I guess it’s probably good to get knocked out of your rhythm, sometimes even when you felt you had a good one going.
We are sitting on the Rhine River, Cologne, and I am writing longhand because I do not know how to access the internet. The over-engineered coffee pot seems more like a rocket ship cockpit, so I don’t have coffee, despite huge volumes of directions I was given last night, and the over-engineered bathroom sink, which is gorgeous and sleek, is full of water because I can’t figure out how to drain it.
Luckily there are two dogs (Uli and Zola) and two cats roaming the house, so that I get. That feels familiar.
I was on a roll back home. Now I am jet-lagged and not on a roll, but have an enhanced awareness of “on-a-roll-ness”. And an awareness that it will be desirable to achieve that feeling no matter where I am, no matter what the conditions.
There are huge, long riverboats behind me and steam rises off the Rhine.
I hear the coffee machine upstairs. Must be a German awake, now, somebody who “gets” the over-engineered coffee pot. Help is on the way.
Sometimes I love my trances and routines, and what I am aware of this 6 AM morning is that it is OK to get knocked out of them because the added increment of awareness and awake-ness is a good thing. And it will be interesting to watch myself find a new trance here in the land my father roamed almost sixty years ago as a 17 year old American soldier boy. I have that photo of him, squatting, with a machine gun.
Now there’s an experience that’ll knock the trance out of you.
I guess waiting on my coffee isn’t so bad a deal after all…And the sink will figure itself out. Peace makes up for a lot of things…We are family now…
Happy Holidays, everybody.
Froehliche Weinachten.
About the Moderator
Jim Nolan is in his 6th year as president of Southwestern College. He has worked for a dozen universities or colleges, both online and on the ground. He holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology, and attended graduate school in English/Irish Literature. He reads a lot of books, takes a lot of photos, plays guitar, got married in India in 2010, and has a wire haired fox terrier named Barney. He is the opposite of a guru, whatever that is called.
