Last Minute Prep for the Apocalypse…

Posted by Tiff in meditation retreat, Momsanity | 6 comments

Any doubt in my mind that this meditation retreat (12 hour days of meditation for 11 days straight…) will be the end of the world was confirmed by the fact that it SNOWED in LA yesterday. Glendale, Pasadena, and so close to West Hollywood it’s not even funny. Everyone knows that snow in LA is a sign that the apocalypse is here, especially if you’re on your way to not speaking for a week and a half.

People are asking me if I’m doing this to punish myself. And no, that’s not really it. I’m just realizing I have this aversion to being by myself. Totally, completely by myself. It’s like when someone comes up to rub your neck a little and then goes “Wow, you have a huge knot right here!” and then they massage it and it hurts like hell and you want them to stop but then realize afterwards that it feels better than it did before. I’m just working out some kinks here, and who knows if this will do the trick but I’m up for the challenge! And I know I wont get any different results if I keep doing the same things, and this is about the most opposite thing I’d ever do.

My younger sister is consulting me as I pack and prepare. When she was 16, my parents sent her to a wilderness survival program for 7 weeks, followed by a lockdown boarding school for the rest of the year. While at the survival program in the middle of Utah in March, she would frequently be put on ‘solos’ for a week at a time, which meant she would be by herself with her sleeping bag, a tarp, and some canned goods. The only way she could eat hot food is if she taught herself how to make fire the hardcore way…using only friction, 2 pieces of wood, and some kindling.

She’s assured me that not speaking for so long will definitely get me inside myself, realizing things that I hadn’t before. “Because, you know, not talking to other people…not talking at all…it kinda makes you go…” [insert universal gesture for crazy here]. “But then, when you get beyond crazy, you go to this other place…” The jury is still out on whether that other place could be classified as “even more crazy”.

But as a precaution, I’m prepared to escape and have a rock solid plan that involves a wig, a blanket of stealth, and my iphone. I have other precautions to stave off other things, too, like loneliness, sadness, and fear…and they mostly revolve around finding room so I can bringing my collection of long comfy socks…

My sister is also consulting me on how to stay comfortable in cold sleeting weather, since cold sleeting weather is what I’m going to have up in Washington. She suggests that instead of layering clothes on before getting in my sleeping bag, it’s best to stuff clothes into the sleeping bag and then get in it naked. Also, she recommends filling a metal bottle with warm water and placing it on my femoral artery when I get in my sleeping bag, and then kicking it down to my feet when I get warm. We have such different life experiences, she and I, which makes for some great conversations and words of advice…and the older we both get, the more our experiences are overlapping. So now she’s giving me lessons on how to get through not speaking for days and days, and I’m giving her advice on how to take care of a baby! Which is mostly just, “have fun with that!”

So, if they have wifi on trains, then I can update via iphone while I start my adventure…then my iphone will get confiscated at the retreat and I have guest bloggers scheduled to post every other day until I magically appear again!

Have fun while I’m gone…play more, eat lots of yummy food for me and say lots of nice things to people for me, generally go out and have some fun adventures for me while I’m sitting still getting to a deep level of crazy and beyond crazy to whatever’s after that!

Share Tweet