I couldn't sleep last night, thoughts swirling about in my head. That feeling, when you're tired and you have planned a day of work for the next day and you keep looking at the clock. I tried breathing deeply and massaging lavender into my temples. Then later some warm milk. I tried writing in my journal, but it was a new notebook and it had it's own demons that I was too tired to battle with. My mind refused to turn off and I didn't really sleep until about an hour before my alarm went off. Needless to say, today I was a zombie.
Sometimes I enjoy a bit of sleep deprivation. It sends me into a state of almost hallucination, things seeming sort of surreal, colors a bit strange, sounds even. It can put a new spin on things, liberate the mind a bit from the mundane. A little distortion of perspective can be just what's needed to bring focus and clarity (I hope these will soon follow as my mind currently feels like a room in which a hundred people have been given musical instruments of different sorts and each is playing their own tune as though they couldn't hear the others!)
I walked around in my zombie state for most of the day, wishing there was a way to snap out of it and function normally, new perspective or not. In the afternoon the sky, broody all day, broke into a thunderstorm. We went for a walk on the beach. I like how the sandpipers all cluster together, run towards the waves, then away from them, or all take flight together in formation. The tide was in so far we had to walk back over the rocks. It felt a longer way going back, it always does. I am tired now and will sleep and dream of all the sandcastles I want to build.
Wednesday 14 July 2010
Tuesday 13 July 2010
That sense of wonder
Yesterday evening as we were playing tennis I looked up to see the arc of a beautiful rainbow in the sky. I can't look at rainbows anymore without thinking of a video I recently saw on Youtube of a man viewing a double rainbow near his home on the edge of Yosemite National Park. The video has gone viral on the internet because of the man's extreme ecstasy at viewing this phenomenon. It is funny and also heart-warming to see someone, particularly an adult, with so much wonderment and joy in the world. The man in question uses the name Mountainbear on Youtube, and he looks a bit like a bear too. Just like my bear does. It makes me think of animals and how we have such an affinity with them sometimes, or see in ourselves characteristics that we see in them. Empathy with other creatures. Which reminds me too of another video I watched on Youtube, produced by the Royal Society of the Arts, which was about empathy and how if only we could develop our sense of empathy with all things the world would be a much better place.
On my other blog I've been working on a piece about knowledge vs belief. And the rationalistic attitude that pervades modern life. Modernity. The idea that some things are known and others are merely believed. This distinction is at once liberating and enslaving. We are liberated by the ability to perform experiments and to devise ever more detailed and careful methodologies to examine phenomenon and to try to understand them and their causes, and this allows us to use all kinds of things in new and creative ways to accomplish things we'd like to accomplish. And yet we are enslaved by this too, enslaved by having to communicate in the language of knowledge, a language that draws lines between knowledge, belief and imagination. And yet of course all knowledge is based on belief, but that belief has been informed by observations and interpretations of them. So, if you drop something and it falls, and it always seems to fall, we believe that there is such a thing as gravity, which draws things toward the earth. Our observations as well as the explanations we have been given for them seem to fit with our reason.
What I'm trying to get at here is that the way in which knowledge is created in our modernist system, leaves no room for say, spiritual beliefs. Spirit and imagination and fantasy are seen as having no space in the world of science and rationality. And that is where I think the world of knowledge is missing a trick. Maybe missing the trick.
Knowledge tells us that animal spirits and that strong affinity that a person can feel with an animal or animal spirit is the product of imagination and therefore unreal. And yet, such affinities are so important. If we feel close to our fellow creatures we will treat them differently, with deference and understanding. Without a feeling that we are separate from them. Instead with a feeling that we are just one species among many and rather than being the center of everything we are simply a part of it. It would give us a different sense of valuing things, an enhanced sense of empathy for our fellow creatures and for our surrounding. If we could acknowledge the spirit in things, in all things, we would find ourselves appreciating more our position in relation to them, within the complex, interwoven fabric of life.
Along that line, this morning I went for a walk down to the seafront and sat on a bench for a while watching waves break. A longboarder came along to ride them. And at the same time I saw a dolphin (or perhaps two or three) playing not far away, surfacing in graceful arcs then disappearing. I watched them for maybe half an hour like that, their glistening gray bodies breaking the surface of the waves while not far away a person surfed the same waves. I left with such peace and joy in my heart. Sometimes I feel like Mountainbear seemed to feel on seeing the double rainbow, just full of wonder at things, and full of love.
