Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Bathing, blind sleeping, movie watching.

I apologize (to myself) for neglecting the blog this month. I lifted my corpulent mass this morning from my bed where I lay prostrate atop my now ruined quilt (THANKS GRETA THE CAT) slowly this morning and discovered that it was already the 19th. Once you get past the 15th of the month, you have passed the point of no return. Or maybe I just think that because the bulk of my expenses happen to come due on the 15th of every month and paying bills instills a deadening clang of mortality in my soul and everything feels like the point of no return with each email confirmation from each creditor that yes, we have received your payment and that yes "You live to work." Wow, ok. Maybe this opening tangent offers explanation to my blogging absence.

In the interest of lightening the mood, I'd like to discuss my recent adaptation of some time worn methods of relaxation that I always kind of knew about, but never really participated in. For example I've been...

...soaking in long, hot baths and reading. I've limited the reading material to magazines because I find myself afraid of ruining a book. I know if my pets weren't terrors on four legs I'd prop candles all around. I know if I was a smoker (and my apartment building allowed it) I'd smoke cigarettes in there. I'd play my green ukulele in there. Just sit in that bath for hours upon hours until I was a large brown raisin. Lately I've been sighing loudly enough for people in my immediate vicinity to ask me if I'm okay. What I never admit is that when I'm sighing like that, I'm imagining that I own a place with a claw footed bathtub in stark white porcelain with delicate and detailed feet. Big enough for two, maybe three people. And a small waterproof library built into the wall next to it. Maybe a mobile bar cart with airplane sized servings of gin. Alas, my reality appears in the form of a windowless bathroom with a plastic bathtub that if you look in your own bathroom you probably have the exact replica of and it is just kind of plunked down on the cold tiles, footless, shallow and gathering mildew, always. However, I'm lucky to have a bathroom to myself and I treasure it as much as if this were my bathroom:

I expect in the afterlife to awaken inside this bathroom with a plate of avocados, sliced and salted next to me.

Relaxation attempt part two includes wearing an eye mask to sleep. In my younger years I was paranoid to do this because, like most self-centered individuals, I often found myself lying awake at night imagining that there was every possibility that a meteor was going to strike my bedroom, or an airplane was going to fall out of the sky on top of my house or that some crazed lunatic was going to break into my bedroom through the window. Good thing NONE of those things happen, eh? Heh. However, I'm older and less paranoid, believe it or not and frankly, I need to sleep more than I get and also, even if any of the aforementioned things were going to happen to my apartment, the ability to see for a few seconds longer without the mask over my eyes isn't going to save me. And so far, it has been helpful to my rest. Well it was helpful for the week I was doing it before one of my cats got hold of the mask and either ate it or hid it behind something unreachable because I can't seem to find it. But it falls into the category of relaxing stuff that people have known about/been doing for thousands of years but that I just started doing. Yes, I made a category for that.

In addition to those two fascinating and relaxing things, I think perhaps my activities of the first six weeks or so of 2013, have relaxed me. I've been participating pretty heavily  in passive observation, mostly watching a massive amount of films and reading a bunch of stuff. I just realized as I reread that participating in passive observation is an oxymoron and likely one that is entirely unique to our current times. Or maybe it isn't. I don't know why but I just thought of gladiators in the Colosseum. Yet another digression. I have also allowed myself time to just think. Thinking without trying to fill up time or space in my brain with something from the outside is something we rarely do anymore, mainly because there is no time. I guess doing this is my form of meditation but in reality is the opposite of meditation. Meditation is supposed to be done with a clear mind and instead I'm just allowing my mind to go where it wants to. I do find I have to put a time limit on that though because I'm prone to reveling and/or being morose and/or perverted and that just defeats the purpose. Regardless, my focus has been clearer than it has in awhile and strangely I think I can chalk that up to sheer concentration on something as opposed to the consistent deluge of distraction that often attacks me.

There is also a lot of relaxation to be found in watching a film, even a challenging one. I needed to redirect my focus because I was turning into a phone zombie. THANKS iPhone. So watching a film of average length is another outlet that is helping me to both relax and concentrate.

Let's put aside the fact that though this new found concentration has lent itself very well to my other writing, it has done nothing for the quantity nor quality of this blog. And for that, I once again apologize. To myself. Not to you. I don't owe you anything. Why don't YOU write a blog? No but seriously, write one and I'll add it to my google reader and read it all the time for realz.





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