Monadnock Resonation

Made up Mt. Monadnock last Wednesday, in a hike that had a little bit of everything. I started off around 10:00 on the Parker Trail, which is mainly flat as it heads due west. I turned north and started the real climb on the Cliff Walk, which is just as tough as it sounds. All this time, it was hot and rather humid, and by the time I hit Bald Rock and took my lunch break, I was overheated and tired. However, as I traversed my way underneath the peak via the Amphitheater trail, the clouds rolled in and cooled things off a bit. Still, the Summit trail to the top was a mix of sun and clouds, although the peak of Monadnock was windy as ever. The clouds were rocking and rolling, as evidenced by the picture above.
As usual for this mountain, I didn't spend a lot of time at the top because there were a LOT of gapers yelling at each other and being generally annoying, so I headed NE on the Pumpelly Trail. By this point, it was downright gloomy and somewhat chilly until I got underneath the tree line, and I wasn't feeling all that great. However, two things got be back up to par: 1) as soon as I started back to the State Park via the Cascade Link, I ran into huge bushes of wild blueberries which I ate with abandon, and 2) dunking my head in the stream that runs parallel to the Cascade Link was incredibly refreshing. Still, by the time I had met up with the main trails (the Red Spot and White Dot trails) it was raining, so I was pretty happy to get back to the car. All in all a good day!

Where i've been

I've either been painting or prepping to paint recently, and that combined with a mini-vacation and nice hike is responsible for the radio silence. Which you can now consider broken.

Meditation and the Brain

While I've always been interested in meditation, I've never followed up this interest with any actual - you know - meditation. Just too impatient, I guess. No time. So short of "corpse pose", I'm out of the loop. However, I find this account fascinating:
This retreat was in the Vipassana tradition, which emphasizes gaining insight into the way your mind works. Vipassana has a reputation for

being one of the more intellectual Buddhist traditions, but, even so, part of the idea is to gain that insight in a way that isn’t entirely intellectual. Or, at least, in a way that is sometimes hard to describe.

... I’ll just say that it involved seeing the structure of my mind — experiencing the structure of my mind — in a new way, and in a way that had great meaning for me. And, happily, this experience was accompanied by a stunningly powerful blast of bliss. All told, I don’t think I’ve ever had a more dramatic moment.

More on expanding your mind here.

Before and After

Last week, I spent a very satisfying day pressure washing the house and deck. To give you an idea of how badly the house needed a cleaning, check out the two sides of my bulkhead doors, one of which was pressure washed, and the other in its original glory. Can you tell which one is which?

Quote of the Day

Two cliches make us laugh but one hundred cliches move us.

Umberto Eco, writing of the cumulative effect of cliches in Casablanca.

Deep Thought

It's depressing how much time I have to spend convincing my almost-three year old son to go to sleep. In the last 24 hours alone , I've spent almost 1.5 hours in his room going through the nap/night time routine. Add in the destressing time recovering from all of his crying and complaining and it's even longer.

I hope to god this is just some form of awful phase.

He placed a jar in Tennessee...

A new Wallace Stephens poetry collection is out. The NYTimes reviews, but spends a good half of the article gossiping and bemoaning the lack of unpublished poems. The reviewer is probably one of those people that pay more attention to the "making of" and "extras" on a DVD than the movie itself.

Anyways, Stephens is the first modern metaphysical poet I ever "got", thanks to Prof. Barnaby at UVM. His “Anecdote of the Jar” is a fantastic picture of how man changes his environment simply by being there, by observing. It's a nice piece of work.