I think I had better slow down. Sometimes my mind races into a whirling hurricane and I'm powerless to stop it. I want to just feel life, I want a break from the judgments worries memories associated with everything I experience. I want to be completely present. At the same time my body wants to move me into the present- wants to devour action, gorge on forward motion like a crazed pac-man- and it's always the thinking that holds me back. My impulse regulator is on overdrive, so that when I feel something in my gut I hold back from doing, but never from thinking on and on until the urge has rotted and my body has long since surrendered.

I have meditated in the past and that has always worked, but I think it is more than that. I don't allow (force?) my mind to slow down enough to get into that quiet space. Even before sleep I plow through a wall of speeding thought straight into vivid uncontrollable fantasy. I feel the dream taking me in, pulling me down this or that corridor, yet all I want is rest. Quiet. A dark place to learn to feel again- to relearn what a little baby does- to feel life, instead of thinking all the way through. Until it has passed you by and all your thoughts seem like a leash upon your neck that led you carefully, around the present. Around the places you wanted to see- so fast all you got was a glimpse out the window. Around the people you love, or wanted to love, where all you can remember are a few stray words, the way she laughed. Not the person just the 'specs'.

I have reached that quiet place before; I know that it is really there, and ever since I have longed to return. I think I need to get off this ceaseless subway and hike through those mountains again until I find it.

-Penny