On my other blog I've been working on a piece about knowledge vs belief. And the rationalistic attitude that pervades modern life. Modernity. The idea that some things are known and others are merely believed. This distinction is at once liberating and enslaving. We are liberated by the ability to perform experiments and to devise ever more detailed and careful methodologies to examine phenomenon and to try to understand them and their causes, and this allows us to use all kinds of things in new and creative ways to accomplish things we'd like to accomplish. And yet we are enslaved by this too, enslaved by having to communicate in the language of knowledge, a language that draws lines between knowledge, belief and imagination. And yet of course all knowledge is based on belief, but that belief has been informed by observations and interpretations of them. So, if you drop something and it falls, and it always seems to fall, we believe that there is such a thing as gravity, which draws things toward the earth. Our observations as well as the explanations we have been given for them seem to fit with our reason.
What I'm trying to get at here is that the way in which knowledge is created in our modernist system, leaves no room for say, spiritual beliefs. Spirit and imagination and fantasy are seen as having no space in the world of science and rationality. And that is where I think the world of knowledge is missing a trick. Maybe missing the trick.
Knowledge tells us that animal spirits and that strong affinity that a person can feel with an animal or animal spirit is the product of imagination and therefore unreal. And yet, such affinities are so important. If we feel close to our fellow creatures we will treat them differently, with deference and understanding. Without a feeling that we are separate from them. Instead with a feeling that we are just one species among many and rather than being the center of everything we are simply a part of it. It would give us a different sense of valuing things, an enhanced sense of empathy for our fellow creatures and for our surrounding. If we could acknowledge the spirit in things, in all things, we would find ourselves appreciating more our position in relation to them, within the complex, interwoven fabric of life.
Along that line, this morning I went for a walk down to the seafront and sat on a bench for a while watching waves break. A longboarder came along to ride them. And at the same time I saw a dolphin (or perhaps two or three) playing not far away, surfacing in graceful arcs then disappearing. I watched them for maybe half an hour like that, their glistening gray bodies breaking the surface of the waves while not far away a person surfed the same waves. I left with such peace and joy in my heart. Sometimes I feel like Mountainbear seemed to feel on seeing the double rainbow, just full of wonder at things, and full of love.
Monday 12 July 2010
A weekend walk
It's Monday but I'm dreaming instead of working. On the weekends we often go out for a hike or walk somewhere in the hills. This Saturday we did an 8-mile walk that went past a slate quarry, leaving from Abergolwen, a nearby village. I have some vague memory of my father (now passed away) taking me there as a child. A geologist, he was always taking us to mines, quarries, cliffs with interesting rock formations showing... that kind of thing. I certainly remember trying to walk up a pile of slate. It's not easy as the smooth slabs of rock just slide over each other, nothing firm beneath the foot.
It was drizzling as we set off, but relatively warm. Bear had his GPS as well as a printed map. In my bag I have a little kit containing a compass, matches, a whistle, fishing line, etc. Stuff in case you end up lost in the hills basically. Not that I don't trust the GPS, map and bear put together, I do, but you never know what might happen. We had sandwiches made with bread that I baked in the morning, and also bread that bear had baked a couple of days before. Good Welsh cheddar cheese, grated, and fresh tomatoes.
Walking is quite meditative for me, one foot placed in front of the other, and thoughts turning in my head like cogs. I think about the speed at which we move through the landscape, and how our speed freezes it for a moment, even though we are moving quite slowly. When we pause for a moment the place slowly takes on movement of its own, beetles trundle past, birds appear out of their undergrowth nests, a big brown hare lops into the path and then disappears again upon seeing us.
The path leads us upwards and through a forest. The drizzle has turned into a damp fog and everything is wet, especially the ground now, soaked with rain and overflowing streams and turned into thick mud. At one point we almost lose our shoes in it! I have to get Bear to help pull me out and my foot, ankle deep in the squelchy mud makes a great SLLLUUUURP! sound as it is extracted. We follow the path upwards through the trees, a fine grey mist making the furthest trees disappear, and altering the sound of our voices. We emerge from the forest onto a moor, the mist blowing over it. The moor is covered in bilberry bushes and delighted we pick many of the delicious blueberry-like fruits and snack on them. We've diverged from the path a little now but the forest was hard work to get through because of the thick mud, so we struggle over the moor instead, eating berries as we go, until we join the path again.
