Going Blind In The Eyeball Area

Morning meditation:

Today was a big day. Today was the first time I didn't open my eyes sometime during the hour, thinking "surely I set the timer for 3 hours by accident," look at the clock and exclaim inwardly "another half an hour! Holy crap!...I mean...surrendering my impatience, surrendering surrendering surrendering...Okay, all patient now...now how much longer do I have to sit here for Chrissake? Oh yea, half an hour...crap...I mean..."

Well not today. Today I kept my eyes closed the whole time, all thanks to my formidable powers of patience...or was it the duct tape blindfold...holy crap that hurts to take off!

Evening meditation:

For the last three days, sometime between 9:30PM and 12:30AM, I cry like a baby for roughly 30 minutes. No, I'm not mourning the loss of my innocence or making a statement against manly men who don't cry. It's all much more simple: this is Gene's latest instrument of torture, designed to get us to enlightenment ASAP.

The idea is to practice mindfulness (yes, again), and to do it with the view of helping out the lucid dreaming experiment. Apparently mindfulness and lucid dreaming go hand in hand. The latest book in Gene's endless queue suggests picking a simple object (mine is hand-drawn letter A), and staring at it for long periods of time, displacing all thoughts from one's mind - doing nothing but observing that object. The book gives a number of helpful suggestions including: "don't blink." This one, this family has taken seriously. Evening meditation is now a sobfest. Oof, now let me go dump my prune-like eyeballs in some warm water.

Guests

My cousin and grandma from Baltimore dropped by yesterday on short notice. My cousin is a business guru with grandma's thuggish good looks. We skipped the usual midnight movie showing, and talked in bed till 3 AM. He told me some wild stories about taxi drivers and hookers, and I reciprocated with my own wild tales of sitting on the couch in our lounge. He was so impressed, he passed right out, so I went to sleep as well. In the morning he was gone, but he'll be back for more stories. They always come back.

I've been breezing through The Time Traveler's Wife - an extremely easy and entertaining read. It is drawing near the end, and my magic 8-ball is growing increasingly pessimistic. The level of drama, nostalgia, sentimentality, and inevitability has gotten so high that my tear glands are begging for an interlude. I've been drinking a lot of Gatorade to replenish my fluids. The only thing that cheers me up is thinking about how hard Chun'll be crying when she's reading it. Other people's tears always provide for quality entertainment, and Chun also has excellent delivery. (Don't worry Chun, the fall of my reputation as a dry-eyed stoic will protect yours.)

Watched a sappy Russian movie from the 80's today, a close relative of my worst enemy - Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. Watch it (the French one) if you're ever feeling more than usually sadomasochistic. The Russian movie was entertaining in comparison, despite being a colossal bore.

Michelle has volunteered me for a set of pushups with dad. I miss my couch.