Tag Archives: balance

Twenty-three years … 9/11

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The vicissitudes of life create pathways of a present tense of existence.

One asks have I performed this or that task? Met the needed deadlines? Balanced all of the varying strands to ensure that I am reasonably on point in concert with the strains and stresses of any given day?

There are, however, those moments when free in mind and spirt I will walk along Brooklyn Bridge Park and in glancing up notice the sky. It is when I cannot help but gasp at the absence of my twin towers of memory.

They were the locating beacon points of the City I love. The edifices that always startled my imagination when I looked up to grasp their presence rising above the city scape.

And they always were a grand surprise. Whether shrouded in mist with the early glow of light on a rainy evening, or majestic as I would walk in and amongst them. Marveling at their symmetry and the quietude of the plaza where they stood so gracefully.

Their loss is also incalculable. So many lives snuffed out on the day they fell and in the succeeding years as first responders have succumbed to 9-11 illnesses.

But there is also the loss of how wars played out in their name leading to yet more death and destruction and a sense of existential threat and imbalance I would argue the USA has yet to recover from.

Were we to enable the symbol of symmetry again, we might, perhaps find ourselves. Understand that while we must defend, we must also have the balance of sure-footedness. That existential threat can be overcome by letting go of our attachment to fear of the unknown. That by embracing our past and our present, we can feel more confident in our future.

I still ache for the towers because they are my memory of place, not from some nostalgic sense, but for a sensibility that embraces the surprise and joy of seeing an old friend made new again. Their absence is also the symbol of a kind of anger and tactic of terror I eschew at every turn. Yes. I understand the politics of terror. It is out of a very old play book. What I have always hoped for and continue to strive for though is a world where such plays are no longer necessary. Perhaps I remain naive to think that such things can exist–but in my city of memory they do exist as two giant towers to the sun that bring light and a boundless sense of joy into being.

Sixth day

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Sixth day

 

The Sixth Day of Creation, 1926 Woodcut, M. C. Escher

 

This is my sixth morning of yoga and I’m thinking am I nuts to get up even earlier than way before dawn to do this??

Sure that meditation-y feeling is nice and it really is quite amazing to think that the body can hit such poses when one is fighting off dreamland but please, I need several more hours in the day just to do this sort of stuff because I actually do *not* think that sleep is overrated!

So I start thinking of it this way.

Did I really need to watch two episodes of Battlestar Gallactica (Season 1 of the reboot from the SF channel-really good) when I came home from work yesterday?  Yes, I acknowledge that I didn’t exactly “watch” per se, but made dinner for my family, removed all the ornaments from the Christmas Tree, took down the lights and packed everything.  So that’s “fair,” right?  So why do I feel “bad” about it?  Why do I insert the “but,” the — but I could have been doing yoga, shadow boxing, lifting weights, reading, paying bills, doing laundry.

Oy!  Balance!  What’s a person to do?

As with a lot of people I know there is way too much going on from day to day: a full day’s work, the business side of one’s domestic life, family time — not to mention attempting to keep oneself in some sort of physical “shape,” plus whatever other stuff is out there for one’s own personal growth.  Say taking classes, writing, gym time, running/walking/hiking/biking, doing pottery, painting, reading … and so on.

It all brings me to the notion that many of us live in a sort of permanent sixth day.

We wake-up much too early, go about creating the world, get to bed much too late and rather than taking a day of rest, get up for yet another day of creating the world.

It brings to mind that we are all like Atlas.  We are over-scheduled, over-stressed and over-worked — not in and of itself a “bad” thing so much as the fact that we are all so tired and need a space to slow it down; the chance to say, the seventh day is not a bad idea after all.  And no it doesn’t mean that one has to get “religion”  and go running off to a house of worship, rather, it’s a way to acknowledge that when one is working hard, very hard for that matter, it is A-OKAY to be a slug for a day.  Further, how one structures that seventh day is really, ultimately up to oneself.

For religious Jews, the seventh day is a weekly holiday.  One eats a huge meal with family, sings, dances, prays, and then sits around till the end of the sabbath period.  I’m oversimplifying, but the kernel of the idea is that we all owe ourselves some rest, if nothing else than to be restored enough to fight the next battle with our wits about us.

It’s a lesson that true athletes know.  The body can only be pushed so far before it needs rest.  And so with all of us as an everyday experience.  We need balance and part of that balance is closing the shutters and putting up the sign that says, “gone fishing.”