This has been the biggest billing month in over a year for me. I say that to remind myself what streamsandpools gently tried and eventually succeeded in telling me last night, which was "give yourself a break".

So, I took an actual do nothing day today, which found me sitting in the usual place by the usual lake, ignoring as best I could the overcrowding and the first-days-of-summer jet-ski mania, which took me longer than I'd imagined it would. I unwound all the resident anxieties, rubbed my face clear of the furrowed lines, and reached out. And I reached out. And it took me a very long time. And that made me more anxious, which caused it to take even longer.

When I finally touched that place deep inside, it all fell away. It's not an enlightened state or even a peaceful state. It's not a place free of worry or detached from life. It's just the place where I meet myself and where I can effortlessly plug in to listening and engaging, to the stories that I tell the water and that I get from the swallows. I'd call it my "awake" state, not my "awakened" state, simply because there I feel grounded, engaged, and alive.

I haven't done much writing in blackwingedboy lately, and that's because I haven't been able to regularly bring that space forward into my life, or maybe I've been unwilling to. But I think that's changing, or about to change. Just like my newly understood goal of body health, I'm reaching a new and finally real understanding of the value of being in that world, what "ritual" and "practice" means to me in regards to it. It's not religion. It's not the ritual of worship or even homage. It's a ritual of remembering myself, remembering my stories and my life, the places of my childhood. It's seeing the severe silencing that I've sometimes allowed to happen through my own actions, fears and decisions ever since, the cycle of denial and return that I've repeated for 25 years.

I see now that it's important for me to keep some basic level of that connection running, whether that means morning and evening sitting, or the addition of mini-meditations during my five minute workrave breaks. It's not important because I have some role to play or feel some sense of obligation or have some kind of religion that requires it. It's important because that is truly me, and being in that place is like being with a lover, in love, body on body, soul against soul. And when I lose it, I feel it. My mistake has been in thinking that I think it. But the loss, or the perceived loss, or the detachment is something deeply inner.

This is me, and I forget me often. And when I think about it simply like that, the decision of whether to forget me or remember me seems pretty obvious.

So I sat in that place for a while, listening to the waves against the breaker stones and feeling the wind through broad leaves. And then I opened up "A Language Older than Words", which is a book I've been violently resiting reading for some time. I read the introduction and the first chapter, and was hit hard in the gut with truth. I closed my eyes and just let the words, their sentiments, and the familiarity of them seep into me.

As I opened them again, I looked down and there looking up at me was a dog with this puzzled and concerned expression on his face. How long he'd sat there silently, I have no idea. But the act of focusing on him and recognizing he was there seemed to be all that he needed. With a happy bark, he ran back away from the shore and into a game of catch the frizbee with his owners.

I took this as a good sign.

It was a very relaxing day. And I thank imtboo for pointing me to that book, and streamsandpools for just sitting with me patiently last night and waiting until I listened to what she was saying. I'm not sure I would have had this kind of day otherwise.

Please wish her a Happy Birthday. She deserves it.