Scotland July 20th - Glasgow

Scotland!

“Wait Chris, didn’t you just go to a land of some sort right near there?”
“Why yes, I went to Ireland last year.”
“Well, what made you go to Scotland?”
“I just had to try flying over a small expanse of ocean in a plane powered by fan blades!”

It was myself and Janet Dreamcrusher off on another adventure in a celtic nation. Oh yes, the trip to Scotland was a whole different beast from my trip last year.

Aer Lingus x2 ***

I don’t know if we were doing something wrong or just being too cheap, but we ended up with a layover in both directions. I’m not sure if it would have been easier to fly into London and drive up to the land of the Tartans, but we just swallowed our pride and took the two layovers in stride. After all if we stopped over in Dublin then we’d have ample time to pick up some Jameson Truffle chocolate bars (this line of thinking will be important later).
Our first flight is straight to Dublin airport from JFK at 5:30p Friday night. The flight is simple enough, but try to patiently board a second plane at 6am in a foreign country without losing your mind and get back to me. If you think that’s too easy, try taking a bus to the plane which is about the size of… a bus with wings and two giant fans glued on.

 

I mean, what you really want when you’re in a hollow metal tube six miles into the atmosphere is two giant explosion tubes to propel you across the earth using invisible fire

Getting into Scotland we faced our next hurdle: this year we decided to pick up the car immediately.

Alamo **

As if switching planes after not sleeping for a full night wasn’t bad enough, we also had to wait on line for our car rental as children slept crashed out on the waiting benches. They looked how I felt, but much more at peace with it. Everyone was helpful though, so there was that.

Glasgow - Where is our hotel? *

We learned from Ireland that the signpostings for the major cities from the motorways would be pretty dynamic and fit our needs fairly well, unfortunately the cities in Scotland weren’t laid out as simple as Ireland. We probably spent a good hour in the area of our hotel while being unable to find it, going so far as to ask around 6 people. We made slow progress until someone grabbed a “Glasgow A-Z” book that pointed out the general area of the city we were supposed to be in. Another half hour of searching got us there - a half hour fraught with wrong turns and tizzies, but after we got it once we never made a wrong turn again.

We had a rocky intro - it was around 12 and we were looking to see if we could get in early. It was then that we were told that our check-in time was an hour later then it was on the website (3pm). That would have been okay except we’d been awake for 18 hours and were pretty exhausted. We went back into town to search for things to do in the meantime.

Botanical Gardens ***

The Botanical Gardens run multiple plays during the summer weekend in the greenhouses, which many people were taking advantage of and having a good laugh at a Shakespearean comedy. Unfortunately we agreed if we’d sat down for a moment we would pass out and wake up looking like well-dressed and under-equipped backpackers, so we decided to continue a garden tour.

Walking through the gardens we were able to swing around to the lower paths which led us along a river walk with outdoor body-weight workout
equipment. It was fun for a lark and made me wonder if that sort of thing appears anywhere in America. After getting through a rousing circuit we continued on to a well-deserved rest at our hotel room.

The Belhaven ***

Despite the introduction, we made it back around 3p and got to our room on the second floor. It was awesome! Huge vaulted ceiling and a view of the streets to die for. We had what we referred to as the ‘Balcony Room’ because we were situated over the entrance of the hotel which had a small overhang. The room was beautiful and was nicely located to give us a quick trip into the parts of the city we liked.

The breakfast was nice and easy without any huge surprises, which made for an easy introduction. The last thing you need getting into a foreign country is an early-morning introduction to some foul foods you'd never even consider eating at home like blood pudding or something... :)

We often grabbed our morning fruit to go as a mid-day pick me up, which made for a nice snack as we made our way around the city. All in all once you find it the Belhaven is great coming and going.

Becoming an adult

This one goes out to Josh, because he asks me this from time to time.

So, occasionally a friend of mine asks me what made me realize that I was an adult. My first answer, back when he asked, was socks. I bought my own socks, and that's when I realized, 'Wow, I'm an adult'. Because I was burning my disposable income on a quality of life item like socks instead of something strictly entertainment purposes. I'll admit It was a goofy answer and only half-serious, but it remained my answer almost six months later when he asked me again so I suppose it stuck.

