A Play Of Light During Caffeine Withdrawal

(enlarge webcam photos for full effect)

Last night as I was about to go to bed after my third day of a steady headache from caffeine withdrawal, I looked at the webcam of Yosemite Valley and Half Dome and ended up staying awake for another 45 minutes to watch the play of light that held my attention despite the headache and my weariness.

This is the 4th time I've gone through caffeine withdrawal.  Until I was 30 years old and was in the process of returning to college to finish up my Bachelor's degree in English Literature and Art, I didn't drink coffee at all.  I had lived with low-level depression and lack of energy all my life, and the discovery of the positive effects of coffee seemed to be like magic.  Suddenly I felt better than I had ever felt.  I could stay awake all day long and was full of creative energy.  Then I began to develop withdrawal headaches if I missed my caffeine dosage and developed gastritis with accompanying nausea and lack of appetite.  I continued using caffeine for at least a year beyond the onset of those symptoms until I felt ill on a daily basis -- worse than I had ever felt.  After the first 5-day withdrawal from caffeine, I vowed never to drink coffee again despite how much I missed the lifting of my spirits that coffee gave me.

In the late summer of 2007, in hopes of becoming a massage therapist, I was studying for an anatomy and physiology challenge exam and experimented briefly with caffeine.  I decided against taking the challenge exam, and instead made plans to undergo an intensive yoga teacher training.   In late September of 2007, while taking that rigorous yoga teacher training, I began using caffeine again so that I would have enough energy to wake up before 5 a.m. and go to sleep after 9 p.m. Again, I was delighted by the feeling of creative energy.  I did experience headaches, but I continued using caffeine until 2009, when recurring headaches were undermining my sense of well-being.  I knew what to expect from withdrawal and vowed again that I was through with caffeine.

In 2010, while starting a new job after being unemployed for several years, I chose to use caffeine to keep me awake for the entire workday and to give me that added sense of well-being.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the job didn't turn out well, and I ended up quitting the job in despair.  During this time of caffeine use, my pulse and blood pressure began to rise alarmingly, and I suffered from recurrent headaches.  Once again, I withdrew from caffeine.  My pulse and blood pressure returned to normal, and the frequency of headaches lessened.

At the beginning of this May, during a stressful period where I was called for jury duty, I decided to try using caffeine again. In addition to needing the energy for the days of jury duty, I was and am acutely aware of my need to find a job, and I question whether I have the energy for even a part-time workday. At first, I had that wonderful lifting of my spirits and high energy. Then I began to wake up in the mornings with a dull headache that would leave only after I had some caffeine in my system.

Given that I had been waking up feeling unusually good for the past few months, the artificial lifting of my spirits from the caffeine didn't compensate for the dull headache I was having upon awakening, and so I decided to go through caffeine withdrawal again.

I know that in the next few days I will be feeling much better than I do now.  Will have to find another way to a sense of well-being and energy that lasts the whole day long.

I am grateful for that play of light during caffeine withdrawal.

"When one finally arrives at the point where schedules are forgotten, and becomes immersed in ancient rhythms, one begins to live."
(Sigurd F. Olson)

"There exists a universal human voice ..."

The Ballad of Hollis Brown

There exists a universal human voice of much broader circumference than has hitherto been imagined."
(Alfred Wolfsohn, The Biography of an Idea)

He realized that what matters is not whether life loves us, but that we love life and are able to express that love.
(from a lecture on Alfred Wolfsohn and Charlotte Salomon by Sheila Braggins in 2007)

Self-portrait by Charlotte Salomon, 1940

First Day Of June 2013

Memorial Day 2013 / Silent Meditation

Celebrating Bob Dylan's 72nd birthday today

My heart is not weary, it's light and it's free
I've got nothin' but affection for all those who've sailed with me
-- Bob Dylan (lyrics from "Mississippi")

Solace in all troubles

I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.

(Anne Frank)

In memory of a dear friend to many in our community

Here is a man who found forgiveness in his heart and carried a message of love.

In his memory, please listen:

Gracias

Listening for an owl before dawn / Hearing a train

If you would like to hear a train and don't have time to listen to birds, go to the end of the video.  My goal was to record the sound of what I thought might be an owl.  The owl remained silent, but at the end of the video, you will hear the sound of a train from three miles away.

