A Shiver Runs Down My Spine

It is Winter. The water outside slows to a crawl and the schoolground reigns empty. With the threat of COVID-19 hanging in the air, an eerie, liminal christmas season descends. Throughout 2020 we’ve heard hundreds of stories of outreach, community, and love blossoming in the face of physical separation, but I've yet to see that same level of excitement dedicated to embracing this newfound quietness. In the spirit of this, I issued a challenge to myself: Sit at a bench with a book and see how long you last. As I found a spot in my favorite park, I opened my book and began to read. It was at the thirty minute mark when I began to crack, my fingers twitching.

What was the world doing without me? What had I missed?

I instinctively reached for my pocket, only to remember that I had left my phone at home.

Damn.

Had someone texted me? Am I missing a video premiere? I forced my eyes to return to the book, only to find the words melding together. The longer I stared at the page, the more my eyes sagged and the more the words lost meaning. A little irrational voice in my head told me that the world was leaving me behind, and a sense of numbness overcame me.

In an effort to keep with the challenge, I closed it, put it aside, and looked around for something, anything to pique my interest and to keep me from going brain dead. I saw a bunch of buildings and a river. In essence, nothing. Nothing to distract me.

Damnit.

I refused to lose this early in, there must be something worth looking at.

I looked closer.

The river in front of me was brimming with crap and sludge. A lone fisherman's boat sits on it. On the other side of the river, more generic building shapes . Past that, a forest preceded by a field. Nothing. As I was about to look away a speckling of lights reflected in the distance, catching my eye.

I squinted, I strained, and an image formed; Five hundred miles away a girl was walking her dinky, glinting old Jett bike on a dirt path, her notebooks balancing crooked in it’s basket. Palm leaves muscled down with dew and rainwater dipped down from nearby, shading her from the sun, dripping droplets on her back. Her bike wore the crackled texture of fresh, spotted mud stains across its body like a badge, and it’s wheels screeched uncomfortably with every rotation. The gear sounded broken. A bouncing reflection told me her glasses were cracked, old and dusty, but fit her face comfortably, the smell of cá cơm kho tiêu and sweat riding the breeze. In her left hand resided a well worn hand print. The mold hidden on her hand wasn’t hers, much bigger, more foreign, yet slotted between her fingers and rested in her palm as an apparition, like a missing half, missing digits in a number set. It was something that should’ve been there. As she clenches her fist, her face contorts, but I can’t see it just yet. I close my eyes. A smile had ruptured across her face, and through the wisps of wind on my cheek I hear her whisper:

“Alright, i’ll play along.”

She looks up at the sky, and she turns to me.

I wave.

She doesn’t wave back, and disappears into the forest.

A squawk from the river.

The rusted boat rocks uncertainty among the scent of sea breeze, the taste of mint ice cream on the fishermans tongue as he lies in his hammock half asleep. The metal bars comfortably dig into our skin. As the rumbles of the nearby road continue, the boat nestles relaxed into its cradle, the glaze of the sweet afternoon sun lightly tapping it’s surface.

As my eyes unfocused, I felt more appear around me. A flash of red becoming a school of rare fish at the riverbank, the smell of flowers morphing into children sowing seeds in empty buildings; My interest in them a microcosm to the millions of glinting things in my peripheral vision. The nothing before becoming everything now. My heart grew quiet, and I took a deep breath.

2 hours had passed. In actively engaging with my imagination and exploring each feeling I felt, I grew calmer, patient, and thoughtful. Who I was did not matter. What mattered were the simple feelings present in the air, the little joy of a passing butterfly, the grass tickling my ankles; the moment of now. I had inadvertently created my own meditative practice that used what spiritual teacher Eckhard Tolle calls in his book “The Power of Now”, well, the power of now. Not to act like I was emotionally enlightened, but it pushed me in the right direction. Boredom is a large component of it, and while it was grueling, it was a key part as to why it worked. Boredom pushed me to confront my racing mind, and to work around it. Everything comes with practice, and boredom is a commodity we rarely make use of.

It Is Winter. Runny noses sniffle often and sidewalks bustle silently. In the backstreets of Phu My Hung I remove my earbuds and take a look around me. I stare into the ancient gutters, the smell of old graffiti, the feeling of an old man sitting alone. I try to empty my mind and understand every speck of stimulus imprinted onto my skin. Like a speck of water encompassed in the stream of reality. Empty tape sinking in an ocean of ink. Like an inverted pair of underwear, the universe wears me. In a world where stimulation is abundant and changing every nanosecond, taking a step back and counting each thought and feeling has brought me satisfaction like no other, our inspired imaginations an untapped well of hidden potential. While the analogy speaks for itself, a question should be asked alongside it: Among the hundreds of self-help books lining our shelves, of business tips and relationship advice, how many are dedicated to the idea of solitude and boredom ?

In lieu of the questions lackluster answer, I challenge you to do what I had done. Find time to be bored, to imagine and manipulate your environment like putty. Understand, then give meaning to the shiver running down your spine.