Saturday, July 07, 2012

doing nothing


Days and days typing on my laptop.
I'm sick of it !
Enough !
I 've done some great work, written new stories, even some work on "Ze (damn) book".
I've been emailing and piss farting around, organizing my Hard Drive.
I have set myself the goal of going through all my key folders and tossing out the junk. A slimming course for the Hard Dive. When I do that I know I'm getting to the end of my patience.

But I am SICK of the computer.
And I didn't want to walk around town anymore.
Mind says: "listen to a podcast, something uplifting"
è "Don't want anything uplifting."
Mind: "it's good for you."
è "Well bugger that, I don't give a hoot !"
Mind sats: "there you go, wasting time, and then you wonder why you get nothing done. Oh well. I've tried."
è "Yea, you tried, now shut up!"

Mind: ".......can I suggest..... a nice walk ?"
è "Don't feel like a damn nice walk."
Mind: "..............................."
I had originally planned to go for a walk because a walk would give me some much needed exercise, but I really didn't want a walk. So what if I didn't get the right exercise right now ? Stiff. Tough titis.
Living life for medicinal reasons sucks.
It's boring.
It misses the whole point.  

With that I went to sit in the coffee shop around the corner, they have good tea, its clean, and they have solid nice tables.

I hold up one finger very prominently and say "La Payiiiih- ONE !" - one of those super strong, bitter, super sweet Myanmar teas with condensed milk at the bottom.
ONE of them.
For some reason whatever you order in Myanmar, you need to specify the number, there is no obvious default setting.
I'm on my own, no other person is near me, I stand out as the only European foreigner in town, but I still have to say "One" tea. Not two, not three, not ten, just ONE tea please.
Ordering dinner, as a single guy, I still have to say "ONE" steak with chips, as opposed to three or ten.
I mean you never know, I might want to order three steaks and have them all at once. You just never know.
I'm sure if I bought a car, I'd have to say, "Yes, just ONE, car today -  might get two tomorrow, but today just ONE will do for now. "
Would I have to say "ONE" wife ? I wonder.
Ok, in all fairness, I understand, it's how the language works. Some languages just require a counter that's how it is. Anyone learning my mother tongue, German, will have a whole list of things to wonder about. Languages are just what they are, not logical.
Even so called logical languages to talk to a logic machine like a computer, there are so many different types of languages computer engineers argue about which is the 'best' all the time.

I've only been to this teashop only 3 times and already I have 'my spot'.
I sit at 'my spot' near the door, at the corner of the table, and do what ?
Nothing.
"What do you mean nothing. You gotta do something."
"You could do some MORE work, you haven't really done enough yet..." Mind says.
è "Go away, leave me alone. In fact piss off....!!!"
So I sit, doing nothing.
And I sit, doing nothing.
Doing nothing means, having no purpose, nothing to achieve,  nothing to do,  just sitting there.
No plan, not even the plan to have no plan, not even the plan to do nothing.
Just no plan.
Nothing.
BUT:
Doing nothing includes DOING things like:
  • -          Staring into space.
  • -          Watching other people.
  • -          Letting thoughts come and go.
  • -          Staring into space.
  • -          ...................................
  • -          Watching people enter and watching them leave.
  • -          ENJOYing the ambience.


  • -          Just sitting.
  • -          ...................................
  • -          Fiddling with my camera, taking a few pictures, reviewing them, erasing some.
  • -          Fiddling with the mobile phone,
  • -          Watching people.
  • -          Staring into space.
  • -          ........................................
  • -          And so on, and so on, and so on....

I'm not doing nothing because I'm following some wanker's advice on 'How to do nothing', in some erudite book on how to attain inner peace and enlightenment and leave this shithole of a human world and move to the much nicer and cleaner and better, and happier  world of nirvanic enlightenment  
I'm not doing any of that. Though I should perhaps write that book about doing nothing... before someone else does...  - oh they've already written it ?
Does not matter, write another one.

