Dwelling

I am surrounded by pieces of, artifacts from my life. A discarded cleat from Edna Lockwood, a log-built bugeye given to me by the Boat Shop of the museum where I worked; a clothbound tome, "English Romantic Poetry and Prose," a textbook from Washington College where I first encountered Blake and Wordsworth; a coffee table book of the centennial retrospective of the White Mountain Guide; my grandfather's shaving mirror, wooden box and arms with candle holders on top; a book "From Pot Pie to Hell and Damnation," that took myself and a graphic designer a couple years to put in order and the author a lifetime to research and compile.

I am surrounded by books and magazines both read and unread. It's enough to keep my head swimming for a lifetime to come.

But instead, this week I've been trying again to clear my head rather than fill it. I am getting back into the practice of sitting meditation; making time everyday to sit in silence, to focus on my breath, to let my thoughts go and just be present; to clear my mind so I can fill it anew; clear my mind so that I can listen to new possibilities, new directions.

During the past week I've gone back to roots. Trick or treating with the girls and friends. Running a half-marathon in 30 to 40 mph winds faster than I thought I was in shape for. Tending to sick children while I was also sick. Finding some balance. Voting in an election. Searching for orange and red fall leaves with older daughter Anna on our drive to school. Driving my 12-year-old truck on back country roads.

Sometimes these moments are peaceful, sometimes they are poignant. It has been a year of things lost and trying to find meaning and of trying to find me. If you go with the Buddhist outlook then that search is a lost cause since there is no individual self anyway ;)

Miles Davis plays. John Lee Hooker. Van Morrison. Their music is expansive. Soaring. Heart breaking. Alive. Searching.

On the album "Astral Weeks," Van Morrison sings like a meditation teacher:

You breathe in, you breathe out,
You breathe in, you breathe out,
You breathe in, you breathe out,

Thanks for the reminder. I try to stay with that. But when he sings:

You never ever wonder why

We part ways. It's in my nature to wonder why.

I love the word "dwell," in both its meanings of living or inhabiting, and also to think or hang inside a thought. Martin Heidegger, in his essay, "Building Dwelling Thinking" spells out that dwelling is fundamental to being human, dwelling in the sense of being at peace, being preserved from harm, safeguarded.

To dwell.

Smartwool socks and holy-kneed jeans stretched and crossed on the coffee table. The taste of Jameson's lingering on my tongue. Beard slowly returning to form. Contemplating Peter Matthiessen's journey in "The Snow Leopard" and his ability to recall or recount or describe scenery and people. Black pen scrawling in a Moleskine notebook, can't recall how many of these, of various sizes, I have filled. Looking up, taking reading glasses off. Breathing in, Breathing out. Wondering why.

To dwell.

Making strides

I remember the walking more than what we saw or talked about. Winter of 95-96 in Oxford, the town was snowed in and Colin was snowed in with us at our apartment.

It was dark, maybe 10pm or later when we set out on a walk to explore the town and the snow. We talked and walked through a good bit of the night, undeterred, actually excited by the weather. I don't remember what time we got back.

One of those walks, those experiences, that sticks with you. I've had a few of them.

Sometimes I think I'm a runner because I'm an impatient walker. A group of us will cover our 10-mile Tuckahoe trail run or a run around town of the same distance in under 90 minutes--covering ground, heart pumping, endorphins cranking, body feeling good. But you aren't really seeing things the same as when you set out on a meander.

Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals. -Rebecca Solnit

Last week I sent some running quotes to a group of co-workers training for their first half-marathon. I stumbled across this gem from Thoreau, "Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow." I've thought and lived and written about this same thing (though less eloquently) for some time. My mind works better in motion.

I'm reading Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust: A History of Walking and it's hard to sit still. It reframes my mind and body and place/relation in the world and makes me want to walk.

My favorite runs have the same quality as a walk--unscripted, unmapped, done for the sheer act of being in motion, of being outside, of talking it all in. Not in a hurry.

Exploring the world is one of the best ways to explore the mind, and walking travels both terrains. -Rebecca Solnit

Some folks espouse walking meditation. I'm with them on that. I find it more difficult and less helpful to sit cross-legged than to be in motion. My mind wants to ramble.

I'm glad I wandered across Solnit and her book. Thinking about what I want out of running, out of life, where I'm going, sometimes I need to be reminded not to be in a hurry. Not to be indoors. Not to miss what's going on around me. Some of the lessons inherent in walking somewhere. Anywhere.

...a certain kind of wanderlust can only be assuaged by the acts of the body in motion, not the motion of the car, boat, or plane. -RS