Give me a Quiet Mind

In an attempt to tame my monkey mind (that's what the Buddhists call the mind that cannot stay still) I attended a guided meditation session yesterday afternoon. A meditation session led by a monk! I had expectations for the class, like being able to tune out everything in my mind and just being in the moment even when  there is so much going on around me. But the monk lowered the expectation for me when he said that it takes practice and patience and time.

I have a problem getting my mind to stay still. Someone that I used to know used to find this hard to believe because on the outside I am this cool, calm and collected being, someone who can sit still for long periods of time and only get up when it's absolutely necessary. Also I am not shy, but I only talk when I have something to say, which, come to think of it, is a lot especially with people that I know. But I am also comfortable letting other people around me talk without feeling the need to say anything. These are the times when whatever is being talked about does not concern me at all, or I don't really care about the subject, in which case my silence communicates just that. I believe in voicing my opinion and I do have opinions on everything. I have talked about marrying the person who can quiet my mind, but I now see how heavy such a burden is to load on a person I purport to share my life with, oh and the impossibility of it all!

Anyway, my calm exterior betrays my internal meanderings. Hundreds of thoughts bombard me from every possible  direction,  each thought demanding my absolute attention. Which I give for a few seconds and before I come to a conclusion, another thought demands my time. Of course, there are moments when my mind is still, but this is when I am on my yoga mat but still these moments require my attention in form of my muscles burning and pulling. So yesterday, with the monk guiding my meditation, I sat still for a prolonged period of time. Of course, there were a few times that my mind would wander and I tried to put it to focus. I was shocked when I realised the meditation was forty(!) minutes long, because it felt like ten. People talked about seeing colours, imagining the sun or the moon above their heads and then floating inside them. I didn't feel any of that. What I felt was a few moments, because I am quite sure they were a few seconds, of stillness. No colours, no moon, no sun, not the voice of the monk, not the mantra that I was repeating.

I left there wanting to relieve that feeling. But I got into a noisy matatu, talked to a friend over coffee then went to watch a film then back to a noisy matatu. I wanted to relieve it today, and in yoga class during shavasana, that moment totally eluded me. The rest of the day hasn't been any different from yesterday. Oh, but how I want to quiet everything down even for a little while.

The title of this post is from the song A Quiet Mind by Blue October.

I've Closed Enough Windows to Know you can Never Look Back

It is the beginning of the year, that time when people make resolutions to change their lives. I think hate is a pretty strong word but I very much dislike beginnings. This strong dislike is probably because beginnings are usually preceded by anticipation which leads to expectations and when my expectations are not met then I get disappointed. Plant an expectation and you are sure to reap a disappointment, so the cliché goes. Having been perpetually disappointed, beginnings have become something that I don't look forward to, something that I dread. I prefer a seamless transition of things with no clearcut markings of the beginning or the ending. I like a continuous flow of events where one activity leads to another which leads to another which leads to... 

But beginnings and endings are inevitable, it is but the nature of things. The law of evolution, therefore, dictates that I have to adapt or be miserable. So I wonder, is it a little immature for me to hope for the wonderful gift of foresight this year? Is it wishful thinking to hope that the world will bend to my whims this year? Is it disengaging from reality to hope that my expectations (because God knows I can't help but have them) will be met?

I am good at introspection. Sitting at the end of each day to record my reflections. I always look back with 20-20 hindsight at the things that I did and what probably motivated my decisions or choices. Hindsight at the end of the year is at its best. I am unflinchingly honest with my reflections, because I am aware of how subjective memory is and so in an effort to be objective sometimes I berate myself for the things that I did. It is said that history always has a point of view,  and there is no exception with my past; I judge myself harshly, too harshly. I want something different this year. To look forward, to think long and hard before making life changing decisions in which future retrospection will reveal an evidence of good judgement. To have a future illuminated by foresight.

The title of this post is from the song Carry On by Fun.

Once Upon a Year Gone By

Oh 2014, I hardly knew you! Only one day to the very end of this year and I am just now tasting the shocking realisation that it has, in fact, been 12 months since the beginning of the year. It's been a blur. The 365 days have drifted by without my conscious awareness of their passing. I took the idea that the concept of time is man's creation quite literally. The distinction between night and day to me was not black and white, it was (still is) grey. I ate supper at midnight, I took vodka -sometimes- at two in the afternoon, I drank coffee at eight in the evening and eight in the morning became my ungodly hour. Time, after all, was my conception -the conception of my ancestors and, therefore, mine. And like the Idiosyncratic Hedonist that I am, I didn't follow the norm. It is no surprise then that 12 solid months have gone by and I feel that the year has just flown by.

It is not uncommon to look back at the years past and talk about something significant that happened in a particular year, for instance: school graduation; meeting a stranger who later becomes a lover; breaking up with the aforementioned lover; going through grief; moving out of the parents' home; starting a new job; these are just some of the major life events. I don't think I'll look back at 2014 and mention any of the above. However, I feel like I did grow tremendously in a short period of time and this growth has gone unnoticed by everyone but myself. I feel like in the space of 12 months, I have traversed so far from what I am used to. I find it difficult to put into words these bits and pieces of transition and transformation. The peace that I have felt, the wanderings -both imaginary and physical, getting lost and subsequently finding myself in a good book, being moved by great music, the magic of the night air, the stillness of the morning just before everyone wakes up, the letting go on my yoga mat, the sound of silence, the surprising emotional balance. These are things I might not be able to tell people in future, yet it is their combination that makes me feel completely and utterly metamorphosed. The abstractness of their very nature makes them difficult to explain.

Oh 2014, I hardly knew you, yet you gave me the time to know myself, and for that I am grateful.

The title of this post is from the song Paradise by Vanessa Carlton

What Kind of Paradise am I Looking For?

It's five o'clock on Monday morning and I am back at my place by the window with my first cup of coffee. I know, (because I have been told) that sounds depressing. I am not depressed. I am melancholic: I love sad things. Those of us with the melancholic disposition are inspired by misery. This is not to say I am a sad person. Quite the contrary, I am a happy soul. So, instead of sleeping, especially since I seldom get a full night's sleep -my sleep comes fitfully, with me dipping in and out of consciousness throughout the night- I find that staring out of the window is an interesting alternative, a better alternative so to speak. In this pre-dawn darkness, I find a solitary kind of happiness. I feel an illusion of aloneness, and despite knowing it is an illusion, or maybe because I know it is an illusion, I embrace the peace that can only be found when alone. I am staring into the proverbial nothingness, my mind's eye trying to form images the way I know them and with others, giving my imagination free rein as I form them the way I'd like them to be. But all too soon, in the light of day, I see everything the way it usually is.

I am a voracious reader. I devour books with a kind of hunger that I am certain can't and will never be satisfied. My Kindle, my laptop, my phone, my physical book shelves are all filled with books because the thought of ever lacking something to read scares me shitless. I spend more time reading than I do any other activity. It is in books that I make friends, travel around the world and acquire immense knowledge which translates to happiness. Every new book shifts my horizon. I find truths in books, especially fiction, because fiction is likely to contain more truth than fact. Books are my anchor: I read when I am happy; I read when I am sad. I read to experience everything across the full gamut of emotions. I feel emotions that I may probably never feel in real life; I become  someone I would never have become without books, and the best part is that I get to change the person that I am with every new book that I read. Someone once said, I forget who, but I agree with this fellow bookish soul, that my library is an archive of longings.

I am a dreamer. While pondering about dreams, Sile, one of the protagonists in Emma Donoghue's Landing, says that dreams pull so unpredictably on the fabric of time. She goes ahead to demystify the default, widespread yet misleading assumption that daytime is the real life. "In the night," she says, "people journeyed far from those they slept beside, they lived out infinitudes of time and in the morning,  they all behaved like adulterers, as if nothing happened." And I tend to agree. I have experienced so much in my dreams. I have been chased by indescribable creatures, I have traveled the world, I have interacted with people I might never meet in my life, I have attended international conferences, I have lived in my own house, I have experienced my worst fears, I have endured terrible pain and I have achieved my dreams. This other life that I have lived -sometimes stretching a whole lifetime and sometimes the brevity of it all makes me second guess myself- is only known to me. I might never experience all these things in my real life (whatever real life means) but I have felt them so strongly, it's as if  I have lived them. Fernando Pessoa says that life is fundamentally a mental state, and all that we do or think valid to the extent we consider it valid, the valuation depends on us. I find immense comfort in that thought.

In all these: sitting alone and staring in the dark; reading an inordinate number of books; and dreaming (living in my head) I believe I am looking for a paradise that is inevitably and eerily elusive. While on this other side of paradise -the preparadise- I try my best to conjure the image, to paint the picture of my paradise. I have imagined my paradise, made both minor and major changes and then done away with it. I am back at the drawing board, unsure of what kind of paradise I am looking for.

The title of this post is from the song Grey by Ani DiFranco.

Who am I to Dream?

I am at that point in my life where I am about to finally (gasp) step into the other side of the future. The future, up until now, meant after graduation. I am now in my second to last semester of school and my mind tells me that I need a new perspective of what the future would mean because I can almost taste what was my future. Like most people, I have dreams -probably because dreams give me a reason to look forward to the future; but could also be because I want people to see that I take my life seriously, I mean, everywhere I look I am surrounded by motivational speakers and books which tell me to dream big and this will propel me to a life of purpose(!)

When I was in standard seven, during a routine check from the Ministry of Education, the officer was fascinated by how lively our science class was. So at the end of the class, he decided to give us 'a word of encouragement.' He launched to the very unoriginal speech of how we as young kids were capable of everything we set our minds to and how we were the leaders of tomorrow. At that, he asked us who would like to be the president of Kenya. Out of the 46 of us, no one raised their hand, to his utter disappointment. He looked at us incredulously and repeated the question, and again to his disappointment, no one raised their hand. Later on that day, our class teacher came to talk to us about how disappointed she was that no one in class wanted to be the president. I mentally rolled my eyes as she continued with her monologue of how we should dream big, see ourselves as leading the country, and how it would bring her great pleasure to be a former teacher of a future president.

