here goes

Multitasking too much is not smart and, with food, really not smart

Multitaskers are not as smart as they think, according to Stanford researchers. Something I’ve wondered about for a while is: are people who meditate, who try to focus on one thing or on nothing at all the smartest of all?

I live in California and know that quite a few of my friends meditate. I once asked a colleague to recommend a book on meditation and she pointed me to a book I largely found discouraging in that it urged me to meditate with other people. Stubbornly, I tried to meditate on my own anyway.

I got out my carpet scrap and my kitchen timer and sat on the cement of my patio contemplating lichens growing in the shade for ten minutes every morning for a week or two. It seemed to help me focus, but I did not stick with it. When I have trouble sleeping, I still measure my breathing: 10 counts to inhale, 10 counts to exhale. That helps me relax and sometimes fall asleep.

The book, Meditation by Eknath Easwaran, suggested that to be present with each moment, we should only do one thing at a time. I find this impossible when it comes to eating. Ever since I was a young person, I would read when I eat. Now, I read books, watch TV, or read news on my computer when I eat. Even when I remember not to eat while doing these activities, I cannot break the habit. I still decide to eat while doing these things. Whenever I cannot just eat, it makes me aware of how not smart I am.

I would like to lose a few pounds and, frankly, I should cut back on what I eat and savor every moment of food. I should focus on how it tastes, how it smells, on the pleasure of the flavors and how food turns my hunger to satisfaction. I should do this because if I eat while distracted by other things, I eat too much. Not smart.

If I eat while reading, I barely notice the taste of the food and I feel I am lacking when the food is gone. This is especially bad when I eat a sugary treat while also occupied with watching a humorous TV news show. I'll think "That handful of Milk Duds did not last long. I scarcely tasted them. I will get another handful.” In the time it takes from one commercial break to the next, the box or bag of candy is half gone.

I don't know if meditation would help me not lose my focus when eating. I can try by going to Chozen-ji Zen center in Hawaii in November through my kendo dojo. I heard stories from people who took the trip before that they had to meditate for three hours each day and eat massive quantities of rice. The rice-eating would be difficult for me. Sitting and thinking of nothing for three hours a day for three days doesn't concern me. However, the idea of eating four cups of rice at each sitting worries me a great deal. I don’t care for rice and, sometimes, I have food sensitivities to it. I can just imagine myself with an allergic reaction clearing my throat all afternoon at a meditative retreat. That doesn't sound good.

Between now and the time to decide whether or not I will go meditate in November, I'll try to multitask a little less, especially where food is involved. It's too late this morning, but at lunch for sure.

The day I woke up happy

One morning while I was visiting my childhood home last week, I woke up happy and content. It was just one morning of peace and happiness out of thousands, which made that feeling all the more remarkable.  I was back at my father's home in the Midwest, in the largest bedroom, the one on the east side of the with water stains on the ceiling where water leaked in from holes in the wall of from an open attic window.

I had slept poorly the night before, partly because the wind blew straight from the east into my room.  I could not find the screens for the window, but I took out the winter storm window and left the window wide open to the outdoors. The curtains made so much noise blowing in and out that I got up and blocked their egress with the plank I used to keep the window open.

Whe I woke the next morning, the wind sighed through the spruce tree outside. The light dimpled and changed as blocked the sunlight coming in, then shifted slightly with a pleasing rustle to let more light shine on me. The meadow larks trilled in the old orchard. The curtains fluttered again, and the light changed and I sighed happily and went back to sleep.

Why did I wake up happy that one morning and not all the others?  If I knew that for sure, I'd change my life to have more feelings of peace and happiness when I wake up.  It could have had to do with it being the first day of a 10-day break from work and my normal grind. I think it had more to do with hearing soothing sounds, breathing the humid air, and enjoying the mild quality of light in the Midwest that all worked to trigger deep-seated memories of happiness and comfort from my past.

I wonder how meadowlarks, spruces, wind machines and humidifiers would do in my back yard in California if I tried to recreate that moment each morning...

Paris Hilton and me

This'll teach me to be judgemental. I just today realized that one thing that irks me about Paris Hilton is something that is actually true for me, too.  Arg! 

Today, I met someone named Odette. I had known about her for a few days, though, because we talked on the phone and arranged to meet today at 10 a.m.  As I waited for a doctor to see me, I let my mind wander, like this

Odette?  What kind of name is that? Must be French. France? Paris? Paris Hilton?  What sort of person would name their kid after a city in France? Geesh.  How silly is that? Oh! Wait a minute!  I'm named after a city in France.

That'll teach me!

That's my thought for today.  Finally, I have one short enough to include in my blog in a timely manner.  I've been working on a post about procrastination, but it's going slowly.

(BTW, the other thing that bugs me about Paris is her media overexposure.  She is so heading for negative Q. Will those young celebrities never learn?)

Happy Birthday, N

What can I say? Today's you're birthday. Hang in there. It's not like you really are soooo much older than last year (in which you commemorated one of those milestones birthdays).