But I had a thought on the way home today while I was mulling over a few songs I'd been listening to. There's one song in particular - "Car Radio" by Twenty One Pilots - that really caught my attention. In the song the singer has had his car radio stolen and he's stuck driving with only himself for company, no music to distract him from his own life. His thoughts run away with him, and he wants to replace it just so he can stop being forced to think about his life on every car ride.

I'm going to be brutally honest right now - no matter how put together everyone appears to be on the outside, we're all just a genuine invitation away from a complete stranger away from bursting out with every fear and misgiving we're dealing with in our lives. Some people do it in journals, some people do it in drunken conversations, some people do it on blogs using thinly veiled allusions, but we all want to get it out.

That brings me back to our protagonist, the radioless man. He's locked away inside the car he's driving, nothing to distract him from the dissatisfaction of his lot, and he's wrecked by it. He talks about his pride being on his sleeve, the dreams (his own) he's killed and says 'I could just pull the steering wheel.'

The french have an idiom for this - "L'appel du vide" or the call of the void. 'I could just pull this steering wheel'. Terrifying, horrifying even.

Back to being an adult.

We're all scared, we don't really know what to do. This is our lot, of course. For the last few years I've always thought I knew how everything worked. I was under the impression I had it all figured out, if I was just a bit better at translating the runaway train of thought and transferring it to paper I could quantify the words that would make it okay for everyone.

I know that I was wrong. I couldn't write it then and I can't write it now. It's certainly not socks. Truly, I may only have just become an adult on this 'car ride' myself.

Because the moment I realized I was an adult was the moment I accepted that I would never know what it meant to be an adult, that I'd always be scared of something. That finally having everything together was always just out of reach. That no matter how much we think we know, there's still something more to be learned.

But hell, what do I know?

Knowledge and Understanding

There's an old rather depressing remark that comes out whenever someone is lamenting their lot in life and it usually goes "It never gets any easier". It is said in many ways, tasted in many flavors, and pokes an already sore nerve.

Oddly (or not so oddly, one supposes), it turns out that as you get older you really understand it. When you're a child and you are tired of going to school, it never gets any easier. When you are an adult getting your first job and working 20 hours a week, it never gets any easier. When you go to college and have more exams on tougher classes, it never gets any easier. When you work your 40 hour weeks, do your own laundry, cook your own food, and pay your own bills it never gets easier.

It's funny how this phrase - so simple, so effectual, can be lost on us at every step of the way, every moment, such that it may always be a hindrance to us on reminder. We know it, we've lived it, our lives never become less complex. It is only in the barest moments of self-reflection does the realization come to us, and then is gone until we complain beside a witty friend.

There is a saying in Buddhism, "Don't mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon." It is a fairly simple idea and explains the flaw in our spoken language. We tell each other, explain to one-another, the wisdom we have gleaned and expect transformation. People will always say that things never get easier because it is simple to say it. But those words are not enlightenment, we have done nothing more then point at the moon while the other person looks to our finger.

This is also the logic behind meditating on koans and focusing on experiencing life in the moment. We are trying to teach ourselves to see the moon rather then watching for the fingers that point to it. We want to be a part of the reality of things rather then the representations that are before us.

So when you are told something, or something is explained to you, think on it and ponder the thing that is being spoken of instead of the words that are being used to convey it. Listen mindfully to those ideas, and understand them. Knowledge is simple, understanding is complex.

Amber Alert: 100 Day Meditation Challenge Disappears at 35 days old

So I was burning up to write something - anything - about the meditation challenge since I'd let it slip off. There's always a mix of shame and relief when it comes to failing at something. You no longer have to give it your all, you no longer have to answer to yourself when you fail. No one enjoys that gentle slipping away and that feeling of 'not quite right' that settles in when you know you've given up on this day or that day. Giving up can sometimes feel too easy, with a seductive quality.

