Breath breathes breath.

You can never be certain of living long enough to take another breath. The first breath catch us off guard. Our wandering attention is surprised by the notice of the breath. The freshness of the air passing into the nose. It warms and fills the chest as it descends. The sensations prickle with energy and varying levels of clarity.

Galileo and the famous Japanese haiku poet Matsuo Basho where contemporaries inhabiting different global regions, breathing the same air but likely didn't meet. The second breath announces its familiarity. It's relaxed in its repetitiveness. We sink deeper into the moment of breathing. The body isn't inactive. Tingling, heat, cold, pressure, sounds, thoughts, and feelings appear in the space of awareness. The feet receive sensations where they contacts the floor. The butt receives sensations where it contacts the chair. There is both a metaphysical and physical taste to the breath.

Each breath does not leave any residue for the next. The third breath is settled in the moment. Breath just breathes.

Road Trip Home

We are children of the Moscow Food Coop. The Coop is in our blood, our bones, and our hearts.

When I first met Mary and winning her love was all I could think about, Thursday nights was date night, and it consisted of volunteering together at the Moscow Food Coop. At the time, the Coop occupied Third Street's quirky old Kentucky Fried Chicken building.

We'd saddle up together, side by side. Our volunteer task was "chip bagger." A chip bagger re-bags the different varieties of tortilla chips, which came in ten-pound bags, into smaller one-pound or so bags for resale to members. We became what we considered connoisseurs of the fine art of chip bagging. We'd banter back and forth about the quality of this week's chips, reminiscing about the day's happenings, and eye all the new products for sale in the Coop.

We volunteered in the evenings after work in the Coop's funky atmosphere, compounded by the packed jumble in every nook and cranny stuffed with eclectic, organic products. The aura in the cluttered repurposed KFC building worked some powerful mojo on Mary because forty years later, we're married and still reminisce about our time as coop chip baggers.

Now we live nestled between wheat fields on the eastern edge of the Palouse. The Palouse is the dry-land farming region of southeastern Washington spilling into Idaho, which is famous for growing wheat and legumes.

Travel is not something we often do, but when we do, it is usually a road trip to the big city of Spokane, Washington, about two hours north. No trip feels complete unless we stop at the Moscow Food Coop on our way through Moscow and stop again on the return.

The ritual of bracketing travel with visits to the Coop started innocently. Our original justification was to get some travel supplies; a pesto cheese roll, Stacy's Pita Chips, carbonated water, or a Salted Caramel Dark Chocolate Almond Kind Bar or two. The ritual evolved as we aged. Now we find the Coop at the perfect interval for bathroom breaks, and while there, we quickly check on what is new in the produce section.

There is no driving past the Coop. Before we can take time to think about what we are doing, we stop, find our bodies already in motion, and begin to discern the rhythm of our ritual. A rhythm etched in our psyche. The rhythm resonates with comfort, echoes the seasons, and builds connections with place and community.

We are children of the Coop. The Coop is in our blood, our bones, and our hearts.

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Flash Non-fiction filed under the "Is this anything?" category, a wild idea for your consideration in roughly 500 words, give or take.

Now Will is working on this Blog Post

Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher from 500 BC. Philosophy in Pythagoras day was different than it is today. A philosopher was a "lover of wisdom" and a natural scientist interested in math, cosmology, and physics. Time and historical events create an almost unbridgeable distance from modernity. Some of his ideas and practices have proven false and are of no value to living a rich life. Pythagorus discovered a few mathematical and scientific principles that have stood the test of time and are used today. He established a language of mathematics, introduced a new cosmic harmony, and discovered the famous Pythagorean theorem. A friend of mine shared what we interpreted as a mantra used by Pythagoras and his followers to focus attention.

Written records from this era are sketchy, and this mantra may or may not have anything to do with Pythagoras. But the story calls attention to a lost skill. Here is the mantra as told by my friend.

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Suppose you want to focus on X. Repeat, or think to yourself, "Now Will is working on X." To maintain some distance from yourself, refer to yourself by name and not by the first person singular pronoun "I." Why? To cultivate the habit of a watchful mind. The moment Will stops working on X. You want to know about it.

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Keep a watchful eye and constantly compare your plan with what you are doing. Be vigilant in noticing where you're spending your attention. Checking in with what is happening to be sure you haven't gone off the rails and started wilfing in Internet land.

It is easy to beat yourself up, letting self-talk go too far. Don't beat yourself up. Instead, start again, gently aligning your focus to the planned task. Dilution of attention is a genuine and often unacknowledged problem.

This begs the question, "Who is watching who?" "Which "who" is the true who?" But those are questions for another day.

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References

• "Pythagoreanism." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Oct. 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism. Accessed 3 Oct. 2022.

• https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/13139/#Comment_13139

Blended into Place

Being in and from a place is a kind of bias—a bias born of being sensually bathed in a place. Partly an evolution, partly a phenomenon of the natural world. Our place's fields are green, its forest smells of tree sap, and its sky is full of water falling gently on the fields and forest. We use visual spacial relationships to establish a sense of place. We form a scale of place based on our bodies.

