From macro- to microcosm

 

In one affirmation-sharing activity during a yearend assessment workshop with colleagues at work, someone passed on a note expressing amazement at the Martian's ability to focus on small, practical matters then shift to really big and abstract ideas.  Such feedback was uplifting at that moment, bringing another dimension to the sense of concrete results stemming from these mindfulness efforts in the past decade or two.  First thing that came to mind while deciding on the content and title for this post.  Now wondering whether this kind of whole spectrum thinking, jumping from one end to the other, could have some side effects.  Like not paying enough attention to people, relationships, and other important things around you.  Including this subdued but palpable anger that wells up when such absent-mindedness is finally brought to one's attention.

Something that has to be brought into the Martian's practice in the coming days.  Downloaded Joko Beck's dharma talks recently, to be played and listened to during work breaks and those quick drives to the supermarket.  In one of her recordings, Beck was tackling this whole system of a person's learned automatic reactions to outside stimulus and events that are thus mostly unconscious and generating counter-reactions from and effects in other beings, often negative.  And how having such awareness now of the said system, one can the begin to make some careful tweaks in the links and the chains.  Posted this photo of massive Jupiter (that tiny dot on top) and the much closer and hellish Venus at the bottom to remind one of how this macrocosm of interdependent causes and effects builds on a microcosm of passing thoughts and unconscious actions.  Took it the other night while walking with Sam.

Rage Against the Machine's iconic compilation album Renegades playing now on this antique radio/cassette tape/CD player that only a week or two ago was most certainly headed either to a repair shop or an electronic items junkyard.  Any CD, whether heavily scratched from too much use or fresh from its case, took these irritating pauses (that lasted for a few seconds) when played.  But perhaps many thanks to this summer heat, which must have vaporized all those oily residues on the CD player's lens, been getting few to none of such pauses lately.  Even encouraged an online order for a copy of Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains The Same double album (but perhaps a topic for a possible future post).  Going back to Renegades, no other RATM album in the Martian's CD library, so this one serves as the go to collection when in need of a quick dose of some powerful hip-hop protest tunes.  Definitely nothing like a background of funky noise to get those writing juices really going. Renegades of Funk, which carries the album's title, and with its anthemic lyrics (memorializing famous resisters in American history, from Chief Sitting Bull and Tom Paine, to Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X) and driving rhythm, is easily a contender as one's personal favorite.

From renegade music, mind is then drawn to this message from your aging parents requesting for some therapeutic leaves from a tree.  Last night, it was all about the kasambahay or domestic worker being sick and not able to report for her duties.  Expecting the next one to be a request to come and visit them at the old family home.  Have to start travelling early tomorrow morning.