Years ago I was horribly overweight. Not just a little bit with a beer belly or anything, but unequivocally morbidly obese. I still have flashbacks of embarrassment from that time in my life, the way I treated friends and family. I was 280 pounds, and I'd stake myself depressed for a majority of it. It was no one's fault but my own, and even now I sometimes struggle with admitting that and try to blame others for it.

I reveal that because it goes hand-in-hand with the breakdown of my attempted challenge. I am no longer morbidly obese and maintain a fairly healthy weight of around 180 pounds. There was a period of my life, about a year and a half during which I worked tirelessly at fixing myself. So much so that I became fixated on those things, I endangered my health and well-being chasing self-image.

I actually spent a period of about two months in a state of constant malnutrition. I survived (barely) on egg white omelets on the morning - 75 calories, a protein shake at lunch - 400 calories, and an egg white and broccoli omelet at dinner - 175 calories.  650 calories is not enough to support a thin guy, much less a fat guy losing 5 pounds a week. All this while doing a near daily gym regiment of a 3.25 mile run and an hour of weightlifting a night.

Did I end up better for it? That's a good question. I certainly look better. Who knows what sort of havoc I subjected my body to during that period. During that time I learned a lot about myself and the way I deal with certain things. I have an obsessive nature which I can channel: In the times I wasn't starving myself and working out constantly, I also started learning to play the guitar, was regularly writing again, went out for rock climbing every week, started reading again, and had completely blocked out video games and television from my routine.


But I persevered in that mode for months, rarely eating out of step and generally being a simpleton with my nutrition. People think I have incredible willpower, I was just obsessed and berating myself for every misstep. I took my self-hatred and channeled it into a self-destructive whirlwind behind a mask of self-improvement. I was ashamed of my progress every step of the way because I knew it had become an extension of the worst part of my personality.



The meditation challenge was, and still is, something I wished I could have kept up with. But I can't let that guy who obsessively follows his whims be the driver; I was generating a lot of self-doubt and frustration from my failures and that's a quick jump to 'looks good from the outside but is a mess within' territory. It's also counter to the purposes of meditation and Buddhism. I'll return to it and continue my personal research into the eightfold path, writing about it when I find something that I can be proud to share with the people around me. Until that time comes again, I'll try to be more active on this blog about the things I'm passionate about. Thanks for reading.

Day 35 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 35

Length: 10 minutes (timed)
Start:: 11:35pm
Experience:

Oh, how to explain this one. I was excitable by the time I got to it because I found a Buddhist temple near my house. I could have sworn I'd googled for this kind of thing a hundred times but one has been nearby since 2009. My mind was all aflutter throughout and I had trouble focusing. I used the singing bowl to start and end it and focused on my breath when I could, but my thoughts were like a tumbling waterfall.

Closing Thoughts: A temple! So excited.

Day 34 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 34

Length: - minutes (timed)
Start:: -
Experience:

It was my birthday! Predictably, I missed it.

Closing Thoughts:

Day 33 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 33

Length: 15 minutes (timed)
Start:: 10:25pm
Experience:

The singing bowl has given my mind a bit of focus this time, I could hear the echoes long after it faded and it reminded me to stay mindful. Throughout most of my meditation I remained so, but some pernicious thoughts came through, regrets and questions on decisions I've made in the past. I tried to view them simply as thoughts, but emotion runs deep in these things yet.

Closing Thoughts: Singing bowls are like echoes of calm minds, regret is a strong force.

Day 32 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 32

Length: 10 minutes (timed)
Start:: 11:05pm
Experience:

Had a drink of my favorite wine and that made it hard to sit calmly. Sat for ten minutes, barely able to focus on breath. On the positive, I recieved a singing bowl from my girlfriend for an early birthday present which is something I'd been coveting - which I suppose it bad :) - but it made me happy. Not happy enough to break any records though, apparently.

Closing Thoughts: Alcohol and singing bowls!

Day 31 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 31

Length: - minutes (timed)
Start:: -
Experience:

Missed it. Came home from the bar and just nattered away my time on games. Could I be more wasteful?

Closing Thoughts:Boo.