Mowing the fields and feeding the birds at the bird feeder have become the soundtrack to my summer days. When I consider all the pains of being a landowner, I wonder if it is worth it or not. Now I see my confusion; it is not my place but the place that possesses me.

The shades of springtime cover a broad spectrum of greens. The falling rain becomes water for morning coffee.

I'm trying to understand the reasons this place has captured my imagination. It has turned imagination into life—the alchemy of myself and the place.

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This is a short piece of creative flash non-fiction to be filed under the “Is this anything?” It's unpolished open for your consideration and comment.

Previously
Imagination can't meet reality — kestrelcreek.com
Creative Writing — kestrelcreek.com

References

• Ehrlich, Gretel. The Solace of Open Spaces. Penguin Books, 1986. pg.96
• Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild : Essays. Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004. pg.69

Reading Discipline is Keystone

"What does this word mean?" says Mary out of the blue. We're quietly reading with our separate books.

"What word?" I say. At the same time, trying not to let the interruption bother me.

"This word, look?
I show her how highlighting the word brings up Kindle's dictionary. The word she is after is 'portmanteau.' The dictionary tells us that a portmanteau is a combination of two words creating a new word combining the concepts of the two words.

"I still don't get it," said Mary.

"Like hungry mashed with angry, equals hangry," I say

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We are lucky. Our reading environment is warm, safe, and comfortable. Many in the world are not so privileged. I read sitting encapsulated in a thirty-year-old Ekornes Stressless Recliner made in Norway. Mary, my sweetheart, sits absorbed in reading her book, sitting a few feet away on my chair's twin. When reading, these are the quiet, restful moments of the day that we don't put enough emphasis on and take for granted. These are the moments that make up a well-lived life. I prefer digital books because my eyesight is failing, and Mary is partial to reading books on her iPad. She can prop it up in her lap and make the text big enough to read while she slightly reclines.

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Slow, steady incremental reading gets the book read. Some longer scheduled reading time will boost the rocket into a new orbit. But generally, it is better to be a turtle than a hare in the book reading contest.

Some Philosophy of Reading

Each post I write starts somewhere. Usually, I start with reading. Let's talk about reading today.

Stories, fiction or non-fiction, are part of our natural makeup. We are attracted to listening and reading stories to learn about the world around us. Via reading stories, we are exposed to the thoughts of others. Our minds mingle with another mind's perspective, which, if we find meaningful, our ideas change.

The game-changer for me was when I started reading to create notes from my reading. I found myself reading closer, thinking more about what the author is saying, and trying to fit it into my life. There are a variety of strategies for making notes. Some of which I may go into in the future.

Here are a few reading tips.

1. Read only books that are interesting to you.
2. Read only the exciting parts of those books.
3. Reflect on what you read. This is the grunt work of reading and thinking. It's how wisdom is acquired.
4. If the book is not good, just stop reading. Nobody is watching. Nobody is keeping score.
5. There are compounding returns to being obsessed with reading, so start young and never stop. It is never too late to start being obsessed.
6. Read in a cluster. Read books on the same topic by the same author or biographies of the same person by different authors.
7. Keep your eye out for key terms that represent meaningful ideas.
8. When we read, we are reading the author's mental processes.
9. Close reading can help you see where ideas are similar and if the ideas are more or less extensively developed.
10. Buying a book doesn't buy the time to read it. Don't confuse the purchasing of books with the acquisition of their content. This phenomenon is called The Collector's Fallacy.

Prior Writing on ‘Reading’

3 reading quotes — kestrelcreek.com
Hupomnemata/Zettelkasten — kestrelcreek.com

(306 words)

Please, continue the conversation anytime: will@kestrelcreek.com .

References

• Schopenhauer: On Reading and Books

The Benefits of Blogging

I've been thinking about friendships lately. Building and maintaing friendships is a keystone skill. We don't treat the work infolve in friendships as a skill but we can benifit if we do. What is the work of building and maintaining friendships? Friends make us smarter, healthier, wealthier and most importantly happier.

"We become who we are in great part because of the friends we have." — Alexander Nehamas

Cultivating friendships is important because the traits of the people who we associate with rub off on us and greatly influence who we become.

As part of my goal to develop a friendship muscle, I'm decating myself to this blog. It is a work in progress. You can help by sharing what you think in the comments.

1. A blog shares knowledge.

"Sharing is caring." Corny, but something I want to do more sharing. I know a lot in various domains and don't share what I've learned. I steal from other bloggers what they have learned without reciprocating.

2. A blog clarifies my understanding of what I share.

Not sharing and writing about my understanding leaves the knowledge floating in the nebulous mind space unmoored by reality. I can't say I know something until I write it down.

3. A blog gives a creative outlet.

I'm of the age (old) where I benefit from staying mentally active. Hopefully, I can stretch my writing muscles and say something interesting.