Meditation, or What I'm Doing Instead.

The floor is squishy under my legs, the cool, rubbery feel of red and blue squares that line the floor of the mostly square shaped room is a welcome relief after a long day in a steaming hot kitchen. The wall to my left are covered with various weaponry, targets, and Korean symbols I don't know the meaning of. A candle glows, sitting on a little plate to the front and left of me. I shouldn't be looking at the candle, I should be looking at the inside of my eyelids. To my right, the walls are lined with mirrors, 6 or 7, but I won't turn my head to look at them, that'd just be drawing attention to the fact that I shouldn't be looking at anything but my inner-self. Above the mirror, words in bold black have been set onto the wall. The tenets I should be focusing on from my cross legged position. I keep my back as straight as I can, my fists lightly closed, hanging over my knees, with a sigh that could be mistaken for a deep, cleansing breath, I let me eyes close, and study with intensity the inside of my eyelids.

I used to be really good at shutting down for meditation before and after class. I knew how to focus my attention to clear away everything that's been going on in my life. A white room, a big box, just a completely, empty, thoughtless place. If I thought of anything, it was related to the class, settling nerves before a class I knew could push my levels of endurance, hoping I didn't look like that idiot black belt who screwed up a really basic poomsae, or form. I sit there, looking like a giant white puff in my brand new, recently washed dobok that still has that rather satisfactory 'snap' when you punch or kick. My belt sits tied around my waist, still too solid to be very comfortable. It's been at least 4 years since I sat in this place, surrounded by the dedicated men and women who practice Tae Kwon Do. The last time, I was an instructor who loved being surround by the children she taught. I was strong and secure in my knowledge of my poomsae, my ho sin sool. I felt full of energy, I knew calmness in the face of the things that scared me, I could do anything I put my mind to. I was physical fit, mentally strong, and then, like things so often happen, I got swept up in life.

I left New York, by myself, for the first time in my life. I fell in love with the wild green grasses of Virginia, I grew to love the southern food I found myself surrounded by. I met new people who will be with my for the rest of my life, I did more public speaking then I thought I could handle, I was involved with prank wars, dinner parties, formal dances, and did homework and studied until I couldn't have remembered anything else if I tried. While it was the best three years of my life, I let my life be full of "fun" and "school" and didn't leave any time for "stay in shape". Admittedly, it wasn't for a lack of trying. There was a great gym on campus, and open for a large variety of hours, so not being able to get there before it was closed shouldn't have been an issue. I joined Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art that hides techniques through dance-like movements. I took kickboxing for my required gym class. Each and every time, I didn't follow through with it like I should have. I half-heartedly kicked through class, I quit Capoeira because I wasn't thrilled with the instructor and the requirements were overwhelming, and I hated the gym because it just "wasn't my thing".

Following graduation, I move back home, firmly believing I'd be back in Virginia before Thanksgiving, secure in a job, surrounded by my friends, and life would be as I wanted it to be. Instead, a year later, I'm working two part-time jobs, struggling to pay off my college bills, my car insurance. I found myself wanting to be no where but in my room, playing video games online with my friends, chatting, snacking, and just generally shutting myself off from my family, and anything else I didn't want to deal with. I didn't, and still don't, to a certain degree, that I needed to get out of my room. She wanted me to be more active, eat right, see a therapist, spend more time with the family. She offered to pay for me to return to Tae Kwon Do, which I readily agreed to. I had wanted to go back for a while, but I couldn't afford the classes. I figured if I did part of what she wanted, I could get away with everything else she requested (which, really, didn't work out as planned, but that's not what this particular entry is about).


So there I am sitting, cross legged, supposed to be myuk sang-ing (meditating), and all I can think about is what has brought me back to this point in my life. This particular class isn't the first one I've taken since I've restarted classes. It's maybe the second or third. The pain of that first class though is still lingering in my legs and torso, the ache stretching with every breath I take. I'd like to think that is why I can't focus on clearing my mind, but I know better than that. I should be thinking of the tenets written above the mirrors, I know I can shut my mind off to focus for class. I feel annoyance growing, tension wanting to move through my arms, clenching my fists that should be lightly closed over my knees.

I'll take the time to explain these tenets I should be focused on while sitting there. Do forgive me if the answers aren't complete precise, or accurate. This is coming from a woman who has been out of practice for 4 years, and without studying, or looking up the official meanings. Courtesy is pretty self-explanatory. Be respectful, do unto others, and so on and so forth. We've heard this "golden rule" type thing a million times before so I'll go by it. Integrity is also pretty straightforward, be honest. Well, while a lot of people remember to be honest with other people, we aren't always honest with ourselves. This my problem. I am honest with the people around me, but just like I don't agree with my mother on what needs to change in my life. If I am completely honest with myself, I know that her advice is sound, but I am very stubborn and resistance to change. Perseverance is the next tenet. It follows the idea that you should always finish what you start. That once you commit to something, follow it through to the best of you ability. Clearly, a tenet I've had some problem with over the last few years, especially when it comes to staying or getting into shape. Next, we comes Self-Control. I always found this one of the easier tenets to understand, and one of the hardest to follow. When you are sparring, or even doing practice without targets, intending to strike towards, but not contact the body of your partner, it teaches you not only where to strike, but to control yourself enough as not to cause harm. For me, this was easy. Sure, sometimes people walked away with an ache, but I have too. Split lips, bruises, one time I had a gash on my leg, but mistakes happen, and you learn from them. Self control in other aspects of my life is a little harder. I went to college. I drank more than I should have, I stayed up late, I got into trouble, I had fun when I should have been studying. I got angry and blew up at people I shouldn't have.