The path begins to climb slightly again as we follow a ridge. We pause for a moment and look down. There is nothing to see but white - a blank page. We are standing atop a grassy ridge and below us, there is nothing, a great white void. Strangely, the white clouds that are obscuring the wide open view give even more of a sense of openness. There is nothing for the eye to rest on, just the edge of the white where wisps of cloud roll up onto the ridge. There could be anything beyond, or nothing. Whatever you want there to be. It's peaceful.
Bear's hair and the fuzz on his face is dusted with tiny drops of dew. His sun-browned skin looks fresh and the colours of his clothes are the only vivid thing in my field of view, everything else disappears into muted tones around us. I guess sometimes you just have to slow down, pause, remove all the noise and flashiness, to see what's really important.
Tuesday 6 July 2010
Bird by Bird
From October 2008 to September 2009, all I did was read. I mean, I took breaks in between for food, sleeping, holidays and an ample amount of procrastination, but mostly what I did was read. Oh and worry. I was worried because I was meant to be doing a PhD, and surely this meant doing more than reading, surely this mean processing what I had read into some kind of form? In retrospect I think that is exactly what was missing, the writing bit. I took a year out of the PhD to go and have a think about this, and whether I wanted to continue with the PhD or go become a town planner. Now, on the verge of completing my MSc in Planning, with only the small matter of the dissertation left to go, I find myself returning to my PhD office, and to the old patterns that were so unproductive. I spent the morning yesterday, guess what? Reading. Yes. Then in the afternoon after some procrastinating and feeling down, I talked to my boyfriend and he said, did you write? And I said no, I was tired, I didn't feel like it. Oh dear. Then he said, ok, just write a couple of hundred words about what you read today. Now, over the years, I have written thousands of words, words flow from me like water, I can't stop, now that I've started up this blog again and if you've come across it, you will soon discover this fact. But when my boyfriend said 'write a couple of hundred words' I thought, 'I don't have that much to say about this! I can't possibly write that. I don't want to...' and endless other excuses.
Why is it so hard to start writing? As a child I used to stay up late at night writing stories. I had notebooks filled with them. I loved it and I did it for fun. Now, nearing thirty, and my dreams of becoming a writer continuously on hold because I feel the need to have a 'real' career that will guarantee an income, and I struggle to write a few words unless I absolutely have to. Strange indeed. Granted, the material is quite different. Whereas writing stories involves wandering off into the beautiful world of imagination where the mind can roam free, academic work involves focusing hard on someone's argument and carefully analyzing and dissecting it and making a good critique of it. It's hard work. Just thinking about it now is making my head hurt. But I'm on the verge of returning to my PhD, which means I'm about to sign up for at least two more years of this misery and I have to find a way to get myself through it... hence the blog. I need to have an outlet where the things that prevent me from approaching my academic writing don't apply, so that I can write freely and work out for myself the problems I'm having so that I can get on with the task at hand without getting caught up in a kind of paralysis.
The thing is this... the task seems mammoth. And as soon as it does, the easiest and most appealing thing to do is to lie down and well, go to sleep to shut it out. So I slept a lot during that first year of the PhD. There are other avoidance tactics as well, but it's rare to escape the feeling of guilt unless you are doing one of two things: sleeping, or doing the work. The best part is when you are actually doing the work. It's rewarding, it's interesting. Sometimes it's disappointing (like when you find someone else's work that covers what you're covering but seemingly much better!), but overall there is a sense that you're doing what you're meant to be doing. And that's good. So, why is it that I try to avoid it so much? The endless hours spent watching youtube videos, on facebook, anywhere else (probably this blog in the future but at least this is helpful)....
I figure there are a number of reasons for why I procrastinate. And so I've made myself a little guide to refer to for whenever I start roaming youtube and looking at videos of talking cats. Here goes:
Question: Why do I procrastinate?
Answer 1) Because I'm afraid that if I do work on something it won't be good
** Think about this: If I don't work on it at all it's bound to be worse!
Answer 2) Because I am under the impression that the work I need to do will be less enjoyable than what I'm doing
** Think about this: I enjoy thinking and playing with ideas. I enjoy writing. Most of all, I enjoy the feeling of having accomplished something!
