new growth

rest more rest less

to have no expectations is truly the best way to approach life and interactions with others. To have no expectations and to give over to the moment, and of your best. it is hard though, very hard. darn near impossible.

unknown universe

I am just as I am. you are right. change may be next to near impossible. I went to my sister's for an egg party and spent most of the time hunch over a succession of bare canvases without the slightest clue how to make the idea in my head move out my stylus through wax and dye onto the eggshell. I also was cursed by the breaking of eggs slipper fingers which is disappointing even if your work is poor.I got home late and was very tired so after the minimum of preparations i tumbled into bed and slept most soundly until 7am. I rose this morning as determined as a person of my nature can be to be happy and pleasant. I take as my role model the laughing buddist nun. Perhaps with careful intention and dedication i can reclaim that sweetness of tongue and spirit. How will i do this? I will do this not by speaking volumes, by simply breathing in and out and clarifying my wants and needs and making clear to others my intentions and expectations. I will be a person who wakes up and thinks what do i want and need to do today? and then do it in the best way possible today! Yahoo!

for today

there is a world of shit outside, for sure, so the question for myself is . . .do i want to wallow in the shit and try to clean it up becoming more frusterated and low as i do so or do i want to find something else more precious. Okay not fair because i have already naswered that question. I have to stop killing myself and pretending that i can handle things i cannot and do not want to handle. I am a very simple woman. I do not want much because i do not have much to give, so i need to stop complicating my life with considerations of meaning and purpose. When i do that i become frusterated and stopped up with greed and longing.



I am leaving edmonton for the summer. I am leaving in the spring season. I hope I am not running away from anything - I do not think so. I am trying to move on with my life with good things and new learning. Because life is the maddest of love and i need to embrace it.

dilemma

the world is not fair. there is a lot of shit and sadness mixed into the lovely. Across every forest path there is a high tension electrical wire. so the way to get by and live well. . .i'm not sure, but I have to feel it, everything-good and bad. if I feel nothing, if I blind myself and my heart to the shit that goes on around me then I will become an automonton, unable to respond in a genuine way or even a reasonable way to the current situation in which we find ourselves and the world.

as it is

there are no rules in life. nothing that must be done one way. It is done how it is done and the results, the consequences happen. Neither good nor bad. just as they are. we are who we are and though our body, minds and spirits change in response to our experiences some part remains firm-call it memory, the soul. If I eat too fast i get a stomache ache if i eat too much i gain weight. if i practice yoga i feel good. if i work i feel as if i am doing something helpful. So keep it simple. Do good. Be good. Give and Receive all the gifts of the universe

YAWN

I am in a slurry of exhaustion today. I need to go to sleep before 11:OOPM if there is any hope for me to raise my eyelids at 6:00AM. This is what happens when i know i am not working the next day. Oie!
I got a job posting today (on the email) from Vancouver Island -it is for a project manager of the B.C. & Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance. Just as a Lark i am going to apply. I have no chance of being noticed. . .good practice. Who knows why maybe i am trying to remind myself of other possibilities. Though maybe i am only willing to poke my eyeball out of the cave because I am certain not to have a finger of ridicule poked into it. silly gurl ruth silly gurl.

Mundane Love

My day was a fine day with sun shining and a temperature high enough to allow for skirt swishing and sandal flapping. I did not work on this monday -first day back to school after spring break. So I did as i did-though meaning to do alot, I accomplished only a little of it.
I have completely committed to going to Beartrap for the summer season.I am thinking of being away from Edmonton from June to October. I got the community newspapers from the area and after poring over their booming and brimming over classified sections. I am sure there will be no problem finding work. It is the 'after the summer' i am uncertain of, if i stay as a sub i will need to find other ways fill out my interests. What will I do? Will i be an artist an activist a writer? what ever i do I need to remember that every day i am living it out. . .my life my philosophies my choices and loves. I am living it right now and not waiting for something something else to happen. i am doing it now. life is the maddest of mundane love. It is the everyday.
I think you misunderstood my take on the mundane. It may be very zen of me, i do not know. To clarify my meaning- to live the mundanity is to live the distraction. If you have a monkey mind that jumps from moment to moment then go with it. If you need naps then nap-a-way and when you wake up- wake up fully, stretch fully and reach for that uncracked & dusty book. If it is to work at night than night time is your friend. If you want to change something, than do it, do it slowly and carefully so the change becomes the mundane and routine instead of the extreme and exception.



