Its All About Chemistry

My experiment this weekend did not go as I expected; such is science. It was non-the-less an atom splitting discovery. Eureka! I think I’ve got it!

I started my trial with an hour of full productivity ( A Pickle in Time) and ended satisfied. Next I began a full hour of doing as little as I possibly could. I lay in savasana, eyes open, trying not to think of anything at all except to rate how ‘fast’ time was passing.

Great idea until 15 minutes in I fell asleep and woke up to the timer beeping, time perception was over, my analysis ruined. Statistically, there was not enough evidence to conclude that my first hour spent was any different than my second hour spent. Statistically, there was only enough evidence to conclude my whole idea was flat ridiculous.

To get over my poor study design, John and I decided to go get some dinner. It was a Friday night and very early. Early enough to go down to Phil’s BBQ which usually has a line wrapped around the building. But at 4pm we could walk in nonchalant, share a beer and even sit and chat with no pressure from the wait staff to turn over our table. ‘Twas lovely!

Afterwards, it was still so early we decided to stop by Home Depot and dream about our house and build ideas about our future projects. On the way home I remember looking at my phone and shrieking in amazement “Baby, its only 6 o’clock. We still have all night.”

Once we got home we tinkered and goofed off and then just got super silly, cracking up a few side splitting laugh-o-thons. Finally, we calmed ourselves and started a fantastically smart new television series ‘Boardwalk Empire’. It was on the couch when I finally sat down where I had my epiphany.

I was falling in love with the evening. We had done so many things and were having so much fun, and time was at a stand still for no reason at all. Time was not flying by, it was right there in the moment.

This was a typical evening for us and there was no other place in the world I would have rather been. There was nothing else in the universe or any other dimension I would have rather been doing. It was there that I realized I cannot control time, nor even try to control how I perceive it.

It is like falling in love. That desperate emotion to guard it, keep it and maintain it will only suffocate it and smother out its fire. And no matter how difficult it was, I remember, at that time in the beginning when things were in romantic chaos, I knew that I had to let go. I had to let fate, and the universe do what it wanted to do because things like these cannot be controlled. It was at that moment I jumped in.

And so I jumped into the time in my life where I could just let go and enjoy being in love with the moment.

A pickle in time

I love pickles. The current Vlasic I’ve been sinking my teeth into is concerning time:

A historically four dimensional element that has be traveling at an ever increasing rate for as long as I can remember. Most of the theories explaining this well known phenomenon are based on perception and the ratio of a time span relative to the total length of time an observer has witnessed. Super fascinating, but my pickle is this:

I enjoy life so much that I want to do as many things as I possibly can to experience it fully before my time runs out.

And…

The more things I pile on my plate; the busier I am; the more fun I have; the faster time flies by; the quicker my time runs out…or so it seems. It’s all relative right, so what does it even matter?

It matters to me because everything is made of matter and I think it has everything to do with balance: in life, in body, in time.

This is a fine line that I haven’t quite figured out how to rest upon.

                          The brilliance of LOST has.

When I watch TV with my eyes, it is a perfect opportunity to fold clothes with my hands and scratch my dog’s belly with my feet. When I drive to work, it is a perfect time to listen to my French and decide what to make for dinner. Before I know it I forget what episode of ‘Cheers’ I'm on and drive right past my exit.

So I have designed an experiment for the weekend:

Objective: To document my personal perception of time to use as a control for further time manipulation studies.

Methods and Materials: Stop watch. Some sort of statistical analysis software.

Step 1: I will do as little as I can in 1 hours time. Record what I did, how well it was done, and how fast each bracket of time ‘felt’ to be passing according to my personally biased scale.

Step 2: I will do as many ‘unidentified flying projects’ as I can in 1 hours time. Record the same as above.

Step 3: Continue with a moderate amount of productivity.

Step 4: Possibly repeat in randomized order. Analyze results and post findings.

What I hope to discover is my own personal scale of time balance.

Talk about badass biological transformation.

Typical life cycle of a jellyfish:

I’ve noticed that something has been happening for a little while. I am changing. I haven’t changed yet, but I can feel the process. It has everything to do with how poorly I’ve treated my body for the past 29 years of my life and now as I approach 30 and have been introduced to Bikram Yoga, I am a flower petal blooming. I am a polyp ephyra budding.

My yoga instructor calls me Gina. This is not my name, my name is Martina. It’s been about four classes since the name Martina turned into Gina. It took me a while to figure out she was talking to me, but I respond to it because I respond to everyone’s corrections and now it has just stuck. My instructor is so helpful. She has given me so many mind blowing adjustments, it’s like she’s created a whole other person, we’ll call her Gina. So, the other night she conducted such an awesome class for me that I’m going to say it was my best ever. Afterwards I wanted to tell her how fantastic it was and remind her my name, but by the time I got dressed she was nowhere to be found, so I am still Gina.

I realize that I enjoy being Gina. She gets a lot of attention. She is young and fun and spontaneous and she eats and drinks whatever she wants. She lives in the moment, rarely giving thought to the future. She enjoys life to the fullest but at times looses balance.

