Isolation & the Yam-Eating Cat

"In Buddhism we talk about mindfulness and awareness....There's a lot of precision, but also a lot of gentleness. Along with being very precise about our world, there's also always space around us that is called gentleness: we allow ourselves to experience how large and fluid and full of color and energy our world is. This space is our circle."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 27

January 30, 2009. Friday night.

Tonight I really don’t want to be the writer. I want everyone else to be the writers. I’d rather lose myself in the Daedalus Books catalog, or the New York Times. Have I said this before?

The cat is staring longingly toward the yams in the bowl sitting near me on the couch. She just took a nose dive into the bowl and I tossed her off the couch.

Today the boys — all three of them — left for a day in Boston and then a weekend in RI. Talk about internet withdrawal! This afternoon I was seized with the feeling of what I’d be doing if the internet was an option — filling that void with Facebook. Endless hours on e-mail, googling, reading and re-reading the weather and endless news.

No car here either. Between that and the internet it is impossible to shop unless I take the bus downtown. Then I could do all kinds of nonsensical damage at the yarn shop, the bookstore, the going-out-of-business sales at boutiques on Exchange street. Ah, the possibilities.

Cars are supposed to make connecting easier. We “connect” to the internet. But not having e-mail/internet and not having a car makes all kinds of connections happen and it is much harder to spend money unnecessarily.