The next step.

Perhaps there's something to be said for unbridled idleness.

I went down to the park to float our little section of the Deschutes and had a wonderful experience of empty-headedness. I think I tend to run from such a thing, into pseudo-productivity on the web or elsewhere, because I feel guilty or lazy, or because I think I should be wisely using the time/space continuum of my mental real estate.

Today I didn't direct my little craft, but let the swift riffles and eddies take me where they would. I saw a water snake resting on the river bed, and noted which of the many pools is the deepest. I drifted back upstream in an eddy and became a captive of river-time; then I was amused that the tiniest of whorls set me free again.

It was when I was becalmed on a boulder that I thought - this is the next step of my healing. Allowing myself a lack of movement, mental quiet, in which to become observant and wholly present to the present of the moment.

I'd been looking outside myself for an answer to the congestion in my head. Somehow, though, it makes sense that mental nourishment would come in the form of undirected thoughts, and the occasional quiet space between them.