Anxiety

Hello friends, I experience anxiety about the morning fatigue that is diminished by coffee and a strong breakfast. Eventually drinking water helps. I need to talk with my doctor about dehydration and getting up too much during the night, and weight loss, too. Peg and I have been doing brief meditation first thing in the morning and reading from Stephen Mitchell on the Tao. So there is a daily attempt at anti-anxiety joined to mindful prayer. Tony cat joins us.

Let the Tao enter all reality immediately around us: lovely garden old and new, birds enjoying new seeds. Have the hummers migrated away for this season? Let our interconnection allay anxiety. The February 2015 photo here, taken by poet Ciera Durden, shows me reading to Athens friends about love, the ultimate human interconnection. Best, Gene

Anxiety

Each hoof of each animal makes a sign of the heart as it touches and lifts away from the ground. Unless you believe that heaven is very near, how will you find it? — Mary Oliver

White-coat syndrome is an odd phenomenon,
blood pressure up, higher and higher,
in a room with a pretty nurse and her monitor.

Will they find heart trouble or stroke
with the latest change in meds?
Maybe a better outcome with a home monitor,

but that requires patience and repetition,
cheering the numbers down
and preserving a sense of manly bravery.

It’s self-deception, to be sure,
since inherited genes from mother,
death fears, and illness threaten more.

Yoga and Zen practice help, pulling
mind and breath into the here and now
away from future fears.

Anxiety is a demon of tomorrow
that robs us of joy today. Blessed are those
who know how to embrace the moment,
like Mary Oliver alone with deer.