tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57584078649535100662024-02-07T21:31:19.719-05:00Movin' Right AlongMoving through life, one moment at a time.K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.comBlogger154125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-41134895533721938112019-08-07T14:44:00.000-04:002019-08-07T14:44:02.407-04:00Rocks, Thistles, and the Work
A buck fifty for a spackle bucket full of rocks or thistles
seemed like big money back in 1986.
Our new home stood on what had once been a field full of
feed corn for one of the last herds of cows in our town. The completion of the
interstate would open up this rural spot in New Jersey to rapid development and
(on the other side of town) McMansions a-plenty. Our home was a 1980s style
box, allK.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-24047988587644642842019-07-30T14:47:00.000-04:002019-07-30T14:47:47.382-04:00To See and Be Seen
A favorite song of mine
is Mr. Cellophane from the musical Chicago. So much so that I think I’ve quoted
it in this blog before.
Cellophane! Mr. Cellophane
Shoulda been my name, Mr. Cellophane
‘cause you can look right through me,
Walk right by me
And never know I’m there.
This
song is a lament, not a celebration.
BeingK.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-69284796047200443022019-07-22T12:23:00.001-04:002019-07-22T12:23:26.029-04:00The Boy With the Cobalt Hair
So this blog is different. This summer has been a different
kind of Movin’ Right Along, and I have
struggled to put into words all the things in my mind (which is so connected to
my heart—herein lies my struggle). But I had to write something, so…here we go.
Inspired by a recent trip to VA to see an old and dear friend and her mighty
boy…I wish I could wrap them in all the love and K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-30209295997168359922019-06-03T10:33:00.000-04:002019-06-03T10:33:04.517-04:00Over the Wall and Back on Track
Well hello.
So, about May…
Yeah. I kind of missed that month.
At the end of April I hit a wall. Figuratively, not
literally, thank goodness. I did that
one time in rage and I think I sprained a finger, so don’t hit a wall, people. Between
working more, family stuff, friend stuff, life stuff, all the stuff, my words
just got clogged. And as all good procrastinators know, K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-21666003796216112982019-04-10T10:30:00.002-04:002019-04-10T10:30:45.966-04:00Spring!
SPRING!!!!!
That is the short version of why I have had no words
recently.
As I dance around my kitchen each morning, in a style that
can only be described as Spastic Muppet, my husband sighs. “WHAT ARE YOU
DOING???”
He is not prone to fits of early morning exuberance.
“I AM DANCING BECAUSE SPRING!!!”
Apparently daylight is my favorite. The slowly increasing
K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-159138381921020822019-03-26T11:36:00.004-04:002019-03-26T11:36:55.029-04:00Moments to Grow
If life were made of moments—
Even now and then a bad one—
If life were made of moments—
Then you’d never know you had one.
Stephen
Sondheim, Into the Woods
&K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-6514862214082956032019-03-18T17:29:00.000-04:002019-03-18T17:29:03.877-04:00Claiming Hope
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
Emily
Dickinson
Ten days
ago, a friend’s daughter was K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-48362296282945955432019-03-04T11:46:00.003-05:002019-03-04T11:46:37.337-05:00Zen and the Not ZenRecently I have been working a lot, and while I find the
balance of working 8 hours/then coming home and driving everywhere/feeding the
horde/etc. almost impossible—hats off to everyone who does this all the
time—the rhythm of being in a school, of working in an academic schedule, of a
day broken into 40 minute blocks—all of these things are so delicious. There is
zen in these moments, that senseK.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-23368649998102734782019-02-25T16:10:00.000-05:002019-02-25T16:10:14.560-05:00Zen and the Pep TalkLast week was an up/down sort of week. Hospital weeks always
flatten me. Weirdly, the flattening extends beyond medical ugh into all kinds
of other ugh. Staying afloat pretty much
becomes the goal of each day.
In that vein, I procrastinated about going to the
supermarket until we were out of too many things, and my secret stash of kettle
corn was threatened by the hungry horde.
