Glass and wood installation, Museum of Art. I started today reading some more of my book I ordered earlier this year, entitled Open to Desire. It is kind of a difficult book. He emphasizes disappointment, whereas I should think desire is a positive emotion with a positive outcome. He cites a lot of cases from his practice, and these are people with pathologies, deep ones, and so they are not even knowing what is desire, in my opinion.
I have been studying Buddhism for about 20 years in earnest, and desire is certainly criticized a lot in that discipline. Wanting what you can't have or don't have isn't necessarily desire though. In this sense it is also not the root of suffering, as has been suggested everywhere. Desire is more positive and forthcoming if you let it be. I have kind of had enough of the mantra of suffering is unavoidable. It's not necessarily suffering then. For me, being open to desire has had me join a gym, which has me spending some of my money which I otherwise don't even enjoy, and enjoyment is unavoidable if you pursue it. I know I know, it's that I really did suffer for a lot of years, and accepting it was a first step but then you have to step out of it, if you possibly can. Zen and other disciplines emphasize the small pleasures and appreciations in life and how is this not even a result of desire. The perfect blackberry. A new shampoo. So it is not the root of all suffering, it is the way out of suffering in my opinion, and when I think of Dr Epstein's patients, I just think they are truly suffering because they don't even know what they want or desire, so they binge eat or engage in sadomasochism or whatever, I haven't finished the book. The guy who was indulging in S and M was a married lawyer who was frustrated with his wife and under pressure from work, at which he excelled. He quit Dr Epstein's practice and some months later found a guru, who told him to stop buying sex altogether and so he did. There is no word on whether he was able to reestablish a communication with his wife. It wasn't desire, it was indulgence, which is not the same thing at all, his desire was a spiritual awakening, I would say. So, I will finish this book because I find some clarity in doing that, but I don't recommend this book, it's dull and fails to illuminate. After reading I went to Barnes and Noble to look at magazines and I found a really really good surf one, called The Surfer's Journal. It is a really beautifully produced publication and I enjoyed reading it cover to cover. The subscription price is $66 a year, so I don't know which surfers will read it at that price, but I just bought one and it is really great. It had an afterward even by Jack Kerouac, ok ok I know but I do love his work. It was from a book of his I hadn't heard of and I want to look it up. It is called The Town and the City, 1950. "Day after day they sailed further north, past the coasts of Maine, Nova Scotia, Labrador, Newfoundland, through the fogs, over the ghostly Grand Banks, out into the ocean-spaces The air grew colder and the winds stronger, something hoary and gray came into the sea and the sunsets lowered fabulously in icy fiery colors. It was the immense, lovely, cloud-sashed Arctic sunset at midnight, the icebergs as big as hills a mile off, with waters crashing slowly and ponderously upon them, the porpoises with their Mona Lisa smiles, disporting and diving in formations and bitter cold, and North Pole grayness ahead. It was the fantastic North of men's souls, the place of Thor and the Ice Kings and monarchial coasts, the place of whales and polar birds, of craggy rocks washed by forlorn waters thousands of miles from man, the last place." Kerouac had been a merchant marine for a while. The photo editor of this magazine is called Jeff Divine, lol. Surely. I also loved the page about the contributors and learning about them, it was engaging and well written. One of them is a young man from Australia who now lives in Japan... I just like things like that. My workouts are going well and every day I can see and feel a difference. i have increased my reps and sets a little, and I have, like today, started to add machines that I really like to other days. I was able to walk today, but foot still a little upset so I cannot run yet. Maybe in a week. I also went to Walgreens and bought some nail polish and some lipstick and some hair ornaments, since I have lost the one I have worn since I was forty-five, lol. I am really like, overdue for some improvements, so yeah, I'm doing things like that. I also found a Dutch magazine called Happinez, which had an interview with my favorite Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron. I was going to say she is my favorite writer, Buddhist writer, but really I also love Thich Naht Hanh, and I think he is very good at people who are more in the general way of things, whereas Pema really works with people who have catastrophic events going on. Each one is a treasure. Anyway, it is a good looking magazine and it had some yoga and Ayerveda, which i like, but I got kind of overexposed to the richness that goes along with the business of this kind of lifestyle interest - precious jewelry, precious art, precious materials of every kind, a really really precious altar, and I just am like, you know, maybe not that much of a consumer, though I have had my souvenirs from some travel and I even had what might be termed an altar, or a display for a while. But my problem was that I would stare at it, and I just didn't want to be transfixed. i wanted to let go and have more motion and activity, mental and physical, in my life. It's an interesting magazine though and it profiles some interesting people, lots of martial artists, for example. I bought it, it's fine, it's just you know, kind of overloaded with, uh, richness. The kind of thing I usually avoid, but the interviews and even the recipes looked good. Like, the recipes you can actually come up with something like that in your house and it would be really nice. I look at this carefully, because I have had some culinary disasters in my life from being attracted to recipes in magazines, which often don't even have a test kitchen. Anyway, I can do this and I will, I have been looking for some new ideas, and the thing I also like is, I can eat the recipes that are not for my type and still have a great time lol. I like this. So this is my life, this is my Saturday, and not once have I mentioned my diagnosis or my meds, until just now. Things are going well. x
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