I'm just doing nothing.
There is no method and no recipe, no technique in this.
I'm sure if I attained enlightenment suddenly the learned pundits would writes tons of books about ' just HOW to do nothing' and thus attain enlightenment. And the 'no method' would become a method,  'a path'.

The path that is a path,
is not the path,
The name that can be named,
is not the name.
- Tao Te Ching


Fortunately I don't attain enlightenment and the world is spared all that clever B**S***.

There's something I really love about these places:
It's the  unwritten rule that the customer ASKS if he wants something.
Waiters don't pester or ask, or pressure anyone to leave, or order more.
No funny bugger games.
No bright sweet smile saying "would you like another drink, sire ?" which really means: "you're not spending enough,  order something or piss off".

Waves  of sadness come over me.
Ok, whatever.
I'm lonely.
Ok, whatever.
I can't be bothered fighting it.
I'm thinking of the "Gyro" story, I've been writing for quite some time. For years in fact. Will it ever get done ?
A warm feeling goes through me.
It really excites me, I want to write more about that story.
I feel it and I see it.  
This excitement is deep slow and real. It's not the frantic monkey mind talking now. It's my deeper core. The really deep part of me.
"You can write that once you've  finished, the other stuff you are supposed to do", mind says.
I don't even bother answering, I know that if I do that, the excitement to write the next bit of "Gyro" will be long dead and gone and it'll be just one more chore, one more damn thing 'TODO'.
Lots of ideas about what to write in "Gyro", flow through my mind.

All this time I'm staring into space,  watching others.

"Jumble dooon, makelemat, blahhh blahh blahh..." one of my neighbours asks me.
"Australia."
He smiles, yep that was what he asked me.
How did I know ?
I didn't.
Lucky guess, -  I guess.
He has a white skull cap and an orange beard. One day I'm gonna figure out what orange coloured hair means.
But not today.

The call to prayer sounds next door, slowly the guys with white caps get up and go into the mosque.
I'm now the only guy sitting.
Time to do some more nothing.

Sit and let the thoughts come and let the thoughts go.
Now that I think of it, I guess this is a kind of meditation, 'teashop meditation' without any rules. Nothing formal.
But give it a few years and there'll be books on it.
And the Poobaah's will argue about the correct way to do 'teashop meditation' a la Sayargyi Haiko, who attained enlightenment in a teashop in Dawei.

"Oh. You never did attain enlightenment in the teashop. "
That's right.
Lucky  
:-)

Friday, July 06, 2012

the lessons of life seen in each country

A friend  sent me this picture, about the health debate in the US 
 

























My reply was:
the entrenched lobby groups are very strong, they like their profits....

was thinking about the situation in the US the other day: it makes sense if one
sees it as a wild west, first come, take best seats, make sure the others who come later dont take them gooddies from ya... that mentality is still very strong....

frontier, fort, defend... is the underlying motto.


h




Hi,
      yes its the frontier mentality "look after yourself"  and "if you fall behind it's your fault", so we see people with mental problems living in cardboard boxes because the state wont help them.

To misquote Spok  from Star Trek " It's civilization Jim but not as we know it."


  regards  P



I thought about all this this morning, as the rain pissed bucketed poured down in this little country town of Dawei. ....
and it came to me like this: if we are all part of the greater collective sub/un/higher consciousness then each country and group of humans take a different part of the lessons of life and go to the very limits....
Yankee land has taken one set of lessons,
Aussie land another,
Myanmar yet another set of lessons. 
etc...

we can learn from each other, but each group takes one aspect and explores it,
exploring means - seeing the light and dark, seeing where it works and where things f*** up...and how and why....

thinking like this helps me make some kind of sense of the crazy, amazing human world we live in... and helps me be kinder to myself too.
link below to a nice experience in this country town.
http://heikorudolph.blogspot.com/2012/07/kind-heart-story-human-first.html