Gloria Roubal's Daily Hand Generated Type Phrase #213

If you know me, or if you have read past posts, you know that I am a HUGE fan of Fiona Apple. She is among my very top favorite singer/songwriter/musicians out there. She is so innovative and creative. I love her voice. Her lyrics intrigue me. I am moved by her chord progressions. The production on her recordings is always phenomenal. She is truly unique. I only hope she decides to record another record; she has stated that she doesn't want to do any more recording. It would be such a terrible shame! However, I have her entire catalog of music—at least I think I do... just about, if not completely. I listen to her songs quite regularly.

Her most recent CD, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (super long title!), was released in 2012, and it is quite different from her others in that everything is really stripped down and acoustic in terms of instrumentation and production. LOVE LOVE LOVE it!

The first song on the record is called, "Every Single Night." Lyrics are posted below. Today's phrase is an important lyric line from this song.

Here is a LINK to the song on Youtube.

By the way, I'm not the only one who loves this album! From Wikipedia:

AWARDS AND YEAR-END LISTS
The album earned a nomination at the 55th Grammy Awards for Best Alternative Album. The album was named the best album of 2012 by Time Magazine, Stereogum, Spinner, and NPR Music's Fresh Air. It ranked at number 2 on the lists of Consequence of Sound and Entertainment Weekly, number 3 on the lists of USA Today and Pitchfork Media, number 4 on Paste, number 5 in Rolling Stone, number 10 on Idolator, number sixteen in Spin, number seventeen on American Songwriter and Filter, and appeared on NPR's unnumbered list. 

Apple's track "Hot Knife" ranked at number twelve in Rolling Stones 50 Best Songs of 2012 list and "Every Single Night" ranked at number 7 on American Songwriters Top 50 Songs of 2012. In Pitchfork Media's Top 100 Tracks of 2012, "Werewolf" was ranked at number 9 and "Every Single Night" was ranked at number 35.

LYRICS:

"Every Single Night"

Every single night
I endure the flight
Of little wings of white-flamed
Butterflies in my brain
These ideas of mine
Percolate the mind
Trickle down the spine
Swarm the belly, swelling to a blaze
That's when the pain comes in
Like a second skeleton
Trying to fit beneath the skin
I can't fit the feelings in
Every single night's alight with my brain

What'd I say to her
Why'd I say it to her
What does she think of me
That I'm not what I ought to be
That I'm what I try not to be
It's got to be somebody else's fault
I can't get caught
If what I am is what I am, cause I does what I does
Then brother, get back, cause my breast's gonna bust open
The rib is the shell and the heart is the yolk and
I just made a meal for us both to choke on
Every single night's a fight with my brain

I just want to feel everything

So I'm gonna try to be still now
Gonna renounce the mill a little while and
If we had a double-king-sized bed
We could move in it and I'd soon forget
That what I am is what I am cause I does what I does
And maybe I'd relax, let my breast just bust open
My heart's made of parts of all that surround me
And that's why the devil just can't get around me
Every single night's alright, every single night's a fight
And every single fight's alright with my brain

I just want to feel everything
I just want to feel everything
I just want to feel everything
I just want to feel everything

Gloria Roubal's Daily Hand Generated Type Phrase #212

I love Thich Nhat Hanh and consider him to be one of my spiritual teachers. I read books and listen to CDs of live retreats by him, and I have learned a great deal.

Here is my daily phrase, and below it you'll find an excerpt from one of his books that explains the meaning to some extent.

Excerpt from The Heart of Understanding, by Thich Nhat Hanh 

“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. "Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are. If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We now the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist. Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here-time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. “To be” is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is. Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of “non-paper elements.” And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without “non-paper elements,” like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.“

GLORIA ROUBAL'S DAILY HAND GENERATED TYPE PHRASE #211

How easy is it to be gentle?

What does gentleness mean?

I actually like some of what was written on Wikipedia:

Gentleness is the value and quality of one's character. Being gentle has a long history in many, but not all cultures. Gentleness is considered to play a very important role in life.
The quality of gentleness is colloquially understood to be that of kindness, consideration and amiability.

Gentleness is a strong hand with a soft touch. It is a tender, compassionate approach toward others' weaknesses and limitations. A gentle person still speaks truth, sometimes even painful truth, but in doing so guards his tone so the truth can be well received. "When my daughter was young, she used to love to squeeze my hand as hard as she could, trying to make it hurt. She could squeeze with all her might, but it never hurt. She didn't need to be gentle because she lacked the power to cause me any pain. Then, just for fun, I'd give her hand a tight little squeeze until she yelped. It's the strong hand, not the weak one, that must learn to be gentle."

The phrase I was originally going to use for lettering today was a little more specific: "Gentleness to oneself is key." Teachings that I listen to regularly, many of them Buddhist in nature, emphasize the importance of gentleness toward oneself. It all has to start there. We can't be at peace, present in the moment, compassionate, or truly loving beings if we don't practice love and gentleness toward ourselves. It takes a great deal of practice to cultivate kindness, love, compassion, and gentleness toward ourselves. Psychotherapy also typically focuses on self love and kindness. We need to learn to think about and treat ourselves the same way we do the people we love most dearly. Meditation practice is one place we can practice cultivating gentleness toward ourselves, but you don't have to meditate to do this!

This has been a nice reminder to me to be more gentle with myself, my thoughts, my habits, my feelings...everything. It helps my inner peace as well as my ability to help others.

I came across a short article, written by Kipp Efinger and posted on a website called THE INTERDEPENDENCE PROJECT that nicely illustrates this point.

