Posts tagged with "weather"

Helpless Wondering

I’m almost ready for spring. The win­ter isn’t get­ting on my nerves quite yet. The only thing I miss right now is being able to dri­ve com­fort­ably with­out a heavy coat on.

I’ve been feel­ing ter­ri­bly help­less late­ly. There are so many things in my life that are out of my con­trol — health, love, mon­ey, work — that I’ve actu­al­ly con­sid­ered doing a thought record for the first time since I fin­ished ther­a­py. Last week I woke up chok­ing in the mid­dle of the night. Then half way through the day I start­ed devel­op­ing mod­er­ate chest pains. I try not to wor­ry when I’m awake, but at night, in my sleep, every­thing comes out. Maybe every­thing is start­ing to get to me.

I want things to hap­pen quick­ly. I’m impa­tient. I want to be proac­tive, but there’s not much I can do. Verse 42 of the Tao Te Ching has been speak­ing to me:

Who knows what fate may bring —
  one day your loss may be your for­tune
  one day your for­tune may be your loss

While I usu­al­ly crave the flux between con­stan­cy and change, I pre­fer it in one thing at a time. It feels like I’m going through anoth­er tran­si­tion peri­od. Nothing around me is set­tled.

All I can do is wait to see where I end up.

Seasonal Cycle

It’s been snow­ing for three days now, the first real snow­fall of the sea­son. It’s a won­der­ful feel­ing to look out­side and see it falling1. Winter brings it’s own sort of cozi­ness, like the way sun is for sports and rain is for movies.

A lot of peo­ple don’t like the win­ter, whether it’s because they get tired shov­el­ing, they’re late from clean­ing the car, they don’t like deal­ing with the messi­ness, or they sim­ply hate being cold. To me, it’s all part and par­cel of liv­ing in the Great White North. The sum­mer brings as many unpleas­ant issues — burn­ing car seats, sti­fling heat, unavoid­able sweat. I would­n’t be able to appre­ci­ate one if it was­n’t for the oth­er.

I tend to get tired of the weath­er only at the end of each sea­son, because they seem to drag on for so long2. It’s a nev­er-end­ing cycle of enjoy­ing the new sea­son, then miss­ing the next one.

There’s this great poem by Shioh T’ao I think of when try­ing to explain this:

Spring comes, and I look at the birds;
Summer comes, and I take a bath in the stream;
Autumn comes, and I climb to the top of the moun­tain;
Winter comes, and I make the most of the sun­light for warmth.
This is how I savor the pas­sage of the sea­sons.

My ver­sion would go some­thing like this:

Spring comes, and I admire the blos­som­ing fem­i­nine beau­ty;
Summer comes, and I go for a dri­ve;
Autumn comes, and I fall in love with every­thing;
Winter comes, and I cher­ish the warmth.
This is how I savor the pas­sage of the sea­sons.

This is why I love Canada. I would­n’t want to live any­where else.

For now, I’m enjoy­ing the snow.

  1. Admittedly, it’s been a mild win­ter so far; maybe I’ll feel dif­fer­ent­ly when I have to scrape ice off my wind­shield at ‑40°C. [↩]
  2. There’s a say­ing that Canada has only two sea­sons — win­ter and con­struc­tion. [↩]

Nylon Smile

In any case, I’ve been work­ing on my projects, though most­ly try­ing to fin­ish the ones I’ve start­ed. Sometimes it seems like there’s no end. Aside from an awe­some Friday night (and an hour after din­ner on Saturday night try­ing to digest a big meal), I’ve been work­ing non-stop this week­end.

At the very least, the days have brought much rain, and even more inspi­ra­tion. I miss the snow, but the rain sat­is­fies for now. I’m not even sure if I like how ear­ly the sun sets at this time of year. Both day and night affect the mind in dif­fer­ent ways, bring­ing out (or mask­ing) dif­fer­ent parts of you that you for­got were there. Each has its own impor­tance.

At one point, I real­ized that life is a series of Jens, from win­ter to win­ter.

There’s been much music too, so much that I’m think­ing about start­ing up a pod­cast again. But it’s anoth­er project, anoth­er idea I have yet to do.