Hot Yoga

I'll start by saying that Hot Yoga is the closest I've ever come to dieing. After that I'll say it was also the grossest I've ever felt in my life, and I've done the Warrior Dash in full zombie makeup. By reference, the Warrior Dash is a 3 mile obstacle course that starts in a filthy river, has you crawling through mud under barbed wire, and jumping over burning coals at the finish line, but that's another post altogether.

It may come as no surprise at this point I would try something like this. Yoga is intrinsically linked with meditation in many circles and I'm a bit of a hippie so it makes sense I would end up doing it. My girlfriend had recently been getting into it and wanted someone to go with her so naturally she yoked me and dragged me out of bed at 8 in the morning on a Saturday.

Surprisingly I have no legal recourse for this treatment.

She drove us to a studio up in Bayside, NY called Hot Flex Yoga. I was already on the warpath to embarrass her as thoroughly as possible; I wore my Vibram Five-Finger shoes ('toe shoes'), pajama pants and wandered in groggily waving cash and demanding a rental mat. They obliged me and I walked past the desk with my shoes on. For the unitiated, that is a big no-no.

Shoes come off before you get past the desk, remember this. We had to endure a cheerful man literally get down on his hands and knees in front of me to wipe up the rancid street water I'd tracked in from the parking lot. They got an "A" for effort as I slinked into the studio proper and set down my mat in the balmy room.

I was interviewed quickly by the teacher (yogi? Stinking bears) regarding my physical shortcomings and informed I could quit at anytime. Whether this is a normal practice or a pointed warning was lost on me but I've been assured since that I was being marked as weak.

We went through a quick but well-described series of positions that tested my flexibility, which also exposed that I had none. I rigidly followed the instructions and in short order became a sweat faucet. Now let me be clear, I've run during NY summers which range from unbearably dry to Georgia balmy. I've done cardio at Planet Fitness during the January rush when the air conditioners broke down. I've never sweat like this.

It was about 3/4 of the way through the practice that I almost passed out for the first time. We had been down on the ground for a bit and stood back up to stretch and I started to white out so I hid from them on the floor. The environment of these sorts of classes is pretty open and judgement free so I shouldn't have felt bad, but I'm a bit self-conscious and stared intensely at the floor like I was breaking open some really advanced chakras or something.

I reprised my role as 'almost passing out guy' at the 7/8 point and the 15/16, at which point everyone else was instructed to sit down and I pretended to just be faster at sitting then they were.

The class ended with a calming led meditation focusing on each body part to relax them. This was actually a technique I learned during my daily meditation to defeat pain/discomfort and worked equally well after soaking a yoga mat in body juice. On my way out I noticed that the worker who had wiped up my street slime was also picking up every rented mat but mine and hanging them over some dryers at the front of the room. I took the hint and hung my own.

On a serious note though it was a great experience and me being out of shape is the only reason I felt funky during it. The class was taught by a very capable instructor and I never once felt bad for having to take a break. The building and studio is lovely and accessible and the price is very good for the quality of the class. If you're interested and in the greater Bayside area I'd highly recommend checking them out.

Day 30 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 30

Length: 8 minutes (timed)
Start:: 10:00pm
Experience:

Focus difficult. I had some rare moments of introspection during the day though where I felt a bit more in tune with the world around me, which was different.

Closing Thoughts: Soldiering on.

Day 29 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 29

Length: 5 minutes (timed)
Start:: 10:30pm
Experience:

Another bad night. I feel really shaken and restless. Would it be cheating to put my closing thoughts two days in a row as "Stress!"? I think once I'm past January I'll be able to focus again.

Closing Thoughts: I think there's like, a special number of days when you're trying to do something new that it loses novelty and becomes drudgery, and I'm wondering if it's around 30 or something. I'm going to break through but in the meantime it's short sits and sadness :(

Day 28 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 28

Length: 10 minutes (timed)
Start:: 9:13pm
Experience:

Couldn't relax and I think that a big part of the problem is that I'm not able to be mindful in my practice. I don't know if it's some looming deadline or something but I just feel like there's a great shadow over me this week. Realized I had forgot to check if a bank transfer went through and I was standing up before I even realized I was doing it.

Closing Thoughts: Stress!

