That pillow is a no; I’m returning it. Yes, it was an expensive enough pillow to justify the hassle. The return process was a little annoying — it kept trying to sneakily change my refund into an exchange, and it managed to reset itself and make me start over. The first time I clicked on the “Return Portal” (which sounds like something much more science fictiony) a couple of days earlier, it was “down for maintenance.” Seems like a dark pattern to me…
But things are generally good with me. No panic, very little anxiety. Calm and peace and general happiness. The morning meditations are going well now, after I looked up a little bit on mindfulness to get an idea of different methods. Instead of a morning routine of reading email and Discord and forums in the bathroom downstairs, I don’t look at my phone. I go to the second bedroom upstairs (a combination shrine room, guest bedroom, and crafting space), sit on the futon and give myself 20 minutes of focusing on the present moment (which happens to be the session length for the Zenowell device). Breathing meditation isn’t super awesome for me, but focusing on sensations or gazing at something specific works.
This morning I had a particularly nice session. In that room we have a shiny gold garland with little stars on it, strung along and between the curttain tods. A cluster of starts was catching the light and waving gently in the airflow from the vent, twinkling and flaring, which caught my eye in a mesmerising way — so I focused on that. I felt a kind of paradoilea, like this was a special moment arranged for me. In Kemetic Orthodoxy, stars are a manifestation of our blessed ancestors, watching and protecting us (which is why I chose that garland in the first place). I also had a lovely experience as a young teen, when I was just sort of vaguely pagan, where a star-like light shone through a pinhole in a curtain and I felt protected and loved for some reason. Hey, I’ll take anything that makes me feel happy.
This sort of meditation brings esoteric questions. When you’re observing your sensations, what is doing the observing? Is that observer the self, or is the self an emergent property of the observation, barely more than an illusion if that? A sort of inevitable coincidence? It seems like the self and God(s) have that in common… no “real” physical thing but an experience nonetheless. Or as physicist Carlo Rovelli wrote, “nothing is; things happen.”
I would much rather face these questions and feelings on waking, than doomscrolling on the toilet. 🙂
The Zenowell gizmo doesn’t immediately make me feel supremely chill, super emotionally relieved, nor give the “brain orgasms” that Pulsetto’s awful marketing claims. What it feels like depends greatly on how well the electrodes are making contact as well as the intensity setting; it takes some practice/experience to find the right combination. But generally it’s a pleasant if odd fluttering; a poor fit is more like rapid-fire mosquito bites. For me, spraying the electrodes with water rather than brushing on the gel, and rotating the earpiece back rather than forward, seems to give better contact and calls for higher intensity settings.
I’ve been using the Relax program twice a day, as they recommend, and the Sleep program right after I put my book down for the night. If it’s doing anything for me I should start to see results within a couple of weeks. There’s a Meditation mode, but that morning session is really the best time for me to use Relax so I’m sticking with that at least for now. There’s also a Headache mode, but I haven’t been troubled by migraines in a while so I’m leaving that off.
The bread machine’s been great. I made the cinnamon bread from that book my sister-in-law likes, and it was so good I made another loaf to give my parents. I also made the simple French bread, and it was quite good, though the paddle got stuck (possibly due to the strong crust) and tore a bigger hole than before. Today I’m making rosemary bread to go with the potato leek soup my spouse is making, and I have plans for chocolate peanut butter banana bread because the grocery delivery service my mom uses brought 3x as many bananas as she wanted.
It’s sort of become a mini-hobby, with things to learn and supplies and equipment to gather and so on. That probably will settle down a bit when it’s just a regular routine thing. But I’m enjoying it. 🙂
Recent reads: A New Map of Wonders is like a modern version of the books about foreign lands and curiosities first popularized in the 14th century. Meant to encourage fascination and wonder, now relying on science rather than making up details, it begins with the theme of light, moves on to life and its origins, the human heart, the brain, the world, and technology. It’s not as lyrical as some of the science books I’ve read (I mentioned Rovelli already) but it does what it sets out to do. I don’t feel smarter or deeper having read it, but it was a pleasant read.
Phoenix Extravagant is a fantasy tale set in an analog of Korea, having been subdued by an analog of Japan and both finding themselves threatened by “Westerners.” The main character is nonbinary and there are several queer relationships, but gender is not directly a factor in anything — instead the struggles are political, and of social stuffiness versus creative expression, tradition and heritage and family versus expediency… and with nothing in black and white. I enjoyed it pretty thoroughly.
The Foghorn’s Lament: The Disappearing Music of the Coast is indeed about foghorns — their sound and the way they make people feel, and a bit of their history and that of lighthouse and lightship keepers who lived with them. A great nuisance, a comforting and familiar sound of home, an eerie and melancholy moan, a nostalgic soundmark of times past, a strange fascination for people who don’t live near one, an element in musical composition — and generally not all that effective as a navigation aid, especially in modern times.
I’ve started reading Ask A Historian, which is a thing that the author was going to do in live performances off the cuff, until the pandemic happened. Answering random questions about history — both good questions and dumb ones — with accurate and witty answers. I like it when a historian is a storyteller, and makes past events relatable.
As of yesterday Joranalogue Walk 4 was officially released, and I’m eagerly expecting a shipping notice from Control any moment now. DivKid did a video on it, demonstrating many different uses — and it is indeed quite versatile. One of the things I was eager to find out was how it behaves processing audio, and I didn’t expect the sort of hyper wavefolder that the Auto-Reset feature provides. There are still some other experiments that he didn’t cover, and I’m sure all kinds of creative ways to use it in patches.