In a few months though, she is getting married. It is perfect timing as far as her age is concerned, but it is not a product of following the next step in her relationship nor the next step in her life cycle. It is a product of wanting to take that step with the particular person who is standing beside her. And for the first time in her life Gina has found herself thinking about the future and loving it: she can imagine her priorities, goals, and passions. Her future fellow aisle walker (fiancée) has already found a new passion too and although they are totally different interests they still talk about them together as if they are the same. In so many ways they are: the passions are both wickedly difficult and challenging, physically and mentally. Both passions are changing their bodies drastically and encouraging them to eat and drink the right things and not poison their bodies with the toxins both passions are so good at ridding. It makes so much sense that on two totally different paths, this couple can still travel together.

So it may be a while before I happen to have another class with the instructor who calls me Gina. Maybe the universe will decide when; maybe it will be when I have fully transformed into the image of my greatest potential.  Regardless, I am looking forward to that day when the polyp becomes a jellyfish and Gina becomes Martina.

And wow-dang, I might even have a new last name!

How does she ALWAYS know?!

I’m currently planning a wedding. I never thought I would and to be honest the idea has always felt very overwhelming, much like the idea of a corset: me gripping white knuckled to the post of an unmade bed, clothes scattered everywhere. My chamber maid pulling tightly on the corset ribbons, one foot on my lower back for leverage against the constant re-gripping and tightening, yank, yank, re-gripping and tightening. My lungs unite with my ribs; oxygen a treat of the past.

I am presently surprised it is nothing like this. I attribute the comfort to the grace that I am marrying the love of my life. He fills my lungs, he cuts the ribbons.

It has become a wonderful opportunity to spend time with my mother. We try on many dresses and we love them all. The first one is my favorite, then the next one is, and then ok seriously the next one is for real. By the time we get to the end we are overwhelmed and can’t narrow them down. All the pretty dresses. Some are so silly, thank heavens, those are easy to put back.

And we sit in the car, my mother and I, and we talk and talk and talk. And she listens. To all the things.

Last night she took me to Chili’s and while we ate our chicken fajitas she told me a story about my Grandma Jerry. It was a story about a struggle my grandmother experienced that is very similar to a struggle I am blessed to experience. And it was exactly what I needed to hear. I have heard so many things: you should do this and you should do that and you should eat this and you should drink that and I do all the suggestions and drink all the potions and it just doesn’t change a thing. But the story she told me about my grandma changed everything. It made me feel honored. To be anything like her for five minutes; I would take it for a lifetime.

It reminded me of a recent yoga instructor who told us during class something to the effect of, ‘you should learn to enjoy the posture and not anticipate when you will be finished with it, but be disappointed when I tell you to come out of it’. Knowing now the story, I want to be in the struggle. I want to be like my grandma. I no longer want to anticipate when my struggle will be finished and I will be disappointed (but also relieved because my muscles are on fire) when I have to come out of it.

The rest of the night we talked about everything else.

This wasn’t the first time.

She always knows exactly what to say.

                         Hannah said…

                                 Was this REALLY necessary?

Come by tomorrow for another chance to enter and win!

        

Are you Ameri-can or Ameri-can’t?

Today is Election Day. I have never been more excited to vote. There have been things I’ve been more excited to vote about but this day I felt honored to flip through the catalogue of crap and gemstones, lucky to have the freedom to make my choices: which piles are crap, and which piles are gemstones. There are always both.

I left work with all of my proposition decided upon, having spent my lunch on the beach picking my kings and queens of government. I love my job. Aside from eating my soup in the sand and my interesting responsibilities I am encouraged, even financially, to learn. It is the reason I work there. When I graduated I had no idea what jobs even existed much less that I would never have the opportunity to get bored because I am constantly learning new things, experience is the fastest way to education. (Yes, I am in very good mood. It was mid-80s on the coast today; I am a very happy girl).

Anyhow, as I left my job that I thoroughly appreciate I came across a fine sequence of music on the radio: Disturbed – ‘Stupify’ followed by Metallica – ‘Master of Puppets’ and what a line up for an election day. I’m not saying the general American population is “stupified” nor do politicians “chop [their] breakfast on a mirror”, I’m not even going to go into “pulling the strings”. What I’m getting at with the fine line up is that Americans make beautiful music. I take it back, Americans make the best music. We all have our favorites.

So as I walked my dog Cash (who is named after America’s finest icon: the man in black not the man in green) barefoot down the street to my residence garage poll in my small town feeling community I felt very proud to be American. As hard as it is to write an unbiased request to go out and practice your freedom to vote (you still have time) it’s even harder to think of a reason why not to. We all have things we love about America. It’s not only about our opinions on the wars, markets, laws… It’s about the things we enjoy, the jobs that are worth more than the money it takes to pay the bills and the songs that are worth more than any years of oppression that were bulldozed through to obtain the freedom to write them.

OK…so go vote!