Miscellaneous Contemplation Practices (18/30)
I'm writing 30 posts in 30 days. This is number 18.
1. Hair
Get your hair cut outside. Forget to sweep up the hair right away. Come back later and see that the wind has carried it into the dirt and gravel, a few feet from the driveway. See it there amidst the soil and leaves, matter among matter, carbon amidst carbon, as all of your physical being is, all the time. Sweep it up, and examine whether you feel that it's still ‘yours’ in any meaningful way.
2. Shower
Next time you shower, if there's a bar of soap nearby, slowly reach out and touch it. Intently consider the slippery feeling. Where is that feeling located? Is it in your fingers, or in some indefinable space in your 'mind'? Where, would you say, is that space? If that space is being created by the soap, in what sense is the soap a part of you? If the soap is a part of you, when you touch the soap, is the universe cleaning itself?
3. Music
Listen to some abrasive music in headphones. Notice your physical reaction. Are you flinching away, maybe in your face, which is crunched up in a prune-y manner? If so, try to relax into the music. Stop defending yourself against it. Let it blanket your soul and pollute it. Let it down into your extremities, into whatever corner of you that becomes unavailable when you cower from sensation. Then turn the music off and feel normal.
4. Flavortown
Think of a food you like with multiple ingredients, imagine its flavors as thoroughly as you can. Now, try to disaggregate the ingredients mentally, and pick one. Perhaps the tomato from a Margherita pizza. Mentally it with something else delicious, to make another delicious dish. (Add bell pepper, eggs, garlic, and parsley, perhaps, to go in a shakshuka type direction.) Now, as best as you can, add another ingredient that makes it gross. Taste the gross imaginary food. Now remove the disgusting element and taste the tastiness again. Cycle a few times.
5. Shame Noise
Recall a shameful memory, one that makes you want to grunt, exclaim, or scream. Perform that noise. Lean into the sonics of it, make it the most intense possible creature noise possible, the kind of thing they'd crank up in a nature documentary to make the pictured animal seem as wild as possible.
6. Chapter
Center yourself in your current life narrative, think about what it is to be the hero of your particular story. Hold it in mind for a second, maybe with some triumphant mental music. Then, as best you can, turn back to a previous narrative you had, maybe in childhood, a totally different story. Think about being the hero of that story. Was that person heroic? Did the story meaningfully 'end', in some way? Now, venture into the future. Is there another story you can imagine inhabiting? How would the hero of that story regard the hero of your current story?
7. Blog
Hear this voice inside your head. Hey hey, ho ho. Check one two. Hear this in your own voice. Hello hello hello. Fee fi fo fum. Merry carrot ferret palate ballot shallot. Do you hear me talking over there? This is you. You you you you you. This is you. It’s you, it’s you. You you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you. Its you!
Yo. I'm enjoying this series.
Also, shower in the dark, just the right amount of sensory deprivation to properly explore slipperiness, contemplate your navel, sob, find out that you actually don't like the scent of your shampoo and you've been missing the yellow Johnson&Johnson stuff you grew up with, this whole time.