“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day – unless you’re too busy;   - then you should sit for an hour.”--Old Zen adage

Batten down the hatches. The Congress critters are at it again.

“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” -- Pablo Picasso

So now the fun really begins.

That is, if you consider fun the sort of thing that happens when Wall Street has way too much information to process in a very short period of time.

“It’s more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long difficult words but rather short easy words like What about lunch?” -- Winnie the Pooh

Washington is back doing what it seems to be best at these days, which is ramping up the national angst while it plays a Congressional game of “chicken.”

Wall Street seems to be in a bit of a holding pattern, not quite sure which way to go as it ponders how to respond to the possibility of another war, a domestic economy that seems to sputter out with regularity, and the inevitability of a tapering off of the massive bond-buying program that has goosed the equity market to record highs.

In terms of volatility, what a difference a month makes.

Back at the beginning of August, the Chicago Board Options Exchange Market Volatility Index (VIX) was hanging around its low point for the year, ending the week at just a shade below 12. But the worm seems to have turned these past four weeks as the VIX, inevitably referred to as the “fear index,” has climbed over 40% since then.

Wall Street had its ear close to the ground towards the end of last week, listening closely to the chatter emanating out of the Fed-sponsored 2013 Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium. One sound they surely didn’t hear was the mellifluous musings of soon-to-be-out-the-door Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who chose not to attend for the first time since his inaugural year way back in 2006.

It is probably a safe assumption that his name did get bandied about by those who did attend the conference, consisting of many of the world’s central bankers and officers.

If you happened to blink last Thursday, you probably missed an event that contains powerful implications for investors and, well, pretty much anyone who has a stake in the economy. That’s when China’s Shanghai Composite Index experienced a 6% swing, going from a roughly 1% loss to a 5.6% gain. And this happened over the course of a mere two minutes.

To put that in perspective, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) would need to undergo a 900-point swing to experience a similar move.

In other words, it was a huge intraday move, but a staggering two-minute one.

If the current economic forecast holds, the European Union (EU) is expected to announce next week that the Eurozone has finally emerged from its nearly three-year descent into recessionary territory. The 17-nation currency union should show that it has expanded its GDP by 0.2% over the course of the second quarter of 2013.

Hardly a staggering rise, but considering that growth has either stagnated or shrunk over the last several years, including the recent string of six straight quarters into negative territory, the gains are sure to be widely heralded.

The market is currently in a nice little comfort zone, touching on record highs on a regular basis. In spite of that fact, it has more or less been in a sideways trend these last four weeks, which tends to beg the question: Is the market consolidating for a breakout or about to lose steam and head into reverse?

That remains to be see, though there are reasons to think that the low levels of volatility the market currently is registering will start to rise fairly soon.

Wall Street presently seems to be in a sideways state of mind, with the major indices traveling predominantly horizontal these last couple of weeks. Not a surprise, really, as the news cycle has been relatively tame and the current earnings season largely followed the predicted script.

So for investors, the question is whether the market is consolidating for a push into yet another round of record highs or simply running out of steam and veering towards an inevitable correction. And, with a busy week on tap, the year’s bullish uptrend gets yet another opportunity to be tested, and the consolidation-vs-reversal question gets yet another look.