I could have writ­ten so much more about each one of these top­ics, but I tried to keep digres­sion to a min­i­mum. They’d end up being full-blown entries of their own, and I’d nev­er fin­ish writ­ing any­thing. For these entries, the ones that ram­ble about no sub­ject in par­tic­u­lar, I always look for lyrics, or titles, or snip­pets from oth­er peo­ple’s entries that sort of explain the mood I’m in. Yep.

I’ve been feel­ing dis­con­nect­ed, some­what for­get­ting my Taoist teach­ings. This is prob­a­bly a good thing, as I tend to be focused on the thought and the­o­ries too often, and not enough on the appli­ca­tion.

There’s a fine line between res­ig­na­tion and accep­tance. But some­times I feel like I’ve fall­en face-first to one side.

To be hon­est, I’ve been writ­ing this entry for over a week now, but my thoughts and ideas keep branch­ing out. Every time I sit down at the com­put­er, I delete some­thing that’s lost rel­e­vance, and add some­thing more. Like this.

A Cold And Grey Summer Day

My room is a mess, a side-effect of my busy sched­ule. I should be clean­ing. Hell, I should be sleep­ing, but I’d rather write instead, see­ing as how I haven’t had a chance in four days. It would appear as if I’m going through some sort of expres­sion with­draw­al.

Vincent Gallo prac­ti­cal­ly wrote this entry for me.

I had When by Vincent Gallo play­ing here.

(If you’re going to lis­ten to this song, turn the lights down, or at least close your eyes. Remove your­self of any ambi­ent noise. Breathe slow­ly for 30 sec­onds before play­ing it. This song deserves it. You deserve it.)

Even though it went up to 28°C today, the morn­ing start­ed cold and calm. There was so much mois­ture in the air that one could taste the grey.

It made me strange­ly sto­ic when I left the house. Something about the whether that remind­ed me of how com­fort­ing it can be to feel sad. It’s as if the earth had decid­ed to com­pli­ment my mood with cloud cov­er. I can’t even explain the cause of my sad­ness, and can only guess that real­iza­tion and accep­tance are set­ting in. The only sav­ing grace is that I feel con­fi­dent enough to pick myself up and move on. Not that I want to do it alone right now. Wish I had the option.

As the day dragged on, things start­ed to wear me down. Exhaustion dried my eyes. I kept try­ing to pick myself up, kept try­ing to hide my sigh­ing sad­ness from those around me, to no avail.

Wish I had a smile in my wardrobe for days like this.

Hold Fast

I was late for work this morn­ing. The weath­er was beau­ti­ful on the dri­ve in. There were thick, dark clouds hang­ing omi­nous­ly in the dis­tance and high in the sky, but the sun was out, bathing every­thing in bright­ness. The wind was refresh­ing­ly cool, so I had to roll the win­dows down.

In anoth­er weird phase late­ly. Hyper again. Currently feel­ing this part from verse 35 of the Tao Te Jing:

Hold fast to the Great Form with­in and let the world pass as it may
Then the changes of life will not bring pain but con­tent­ment, joy, and well-being

Sometimes, I feel like I’m being test­ed. It has­n’t real­ly been going bad­ly, but it’s cer­tain­ly a mix of ups and downs, res­o­lu­tions and frus­tra­tions.

I start­ed to notice that I’ve been talk­ing to myself when alone. Sometimes I laugh aloud too. I once read an arti­cle about a young man who did a solo transat­lantic jour­ney by boat that took sev­er­al weeks, and he said that talk­ing to your­self is nor­mal; it’s when you start to answer your own ques­tions that you should be wor­ried. I think I’ll be alright.

I’ve come to accept the way things have turned out. I’ve felt this way before, but it nev­er last­ed more than a cou­ple months, some­thing that hap­pens when I lose sight of the tao. Hopefully it won’t be so ephemer­al this time. I just need to remem­ber that things will con­tin­ue to work out on their own. To stop try­ing to force things to hap­pen. To breathe.

And to hold fast to the way that can­not be walked.