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Abstract

ow would things sound if I stopped thinking?</li></ul><h2 id="9fa8">Somatic Field</h2><ul><li>Which part of my body is the least comfortable?</li><li>Which parts of my body are hardest to detect?</li><li>What happens when I concentrate on two body parts at once?</li><li>Do any bad emotions arise during the body scan?</li><li>How would my body change if I stopped thinking about it?</li></ul><h2 id="778a">Taste Field</h2><ul><li>Does the taste change as I roll it around my tongue?</li><li>How does the intensity compare with other things I have tasted?</li><li>How would it taste if I had never smelled it?</li><li>Does my feeling about the taste change between first contact and swallow?</li><li>How would it taste if I were asleep right now?</li></ul><h2 id="a87c">Olfactory Field</h2><ul><li>Would I recognize the smell if I had not seen it?</li><li>What adjectives are suitable? (Smooth? Bold? Sweet? Floral?)</li><li>How close must it come to me before my nose can detect it?</li><li>Does it improve my mood or worsen it?</li><li>What memories does it bring to mind?</li></ul><h2 id="5631">Cognitive Field</h2><ul><li>If my thoughts were rabbits in a yard, how crowded would the yard be?</li><li>If my attention was a dog, which rabbits would it chase?</li><li>How much of my focus three seconds ago was on the past?</li><li>How does a little circle make me feel?</li><li>What would I be dreaming now if I were not awake?</

Options

li></ul><h2 id="9690">Emotional Field</h2><ul><li>How easy or hard is it to turn each feeling on and off?</li><li>What changes will happen when I start to pray?</li><li>If I were the prow of a ship would my sea be bright under the sun?</li><li>Who have I shared this suffering with?</li><li>How deeply do I love you?</li></ul><figure id="ef74"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*31vXTbzWPAdDxN72iuu31w.jpeg"><figcaption>Photo by Author | Dancing with the Goddess</figcaption></figure><h2 id="1f17">Questions After the Scans are All Finished</h2><ul><li>Did I close my eyes for most of the scans?</li><li>In what ways are mental fields like maps?</li><li>If I were only allowed to keep one field, which one would I choose?</li></ul><h1 id="010c">Note</h1><p id="4022">To the best of my recollection, all the questions are in my own words. If I copied anybody from unconscious memory it was probably my first remote meditation teacher, <a href="https://www.thegreatcourses.com/professors/mark-w-muesse/">Mark Muesse</a>, a Therevada practitioner from Texas.</p><h1 id="d3c3">About the Author</h1><p id="f104">Tom spends his workdays asking people in a big store if they would like any information about heating and cooling. He often wears an Indiana Jones hat. A grapevine in his front yard convinced him to let her live and to even provide her with a little support. That’s all. :)</p></article></body>

Report on the Fourth

When we have a get-together I always report on the event. Sometimes it takes a while to get the post on Medium because, well, you know, bail-bondsmen can be dicks. Generally I try to have a “lesson’s learned” meeting within a couple of days. Now what follows is MY subjective interpretation of events. If you were there then you might have… experienced… things differently. So if I say that Devon Henry tied the lobster boat to the dock (you’re supposed to leave it on the mooring and row back into shore) and without diesel fuel you know that’s true, unless, of course, she shows up in the comments and sets the record straight¹.

The Preparations

The art department stayed up all night to make the three piñatas. I said the piñatas had to be done by 9:00 AM. Of course they weren’t ready at 9:00, but that didn’t matter because I didn’t really need them until noon. They were done at 4:00 PM. Radical Free Ellie, the head of the Art Department, delivered them herself. I have to admit they were all really beautiful. The first one, the Piñata of Life, was a giant egg made out of multi-colored wool yarn that had been felted.

“That looks kind of soft, Ellie” I said.

“Yea, well, it’s a soft sculpture,” she said.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the words “soft” and “piñata” don’t really mix that well because I know that she lives to destroy my mansplaining dichotomies.

I thanked her profusely and then got to stuffing the piñatas. I told Fat Joe to go get ice. He came back two hours later and told me he needed help. “With what?” I asked.

“With the ice,” he said.

We went down to his car. He has a powder blue Chevy Malibu wagon that until today was stuffed chock-o-block full of old newspapers. Inside he had four coolers full of ice. “How much ice did you get?” I asked.

“250 pounds,” he said.

Finally, A flunky who understands ice!

He also had a cooler full of uncooked sausage.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

“Munsel, the butcher.” He said.