Patterns I've missed

Last night, I gave a fellow commissioner a ride home after our monthly meeting (where I was elected once again to serve as chairperson for a year). We rode along and talked and I left him off near his apartment. As he climbed out of my car, I saw several bright red and yellow snack bar wrappers poking out of his pocket. He'd taken them from our meeting. So, I think his interests in the programs we fund may be more than philantropic ones (meaning he probably qualifies for a lot of of the food assistance and affordable housing programs we fund).

Even though we parted around 8:30, the sun was still touching the clouds over the western hills. The deep purple and orange made my heart say, "Ah...." and I remembered an enlightening incident from a number of years ago.

My family took a trip to Arizona and I celebrated the occasion by taking along my large format camera. I set up to capture a promising desert sunset. When I started taking photos, everyone in my party said, "What are you doing! Why are you taking pictures now?"

"Um. It's a pretty sunset," I said.

"Just wait," they said. "It will get better." So, I waited. A few minutes later, the sun lowered enough to catch the bottom of the clouds and the sunset suddenly brightened and the colors became more vivid. I felt annoyed with myself because I have watched plenty of sunsets over the years, but I was never present enough in those sunset moments to notice the pattern of sunset loveliness.

Dozens of moments with feelings like that have accumulated over the years. I collect them in some shoebox in my mind and pull them out from time to time, like the patterns of dining out at a nice place, the patterns of movie-going, the patterns of air patterns. While it is comforting that the world is more predictable than I thought, it is also disconcerting that I can't see these simple, everyday patterns on my own.

The best strategy for me to find more of these organizing principles is to put myself out there and strive where people can see me (and point out things I miss). Like, during triathlon training last year, my hip had issues that I'm now dealing with. I now see the pattern of injury displacement. You injure someplace, which heals, but in compensating for it, you do harm someplace else.

The latest, most exciting, pattern is that I got an invitation to meet President Clinton at a private home in the South Bay hills (granted, it's for some fundraising event). But again, the invitation came because put myself out there in the community. If you're involved, you get invited to become more involved.

Flannel chipping

Today, I am malaprop ma'am. As I spent a few minutes on each channel early this evening, my husband expressed shock that I was wasting my time watching the WB's extra-cruel Superstar USA. I defended myself by saying, "But I'm not! I'm flannel chipping!"

Where do words and fish come from?

I found an interesting little quiz when I looked up the etymology of the word shampoo. When I took the quiz at this link the first time , I only scored 50%. Probably I was right not to go into linguistics.

This link contains an interesting quiz about the species of fish called the coelacanth. I did much better on this quiz for some reason. I got about 80% correct.

There was a nice balance to these recent explorations. The fish species, coelacanth, actually came up during a dinner conversation a few days after I took the quiz. I felt good about knowing something about the topic. The same person who mentioned the fish asked me about the etymology of the word shampoo, which caused me to go look it up. Thus is demonstrated the push and pull of the Internet in perfect balance.

Seeing shadow people

I'm not sure my perceptions are normal, but I have noticed that I see human shapes in shadows all the time. For instance, when I turned left at an intersection today, I thought that a person in a black coat stood in the esplanade mostly shadowed by overpass above. A traffic light mounted on the post in the middle of the esplanade stood only about 6 feet high at most, so we drivers in the left turn lane could see it as we sat in our cars waiting for the left arrow.

Each light has its own hood, so the light fixtures appear huge relative to the rest of the post, and the hoods toghther cast a large shadows on the lights and post below. The post itself and the No U-Turn sign also cast shadows. The impression of all this negative light was of a person wearing a dark trenchcoat and a dark hat hunched under the traffic light. Pedestrians standing on espalnades are a bit creepy, especially at this particular intersection, so as I pulled up to this "person," I shied away a little.

Then I saw that I was jittery only because of a shadow.

Later in the day, I thought how that now that the sun shines again in Northern California, I've been jumpy because of shadows. It reminded me of a striking photo I saw in today's SF Chronicle about how the state of California just surreptitiously purchased part of Sutter Buttes, the "smallest mountain range in the world." The photo had a lighting and shadow situation similar to my traffic pole incident (the lighting was on the other side).

After I remembered a dream conversation I had last night about shadows and light. In my dream, I must have been a photographer out to capture these mystery shadows and someone asked me to describe the process of perceiving light and shadow and capturing these perceptions artistically -- which is impossible to describe even in a dream. Or, maybe it's impossible to remember.

The striking thing about "mountain" photo is that there is no way to gauge the smallness of the mountains by the photo. Anyway, I can't publically access Peace Valley anytime soon, according to the Chronicle.

That's great

I accidentally posted a blank entry... Quick! Add something!

Months behind! Months!

I'm months behind on my correspondence. It is sad. Last week, I sent off three letters. This week, I have made (so far) three phone calls I've been needing to make and I cleaned up my weeks-old stack of mail.

One person on my list of people to write is my friend who is exploring Australia. She sent an update that told us she saw an Ulysess butterfly fluttering around in the wild. When I looked up these butterflies on Google, it was depressingly difficult to find a photo of one that was still living and not fake, framed or mounted. (I can't credit the image because I got it from a grade school teacher's site who also did not credit it.)

Enough unsuccessfully playing with pop-up links.

On with my catch-up-on-correspondence day. I'll write about seeing The Passion of the Christ later.