Thursday, June 25, 2009

Knitting & the Art of Zen......

Last night's train ride was...eventful in a totally uneventful way. The baby bullet had engine problems and had to stop 2-3 stops down from SF(at a non-baby-bullet stop). We sat for about 20 minutes before the engineers gave up and the conductors announced that we had to get off the train, but that the train behind us was going to stop and pick us all up.

So, about 100+ people got off the train into the nice warm day (most of us having to travel back to the last train car in order to get off on the actual platform), and waited and waited.

Because of the baby bullet delay, the train behind us was 38 minutes late, which we didn't find out until about 15 minutes into actually getting off the train. *joy* Gotta love Caltrain service!

I had placed several calls to DH who was picking me up AND who claims he was actually ON TIME to pick me up at the train station and cites that's why the delay occurred. I had him just go home and wait for my call since I didn't know how long it was going to take to actually get home.

Most people were a bit frantic at being delayed so long, and many were on the phone either complaining or passing the time away, and there were many small congregated groups also bitterly complaining about said delay. There was also a lot of people who started reading email, the web, or whatnought on their phones. (I wonder what would have happened if we had been in an area with little signal??) Or just standing there and sulking for the train to arrive.

And, while I was somewhat miffed at the delay (I was eager to get home, PLUS I was starving), I sat back, relaxed, and enjoyed a bit of sun. I took out my knitting and just worked away at my stole.

One person even commented at how lucky I was to have brought it, but I've started carrying around a knitting project because I find myself waiting a lot. It's something I don't think I've noticed until I STARTED carrying around the knitting.

There's waiting in lines, waiting for the next bus, waiting on the bus, waiting in a waiting room, waiting for food to arrive....just a lot of waiting, waiting, waiting....Five minutes here, 10 minutes there, a couple of minutes here, 20 minutes there.

That's lot of time wasted just waiting around.

However, I'm finding myself 'zen'-ing out with the knitting during these waiting times. It gives my hands something to do, it allows my brain to go into a meditative state, and I find myself less hurried and frazzled during those waiting periods. Especially, yesterday, I found myself relaxing versus most of the very frazzled people waiting around for the next train

Plus, when everything is said and done, I end up with a finished product. THAT alone delights me to no end.

Of course, I could also be reading a book during these waiting periods, but I find that I require a good chunk of interuppted time in order to get into the flow of a book (at least 10 minutes); any time shorter than that is unproductive for reading. However, I do find that if I've got two minutes, I can easily whip out the knitting and get a few stitches done without any issue.

But, with the audio books, I am definitely getting a bit of 'reading' done while knitting, so I'm quite pleased with the setup.

Yesterday, it took over two hours to get home (Left work at 5; got home around 7:30), and I got a lot of work done on the stole.

AND, random piece of trivia -- In some Southern American countries, such as Costa Rica and Peru, a person who doesn't know how to spin (or tend sheep or weave or something "practical") by the age of 5 is considered useless.......

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