My beloved, who is practical like a Scot, or a German, loves to plan. He likes to pore over train timetables, have daily "diary sessions" where we compare notes, organizes holidays years in advance. I long to be like this. I am last minute. I deliberate until the day is upon me. I am entirely too big picture for my own good.
What is time? How can we stretch time? How do we hold on to something that is intrinsically ephemeral? ("I miss the days of photo albums" my mother says to me on the phone, and I agree with her. The great joy of captured magic in a book, not endless jpgs clumped together on the laptop, blending into each other, a muddle of moments.) I think, as it appears Mr Jenkins might suggest, that rising earlier in the morning is something to try, as is not drinking ("drunks don't remember anything" I read yesterday, in relation to what, I don't remember.) Drop into a flow state, suggest psychologists. Do something you love and continue to do it so that you don't feel time passing. The yard where my mare lives has a large sign that says "The Time You Enjoy Wasting Isn't Wasted Time." And that is exactly how I feel with my horse; we enter another dimension, the mare and I, where nothing else matters, just our silent conversation. As it is with a lover.
So the plan for the week is going to be: achieving the flow state. There is a most excellent Ted Talk on the subject here by Dr Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi. Will you do it with me?“You are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don’t exist. I have experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. And [the music] just flows out of itself.”
3 comments:
A positive glut of March posts! I'm smiling with pleasure and gobbling them up - thank you!
sign me up Scotty!
I'm in!
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