The K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-15296667605213819812019-02-18T10:17:00.001-05:002019-02-18T10:17:42.274-05:00Zen and Practice (aka Hey, a Post After a Hospital Day!)(first: our MRI day showed everything is stable--time to breathe)
“Practice makes perfect”
Yay, perfect!
Boo, practice.
And really—does practice make perfect?
Practice promotes progress. Practice builds perseverance.
Practice fosters peace.
Perfection doesn’t exist. Except O’Bagel bagels (Stirling,
NJ). They are pretty perfect.
Cinnamon Bagel, O'Bagel.
Yes, it has icing. Be K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-13182281671653135092019-02-10T11:48:00.000-05:002019-02-11T04:38:39.628-05:00Zen and the Weight of Ugh -- A DigressionSo: Zen is a path, a moving
moment in a spectrum of experience. Zen can’t be forced, it has no endpoint. I
can’t control my zen, but I can practice healthy striving towards being my best
self. I can use the tools I have learned to keep movin’ right along…
As long as it is a good day.
Let’s just call this The Great
Reality Check. Again.
Most folks reading here likely
know that in 2004 my then 6K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-21525737035672334782019-02-04T10:06:00.002-05:002019-02-04T10:06:30.617-05:00Zen and the Trash Can (or Recycle Bin)Big News: In the last week, I threw away some papers.
Please, please HOLD YOUR APPLAUSE.
Literal holding of Applause. Heehee.
These were Papers of Significance.
Ok, so I am a historian by vocation, and I see most papers
as papers of significance.
Side thought, I wonder if you can be a historian AND a minimalist? I doubt
it. I wonder if your scholarly work centered on K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-54541073610351977842019-01-28T10:17:00.000-05:002019-01-28T10:17:39.675-05:00Zen and Slo-Mo MetanoiaOf course as soon as I post Magnify the Good, I come up against a giant Monday through Friday sized barricade ala Les Miserables, but instead of a barricade built out of random wagons and barrels, mine was comprised of a broken water bottle, an anxiety tsunami (not my own, but I find anxiety contagious so it became mine), having those same old resentment scars poked this week, still going K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-12800806160509962552019-01-21T09:39:00.000-05:002019-01-21T09:39:17.785-05:00Zen and the Spotlight
“Turn up that
spotlight, and though it’s not right,
I simply can’t refuse
its call….” –Nunsense
I cannot control all of the horrible things in the news. Wars.
Poverty. Hatred. Exploitation. Racism. Sexism. Discrimination. Hunger. Disease. Hopelessness.
I cannot control the political and ideological quagmire sucking the lifeblood of our country.
I cannot control people’s ideas, K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-63562114028277817682019-01-14T10:52:00.000-05:002019-01-14T11:03:33.847-05:00Zen and the Inner Tube
Each step forward or sideways or whicheverways brings new
questions, or new realizations. After days of working through ideas and drafts
about Do vs. Be and zentasticness, I
found myself dragged unexpectedly back into an area of old resentments.
Dagnabit. I can write about zen progress and do yoga and feel good and then a
conversation or a facebook post leaves me chewing my pencil and K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-81723302772959250762019-01-07T11:01:00.000-05:002019-01-07T11:01:14.349-05:00Zen and the Restart
Happy 2019, all.
So…while math is not my first language, chronology is the
language of my chosen profession—and I realize that this entry is in no way two
or three days after my last entry.
Oops.
I kept adding BLOG in increasingly urgent fonts to my bullet
journal. I dug out my gold star stickers. And yet I could not write the words.
What the heck happened?
Well—a few K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-55777364329635445602018-11-06T13:44:00.000-05:002018-11-06T16:03:38.911-05:00Zen and History
History is
happening—always, right here, right now, you are historying at this very
second!—and right now, the history happening seems to be pretty solidly
anti-zen. While I am not in a history
classroom of my own these days, I find myself still filtering everything
through the lens of history—what has happened before, and what have we learned
(or not) from those happenings? And one step K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-4695083869505107222018-10-23T11:15:00.000-04:002018-10-23T11:15:27.301-04:00Zen and the Darkness
Hello,
darkness my old friend.
