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Snowballing

Abby Sarah's picture

It’s been a crazy last few days. I avoided going to my site for a while because I had so much on my mind. I didn’t trust my ability to go and observe, nor did I have any faith in my capacity to just be, when my head felt like it might explode from snowballing anxieties, doubts and frustrations. Finally, I decided to just go and let it snowball. So I apologize if this had little to do with the site and just leaves you hanging in the madhouse of my head. I left class on Thursday more than a little frustrated—not at the class, but at my inability to articulate anything I was trying to argue. I meant to meditate on that at my site, but once there I couldn’t even remember what it was that I was frustrated about. It was all faded and seemed like it was eons ago. I wish I could say that my visit cleared my head. It was calming on some level, with the 40 degree feeling like a spring day against the ridiculous cold of the past week. But still my mind tripped over itself, tense and anxious. I found myself on one train of thought and then another and by the time a bird chirped or I could hear a car all the way in the parking lot, I realized that I’d been staring at the same patch of snow for a long time without ever really seeing it. That was why I was afraid to go out in the first place. Usually I want to observe and explore and extrapolate and even think about how I might represent the experience, but this week I felt stuck. I envision it as a type of inertia. I find myself thinking or doing something and don’t even realize that I've been doing nothing more than that for a long while, and yet to switch gears feels like trudging through molasses. It’s easier to just stare at the snow patch and lose myself in myself than it is turn any sort of analytical eye towards the world around me. 

Comments

Anne Dalke's picture

No need to be 'analytical,' Abby--the assignment is just to show up, weekly, observe what happens, and record that in some form for the rest of us to observe, in turn....

What I'm observing is, first, your cascade of metaphors--"snowballing," "tripping," "truding through molasses"...and I am also very struck by the notion of your "losing yourself in yourself," unable to lose yourself in your site...

The phrase "ridiculous cold" also caught my attention. Can cold be "ridiculous"? What makes cold "laughable"? Is it our expectation that we can always move comfortably through the world, unimpeded by the weather? (Or: are we the ridiculous ones?)