Day 27 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 27

Length: 5 minutes (timed)
Start:: 11:15pm
Experience:

Another bad day, unfortunately. I'm having trouble concentrating for variable reasons. I freaked myself out about my foot thinking that the paralysis was getting worse and in meditation I couldn't escape this consuming doom feeling. I scurried away from my pillow and tried to forget the panic.

Closing Thoughts: Need to relax about health concerns, causing too many problems.

Day 26 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 26

Length: 12 minutes (timed)
Start:: 9:47am
Experience:

Mind was roiling, wouldn't quite say I got much meditation does as much as I got lots of daydreaming and fidgeting. Waiting on a package and trying yoga later. Tried my normal rounds of wishing peace and loving happiness and that saved me for a short while but I felt doomed from the start.

Closing Thoughts: All the thoughts. Also, wow, past the 1/4 mark!

Day 25 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 25

Length: - minutes (timed)
Start:: -
Experience:

Missed it :(

Closing Thoughts: Mornings! Didn't sleep well most of the week and just burned out at like 9pm.

Day 24 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 24

Length: 10 minutes (timed)
Start:: 10:45pm
Experience:

Ah a bit of drink (stronger then normal by happenstance) and my mind is all afray. Maintaining focus beyond 7 minutes or so very difficult. Songs less or a problem then just intrusive thoughts which I cannot quell. On Thursdays I must be more vigilant.

Closing Thoughts: Earlier the better! On nights I plan to go out I must get my meditation done early, patience and focus are finite even with trace amounts of drink in me.

Day 23 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 23

Length: 5 minutes (timed)
Start:: 11:20pm
Experience:

Today I had a deep seated anxiousness that pervaded every moment. Music was back on my mind where I had not dealt with it in several days. I decided to cede this one to my brain for various reasons.

Closing Thoughts: Catchy music + medical stuff = bad sit. Not very surprising.

Day 22 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 22

Length: 15 minutes (timed)
Start:: 9:45pm
Experience:

I had a good sit today. I spent a majority of the time enacting some techniques I've been learning about in Mindfulness in Plain English: counting breaths, defeating frustration by wishing loving kindness to all things, and focusing on unpleasant feelings.

Counting breaths really helped my wandering mind, and when I met with some frustration with how my day went wishing loving kindness helped evaporate it. I was having some discomfort in my back and found the most peculiar reaction to focusing on it - it disappeared!

It made me think that perhaps minor pain was but a momentary pin prick and my brain just kept reminding me that it had happened. When I focused on it, truly focused on it and tried to observe it mindfully, it slipped away like grains of sand through my fingertips. It was quite an experience.

I also focused on my favorite koan - Tekisui. It's a simple one that has brought me great joy in its contemplation:

"
A Zen master named Gisan asked a young student to bring him a pail of water to cool his bath.
The student brought the water and, after cooling the bath, threw on to the ground the little that was left over.
"You dunce!" the master scolded him. "Why didn't you give the rest of the water to the plants? What right have you to waste even a drop of water in this temple?"
The young student attained Zen in that instant. He changed his name to Tekisui, which means a drop of water.
"

I daresay this particular koan is the reason that I started down this path. If I had a proper meditation room or altar I'd decorate it with some kind of reference to it in order to remind me of my root.

Closing Thoughts: I should make better use of the advantages of this interconnectedness of contemporary life, I've held an electronic copy of Mindfulness in Plain English for so long but have yet to finish it even though upon each page I find great wisdom to help me in my practice. Enacting several of the techniques within have helped me greatly improve. My favorite koan still brings me great pause even now.

Day 21 - 100 Day Meditation Challenge

Day 21

Length: 14 minutes (timed)
Start:: 8:30pm
Experience:

Tonight was a good night as far as the Vipassana meditation school is concerned. I was able to refocus myself on my breath for most of the sit, it wasn't until the last five minutes or so that I had real trouble staying focused. My mind wandered to my other responsibilities and things, a bit about a game I'm playing, just the usual nonsense.

Closing Thoughts: Vipassana meditation is more calming. I need to learn to deal with distractions properly.