Gentleness Toward Myself

I was standing on an ordinary street corner in DC when the change started. Lunch in hand, waiting for the cross-walk to change so I could go back to the office and eat, I was remembering something I said at a meeting, which now seemed embarrassing.

That's when I heard the voice: "You're such a fucking idiot."

"Wait, what?! Where the hell did that come from?" I thought. I was in shock. This voice was familiar, but I had never noticed it before.

There was a narrator inside my head. We all spin stories; I knew that. What I didn't realize was that the narrator in my head wasn't very nice. But of course the narrator was me. How could I talk to myself like that? This had obviously been going on for many years, under the radar.

That moment changed me for good. I had realized something my meditation teachers were telling me over and over again: be gentle toward yourself.

Gentleness towards oneself is a foundational practice. There are a multitude of reasons why. For example, we can't effectively be compassionate toward others while we are beating ourselves up.

Gentleness also gives us the ability to see reality more clearly. A person who is gentle towards him/herself doesn't have to put as much energy into protecting the ego. So when the truth appears, it is less threatening. We can hang out with the truth and get to know it, rather than defending against it.

It's amazing when I make realizations like this. Little by little meditators untie the knots in our lives, we drop our hangups as the truth becomes clear.

Of course, these kinds of realizations tend to come more quickly when you are a beginner. Maybe the trick is to always come at meditation with the mind of a beginner.




Thanks for reading. Here's my daily phrase.

GLORIA ROUBAL'S DAILY HAND GENERATED TYPE PHRASE #210

Just do it!

Gloria Roubal's Daily Hand Generated Type Phrase #209

I believe that you can learn something from everything. You can learn something from each person you meet or encounter. You can learn from every single one of your relationships in life. You can learn really important things from people, animals, plants, places, things, and experiences—things that enrich your life and enlighten your mind in so many ways.

I was a massage therapist for ten years, and I saw hundreds and hundreds of clients over that decade. Many of them were regulars, and it's such an intimate type of encounter—physically, emotionally, spiritually, energetically—that I became very close to many of these clients. I loved the work I did and loved many of the people I came to know. However, the ones that taught me the most were people who were difficult (and there were very, very few of them). One person comes to mind as I think back. She was outwardly unpleasant, demanding, negative, pessimistic, impossible to please, whiny, impatient, irritating and irritable, blaming...the list goes on. Other therapists couldn't see how I could deal with her; even in the lobby while she was rescheduling at the counter, it was clear to everyone around that she was extremely unpleasant (that's putting it mildly). She seemed miserable and seemed to take it out on everyone she met. It was really quite sad...

I chose to have the attitude that she continued to come to the office to see me because she liked me, because I helped her, and because she had things to teach me. I was always calm and kind to her, and I developed a lot of compassion for her. It became clear to me that she had developed these habits out of a lack of confidence and a great deal of self loathing. Clients often confide in massage therapists, telling them things they wouldn't tell anyone else, and she told me a great deal about herself, her family, her relationships, her background. From this client, I learned a great deal about true compassion and patience, and even though she continued to be "difficult" when I saw her (but less so as time went by... either that or it just seemed that way to me), I was grateful to her and felt that we helped each other greatly. Was I always glad to see her? No. It was hard work! I mean, I had to really focus on the positive. There were times when our conversations were actually pleasant, though, and it became easier for me to deal with seeing her name on my schedule. What I really learned was that she was really, really stuck in negativity, and I could feel her pain. I did what I could to help her with her physical issues and also did what I could to bring out the positive in her as much as possible. She was one of my most important gurus, and I really hope she is doing well and is healthy and happy.

GLORIA ROUBAL'S DAILY HAND GENERATED TYPE PHRASE #208

I was talking to somebody today about Stephen King books. As a teenager I got into books like The Shining, The Dead Zone, The Stand, and other creepy King books. I've always been drawn to strange, creepy, scary, intense, supernatural, suspenseful stories, in book, movie, TV, or other form.

This quote by Stephen King might just explain to some extent why people like myself get into these horror stories. Even the one short story I wrote has elements of the macabre, the supernatural, and suspense. It's rather creepy, but it also makes you think.

Anyway... Some people steer clear of horror stories, and I completely understand that. Sometimes it's hard to get the images out of one's head. For me, it's an escape of sorts, at least in part. For Stephen King, his writing must help him cope with some of the horrors that exist in this world. I totally get that.

GLORIA ROUBAL'S DAILY HAND GENERATED TYPE PHRASE #207

Today, for some reason, I had an insight.

Sometimes, for me anyway, insights are simply things we already know, but somehow seeing them in a different light. You might, for example, read a spiritual text over and over, and once in awhile you'll think about a phrase or section that you've read a thousand times, and suddenly you "get it!" That's what I mean. It can be anything. It's just a new level of understanding.

My insight today had to do with habits. I have no idea what got me thinking about habits, but we all have them, and some are good for us and others aren't. I struggle with some unhealthy habits at times. This leads to reprimanding myself, feeling badly about myself, and so on, which sometimes just starts the cycle all over again. Other habits that I have are good for me and I benefit from them tremendously. So, my insight was just me talking to myself. It went something like this. "Everyone has habits! It is human nature to have them. To transform habits, all we have to do is to develop beneficial habits to take the place of bad habits. It's okay to have habits. I can accept all of the habits I have right at this very moment, and I can do my best to transform them."

So therein lies the motivation for my phrase today.

PS - Pema Chödrön teaches a lot about mental habits. Here is an excerpt from her audiobook, Getting Unstuck, in which she discusses how we strengthen negative mental habits. If you are interested...

PEMA VIDEO EXCERPT LINK