Life, lived through the senses

My favorite part about living in this area is the ability to get the best coffee in the Southeast and food from our local farmer's market as well as see a cow grazing in the fields, both within one or two miles.

For an "N" or intuitive vs. sensing person in the Myer's Briggs typology, I spend a lot of time in the focused inwards and in the imaginative, idealistic world of my mind. I think the reason I love running and biking (and yoga and surfing) so much is that these activities pull me back into my body. My sensing body interacting with the world in the present moment, sending perceptive signals to my mind connecting mind-body-nature.

Riding my bike out in the rural roads of Orange County: 

-seeing the idyllic rolling hills of vegetable fields, barns and animal pastures and the leaves dance in the wind;
-hearing a tractor and chainsaw, the sounds of cows, horses tempered by the hum of the wind in my ear generated from the movement of my body on the bike through space.
- inhaling and whiffing of the scent of blooming flowers and the occasional not pleasant smell of the pastures, mostly astounded by how consuming are the breathes of clean, country air.
- tasting the salt from the sweat dripping down to my lips as I take a sip of water

Above all, feeling the sensation of my body moving through space: my legs pedaling, I feel the tires grip the ground below, feel the wind against my whole being like a soft touch. The flow of prana - or life force - as I inhale all that is this section of the country road and exhaling myself
into my surroundings.... a glorious exchange; a beautiful fabric of each breath weaving together that which appears separate: my body and that which is not my body, becoming one with the bike that propels me forward and with my the engagement of each of my senses with everything around me.

Bike trip across NC

I had a renewed sense of pleasure (pun intended) from my "being-in-the-world" experience.  I felt the duality between mind & body disappear as well as the dichotomy between self and non-self disappear into a oneness with time & place.

Just a 45 minute bike ride. Such a simple activity but with the opportunity for it to be everything. Infinite number of moments and the infinite number of objects of the senses.

I felt it all.

PS- Picture is from biking across my lovely state with my best friend in life. Journal of the week-long trip here: click here or url: http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/Sustain2007

Life is a spiral --- student life once more

My life has been defined in relation to others: a daughter and grand-daughter, friend, girlfriend but also in iterations of my identity mainly as a student and a runner.

The position of my self with-in the cultural world of the academic institutions feels like home... it was all I had known until I graduated college. 21 of the 27 years of my life (13 years until graduating high-school + 4 years undergrad + 3 years grad + 1/2 yr. part time + 1 summer of Thai language) "being" a student.

I have not been a student since last December 9th, 2010. I also had 1 1/2 years of graduate school as a student giving 100% effort erased, "withdrawn".

As I begin in public health once again as a part time student this fall, I feel like I have gone in a circle - or - more of a spiral with broadening boundaries and perspective. Yet, while the distance from the center may have widened, I stand in relation to the same space that I have inhabited before as a new student.

The b-line, straight line to a PhD, like most things in life has taken an unexpected detour(s). I never thought I would be a "new student" again. I believed I would start graduate school and continue until completing my terminal degree. Instead it has been revolutions of a wheel that I am riding, inching forward semester by semester.

Not only anything but a linear trajectory, I have actually gone backwards or rather, time passed for which I was a full-time student that "doesn't count" ..... does that mean that the time - a year and a half of my life did not exist? Obviously it did.

It is just strange to stand here in the present which is a point along the PhD line that I should have passed years ago. I stand here as a student starting the fall semester of the 2nd year of my master's program as if the year spent in anthropology and in the PhD program never occurred.... (maybe a detour rather than a circle or a spiral then?). The students that I started my master's program with have since graduated and been working for over a year.

Where would I be - location? job? if I had not transferred into the PhD program early? What other possibly life courses might I have taken if different paths were taken at the major crossroads thus far?.

I cannot help but to feel like my identity has been lost in time and I am left to ponder where exactly my two feet are standing as I pause before walking into the Health Policy and Management building.

Will this be the last time I am a new student? Will it all come crashing down, again? Defer. Wait to heal. Withdrawl. Repeat.

I so want to embody the life of a student... perhaps for my whole life. I can see myself graduating and never leaving the university system switching from student to teacher/professor. All the time I am learning surrounded by a culture of learning. This is where I feel at home.

Ready. Set. Go.
Patricia K. Brewer- part-time post-baccalaureate student-HPM 710: Health Law.
Here's hoping for synchronicity between absolute time and time as a student.

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**Note: I firmly believe that wherever you are, you are and that that is ok and alright. This feeling does not keep my mind from churning around with its chattering of thoughts.