A Fourth Week

I find myself moving into the fourth week of teaching with well-judged moderation guiding me, that wiley old man seeking the less trodden steps up the mountain, seeking the easy bumps of small hills that make the journey a slow experience. 

Many of the usual things that might fire my nervous system still exist at work, of vexatious approaches and busy students, of colleagues with other demands, but mostly of my uncertain and complex dance. 

Breathe more deeply than before, and integrate who you might find outside you. Breathe because you are alive and that your imagination might take you places beyond the fleshy prison of your skull, and the inky confines of these words. 

Perhaps I quit my job a while ago. And that I save the money I do and live the way I do is a testament to another way of being :-) 

A fourth week comes up, with the seven days of teaching leaving me with energy in reserve. I start that week now. 

Today I write about a calmer, moderate life

For the first time in a long time, I catch the shallowness of my breath and breathe more deeply. Without deep breaths my body suffers, stifling itself in a crushing posture, like industrial terracing housing blocking a casual amble up the valley hill. 

I hear from friends that the Middle East is as busy as ever with bosses demanding a pound of flesh. Knives flash as timetables are demanded. The price? 10s of 1000s of pounds of savings are enjoyed by them. For me the price of the mind is too much. To sit here and type is a privilege I have granted myself, a freedom to step away from work for a pomodoro and explore what cultural manifestations might emerge from my mind, what figures might step from the collective unconscious. 

I breathe.