I don’t honestly remember the last time I came on here just to check in and share some random thoughts in writing, so here I am – lest I forget how to do it. I don’t exactly feel regret about this; I’ll freely admit when I’m being neglectful, but in this case, the focus has just been applied in a different direction – one I think actually has greater potential in a lot of ways. In fact, if you’re really interested in what I’m thinking and where I’m at, you really ought to checkout the podcast (The Wizard of Monadnock Radio Hour – search for it in any podcast app or just click the links on the right side of this page). I’m not sure what it is about the “radio” medium, but I am at the point at which, at least once every single episode, I find myself revealing some belief or position or faith that I wouldn’t normally say in person to others – and certainly wouldn’t invite the risk of putting in writing. (“You might be ridiculed!”) Making an audio recording, arguably just as permanent as a written record, of an intro monologue, or sometimes in the heat of a really engaging interview, for some reason, I just spill my guts.
I don’t know why, but I’m really enjoying it, too. And I’m not embarrassed by a word of it! But if you’re interested in hearing some real uncut honesty from the depths of a wizard’s spirit, you still gotta check out the podcast, because I’m still not gonna catalog that stuff here in writing.
Anyway, I’m serious – I can’t risk losing the ability to drop sermons and notes and rants, not after almost five years of fine-tuning. (I mean, come on, though, like I’d ever forget how to rant!) It’s good to be back at it, if only for a second. At least through the next couple of months, until the Special Spring Project ends, all my actual writing is going into that project, with the exception of the occasional meditation. The rest of my creative efforts are directed more toward audio and video – and I’m pretty happy with that, from where I’m sitting today.
Still, the main obstacle to composing regular written comment is that I lack the ability to write anything short, sometimes anything less than grand in scope. That’s an impediment more than a benefit, and I’m working to train myself to be content with making short comments about little things I’m thinking about or reading. It’s not working yet, but who knows.
Anyway, we just did Easter a couple days ago. I liked it, and I hope you did, too. My pace is very rapid these days, but I haven’t quit observing and adapting to the turnings of the Wheel of the Year just yet. Most of the time, in fact, I feel like they’re more deeply integrated with my being and experience than ever before. A lot of things are happening, lot of things coming together – in my corner of the universe, anyway. But I’m inclined to believe this isn’t something I’m experiencing alone.
On several podcast episodes now, I’ve referenced something I’ve come to call the Waldorf Dilemma. Just listen to the damn show, all right – I am not gonna explain the whole thing in detail again here. Basically though it’s an internal war that goes on in my head all the time over whether it’s possible to live in a certain harmonic way that draws out the omnipresent divinity that runs through all things or if ALL OF LIFE IS A FIGHT AND IT IS OUR DESTINY AND DUTY TO STRUGGLE MIGHTILY UNTIL WE DIE! At the center of this constant fight I experience lies Waldorf education, something with which I’m only connected by marriage.
So since this is obviously a significant and recurring theme for me, I’ve decided in the medium term to familiarize myself with the philosophy of the wildly mystical dude, Rudolf Steiner, who spawned the Waldorf and a bunch of other things. He’s even got his own little shelf in the used books part of the Toadstool Bookstore here in Peterborough, and the other day, that’s where I found a couple random little books of his lectures, both of them featuring lectures he delivered relating to Easter and its meaning in our lives and the cosmos.
I read the first lecture on Easter, while watching the Celtics tragically lose their first playoff game against the Bulls, and while there’s no human way I can explain it in a way that does it justice (I probably don’t even fully grasp it, to be honest), it definitely knocked my hair back a bit. I’m reading these words about what happens over the course of the procession of the solar year, and I’m just like, this is my shit! But he’s giving it this entirely new angle about how the earth – being a living and breathing organism – breathes in during the fall, holds the breath most of the winter, and begins exhaling – in this case, blasting its essence into the cosmos – around Easter, climaxing with the summer solstice. It’s way more involved than that, and also involves Jesus and his buddy Mike and a dragon, but that’s all I can really explain. That’s the part, that image, that concept of the seasonally breathing planet, that has stuck with me, anyway.
I also use a meditation app called Calm that has a mode just called “Breathe” where the meditation is open-ended, and it makes sounds as a ball goes around a circle divided into four – breathing in, holding in, breathing out, holding out – over and over again, with these cool ambient sounds. Oftentimes, being so low-maintenance and given that you can do it for as long or as short as you like, this is the easiest meditation to get myself to actually do – and now it makes me think of this planet we live on, and what it’s doing.
No conclusions today. Just stopping in to drop off some stuff to think about. We’ll talk soon.
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Christopher J. DiLoreto 