Hello, I hope all is well. Thank you if you’ve recently signed up to Outside Thought on Substack. Welcome! The earth keeps on turning and we move into a currently hot Autumn here in the UK.
As Bilberry picking season comes to an end, my thoughts have turned to taking time out. The borage is yellowing and the blue of Delphinium is a memory to be conjured up (aided by the photograph in my previous post). I am out of synch with those who take holiday in August, for school and other term-imposed reasons, and I can’t help feel somewhat out of rhythm. And whilst I am looking forward to being offline, I am also feeling low.
I wonder how much of the lowness is to do with an acute (yet hopefully temporary) pain I have found myself working with, I am accepting it better some days than others and noticing how irritated I have got that this has come as I am about to take holiday. I’m noticing how fluid pain is, and that it too can have a rhythm, and also noticing how much energy I can spend on trying to remedy it, rather than simply being with it. Maybe my melancholy is due to a longing for (or lack of) something I can’t quite articulate. My mood is contradicted by the surprising sunny heat of this first week in September in our northern country. I have been caught out every evening this week by how much earlier it gets dark now, and how with this heat I am expecting the reassuring summer pattern of at least another two hours of daylight, or the equally reassuring pattern of cooler evenings, which we are not experiencing.
Back to the fading and now squishy bilberries, and a little rant against those who wield purpose-built plastic bilberry pickers which strip the branches bare of fruit whether ripe or not. Leaving none for fellow pickers be they human or more than human. This is akin to me to indiscriminate dredging of the ocean floor where so many beautiful living beings are caught up in a deathly net. Without wishing to head into this territory, my point here is that for bilberries, the joy is in the meditative picking and dreaming, the whole experience, the touch, the taste, the colour, the purple fingers and tongue. They are so very tiny and yes, it takes a long time to fill a small box, yet here is part of the gorgeousness. There’s a considerate way to pick them, and always I wonder how much is enough?
Whether it’s picking bilberries or considering our whole being; allowing a spaciousness, a slowness, the meditative quality of picking such small fruits. How do we decide what is enough for each of us?
I notice a speedy, fast, ‘let’s have everything, ripe or not’ quality to aspects of how we live. How can we notice when we tend to bring a sense of ‘too fast’, and notice when we expect it of others, or of the tools we use, the machinery, even our technology. Much has been written on this desire for speed even whilst things may be far from ready, better than I am writing it now. Yet, I notice how impatient I can be for the pages to fall from my adequate inkjet printer, and how my expectations cloud the potential lightness that can exist when we allow things to take time.
I got chatting to a person this week about how I remembered dot matrix printers. They had no idea what I was talking about. They could not comprehend that we waited for some minutes for one page to print made up of tiny dots. Wikipedia describes a dot matrix printer as ‘an impact printer that prints using a fixed number of pins or wires. Typically the pins or wires are arranged in one or several vertical columns. The pins strike an ink-coated ribbon and force contact between the ribbon and the paper, so that each pin makes a small dot on the paper.’ The paper itself had a tearaway strip down the side with regular holes in. Sort of a pianola-printer-typewriter.
My main memory, more than my impatience at their slowness, is of their sound. A symphony was created in 1999 which I have on mini disc. ‘Symphony #1 For Dot Matrix Printers’ by the artists Thomas McIntosh and Emmanuel Madan who go by the name ‘[The User]’. The Symphony features 14 dot matrix printers, and was composed whilst the artists were in residency at Hull Time Based Arts, UK in 1999. At the live performance I found myself strangely moved. As one might expect the music is electronic and experimental. It has a rhythm to it which is unexpectedly varied. Dot matrix printers continue to exist and recently other artists have assigned the printer more musical functions. Here’s the cover image for the mini disc for the 1999 work:
Well, I started (again!) with bilberries and have ended up at dot matrix printers. Tiny dots, tiny berries.
Noticing when we have enough, noticing when we are hurrying, rushing, wanting more, and being curious about that, noticing a lightness of possibility.
The amazing Jack Kornfield, mindfulness teacher and author of many books, including the fantastically named ‘After the ecstasy, the laundry’ has said:
‘When your thoughts are racing and repetitive, remember: no one can harm you as much as your untamed mind. When you are struggling or in pain remember: no one can help you as much as a quiet, clear, composed mind.’
There is a rhythm to those words that I find deeply helpful. I have written in other posts about ‘still’ and clear water, clear mind. Kornfield also notes that the two things always free to us that we can do whatever our circumstances, are: to be present and to be willing to love.
I invite you to get curious about
· Where might you be able to be more present in the next few minutes? The next hour? The next few days?
· How might love show up more in your everyday practices?
· Where are you rushing when there’s no need?
· Are there areas where you are taking more than you need? Or areas that just aren’t yet ripe or ready?
And if like me, you’re a little out of rhythm, I’m reminding myself, that this is fluid, it changes. I’m wishing you a whole heap of presence and love and just enough of your favourite kind of rhythm.
There are places on the next online 8 week Mindfulness for Stress course starting 29 September, Friday mornings. If you are interested please contact me. I will respond to any enquiries as soon as I return on Monday 25 September. More information is here on my website and in my previous post ‘Reasons to be Mindful, part one’.
Go well and thank you for reading
Karen
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