“How did you pay for it?” I asked.

“I put it on our tab,” he said.

“We don’t have a line of credit at Munsel’s,” I said, “We haven’t had one since I got into a fight with him over shad roe and called him a Nazi.”

Joe just shrugged his shoulders. “He seemed like a nice guy to me,” he said.

Finally, a flunky who understands ice AND Nazis!

The First Piñata: The Piñata of Life

The piñata of Life was the soft-sculpture egg. I had stuffed it full of play money and plastic pieces from an old Game of Life we had in the game closet. To that I added some Life cereal, pixie sticks (representing the candy of youth), some ankhs I made out of coat hanger wire, and three Life magazines. To some of you those contents might be a letdown. Rest assured, when everyone has been drinking for an afternoon and waiting until dark, once the hitting with sticks happens the rest takes care of itself. What comes out of the piñata doesn’t really matter. The crowd will fight for whatever gets splattered across the lawn..

I was concerned that the felt egg might be hard to break, but one of the Danks from the painting crew drew the lot for first turn at the piñata. He was wearing a Maple Leaf’s sweater and carrying a hockey stick, so I still didn’t think he would do any damage (because how effective can a guy in a Leaf’s jersey be with a hockey stick?) but, sure enough, his first strike sent Life flying into the crowd, and then the fight for Life ensued.

The Second Piñata: The Piñata of Rebirth

The piñata of rebirth was in the shape of a pine cone. I’m not sure why. I also wasn’t sure what to fill it with. When trying to import things with symbolic meaning, when in doubt, use water. Water can be a symbol for just about anything! So I filled the pinecone with water balloons, a bunch of dark chocolate bars (the candy of middle age), and some of those “wine in a bag” things like the ones below.

We let Percy from buildings and grounds take the first swing. It seemed only right. She didn’t do much damage. A lot of other people got to take whacks, but the pine cone turned out to be pretty sturdy. Finally Chait hit it with his badminton racquet and water balloons and wine bags sort of burbled out like a lanced boil. It looked gross but that didn’t stop people from eating the chocolate bars.

The Piñata of Death

The piñata of death was an “indestructible” Bebop the Warthog, an homage to the original indestructible Bebop the Warthog piñata created by Lon Shapiro. My plan was to fill Bebop with mosquitos and ticks and then scream “THE MOSQUITOS HAVE ZIKA” and “THE TICKS ARE FULL OF LYME DISEASE” when it broke open. Now, I understand that neither Zika nor Lyme disease are fatal and, therefore, kind of bad candidates for the “piñata of death”, but not every piñata of death lives up to the billing, you know.

Capturing mosquitos turned out to be harder than you think. I had Fat Joe sit out under the porch light without his shirt on for three evenings and only managed to catch a mason jar full of mosquitos. We decided to fill Bebop with tapioca and then scream “THAT’S EBOLA INFECTED MONKEY BRAINS YOU’RE WEARING” when the piñata broke open. We also added some plastic baggies full of Halls cough drops (the candy of old age).

It didn’t work out very well. Everyone was already bored and restless. Despite the “no nude sparklers” rule there were quite a number of nude sparklers running around. Before we could get Bebop out of the kitchen where it had been stuffed (we thought it important to make sure it was warm tapioca) everyone started chanting “death! death! death!”

Because he is the tallest guy around, we usually have Gus, the silent Swede, hook up the piñata on the piñata court. He makes a good show of it, but this time when he held up the piñata of death up to the crowd, demanded silence, and then yelled, “Behold, BEBOP, the indestructible warthog…” everyone rushed forward, grabbed the piñata, and started tearing it apart. There was a furious scrum, and though it lasted a long time, Bebop was not indestructible after all. Instead of everyone being splattered with warm tapioca, there was just a lot of screaming. Mostly people screaming “what is this shit?” Suddenly, from the back, Fat Joe yelled, “THE SHIT IS FULL OF CHOLERA.” I have to admit, everyone went fucking nuts.

Finally, a flunky who understands ice, Nazis, and how to push the party needle up to “riot”.

¹ You might wonder why I am picking on Devon Henry. The answer is: when was the last time you saw Devon Henry sniffing around here? She has ghosted us, so it’s perfectly safe to make her a main character. Don’t worry. She is not going to sue. Hex, maybe, but not sue, and I ain’t scared of no hexes. I’ve got what they call a “universal voodoo doll”. It’s like one of those screwdrivers with all the extra little heads you can snap on. It works with anyone.