I’ve come to
talk with you again.
I do not love the dark.
I love Simon and Garfunkel, and Sounds of Silence is
to my mind one of the greatest songs ever written. But darkness is not my
friend.
Decades ago the Muppet Babies sang about how good things happen in
the dark (which sounds weirdly inappropriate now). I recently heard a podcast
about embracing K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-75442572040579650212018-10-16T10:55:00.001-04:002018-10-16T10:55:28.405-04:00Zen and the Little Picture
So I sat down to write this last Friday (I worked outside the
home on Thursday and was pretty much comatose by the time I finished that and
then driving my girls hither and yon). I sat, made myself start to write (ye
olde BIC method – Butt In Chair) and STILL the MEH won. Ultimately, I think that was helpful, both
because of what that reveals about my meager stores of mental energy and
K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-73721916127046873472018-10-09T10:51:00.001-04:002018-10-09T10:52:21.133-04:00Zen and the Big Picture
It’s a
great big universe and we’re all really puny,
We’re just
tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney!
It’s big
and black and inky,
And we’re
all really dinky!
It’s a big
universe and we’re not.
--Yakko’s Universe,
Animaniacs
K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-42159484907111776692018-10-04T12:08:00.000-04:002018-10-04T12:08:47.411-04:00Zen and Memory
“MEMORY! All alone in the mooooooonlight! I can smile at the
old days….”
I will take “Oversung Karaoke of the 80s for 200, Alex…”
With all of the sturm und drang of the last few weeks, I have
been thinking a lot about zen and memory. I tend to think about memory a lot,
for my entire life I have been intrigued by the history of things, the memory I
can feel in different places. I know K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-71503826650936939712018-10-02T13:55:00.000-04:002018-10-02T14:03:16.005-04:00Zen and Stepping Away
The past few weeks have simultaneously renewed and decimated
my faith in humanity, even with folks I personally know. Not surprisingly, this weird dichotomy has
not been a real Zen-builder. But it has brought home to me the idea that
sometimes the best way to preserve zen in relationships is to step away.
Not RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! Ala Monty Python, more Homer Simpson
fading back into K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-35266342577855450562018-09-28T09:23:00.001-04:002018-09-28T09:33:09.035-04:00Zen and the Trigger -- or, More Work to Do
For context: I do not have a #metoo story. I am the rare
woman who does not—I did not know HOW rare until the last year or so. So many
of my closest friends have been affected by harassment, assault, or abuse, I am
appalled.
The fact that these women have gone on to do amazing things
in defiance of what happened (or happens—ongoing in the workplace) to them
inspires me beyond adequate words.K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-74240080747474905072018-09-24T11:34:00.001-04:002018-09-24T11:34:11.709-04:00Zen in the Wait
This summer I climbed a rock wall for the first time.
I did the easy side, and my third born zipped up the harder
side next to me—but after so many years of being too afraid to try it, I knew THIS
year I had to get it done.
So I did. Awkward helmet on my pumpkin-sized head, straps
uncomfortably cinched around my ample backside, I did.
I zipped up my course…not because I have skill, I K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5758407864953510066.post-75884669676663595782018-09-20T13:31:00.000-04:002018-09-20T13:40:29.770-04:00Zen in the Face of Meh.
Meh.
Anger is easier than grief.
Action is easier than waiting.
Doing is easier than being.
The last few months have been a bit like emotional whack a
mole around here—just when our heads come up above the earth after some loss or trial, WHACK! things
happen and we are back underground, holding our heads and thinking well, THAT
was ill-advised.
Over the last year I have worked hard to K.M. Camiolohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11706383894795253801noreply@blogger.com0