Answer 3) Not doing it is easier
** Yes, but there is also no satisfaction in it, and I feel bad after wasting time. I feel ashamed of my procrastination and guilty for not having done my work. Also, it makes my work harder and stress level higher in the long run.
A4) The thought of the work in its entirety fills me with fear and dread - if I occupy my mind with other things I don't have to think about it and thus don't experience the fear and dread.
** Try not to think about the entirety. Instead, think in terms of paragraphs, or ten minute chunks. e.g., I'm just going to write 2 paragraphs on x and/or edit 2 paragraphs. Baby steps!
This last point is where the title of this post comes from. I have a book called 'Bird by Bird' which is about writing. And the story goes that someone's son had to write this paper on all the birds of a certain area. It was the end of the term and the boy hadn't done any of the work and now the task was mega. Feeling daunted he just didn't know where to start, until his father advised him to just take it 'bird by bird'. Just write one thing at a time and in the end it will add up.
I'm all too easily distracted but hopefully I will refer back to this when my mind is wandering for the umpteenth time each day, and I'll find the will to carry on and get something written!
Why is it so hard to start writing? As a child I used to stay up late at night writing stories. I had notebooks filled with them. I loved it and I did it for fun. Now, nearing thirty, and my dreams of becoming a writer continuously on hold because I feel the need to have a 'real' career that will guarantee an income, and I struggle to write a few words unless I absolutely have to. Strange indeed. Granted, the material is quite different. Whereas writing stories involves wandering off into the beautiful world of imagination where the mind can roam free, academic work involves focusing hard on someone's argument and carefully analyzing and dissecting it and making a good critique of it. It's hard work. Just thinking about it now is making my head hurt. But I'm on the verge of returning to my PhD, which means I'm about to sign up for at least two more years of this misery and I have to find a way to get myself through it... hence the blog. I need to have an outlet where the things that prevent me from approaching my academic writing don't apply, so that I can write freely and work out for myself the problems I'm having so that I can get on with the task at hand without getting caught up in a kind of paralysis.
The thing is this... the task seems mammoth. And as soon as it does, the easiest and most appealing thing to do is to lie down and well, go to sleep to shut it out. So I slept a lot during that first year of the PhD. There are other avoidance tactics as well, but it's rare to escape the feeling of guilt unless you are doing one of two things: sleeping, or doing the work. The best part is when you are actually doing the work. It's rewarding, it's interesting. Sometimes it's disappointing (like when you find someone else's work that covers what you're covering but seemingly much better!), but overall there is a sense that you're doing what you're meant to be doing. And that's good. So, why is it that I try to avoid it so much? The endless hours spent watching youtube videos, on facebook, anywhere else (probably this blog in the future but at least this is helpful)....
I figure there are a number of reasons for why I procrastinate. And so I've made myself a little guide to refer to for whenever I start roaming youtube and looking at videos of talking cats. Here goes:
Question: Why do I procrastinate?
Answer 1) Because I'm afraid that if I do work on something it won't be good
** Think about this: If I don't work on it at all it's bound to be worse!
Answer 2) Because I am under the impression that the work I need to do will be less enjoyable than what I'm doing
** Think about this: I enjoy thinking and playing with ideas. I enjoy writing. Most of all, I enjoy the feeling of having accomplished something!
Answer 3) Not doing it is easier
** Yes, but there is also no satisfaction in it, and I feel bad after wasting time. I feel ashamed of my procrastination and guilty for not having done my work. Also, it makes my work harder and stress level higher in the long run.
A4) The thought of the work in its entirety fills me with fear and dread - if I occupy my mind with other things I don't have to think about it and thus don't experience the fear and dread.
** Try not to think about the entirety. Instead, think in terms of paragraphs, or ten minute chunks. e.g., I'm just going to write 2 paragraphs on x and/or edit 2 paragraphs. Baby steps!
This last point is where the title of this post comes from. I have a book called 'Bird by Bird' which is about writing. And the story goes that someone's son had to write this paper on all the birds of a certain area. It was the end of the term and the boy hadn't done any of the work and now the task was mega. Feeling daunted he just didn't know where to start, until his father advised him to just take it 'bird by bird'. Just write one thing at a time and in the end it will add up.
I'm all too easily distracted but hopefully I will refer back to this when my mind is wandering for the umpteenth time each day, and I'll find the will to carry on and get something written!
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