The Two Shores
The point is to touch a question that keeps taking the whole house, put it on the far shore, and go back to what is within reach.
A question has taken the whole house when it is what your attention goes back to whenever nothing else is holding it. The near shore is what is within reach. The far shore is the question.
Choose the near shore: a chair, the window, a cup, the wall, the wheel under your hands, today's date, a person you trust who is nearby.
Put something with weight in one hand — a stone, a full cup, a bunch of keys, a tin off the shelf.
Name the far shore. Say what the question is in one line: a decision you have not made, a message you have not answered, a diagnosis, a thing you said. Give it one ordinary word — grief, anger, the message, the meeting, the money.
Touch the word once. Then move the weight to the other hand and go back to the near shore. Do not dig into the question and do not work out what it means.
Look outward, at the near shore. Shift position. Feel the weight in the hand that is holding it now. Rest.
Ask: after this movement, is there more room to choose? You can tell by the body — the shoulders, the jaw, the place under the ribs, whether the breath has got longer or stayed short.
If there is not, or if no answer comes, stop. The return is complete and you are finished. This is the more common ending and it is not the lesser one. You can touch a question without giving it the whole house.
If there is more room, you may go back and touch the word once more, and the weight goes back to the first hand. Once.
Repeat the touch and the return only while stopping is still available to you.
Write the word for the question and the near shore you used, with the date.
Then put the weight down where it lives — the stone back outside, the cup in the sink, the keys on the hook — and go back to whatever you were doing before the question took the house.