I am reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret after having watched Martin Scorsese's "Hugo."  There are trains running through that story, and from that story I have a new appreciation of trains, train stations, clocks, automata, books, children, silent films, Paris in 1931, World War I veterans, writing, drawing,  adventure ...

Just like a wheel / Mousie Brown's ingenuity

Does anyone remember this childrens' song?

He ran up the candlestick

The little mousie brown

To steal and eat some tallow

But he could not get down.

He cried, "Mama, do come quick!"

But Mama was in town

So he rolled up just like a wheel

And rollee-rolled, rollee-rolled,

Rolled himself right down.

I know I don't have the tune exactly right, but that is close to what I can hear in my mind.  As a child, I was not allowed to sing in the Glee Club in grade school or in the Glee Club in junior high because I have trouble carrying a tune.  The part of my brain that carries tunes doesn't work as well as the part of my brain that allows me to draw, and I've always been ashamed of not being able to carry a tune.  Today I can hear that I sing like a child who is still learning to sing, and I'm not ashamed of my voice.  

When I looked around on YouTube, I found a different version with a different tune and a grandma instead of a mama.

Here is the Chinese Mother Goose version:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40425/40425-h/40425-h.htm#THE_MOUSE

As a child of the 1950s and to this day, I am boundlessly delighted by Mousie Brown's ingenuity.  

Ain't it just like a wheel to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet?  

Remembering my mother on Mother's Day 2013

Although I am not a mother and was never even pregnant, I am moved by Rachel Barenblat's essay on motherhood.  If I had read an essay like that when I was younger, I would not have been so afraid of being someone's mother.

These two photos of my mother and me were taken by my father, probably in 1950.

My guess is that the photo below was taken in the early 1980s, if not late 1970s.  I remember first seeing that photo and thinking that my mother looked younger than I did.  My sisters and I all grew up to be taller than our mother. That is one of the few photos of just my mother and me as adults.  I can only think of one other.  The photo was taken by my father at Anchor Bay, California, a few miles up the coast from where my parents lived after my sisters and I had grown up, and my father had retired.

Beginning in the late 1980s, my relationship with my mother underwent stresses that were not worked out before she died in 1994. Now I understand that she had a similar relationship with her mother.

As I was watching "Hugo" a few days ago on DVD, I thought it was something that my mother would have enjoyed seeing:

2005 / Thich Nhat Hanh's First Time in Vietnam since 1965

One day when I was in Paris as a representative of the Vietnamese Buddhist Peace Delegation, to be present at the Paris Peace Talks, I received a phone message from Saigon, telling me that four social workers had just been shot and killed.  I cried.  It was I who had asked them to come and be trained as social workers.

A friend who was there with me, said, "Thây, you are a kind of general leading a nonviolent army, and when your army is working for love and reconciliation, there will surely be casualties.  There is no need to cry."

I said, "I am not a general.  I am a human being.  I need to cry." Six months later, I wrote a play about the deaths of these students, titled The Path of Return Continues the Journey.

(Quoted from For a Future to Be Possible (2008), by Thich Nhat Hanh)

(The play mentioned above can be found in the book Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change (1993), by Thich Nhat Hanh)

Martin Luther King, Jr., with Thich Nhat Hanh in 1966.

Thich Nhat Hanh visiting in Hue, Vietnam, in 2005:

Read about Nobel Peace Prize 2013 nomination campaign here.

Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da from Japan

Many thanks to Doonesbury's video archives.

Wish I could play my ukulele and sing as well as this young man.  I'm working on it (-:

Whatcom Falls Park 5-Mile Walk Meditation

"Of all the pitfalls in our paths and the tremendous delays and wanderings off the track I want to say that they are not what they seem to be," writes Agnes Martin. "I want to say that all that seems like fantastic mistakes are not mistakes, all that seems like error is not error; and it all has to be done. That which seems like a false step is the next step."

(quote from here)

Another view from my yoga mat

(from the 2013 Yoga Cats Calendar, by Daniel Borris, "Triangle Pose Variation")

While in Chaturanga Dandasana, a part of my variation of the Sun Salutation, I noticed the moon in my field of vision and made this little video:

If you turn up the sound on the video above and listen closely, you will hear music and chants of India, from a CD produced by George Harrison in 1997:

Happy Birthday Dear Mom!

That's my grandmother holding my mother in 1916.

My mother would have been 97 years old today.  She died when she was 78 years old in 1994 and still appeared young to me then. 

