Blog/slog

I'm getting bogged down in the effort to write a good blog.

That bit about the unicycle took me a whole day to write and then another three days to decide if I should post it, or if I should reduce that whole story to about three sentences, which might have made the point just as well while sparing you my own personal Rocky Balboa saga. And it was a distraction, really, from what I had originally sat down to write that day, which was also a story of overcoming anxiety. I think my ambitions to make this a searching account of my experience are overwhelming my ability to just write about what's happening. I'm missing the trees for the forest, as it were.

So today I'll just write about today, and not worry about how it fits into the larger pattern...

Today being Saturday, my hosts at this house in Campinas did the weekly housecleaning. They don't let me contribute much. I'm in the weird position of being some kind of honored guest, the exotic American, and they really want to take care of me. So they cook for me, they don't let me clean, and they're not charging me any rent.

At this point, though, I'm sleeping on a mattress in the living room, where the TV is on most of the time. My computer is set up on a desk near the front window; for the first week I was out here, I was sitting on a cushion next leaning on the wall with my computer on my lap. Now, for a chair, I have a strange wooden structure, on which I've placed another cushion and the zafu that I was given as a gift in Mexico City.

Did I tell you about the zafu?

Zafus are the round black cushions that Zen Buddhists sit on to meditate. It turns out the Bed and Breakfast where I was staying in Mexico City was also maybe the only Zendo in the whole town; I got along very well with the proprietess, and told her that I'd been experimenting with Zen during the last few years but was struggling without a teacher. She said, "you don't need a teacher. Do you have a zafu? Your zafu is your teacher." I told her I didn't have one, and she then insisted that I take one of hers, since she saw I had some spare room in my luggage... And she made me promise to use it, even if I was frustrated and struggling. She reminded me that frustration was part of the path... So I took the zafu and have hauled it around with me the whole time, convinced that receiving it in this way was an event of karmic significance — a great gift. And here in Campinas I've been able to use it. It's almost a regular part of my daily practice, now, with tai chi, stretching, guitar and pandeiro practice. And it's a big struggle, but I'm now trying to just embrace the struggle, and let the practice take root. I think that's what she meant for me to do.

The Zen focus was key to my ability to be funny in the Clown block my first year at Dell'Arte, and it's been key here too. In the Cavalo Marinho class at LUME I was able to achieve more focus and presence than I think I ever did in Blue Lake. That was enormously frustrating at first: did I waste my time there? Or was the (self-imposed) atmospheric pressure of The School a roadblock that has dogged me my whole life? Aren't I supposed to be a better actor now than I was in school?

OK, this was a ramble but I got out a lot of the info I've been struggling for days to write...

Instructive.