Reply To: Exercise 2: Three Raisins
3 Raisins by Evelyn Wallace
• The value of seeing a loved one’s expressions? Is it to identify how they might be feeling? By expression do you mean facial expression? Or do you mean sensing how they feel, by any means, whether it be by their facial or verbal expressions?
• Who notices if I miss what? Seeing their expression? They do, I suppose. I have to say, though, as someone whose expressions are often misinterpreted by the outside world, I am more apt to notice if someone guesses my thoughts, emotions, or intentions based on my nonverbal communications, especially if they’ve guessed wrong.
• What about the nuances of my boss’s communications? Is the question who notices if I miss the nuances of my boss’s communications? So that would be my boss. My boss would notice if I miss nuances of their communications.
• What can I do if I sense the nuances of my boss’s communications? Or if I do sense the feelings/ expressions of others?
• What did I observe about my senses and attention: that there’s a mighty deep well oh human experience in here. I had never dived into the specific 3-raisins pool specifically, but I have done similar experiments of living entirely in the present through all the senses. (In one particular era of my “experimentation” it wasn’t uncommon for people to ask me if I was on drugs.)
• On my ability to focus: this was a bit like a four dimensional meditation, moving through spacetime (though aren’t we always?). I don’t recall my mind jumping around much at all because it was so engaged by the activity of it all.
• How might I apply this to the rest of my life? Slow down. Notice stuff. Remember the infinity contained in every moment, within and without.
NARRATIVE OF THE EXPERIENCE:
It was getting late and I was supposed to have done this exercise already. I drew a bath, put three dried cherries in a small porcelain dish, put my devices in do-not-disturb mode and initiated what I thought was going to be a pleasant ritual. What happened was: after I’d eaten one, I realized that I was so over-full from the cake I’d made with my son earlier, it would have made me sick to eat even one more bite. I felt a bit like Mr. Creosote, a character from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, who has eaten so much that he literally explodes at the next bite. The hot bath made it worse. It was grotesque, actually. I was not proud of myself.
However, in the experience of eating that one cherry, here’s what happened: I pushed at it between my finger and thumb and let it squish around. I rolled it. The inside part of the cherry got squishier and softer, which made the brain rolls of the outside become less rolly. I held the thing close to my ear and learned what sound a dried cherry makes when its being rolled between one’s pincer and thumb. I gave it a sniff, but didn’t notice much odor, other than the steam from my bath. If you are feeling disgust at the prospect of eating in the bathtub, put it aside for a moment and remember this isn’t exactly eating.
By the time I put cherry number one into my mouth, I had already gotten to know the little fella much better that I ever had before. I rolled it between my tongue and the roof of my mouth the way I’d done with my fingers. I kept at it, avoiding my teeth because wouldn’t that be fun? The squishy insides eventually gooped out in what felt like a burst of flavor. Maybe that’s what every candy ever produced in the history of candy is trying to replicate–and failing. The cherry-flavored cherry swept through my mouth. Could all this flavor fit in one little thing? I knew it was possible—I’d had mountain strawberries before, after all—but I suppose I’d never given myself the opportunity to get to know a humble raisin (or raisin substitute) to such a degree.
Eventually, the skin of the cherry became a whole new recognizable element of the fruit. I gnawed at it with my tongue then finally swallowed. I had been digesting for the last 2 hours and had a bike ride home in the interim, but I could feel every particle of that bite add to the unnecessarily large pile of food I’d already put down my gullet. I would finish the task, but not right now.
**
Though there was a gap of many hours, the second cherry was the next thing I consumed. I returned to the ritual.
For this cherry, I decided to play with touch. Holding it with my right hand, I rolled it across my left palm, then around the perimeter of my fingers. It was sensual, to say the least: especially if we define sensual as “being of the senses.” Honestly, though, I was glad I was alone in a room. It felt like foreplay. I realized that touching the cherry could be with any part of my body and that if I utilized it as a tool for body work, this could go on all day. I brought it back to my face, rubbed the cherry around my lips a few times, then popped it in.
This time, I wanted to do something less refined than before. I bit in hard, almost aggressively. Take that, I thought. The flavor burst was still there but the skin was all torn up this time: there was going to be more cleanup, for sure. I chewed slower than usual, but using my teeth in a way I hadn’t with the first one. I opened my mouth and heard the sounds of my own mastication. I closed my mouth and understood why it was better manners that way.
After I’d mined every bit of cherry particle from every recess of my mouth, I met cherry number three. I looked it up and down. It was a little brain, a little planet with geography and topography. What a perfect little particle of nature, this guy! I didn’t want to eat him all at once so I gently put his head in my mouth and bit that off. I ate the last cherry in the smallest slices my teeth could cut and I used my tongue to mush it around.
My takeaway from the Three Raisin Exercise? How many ways there are to play in this life! How many universes of possibility are tucked into every possibility! Also: I could probably stand to slow down while eating in general. Or in general.