WATERMARK

I confess, this has been an abundant week — an adventurous week,
given my usual quiet solitude. Even the solitude is abundant. Right
now, for example (it’s Sunday evening) I am writing this during breaks
from Poirot, drinking wine and eating good dark chocolate. While I can quite
reasonably claim that the specifics are unusual — I rarely drink wine
— luxury is not unusual for me. I am not one of those anorexic, self-depriving, scarcity types for whom this chapter was written:

. . . a little authentic luxury
can go a long way. The key word here is authentic. Because art is born
in expansion, in a belief in sufficient supply, it is critical that we
pamper ourselves for the sense of abundance it brings to us.

On the contrary, my lesson has been self-discipline — and I do
discipline myself, by necessity, at present. I know I can live on very
little, having done so (and barely doing so now) and I know I can live
on plenty — by spending it. I also know that, in terms of contentment,
there isn’t a lot of difference — assuming there’s enough for shelter,
heat, food, and pets. Which is quite a lot, actually. A very lot, by
many measures.

All too often, we become blocked
and blame it on our lack of money. This is never an authentic block.
The actual block is our feeling of constriction, our sense of
powerlessness.

The difference between enough to live on and a great deal is
insignificant; the difference between not-enough and enough is vast. It
is true, though, that the discontent in my life has generally stemmed
from matters other than
money.

In order to thrive as artists — and,
one could argue, as people — we need to be available to the universal
flow. When we put a stopper on our capacity for joy by anorectically
declining the small gifts of life, we turn aside the larger gifts as
well.

The exercises in this chapter were enlightening, and give me some sense
of why I may have difficulty holding on to the abundance that comes my
way. Deserving (or, rather, undeserving) is a big word in my personal vocabulary.

A personal god/dess is still not in my personal vocabulary. And as I write that, I notice on C-Span2 Book TV, Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason — which I will now watch.

Monday morning notes: The Sam Harris program was fascinating.
Sadly, I came in half-way through. The book has been sitting on my
shelf for many weeks; I will begin it today. The back cover blurb says:

In The End of Faith,
Sam Harris delivers a startling analysis of the clash between reason
and religion in the modern world. He offers a vivid, historical tour of
our willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs — even
when these beliefs inspire the worst of human atrocities. While warning
against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics,
Harris draws on insights from neuroscience, philosophy and Eastern
mysticism to deliver a call for a truly modern foundation for ethics
and spirituality that is both secular and humanistic.

Linda, in her reading, gestured and said: This space moves to let my hands pass through.
She spoke of the Navajo language as a language of verbs, while English
is a language of nouns. I find myself thinking: this world, this
universe, is not a creation, it is a Creating. Rather like the old joke: Be Patient. I’m not done yet.

I am a creating. We are a happening! It’s all verbs. Even a stone, with its internal space and whirling — molecules? — is a verb.

Little terriers are, most certainly, verbs; and cats are slow and
sudden verbs. I — I am a languid verb, an intense verb, a deepening
verb. I am a poeming verb.