The art and artifice of mindfulness

I have been practicing mindfulness for a while now. And it ain’t easy. Especially for creative types. Especially for creative writer types. Especially for creative writer types with hyperactive imaginations whose minds don’t just drift but whiplash from one idea to the next. The idea is to just focus on what you’re doing. When you’re working, work. When you’re eating, eat. When you’re bathing, bathe. When you’re walking, walk.

But the walk goes something like this: “Oh. Look at the trees. Great trees. Especially that red maple. I was so annoyed that we had to cut down the red maple in front of our house. But it would have cut out too much light if it grew larger, oh, well. Trees. Yeah. OK. Here’s some more. Wow, they’re really greening up. Nothing as green as brand new leaves. Remember that artist you used to date in Boston? He’d get all excited when the trees started to bud…yeah, that one didn’t last too long. Wonder if he still has that painting of me…OK. Being mindful. Look at the lilacs. Nice lilacs. Smells nice, too. I love the smell of lilacs, remember that tree we had outside the back porch on Entry Road, and how it was always full of bees, and I got stung once and Mom put on this paste she made with baking soda and water….OK, this isn’t working. Just focus. Walk, walk, walk. What’s that? That smell? Lily of the valley? Already? That doesn’t usually come up until June. Must be the warm winter. Really was a warm winter. Did we ever pay the plow guy? Don’t know, I’ll ask Husband when I get home. Oh, that smell. I wore a perfume that smelled like that, when I was sixteen, when I met what’s his name, the guy from the Catholic school, who was only taking me out so he’d have a date for the prom, but then he broke it off with me because (he said) I wasn’t Catholic, but I think it was really because I wouldn’t let him beat me at tennis and I wouldn’t let him get to second base because I didn’t really like him THAT much…remember that Valiant he used to drive? He said he liked me because I smelled nice and was quiet and when he’d had a “tough day” I was calming to be around…damn. He wouldn’t like me anymore, would he? And…wait. Mindfulness. Hey, look at the gingerbread trim around that Victorian. Remember when we were thinking of buying that Victorian uptown and…

You can see my dilemma.

How does a creative person succeed at this slippery art? Every soap bubble on the sponge tells a story Every word leads to another. And the shower? Forget it. The hypnotic rush of the water - the sound, the feel, the heat – extracts story and memory from my mind like sap from a maple tree, like honey from the hive, and then there was the time that…

Oh, we were talking about mindfulness, weren’t we? When you cook, cook. When you eat, eat, when you…

I was trying my damnedest to do it during acupuncture yesterday. When you get stuck with needles…well, you can’t really think about getting stuck with needles. What I do is get myself into a hypnotic trance to keep myself relaxed so I don’t think about needles sticking into some extremely tender parts of my body. Instead I focus on the healthful, healing benefits of the practice. “Go into trance,” I tell myself. “Let your scalp relax, let the muscles of your face relax.” Which isn’t easy when your face is being scrunched into a head cradle. “Let your neck and shoulders relax…” Et cetera. I think about letting go and letting the healing energy the needles are freeing circulate throughout my body.

And then the thoughts creep in.

“I wonder, if I could get outside my body, what this looks like?” I felt about where he stuck all the needles, and I’m trying to parse what kind of pattern it formed, whether I’m a crop circle or Stonehenge around my shoulders and upper thoracic spine, and going south toward my lumbar, where he’d placed paired needles in sequence flaring out at my hips, if it looks like a string of telephone poles or street lights or railroad tracks. And that other day when we worked on my sinus points, I must have looked like some kind of alien cat with steel whiskers and antennae. Now I’m seeing in my head a series of photographs of various patterns of needles for various conditions. Wonder what the treatment for asthma must look like. As opposed to eczema, as opposed to irritable bowel, as opposed to…I’m seeing the images really close up, so you can see the texture of the skin and the glint of the steel, maybe one with the acupuncturist’s hand inserting one of the needles, and in the background his practiced and steady eye. I’m seeing…calendars. Paintings. Screen savers. Coffee table books. And who had the idea for acupuncture in the first place? What Chinese healer figured out that if he stuck sharpened sticks under people’s skin in specific patterns, it cured their headaches, or their allergies, and could actually prevent certain diseases?

The door opens. A soft voice says, “OK, I’m going to remove the needles now.”

Funny. I’d almost forgotten they were there.