Beltane and the Mesa View Moon
Friday gratefuls: Alan. Good sleeping. A cool night. A not so great day. Psilocybin mistake. Diane. Ecuador. Rom-coms. My son and his wife, their last days in Hawai’i. For now. Snow! Crazy Rich Asians, second viewing. Anytime Fitness. Lowering my bpm. The Thousand Nights and One Nights. A reread.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Learning from mistakes
One brief shining: Drove home in the rain Wednesday night, memories of the humid Midwest splashed up, an uncommon Colorado experience which the next morning turned to big, fat flakes of oh no Snow, tired of the Snow and the cold, unusual for me, watered down my mood.
Calligraphic therapy. My favorite mode these days. And, a good one. There it was, in that sentence. I allowed the Snow, which I cherish, to give me a hit, a slap of too much as if Pachamama had decided to make me feel bad by adding one more day of Snow when I wanted warm weather. I doubled down on the disgruntlement when I took a microdose of psilocybin. Set and setting.
Not my intention, but certainly the result. As the day went on I went more inward, didn’t engage my usual coping skills. I could have, for example, done a couple of rounds of how do I feel? Instead I went on a sleepy sad path for about half of the day. Including a two hour nap. Not a joyful morning or early afternoon.
Felt especially sheepish about this since I’d had the wonderful experience Wednesday focusing on joy. I mean, gee…
A lesson. Set and setting. Are as important as the Michael Pollan book, How To Change Your Mind, suggests. I will not take psilocybin unless the set and setting offer the promise of a fruitful and joyful journey. Not blaming the mushrooms. My choice, made with insufficient awareness.
Also Thursday is not an exercise day. MWF. No mood lifter there. No people since I slept through Thursday mussar. Altogether a rum day.
Friday morning, this morning. Resurrected. A new life for this soul. Ready to take a drive to Evergreen for breakfast with Alan. Pick up some more bread. Maybe shop at the Evergreen Market. Come back and hit the treadmill, then over to Anytime Fitness. I’m up to 10 reps on all the machines, lower and upper body. Next week, two sets.
I now see each day as a new life. A rebirth after a passage through the small death of sleep. Not an original idea. But one of recent lodging in my psyche.
We only ever have this day, this hour, this minute, this second. This is the first time I’ve been alive on Friday May 12th 2023 at 7:43 am. What will I do with this one wild and precious day?
Not wallow in yesterday. Not reach for Saturday. Instead I’ll enjoy this session of writing Ancientrails. Get dressed for breakfast with Alan. Let the day flow. Perhaps some spontaneity. Who knows?
How do I feel? Overslept. How do I feel? Bemused. How do I feel? Sad. How do I feel? Like laughing. How do I feel? Ready. For this day. This life. This moment.