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This coming week has a (local) conference. I need to pace myself carefully.
Last night, as i heated up dinner for myself, the question my therapist asks when she's guiding me to a checked-in with Now state, crossed my mind: what is pleasurable? Pleasurable. We talked a bit about how that question doesn't resonate for me. As i watched the microwave struggle to heat a frozen vegetarian patty on top of the refrigerated cabbage, i realized how little i go out of my way for "pleasurable." Dinner was going to be edible, it was going to have the cruciform veggie i found satisfying, it was going to have protein i knew i needed. Was i really going to taste it? Appreciate the textures? No. I was going to forget it existed as i ate it on automatic pilot while researching the project that was teasing me yet again.
There's another clue about being in the Now there, about connecting with the Source, as opposed to borrowing against it.
I spent much of the evening on my creek in the news report, and then found myself very curious about what sources exist for chronological historical Quaker writings. So any of the journals aren't exactly journals. I want to subscribe to an RSS feed and get early journal entries and letters like i do with Pepy's diary. Not simple! Last night i found one collection of Fox's epistles in chronological order: the richest years have around thirty letters. I did find another collection of historical letters in chronological order.
I found the idea of a far too ambitious project form in my mind. I could spend this decade slowly moving these documents into a wordpress draft archive, placing them in chronological order as i read them (and put OCRed text into a reasonable format). Then with the beginning of the next decade, there could be several decade long feeds, for the 1650s (much of Fox's letter writing in this decade plus the historical letters), 1660s, and 1670s. The excerpts from journals, letters, and biographies could all be interwoven so a multidimensional narrative could be experienced, slowly, in real time. It's conceivable over the decade of preparation i would find other folks willing to help prepare the old texts. (I imagine only occasionally slipping out of the narrow zone of Friends writings to pull in relevant historical events like the Fire of London).
If i wanted to be really ambitious, i could get things in order so as to kick off the project in 2013 with the letters from 1653 (360 years later): that's when Fox's letters take off (thirty three that year) and the historical letters in The Friends' Library [Vol. XI, 1847, pages 323-449] begin. One of the mild headaches is that the letters are in the Julian calendar, so one must read Quaker notations of, say, Seventh month as September instead July. (At least when Quakers started, there were four months of the year named with numbers, and Friends were just translating to English).
I don't need another project. But.
Last night, as i heated up dinner for myself, the question my therapist asks when she's guiding me to a checked-in with Now state, crossed my mind: what is pleasurable? Pleasurable. We talked a bit about how that question doesn't resonate for me. As i watched the microwave struggle to heat a frozen vegetarian patty on top of the refrigerated cabbage, i realized how little i go out of my way for "pleasurable." Dinner was going to be edible, it was going to have the cruciform veggie i found satisfying, it was going to have protein i knew i needed. Was i really going to taste it? Appreciate the textures? No. I was going to forget it existed as i ate it on automatic pilot while researching the project that was teasing me yet again.
There's another clue about being in the Now there, about connecting with the Source, as opposed to borrowing against it.
I spent much of the evening on my creek in the news report, and then found myself very curious about what sources exist for chronological historical Quaker writings. So any of the journals aren't exactly journals. I want to subscribe to an RSS feed and get early journal entries and letters like i do with Pepy's diary. Not simple! Last night i found one collection of Fox's epistles in chronological order: the richest years have around thirty letters. I did find another collection of historical letters in chronological order.
I found the idea of a far too ambitious project form in my mind. I could spend this decade slowly moving these documents into a wordpress draft archive, placing them in chronological order as i read them (and put OCRed text into a reasonable format). Then with the beginning of the next decade, there could be several decade long feeds, for the 1650s (much of Fox's letter writing in this decade plus the historical letters), 1660s, and 1670s. The excerpts from journals, letters, and biographies could all be interwoven so a multidimensional narrative could be experienced, slowly, in real time. It's conceivable over the decade of preparation i would find other folks willing to help prepare the old texts. (I imagine only occasionally slipping out of the narrow zone of Friends writings to pull in relevant historical events like the Fire of London).
If i wanted to be really ambitious, i could get things in order so as to kick off the project in 2013 with the letters from 1653 (360 years later): that's when Fox's letters take off (thirty three that year) and the historical letters in The Friends' Library [Vol. XI, 1847, pages 323-449] begin. One of the mild headaches is that the letters are in the Julian calendar, so one must read Quaker notations of, say, Seventh month as September instead July. (At least when Quakers started, there were four months of the year named with numbers, and Friends were just translating to English).
I don't need another project. But.
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