Reclusland

The plan was to start writing something new here last Sunday.  I’d hinted as much in the comments, but then drank myself stupid last Saturday and couldn’t really raise the energy to get back in the saddle (or even get out of bed, to be honest).  Then I was on call for jury duty part of last week and had to work overtime at the office the rest of the week playing catch up.

Luckily that’s all over and done with, and I’ve had a chance to get things started up here again, somewhat.  My current plan, for what that’s worth, is to pick things up here slowly, with larger pieces spread further apart, with more regular updates on The Links as I get through an unnervingly large backlog of articles I’ve been saving up.  But I’m not making any promises, as I’ve noticed that my pronouncements about “what I’m going to do” usually seems to make it that much harder for me to actually get around to doing it.  Just goes to show any plans I make are, at best, something I should consider as a loose guideline, and not something that I necessarily must follow through on.  Gotta keep that old OODA loop running its course…

First though, I’d like to take a chance to explore the problems I’ve been having when turning my attention back to this site, in the hopes that other people might find it useful.  Plus I’d like to try and work through it for my own sake as well.

After the large “Organization” post I was really happy, both my the post itself and everyone’s response to it.  I was surprised to see so many people comment on it, and I was really happy to see some of my readers chime in with their own thoughts.  One of the things I enjoy most about this blog is the conversations I get into with everybody in the comments; sometimes it feels like the posts are just attempts at stirring up good discussions.

And after that “Organization” post, I wanted to keep up the energy it had raised, and tried to have a post up every day.   I managed to pull it off for a couple of weeks, but then I simply ran out of steam.  I had become so focused on needing to have something new up that I’d lost any sense of why I wanted to do so in the first place.  At first, I didn’t even realize this had happened, and I just felt really sad at my inability to keep up the work.

But I’ve since come to realize that what I enjoy most about the process is organizing my thoughts and experiences into some sort of entertaining ride.  As I write here, I am taking a journey through all the things that are floating around in my awareness and trying to piece them together into some kind of whole to make sense of all of them.  It’s something similar to making a mandala, I suppose, in that you take different things, put them all together as part of one “whole” in a way that feels as good or as right as possible, and then you let it go.

With the Tibetan sand mandalas, the mandala is blown away as soon as it is completed.  And with these blog posts, I hit “publish” and that particular thought-formation is released back into the public noosphere from whence it came, hopefully better polished and more able to help others work through those same thoughts.  Anyway, that’s the way I’ve realized that I describe the process to myself, in a subconscious sort of way.

What I’d run into after the “Organization” post was a desire to have more of that feeling of “finished”, without wanting to spend time developing the “thing-to-be-finished”.  And I ended up rushing out a bunch of half-finished posts which weren’t on the issues I really wanted to tackle.  I’d sacrificed quality for the sake of quantity, and ended up feeling unfulfilled without really knowing why.  It’s like picking unripe fruit, except that I’m the tree, the fruit, and the sun all at once.   It’s my attention that I focus on certain things which then reach a point where I feel I’ve explored them fully and I can let them go.   Why make sour cherries when I can take more time and have some good juicy plums?  Or whatever…

Not that quick little sour cherries are bad, but a better balance between the two was definitely needed.

This wasn’t something I realized at the time though (to be honest, I’m really only finally putting the pieces together now), and I looked around for things to blame.

My job? Definitely, because I spend all day at the office in front of the computer, but I can’t focus on the blog very much because, well, because I have a job to do.  Forgetting, of course, that it’s that same job that gets me my paycheck and health insurance, and that also teaches me what it means to do something well just because it needs to be done, irregardless of whether or not it’s something I “want” to do…

My relationships? Yeah, of course, they take up time that could be better spent working on my writing.  This blog is really what I want to be doing with my life for the time being, and anyone who wasn’t supporting my attempt to be doing that every chance I had, must surely be someone who was only holding me back.  And here, I’m forgetting that it’s these very relationships that make life both so enjoyable and so unpredictable.  Ain’t no fun to be had in a solipsist universe, unless you like jerking off in a corner and talking to yourself…

Anyway, there was a bunch of finger pointing, but no moons in sight, if you know what I mean.  Looking back , I do feel I acted kind of badly, but at the same time, it was a chance to really experience these kinds of feelings in action and focus deeply on them so that now, when I’ve had a chance to put them behind myself a little bit, I have a better understanding of what causes them (all in the interest of better avoiding them in the future).

