Still Sundays
October 2nd.
Lymph nodes for spiritual bacteria. Dialogue with the body (video link to blindfolded yoga with Marco Rojas). Notes from Protests and Revolutions: the phenomena needed for a revolutionary movement.
The windows in the bedroom had to be closed last night. The room was chilled from the October breeze, a carrier with a post-card from the future: winter is around the corner.
I wish I didn’t write as slowly as I do. I wish I didn’t see putting words on paper as setting lights on a stage (and on worse days delivering thought babies!). I wish I wrote as fast on Sunday mornings and when I attempt fiction as when I am writing an email.
However, I am grateful to this morning’s stillness that is welcoming my haute couture thoughts as if they are walking on some red carpet.
Another autumn filled with the beautiful mystery of organic decomposition.
Knowledge that we are dying is a maître d’ that oversees our reservations about life. We are not afraid of death but some long, lingering pain that may lead to it. How we handle pain then is how we handle living.
That is why I practice yoga*, whether the fad stays or goes, to explore pain and pleasure, real and imagined. My mother is always reminding us that dopamine, “the pleasure chemical,” is not only triggered by pleasure/joy but pain too.** The body can very well become addicted to this self-induced chemical. You can’t control the chemical reaction, might as well control the emotional stimuli.
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There is something about ten o’clock I don’t like. It doesn’t matter if it is in the morning or at night. I love eight o’clock. I also like eleven o’clock. Just 10:oo a.m. or p.m. makes me feel unfit for time. I don’t know what it wants me to feel when the hands on the clock separate slightly like scissors to create that statement that it is ten o’clock. If you search the terms “ten o’ clock” or “10 o’clock”, like I just did on the Internet, some very interesting things come up. They didn’t distract me for long given none resonated with any feeling I have about 10 o’ clock. I think it is simply that ten o’clock makes me feel that time doesn’t really belong to me for I feel no attachment to any particular emotion to time at that hour.
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Lymph nodes are found all through the body and act as filters or traps for foreign particles. They are important in the proper functioning of the immune system. The increased numbers of immune system cells fighting the infection will make the node expand and become “swollen.” They become inflamed or enlarged in various conditions, which may range from trivial, such as a throat infection, to life threatening such as cancers.
Reality is a trampoline. Where are the lymph nodes for spiritual bacteria? I feel our body ailments are a reflection of the vast pool of emotions that hang loosely within and those emotions too that we attract or maintain in our social pools.
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At least 700 have been arrested in the most recent “Occupy Wall Street” protests on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City for not staying on the pedestrian walkway during their protests.
I couldn’t help reviewing my notes from my Protests and Revolutions course as part of my International Studies major back in the days of college academics. I had the privilege of taking a course right after 9/11 from a professor who had spent his life studying protests, revolutions, and terrorism.
I share:
A social movement can be defined as a persistent and organized effort on the part of a relatively large number of people either to bring about or to resist social change.
Although classifying movements as either primarily change oriented/liberal or change resistant/conservative can be useful in conceptualizing the central goals of particular movements, it is important to understand that in reality few movements can fit perfectly into these categories.
For example, although the Women’s Rights movement can be viewed as change oriented in the sense of advocating a shift from patterns of male dominance toward greater equality of the genders in the economic and political sphere, it also has qualities that could be perceived as conservative. Among these are the movement’s opposition to the sexual exploitation of women, an element of traditional religious morality. [Side-note: my personal opinion for opposing sexual exploitation of women are not embedded in any religious beliefs but a matter of human rights where women’s rights are most vulnerable by the simple fact that they are women.]
A reform movement attempts to change limited aspects of a society but does not aim at drastically altering or replacing major social, economic, or political institutions. A revolutionary movement, in comparison, is a social movement in which participants are organized to alter drastically or replace totally existing social, economic, or political institutions.
Although revolutionary social change (change in the structure of basic institutions) can be brought about through nonviolent means such as peaceful labor strikes or democratic elections, most revolutionary movements that have succeeded have usually been accompanied by some level of violence on the part of both movement and participants and governments and groups opposing revolution.
Of all the phenomena specifically relevant to the success of a revolutionary movement, five appear to be of crucial importance: (1) the growth of frustration among the majority of a population; (2) the existence of elite elements who are alienated from the current government and, more specifically, of elite members who support the concept of revolution; (3) the development of unifying motivations that bring together the embers of different social classes in support of a revolution; (4) the occurrence of a crisis that severely weakens government administrative and coercive capabilities in a society experiencing the development of a revolutionary movement; and (5) the choice on the part of other nations not to intervene or their inability to do so to prevent the success of a revolutionary movement in a particular society.
The third point does not exclude the probability that some of the reasons individuals participate in or support a revolutionary movement are of a highly personal nature, such as the belief that the success of the revolution will improve their own material well-being, or a desire for revenge, or because of ties to loved ones or friends who support revolution.
(from Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements, Second Edition, by James DeFronzo).
At least 700 have been arrested in the most recent “Occupy Wall Street” protests on the Brooklyn Bridge for not staying on the pedestrian walkway.
Elite dissidence is a key factor in bringing about any lasting change in developed countries.
What if everyone stopped using their credit cards? What if the 1% no longer used their credit cards?
What is it that we want?
A movement for movement’s sake?
Revolt within first.
The only way to deal with an un-free world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. ~ Albert Camus
In Stillness I find what matters and therefore I find some freedom.
~a.q.s.
*Here is a link if you would like to take a peak at Marco Rojas teaching blind-folded yoga.
** Here is a link to an article (albeit old, there is more recent research supporting this) about the pain-pleasure chemicals in our brain.
Perhaps I extend the metaphor too much, but it seems there is a microcosm-macrocosm parallel in what you write here. Physical and even spiritual illness/malaise in an individual triggers repair response including swelling lymph nodes. When groups of people experience malaise, the nodes of protest appear and begin to swell. The clearer the aims of reform, the more likely the chance of healing a hurting people.
But perhaps this is what you meant all along! You certainly made this point with your creative juxtapositions, Like stage actors, your words typically “show” rather than “tell.” The artist’s way.
Yes, freedom within first. Very instructive excerpt from political science text, and wonderful quote from Camus.
~lucy