Slacker Sitter

"I am not a well woman." - Vivi Walker in "Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood."

Day 287. I'm with Vivi. I am NOT a well woman. I can't tell exactly what's wrong, but, to quote another wise character in my life (Anna, who is larger than life, and DEFINITELY not fictitious): "This ain't it."

I regularly experience a mild-to-moderate decline when the days get shorter, but I have never previously dropped into the sea of despair quite so abruptly when we turn the clocks back as I have this year. To me, even when we gussy it up with an extra hour's daylight, morning is, hideously and unalterably, still morning. And evening, that prelude to glorious night, gets gypped out of a precious hour of its ambrosial splendor. It's enough to make a person drag lane markers into the sea of despair and use it for lap swims.

I vaguely recall a blog posted waaaaay back in the early weeks of this malady titled "Regression Confession." If memory serves, I humbly revealed prematurely checking the timer while sitting. At the time, it genuinely felt like a major infraction of whatever version of Zen Law I had initially internalized. And then there is the here-and-now of over 200 days later. Last night, with an audible sigh of frustration and boredom, I scooped up my phone and looked at the timer during the interminable final minutes of zazen. Accusingly, disgustedly, the timer glared back at me: 15 seconds to go. I irreverently dumped the phone on the floor, sloppily slapped my mudra back together, and gloomily sat for another 15 seconds. I am aghast. Who was that slacker on the cushion?

Zen is, undeniably, irrevocably, patently, incontrovertibly not for the wimpy. More accurately, Zen is not for the wimpy who mistakenly experience their wimpiness as Reality rather than temporary delusion. It is tempting to twist off into multilayered hypothesis formulation regarding the etiology of my malaise. I'm pretty sure the primary cause is pain. I hurt all over. I have yet to recover from the two Womble crashes that brindled my flesh with hematomas. Pain causes stiffness which restricts movement which precipitates increased pain. Lather, rinse, repeat. Swirl with the emotional fallout of gloom, fatigue, and impatience. Viola! Cushion slacking. A Zen practice gone stale, monotonous, tedious, and laborious. Which makes for some downright heinous blogs.

Contrary to what a consensus of Zen masters might recommend as anecdote, I coped via the Great American Way. I turned on the TV. Watched Gwyneth Paltrow sashaying across the set of Glee. Her wanton felicity rendered me engulfed by fantasized versions of the American Coping Tripartite: Ingesting copious amounts of simple carbohydrate; Divesting myself of funds through rampant and conspicuous consumption of purchasable goods; Depicting a new variety of "whiner" as my status on FaceBook.

I refrained from all three. The house is devoid of sacchariferous treats; I have no funds; I have no FaceBook page. I am a lousy American. What DO I have as a coping mechanism? Oh yeah. A cushion and a zazen practice. A stale, monotonous, tedious, laborious zazen practice. Yippy. I'm headed there now. Feeling better already. And yes, I typed the last sentence with an audible sigh of frustration and boredom.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc