December 1, 2023
one month
Welcome friends to Meditations in Blue, a serial memoir project documenting my time incarcerated and return to community through journal entries, poetry, essays, and art.
You are welcome to join the story at any point as it unfolds, but if you’d like to begin at the beginning, I have written an introduction here and the first journal entry begins on November 2, 2023.
Thank you so much for being here, bearing witness and building community for healing and transformation.
Additional commentary and reflections are included in the audio recordings
December 1, 2023
Deep Work
“The isolation that splits us from the living body of our world is an illusion; the pain breaks through to tell us who we really are.”
-Joanna Macy, “Active Hope”
Expressing Concern Journal Prompts:
#1 When I see what’s happening to the natural world, what breaks my heart is…
When I see what’s happening to the natural world my heart breaks because so much pain, suffering, and brutality we wield against it is unnecessary, fueled only by our human desire for immediate and complete reward. I think of the animals who are starving and yet others slaughtered mercilessly; driven from their natural habitats by the force of human greed. The forests destroyed, bull-dozed to “make things”— the sacrifice of entire ecosystems. The pollution heedlessly dumped and pumped into our waterways; plastics choking our fish and turtles, toxins killing the plankton that feed so many, oil sludge that permeates the skin of our animal brethren. The suffering by innocents who simply seek to live as they have lived for thousands of years now— made dangerous and impossible in the unraveling of our world. I think of their fear, how visceral it must be when their homes are invaded by large machinery, when the heat of the fire rips through the forest line destroying all in its path, when the tidal wave from the tsunami consumes and they remain powerless to change it or escape. They did not set these chains of events into motion and yet they carry the brunt of the consequences and that breaks my heart.
Surya Namaskar Count: 20
“In reality you are perfectly unaffected by all expressions of lack of love. These can be from yourself and others, from yourself to others, or from others to you. Peace is an attribute in you. You cannot find it outside. Illness is some form of external searching. Health is inner peace. It enables you to be unshaken by lack of love from without and capable, through your acceptance of miracles, of correcting the conditions from lack of love in others.”
December 1st. One month I have been here now. It feels both like so much longer and as if I have just gotten here and am a brand-new newbie who doesn’t know anything at all. I fell asleep for a couple of hours last night but then stayed up to talk with Monny so this morning I went back to sleep after breakfast instead of staying up for a practice. I got to see MC this morning and that was really good medicine. He sent me the poem by Joy Harjo that I shared with him from a grief group months ago and I wrote it down to make some art with it later on.
Several of the women were admiring the art that I was making today but when I offered them supplies and to show them how I learned how to do this type of drawing, they didn’t want that. They say they want to learn to control their anger more and to be calm like they see me being but then they don’t want to do any of the practices to move closer to that goal. Reminding myself that it takes all of us time to be ready for change, so to just keep doing me and my art, and if they are ever ready, I will be here to sit with them and share practice.
I’m thinking now of how last month when I started to share yoga practices with some of the women Monny didn’t join in or show too much interest and now she’s starting to do some on her own and participate in class a bit more. We all come to things in our own way and in our own time; it’s good to remind myself that it means so much more and we’re more likely to stick with something when we are the ones who choose it and aren’t told by someone else.
Monny said last night that she’s able to feel the difference within herself when she does some yoga, art, or meditation— she can feel herself becoming calmer and more at peace. This makes me feel so glad that she now knows a few tools to help support herself in these small but mighty ways.
I’m feeling wired but unsettled this afternoon. I have a lot of energy but having trouble focusing on any deeper work. I’ve made a few pieces of art and did my chanting practice, both of which helped. The Om Hare Om chant in particular really settles my nervous system. Monny is at class for a while, I may lay down and rest and read for a little bit, maybe a mini-napitation. There’s still about an hour and a half until dinner.
Music is blaring, Ange got into with another inmate over the tablets again and got another 48-hour lockdown and she’s pissed over it. Normally she’d get sent to max for this violation but there’s no room there so now our “medium” unit is 1/4 quarantine cells, 1/4 max holding cells on 24 hr. lockdowns, and 1/2 medium. It’s a lot— the volatility is off the charts. I was going to try and lay down to rest but the sensory overload is so much.
I’ve finished my book and done a bunch of sudoku puzzles mostly to try and help my mind to settle while I can’t rest. I wish the chaplain had brought more books today, I’ll start re-reading Active Hope tonight in the meantime. Jules said she is going to try and bring over The Stand by Stephen King tonight, which is apparently like 1,300 pages, which would be good to keep me occupied for a bit. So much time to myself, leaves a lot of “free time” in the day. I need to be better about creating pockets for Deep Work and hopefully begin to write more. Something beyond these pages at least.
Even after just a few days practicing with the surya namaskar mantra I am remembering it really well. Not fully memorized yet but I remember it much better and faster than I thought I would. I remember when I first heard Janet share it in a practice and I thought I would never be able to remember it and here it is, coming easier than I thought when I am focusing on it with little other distractions.
That is the end of this day’s entry.
Thank you for being here with me, friends.
And until next time, much love.
Beautiful to hear how your practices started to help others reach places of calm. And loved to hear you searching for spaces for Deep Work back then, and to think how that desire has carried through time to the Deep Work spaces we now share 🥰