Artist's walk, haunted house, thinking death, life long learning

Today I managed to wake up at 6 and got out of bed by 6:30. As a part of Artist’s walk, I took a 30 minute walk around my neighborhood. There is a trailer park across the road and some 200 meters from my apartment. It is called Roxanne trailer park. The first trailer is the area housing’s office and just left to it is an empty fallow open field. The only vegetation there is a tree. I should say couple of trees seems to be sprouting from one place on earth and among those one almost lying on the ground giving a very unusual view. To the right is the only house in the whole complex. It has a neat lawn carefully maintained by the owner and you begin to wonder how does its owner feel like living in such area? How does he tell his friend about the address? Ah.. It’s in the middle of the trailer park and you can’t miss it! Behind that house there is another trailer with a sign “open” dangling on its wall and it seemed to be the place for the maintenance workers. Then comes a very old house whose windows are all sealed but for one. It’s all dilapidated and the sign outside warning against trespassing. It’s a haunted house an inner voice cried. I have seen one more in Carbondale and I am sure this one is too. I start to imagine the long time in history when this house was built, Children playing on the front porch, adults sipping coffee, nice summer early afternoon and clothes making a fluttering sound on the cloth line. Any way I moved ahead and saw some empty trailers. My guess is around 20 percent of all trailers were empty. Behind few of the trailers on my right side was a verdant park and I am sure in evening people play soccer or Frisbee there. There was also a lake behind trailers on my other side; however I didn’t go there as I was afraid that I may be trespassing on someone’s property. I came back and had to sleep for a while.

After I woke up I finished several of the DVDs on time by anchor Kaku. Then I thought I should do a quick yoga and realized that 50 minutes passed by in that one quick session, yes yoga makes time fly by. Today I learned elbow-to-knee and balance posture (also called as “Natrajasana”). Some of my favorite asana I have are Sirshasana, Salabhasana, Halasana, Gomukhasana. So I try to start doing the one which I can do while lying and then I have gain some flexibility I move to one which requires one to sit. Anyway I am happy with the progress I am making.

I don’t know why but I do think about death a lot of times. My last moment and it is nothing in any depressing way. I think about things I would like myself to have finished by that time. I like the Buddhist way of believing that each life is a preparation for next life. So whatever things you leave unfinished you can start from there in the next life. I know it may sound unsettling but isn’t it fun to believe in. Instead of thinking you start over or you just waste time sitting in heaven doing nothing. Learning gives both pleasure and meaning to life and I want to keep learning my whole life till the very last breath. There have been times when people say go and step in to real world, academics is not reality. Then I looked at people who are getting paid to be teachers and enjoying. It’s easy to look into the history and see the people who lived a enjoyable and meaningful life and it invariably comes down to people who love to learn and help other people grow. I love teaching as I said before it’s a two way process where two individuals learn from each other. To me it’s a profession ideally suited. I like the curiosity and the learning part, the teaching also provides the feedback part.