A Horse and Chariot Meditation / Morning Light with Birds Singing

(drawing you may have seen before, from childhood, by am)

April 28 (from Eknath Easwaren's Words To Live By)

Know the Self as Lord of the chariot, the body as the chariot itself, the discriminating intellect as the charioteer, and the mind as the reins. The senses, say the wise, are the horses, selfish desires are the roads they travel. 
  – Katha Upanishad

The Upanishads say that your body is like a chariot drawn by five powerful horses, the five senses. These horses travel not so much through space as through time. They gallop from birth towards death, pursuing the objects of their desire. The discriminating intellect is the charioteer, whose job it is not to drive you over a cliff. The reins he holds are the mind – your thoughts, emotions, and desires.

This image is packed with implications. For one, the job of the intellect is to see clearly. The job of the mind is to act as reins. When everything is working in harmony, our highest Self makes all the decisions. The intellect conveys these decisions to the mind, and the senses obey the mind. But when the senses are uncontrolled, they immediately take the road they like best: personal satisfactions, mostly pleasure. Then we are not making the decisions; the horses are.

(Johnny Cash appears, too)

Flower Clouds by Odilon Redon

Thanks to wood s lot for bringing my attention to this painting.

Just finished a 3-day break from the internet.  Looking for balance.

"A Change Is Gonna Come"

Listen to my nephew.

Sending love to runners and their families and friends in Boston and all around the world

“For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any means. I’m at an ordinary – or perhaps more like mediocre – level. But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.” 

― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Listen: 48 years ago / Something Beautiful

Watch for the faces of the people in the audience.

he ping / 和平

 Listen:  和平

For some time now, I've been slowly reading Red Pine's translation of Lao-Tzu's Taoteching, which has the Chinese characters next to the translation. Gradually I am learning to recognize some Chinese characters. In particular, I've been looking for 和 because I have a small framed calligraphy of the characters 和平, with the word "peace" below it. I had noticed 知 (knowledge) because it looks similar to 和.  Finally, in the 55th verse, I saw 和 in a line translated as "knowing how to be balanced we endure." Just now I was able to figure out, via the internet, that the framed calligraphy is made up of the characters he 和  and ping 平.

Yesterday we had snow mixed with rain in the morning and exquisite sunshine illuminating the clouds to the east in the late afternoon.

Rainy day series, part 3 (coming soon, I hope)

For some reason, I can't get any more rainy day videos to upload.  I'll try again later.  I have three more that I'd like to share.  I thought that maybe putting only one video per post would work.  Nope.

Rainy day series, part 2

Rainy day series, part 1

"One of the attractions of being in the Northwest is the rain.  If I don't feel good or I don't feel creative, if I can get near the water something might start to happen." (Dale Chihuly)

Morning Sky And Bird Show / Something For The Mind To Hold Onto

There is a Hindu story comparing the mind to the trunk of an elephant – restless, inquisitive, always straying. In our villages in India, elephants are sometimes taken in religious processions through the streets to the temple. The streets are crooked and narrow, lined on either side with fruit and vegetable stalls. Along comes the elephant with his restless trunk, and in one sinuous motion, he grabs a whole bunch of bananas. He opens his cavernous mouth, and tosses the bananas in – stalk and all. From the next stall he picks up a coconut and tosses it in after the bananas. No threats or promises can make this restless trunk settle down. But the wise elephant trainer will give that trunk a short bamboo stick to hold. Then the elephant will walk along proudly, holding the bamboo stick in front like a drum major with a baton. He doesn’t steal bananas and coconuts now, because his trunk has something to hold onto ...

(from Eknath Easwaran's Thought for the Day for March 31)

"Always be proud of who you are and what you are" (Lummi man speaking on April 6, 2013, at an Idle No More gathering )

As I drove towards downtown Bellingham on Saturday morning, I noticed a group of people from the Lummi Nation gathered at the side of the road at the entrance to the Lakeway Holiday Inn where a conference associated with the CERA was taking place.  This morning I found the above video of their brief peaceful protest of the conference.

I did some Google research and found this:

Both the CERA and the CERF are made up of white owners of Indian Reservations lands. The CERF and CERA members are third and fourth generation descendants of the people who profited from acquiring Indian lands.  What alarms them these days is that tribes are re-acquiring some of these lands in order to build an economic base for their people again.  The hate groups can't stand the idea that Indians would get some land back, no matter now it happens.
(from Racism in Indian Country, by Dean Chavers, published in 2009).

