NaNoExerpt: The Sound of Silence
The Sound of Silence
Like most normal people, Nora paid monthly fees to a gym but only visited it once or twice every few months, despite it being across the street from her apartment complex. She had to look at it every time she pulled her car out of the parking lot and every time, she would feel a twinge of guilt about how she really should be exercising; sometimes she would make false promises of going the next day. Every now and then, she would get a sudden attack of guilt for not exercising while or when she was suddenly desperate to hurry the weight loss along.
But the gym occasionally had self-improvement classes on random week nights and occasionally Nora found one she thought she should try for some reason or another. Every once in a while she’d actually get around to signing up for one.
Since aromatherapy wasn’t working out quite like she wanted, despite the $100 or so she’d spent on the supplies and the books, she was trying to find other alternative methods to help her migraines. She’d read somewhere that meditation could be stress-relieving enough that it could ease the pain in migraine sufferers. It sounded like just the thing for Nora.
She showed up on the appointed day with a small cushion as they’d sent a notice instructing her to bring one. They hadn’t indicated what they considered small or what it would be used for so she was already a little stressed about the whole pillow thing when she arrived. To add to her anxiety, the classroom was dim and there was a half-ring of chairs with strangers sitting in them. Worse, there was no one her age. Everyone appeared to be thirty to forty years older than the petite red-head. She appeared to have wandered into a senior citizens’ meat market disguised as education.
Resisting the urge to go home immediately, she forced herself to walk into the room. She managed to find a chair that had no one sitting on either side of it. That status would change as the time for the class got closer. Soon there were two people – two unknown people — invading her space. Nora’s space seemed to be wider than most people’s space. At least, it seemed like someone was always invading her space and she was more and more aware of it as time went on. Nora tightly clutched the pillow on her lap, trying to maintain a certain amount of distance between the two people who didn’t seem to mind accidentally bumping or touching.
Before long the instructor had arrived and the door to escape was closed. The instructor handed out copies of a print-out detailing some different types of meditation – breath and navel meditation, central channel meditation, microcosmic meditation and so on and so on. There was also an explanation about its religious connotations and how the class would not get into that subject but that the methods that evolved from the religious connection would be taught. Nora was fascinated by the religious connotation and was therefore disappointed by this.
“So, what I want everyone to do is sit cross-legged on the cushion you brought in front of your chair…or wherever you can find space,” the anorexic-looking older woman who was teaching the class instructed.
Everyone creaked and groaned as they shifted from their chairs to the semi-awkward sitting position the woman had described. A few minutes were taken up by people trying to find enough space to sit cross-legged without bumping knees. Actually, Nora was a little worried that a number of people wouldn’t be able to get up again. Really some of them looked too frail to have gotten into the building on their own. Thank goodness the class had been on the first floor of the building!
“Now what we’re going to do is press our tongues to our palates, close our mouths – don’t clench your teeth – and close your eyes,” the grey-haired woman continued.
Close your eyes! Nora could feel that tingling sensation in that area of her chest above her heart but slightly below her throat. Her throat reflexively tightened a little. Closing her eyes meant she wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on the strangers in the room and she wouldn’t be able to check to see if she was doing this meditation thing right by watching the others. This was a bad thing.
“Now, just breathe naturally, through your nose. Draw the breath deep down into your abdomen, then exhale long and slow.”
Nora had taken about a year of Tae Kwon Do. They’d done some sort of chi meditation-type exercise at the beginning but she hadn’t been very good at it. She was never really sure what she was supposed to be feeling or doing…and she certainly hadn’t ever kept her eyes closed.
As she inhaled slowly, trying to draw it into her abdomen, which was illogical because the air really could only go as far as her lungs technically, she tried to focus on the whole just breathing part. She could feel the anxiety building in her chest. She slowly let the breath seep out of her nose, she wasn’t sure that she’d done it slow enough. It seemed that other people were just starting to exhale their breaths. Damn.
