as a moody human being, i find this almost impossible to practice, especially sitting here on a mountain-top, alone ten days at a time. self-awareness comes at a price, ie. you can't really control how you're feeling, try as you might.
example, this week up and down like a yoyo. i think it was wednesday i inexplicably felt grateful for everything, needing to have, be, discover nothing more. the peacefulness of it all, that state of acceptance and perfection. i could just sit! what a relief, as i'm usually as restless as a bee on a blossom.
the next day we'd a dramatic event. a lumber truck turned over and burst into flame, blocking both lanes of highway 70 in the feather river canyon, igniting the brush on a steep slope. at least, this is the way it sounded when my friend lucas, lookout on another forest, called and told me a helicopter reporting it. i immediately passed it along to our dispatch. later ron, on pike county lookout, called me with updates, and these too i relayed.
all ended well, just a half acre of tiny flames crawling between the rocks. alas, the next day i got chewed out for interfering with the dispatch, and i'd thought i'd been the hero of the day. my heart hardened like a rock, i couldn't feel anything but a kind of sociopathic hatred of the world. this two days after feeling completely at peace.
okay, a couple days later i forgave everybody and got back to normal. that said, i've careened from peacefulness to anxiety to inspiration to despair over the weekend. i lurch for the good and grab the bad. i curse the bad and am suddenly uplifted with insight. a doctor once wrote, 'if you wake up in the morning age sixty plus and feel no pain, you're dead.' and to that he added, 'no day will be the same.'
my eternal search for security could only end six feet under, rolling my eyes in the quiet of the tomb. if i could just let everyday be different, i wouldn't have to collapse every night in a frenzy, worn out by the struggle to make no effort.
my androids reflect all this:
tolstoy wrote 'creative works the record of our twitching nerves.' no wonder he always felt like a saint in heat.
