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How do I look
Is my hair tidy? Are any strands out of place? Oh no, is my hair turning more grey. Is that a new wrinkle.
Am I putting on weight? Am I losing too much weight? Do I have it in me to workout more because I would love to look fit and athletic.
Are there any features that are particularly striking? Do I have good cheek bones, are my lips plump enough, do I look put together such everything is perfect. Or is everything in a perfect amount of disarray because I want to show I don’t care about looking perfect.
.
How do I look with my friends at the bar in this photo. Does it look like I’m happy and fun loving? Does this photo show my good side, does it show me in a flattering light.
How do I look?
How do I look?
Do I look with warm eyes not because I know how to make a smile go to my eyes but because there’s a warmth somewhere that radiates out of me.
Do I look at you with compassion and peace because I see your pain is my pain and because I know I no longer need anything from you.
Do I look at everything with interest and curiosity because i am interested and curious.
How do I look?
At couples holding hands? With envy. With cynicism. Disapproval. I don’t like PDA. He’s more handsome than her, what’s he doing with her. She’s more handsome than him, what’s she doing with him.
How do I look at strangers? With suspicion. With a practiced friendliness. Or I don’t look at them at all because they are not important.
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How do I look at this loneliness inside me? How do I look at this little ache?
I push it down. Figure out ways to get rid of it. Fix it with a new relationship. Cover it with a veneer of I don’t need anybody or a veneer of busy. Reject it, bully it. Hate it.
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The answer to the question how do I look can only be found in looking at how I look.
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A-ttention
A – ttention
A – tension
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prefix a- typically means not.
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Chromatic means color, therefore achromatic means not color.
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Tension means tense. Therefore a-tension means not tense.
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prefix a – typically means not.
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If I want to be tense, be tension.
If I want to be not tense, be not tension.
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What is not tension?
Attention.
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The “opposite” of tension is attention. *
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Attention is real.
Tension is not.
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I think I know what attention is. It’s obvious.
Therefore I use it to stare at tension. Because I do not know what tension is.
.
I think I know what it is.
I feel hard, contracted, stiff, tightened, coiled, jittery. I think I know what tension is (about). Tension is (about) (this) loneliness, (this) anger, (this) addiction, (the story about the) anger, (the) bitterness, (the) betrayal, (this meaningless) life, (the stresses at) work, (the bad news about my) health, uncertainty. Death.
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I think I know tension so I look at it day and night.
.
Though isn’t it true
once I know what something is
I stop
looking at it.
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Once I know what tension is
I stop looking at it
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I can’t stop looking at tension because I actually don’t know what tension is.
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Tension is NOT about feeling hard, contracted, stiff, tightened, coiled, jittery. Tension is NOT about (this) loneliness, (this) anger, (this) addiction, (the story about the) anger, (the) bitterness, (the) betrayal, (this meaningless) life, (the stresses at) work, (the bad news about my) health, uncertainty. Death.
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Once I realize I don’t know what tension is, I may realize I don’t know what a-tension is either.
Once I realize I don’t know what a-tension is
I
may
start
looking
.
and looking
and looking
.
until one day I realize
I am attention.
And not tension.
.
.
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*attention has no opposite
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Ode to: Of Beginnings and the Names of Things ~ The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
In some ways, it began when I listened to them speak. It wasn’t their words, it wasn’t what they were speaking about. It was what their voices were made of. Yearning, sorrow, hope, suffering, fear. Love. Pouring out of their eyes, pouring out of their mouths as sounds that took the shape of a life’s story.
(shaking my head). No. It began when I went to China. I had spent a year swallowed by insanity and when it spit me back out, I found myself sitting in an airport, a ticket to Beijing in my hand. It’s not like I was looking to find myself in Machu Picchu. I wasn’t backpacking my way across the Great Wall. I wasn’t learning to be a Buddhist in a Chinese temple. No. It was just life again. Life always dragging me places I didn’t want to go.
But I expect the true beginning lies in what led me to China in the first place. That smoke-like, ethereal, disembodied arm that punched deep into my chest and grabbed hold of my soul. The legion that I didn’t know had been hiding inside me, burrowed deep in my thigh muscles, my guts, my back, my neck – all of it finally exorcised in one agonizingly long living nightmare of a night. One tremendous, incredulous, epic battle over … of all things …
my soul. Yes. I suppose that is where it all begins. This is, in many ways, a story about all the darkness I carried.
***
My name is Frances, pronounced exactly the same as Francis, except it’s e for a she instead of i for a guy. The name Frances supposedly means “free.” This was not obvious if you’ve ever come across me. There was nothing free about me.
It could, however, be considered prophetic. Without knowing it, I spent my whole life yearning to live up to my name.
***
I have been a sleeping princess. I have been the prince who had to learn his own kiss was the only thing that would open my own eyes. I have been the dragon I needed to slay.
I have clutched the gates of heaven and was found wanting. I have ripped apart a family. I have touched hell and left with my soul. I have spent a year with insanity and left finally knowing the true taste of sanity.
I have been a bad student, a straight A student, a good daughter, a bad daughter, a harlot, an artist, a poet, a sailor, a dutiful wife, a mother, a Christian, a lover of God, a lover of new age, an orator, a mathematician, a teacher, an entrepreneur, a yogi, a meditator, a psychotic, a zealot, an addict, a conspiracy theorist, a savior of the world, a vagabond, a spiritual seeker – only to find myself wanting. Every. Single. Time.
I have sung songs that call angels forth from their hiding places to sing harmony. Our voices mixed makes me weep. I have touched the birthplace of poetry. I have seen the universe explode into being straight out of your eyes.
You have never heard of me.
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Hello,
I’m Frances
I’m in love with the spiritual journey.
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Non(sense)-Duality 