A twisted sense of time
21/07/2003 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIzzie has had a most wonderful week...especially Saturday. Usually I work afternoons 3-9pm at my house elf job at what the muggles would call a nursing home but gazing through those emerald green glasses it becomes "St Salazar's Sanatorium for Superannuated Sorceror's". Saturday nights I do not return to the lair but rather stay at my parent's place. (I usually refer to them as the Dursleys)
For some strange reason I was put on the morning shift for Saturday which pleased me enormously as it was such a beautiful day.
The question was..which place would I lurk for such a gorgeous afternoon. Sunset at the beach would be nice but the Floo transport network from there to the Dursley house is not too good. Then there would be the Zoo and St Brutus which is not too far from the train station wheree the Wizard Express departs from. Both of these two places are on direct bus routes but one takes 3 times as long to get to as the other.
But being exactly four weeks since first perusing the Precioussss...and being unable to resist the call of the inner creatures to yet again visit their sacred site..the zoo got delayed for another day.
But what really amuses Izzie...the first part of the mission is to get from work at 1pm and be outside the bus stop for 2pm or else wait an hour for the next one...Buses don't run as frequently on weekends.
I got on my bike, arrived home 15 mins later, went upstairs to have a shower and wash my curly twisted snaky mass of curls, got the usual supplies of bread, cheese and wine for my picnic and then swept the floor and did the dishes.
This sounds like no big deal..but it sure is. I did all this stuff...never in a rush...at Izzie's slow snaky pace and never doubted for one minute that I would be on that bus for just after 2pm.
Not too long ago in the dark demented past...and in those days I had a car...would spend the whole morning worrying..will I get out by 1pm...what if..this..what if that...I would be muttering to myself the whole time about the stupidity of setting such impossible deadlines, rush around like a headless chook and get more and more agitated. And would of course invariably miss the bus and spend the rest of the afternoon moping and having myself a little pity party. (Why didn't I drive there? Izzie hates driving and stayed within a small area between work and home. Driving any where else was only when I would be truly desperate)
I just could not help but think of a book I was reading in those dark days called "Time shifting" by a Dr Rechtschaffen. Fascinating...especially the concepts of entrainment...how people's pace ends up matching their environment..and also the use of ritual. He particularly emphasized the tendency of people in our rushed society to never be in the present moment but always somewhere else. He talked about various techniques to escape this trap. The ever present message was "Be here now." As the Buddhists would say....Awareness, awareness awareness... and us more paranoid suspicious serpents..."Constant Vigilance"
But while all this was ever so interesting and intuitively made sense, Iz could not help but think....oh that's alright for you to say, easier said than done etc. You see, Izzie was a compulsive and obsessive worrier and was mostly anywhere but the present moment. In the rare photos of myself, I always looked grumpy and like a frantic rat in a treadmill.
The harder I tried to move forward the further backwards I went.
But one day, without any effort on my part, the creatures of the past who kept me on the treadmill, the whinging whining critical voices who were never satisfied no matter how hard I tried to please them, they suddenly disapparated and I found myself in the present and have been there for most of the time since. Oh, I do occasionally get led astray but always know that I can get back to the present because I am there so often now that it is so much easier to find my way back.
It was two days after this happened that I began to suspect something had radically changed but after two weeks I knew it for sure. I had arranged to meet a friend at the zoo for lunch. It was an icky sticky revoltingly hot and humid day. Normally would have spent the whole morning bitching how unfair it was to have such horrid weather...what these days I call awfulizing. And even if it was a nice day I could get upset thinking about the heatwave and 90% humidity predicted for next week.
But as it was, I noticed it was hot and sticky, accepted it instead of resisting it and it did not bother me at all after that. I mean.. it was not the weather that had changed but my reaction to it. Strange... this year we had several days in a row of 39-41c and it hardly affected me at all. It really did feel like I was surrounded by some sort of teflon shield reflecting off all the nasties... either human or natural.
To this day I still do not understand it. But when it first happened ..the vivid memories of how awful life was only a few days previously was enough to have me waking up every morning jumping for joy and so happy to be alive and wondering where on earth all this new found energy and contentment was coming from. Eventually the absence of the dementors and other monsters began to be the normal state of affairs which it still pretty much is today.
But still, I do remember how it was used to be and never ever want to take what I have now for granted.