It would be worth your time to listen to the voices of some of the Lummi people whose reservation is next to the town of Bellingham, Washington.

Pacific Tree Frogs At Midnight

Raining Quinces

On Sunday morning, having recently read solitary walker's newly published book of poetry, Raining Quinces, I noticed several flowering quinces in containers at a nearby nursery.  Sensing there was some synchronicity involved in the unexpected appearance of flowering quinces that day, I bought and planted one next to where the golden day lilies will bloom on my little porch in June. I'm not much one for writing book reviews, but I can recommend his book if you are a person who lives with gratitude and awareness, in both levity and gravity, walking down as many paths and trails and roads as possible, both on foot and in the heart and mind.

Today's view from the porch, looking east toward the light:

Celebrating Cesar Chavez's 86th Birthday on Easter 2013 / "... the enormous invulnerable beauty of things ..."

(1927-1993)

Occupation:  Farm Worker, Labor Leader, Civil rights activist

Religion:  Roman Catholic

Words of Cesar Chavez:

Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.

It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere.  But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just.  He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we use our limited time on earth.  It is an awesome opportunity.

What do we want the church to do?  We ask for its presence with us, beside us, as Christ among us.  We ask the church to sacrifice with the people for social change, for justice and for love of brother and sister.  We don't ask for words.  We ask for deeds.  We don't ask for paternalism.  We ask for servanthood.

Cesar Chavez, Coretta Scott King, Dorothy Day

My words:

Although I do not belong to an organized religion or spiritual tradition, I am grateful to those people who do belong to them and practice them with love and compassion, those whose hearts are not closed to those who don't share their experiences.  Through their teachings, they have brought grace to my life and the lives of many of us who belong to something beautiful, too, in the experience of not belonging to an organized religion or spiritual tradition and yet not being alone either.  

From "Nova," by Robinson Jeffers:

Meanwhile the sun shines wisely and warm, trees flutter green

in the wind, girls take their clothes off
To bathe in the cold ocean or to hunt love; they stand laughing
in the white foam, they have beautiful
Shoulders and thighs, they are beautiful animals, all life is beautiful.
We cannot be sure of life for one moment;
We can, by force and self-discipline, by many refusals and a few
assertions, in the teeth of fortune assure ourselves
Freedom and integrity in life or integrity in death. And we know
that the enormous invulnerable beauty of things
Is the face of God, to live gladly in its presence, and die without
grief or fear knowing it survives us.

(am's italics)

(am's photo of the landscape where Robinson Jeffers lived and wrote his poetry)

Now it's time to thank this blogging community for all the inspiration you give to me and to go meet for breakfast with another diverse community of friends.  Some of us belong to organized religions or spiritual traditions. Many of us don't. We are fortunate to have found each other.

"... He said, 'All men shall be sailors until the sea shall free them'..."

Leonard Cohen: Dear Seth, I don't really have a 'take on the state
of Christianity.' But when I read your question, this answer came to
mind: As I understand it, into the heart of every Christian, Christ
comes, and Christ goes. When, by his Grace, the landscape of the heart becomes vast and deep and limitless, then Christ makes His abode in that graceful heart, and His Will prevails. The experience is recognized as Peace. In the absence of this experience much activity arises, divisions of every sort. Outside of the organizational enterprise, which some applaud and some mistrust, stands the figure of Jesus, nailed to a human predicament, summoning the heart to comprehend its own suffering by dissolving itself in a radical confession of hospitality.

...

Lars: How can I actually be sure that this is Mr. Cohen writing?

Leonard Cohen: Dear Lars, What kind of proof would you need. Kelley's typing this. I don't type very well. But to answer your question, you can't be sure. 

(source)


(additional source)

White birds going home

My sister who lives in Mississippi on the Gulf Coast looked up and saw a large flock of white birds high in the sky.  I've been Googling around, hoping to find what they might be.  My best guess is that she saw a flock of homing pigeons that had been released at a wedding or funeral or other event.

Any other ideas?