The final tenet is one that always seems to strike me. I'm not sure if it is the way the instructors I've had the greatest pleasure to work with said it with awe or reverence, or if I just imagine the importance in my head. Indomitable Spirit seems to follow this idea that you never give up, you never surrender. I'd like to think I've followed this better than any of the others, but I know it's not true. I'm full of self-defeat, I give up on everything too easily. While I believe I'm going to keep this blog going, I know how often I give up on writing. Writing seems to be the worst. It is what I want to do with my life, I want to be as famous as Tolkien, and three times as successful. I've given up on friendships, relationships, goals, activities, hopes, and dreams.

Tae Kwon Do probably saved my life. When I was in high school, I experimented with self-mutilation, I suffered from manic depression, and minor social anxiety. I dyed my hair so often that I actually met people who didn't know my natural hair color. I was a goth kid, an ska kid, and once just "that blonde chick". I had friends I'd later lose because I was pretending to be someone I wasn't. Sure, I still love strange music, and dark clothing, and suffer from a bad bout of depression from time to time, but it isn't what defines me anymore.

It was at Tae Kwon Do that I became someone I enjoyed being. It was, and still is, one of the few things that really seemed to come naturally to me. Some people are good at baseball, or painting, or writing wonders. For me, it was dance and Tae Kwon Do. I could feel the energy of a form, I could use it to hold myself in place, to not get lost in the thoughts that chased me away from sleep, and into harm. I was a good student, and a passably good instructor at one point. Going to class was the highlight of the day, I felt like I was a star, I had amazing form, I was dedicated. Man, there was nothing better than the praise of my fellow students and instructors. I would like to say I was humble, but I know better. I was more than a little cocky about it. I never outwardly would say anything, or, to my knowledge, smirk smugly, but there was more than a little delight in showing off my amazing skills. It was something I could truly take pride in. I found peace, calmness, in the same room I sat attempting to meditate in now. I loved the smell of burning incense, the feel of the squishy floor, the ebb and flow of energy through my body. Where most teenagers would have pouted and groaned about having to sit still for a couple of minutes and clearing their mind when there were parties to go to, or phone calls to make, my life centered around that calm.

I suffered through insomnia, and I found that through meditating every night before I went to bed, I could fall asleep without a problem. When I hit college, I lost the trick of it. When I tried to meditate, I'd just get more thoughts in than out, or would just not try at all, and suffer through the sleeplessness. When I felt the darkness pressing, meditation of a bright, white room where all my shadows disappeared. In a way, the things I learned in Tae Kwon Do, the tenets, the meditation, the self-confidence, and yes, even the pride, saved my life. It gave me goals, something to work towards, and gave me the means to work towards it. I had a place in the world, a way to find happiness, and success.

Four years later, $80,000 in debt, single, unsuccessful in finding a steady, full time job, and mostly friendless in this horseless town, I find myself sitting in this room again, frustrated at not being able to shut my mind down, to find my center of peace. My mind if full of thoughts at how much of an idiot I'll make out of myself this class, how much pain I'm in and going to be in again after I get home. I'm thinking about my faerie home, I'm thinking about tonight's Halo matches. I'm considering if I want Twizzlers or some sort of cookie for a snack, if it's a good idea to run by one of my jobs to grab my paycheck. I'm thinking about my best friend, what she's doing right now, and if she misses me like I'm missing her. I'm wondering about my friends and if their summers are going well, if they got the jobs they were trying to get. I'm wondering if I'll be able to look myself in the mirror tomorrow, I'm wondering if I'll be able to crawl outta bed. I'm trying not to cry as I look at my life. I'm trying to figure out if I'll have the strength to smile, to wear the mask, to do all that I need to do.

I should be meditating.

Instead, I'm sitting here wondering if Tae Kwon Do can save my life.

I Always Get Back To The Oatmeal.

Have you ever let oatmeal, or a cream of wheat sort of hot cereal cool down in the container you had it in, then you shake it, give it a good, hard wiggle and it has the shape of that container, now sitting, moving not unlike Jello, in the palm of your freshly gloved hand? Where it shivers and shakes, a little cool to the touch, and you know its moist, even through the thin veil of latex or vinyl you've slid over your skin to protect it from the alien-like, once-hot breakfast cereal. You toss it into the garbage can, where it partially splatters against the far side of the can, the remaining mass still bobbing in place, almost cheerful. You hate that stupid little blob, so you pick up the next small round maroon colored bowl, flip it upside down so that the cooled cereal dangles over the vast, filling pit of life and sure destruction that is the garbage can. You wiggle it, give it a few nice, firm shakes, whack the bottom of the bowl with the palm of your free hand, and with a shilik! and the snapping of a few long, wet strings of cold cream of wheat let go and fall, spiraling, laughing through the air, landing on an empty All Bran box and jiggles there, solid, channeling the spirit of the strawberry Jello you had to serve for the second time in four days as it settles into stillness.