These days when I look at those books...I think to myself...Now it all makes sense. Why was I never able to see it before. I guess it is true that the teacher appears when the student is ready.
(Iz will be back later to talk about what she got up to after catching the bus)
For some strange reason I was put on the morning shift for Saturday which pleased me enormously as it was such a beautiful day.
The question was..which place would I lurk for such a gorgeous afternoon. Sunset at the beach would be nice but the Floo transport network from there to the Dursley house is not too good. Then there would be the Zoo and St Brutus which is not too far from the train station wheree the Wizard Express departs from. Both of these two places are on direct bus routes but one takes 3 times as long to get to as the other.
But being exactly four weeks since first perusing the Precioussss...and being unable to resist the call of the inner creatures to yet again visit their sacred site..the zoo got delayed for another day.
But what really amuses Izzie...the first part of the mission is to get from work at 1pm and be outside the bus stop for 2pm or else wait an hour for the next one...Buses don't run as frequently on weekends.
I got on my bike, arrived home 15 mins later, went upstairs to have a shower and wash my curly twisted snaky mass of curls, got the usual supplies of bread, cheese and wine for my picnic and then swept the floor and did the dishes.
This sounds like no big deal..but it sure is. I did all this stuff...never in a rush...at Izzie's slow snaky pace and never doubted for one minute that I would be on that bus for just after 2pm.
Not too long ago in the dark demented past...and in those days I had a car...would spend the whole morning worrying..will I get out by 1pm...what if..this..what if that...I would be muttering to myself the whole time about the stupidity of setting such impossible deadlines, rush around like a headless chook and get more and more agitated. And would of course invariably miss the bus and spend the rest of the afternoon moping and having myself a little pity party. (Why didn't I drive there? Izzie hates driving and stayed within a small area between work and home. Driving any where else was only when I would be truly desperate)
I just could not help but think of a book I was reading in those dark days called "Time shifting" by a Dr Rechtschaffen. Fascinating...especially the concepts of entrainment...how people's pace ends up matching their environment..and also the use of ritual. He particularly emphasized the tendency of people in our rushed society to never be in the present moment but always somewhere else. He talked about various techniques to escape this trap. The ever present message was "Be here now." As the Buddhists would say....Awareness, awareness awareness... and us more paranoid suspicious serpents..."Constant Vigilance"
But while all this was ever so interesting and intuitively made sense, Iz could not help but think....oh that's alright for you to say, easier said than done etc. You see, Izzie was a compulsive and obsessive worrier and was mostly anywhere but the present moment. In the rare photos of myself, I always looked grumpy and like a frantic rat in a treadmill.
The harder I tried to move forward the further backwards I went.
But one day, without any effort on my part, the creatures of the past who kept me on the treadmill, the whinging whining critical voices who were never satisfied no matter how hard I tried to please them, they suddenly disapparated and I found myself in the present and have been there for most of the time since. Oh, I do occasionally get led astray but always know that I can get back to the present because I am there so often now that it is so much easier to find my way back.
It was two days after this happened that I began to suspect something had radically changed but after two weeks I knew it for sure. I had arranged to meet a friend at the zoo for lunch. It was an icky sticky revoltingly hot and humid day. Normally would have spent the whole morning bitching how unfair it was to have such horrid weather...what these days I call awfulizing. And even if it was a nice day I could get upset thinking about the heatwave and 90% humidity predicted for next week.
But as it was, I noticed it was hot and sticky, accepted it instead of resisting it and it did not bother me at all after that. I mean.. it was not the weather that had changed but my reaction to it. Strange... this year we had several days in a row of 39-41c and it hardly affected me at all. It really did feel like I was surrounded by some sort of teflon shield reflecting off all the nasties... either human or natural.
To this day I still do not understand it. But when it first happened ..the vivid memories of how awful life was only a few days previously was enough to have me waking up every morning jumping for joy and so happy to be alive and wondering where on earth all this new found energy and contentment was coming from. Eventually the absence of the dementors and other monsters began to be the normal state of affairs which it still pretty much is today.
But still, I do remember how it was used to be and never ever want to take what I have now for granted.
These days when I look at those books...I think to myself...Now it all makes sense. Why was I never able to see it before. I guess it is true that the teacher appears when the student is ready.
(Iz will be back later to talk about what she got up to after catching the bus)