(if you are like me, it's easier to look at the birds if the sound is muted)

Oh Shenandoah / River imagery / Bob Dylan's voice

I prefer Bob Dylan's version of "Oh Shenandoah" but was moved by the river imagery in the first video, and that prompted me to look for Bob Dylan's version on YouTube.   I am always puzzled when I hear someone say that they like Bob Dylan's songs but not his voice.  There is something in his voice throughout the years that has held my attention in a way few other voices have.  Considering how much Bob Dylan's voice has changed since I first heard it in the early 1960s, maybe it is not the voice itself but that something in his voice. Try muting the voice on the river video and listening to it with Bob's voice:




These other lyrics come to mind:

"... It was for her I crossed the water ..." (from the version of "Oh Shenandoah" that Bob Dylan sings)

"I crossed that river just to be where you are ..." (lyrics from "Mississippi" on "Love and Theft")

The water is wide, and we can cross over.  That's the story I hear Bob telling in these songs.

Early spring again with memories

"... Crazy Chester followed me, and he caught me in the fog.

He said, "I will fix your rack, if you'll take Jack, my dog."

I said, "Wait a minute, Chester, you know I'm a peaceful man."

He said, "That's okay, boy, won't you feed him when you can ..."

(J. R. Robertson, "The Weight")

(That's a zoom view from my porch in the last few days.  I like the blurred effect.)

Swallow's Nest Mandala Revisited / "All The Little Birds"

This morning while reading at our local newspaper's website just before 7 a.m., I noticed this headline for an evening musical event.  For some reason -- unclear to me but significant in its outcome -- I clicked on the headline to read more.  These days I rarely go to any events in the evening because I go to bed very early so that I can wake up between 4 and 5 a.m. without needing an alarm clock and get 8 to 9-1/2 hours of sleep.  For that matter, I rarely go to live music events or public gatherings, preferring to spend my social time in walking and in meeting with friends daily at breakfast time.

There was something compelling about the intensity of the gaze of the young woman next to young man in the news article's photo, and the mention of "Child Ballads" drew me in further.  Next I clicked on the link to Anaïs Mitchell's website, while musing that she was likely named after Anaïs Nin. There I found myself moved by the fascinating shifting nature of the image on the cover of the album she had recorded with Jefferson Hammer.  Entering the website, I clicked on "Media" and went to her videos.  I scrolled down, and the words "Mad River Rising" caught my eye, as I had spent some time years ago near the Mad River in Humboldt County in Northern California.  What also caught my eye was the name "Daniel Houghton" as the director of the video and that the animation was done by students at Middlebury College in Vermont. On my mother's side of the family are people named Haughton who came from Ireland to Canada to New England, and I idly wondered if Daniel Houghton were a distant relative.  I also thought of bev and her new stringed instruments from Vermont.

This is a classic example of how I am drawn into the internet by chance clicks that lead me places I never expected to be -- where I feel things I never expected to feel, where things I never expected to heal can begin to heal through the creative efforts of others.

Before I left to meet with my friends, I had watched the first half of the video and found myself in tears but didn't want to be late for my friends.

Caught up in the stories of my friends, I forgot my tears until a few hours later when I returned home and finished watching the 13-minute video:



I didn't realize how much I had needed the relief of unexpected tears in these few days after the anniversary of my father's death in 2003 and the anniversary of yet another time that my Richard nearly died but was resuscitated in 2008.  He lived for another month -- just long enough for me to be able to visit with him in the ICU before he died in the afternoon of April 20, 2008.

Although I didn't pick up all the details on the first watching, the second time I did notice many significant details I had missed the first time including the Scandinavian knitting pattern that my mother had used when she made a pillow for me many years ago:

The pattern now seems to me to be of four little birds.

Here's the commentary for "Mad River Rising":



And footage of the Vermont flood of 1927:



Watching this little animated film today was healing for me on so many levels.  I take heart when I see what younger creative people are doing with their energy these days.  Although I won't be able to stay up late to hear Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hammer in person, I am grateful to have discovered them today through the magic of the internet.

(the photo at the top of the post came from a post of mine from 2010 called "Swallow's Nest Mandala.")

St. Patrick's Day 2013 / Thinking about our father

Our father died of congestive heart failure on St. Patrick's Day of 2003. In the above photo taken in April of 1977, our father was 63 years old -- the age I am now.  The photo was taken by our mother somewhere in Mendocino County, California -- probably not far from where they lived in the tiny coastside town of Gualala.

