22 November 2006
A Suggestion for Promoting Good Mental Health: Laugh at Yourself
You make a doll in your own likeness. You giggle the whole time. You record your voice and listen to it. You laugh heartily. You smell the sweat on your arm. You are seized by uncontrollable guffaws. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and are so struck by the absurdity of your own image, how it seems to float above the world, unsupported and ridiculously delicate, that you are convulsed by sidesplitting, oxygen depriving laughter which goes on for some minutes and does not end until your brain says Enough! Get serious for once in your life.
Labels: Suggestions for good mental health
21 November 2006
A Suggestion for Promoting Good Mental Health: Watch the Sun Rise
It is a cloudy day, but that doesn’t matter. You pack a breakfast and climb the nearest hill. You know the sun will rise. Of course it will. It rises every morning, even when you’re not looking. The sun has a schedule. It is never late. The air is cold. You put on mittens. The birds start singing. A stirring rolls over the land. The air seems filled with creatures you have known for years. All anticipating the sun. You share your breakfast. The sky is nothing, but it shelters you. The light is heavy. The horizon begins to melt.
Labels: Suggestions for good mental health
20 November 2006
A Suggestion for Promoting Good Mental Health: Don’t Worry About Money Today
You take pennies out of the little jars at the checkout stands at grocery stores and say Hey, how about that, I got a lucky penny today. Then you give the lucky penny to the first person you meet as you leave the store. You go to the bank and empty out all your accounts. You take the cash and start giving it away to anyone who wants it. A lot of people want it. They thank you and walk away. Someone says, Are you sure about this? You say, Don’t worry. It’s only paper. It doesn’t mean a thing.
Labels: Suggestions for good mental health
19 November 2006
A Suggestion for Promoting Good Mental Health: Oil a Squeak
You stand at the front door, swing it open and closed. The squeaks reverberate throughout the neighborhood. This is the innocent and generous voice of the door, which announces the entry and exit of all visitors. You decide you cannot mute such an abiding voice. However, the neighbors do not share your generosity. They come in the night, bearing oil cans, and destroy the squeaks on all three hinges. In the morning the door is eerily silent. You feel a profound discomfort, as though you have fallen from your skin. You want the squeaks back. You crave their abundant kindness.
Labels: Suggestions for good mental health
18 November 2006
A Suggestion for Promoting Good Mental Health: Run an Errand for Someone
You shake the gnawing creatures off your legs and hobble down to the river, where you retrieve a bucket full of water and haul it back for the old man who is melting into the sheets and blankets of his deathbed. He receives the water with gratitude. You were gone for year and years, he says, what on Earth were you doing all that time? You tell him it was only an hour, maybe two. He says: You know I don’t have much time left, but if you would kindly answer the question, we’ll both get the rest we need.
Labels: Suggestions for good mental health
17 November 2006
A Suggestion for Promoting Good Mental Health: Imagine the Roar of the Ocean
You upend a bag of marbles. The sound doesn’t make you think of the ocean. You crumple up a sheet of paper. That’s a little closer. You listen to the static on a dead frequency on the radio. Closer still. You turn your ear to the sun, crazy bright and crackling up there in the sky. Now you’re getting somewhere. You imagine picking up a seashell and putting it to your ear. Oh! The sensation is overwhelming, more than amazing. You cup your hands over your ears. The world inverts. The sea imagines you, and you are holding the sea.
Labels: Suggestions for good mental health
16 November 2006
A Suggestion for Promoting Good Mental Health: Try a New Road
You make circles in the air with your finger, then plunk it down on a random page of the road atlas. You have selected a highway on the edge of the world, near where the ocean drops off in an immense waterfall that resolves itself into streams of droplets that become stars. You drive to that road and spend the next few years of your life getting to know its twists, turns, ruts, and potholes. You get out of the car occasionally, and stand by the ocean and watch the stars being made. The sharp salt spray makes you shiver.
Labels: Suggestions for good mental health
15 November 2006
A Suggestion for Promoting Good Mental Health: Express Your Thanks
You thank the trees, the sky, and your ancestors. People think you are nuts. You don’t care. You thank the clouds, the river, the leaves, all the rocks, most of the animals, and the snow. People think you are from Bonkersville. You still don’t care. You thank pain, disfunction, disfigurement, and warped logic. Now people are starting to understand. They say, maybe you’re not so crazy after all. You say: Nope, I’m not, and thank the crashing stars, the careening asteroids, and the belching volcanoes. You thank the earthquakes and the tsunamis. People say now will you thank me, too?
Labels: Suggestions for good mental health
14 November 2006
A Suggestion for Promoting Good Mental Health: Visit a Museum
You have the feeling that it’s all about expired lives arranged on flat surfaces like pinned butterflies. But you go and get your ticket and look at the pictures anyway. They remind you of coffins, and the solemn air of your fellow museum visitors makes you think of a funeral. When what you really want is a wake. Let’s get crazy, people, is what you think. Let’s make fun of this picture. Let’s drink some ale and smash our glasses on that picture. Let’s laugh it up. We’re in the presence of art. We should at least smile. Giggle even.
Labels: Suggestions for good mental health
13 November 2006
A Suggestion for Promoting Good Mental Health: Phone an Old Friend
You wait until the middle of the night, when the darkness holds everything, endlessly looping around itself and pinning you tightly. You find the number in an old address book you haven’t thrown out yet. You wonder if it is a good idea to reconnect after so many years. And at such an hour? But you press the numbers anyway. A sleepy voice answers. It isn’t your old friend. A stranger. His hand reaches through the phone and grabs your ear. You want to hang up, but any human contact feels good. How are you? you say. How’ve you been?
Labels: Suggestions for good mental health
12 November 2006
A Suggestion for Promoting Good Mental Health: Blow Bubbles
You don’t remember the recipe, but recall something about diluted dish soap, so you pour some into a bowl and add water, hoping you have the right proportions. Then you fashion a wand from a piece of wire, looping the end and twisting it around to make a circle. You dip the wand into the soap solution. You raise the wand, take a deep breath, and expel it through the loop. You don’t attempt description. You just experience: remembering your whole life at once; smelling the original scent of the world; confirming the beauty of everything that has ever existed.
Labels: Suggestions for good mental health
11 November 2006
A Suggestion for Promoting Good Mental Health: Keep a Secret
You perform experiments that show decisively the beneficial effects upon the betrayer of revealing confidential information. It is a stress reliever and a general immune booster, equivalent in effect to quitting smoking or dropping your cholesterol a hundred points. Reasoning that if people knew this then no information would ever remain secret, you decide to leave your findings unpublished, nor do you inform any of your colleagues of what you have discovered. You keep the knowledge to yourself for years, finally telling your cat the details of your research. She scratches your face. You blink and scratch behind her ears.
Labels: Suggestions for good mental health
10 November 2006
A Suggestion for Promoting Good Mental Health: Smile at Yourself in the Mirror
You put up two mirrors facing each other. Then you stand between them and show some teeth. They multiply forever and seem to drill a hole into the wall. You put your hand up and it goes into the hole. Your feet leave the floor, your head angles forward and suddenly you’re falling into the mirror, passing thousands of images of your teeth, bared behind smiling lips. They chatter as you go by. You have the most pleasant feeling of ease, like you are floating on warm water. Infinity beckons. You answer: All in good time. I’m on my way.
Labels: Suggestions for good mental health