“Focus on the air flowing in…and out of your nostrils. Follow the breath out as far as you can. Feel it traveling into the room. Focus on your navel rising and falling.”
Well, which was it? Nora was a multitasker when it came to computers but she just couldn’t focus on both her navel and her nostrils at the same time. They were just too far apart from each other and she still didn’t seem to be breathing at the same slow pace as everyone else. How could people keep inhaling that long? How big were these people’s lungs? They seemed to have twice the air capacity as she did. Quite frankly, she was starting to feel like there just wasn’t enough air in her space or in the room or even in the building for all of these slow-inhaling people.
“Keep your posture straight, but relaxed. Let your mind just float in the nothingness. Don’t let it wander off and think about work or your kids or something that happened earlier in the day. Just float in the nothingness. Focus on the nothingness.”
Well, crap. Now she was thinking about work, about the outsourcing, about that stupid thing that Bob had done earlier. Idiot. He really was the bane of her existence. He seemed to live to frustrate her. No, she had to focus on the nothingness. What exactly was the nothingness? What did it look like in the mind? Was it all black or was that still something? How did one empty one’s mind?
The instructor pressed the button on a cassette recorder and instrumental music began to fill the room. It had a kind of cosmic feel but Nora didn’t recognize it. It seemed more synthesized than she cared for. “Now we’re just going to sit here and continue to float in the nothingness for about ten minutes or so. Just free your mind and let go of the negativity of the day and let the nothingness wash over you.”
Ten minutes. Ten minutes was an excruciatingly long time. Nora recalled her younger days when the minister or Sunday school teacher would instruct everyone to bow their heads for a moment of prayer. That moment seemed to drag on indefinitely. Nora didn’t think she was a bad Christian but she seemed to be able to communicate to God quite quickly – more quickly than everyone else. Or maybe she just felt like she didn’t need to tell him in flowery detail every little thing that had happened since the previous Sunday. She figured that since he was God, when she asked for forgiveness of her sins, he knew what they were and probably he remembered better than her. And so, she would sit there in the deafening silence of the Church and wonder what other people were thinking and then feel guilty that she wasn’t still praying. Maybe she needed to spend more time thanking God for the flowers and the trees and Summer and the gasoline in her car and the grilled cheese she was going to have for lunch.
Even with the cosmic meditation soundtrack, Nora felt that this silence was not just painful long but also deafening. The pounding in her chest seemed to be getting louder and more painful as each second crept by. She couldn’t help it. She opened her eyes enough to peak about the room at everyone sitting around on their throw pillows and breathing slowly. What were they thinking? How could they be that relaxed?
Nora tried to refocus on the nothingness but random thoughts kept popping into her mind. Did she want chicken and rice or a vegetarian burger for dinner? Maybe a baked potato with chili and melted cheese? Did she try adding an “IF” statement to that one stubborn line of code in that program? Maybe a flag was needed? Katherine really shouldn’t have had to ask for her help with that one program; how many years had Katherine been there? Oh, and that meeting that Bob had called to discuss the status of everyone’s projects – Michael had looked fairly annoyed since the responsibility of the Integration Team was his now and Bob had been instructed to let go of it. That had been pretty funny.
No! Focus on the nothing. Stay focused on the nothing. Do not think about work or Bob or dinner.
Those ten minutes felt like ten hours and Nora felt completely frazzled by the end of them. The rest of the thirty minute class went pretty much the same way and by the end Nora was in a full blown anxiety attack and could not wait to get out of that door and hurry back to the safety of her own air-conditioned home complete with purring kitties.
Nora never could bring herself back for the rest of the classes.
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on November 7, 2005 at 2:05 pm
Tamara said:
This is awesome! Funny and poignant. I could really see the scene in my mind’s eye.
I finally got back to writing again yesterday, and I’m at about 5065 words. I just had a brainstorm for something that will happen, so that’s good. I hope to get to 10K by tomorrow before I go to bed.