I'm thinking about our father today and his life's journey beginning with his birth in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1914; his travels to the East Coast with his father and a historian in the 1930s; his move to Los Angeles, California, in the late 1930s; his first marriage (which was a secret until after our mother died); his marriage to my mother and their move to San Francisco in 1948; their moves to San Mateo, Palo Alto, Taft, and Redwood City, California, before I was 8 years old; their move to Gualala when he retired in 1974; his retirement travels to Norway, the Orkney Islands, the Middle East, China and India; his move to where I live in Bellingham, Washington, after the death of our mother in December of 1994; his move in August 2001 to Seattle, Washington, to live near his youngest daughter, her husband, and their son (our father's only grandchild); and ending with his ashes being buried, at his request, in Minneapolis, next to our mother, his younger brother, and his parents.

I don't think of his spirit as being in Minnesota, though.  I still think of him and our mother living their quiet and private lives close to the Pacific Ocean.

Here is more about our father from a previous post:

"On the day after my father died, I walked alone on a beach in West Seattle and looked out at the relatively calm expanse of salt water, which suddenly appeared to me to be much like my father. I could only see its surface from my place on the shore. I knew nothing of its depths and neither did anyone else."

Here is the view from my porch today:

Clinch Mountain Backstep

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play. (Heraclitus, philosopher, 500 BCE)

Radiant Woman with Cedar Hat and A Young Man Speaking from Indian Country

While looking at the above photo from the news today of the signing of the Violence Against Women Act, I noticed a woman wearing a woven cedar hat much like those woven at the Lummi Nation -- a few miles from where I live.

With a little Googling, I was able to identify the woman as Deborah Parker, the Vice Chairwoman of the Tulalip Tribes of Washington State.  Listen to her story (recorded in 2012):



Now read the words of activist Gyasi Ross of the Blackfeet Nation writing from Indian Country yesterday:



"The President's legacy with Native people will ultimately be determined by how he deals with the environment, climate change and Keystone XL. Why?  We're the stewards of this land -- we cannot "go back to where we came from." We come from right here.  Some, that do not understand Native people's relationship to the land, will argue "there are no federally protected sacred sites affected!" Those folks just don't get it -- it's not just the few places that the government determines are "sacred" that we're concerned about.  No, all of this land is sacred and is not supposed to be ripped apart for a few coins.  Soon, after the euphoria of winning the VAWA war wears off, we'll realize that the Obama Administration snuck a fast one past us--the day after VAWA passed!"

Please read the entire article for context.

We can celebrate the signing of the VAWA and International Women's Day and not forget the problem of violence against Mother Earth.

Thoughts on procrastination 48 hours later / Not wasted time / Progress / Vitality

This morning:

48 hours ago:

Thank you to The Solitary Walker for the concept of swinging between procrastination and procrastination.  Now that you mention it, I can either be postponing some challenging task or postponing something I thoroughly enjoy doing  (-:

I think often of the header on Sabine's blog that says, "Live all you can:  It's a mistake not to."

Thank you to Sabine for offering a German equivalent for the word "procrastination." It's frühjahrsmüdigkeit, which literally means "spring tiredness."

Given that spring can be my season of greatest procrastination, I relate to Sabine's equivalent and find myself wondering if I might think of spring as a season for celebrating procrastination, using my yearly diminished momentum as joyfully and creatively as possible with my limited energy.

My MacBook's Dashboard gives these words for "procrastination."

French -- temporisation (as in wasted time?)

Italian -- indugio (as in indulgence?)

Spanish -- dilación (as in dilly-dallying?)
Dutch -- uitstel (as in uitsted time?)

And then there's:

"Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."

Yesterday morning I had been wondering if vitality might be the opposite of procrastination.  When I am working on a blog post or reading blogs or out walking or practicing yoga or meeting at breakfast time with my eccentric friends most mornings of the week, I experience vitality -- even if in doing so I postpone other creative work and looking for paid employment.  The truth is I don't really want a job at this time as I am enjoying life in a way I never have before.  There is something to be said for that.

When I asked one of my eccentric friends what word came to her mind as the opposite of procrastination, she paused and then replied, "Progress."

Any other thoughts on a word for the opposite of procrastination?

Between

I swing between procrastination and being really thorough so either way things aren't getting done quickly.

(Freema Agyeman)

Oye como va (-:

Thanks to the Doonesbury website video archives for March 2, 2013.

On the MacBook "Dashboard" oye como va translates as it hears as it goes   (-: