Why you must sit and stare
Plus, some ideas and instructions for doing just that ...
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The best thing about a road trip is the opportunity to sit and stare out the window for hours on end—to watch landscapes move, their colors and topography undulating, shifting.
When I do this I become mesmerized and start to unspool. Poetry enters my brain more easily. Poetry comes out of me more easily.
Earlier this month, on a road trip across Massachusetts, I found myself staring a lot. Out the car window, yes, but also, during one particularly notable moment, at a river of dandelions that were snaking their way up a road on warm breeze. I must have watched them for a solid hour.
When I was a teenager I would get home from school and just sit on my couch and stare into space for hours at a time. Back then, I thought I was being unambitious and lazy, but now I see it as necessary to my mental and emotional processing.
On that note, TIL about Shikantaza wall-staring. It’s a specific meditation practice within the Soto school of Zen Buddhism. Shinkantaza literally means ‘just sitting’. It’s a form of objectless meditation. It has very little to do with the wall itself. Rather, it’s about letting the mind rest in awareness.
There’s plenty of literature that expounds the benefits of such staring, whether at nature or a blank wall. Claims include that either or both practices can positively impact focus, attention, memory, creativity, blood pressure, and cortisol levels. I will let you do your own research.
In my personal experience, when I find time to stare a while, I click into a different way of paying attention to the world around me (and processing that attention). Its feels necessary to the making of alive and exciting music, poetry, art.
So this week, I’m sharing some thoughts on sitting and staring.
…,
Lucy
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Dreaming
An incomplete list of things to stare at.
Murmurations
Dust motes in light
The sky reflected in a body of water
Leaves on trees being tossed in the wind
Fast-moving clouds
Slow-moving clouds
Waves hitting a shoreline
A skyline at sunrise
Shadows on a wall
Ants in the grass
Geese on a pond
Doing
How to sit and stare.
1. Find something (not someone) at which to stare
2. Sit down in as comfortable a spot as you can find
3. Start to notice the movement of the thing(s) you’re staring at
4. Let your eyes go soft
5. Keep paying attention
6. Have whatever thoughts and feelings you have
7. Keep paying attention with soft eyes