Tuesday, March 16

I woke up at 4:45am, instantly alert and unsure where I was, or which country I was in. I think waking up is probably particularly confusing since I don't spent much time in the Sleeping Bed, so it's not as familiar at the Lounging Bed, but I think this distinction will help me sleep better. Or I have too much time on my hands and need to create Habits, Rules, and Structures!

Anyway, I went to bed at 9:00pm so the early wake up didn't really matter, although it's still very dark at 5:00am. It made me think of something the instructor at the Dipabhavan meditation retreat we went to two years ago said about the hour of 5:00am...I think there was some poem? But I couldn't find it. However, there is an Allen Ginsberg poem called Five AM:

Five A.M.

Elan that lifts me above the clouds
into pure space, timeless, yea eternal
Breath transmuted into words
Transmuted back to breath
in one hundred two hundred years
nearly Immortal, Sappho's 26 centuries
of cadenced breathing -- beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars,
chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, Nation empires
brass walls, polished marble, Inca Artwork
of the mind -- but where's it come from?
Inspiration? The muses drawing breath for you? God?
Nah, don't believe it, you'll get entangled in Heaven or Hell --
Guilt power, that makes the heart beat wake all night
flooding mind with space, echoing through future cities, Megalopolis or
Cretan village, Zeus' birth cave Lassithi Plains -- Otsego County
farmhouse, Kansas front porch?
Buddha's a help, promises ordinary mind no nirvana --
coffee, alcohol, cocaine, mushrooms, marijuana, laughing gas?
Nope, too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky
at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street --
Where does it come from, where does it go forever?

Am I crazy to think this poem totally is about meditation?

Anyway, I did a 5am meditation, and then did a little clean-up. Spending ALL my time in this room has made me aware of a couple overlooked areas, and I swept and wiped down the floors and removed the glass top from my desk and wiped down both sides.

I took a shower and fussed around with my iPad—I haven't been able to figure out how to watch anything except streaming YouTube videos, and I'm getting error messages on all the apps I so thoughtfully downloaded before leaving the US. The Internet is strongest early in the morning, and I did all I could to try and troubleshoot it...but had no luck. Damn. I'd really like to have something to watch at the end of the day.

But I was surprised and relieved when breakfast arrived at 6:30am!

Ruby and Dan always said a prayer before meals, and I found I missed that moment of mindfulness...and also, meals are kinda the biggest deal of the day and I don't wanna rush through them...so I found a Zen chant, Gokan no ge, transcribed the translation I liked best, and put it on my desk.

I got the French toast with syrup, which was really just like diner French toast, but I enjoyed it more than the other breakfasts so far. 

Then I put on some make up and jewelry and took some pictures on myself. Yep. This was (mostly) out of boredom, but also because I'm only gonna have these glamorous eyelashes for so long...

 

 

Then I texted with Roman for a while, and left my iPad outside my door, which he picked up and fixed! Yay!!!! I was able to start downloading stuff on Prime! Whew.

We also caught a glimpse of each other, which was nice. He's across the hall from me and another room down the hallway, so our rooms are like kitty-corner from each other. I was disappointed that we were gonna be in two separate rooms, but I actually feel closer to him than I expected. We text a lot and so I feel like I have at least some idea of what's going on down there.

I felt like I fucked around a lot this morning, taking pictures and texting Roman, which is funny because...what am I doing that's not fucking around? Self Betterment, I guess! Habits, Rules, and Structures!

Lunch was "fried mixed vegetable with jasmine rice"...but really rice with steamed vegetables and a fried egg. It was nice to have vegetables, even if they were a little bland.

After lunch, I sent some emails/messages to friends, read, and then tried once again, with Roman's help, to figure out how to download Prime videos onto my computer, since it turned out I actually wasn't able to download stuff onto my iPad. This didn't go well.

I've avoided going into all this because it's stupid and boring...but the short story is, we bought a VPN subscription just before we left the US so we could watch all the shows while in Thailand (VPN=virtual privacy network and can be used to access local sites while traveling internationally). I especially wanted this subscription for quarantine, since I knew I'd want to have the option of watching TV shows or movies with not much else to do. But it seems that Amazon has a restriction on VPN's! When I tried to download stuff onto my iPad, I kept getting a message notifying me I was using a VPN and to please turn it off. Plus, I was getting lots of different error message on my iPad, and I was losing faith I'd be able to really use the device in quarantine.

But Roman wasn't having any of these problems on his computer, so I decided to download the VPN onto my computer, which involved getting Roman's help and doing some super geeky coding stuff since my computer uses Linux and that's how Linux rolls. I finally got the VPN downloaded and...got the same error message from Amazon that I can't download stuff while using a VPN. I can look through stuff that's available internationally...but that selection blows.

Augh! I was relying on Prime because with the slow WiFi here I can't stream Netflix, Hulu, or Disney Plus.

I got kind of bummed out. I just wanted to have a few episodes of something I could look forward to in the evenings. Plus, I'd searched through Prime and had a little mental list of the shows I wanted to watch and was looking forward to downloading them.

Ah, expectations.

I did a meditation, which helped me feel a little less sorry for myself, then drank some tea, and read.

Then I did a short yoga class, texted with Roman, and read some more. I finished Night of the Mannequins (so good!) as well as Pema Chodron yesterday, and started a book called What She Ate, which I realize could also be the name of this blog.

I ordered pork flat rice noodle with brown gravy sauce Hong Kong style for dinner. I thought it would be a stir fry dish, but instead the noodles were served in one dish and in the other dish was a kind of soup with pork and vegetables, the broth thickened with cornstarch. Maybe I was suppose to combine them but I didn't. The noodles were better than the soup, which was bland. Hooray for little packets of fish sauce and pickled chilies!

The internet wasn't working on any of my devices, except my phone, so I just read some more after dinner. Maybe q-tine can be a chance to get into some reading? 

I thought I'd try and stay awake until until 10:00pm, but after dropping into sleep in the middle of a Youtube video about making cake frosting and having what felt like a slightly delirious text conversation with Megan about symbiosis, I gave up and turned the lights out just after 9:00pm.