Mind Still Matters

Looking back to yesterday and forward to tomorrow

Yesterday, I woke up at 2 AM and could not get back to sleep. My mind was reproaching me for all that I am not at 63 and all that might have been. It matters and, by that, I mean that the mind creates all of this ex-nihilo. It perceives, it classifies, it says “Good” or it says “Bad” when actually, nothing exists upon which to project these labels.

So it seems to me right now. I corrected my mind by writing:

As usual, it ran all over the place, but generally, it helped me clear the fog. As often is the case, it asked for help from my readers. I had one person tell me that they would help if they were able to do so. What I am asking for is evidence that I am heard.

I like to help others feel that way and have collected something of a cadre of folks who I regularly amplify over cyberspace. Substack makes it very easy to simply click a button and either amplify the signal being sent out here or also to put it out on X, BlueSky, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Seems a bit more complicated to get things out onto Instagram and Reddit but that’s possible too. Why not?

I read a lot. Sometimes I engage with the content. If all goes well, a dialogue starts and our minds create something out of this which might not otherwise have existed. I first became aware of this ability when I got an email account upon arriving at the University of Pittsburgh in the late summer of 1994. A newly minted Teaching Assistant (TA), I was teaching a course in Elementary German to a class in the Czechoslovak Nationality Room that first semester. I was, of course, terrified, but did my best. We TA’s in the Foreign Language area were encouraged to observe each other. My cubicle mate, a chap from Augsburg, Germany on exchange, told me that I had “unglaubliche Erfolg” (unbelievable success) with my female students. Being somewhat blind to these interactions, I was, of course, flattered. I learned to use this as a teaching strength rather than abusing the energy that was being generated.

Looking back on it, I am rather grateful that I had the good sense not to abuse the dynamic created between students and teachers. Only once, after a class was over, did I have a romantic connection with one of my former students, a graduate student in the History of Art and Architecture program and that did not last long. Coming out of that dalliance, I made my move to Denmark to see if a burgeoning relationship that had begun with a connection over sixdegrees dot com could work. I discovered it could not.

In a dream last night, I had traveled again over to some European country and was having dinner at a restaurant where a band was playing including the (then) young lady who had been my impetus for taking a job and moving from Pittsburgh to Copenhagen. I wanted to thank her for her part in my story. I think that’s the right move in general although I don’t believe that I need to inflict my presence on anyone who might find my presence a distraction.

Earlier this morning, I was reading a post by Taly where the writer expressed a desire to make their cheeks sore from smiling. This took me back to 1997 when, as an early adopter of Match.com, I connected to a woman who did just that…made her face sore from smiling because she had connected with me. I wish that back in those days, I had possessed more self-confidence and ability to be the person that she would stay with, but I was able to provide her with a summer such as the one Taly was sharing about wanting this morning. It is one of the gems of my memory, thinking of how we traveled together and had experiences in Williamsburg and Amherst, Virginia, as well as in Baltimore, Freiburg, Germany, Paris, France, Milan, Italy, all in the space of the summer of 1997 as I was concluding my graduate studies. Splitting up with me was also a gift. It led me to getting sober.

During that summer, we were listening a lot to Sheryl Crow’s album that included this track:

At times, I have wished that I had been strong enough to have been her man. For a few months, I was, I suppose. The experience is bittersweet.

I saw this same woman not too long ago at the Hamilton Live here in DC. I didn’t feel the need to go up and say hello, but it was good to see her looking pretty much as I remember her as we enjoyed Sunny Trippel leading Psycho Killers. I didn’t see her at this year’s performance. Hers the one we both attended:

In general, it is a joy to mull about in the past, but this article was to be about how Mind Still Matters - and that is where I want to leave it now. The mind creates all of this out of nothing. We are that mind, collectively. The next article out to dig into that as I harrow the fields of my personal history. Sometimes it feels a bit “FraKctured” -

Onward!

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