Then I got sick. I'm still sick. I'm hungry. I'm cold. All I want to do is take a bath and watch Investigation Discovery shows, but I skipped yesterday's post, so here I am today. I'm not my best self, but I am here. Present.
Marina Abramovic's 2010 show consisted of her sitting for 16 hours in an Eames-inspired chair of glowing wood. Across from her sat another chair, also Eames-inspired, of equally glowing wood, and in that chair sat whoever wanted to, for as long as they wanted to. (Don't get me wrong. They filtered out the freaks. There was an aspiring performance artist that tried to take her clothes off before sitting down and the MoMa security guards put a stop to that real quick.)
Marina didn't take breaks. In fact, she installed an ingenious little potty hole in her chair, just in case nature called. She doesn't look it, but she's in her 60's. Sitting still for that amount of time in a hard wooden chair is no small feat. But that's not what the show was about. It wasn't just about being physically accounted for, it was about being present in a larger sense. Marina took a small moment whenever someone new came to sat with her. She closed her eyes, bowed her head. Then she'd lift her chin and meet the gaze of whomever was sitting across from her, ready to give all of herself. She reacted to every one of these people. Sometimes she smiled. Sometimes she cried.
The chair couldn't have been comfortable. The surrounding noise and the crowd were probably unnerving at times. I'm such she itched and wanted to scratch sometimes, but with practice, she was able to transcend those twitches that come from having a human body and be present.
Writing is uncomfortable. There are a million far easier distractions available to you at all times. Sometimes our own thoughts fail us. That's okay. It's okay to be uncomfortable. It's not pleasant, but it is okay.
The chair can be hard. You can itch and have to go to the bathroom. That's human nature.
NaNoWriMo is a perfect time to focus on being present. Sit across from your work. Let your fingers move across the keys. Let the itches and twinges of self-doubt come and go. But stay there until you can't anymore. See only what's across from you.
*To get really lowbrow with it, if gamers can relieve themselves in Mountain Dew bottles, so can you. I mean, you're creating art here. Don't let your base urges stop you.
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