Contrasting Fields

It's a cold, blustery day here in Arlington and I've gotten up early like I used to when I was doing my blog regularly and I had the urge to get started again. Not much has changed. I'm still writing about myself with a vengeance (er, well, we've just gotten started, I can't tell for sure, we'll see). That might be a turn off to some people, but I know that some of my favorite writers have written in the first person, like Henry Miller. Actually, I haven't read Henry Miller for at least ten years, but I was into him for a long time, reading his books and even his biographies. I loved when he wrote about his writer's life - his big desk, his oriental robe and the quotes of wisdom taped to his walls and the sense of peace, joy and relaxation he felt in his writer's studio in Brooklyn, with his feet up on his desk, contemplating life.

So, here I am, with that inspirational image in my head. What shall I do with it? That image is not so different from my life, in it's essence. I don't have big desk to put my feet up on, but I have the sense of joy, peace and relaxation at times when I sit in my big chair and contemplate things. And, I have been writing daily, if not on this blog, then in my computer journal. I've felt like taking things more inwardly and less publicly of late. The thought of blogging has been too formidable to consider. The endless writing in anonymity, it can get a little creepy, going so apparently unnoticed after putting myself out there so completely, or as completely as I do. There's always the possibility for more. But my intent is to be completely open and transparent when I write. I see no reason to hide anything, except for references that no one will know. Considering that, this writing seems pretty tame, I think. There are few juicy details about my life, which seems to make sense - my life goes along pretty much without to many unusual or exciting elements, or at least that's how it seems without considering it too closely, on my part. That's a belief about my life, which has built up over years of seeming smooth runningness. If something did happen to shake things up, it might go unnoticed by me due to my beliefs.

Well, something did happen to me a few weeks back. A guy yelled at me on the street for not reading something that he presented me with after asking me intrusive questions about my ethnicity. He was a stranger, but he was getting pretty personal and something in me didn't want to go along with what he was doing regarding the piece of paper he had put in my hand. This caused a complete turnaround in his friendliness and he became enraged and laid into me with ethnic epithets. At that point, I simply walked away, I was not going to continue to be around that kind of energy. Fortunately, he didn't follow. It did take a bit of work to throw off his negative energy, but soon, I achieved a sense of resolution with him in my mind. I don't see this as a random thing. I view it as something attracted into my life based on the thoughts and feelings I had been holding. That morning I had been writing a fairly charged entry in my journal describing desires I had been choosing not to act on and I also had been in a situation in a class related to my ethnicity that stimulated some strong feelings in me that I believe led up to this. The scene was ripe for someone to come into my life and mirror my conflicts. I realize that I could go into this deeper here, but I want to keep things on an even keel and, at the risk of being tepid, I'll let it go at that.

So, that pretty much sums it up. I choose to keep things on the surface, rather than going deeper, thus my relatively uneventful punctuated by a rare event of strong emotion reflected back to me. I realize that I have not fulfilled my ideals of openness in a way, but, on the other hand I have shown myself in relation to the situation I encountered, while leaving out details of the other's behavior, which I don't want to recreate by writing them here. I'm not really concerned about others' behavior, I just care about who I am and who I am becoming. That keeps things simple and focused the essentials. Others are contrasting fields in relation to which I can experience ultimate reality. Or, rather, the illusions someone created of judgment and hate are the contrasting fields through which I can experience nonjudgment and love.