moment and the joy it gave both my parents. He spent most of his early childhood at my parents house while his mother and I worked. For him they are the something that has always been.
Yesterday I realized that I was in need of some self care. I met my barber for a haircut at 7:15 am and treated myself to breakfast at Chaps Restaurant by 9am where I devoured a cinnamon roll and half a breakfast burrito while I read a book on my kindle app.
The author described the craft of writing and how in certain well written paragraphs a single word will sink to the bottom of a paragraph like a rock dropped into the water. The word represents an idea that is so profound that it carries through to the end of the thought.
The author also described the use of certain word sounds that punctuate a sentence. Completing a sentence with a word that ends in a t sound is just as good as adding a period.
I found it interesting that the writer is so concerned for the reader that they need to hear their words out loud to make alterations to the rhythm of the literature in order to keep the reader engaged. Essentially all writing is poetic and musical if it is done with craft.
There was another one of those t words…
After breakfast I went home and worked. I am actually all caught up with grading as we head into finals week. The students did extremely well overall. They stayed engaged. They showed up for the final class and they shared their work. I couldn’t ask for more. The pandemic really helped me as an educator. It helped me see the importance of small acts of kindness.
Yesterday’s self care included the first motorcycle ride of the season late in the afternoon. It felt good to ride in the sunshine. I had purchased a battery powered heated base layer but ended up not needing to turn it on. It was 52 degrees. I think the heated base layer will help me extend my riding season down to just above freezing as long as there isn’t ice on the road. I don’t have a place to park it under cover so I ended up backing it up onto our front porch overhang. It will do for now. The bike’s pointed in the right direction to simply take off. I think life can be set up that way to if I have just a little bit of planning.
Sarah and I had our morning coffee at 5:30 am and my day started out with an alert that my credit card had been hacked. I get lots of phishing texts and messages so I was skeptical. This email had the correct last four digits of my card so I had to log into my account to check it out.
Yikes. It was a legitimate message. My card was hacked and over $2000 worth of false transactions were processed. I had planned to use this card on my upcoming trip to the coast for my sailing class but now it is frozen and I am waiting for a new card that will likely not arrive in time.
So far I am just procrastinating. I apologize if you have gotten this far and haven’t found anything interesting in today’s journal. My mind is a bit fragmented and its hard to concentrate.
I chose to share this image of a stick insect on my studio carriage door this morning after reading a New Yorker article about Nicholas Humphreys Theory of Mind where he describes the difference between perception and sensation. It turns out that most biological functions can operate perfectly well without conscious thought. What separates humans and other sentient beings is our ability to experience sensation.
Sentient involves the ability to not only perceive but also to feel. Sensation is the feeling part of our awareness. In the article the author meets Humphreys and his wife in Greece and they travel to a cave that has an altar to the god Pan and the Nymphs. It is also thought to be the very cave that inspired Plato’s allegory of the cave. In the cave the shadows represent the distorted reality of human perception while the sun represents the true forms of reality that can only be perceived through logic and reason attained through math, science, and critical thinking.
For me the shadow represents mental blindspots that can adversely impact my emotions. A mental blindspot can cause me to react negatively to a situation or misinterpret the meaning of an interaction. Keeping this journal represents and attempt to apply logic or at the very least serves as an acknowledgement of the mental blindspots. Plato’s metaphor of shadows along with a photograph like this one are helpful reminders that more can be made of situations than is warranted. Being sentient means being emotional. It is a gift of pleasure and emotional pain. With the camera I can re-calibrate my perception and gain some perspective to see both the sun and the shadow and to appreciate both.
Peace,
Ira
