My neighbors and I have a habit of giving our unconsumed food to one another when we leave. This year, when Rita left, she gave me onions and garlic and butter as well as her wine in a box. After we finished the wine, I decided to use the box for a purse.
First I papier-mached the inside with flyers from the grocery store then covered the outside with fused plastic bags. Some hand and machine stitching was needed for aesthetics and pragmatics. The handle is made from crocheted shopping bags.
The name of this purse is Del Cecco as some Del Cecco pasta packaging somehow creeped in. Thanks to my consumption of wine and pasta, I was able to make this purse!
Our Parian stay has come to its yearly end. Balcony curtains, throws for the terrace sofas, hanging baskets have all been removed. Last minute repairs, plant pruning and superficial cleanup are almost done. Our summer home is heading towards hybernation.
Transitions are difficult for me. They make me feel like I’m in apnea and I hold by breath while living in between Here & There.
Spring 2014
Fall 2014
On my Wish List of “Things I Would Like to Learn” is, in the top 10, that of learning how to affront transitions with elegance and style and, above all, tranquility. Which means learning to be more flexible from within. And detached.
When I finally arrive on the beach of Krios and find, with luck, a bit of shade under a tamarisk, the first thing I do is lay down my towel. Beach towels are like territorial flags and say “this space is taken”. They indicate a line of demarcation, a boundary.
Today I have reached a boundary—the limit in terms of these 31 days dedicated to daily posts regarding my walks to Krios.
I began this series as a reflection on walking as a spiritual practice. But the reflection today is: just what is meant by spiritual? Spirituality has so many definitions that it has none. So I’ve given it one of my own: spirituality is the contemplation of what gives meaning to life.
While walking to Livadia today, I asked Pierluigi if, in his readings, he’d come across anything of interest regarding spirituality. So he began talking to me about anima mundi–the belief that everything that exists is connected by a world soul.
But my walks are not about the world, they’re about me. Because there’s a territorial domain inherent in my spirituality–it belongs to me and no one else. Religion is a different story. It aims to transform multiple needs in to a single creed. Maybe we can’t be sure that God exists but a need for God undoubtedly does.
Several people have contacted me expressing their interest in the idea of walking as a means of re-connecting with the self. So, if anyone reading this is would like to write a piece for my blog about walks, I would be thrilled to post it. You can contact me at korzekwa at gmail dot com.
Thanks for keeping me company!
By the way, I will be taking a short break from blogging.
My mantra for today comes from Grateful Dead’s “Truckin’”.
Keep On Trucking. OM. Trucking. Trucking. Keep On Trucking.
Several years ago, I read “Super Consciousness: The Quest for the Peak Experience” and became a Colin Wilson fan. A Peak Experience, term coined by psychologist Abraham Maslow, is an ecstatic state when one feels a sense of euphoria and interconnectedness with the world around them. Intrigued, I also read Wilson’s “Access to Inner Worlds” (1983). Wilson believed that our everyday consciousness lacks animation because we habitually use only certain parts of our brain. So, to make our life more alive and exciting, we need to expand our perception. And this means training our attention in order to create a peak experience at will.
Wilson devised this exercise that, with practice, can help achieve control over one’s attention:
Take a pencil and hold it up against the ceiling then concentrate on the pencil with all your might. Relax then concentrate again. Keep doing this on and off concentration until you’re able to focus your attention at will. This exercise is a bit boring and fatiguing. It even produces a strain behind the eyes. However, if you persist, at a certain point you will feel much discomfort followed by an immense relief. And this will create a peak experience. Like an orgasm, first it’s tension then a relief producing euphoria.
Altering our perception is an act of will.
Wilson also used Wilhelm Reich’s breathing exercises for the focusing of perception: lie down on the floor and take a deep breath. Exhale as slowly as possible going down from the lungs to the stomach to the genitals as you say “out, down, through”.
Wilson said that if first you do the breathing exercise followed by the pencil exercise, you will be rewarded with a feeling of exaltation.
Breathing is inter-relating with our environment. By breathing, we become a part of the world around us. That’s why, if I live in a smog filled city, I will absorb this smog and become toxic, too.
Research shows that living close to the sea makes one healthier because of the air that’s full of minerals and negatively charged ions. These ions help strengthen our immune system, absorb oxygen, balance serotonin levels and counter-balance the positive ions (free radicals) we get from computers, TV and electricity in general.
We take breathing for granted without realizing its true power. If done properly, breathing can revolutionize our lives. That’s why I like to sit on the beach to do some basic Pranayama yoga breathing exercises. Blood needs fresh air to flush out toxins and the sea air is perfect for this.
Life is but a series of breaths. Yogi Ramacharaka
As for the mantra today, it’s from Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”. Ok, maybe I’m being a bit kitsch and I should have used Sting’s “Every Breath You Take” but that’s just how I woke up today…feeling kitsch.
Breath in. OM. Breath out. Breath in. OM. Breath out.
The Narrative Within 