push/pull

the semester is nearly over, and by the time December rolls around, i'm usually at my wit's end from all late nights and deadlines and juggling. this year is different, though. i'm taking only one class (mon cours de français) and rather than writing until 2am five nights a week, i find myself in the enviable position of putting in six and eight-hour days on my thesis.

in spite of this, i'm starting to feel the familiar push/pull of ease and anticipation, with my natural proclivity towards excess and productivity finds itself pitted against the holidays' unique ability to bring out all manner of vices. while best known as a time of gluttony, the time between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day also inspires an impressive amount of sloth, which happens to be among my favorite of the Seven Deadly. it seems that nothing much happens during these five weeks, and the promise of easy days and late mornings whispers to me in the night. and yet...

i feel a gnawing in my gut, a gnashing of the teeth, a gnosis of the coming solstice and the persistent awareness that the gnarled tree of knowledge is ever wakeful:

the Joshua tree was named by Mormons

oftentimes we speak of balance as if it was a fixed thing, an object, or something to be obtained. in fact, however, it is exactly the opposite.

(an experiment:
close your eyes and
stand on one foot.
what do you notice?)

as this simple exercise demonstrates, balance is always changing, always shifting, always unstable. this is one of my favorite things about balance because it speaks to the underlying, impermanent nature of all things. Marx and Hegel would call this a dialectic, Lao-Tzu would call this yin and yang, the Tantrists would call this the dance of Shiva and Shakti:

i call these things 'potato, potato'

the very activity that promotes balance one day may be the thing that causes us to fall the next, and events that blindside us might end up being the experiences that ultimately allow us to stand tall. you can try to control it, or figure it out, or deny it; but, as a half-Canadian friend of mine is apt to say, it's usually best just to: