I Sleep to Dream, And Take My Waking Slow

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling.  What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

--Theodore Roethke, "The Waking"

Sometimes instead of getting songs in my head, I get poems.  Though, I remembered the first line as being "I sleep to dream, and take my waking slow."  I suppose this was in my head because that was my morning.  I woke from some sort of dream, but stayed in that place between the dreaming and the waking worlds for a long time.  It's a great poem.  I do learn by going where I have to go.

My day was good.  Watched a bit more Avatar.  Listened to some lectures about Zen Buddhism.  There was a minor ISN crisis that was completely my fault, but it was easily solved.  On Friday I signed up a few people for the Dutch courses that start Monday.  Then people started coming in for the Game Night, asking me questions, then the Game Night started, and Monopoly happened, and then it was time to go home, etc. etc.  And I forgot to contact the teacher.  Which means there were  a few students who didn't know at 2pm on Sunday where there classes, which start at 9am on Monday were to be held.  Oops!  Not very responsible of me!  But, I called the teacher, and he came by to get the money, and it was all good, no worries.  

The big excitement of my day was tea with Jennifer and two girls from her art history program, Mary and Sophia.  We drank loads of tea, and ate loads of cookies, and we talked about a little bit of everything.  Politics (mostly about Sarah Palin, about whom I will probably post soon), religion (I think Mary and Sophia sort of think I'm a bit flaky, haha), and even the quarter life crisis.  Good times all around.  It was just an afternoon of contentment.  A nice hot cup of tea (or 4) great conversation, beautiful weather outside, sunlight in the window.  Life as it is being lived!

Jennifer and her family (Sören and their daughter Kaya) have the COOLEST apartment!  It's HUGE and has huuuuge windows, and overlooks the canal.  They even have a hidden ladder that leads up to this sort of attic (looks like a barn) which is where the bedrooms are.  I'm so jealous!  I mean, it's a two bedroom apartment.  I could share that apartment with another person, and only pay about €30 more than I'm paying right now....  Which is sort of sad.

Today (and every 21. September) is UN International Day of Peace.  There were ceremonies and celebrations in Amsterdam and Den Haag, but I didn't make it to any of them.  I lit a little incense and meditated on peace.  Haha, my own flaky way of doing what I can.  Maybe next year I'll be able to do more than just send out positive energy.  :-)

For now I'm going to go into the little extra room I have off of my balcony and practice my Tai Chi and Wushu forms (ok, maybe the girls were right about me....)  I've been considering changing the empty room into a meditation room.  All I have to do really is put a blanket or something over the window to the hallway, and I have another, mostly private room.  I'll have to see what Laura and Matteo think about it, and I'll have to hope that the staff here don't mind that I'm using the room.  I don't think anyone will have any problems though.  :-)

I'm happy.  Things aren't perfect, but there is peace inside me again in a way there hasn't been for a long long time.  

Why do we wait

So long upon the marble steps, blood

Falling from our open wounds? and why

Do our black faces search the empty sky?

Is there something we have forgotten? some precious thing

We have lost, wandering in strange lands?

There was a day, I remember now,

I beat my breast and cried, "Wash me God,

Wash me with a wave of wind upon 

The barley; O quiet One, draw near, draw near!"

--Arna Bontemps, from "Nocturne at Bethesda"