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Mar. 15th, 2005 06:31 pmMy knees are still pretty blown - the bruises are this stunning mix of purpleyellowgreenishbrown and there's so much fluid in them my kneecaps are floating around, making me feel like a marionette with stretched-out strings. However, that's a good deal of improvement, and I was able to do quite a bit of housework today. Tomorrow I'll be going to yoga, but to the 9:30am gentle yoga class, rather than the 4pm vinyasa, just to make sure I don't push them too hard, and to see if my shoulder has gotten back into shape. Of course, I'm questioning whether my choice to go to the gentle class rather than the vinyasa is a mark of maturity or laziness. (sigh) I wonder when I'll stop dithering like this?
I just got an order from Daedalus Books, which I highly recommend. One was "Conditions of Love, Towards a Philosophy of Intimacy". I had ordered it because it spoke to something I've had a great deal of trouble with - the 'middles' of relationships, when the breathless energy of the beginning of the affair has faded, and life settles into a routine with the beloved. I've always hated middles, feeling like they were a failure, a leeching away of passion, of feeling, and I drive myself *nuts* trying to 'get back' to the original intensity. While the book didn't have any particularly mind-blowing insights (in fact, I found it rather pessimistic, with the author talking a great deal about the 'lowering of expectations' being a major aspect of the maturing of love - bah.) my own musings inspired by it led me to some insights of my own. Standard disclaimers apply, ymmv.
I think we're culturally conditioned to become emotionally numbed on some levels, trained to only respond to the heights of experience, the intensities of drama. Look at most movies, much of television. Long lasting relations seem to be relegated to comedies, looked at with irony, rather than tenderness. Any sort of emotional content/context is lost in the screeching pace of the day to day, the gottahaveitall - because if you don't, there's some lack, some fundamental hole in your life. Our pace deafens us, like going to rock concerts without earplugs.
Sometimes, Sir and I will be in bed, side by side, he's playing a computer game, and I'm knitting, or reading. Something will make me look up, and a wave of warmth comes over me, because here we are, together, simply breathing the same air while absorbed in different worlds, and that's *enough*. That moment is a constant, but requires a presence, an attention to now that's hard to maintain. Mindfulness is always hard to maintain. It doesn't have the overwhelming, drowning feel of those first days/months, but it doesn't *need* to. It is what it is, and deserves to be valued on its own merit, its own sweetness of the quiet of a Manhattan Saturday morning on the way to market, or a rainy afternoon tea, all our well-worn habits, where we fit into each other like my feet into my Tibetan slippers - they don't have a left/right foot, they form to you with wearing.
A friend once said that she and her husband believe love does not take place in the mundane, so they make an effort to enact it outside of the day to day. While this view may hold value for them, I think it misses something - *everything* takes place in the mundane. Birth and death happen all around us, life does not wait for us to enact it, it happens whether we pay attention or not.
I babble. Suffice it to say, I think I'm over myself when it comes to middles.
I just got an order from Daedalus Books, which I highly recommend. One was "Conditions of Love, Towards a Philosophy of Intimacy". I had ordered it because it spoke to something I've had a great deal of trouble with - the 'middles' of relationships, when the breathless energy of the beginning of the affair has faded, and life settles into a routine with the beloved. I've always hated middles, feeling like they were a failure, a leeching away of passion, of feeling, and I drive myself *nuts* trying to 'get back' to the original intensity. While the book didn't have any particularly mind-blowing insights (in fact, I found it rather pessimistic, with the author talking a great deal about the 'lowering of expectations' being a major aspect of the maturing of love - bah.) my own musings inspired by it led me to some insights of my own. Standard disclaimers apply, ymmv.
I think we're culturally conditioned to become emotionally numbed on some levels, trained to only respond to the heights of experience, the intensities of drama. Look at most movies, much of television. Long lasting relations seem to be relegated to comedies, looked at with irony, rather than tenderness. Any sort of emotional content/context is lost in the screeching pace of the day to day, the gottahaveitall - because if you don't, there's some lack, some fundamental hole in your life. Our pace deafens us, like going to rock concerts without earplugs.
Sometimes, Sir and I will be in bed, side by side, he's playing a computer game, and I'm knitting, or reading. Something will make me look up, and a wave of warmth comes over me, because here we are, together, simply breathing the same air while absorbed in different worlds, and that's *enough*. That moment is a constant, but requires a presence, an attention to now that's hard to maintain. Mindfulness is always hard to maintain. It doesn't have the overwhelming, drowning feel of those first days/months, but it doesn't *need* to. It is what it is, and deserves to be valued on its own merit, its own sweetness of the quiet of a Manhattan Saturday morning on the way to market, or a rainy afternoon tea, all our well-worn habits, where we fit into each other like my feet into my Tibetan slippers - they don't have a left/right foot, they form to you with wearing.
A friend once said that she and her husband believe love does not take place in the mundane, so they make an effort to enact it outside of the day to day. While this view may hold value for them, I think it misses something - *everything* takes place in the mundane. Birth and death happen all around us, life does not wait for us to enact it, it happens whether we pay attention or not.
I babble. Suffice it to say, I think I'm over myself when it comes to middles.
