Mosaic

The nurse tells me to put both feet flat on the ground and asks if I'm feeling a bit nervous. I nod. She says, that's probably it then. The doctor tells me to monitor it at home; hypertension is the silent killer. At CVS I get distracted by a $10 coupon and buy soap that smells like my multi-purpose cleaner. At the register, it becomes clear I can't use the coupon unless I become a CVS member. I leave paying full price and without a blood pressure cuff. The internet tells me meditation helps. So I redownload an app, close my eyes, and put both feet flat on the ground. The voice tells me to pay attention to my breath. In. Out. In. Out.  

Near the end of How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell says, "I find that I'm looking at my phone less these days. I stopped looking at my phone because I was looking at something else, something so absorbing that I couldn't turn away. That's the other thing that happens when you fall in love. Friends complain that you're not present or that you have your head in the clouds; companies dealing in the attention economy might say the same thing about me, with my head lost in the trees, the birds, even the weeds growing in the sidewalk." 

Attention is a distilled form of love. Equally precious. Equally mercurial. 

I've been noting, meticulously, what I eat each day, in a small spiral notebook from the same CVS that wouldn’t take my coupon. Sometimes I fall down a rabbit hole and watch video after video of people eating things I used to love that would now make me sick. Then I go and eat my food very very slowly, trying to ferret out each ingredient. Teaching my tongue to savor even the olive oil my food has been cooked in. 

In Why Fish Don't Exist, Lulu Miller details the habits of David Starr Jordan after his older brother dies. "After Rufus's death, David's journals explode with color. Meticulously rendered sketches of wildflowers and ferns and ivies and brambles and any scraps of nature, it seemed, he could tear away from the world. The drawings are not artful; they are labored, covered in pencil smudges, ink stains, eraser marks, and little tears from overly vigorous coloring in." All the energy of sadness focused on the dutiful work of capturing what lives.  

I went walking in the snow today. At one point I stopped to look at the frozen water covering a drain pipe, and a piece of ice smacked into my back. While writing about this in my journal, I wondered if paying attention to my life is the same as loving it. I feel, often, upon changes in my circumstances, that I am lucky. When handed an unpleasant situation, it seems my hands are full. There is so much pleasantness to hold. 

Before they put me to sleep, the surgeon asks if I've been eating gluten. No, the doctor said I was allergic. Then the test might come back negative, the surgeon tells me. It seems I'm paying for a fruitless endeavor, but it's too late now; I'm already wearing the gown. They find nothing. My insides are clean and pink. As the delight of having an answer gives way to the grief of loss, nothing feels more like something. To be alive means there is so much to mourn. So much to delight in. So much to love, and then lose, and then love again anew through the loss.

If I can keep me attention toward what I can have, what I can't have loses it's power. It's all right in front of me. In. Out. In. Out.