Under the new moon/solar eclipse

I am still fretting over this ever-increasing weight gain around my middle. I know it has to do with eating too late in the day (like, in bed!) but I keep having this feeling that there’s more to it than that...

It is my fear of going into the night, the hours when the unconscious reigns over the conscious, and we are shown what demons still lurk beneath the cover of darkness. When it starts to get late at night, if I don’t have a good excuse like having to get to sleep cuz I have to work the next day, then that’s the time when I suddenly feel hungry, or want to stay up and read even when I’m sleepy...

Actually, none of this seems authentic to me... I’ve dug into this many times and all I know for sure is that, where the fat is, is where I feel most vulnerable, underneath. If someone were to ask me where I feel the most vulnerable, without thinking that’s where I would point. My solar plexus, the seat of the ego and self-esteem, which is developed in the teenaged years. Probably why there’s been a lot of teenaged characters in my dreams lately.

I see in one reference on foods that nourish this chakra: pastas, breads, cereal, rices, flax seed, sunflower seeds, milk, cheeses, yogurt, ginger, mints (peppermint, spearmint, etc.), melissa, chamomile, turmeric, cumin, fennel. Nothing I’m interested in or drawn to. Hmmm...

A slight achiness is developing in the right side of my brain, and I’m feeling tetchy and unsettled inside my skin. Perhaps I should stop writing for today.

Finally couldn’t stand it anymore, I went down to the beach. Didn’t bring my journal. Just sat on a rock and took in the lake in a lavender sunset. As I lost myself in the rhythm of the lapping waves, it came to me that this headache, tetchiness and all is because earlier today, or was it yesterday, I asked for help to surrender my ego. And these are symptoms of resistance from my ego, knowing that it’s about to lose supremacy. My body began to relax as soon as I realized this, and the pain in my brain shifted and diffused. There is still some tension now in the middle of my forehead, but it’s no longer a dense contracted panicky sensation.

Came back and watched a documentary on the painter Agnes Martin who called herself an abstract expressionist, because she painted her feelings. Or I should say, her feelings are painted into her work, though the inspiration for each piece was never hers, according to her account. She would just sit in solitude, empty her mind, and wait for the inspiration for her next painting to come. One time, she said, she had to wait 5 months. The film was made to imitate or follow the pace of her life and her work, the stillness, the humility, the non-striving. She feels that any kind of ‘going after’ or ‘doing’ is a form of aggression, and certainly there isn’t any hint of aggression in her paintings. I think she painted inner peace, which she called happiness, the form of it that was revealed to her, unto an external canvas. And though she lived and worked in New York City as well as Taos, New Mexico, she said it made no difference at all where she painted – because she carried the necessary stillness with her wherever she was.

I feel deeply struck by this film, her life, the profound simplicity and humility that was like a blade of grass or a rock, it’s more than acceptance, it just knows that it is, no more, no less. At the lake earlier I was wondering whether the seagull floating on the lake was happy, or was it content, how did it feel about its life... I guess I got my answer, in human form, not any different than the seagull after all.