A sence of place

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A small tributary to the Middle Fork of the Potlatch River borders our property. It crosses the path at the bottom of the gravel driveway. The trail carries me onward, making rhythmic sounds as my feet contact on the gravel, the sun warming my face, my leg muscles contracting and relaxing with each stride, and my ears filled with the melody of the stream. Stepping off the dusty gravel road, where the smell of the moist, cold morning air becomes the sweet, musty scent of plants decaying back into the soil. The taste of the mornings' coffee laced with cream is swirling over my tongue as I turn to ascend alongside the creek. Once teeming with spawning salmon, this small creek is now dry as a result of the neighbor's farming practices. A Northern Flicker eerily announces her presence with a high pitched squeal that emanates like a rifle shot from somewhere high in the Cottonwood grove. As I move higher up the creek, the air smells sweeter and sweeter. I see a pair of Mourning Doves perched on a wire and remember that I've read somewhere that Mourning Doves mate for life.

How we manage the spacial environment around us is not something that it is on the top of our priority list, but should be. How we arrange our environment plays an outsized roll in how we perform and how our environment makes us feel.

In having a body, we are spatially located creatures: we must always be facing some direction, have only certain objects in view, be within reach of certain others. How we manage the space around us, then, is not an afterthought; it is an integral part of the way we think, plan and behave, a central element in the way we shape the very world that contains and guides our behavior. [^1]

A good strategy is to reduce the complexity and to place clues the support us in our environment. This could be a simple as placing a book under the tv remote. Reaching for the tv remote reminds you that you'd rather read.

[^1]: David Kirsh (1995): The intelligent use of space, 1995, Artificial Intelligence 1, Vol. 73, pg. 31 - 68,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222502846_The_Intelligent_Use_of_Space

Quietude

I have nothing to say and I am saying it.

I am here , and there is nothing to say . If among you are those who wish to get somewhere , let them leave at any moment . What we re–quire is silence ; but what silence requires is that I go on talking . Give any one thought a push : it falls down easily [^1]

 
 
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On my walk walk with the puppy I noticed that I could get almost completely quiet. There was always some background noise, the stones under my feet, Zivon rustling the grass, the sounds of the slight breeze, and the those quieted, there was the voice in my head talking to me. It was saying "Boy, I'm really getting quiet now. I don't hear the stones any more, wait is that the sound of a truck in the distance? This is really quiet now. Am I quiet enough? I sure don't like the things that interrupt the quiet. It sure is nice when I get quiet. Don't I wish I could all the time, at a moments notice get this quiet. Maybe if I took drugs you could get even quieter..." And on and on and on with no stop.

  • "It’s just in front of your nose." We can create it anytime with focus and introspection. It isn't always about decibels. "The potential wealth of being an island for yourself is something you carry around with you all the time." [^2]

I can watch my thoughts come and go out of nowhere and back into nowhere. Even all the persistent mind chatter about past and current troubles. I give my thoughts a push and they naturally fall away. Where was that thought that just now occurred to me, last month, where will it be next month?

[^1]: John Cage (1961): Silence: lectures and writings
[^2]: Kagge, Erling (2016): Silence in the age of noise

 
 

You are what you do

Before I start writing, before I stare at the blinking cursor on my computer, before I make an outline, before I have any idea of what to say, before I can even sense the shape of anything to write about, I go for a walk.

““By moving yourself, you move your mind.” ”
— Silence in the Age of Noise, Erling Kagge 2016
 

The sun is shining from its low position on its winter path in the southern sky. It is unusual for the wind to be blowing from the East, but this morning it is. The wind is on my face as Zivon, my Chocolate Lab, and I head out on a hike to the aspen grove at the head of a patch of land too steep and rough to be farmed, about two miles out our back door.

We walked in the rough, matted grass next to where last season's winter wheat had been tilled up. The field has been tilled using a moldboard plow, which overturns the soil, burying weed seeds and harvest residue under the soil's top. The surface is soft and clumpy, making it hard to walk in. The matted grasses on the edge of the field are only a little easier to walk in. Here we are only talking about me. Zivon roamed everywhere, in the tilled field, in the grasses, down by the creek, in amongst the Hawthorne trees lining the stream, all over the place without any preference other than which area has the freshest and most enticing scents.

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The message of neuron-plasticity is that we become what we repeatedly do, think, read, react to, how we treat others, and what we allow ourselves to be exposed to. You are making yourself based on what you are doing with your attention and the habits you are ramifying. You are quite literally sculpting your neural circuitry.

Tiny moments for gratitude expression

 
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No matter how busy we are, much of our lives is spent in the transitional time between what we were just doing and the what we are about to do. Pay attention these interstitial moments because they contain deep and rich opportunities for the expression of gratitude.

We tend to miss these moments as they come routinely and without the bang of the sweeping, grand privileges which are the easier targets of our gratitude.

To create a real-time felt sense of gratitude notice these tiny moments of life. Be surprised and capture them by communicating them out loud - to the specific target of the gratitude, be it a person, a thing, a feeling, or to an empty room. The act of vocalizing gratitude gives it power and will make feeling grow in a positive feedback loop.

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“The day I acquired the habit of consciously pronouncing the words ‘thank you,’ I felt I had gained possession of a magic wand capable of transforming everything” -- Bulgarian philosopher Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

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When you can pay attention to the minutia of life you'll discover all around you the world is sparkling.

I've written on gratitude several times before but it is a topic I never tire of.
Interstitial Gratitude
Gratitude
Equanimity and Gratitude