...of the mind

At the swimming pool, I focused all my efforts on one goal: to reduce my mental hyperactivity. To let myself be, naked under the sun. To create internal silence. I have pursued this goal through all of life’s twists and turns, almost like an idée fixe. This is the small and alarming idea that stands out in the midst of all other ideas and raises the volume of psychic noise, which is already quite considerable. Hyperactivity has become my brain’s normal way of being. It’s always been like that, to tell the truth, at least since my adolescence, and I’ve learned about the more normal way most other people are - hesitant and half-empty - through reading, observation, deduction, and conjecture. And because, on a few occasions, for a few seconds, I have had that experience. My readings in Eastern psychic techniques, and even those stupid articles about “meditation” that often appear in women’s magazines, have taught me that there is one further step: an empty mind, the complete or almost complete lack of electrical activity in the cerebral cortex, a blackout, rest. And if at one time, with my characteristic ambitiousness I, too, wished to achieve that, and practised all the recommended exercises with innocent trust, I finally grew convinced that I was wasting my time. It wasn’t for me. First, I would have to descend from my peaks of frenzy, take hold of the reins, and mollify the runaway beast of my thoughts, force it to slow to a normal pace; only then would I have a chance to glimpse those Eastern worlds of spiritual clarity.

[The Literary Conference, Aira, C.]