This evening's writing class focuses on meditation and
mindfulness, including mindful eating. I
learn two things from the class:
1. Mindful eating is very noisy inside my head.
2. You cannot take the comedy out of the
comedienne.
After doing some writing and discussion work, we are
meditating. Personally, I think
meditating is a wonderful thing, and I want to be serious. I truly do.
Eyes closed, we are focusing on our breathing. I've had pneumonia about a dozen times, and
every so often I will do deep breathing exercises just to make sure both of my
lungs are inflating properly, so I have no problem with this part of the
exercise.
Except the "clear mind" part.
My mind is going a mile a minute: Are my
lungs inflating? Am I healthy? Should I exhale through my nose, too? Is my nose whistling? It's awfully dry in here. I wonder if
anything good is on TV tonight. When are
the Bruins playing again? Great
shoot-out win Tuesday. Is there an echo
in here? How much wood would a woodchuck
chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Hey, there's feta cheese in the fridge.
I am supposed to be meditating, thinking of nothing, just
breathing. So I try applying a little
Pilates -- breathe, feeling the rib cage
expand then contract. Expand then
contract. Expand then … what … what the hell
is that noise?
Without opening my eyes, I realize the guy sitting across
from me is snoring. Snoring. SNORING.
That's like ultra-meditation, right?
I try to control myself, but I'm smiling. Thank goodness the teacher said she'd close
her eyes, too, so hopefully she can't see me smirking and losing
concentration.
We are instructed to pay attention to our feet touching the
floor (mine are not - I'm too short, so my feet are dangling about two inches
away from the carpet), pay attention to our hands on our knees, pay attention
to our shoulders, think about our heads being lifted straight as if our spine
is being straightened by someone holding an invisible thread above our
heads.
A thread? Holding up my head?! Holy
crap, I've meditated myself into a marionette.
The teacher rings a chime, and all I can think of is how
long the sound echoes in the room… one second, two seconds, three… Suddenly a
woman two seats to my right smacks her hand on the table and scares the shit
out of all of us. We still don't dare
open our eyes because, hey, we're meditating.
Meditating. MEDITATING.
Snoring Guy is still snoring, and now Fidgeting Girl is
fidgeting. I can hear them. I listen, and then I listen some more, and I
keep on listening. Hmmmm, this has been an awfully long meditation session. I hope the
professor is all right. I don't think
she has any outstanding heart conditions … does she? What if she passed out and needs medical
attention? How will we know? How long should we sit here like this? Oh, shit, I'm supposed to be meditating. Meditating.
MEDITATING. Ommmmm. Ommmmmm.
Wait, that's not it. We're
supposed to be breathing. Is the
professor breathing? I know the guy
across from me is breathing because he's snoring. Snoring.
SNORING. Breathe. Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be concentrating on
my breathing. In. Out.
Here. Now. Wax on.
Wax off. Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles.
DING! The chimes go
off again, and I count the seconds again.
For some reason, I am obsessed with the length of time I am able to hear
the chimes. Maybe that makes me mindful
and meditative. Personally, I think it
just makes me obsessive-compulsive.
Next comes the mindful eating. First we are each given raisins. I immediately make mine dance and start
humming "I Heard It Through the Grapevine." I look at the woman next to me and whisper,
"Don't you wish you hadn't sat next to me?" She nods slightly, closely examining her
raisin.
Eventually, after we've had our filthy paws all over them,
we eat the raisins, chewing twenty-five times.
The noise inside my head is excruciating, and I am sure everyone else
can hear it, as well. I don't swallow my
raisin right away because the professor only said to chew not swallow, and if
it's anything like those Catholic communion wafers (I'm Protestant, so I don't
honestly know this stuff), I don't want to fail meditation for finishing off
the raisin if we're not being mindful of the poor sucker.
The same thing happens with the Ritz crackers, which are
passed around after we've ingested the raisins.
We look at them, smell them, feel them, discuss them, chew them
twenty-five times, and make a lot of noise with this progressive munching.
Then we are given slices of orange. When we get to the "feel it" part,
I start doinking mine with an index finger, watching the yellow-white end of it
limply bounce back into place. What does your orange slice feel like, we
are asked.
"Michael Jackson's nose," I reply.
The woman sitting next to me has clearly made the decision
never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, to sit anywhere near me again.
Look, I'm trying, really I am. Meditating is a new concept for me; I'm not
one to slow down, and I'm certainly not one to just shut off my brain voluntarily. But you can't put me in a room with sleepers,
jumpers, raisins, crackers, and wimpy orange slices and not expect me to come
up with a treasure trove of material.
That's like locking a trained monkey in a round room and expecting it to
find the corner.
I meditated, and the only deeper meaning I discovered is
this: While you may take the comedienne
out of the comedy, you can never take the comedy out of the comedienne.
Meditate for a while on that
one.