This makes a lot more sense with a little bit of background. I've worked for the last six years in an adult retirement and rehabilitation facility. I've run the gambit between baby-puke colored, pureed green beans, unidentified substances long hidden behind removable silver panels, suffered the agony of rapidly melting frosting on a once-frozen cake, and the ever un-enjoyable task of working a major winter holiday. I've seen residents come into the rehab center for a fall and bounce back into independent living in a matter of weeks. I've seen the same type of injury take a toll they can't pay. A woman lives there now, given something around 73 hours to live. That was over three months ago. I've seen people survive on vanilla milkshakes, and a man who looked pretty good yesterday gone by the end of the day. I've seen families visiting, and I've seen, or should I say, I have not seen, the families of other residents only show up to clean out the rooms of the recently passed. I've seen families not even show up to do that.

For three of these long years I've worked, I attended a college eight hours away, nestled snug in the Roanoke Valley. I'd come home at school breaks, and I'd be given hours, and I'd work my ass off, then go back to the place I was rapidly considering my true "home." I made an amazing group of friends (many later blogs, I am sure, will involve them, including a large explanation of our inter-workings). I had a wonderful job, challenging classes, interesting (and occasionally dull) professors, and some pretty damn incredible adventures. I found, and lost loves, I knew fear and sadness during the tragedy at Virginia Tech, I knew intense joy and freedom in the light of the sun through the trees, in the cool, well-tended grass under my feet. I felt magic. Roanoke was my faerie home, my sanctuary. The way the red and gray bricks warmed in the sun, how the snow glinted outside my toasty warm room. I can remember my first party, my last night out, my first impressions, and last words. I remember crying because I never wanted to leave.

That brings me back to the oatmeal. The maroon bowl seemed suddenly symbolic once I went back to work after my graduation. (Six months, I told myself, I'd have a real job back in Roanoke, near where my heart wanted to settle for a couple more years, and yet, over a year later, here I sit). The cereal felt like it was laughing at me. Here I was, pulled away from where I had settled, in the form of one thing, like a bowl, and sent to a doom in the pit of All Bran boxes, and garbage cans. This was the real world? Send me back. It's the sound of it that gets me. The shilik! It's a moist noise, and I just think about a soul, sucked out though the tiniest hole in the body with a super vacuum. Shilik!

Now I have to admit I shamelessly stole the idea for this first entry's title. While I can't remember who wrote it (says the now-graduated, super proud diploma-displaying English major, with a slight blush, voice full of sorrow and shame), there was this poem a visiting writer read to us. I had hated it when I read it. I found it dull, and useless, like most poetry, to be 100% honest with you, I'm very partial to what I like, and little else. But when the author read it to us, it was full of emotion and energy, and about things coming around full circle to me. I remember I gave her my email address, hoping she'd get back to me and share her thoughts (meanwhile, I'd later reveal what I thought was my best poem of the year An Ode To Cheese, which may end up posted here later, because I still think it's pretty damn awesome, even if no one else thinks so, but anyways, I read a poem about cheese in front of her and she even mentioned it, so I felt memorable, at least). The last line of the poem was, and do pardon me if I got this wrong. "But I always get back to that toaster, how you held it like you knew how to love something."

Do I know how to love something? I don't even love myself most of the time. I don't know who I am, or where I am going, so I stick to the round maroon bowl I let myself meld into. I have my heart and soul wrapped around this life I built for myself down in Roanoke, but reality decided to flip the bowl over, wiggle it, give it a few nice, firm shakes, whack the bottom of the bowl with the palm of it's giant cosmic hand, and let me fall into the vast garbage pit I've let my life become. What is this? What did I do in this life or the last ones to let me have this life I hate to lead? Where I get up in the morning, just wanting to go back to my nice, safe, perfectly working maroon bowl, and with my simply glorious sort of luck, end up on the All Bran.

I've tried thinking positive. I have tried writing, reading, laughing, working out, dancing, drinking, sleeping, gaming, drawing, dreaming, screaming, and scheming. I haven't been able to find my way out. I haven't found my true release. I thought that finding my telos, my ultimate life goal, was set in stone. I was wrong, I was so wrong, to the point where I'm hoping when I look over this after I've gotten some sleep, I don't weep like a child at finding Santa doesn't exist (I work two jobs, often back to back with less than 4 hours between sleeps, for up to 20 hours before I get sleep from the time I wake up to the time I get to sleep. Like tonight, it's quarter after 4 in the morning, and I'm half dead sitting in this chair with the overwhelming need for sleep and the restroom). All I know is this:

Over a year later, and I still get back to the oatmeal. Shilik!