Imperfect Practice
At first, I sit.
That is, after all, the only thing to do while attempting to meditate. I am grounded, sitting crossed — crossed-legged, of course. Yesterday, I was another sort: chasing a bus I wouldn’t catch well past my office. Fuming. Hypothalamus pouring, I resented the grandfather clock of a vending machine too senile to accept my roughed-up dollar bill. I stood maddened, panting between bites of caramel and nougat too delicious to spit out.
Now, I sit, recount, and re-measure the fanatical weight of peripheral happenings that fog up my front windshield beyond the point of calm, or safe driving.
Last night’s happy hour flashes by: two whisky sours into a reunion and old friends lit my fuse valorizing their sexuality, joke after joke, and flexing their egos about client-responsive consulting (read: commision). I nearly cracked when one pulled out his iPhone — “for the ‘gram” as always — sinking his teeth into our staged candidacy.
The caption bragged ‘old friendships never die,’ which my complicit attendance confirmed. As tonight’s breath fills with last night’s apocalypse, I realize old friends are just the undead zombies of jerkoff acquaintances.
I sit, yet no part of me got the message. Instead, I’m racing. I’ll never go back to another rooftop bar until they make me. Who needs a social ladder when I’ve got a parachute. Where’s my airplane? I just need …
Breath. My mind overrides itself three minutes into practice too late. I accustom myself to the hardwood floor scolding the rotund ends of my ankles. I urge to spring, as a cat squirms above a soapy kitchen sink. My practice cleanses. I’m held by it, and until I’m finished, to the flames. My sit bones acclimate to earth in this newfound way. I ache. I sink deeper and press softer, releasing physical pain as one forgets gravity enjoying a trampoline.
I accept.
Dialing down the volume of my internal propaganda helps. It’s just monkey talk, as my therapist calls it. My mind runs lap after lap around scripts, excuses, and premonitions — just to stay ahead. Sitting here, I see these immature amusements for what they are: fears streaked across a teleprompter imposed above me.
Stay present. Keep away from… Why even dignify insecurities with an address? Pink elephants beware this practice. In front of me, I see a remote with one button. It’s big, red, and inviting me to push it. I do and the teleprompter dies, as if cut at the cord.
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The silence begets a new construct: ‘Here,’ not just a place, but a home, and ‘Now,’ while a given, also a perpetual choice. ‘Here, Now,’ I grip my conscious — or does it cradle me? — sending electricity from my Heart Center to my furrowed brow. We are but of the moment, how can we tame it? I answer filling my nostrils with awareness known as oxygen.
I settle as I meditate. I meditate deeper the further I settle.
I concentrate until my distractions are mired irrelevant. Fatigued as I fortify. Clutch and release. It’s simple. I clamp my mind in place, at peace, like a finger shoved into a paperback text, holding a favorite page to read to Sister. Holding onto what we’ve already turned past. Paced, consecutive breaths let my brain fizzle like Cherry Pop Rocks. I release the page, hold of Sister, and attempts to make a monument from a past moment.
Kids cry until the hurt goes away; in my practice, I embrace this by rescinding obligation to account for anything more beyond my immediate grasp.
I let the present ease from a hum to a jingle until it builds a symphony.
I dance in sequence. My breath strikes rhythm. From within, all returns back out. And some. Embracing my place — just as it is — sitting atop rigid floorboards, in my quiet home with only the laundry tumbling innocently downstairs, I bask. The music changes; I linger on the feeling, fondling it with bewitched curiosity. I invite it to foxtrot. We relish in a vintage worthy of Bruno Tonioli’s approval. Our sidestep dazzles; our timing impeccable. I adore the silk touch of a glove in my hand, well, until it begins to fade. My partner opacifies as the 4/4 signature morphs. Sweat breaks my brow and a smile escapes my lips as my promenade turns to a lone Cissy Strut as my date evaporates from sight. As the song fades, my ballroom-turned-jazzclub follows suit. I return to my perpetual reality not as I wish, but as I know it.
My laundry! Can’t forget before going out. Wrinkles. Is it still raining? Too much to ask to simply frequent a chill bar, drink three buck beers, and get home tipsy? Can’t keep running forty buck tabs to flex…
Goddammit, I’m not present. Again. It’s a hearty task, bottling chaos. Doing so is akin to stepping inside a coliseum surrounded by blank canvass instead of lions. Blink. My medium is covered by the chicken-scratch we etch onto our psyches. These murals depict all we fall back on at our worst; they word our belligerent monologues, fill the jar from which we grab our justification, and spark our fuses day-after-day.
Come back to breath, I plead. I straighten past Catholic School standards. I draw from my chest cavity. Release at will. And then again, yet deeper. I focus pressure between my thumb nails; next, on my tongue dried against the roof of my mouth. My back aches and I’m before canvass again. This time, with a paint brush. Ready for it. One more Cherry Pop Rock blasts.
I remain rigid, in mind and body. Right Here. Right Now. I am humming, and begin to feel as though I deserve praise for such practice. Surely I do. It’s just as I begin articulating a humble congratulations that the windchimes from my iPhone’s timer reach my ears.
I lost concentration misconcentrating on the spoils of the present. I shrug off my indulgence as I learned to dismiss the discomfort in my sit bones. After all, I’m just practicing.
