Mindfulness as Technology

02/02/2015 by J. Nelson

Courtesy of a Sunday op-ed, “Mindfulness as Technology” might stick with me for a least a week!

Ok, so I still like to read newspapers. There’s just something cathartic about being able to crumple up the stupidity I come across, and it takes a lot less time than entering a log-in to leave an angry comment. One is arguably empowering, the other simply self-aggrandizing. Besides, the Internet is great ‘n all, but compared to 130 years of industrial age headline-induced anger, the web is still preoccupied with its own genitalia.

For me, reading the paper is an exercise in delayed gratification. I first physically disassemble and reorder its parts from responsible to frivolous, from world affairs to the national scene, and from what’s happening around the state to local news. I save the culture, arts, and entertainment bits for last. It’s fairly meditative, so it fit to come across Teresa Jordan’s op-ed, “Seizing a moment for mindfulness.” (Don’t ask me why titles are changed for online versions, but it might be a good thing you can’t crumple a laptop. Had I seen the online one first I would have skipped the piece).

Teresa Jordan is the author of The Year of Living Virtuously (Weekends Off), which is essentially about surviving distraction and obliviousness. Self-help books are lame – Where Excuses Go to Die once had a chapter called “Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Chuy” that mocked the ones you find in prison – but these days so many are being written by people who hate ’em too that at least their titles reflect the removal of an important stick, if you get my drift. That makes it much easier to fight the urge to laugh at the sight of one. Plus I’m getting older, so my decades-long diet of nonfiction treachery, high weirdness, and absurdity is beginning to require balance. Read more

Christmas Cards My Ass

12/02/2014 by J. Nelson

There are many excuses for not sending holiday cards. Here’re mine:

Christmas cards, holiday cards, greeting cards – whatever people wanna call ’em, I don’t care.

It’s been many years since I purchased a greeting card, because the greeting card industry has become insulting. It pushes homogenized sentiments and condescending condolences that are marketed as if buyers were monkeys. While card aisles and displays are perfectly convenient and, yes, could come in handy someday, I must say I did better in a prison cell with magazine collages, glue sticks, and agitated screamers to my left ‘n right.

Yes sir or ma’am: I heavily promoted my “John has turned over a new leaf” brand by mailing handmade greeting cards to friends and family who were on the fence about me. For one, I was determined to prove that my imagination would never be replaced by swastika tattoos and institutionalized hatred. Watching the arrival and transformation of so many gullible young men into seething and explosive monsters positively inspired me to trade even my meals for whatever I needed to stay creative, expressive, and weird.

And there were just certain things I couldn’t re-embrace upon returning to the civilian world. First among them, coincidentally, was store-bought greeting cards. Why? Because I was fresh out of the joint one day and nudged toward a cousin’s birthday party the next. I looked at the clock, gathered the things I’d need (accessing real scissors was a plus), and never looked back.

All these years and hundreds of greeting cards later, the only downside has been visiting my parents during the holidays to find my own card among their others, displayed writing-side out (as if the interior sentiment were the thing!). Apparently my mom is uncomfortable with the idea of guests commenting on the one that’s “different.” My cards are as professionally made as the Thomas Kinkades, yet the images I choose are antidotal to forced-marching-to-the-glowing-Christmas-cottage.

But never mind all that self-congratulatory poo, here are my excuses for not lifting a finger this year: Read more

IN DEFENSE OF ISIS

09/24/2014 by J. Nelson

No, Isis the cat, not the beheading berzerkers in Vietcong jammies!

Natalie, a friend of mine, has a cat named Isis. Now, after a comment a neighbor lady made, she wants to change it, and that causes my brain to reach Critical Processing Failure. So in defense of Isis, the cat, I’m now determined to convince my friend to shave an Islamic crescent moon into the animal’s fur.

Apparently the neighbor said something about the cat confusing kids, who are just learning about the militants. At any rate, that’s about as far as Natalie got before my hands and arms took on a life of their own, flailing like flies were trying to get into my mouth and land on my eyeballs.

“Wait, wait, wait…she said WHAT!?”

What low-watt adults are these, inflicting the media’s 24-hour terrorist hostility feed onto children? Show me kids who are so ruinously strobed by ISIS media hype that they’d confuse a house cat with the Islamic bogeyman and I’ll show you parents who need an ass-kicking in a parking lot.

I had to sit down and be convinced not to confront the woman, demand she never speak to Natalie again, and wish mortuary cannibalism upon her.

But it was Nat’s failure to laugh that gave me pause. She’d actually taken the woman somewhat seriously, I could tell, which re-prioritized the mission at hand. I realized I needed to listen, to offer Natalie counsel. Read more