It Starts Quiet
The mind doesn’t start
screaming
like a crowd in the dark
after a gun goes off
It starts still.
It starts quiet.
I took a quick weekend trip to Playa del Carmen, Mexico to see some good friends last week. One of them is the girl in this pic, posing for my physiopoetry project Skin on Sundays. She's the kind of person that goes around to impoverished areas of Mexico to teach teenage girls and boys sex education. Obviously, they need it, but that doesn't mean that people are going to go around teaching them that stuff for free. Certainly the government isn't really including it in public schools K-12. Agustina is an extraordinary person, empowering to females and males too. I feel like she has been having some spiritual trouble, and maybe that's why I wrote her this poem. To quiet the mind a little when it gets too loud, to remember that we all have the power to do it, that it didn't start out so loud in there. That was the subconscious reason for writing it. I also think Agustina reminds other people of this gift, this ability to quiet the mind too. She has a softness which she protects, because she doesn't want to be too vulnerable.
Anyway, Playa del Carmen helped me to quiet my mind a lot too. I was listening to a podcast, OnBeing, on the plane ride over to Caribbean paradise, and this particular one was talking about this concept too, how the mind gets chaotic but it actually starts out quiet. Even if we close that in a little, every morning when we wake up, it is quiet before we start introducing things like thoughts (and phones and media). I highly recommend the podcast, not just this episode, if you're into thinking about big philosophical questions and listening to people talk about them in a pronouncedly intelligent, powerful, yet calm way.
My mind just gets loud because I have so much I want to accomplish on a daily basis, aside from just making money by tutoring essays and writing articles about celebrities, healthy lifestyles, whatever they have me writing. It's nice to let it go so that when I come back to it, I am re-energized.
And re-energized I am.
xo,
Jessica
ps. Look at how the color of the water shifts when the sun moves, from the first photo to the second. My color adjustments were very minimal, so that is just nature. And well, nature. Nature is pretty incredible.
Our minds are thought generators. Meditation and what we give attention to helps.
So true. What we give attention to is constantly under the influence, so we really have to put the effort in.
Yes.
That poem is so striking! Impossible to ignore an image that strong - I'm sure it will be stuck with me for a while. It almost has a political angle to it also, a comment on our over-saturated media environment and the difficulties that poses for mindfulness. Sounds like the podcast had some similar things to say - I'll try and check it out!
Thank you! Yeah it is so hard to stay tuned to what's in front of us with all the media. Ufff. But we just have to learn to live with it and try our best :)
Photos are fun and definitely like your writing. Sounds like your friend is doing some fine service - best of luck in your endeavors. I have sailed past Playa del Carmen on the way to the Rio Dulce. That was an adventure.
Thank you! I love Playa. Maybe someday I will return to live...or some other beach
A worthy cause, hers is.
Definitely. She is a saint <3
Cool photo!
Nice post. Oh how I wish my mind would start out quiet sometimes, seems like almost every day I am awakened in the middle of a frantic stream of thoughts.
Oh noooo. Maybe if you try to fall asleep with a quiet mind, it could help?