Rumination on Meditation

When I think of comfort, warmth, I sometimes flash back to images from childhood. Images of reading comic books under the yellow blanket up top my captain’s bed in the summer. The late evening sun shining through the curtains giving the room a warm look of permanent twilight.

Images of mornings before school, sitting on the clothes hamper in the closet, the louvered metal doors shut, shards of dawn light creeping between the slats and the sound of the shower running like a gentle rainstorm through the wall.

Then even farther back than that, sitting and playing inside a “Jolly Green Giant” plastic playhouse which was nothing more than a plastic sheet screened with “green leaves” and an image of the Green Giant’s sidekick, The Sprout. The plastic sheet fit perfectly over the old, square card table, you know the one! It had the folding legs, and had been around as far back as you can remember, which wasn’t very long, because you were only six.

I would lay inside, imagining it to be a space ship, or a submarine, or a castle, or moon base, or sometimes just colouring, or playing with my Hot Wheels®, and Matchbox, and Corgi vehicles. Sometimes even just shoving it against the wall under the open window when a rainstorm came and listening, eyes closed.

Being surrounded with semi darkness, and filtered light, and occasionally the sound of water, these are the things that make me glow inside, that create in me a special warmth which to this day I’ve not felt since.

The only time I’ve ever come close to this in my adult life has been by shutting myself in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub and turning off the lights. This can sometimes afford me two or three minutes before noise from the outside world intrudes on my meditation in the form of a phone call (I really should just get rid of that fucking thing), the sound of the TV or a buzz at the door.

All this brings me to the conclusion that the kind of peace and quiet I seek can only be found in one place, and at one time: In Utero.

Nobody asks to be born into this world, but at the end, nobody wants to die either. Why do you think babies are born angry and screaming? (Like big, wrinkly raisins with a voice box.) Because to be torn from that place, that perfect place of comfort, warmth, and joy is a traumatic thing indeed. I’m sure most of us, had we the muscle strength, would crawl back in and stay there forever.

The moment we are born we begin dying. The clock starts counting down inexorably, perhaps another reason why newborns scream so much. This atavistic knowledge that time is a predator that now has them in its dark sights.