[This is a “back-post”; it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks. This is “day 6(b)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat. For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]
The buddhist term for the mind that wanders and makes problems for someone dedicated to trying to meditate is the “monkey mind.” I have a monkey mind, but what I’ve decided, this morning, is that I LIKE my monkey mind. It’s very interesting to watch, as I sit here trying to focus on the sensations in my body.
As my mind has cleared itself of the more immediate worries (will my truck start after 11 days in cold? will I get a job in Korea when I go back? will I ever learn Korean well?), I begin to daydream. I have been observing what sorts of things I tend to daydream about, and as I watch closely, I find some things that surprise me a little bit. Here is a catalog of my most common daydreams, in the order in which they most commonly occur:
Most common are my architectural fantasies. This is something I’ve always been aware of — I have wanted to become an architect since I was about 7 years old, but it never worked out. I constantly daydream about buildings. Rearranging existing ones, replacing existing ones with “better” ones, completely new ones. All kinds: commercial structures, houses, apartments and towers and office parks and cathedrals and new vipassana meditation halls. Elaborate, baroque-looking structures and designs, spare and utilitarian designs, revolutionary and avant garde designs and classical designs.
Related to this, I often have what I refer to as “homestead” fantasies. These are where I imagine creating some kind of home for myself. A farm, a remote mountain location, a warehouse loft in a city, etc. I imagine barns and libraries and workshops, tiny single-room cabins and giant palaces. But a key factor is that they’re things I build at least to some extent “by myself.” I suppose this is actually quite understandable, given my background. My mother and her brother, my uncle, both live in self-designed homes, in Australia and Alaska respectively. The house I grew up in, in Arcata, was an evolving space that didn’t retain the same floor plan in the 17 years I spent there, as rooms were added, rearranged, “re-architected” (as a software guy might term it).
Unrelated, and more surprising, is the amount of time I spend daydreaming about food. What’s interesting, is that I’m not thinking about EATING it, but rather, making it. Cooking exotic or unusual or interesting dishes. Fantasizing about becoming a chef or running some hole-in-the-wall restaurant. This is so prevalent that I wonder if maybe I should consider a career in cooking. Maybe next career? Who knows. At the least, I should listen to this inner daydreamer and dedicate more energies to being creative in the kitchen, perhaps.
Not unexpectedly, I’m constantly working through settings, descriptive passages, characterizations and plots of novels-in-progress. I don’t really get much actual writing done on these novels, but I certainly spend a lot of time writing them. I also do some mental “writing” on my perennial thesis (on Cervantes’ Persiles), and on some putative autobiography or memoir of my experiences and travels.
I like to work through visual arts in my mind’s eye, too. This is related to the architecture daydreams, and the two will often blur into one another. I imagine decorated surfaces, sculptures, and classically executed drawings and oil paintings (although the style is most often abstract or occasionally surrealist).
Most surprising and unexpected are the romantic fantasies. I mean… it’s not unexpected that I have romantic fantasies. These are nearly universal, to anyone, I think. Certainly, I’ve always had them. What’s different from in previous times in my life is the weird way that these daydreams are “domestic”: never before have I had frequent fantasies of the “settle down and have kids” variety. I find myself imagining having children. This is disorienting and alarming, because it’s so out of character, at least to compare to past selves. It’s also a bit depressing… because it’s only now, when I’m really “too old” to start a family, that I suddenly find myself yearning for one. Perhaps I’m enjoying teaching so much, because it serves as a kind of surrogate for these have-a-family fantasies?
So, my monkey mind is conjuring both familiar and unexpected daydreams. But what I’ve decided, over these last several days, is that regardless, it’s very interesting to watch. I really actually enjoy it. I don’t WANT to turn it off. I don’t feel any need to turn it off. Let it roam and hop and jump around, and I’ll watch it happily for hours on end. It’s not like anxiety or depression at all. It’s fascinating.
Monkeys rock! I {heart} my monkey mind.
