Today

It's chilly this morning after a hard frost. The mesa is starting to close up, contract. There was a flurry of bird activity a few days ago; I may have even seen a small flock of bluebirds resting on the yucca branches before continuing their migration. Just a fleeting flash of blue in the corner of my eyes, then faded into the grassland again. And the meadowlarks were full of song a few days ago. Mark thinks that they never left but it seems to me that they disappeared during the hot summer months and came back only a few days ago, also on their migratory path to somewhere else. It's always a surprise to be walking along the path and hear the clear trill of the meadowlark coming from what sounds like only a couple of feet from where you are. But they're clever ventriloquists and if you look hard into the grasses you can usually spot them sitting high on a stem, 100 feet away. When I was a new mesa-dweller I would stop walking and peer into the grass near the path, convinced that the bird was right there. Now I know better and it still thrills me.

Yesterday I took part in a 2-hour meditation practice at Naropa, one in a series of happenings during Community Practice Day. All regular university business stops and people come together to experience various types of contemplative practice. The meditation happened in a big room with about 100 mats and cushions arranged on the floor. People were called to the room by a gong and found their seat. The 10-15 minute seated meditation sessions were interspersed with walking meditations, led by a soft-spoken woman who sounded like an NPR commentator. Once I discovered how to arrange my legs so as not to develop cramps I was able to sit still for the duration. But my mind...how my mind loves to go into overdrive when it's quiet. I know this is common among new meditators so I tried hard to not go to a judgmental place. Breathe in, breathe out. Sooooo....hummmm.

During the walking meditation we walked slowly and deliberately, hands at waist, eyes softly down. Let the thoughts go, just be here now. Two circles of walkers snaked around the room, passing each other in the middle. I kept thinking about the security lines at Denver International, where you walk slowly and deliberately back and forth in the corrals, gaze diverted. You pass the same people again and again but you rarely acknowledge them or even make eye contact. Maybe I'll try to meditate in line next time I'm there.

I should be

I should be running right now. Loping, really...lumbering is more like it. I think I want to be a runner, you know, one of those people who glide along across a surface, light-footed, breeze in their hair...they say that running relieves their stress. "I'm going to go for a run." I think I want to run the Hartford half marathon in October with Jodi, Mark and some other Harris folks. But. But. I put myself on the C25K program (couch to 5K, which isn't really accurate because I'm not really a couch potato, but fine, it's the couch to 5k program) which is supposed to get me in shape to run a slow 5k in 6 weeks or so. And I'm on week 3, which has me alternating jogging with walking for about half an hour 3 times a week. So a couple days ago I was out there on the mesa path, walking and jogging, feeling not quite as miserable as I had in the near past and I decided to speed it up just a teeny bit during the final 90 second jog. I mean, I probably went from 4.5 miles an hour to 5 miles an hour. Nothing drastic, nothing fancy. And about a minute in I felt this sharp twinge on the inside of my left knee. Really? I slowed to a walk, fighting the impulse to validate that this is why I'm not a runner. Runners have pain, right? And now, two days later I'm confused about whether it would be better for me to buck up, grit my teeth and get back out there for my 2nd run/walk of the week, or just fuck it, take some ibuprofen and rest my tweeky knee. And then what? This seems to regularly happen, so I'm not entirely sure what to do. I'm not intrinsically opposed to experiencing pain, but I don't want to do anything stupid to my almost 52-year old body.

But the upside is that I'm writing a blog post. I took the part-time job at Naropa as assistant to the dean of graduate education. I start on Monday. I also had an offer from the molecular biology department of CU, a full-time gig supporting the brainy faculty. In the quest for life-balance, the Naropa job is the way to go. Remember, I went from flat-out, exhausted, stressed, way too engaged in my job at Odyssey to having too little to engage in here in Boulder. It took me a few months of down-time to get here, but I had begun to long for meaningful work, for a means of engagement with a wider community. Taking the job at Naropa is part of my path toward a balanced life, for the first time in...forever? It will put my in the company of other seekers, students of the university and of life, people who seem to be open, gentle.

And tonight's my last training session with Hospice, and then I can begin to volunteer with a family that's going through the dying process with a loved one. I'm a little trepidatious about jumping in, but also feel that I will be ok with just being there, just being a loving, caring presence for others. I've been thinking that my work with Hospice will afford me a more acute awareness of the beauty of now, the fleeting present. I'll have to revisit that notion down the road and see how it's going.

The last thing I'll share today is that I decided that I'll spend my first few hundred bucks earned at my new job on a 3-day intensive writing course given by a local author in Boulder. It's called The Heroine's Journey, about writing memoir. I already sent my deposit in. Mid-November and I get to spend this time in the company of other writer-seekers. It will be my birthday present to myself. I'm gonna go take a run.