Several years ago I attended a six- week course on Mindfulness. I was a bad student, wanting ‘results’ and wanting them fast, there-bye negating the whole process. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for and, at the end of the sessions, I gave up and, beyond occasionally reminding “The Writer”and myself to slow down and notice what we’re eating, never thought about it again. But I am thinking about it in Lockdown. Two of the exercises in particular stay in my mind. The first was learning to clean one’s teeth mindfully: watching the toothpaste snake onto the brush, tasting it on the softness of one’s tongue, feeling the bristles of the brush on the gums, noticing the rhythms of brushing. (The point is not to think about other things as you mindlessly carry out a a dull and regular task but to stay in the moment, experiencing fully what is happening NOW, rather than thinking about what was or what is to come). The other most vivid exercise was to take a raisin, look at it carefully, turning it in your fingers, noticing its varying shades of brown, its wrinkles, its uneven shape and texture, then, having taken the time to appreciate every detail of its appearance, to put it in one’s mouth, roll it around the tongue, feel its declivities, notice its resistance when squeezed. Next, to chew it, savouring its sticky juice then, finally, swallow, concentrating as it leaves the mouth and relishing the sweetness left behind.
Now, in Lockdown, when the frantic hurry in which we city dwellers live has been rendered pointless in an instant, I feel myself growing more mindful of many things, especially the natural world, of which we can see only the plants that grow on our terrace and a few trees on neighbouring rooftops. Suddenly, I’m beginning no longer just to look at flowers, for example, but to see them. And the process is different. (I once volunteered to take LSD for an experiment carried out by the Psychology Department at my university, and there are similarities.). Maybe, it’s to do with not only seeing the whole but spending long enough in the moment to appreciate the parts that go to make up that whole. Below is a pictorial attempt at explaining how it feels to me.
And here’s a stone on the terrace I have walked past, heedlessly, countless times but now, as I take the time to look at it, it’s extraordinary striations seem brilliant and arresting.
Even last night’s meal, the look of which I would not normally have paid any further attention to after arranging it on the plate, so busy was I rushing on to the next task, struck me as a thing of beauty, worth appreciating for longer.
If all this sounds narcissistic and fanciful, forgive me but I’m writing about it wondering whether it’s happening because one’s sensory input is much reduced at the moment or because the time available in which to speculate and observe is more plentiful. Is it happening to other people locked down indoors in cities? Those isolating in the countryside have a broader landscape to view and are not so constrained to look at the same few things over and over. Of course, a visual artist would probably have experienced all this as a matter of course but I am not an artist. I am word – and task- orientated and, as it turns out, grateful for this hiatus in which the tasks are fewer and less urgent and there is time to spare. I’d like to think that, when this is all over and the available sensory experiences are once more multiplied a thousandfold, it might be possible not to return to hurtling though life thoughtlessly but to stay more mindful more often. Perhaps even do part two of the course.
Locked down in London 