Mini update

I noticed that there weren't any new blogs since last November, so I thought I'd whip one up to let all of my loyal followers that I'm still alive.

Business is slow, but not at a concerning level
I need to go to T'ai Chi Chu'an class more regularly
I need to brush my cat more (especially since it's becoming summer)
We need to decide what color to paint the hall bathroom

Try to go out there and have a good day!

Dream a little dream

I had the guitar dream again last night. In my dreams I always play fantastically, to an enamored audience.

This dream was a bit different. I was playing my Gibson Les Paul, a guitar I sold many moons ago but owned for over 20 years. Strangely enough I was picking/ strumming the strings with my fingers instead of a pick. This is strange because I collect picks and own thousands. I can and do play fingerstyle, but not on an electric

The music was really organic sounding, and really soulful. Beautiful in fact. I was playing to my girlfriend, and I think it was at my house. The odd thing is that my dream playing is original and fun. I do not know why I'm only able to make this happen within the confines of a slumbering mind.

I am a very creative person in a lot of ways, but I am not when it comes to guitar playing. I am technically proficient, but have not ever really been able to create music. Many years ago I realized I wasn't going to be the greatest player in the world, I suppose that changed my attitude towards music. I do really enjoy playing and will continue to do so in my lifetime.

I guess this dream is telling me to start practicing more.

The animal in me

Wednesday night usually finds me at practice. I had missed the previous couple of weeks due to me moving my company into a larger office space.
T'ai Chi is a great stress reliever for me. I need to do things like this, for my mind as well as my body. Plus it gets me out of the house from time to time!

Having missed quite a lot of classes recently, I'm out of shape (in a relative sort of way). To my surprise, I felt really good when we started Slow Set (108 postures, usually done in about 30 minutes). Just fell back into the postures and transitions, like I'd never left. This kind of feeling does not happen very often. The last time was when Master was in town for a weekend seminar a couple years ago. It is really hard to describe this to non-martial arts practitioners, although I'll try.
The best thing that comes to mind is moving like an animal. A way of moving without conscious thought, only instinct. The movements become fluid, the mind clear. Being able to feel every joint, every muscle group moving under your direction is a fantastic thing. No movement is wasted, everything efficient and powerful. I think they call this the T'ai Chi trance. Not the best description, because trance to me sounds more like a dream state. My mind is in the present, my focus clear and control over my body is complete.
Of course, there were a couple bobbles, as my atrophied muscles could not pull off the movements with the same ease and grace that I always strive for. Mastery of something to me is being able to make the impossible look simple. I'm certainly many decades from that, but it's fun and inspiring to see glimpses of that once in a while.

The barrier bubble

Things have been piling up on my plate, figurativley speaking. Life, work, normal stuff like this. Although I now have an extra helping or two with my latest project: moving the family company to a new location. We have needed this for quite some time, and I'm very glad to see this coming together.

The extra stresses of making this happen have been wearing me down somewhat these last couple of weeks. Okay, a bunch. I was thinking about this at T'ai Chi class this evening, while I should have been concentrating on the postures. The concept of the bubble came to me then. This is by no stretch a new idea, but I'm putting it in a new context. There is a martial arts technique known as 'pung' (the U is kinda pronounced the same way as in fun). It is a way of 'setting' your body to ward off an incoming attack. It's a way of not letting someone in (and ideally not using force to repel, but to redirect energy), and I think this is analagous to how I've been dealing with recent stresses. We all have bubbles around us. Call it personal air-space, emotional barriers, whatever you like- you can see where this is going. Some have rather thick and unflexible barriers, where nothing ever touches them. Others have very fragile and small barriers, where the simplest word could send them into a dire emotional straight. Neither one is ideal, to me at least.

I think my barrier has been taking some nasty dents as of late, and I haven't really realized the extent of it until this evening. All these set-backs, delays, things not going as I envisioned they should, personal disagreements, and everything else have compressed my barrier until it was within my body. It wasn't doing much good protecting me from regular, normal stress. I'd like to think it was merely a 'resetting' of my personal/ emotional space and I'm all better, but there's more to it than that. I know that my outlook needed to be recentered. My family, my girlfriend, my friends; these are who I look to to keep me on an even keel. Sometimes I can get bogged down with self doubt and fears, but with such a support group (even if they don't know they are helping), I cannot go wrong. It is a wonderful feeling knowing there are people that care for you. It's this knowledge that keeps the everyday stresses at bay, and reminding myself of this does fantastic things to my barrier bubble. I can feel it expanding beyond my body, out to a comfortable distance once again. It's about keeping the unnecessary things from getting under my skin, while being open to allow the important things to enter my heart. 

I need my feet to feel the grass, the rains to touch my skin. The colorful glow of the sun shall fill my lungs.

Lights, camera, mountain?

I like weather. Sounds kinda funny, but here in Phoenix there usually ain't much. Absolutely love lightning/ thunder storms, even when they wake me up at night. So the monsoon season is winding down here in the valley, so I was happy to see an unexpected storm this week. Rain on a 45° angle, and pea-to-marble sized hail, all while the sun was shining brightly on me.

My intent was to pop up to this short mountain that I know of at 47th Ave and the 101 and snap a couple pictures. It overlooks the North valley, so I needed to climb it to get to the proper vantage point. Not a bad sunset:

Although the lightning storm that developed was really fun. This was the storm that hailed on me earlier, and now it was lightning-ing all over the area NorthWest of the valley. I snapped dozens of photos, but only a couple turned out fairly okay.

I did learn quite a bit about shooting this sort of thing at night. Hopefully, I can apply this to the next time something like this comes up. I also need to buy a better flashlight for the camera bag. Coming back down the mountain wasn't too much fun, but a couple skinned knuckles are worth it to me. Leah might not agree with that (and she's probably right), although I enjoyed the experience.

Monsoon season, 2008

So, I've been sitting on my roof during thunderstorms recently. I've been trying to get a good picture of lightning in the clouds. There was a pretty good storm in the East valley last night, good strikes. I was only able to get this pic with the smallest smattering of lightning. But it does mark my first actual photo of such a thing. I'll have to update this post as I get the shots I see in my mind's eye.



I do have some fairly cool pics of the surrounding clouds at sunset. They're on my Facebook and Myspace pages. My Mother has been expressing some concern with me being on a rooftop holding a metal tripod during a thunderstorm. It would only hurt once! :-)

my life as a cube-making robot

Everybody views the world from their own perspective. I saw the movie Wall-e this weekend, so the things currently bopping around my mind kinda got packaged in this context. For those who haven't seen the trailer, Wall-e is a little robot, whose sole job is to compact trash into cubes and neatly stack them. After the movie I was thinking this is a pretty good analogy for how I handle some aspects of my life. Unpleasant emotions or memories? -Crunch- into a convenient form and organized away. Of course this was all being done by my subconscious (which is just the program human brains run), so for many years I really didn't realize it. Recent conversations with good friends (and new ones) have brought this out into the open.
How this is relevant to me is that internalizing this stuff will clog your mind and body with such unwanted garbage (negative emotions) that potentially serious harm will result. The body just does what the mind tells it to. For example: I tend to carry some stresses around by tensing my shoulders. Once again subconsciously, but the end result is the same - sore shoulders.
So I am searching myself, trying to find and release all this stored up junk. It is not easy, and I cannot do it alone. Having supporting family and friends is such a huge boost, even if they don't know they are helping.
I am working on several different aspects of my life now. Some are small, some not so. My intent is to be a better Daniel; to myself and to those I love.

Let's toast to our good health!