None of this really began to come together though, until I was sitting in the jury selection pool, waiting to be called to a trial.  I was going back and forth on how to approach the interview process.  Should I pull some ridiculous tin-foil-hat bullshit, to get out of it?  I knew things would be piling up back at the office, and didn’t want to leave my coworkers (who are all great people) pulling my weight for too long.  Should I do what I knew I was “supposed” to do, and serve on a jury no matter what?  They tell you that trial by jury is one of the things that make America great, that it’s a chance we citizens have to take a part in the governance and administration of the very system which is meant to allow us so many great freedoms.  And I do believe in that system, despite whatever other craziness might be going on.  The American system is not perfect, but at its core are some really great things.  If those things are failing to shine through, then we can only blame ourselves for not keeping things polished enough to let their light out.

I spent most of the day waiting, reading a book.  Then, at some point in the early afternoon, the Commissioner of Jurors, Nancy Sunshine, came out to speak with us.  She explained how she’d been working to make the jury process smoother and more convenient for everyone.  How’d they’d recently gotten rid of the old wooden benches everyone used to have to sit on and put in comfy chairs, plasma TVs (running news coverage all day), computers with free internet access, and free wi-fi for laptops.  She asked us to come up and speak with her if we had any suggestions on how to make the waiting process better.  It was King’s County’s attempt at crowd sourcing, and I was impressed by her sincerity.  I almost went up and asked if there was any plan to put a Starbucks in the waiting area, but I figured, no need to be a smartass.  Plus there was one right across the street.

She went on to tell us that many of the cases that we had been called for had reached verdicts without needing a jury.  She spoke of the persuasive presence of jurors, how many parties bringing cases to trial would see the many people on hand to serve on juries and would decide against seeking legislation.  She spoke of the power of presence, of how we were actively fulfilling our civic duty by simply being present.  I thought of the old saying about “90% of life being just showing up”, and I thought of the meditation practice I’d been undertaking these past few months.

Long story short, I almost made it out the first day without being called, but got summoned in to be interviewed for a jury towards the end of the first day.  They didn’t finish the interview process that night, so we were told to show up again the next morning. After a few hours of waiting that next morning, it turned out that our trial had done exactly what Ms Sunshine talked about and settled without a requiring a jury.  We were put back into the pool and were the first group of people to be dismissed later that day.

That experience, on top of what I was going through in regards to keeping this blog going, really brought home the fact of how much our life just requires us to be present in it.  To work on fully acknowledging exactly what is going on around us and exactly how we feel about it.  I’ve been trying to do this is every aspect of life lately, and it has proven quite difficult.

Facing every situation exactly as it is, not bringing in anything that is irrelevant, and to trying to truly decide what I think the best course of action is, makes me feel like a toddler trying to learn how to walk again.  It’s such a slow process, but it’s forcing all my old thoughts and prejudices out of my mind, because I don’t have the energy to sustain them, not when I’m trying to achieve the best possible understanding of what-is-really-going-on and how-I-really-feel-about-it.

With that said, I’ll let this little grain of sand loose on the winds, to blow around until it can get into someone else’s eye and make them tear up and wash themselves a little bit cleaner.  I’ll finish up with a long list of pictures and videos in an attempt to capture another facet of this thought-form.  Hope you all enjoy, and Happy Easter, Happy Passover, and Happy Buddha’s Birthday everybody!

Nancy T Sunshine, King’s County Commissioner of Jurors

2008 Cherry Blossom Time-lapse at Brooklyn Botanic Garden from Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Vimeo.