Sunday, November 15, 2009

Wanting to quit

Wanting to quit. Interesting feeling. Not wanting to die. Not wanting to quit life. Not wanting to quit existing. Just quit. No quit what. No when. No why. Just quit. Nothing else. Just quit.

But what does that mean, to me, at least? I don't know. It's not quit living, that's not the thought, the feeling or the emotion. Not resignation, defeat, leaving, going, whatever else. Just the simple word. Quit.

It's the feeling. To sit down and just let life go by. It's the feeling. To sit there with a blank mind looking out with no thought, feeling or emotion. Just sitting.

To get up and walk, just walk, and keeping walking, nowhere, just going one foot at a time somewhere except here. To hope it never ends and I never tire.

To stand up and let life just drain from me, onto the floor. To feel empty, totally empty, nothing. To sit in the pre-dawn darkness and hope the sun never rises, to feel the darkness surround and enveloe me, and dissolve into it.

To stand surrounded by the light with the edge of the sun just below the horizon spreading all around. To feel the cold just before the first rays hits my face. To feel the light and warmth of the first rays of the sun. To feel the light just go through me forever. To feel the cold of the morning slowly slip away with the darkness.

To stand in the forest during a rainstorm. To feel the rain fall. Constant, never ceasing, never letting, just falling. To feel it on and around me. The sound against me. The smell. The feel. To disappear in it and into it. Into everything else. Nothing else, just rain.

To stand in a snowstorm surrounded by white. Everywhere. To feel the blizzard, the snow swirling all around finding me, to settle on me, and dissappear into the white. To be lost in the white. And the snow.

To stand in the middle of a stream like a boulder, the water flowing over and around me, not knowing anything else. To feel the cold, flowing water wearing me down, slowly. moving me during floods like all the rocks and boulders. To stop anew somewhere, nowhere but still in the stream, like nothing happened.

To stand in desert surrounded by sand. The heat, the wind, and the sand. Nothing else. Just another particle on the wind. To be one of the vastness of openness where all is sand, wind, heat and time. Nothing else.

To sit on the edge of the Grand Canyon, the depth of time below, the vastness of space around, and the sky above. To know time has been, time is and time will always be. And be there for a moment, lost with the rest of everything and lost in time with everything.

To quit being and just be. Nothing more. Just be. No thought, No feeling. No emotion. The spiriting wanting. The soul wondering. The mind empty. The body just there. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just nothing.

To quit. To feel alive.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Inside a cloud


I was trying to think of a way to describe my experience with Dythymia, and I would drawn to the idea when people visit Paradise in Mt. Rainier NP. Paradise is as the name implies, wonderful and beautiful, and through the sunmer it's majestic. Many people go there during the summer and don't see the other seasons and many other different times there and in the NP.

I've been there when the clouds cover the region and lose the mountain from view. And being there you realize you standing inside a cloud, a massive storm front cloud, surrounded by everything cloud. And your visibility, if you're lucky, is a few hundred feet at best. And after a minute you feel the water droplets encasing you into the cloud itself. You become part of the cloud.

I's always an amazing feeling then and there. To just stand there and feel the cloud envelope you and the water forms on your clothes, your (exposed) skin, and for me, my glasses. It doesn't matter to wipe it off as it reforms almost as quickly. The cloud simply makes you one of the object inside it and a part of it. You're lost in and being part of the cloud.

That's what it's like. Except the cloud is the world and life, engulfiing you in a world surrouded on all sides by the world you can't see out. You can only feel the immediate world around, hanging on you, engulfing you, and becoming you. You and the world merge into the one where all you see and know is the world as a cloud. Everything else is gone, long outside the cloud, beyond your horizon, and even your imagination and memory.

The cloud is outside and iinside of you. You become a cloud within a cloud, lost when the inside and outside merge into one, including you, your mind, your heart, all of you. You know and feel what is and yet you know it's just the situation and circumstance. You know you're in a cloud, and yet there is nothing yhou can do or think to change it.

You can only stand there and wait. Let things pass and the weather will change to rrain, snow or sunshine. You don't know because the cloud doesn't know what will happen. That's determined by the situation and circumstances outside the cloud and you. You can change some things, even your emotions, feelings and thoughts, but always inside and surrounded by the cloud.

There is no out. Mentally walk as you want, it's doesn't change. The cloud doesn't follow you, it's always just there, More cloud. And then there will be a moment when you think and feel like a cloud. The cloud. The one you're in and the one you are. But then everything doesn't feel bad, not even just what is, but ok. Comfort.

Your whole world isn't a cloud but a whole universe. Your universe. And it's suddenly not a cloud but that whole universe. You realize it goes on forever, not restricted but something of itself and connected to everything else. It hasn't changed. You have. And it's not bad or sad. Just is and what it is. What you are.

And then it's no longer a cloud. Others, outside, may see or think it's a cloud. That's all they see, the cloud and you somewhere deep inside, lost to them and the world. But it's not. It's a world just different from theirs. It's yours, the cloud and you, and now you know it will be and get better, sunshine or not.

You don't need sunshine. You know the cloud isn't the limitation to you, it's just where you are for the moment, and you know it won't last when weather changes. You've seen and felt the cloud from the inside, You've been a part of it. And even when the sun comes, you'll remember the cloud and what it was like, how it felt, how it enveloped you, and how you found solace and understanding, of the cloud and of yourself.

And the next time, you'll know and learn again and anew about the inside of clouds.