Panic

I am opperating right now under the influence of panic. There are no lions after me. I am not being shot at. I just don’t want to work. When we feel a strong emotion, we feel it in our bodies. Strong emotion is associated with the heart or the gut or the head. When you are angry you blow your top. Your heart breaks when you are sad. Butterflies in your belly. So I am in a sort of panic state right now - and with that there are feelings of being found out - of being revealed. Someone might see through my suit of armor and question my substantiality. So maybe in the future you will be able to get meta data about every letter you see on a page. You could right click on a letter in one of these words and a context sensitive menu would pop up and you would be able to see how much force was used to press the key. You would see that I am pressing the keys very hard because I am in a complete panic. Well, I guess its not a complete panic because I’m pretty much just feeling it in my body. I’m not pulling at my gums and kicking the doors. I did make a little whiney noise - real quiet at one point. I have that under control now. It’s nice to be able to have it out with a keyboard. It beats stripping off my clothes and running into the street. That would be a real change of pace - from “sitting at my desk fretting that I’m just not into working today” to “scraping my naked theighs as I scale cyclone fencing trying to avoid arrest”. That’s usually why I freak out, its a change of pace. I need to get some mittens for this office I work in. A lady here has hot flashes so she turns the AC down to 68 degrees.

Driving down the road with all the road goers
Mind slows down, speeds up, checks for danger
The road goes with the traffic
stretching canvas, looks like moving cars!
Or how are we to take it today?

My father went to AA where they told him that when he was at his lowest - when things were the bleakest and most confusing, that he should, ‘do the next indicated thing’. Just plan to the next indicated thing and don’t get mired down in the big picture. Like in order to not be an alchoholic today you need to brush your teeth. Like that’s it. Then when you are done brushing, do the next indicated thing. It’s actually really helpful. If you are freaking out and kind of freezing up, just move your mind to something simple. Gosh, if it’s bad enough, if you are wild enough, the next indicated thing might be, ‘breathe in’ then, ‘breathe out’. So that is pretty good advice that i think transcends freaking out. Meditation is good training to get you back to the essentials. On one level it is just that - you are sitting there, you are breathing. It is enough. In a very real way everything beyond that is utter complication. I mean, that’s why we have an idea of grace. Because this world is akward and anyone who moves through it without bashing into something is graceful. I don’t know if I would be considered graceful or not. I don’t bump into things too much or fall down too much. But my mind crashes around a lot, ungracefully. Is gracefullness only an asthetic quality?

Back to my panic, which I just forgot about. I’ll induce it again in a moment. Next indicated thing: PANIC!