Someone in my neighborhood...

...is angsting something furious.

Mindfulness: Day 1

I had my first "sit" today, beginning my effort to try daily mindfulness meditation. I flipped off my shoes, pulled on my favorite sweater and sat indian style on the couch in still silence for twenty minutes. I have to say this time was very relaxing, but I felt pretty amateurish--my thoughts kept drifting out of control. Based on what I've read, the key is to focus your mind on one thing, such as your breathing. I had a difficult time doing this, particularly as I fell into deeper relaxation and maybe even began nodding off a little.

A book I read when I was younger kept coming to mind. I'll have to find the title later, but the gist was that a character had to spend a night without any thoughts in his mind. It's a herculean task, and he fails, falling asleep and dreaming I think of being in a movie theater with all of his friends. He's very disappointed in himself, but I think things work out for him in the end. So it's clear the author was incorporating parts of his experience with meditation; it'd be interesting to go back and read this again now.

And I think I'm beginning to get it, at least a little bit: the brain isn't meant to think about one thing. We juggle and multi-task, always wondering about something and flitting back and forth. To try what for me is basically impossible at this point--to focus on one thing alone for an extended period of time--is a work out, simple as that.

No wonder you see an increase in grey matter after regular meditation, as described in Sindya Bhanoo's neat blog post on Well describing some of the health benefits of regular meditation that inspired my meditation foray.

I don't plan on describing every session or anything like that, but I will try to post intermittently about my experience beginning meditating. I did bring my old (unread) copy of Hesse's Siddartha back with me from the states. It seemed appropriate. I'll be sure to report how that goes.

International Airport Pay Phones

OK so I don't know what I expected when I put my credit card into one of these in the Lanzarote airport trying to get in touch with my ride.  

The evil box.

Actually, I'll give it a shot: I expected to make a phone call--throughout which I thought I might be able to communicate essential information about my having just arrived at the shores of a strange land--that would be expensive, but reasonable, compared to normal phone rates. After all, I was making a brief call to a local number. How much could it cost? 

Well there ya go. And I should note: I had to call twice because the connection the first time was so bad that NO essential information was communicated whatsoever. So in total I made two local calls of about one minute each.

I dunno. I did connect with my ride and that is worth $50 to me. Still this seems high.

And just for fun, also included is the bill from my brunch a few weeks ago at Charlottesville's Blue Moon Diner. That, on the other hand, was totally worth it. 

Aha! Something to blog about...

OK well I was right pleased about this itty bitty gem of a find, so I wanted to write this one up (AKA generate some "content") and do my second-blog-post-in-three-years thing. Here is a brief clip of the end of Rubicon's episode four. Check it out:

I've been watching AMC's Rubicon with an eyebrow raised for now five or six episodes. Throughout I've flipped back and forth constantly from thinking the show is smarter/dumber than me and that overall it's really good/bad. A lot of the writing is great, and a lot of it is pretentious and awkward. This doesn't really bug me, because it's been a lot of fun having a show to regularly watch with my dad while I'm home, but the way Rubicon eludes both criticism and praise has really caught my attention.

I think partly this is because the show's (noble, if imperfect) aesthetic hinges on reversing genere expectations--leaving unsaid things that are normally said, giving us disconnected conversations where there are normally gunfights and explanations (or even... plot), etc. They might have also wanted to sustain the appearance or narrative possibility for as long as possible that this is a conspiracy show set in a world in which whatever conspiracies arise are actually just figments of obsessive, overworked people's crazy imaginations.

Or something. Whatever it was, there was lots of weird ambiguity that was genuinely difficult to read: "The dots are out there in the world . . . a woman buying vegetables in an algerian market . . . Teenagers fornicating in a liverpool market . . . What's the connection? What is the narrative?" the crazy old spy man asks in a delicious (if heavy handed?) meta-moment.

But try selling that to the network. So then the 5th or 6th episodes air and the entire feel of the show changes considerably. This has been commented on all over the internetz. The pace kicks up just as more plot details and character information is revealed. Much turns out to be different than we've perceived it to be (unless we perceived a hall of mirrors all along, in which case we were spot on. But at least now it's an exciting walk through the hall). At this point, I'll bet there will even be a shootout of some sort by the time the season's over. Huzzah.

And just before the change, the audience was given a really clever, sly clue, hidden-in-plain-sight. Back to that clip from above. Watch it again. Keep an eye on the board the right of the screen as the camera zooms in.

The audience "crosses" the Rubicon. 

There in the north of Italy is the Rubicon itself. In episode four, you, or at least your proxy in the camera, cross it. Maybe: "If you've stuck with the show this long, you're now committed. Settle in."

I'm not sure. I think that's a very deft way to make a very simple point, so something tells me this moment fits in with the overall architecture of the show in some way that's even more ("No!" "Yes.") clever.

Good stuff. We'll see if that reading holds. Or at least I will--I'm hooked.

Well...

This is exciting.