That little incident has always been at the back of my mind throughout the years I have been growing, changing and redesigning my dreams. I like listening to other people talk about their dreams. To gauge if they are passionate about the life they envision, and to predict the possibility of the realization of these dreams with regards to their life right now and their level of enthusiasm about the said dream. I think the line between dreams and fantasies is very thin and faint, unnoticeable to the people who don't look carefully. Fantasies are great, and in unguarded moments, I like to indulge. Dreams on the other hand require me to be realistic. But again, in moments of despair, I wonder if James Morrison was right in the song from which this post gets its title from when he said that dreams are for fools, they let you down. In these desperate moments, I don't see a bleak future. Rather, I see myself building walls around me that would withstand any amount of disappointment. In short, I prepare for when life's sometimes grim realities finally catch up with my perfect dreams. By preparing, I mean discarding my dreams for a little while because we know that's the safest way to avoid disappointment.

So, back to my present situation, even with the knowledge that some dreams don't come true, I can't help it. I am a hopeless dreamer. I am about to enter what people call the real world, whatever that may mean. My thoughts lately revolve around which companies I should send my CV to and what is like to plan my life outside of years characterised by semesters. I am anxious to enter this world, with equal part zeal and equal part fear. I feel ready to face this changes, but then who will I be after a lifetime of being a student? This feels like a point of transition, where my dreams should shift to reflect the person I am becoming. But I don't know that person (yet).

The title of this post is from the song Wonderful World by James Morrison.

The Moon Don't Hang Quite as High as it Used to

I saw the moon last night. That I am sure. Why, I had the lyrics ''She swears the moon don't hang quite as high as it used to'' from Matchbox Twenty's 3 am on my mind the whole night yesterday and the whole day today. So I am sitting by the window to look at the moon only that I can't see it. As I sit here, I remember the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. In explaining her name, Esperanza says that she was named after her great grandmother. She, like her great grandmother was born in the Chinese year of the horse. This is apparently bad luck if you are female, because the females born in the year of the horse are strong. And in both the Chinese and Mexican cultures, strong women are not encouraged. Esperanza, the great grandmother, was a wild horse woman who wouldn't marry until a sack was thrown over her head by the great grandfather and was carried away. She did not forgive him and for the rest of her life, she looked out the window. Esperanza compares her great grandmother's looking out the window to how many women sit their sadness on an elbow. Esperanza is fine with inheriting her great grandmother's name but she doesn't want to inherit her place by the window.

I shudder just by thinking about the book. Because I am looking out the window just like, I am assuming, Esperanza did. I guess looking out the window at this other side of midnight is a little sad and lonely. That thought is a little bit disquieting, so I ask myself, what really is it that I am looking for. I tell myself that the wanting to see the moon is just an excuse my conscious self wants to believe and my subconscious is hiding the real reason. So I stare. The wind is blowing softly. This, I deduce from the fact that I see the leaves moving slowly, back and forth, back and forth, then a little more violently, then back to its slow rhythm. It's fascinating. It is quiet. Deathly quiet. I like it.

Esperanza may have been looking out the window hating how her life turned out. But I am looking out the window finding peace in my aloneness thinking I should sit here daily instead of every other day and knowing that beyond the horizon, beyond this tiny spot on the globe, the sun is rising.

The title of this post is from the song 3 AM by Matchbox Twenty.

Get into my Ear: Just Another Girl by The Killers

The Killers - Just Another Girl: http://youtu.be/3BwzP1laWkQ

If you know me, at all, you'll know that matters of the heart are not my forte. I fundamentally believe that you can get through this life without being romantically involved with anyone. I mean, if you doubt me, ask the monks and the Catholic Sisters, Brothers and Fathers. If you happen to fall in love,  well and good. If you don't, it's not the end of the world. I have been, or thought I was at the time, in love. But with the benefit of hindsight right now, I think I never was.

Given my take, it is therefore unusual, absurd even, to have this song on repeat. I tell myself it's because I find every song by The Killers, and Brandon Flowers while we are at it, very entertaining. The Killers would most certainly have a place in my mix tape, if I ever make one. Or maybe it's because the video features Dianna Agron, who looks amazing by the way. Whatever the reason, I have this song on repeat. So why waste time psychoanalysing myself and the absurd reasons behind why I love it. Why not share with the world? I know it sounds pathetic to hold on to the past, but this song gives the past a whole new meaning.

Favourite Lyrics

I could be reeling them in left and right
Something's got a hold on me tonight
Well maybe all of my friends should confront
The fact that I don't want another girl

Then why can't I sleep at night
And why don't the moon look right
The sound's off but the TV's on
And it's a great big world

All of my friends say I should move on
She's just another girl
Don't let it stick to your heart so hard
All of my friends say it wasn't meant to be
And it's a great big world
She is just another girl