meditation Archives - From the Write Side

Resolutions — A New Sense or a Nuisance?

Ah, the pressure of a new year...the overt or subtle messages from friends, family, the media to change your ways, make a fresh start, replace old habits with new ones. Do I or don't I make that list? Some days the desire to simply 'be' overshadows everything else and raises questions. Why must I push myself forward? What do I hope to accomplish in this moment? Do I need to always be chasing after something more? During December, I spent much of my online time [...]

By irvinjgdm|2022-01-01T14:50:08+00:00January 1st, 2022|Essays|0 Comments

An Attempt to See Clearly in the Fog…

In May I had surgery on the muscles in my left eye to correct the strabismus that has dogged me since before and after my brain surgery on the torturous blood vessel rubbing against one of my cranial nerves. (Yes, that is the official wording on the MRI analysis...torturous!). I also had the cataract removed. In August, the surgeon completed the trifecta by implanting a new lens in the right eye. Wow! I can see to infinity and beyond...if infinity is the sky above the [...]

By irvinjgdm|2021-08-31T14:52:01+00:00August 31st, 2021|Essays|0 Comments

Are We Really Back To ‘Normal’?

As I sit to write this post, Independence Day beckons. News stories about picnics, gatherings, and fireworks abound. How comfortable do we feel moving among a crowd when we know so little about the health and vaccination history of the people crowding around us? I confess to a bit of trepidation, yet I have already stepped out, joining other writers for an event in Columbus June 24. Almost everyone removed their masks, and the atmosphere was one of celebration and thanksgiving. We the people were [...]

By irvinjgdm|2021-06-30T13:17:11+00:00June 30th, 2021|Essays|0 Comments

Celebrating the Two-Headed Beast: A Toast to Time

New Year's Eve...one foot in the past, one in the future. We watch a ball drop, twine arms and sip champagne and the months of the old year wind out behind us like a scroll. January...weather alerts and bowl games. February...does he/she love me, does he not? March...the winds blow, carrying the faint aroma of rebirth before the cold clamps down again. April, T.S. Eliot's cruelest month...but you get the picture. Twelve months gone. Our past is written, at times in lyric poetry, often in [...]

By irvinjgdm|2015-12-30T15:35:39+00:00December 30th, 2015|Essays, motivational|0 Comments

Of Carnage and Compassion and Common Sense

Tis the holiday season. Amid all the preparations, we reel from the ongoing attacks by people intent upon forcing their way of worship onto the greater mass of humanity. The awful events from around the globe - Beirut, Paris, Afghanistan, California - regale us with images that haunt our dreams and create fear in our hearts. Reacting to that fear, some among us advocate for policies that will throw us back into history, force us to retreat from our empathy and understanding into bigotry and [...]

By irvinjgdm|2019-12-31T01:45:22+00:00December 10th, 2015|Essays|0 Comments

A Hole in My Head: Musing about Brain Surgery

Two and a half months from today, I will allow Dr. Raymond Sekula, world-renowned neurosurgeon, to make an incision behind my left ear, drill out a quarter-size piece of my skull, open the lining of my brain and insert a microscopic teflon sponge between a blood vessel and the nerve it impinges. Then he'll glue, paste and tape me up. All this to cure my rather rare hemifacial spasms and release me from the trimonthly injections of botox around my eye used to control the spasms [...]

By irvinjgdm|2019-12-31T01:47:03+00:00May 21st, 2015|Essays|1 Comment