So yesterday didn't go as one could have hoped. It wasn't a failure or "bad". Excellent learning experience, let's say.

People say, "oh, take a nature walk, it's so nice" but I've decided that advice is for extroverts, or at least people in a less populated area. I gamely got bundled up because temps were in the teens and went for the normal walk around the nearby lake. I have fur earmuffs - warm ears are the trick. I figured the cold would keep most people home and that was true, traffic was low.

Because I was going out in public, I chickened out on the amount I intended to take and played it safe. This was a mistake, in retrospect.

The walk was fine, but honestly, not AMAZING like some people say. I saw a whole bunch of different birds - wrens, cardinals, a woodpecker, crows, the usual ducks and geese looking grumpy because most of the lake was frozen. It was very windy recently and some trees have been knocked down. At one point I walked out on the little fishing pier and looked over the sheet of ice covering the lake. Some kids had thrown some rocks and branches off the pier. There was a broken pattern like a basket star in the ice - arms radiating off the impact point and dwindling into fractal like fronds. Like an irregular snowflake. "It has to be broken, that's how the pattern is made," said my subconscious. "You don't get the pattern without the break."

As I was walking back to the apartment I paused at the crosswalk I normally use. There was a woman walking her two dogs on the other side and I stood there pondering if I wanted the awkwardness of sharing the sidewalk and decided against it. Then I felt like maybe she noticed me changing my mind, and my first impulse was to shout at her from across the street, "Your dogs are fine! I'm just a little stoned!" and that's when I knew being out in public is not for me. I did not shout at her, of course, but I still felt like I'd become one of those lulu bus people I've learned to avoid interacting with. The happy outgoing ones seem fine at first and then eventually they say something nuts and then you're trapped in an interaction with someone you realize is not "friendly" but "unbalanced", when all you want to do is chill on your way to work. But everybody is a lulu to someone else at one point or another - everybody is entitled to a freebie now and then. I didn't do anything, it felt like I was tipsy and had my inhibitions loosened. I'm not a fan of being tipsy in public - it spoils the enjoyment to make sure you aren't being That Person, and then if something happens you won't be at full faculties to deal with it. Anyway, we won't be doing this again, we'll keep ourselves somewhere that for sure has no strangers to worry about. I'm too introverted for inebriated walks.

I'd started the day pretty cheerful and as I went on the walk my thoughts started to feel a little manic. My multivitamin reorder arrived right before I left on the walk, so I took one, and it has various active B vitamins in it and I wonder if that didn't amp my energy levels at the exact wrong time, or maybe the walk was too stimulating. My subconscious was parroting thoughts like a cheeky bird and being a little obnoxious. At one point I saw some crows and I imagined my subconcious as having the body of a crow with a human face pasted on the head. First it was my face, and then it took the face of that guy who played the Mayor of Laketown's flunky in the hobbit movies. Stephen Fry plays the mayor, but it's his assistant I'm thinking of, who is an obnoxious caricature. Specifically, the point when the flunky tries to disguise himself as a woman and is wearing a ridiculous floppy mop cap. So imagine a photo cutout of a crow, and then imagine a photo cutout of the flunky's face in a mop cap, poorly pasted on the head. This is the man-faced-bird. Imagining my subconcious as the man-faced-bird only emboldened it to be more obnoxious. This was not relaxing, but I was still in a good mood and kinda humoring myself. Oh ha ha, funny, man-faced-bird.

I get back to the apartment and I'm looking forward to warming up in my comfy bed, cuddling with the kitties. I close my eyes and it's like looking into a spacious darkened cathedral lit by colored stage lights with the beautiful geometric dome shifting in different patterns overhead. Open eyes: boring white walled room. Close eyes: disco cathedral. You know that meme of the two astronauts - first astronaut: "Wait, everywhere is a cathedral?" second astronaut: "Always has been."

So I'm at the point where my awareness of my body is fluid, and I'm wearing my talisman, so I touch the talisman with my fingertips to remind myself it's there, and I'm in the space where my body both exists and does not. And then the man-faced-bird comes in and starts MAKING FUN of my talisman. "What are you afraid of, huh? You only need protecting if you're afraid." Like someone carrying in the grocery store - they claim they're not afraid, but why would they need to take the gun everywhere if they're not afraid? Everyone knows they have the gun because they are scared and want to stay in control. They want to protect themselves. They want to feel safe and be assured a random bad thing will not happen to them, that they have power. They want control of their life, because they are afraid of the world, afraid of what can be taken from them.

"Gotta be safe," mocked the man-faced-bird. "Illegally altering your consciousness, gotta be safe. You want your training wheels? You want water wings?"

The man-faced-bird is right, the talisman is just my crude attempt to exert control over an experience that is all about loss of control. I still like the talisman, but I realize now it's contrary to the larger goals of the grey project. The whole point is not to be safe.

"You just like to make up rules and ruin things," said the man-faced-bird. "It's supposed to be irrational. You make up rules to feel safe and special and you never get anything done."

And that made me feel bad because it's true. But then I'm like, I thought there aren't any woo woo cops?

Apparently I invented my own, telling me I'm doing stuff wrong? Then I wanted to get rid of the man-faced-bird because I knew that jabbering stream of consciousness was distracting me from the full experience. Like being in a movie theater and having someone taking and playing on their phone nearby. Can't properly concentrate, annoying.

"You're shit at meditation!" screeched the man-faced-bird, hopping around, now with a police hat pasted on him. "Can't get rid of me!"

Anyway, I got disgruntled about the whole thing and by the time I finally settled down it was coming to a close.

Things I learned:

- I think sunset/night is a better time than morning/daytime. There was too much going on, too much outside noise, too much light.

- Being in nature would probably be great if there's no chance of encountering strangers. I felt self-conscious and couldn't relax.

- Avoid vitamins that could overstimulate energy. Probably stay off electronics/the internet the day of, too.

- Uncertainty and risk is part of the process. Be aware of ways you will attempt to exert control to make it "safe".

- I should meditate more.