I am learning to meditate tonight. There's a short class teaching techniques and I am in it now. Right now. I am thinking. I cannot stop thinking. I am still thinking.
The top of the head. Hello, scalp, hello hair, hi brain, skull. Breathe in. Breathe out--thank you scalp, hair, brain, skull. Shut up brain. Shhhhh.
Breathe in -- breathe out -- breathe in -- out -- in -- out. . . .
I am sitting in this stupid position with a pillow under me, my fleshy legs bending muscles over other muscles in painful arabesques. My back looks like a pickle from a non-refrigerated jar. I don't smell like vinegar. I don't feel as though I am going to ever attain quietude within myself. Stream of consciousness brings me so many places.
Thoughts act like water running through dirt or sand. Have you ever poured water out onto dirt? I love the way it separates and takes different paths, soaking into some particles to become mud, occasionally sweeping itself along so quickly that the underneath dirt is dry. It almost makes me think of that line from Apocalypse Now: "A slug crawling across a razor . . . That's my dream." It is a line about a unity of peace and pain. My thoughts run in thousands of directions and collect in a puddle at the end of the incline. There is no incline in my thought but one--the only subject on my mind for the last month. That makes me absolutely sick. It itself is a unity of peace and pain. Peace--in certainty of negation. Pain in the same certainty, and also in the thought of my own pessimism.
Disgusting the way that one little thought can turn into an obsession. I am not obsessed. Breathe in. Think about the eyes. Brown and depthless. His eyes are never the same color. Shut up. Breathe out. Thank you, eyes. Thank you for seeing too much. Eyes. Breathe in. Shut out the world, ears. Thank you too, my dears, my ears, my dear ears. Breathe out.
I remember my ears are pierced. It's funny to forget a thing like that. My eardrum had to be slit once to let the trapped water within drain. I was so scared when the doctor put the instrument in my ear. I had a softball game later that day and I was dressed for it already. Dad told me to sit still, as I leaned farther and farther away from that probing metal bar that sucked the heat from my aural canal. Pressed against the fresh plastic of the patient's bed, I finally could retreat no farther and I don't remember much else except that the tissue (placed in my ear to keep out foreign objects) fell out when I made a triple later that night.
Breathe in.
Thinking, concentrating on the eyebrows. Breathe out. My brother put a scar right under my eyebrow, messing up the alignment so slightly and making my eyelashes irregular. My friend Laura asked once whether I plucked them, then didn't say much else about it. The right eye sometimes looks odd, lazy, just misshapen enough to be ugly--when I am not having a good day. Shhhh.
The thoughts are swirling, in muddy wonder, somewhere in my brain. I bet they're having a big damn party. I don't feel so good. Too much memory.
Cheeks. Do I really have to breathe in? Pinched, dimpled, smeared with mud by boy with smooth hands. Sigh. Mindfulness of thought: concentrate on nothing. Let thoughts flow by you; note them and allow them to pass undisturbed. It's not that easy, really. Really? I can't put thoughts down; it's only natural to pick them up. Next body part, please.
I arch my back to hear it pop. I love that sound. The action does not make my back feel better, but it does sound kinda cool. Breathe in. Losing train of thought . . . breathe out, concentrate on the nose. Thank you nose, that will be all. Slight smile. Flux.
Balm is in my tiny hidden pocket at my waist, but my hands are supposed to be folded in front of me. My eyes are closed. I can smell the tawdry strawberry from here. Breathe in. Tongue. Tongue flickers out to taste what's left of the old application of balm, teeth grab the lips. I wonder what makes me so fond of biting my lips. I also bite my fingers. Exhale, dearie. My fingernail polish smells a bit like grapes. I was fed grapes. Fed grapes by . . . . green and cool. They felt wonderful against my teeth in the chilly breeze from his car window. Concentrate!
Teeth. Crooked, unevenly enameled, sensitive to floss. Appreciate them now. I have a feeling that I'll end up with false teeth. My mom lost her four front teeth in a car wreck and has had the same plate for thirty-something years. Every time I head home, my grandmother has to get her tooth reinstalled. (As though it were a piece of software.) In, out, in out, inout. Bad genetics gave me a fang. The tongue wiggles behind the tooth, the tooth is connected to the jaw-bone, the jaw-bone's connected to the . . . .
Inhale. I ran into the door on the way back from talking to my friend about the boy, jaw-first. I always run with my jaw ahead. Breathe out. Let it go.
I get up from the meditation. This is no good. I run outside.
The wind is blowing hard, harder. The clouds varied this evening from patchy to thick. I remember Louisville, two years ago, New Year's Eve, this same feeling, almost as warm, December, was I so susceptible to a lack of concentration then?
Same wind, new leaves. I can't stop anything anymore. I'm trying to let it go. Do you think if I let the edges of my flannel shirt out, they would allow me to fly? Could I really fly? If I am afraid of heights, would I fly anyway? This tempest must help me.
Breathe in.
I concentrate now on the air that hits my face with concern. It hits me and is beautiful in silence and darkness. It is louder than ever and decked with tiny leaves that look orange in the amber streetlit exemptions of black in the world surrounding. The quiet world that makes one noise. One noise, one noise. For me.
Breathe out.
Throat. Thank you throat. Lungs, thank you, thank you, thank you. Blood, thank you.
There is a particular touch I feel from the wind. It is not like human touch, which only creates and procreates. It is a touch of neutrality without injury, cancellation without voiced need, a natural disaster on the island of the blue dolphins. Me on my little island like the girl in the book, swept away, never looking back.
Breathe in. Breathe out. In, out, in out, inout.
And suddenly I was free.