Drifting Down

Hard to start again.

I generally go backwards, when I'm on vacation. Stop meditating. Hit the taverns. Take up many more projects than I can accomplish, and fret because I can't finish them.

I guess the fact that I haven't hit the taverns, so far, is progress of a sort. If going backwards a bit more slowly can be viewed as progress. And soon I'll be back at work.

The funny thing, of course, is that while at work I imagine that I would have more time, and be less tense, and do more of the things I feel I should do (exercise, meditation), if only I didn't have to work. The reverse is true.

I have been working feverishly at my Chinese. Fashioning an elaborate system for memorizing characters. Generating pages and pages of meaningless strings of characters, as I practice, practice, practice.

-- "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

-- "Practice, man, practice."

But only if you practice at something you are eventually going to do for real, yes?

A scrap of tissue paper twisting slowly in the air down from the roof of 14th story of a building, riding the thermals, rippling and spinning. That's my mind, drifting away from the Dharma. It floats gradually, noiselessly, but inevitably, confusionward.