Monthly Archives: March 2016

Currently Reading

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It is Spring Break a.k.a. reading for fun time (as well as supposedly getting ahead on homework). The book that I have been recently devouring is A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland. It is listed under philosophy/spirituality, but I was drawn towards it simply because it is creative nonfiction.

As the title suggests, Maitland discusses silence. She brings the reader through her experience of silence in first the Isle of Skye and then the Scottish hills and the Sinai desert. Her book is exactly the kind of creative nonfiction that I want to write: one that relates personal experience while simultaneously drawing from history, literature, and philosophy.

Her discovery of silence, especially when she is on Skye, is beautifully relayed and all encompassing. That is, she described the good as well as bad (in fact, there is a whole chapter entitled “The Dark Side”). In all honesty, I felt a bit jealous of her. I have become extremely aware of all the chatter and noise around me, so much so that I’ve become irrationally irritated at those who are contributing to the noise.

As she pointed out, there is no such thing as complete silence. I am not currently listening to music and my roommate in the apartment is keeping to herself right now, but even so, I can hear the fridge, the tapping of my fingers on the keyboard, and every once in a while my feet or my bones somewhere else in my body make a noise as I fidget. It’s funny that I call that silence.

I know full well that since I am a student and I have definite plans for a least my near future, I cannot suddenly become a hermit. Instead, I can make room for silence. I have already made two moves toward doing so: I uninstalled Facebook on my phone and I removed Pandora. And when I drive to church for the Maundy Thursday service this evening, the radio will not be turned on. It will not be the kind of silence that will drive me crazy (which has happened), but it will be the silence that keeps me whole and hopefully sane.

Coursing through my veins

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“Then I reflected that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.” – Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”

 

First, let me apologize for the lack of posts recently. This semester has been especially difficult.

This semester, I signed up for a yoga class with the university. Unlike my other classes, it does not have weekly assignments or stress associated with it. Instead, it works as a destresser.

I took a yoga class for an elective in high school and even then I was somewhat wary of taking it. I was well aware that it could help take some weight off shoulders at the end of each week, but I was also extremely aware of its increasingly popular status in society. I was afraid that my class would be full of people who were taking it simply because it is fashionable in some way, but maybe because it is offered at the university and not at a studio, it does not seem to be.

My instructor especially emphasizes the breath. He says that each movement should by synchronized our inhales and exhales, something that I haven’t perfected quite yet. Quite often, I am too intent on not falling out of poses or doing them correctly to focus on my breathing. Every once in a while, he asks if any of us have stopped breathing during the current pose, a sign that we might be pushing our bodies past our limit. My honest answer, which I don’t say out loud, is that I hadn’t noticed.

The one pose during which I am very cognizant of my breath is shavasana, or “corpse pose.” Physically, it is the easiest pose as it consists of laying on your spine with your arms nestled against your sides and your eyes closed. Some people find it the most difficult as thoughts have a tendency to take over. Ideally, in this pose, one should become grounded in their body, in their breath, in their existence and nothing else.

At the end of my first yoga class, we lay like this for a few minutes and I was very aware of my blood. I felt it pulsing in my arm and I spent the time idly imagining it running its course through my body, an image, which I realize now, is perhaps slightly disturbing. But at that time, I was amazed at my heart’s ability to send the substance throughout my body and at it changing and changelessness. That is, cells die and are reborn, but are swept along in the same current of life. At that point, my blood, my body was different than it was a moment, a day, a year before that. But it was the same.

In this present moment, I am drinking blueberry green tea, sitting on my bed, listening to the Pentatonix radio on Pandora, and typing this. I am not aware of my veins right now, but I am aware of the slight cramp in my fingers and the feeling of the keys on my fingers, which are pressing the keys out of memory. I know that when I move onto other things later today, this moment may or may not matter. Because I will be in a different present. I will have different, but the same blood in my veins.