I got my taxes back. I have a refund of 2000 dollars. i should start building my RRSP fund. It would be a good idea but a plane ticket sure would be nice. . .maybe a compromise can be reached. . .

I see the value in...

Mundane existence. I am impatient with it. I frown and sneer at it. I fall into it. Then berate myself for not fighting hard enough against it.

I struggle with the mundane because I like distractions and have difficulty setting my hours into neat schedules. It is preferable for me to stress myself with impending deadlines than it is to pace my work and set measurable quotas. This is not a very productive way to work, but I've told myself I perform best under pressure for a very long time now.

I admire your Zen approach, but doubt I could ever emulate it. You've suggested I embrace the mundane aspects of work (of writing) before, and I tried. Now that you've reminded me, I'll try again, but I may just be a lost, all-nighter, intellectual adrenaline junkie. Sadly, it means that sometimes, I tend to sleep all day, and I'm beginning to feel guilty about napping like I do.

Today was a good day. I'm returning to my life of books. How was yours?

Living life as it is

remember my theory that life is only the mundane. so what then, what will you do?-what will I do? If life is the mundane- then we must embrace the boredom of it, relish it and learn to sit and breathe. Harder to do that it sounds because (and i speak from experience) it is easy to be distracted by noise, television, internet, cleaning up, laundry and naps.
So if my theory of life; as the living mundane holds, then to live it -is to live the pacing of the mind and open up and read all those uncracked books on our bookshelves.

Musings

I am pacing in my mind today, yet I do nothing but take a nap. There, my dreams bring my escape from mundane life.

I took the plunge and opened up de Beauvior this evening. The Second Sex was on my shelf for a few years now, but it was one of those books that gathered dust, merely looking important. In the end, I figured its status in my collection isn't worth much until I know what's inside it.

Simone de Beauvior wrote her book from the impulse to discover herself, but created a work that transcends mere autobiography. However, it remains a much more individual account of femininity than the universal one she hoped to write. I can't help but marvel and pity her emotional distance to her subject. She is cold, and seems to be quite disassociated from her own experience of womanhood and femininity. I will read to to discover something more about myself.

Happy Foolish Happenings

I have never 'cracked' a copy, never read it, never owned it. . .maybe i should but not now, definitely not now. It is interesting to go back and see where we have been, where we are coming from -it is helpful to remember so we have a direction to follow as we go into the future. I have not read much theory for two years since i left university. Though what i have begun reading is some early 'classic' writers Shaw and Wilde - the issues they raised are relevant today and some fun ones like Wells and London -who seem so in your face policos that it is hard to see how they could be funny-good at their craft i suppose. . .so as i look back at my own thinking and writing i lay it down next to the concerns and politics of 150 years ago and realize much of it is the same struggle. Foolish.




Amazing things happen

When you close your eyes
In the middle
Of a busy moment
You kill the world
And all that exists is you
And you tell yourself you will never
Get so busy again
And my life is too much in my
Own world to worry . . .
And it. Hits you
WHAM!
And you know. And you know.
The most amazing dazzling things
And you want to dance through
The streets and you do
And you sing in your own voice
Amazing things happen to your voice
When you forget to check over your shoulder
To see
If anyone is around and the song your heart sings
Bursts out as joy - a joyful sound unto yourself
To the world. To the universe.
That would not exist without you
And to which you own your life
And you feel sometimes, that life,
Spins you out of control
Or that it is spinning a yarn
And either way is fine
Because you like crazy stories and
Amazing things happen when you are.

Ruth the Great Instigator

Yes you, Instigator, Inspirator, Imaginator!
May your wealth of creativity overflow...or at least simmer at the brim of life.

I have newly rediscovered some of my writing from when I was in Germany. The most enlightening insight I gained was a confirmation that I am still the same person. I continue to have very similar questions about life, yet I feel I am now working through them in a more sophisticated manner. It's so cute to revisit my 18 year old self (I was so naive!).

The biggest question I had was about the nature of constructing ideals.... specifically in regards to Love and Beauty, and my questions about these ideas haven't really changed either.

I also discovered I was obsessed with Simone de Beauvoir. Unfortunately, after being inspired by an essay of hers, I really haven't read much else. Did you ever crack open The Second Sex?