park bench therapy

attempts at sitting still and moving slowly as an antidote to chronic scatterbrainedness

A park bench is no place for happiness. Happiness needs movement to propel itself forwards – no one has ever cartwheeled whilst sad. It’s difficult to move quickly and for sadness to catch you. Happiness skips past the park benches and cuts straight across the fields. Perhaps that is why it so often eludes us: if you’re not fast enough, you will not catch it.

If you sit on a park bench when you’re too happy then you risk losing that delicate thread of joy, and before long the stillness will remind you that you’re always at the mercy of time. You’ll find yourself thinking again about how much there is you want to do in this life and how little time there is to live. This is why you should never stare at somebody alone on a park bench, because they’re most likely having an important conversation with time and should not be disturbed – it is an invasion of the most intimate of privacies.

No one sits alone on a park bench on a pale Sunday morning in March when the clouds are bloated with rain unless you’ve exhausted all other attemps at trying to settle the unsettled mind. So I sit on a park bench because I would like to try and settle the unsettled mind. Sometimes you get so fed up with yourself you take yourself on a walk like a dog. My heart is the dog, always tugging, and I the tired owner, fingers loosely wrapped around its leash. My heart and I sit on the park bench, and for now we are not late for anything or needed anywhere, so my body sits still for long enough to hear its inner whirrings.

I’ve been trying to move slowly these days because I recently found another grey hair and lately all my breaths are shallow ones. When I eat blueberries I let each one rest on my tongue for a few seconds, before focusing on the sensation of my back teeth piercing into the cool, greenish flesh with each bite. I always thought grapes were the easiest fruit to like because they were the sweetest, but I know a girl who won’t eat them because she hates the texture of the skin tearing. I suppose when you’re so used to paying attention to things then this could indeed be an issue. For years I ate without paying attention to anything except fear. Taste and texture was secondary. As long as my mouth was preoccupied with something to chew, I wouldn’t have to worry about not knowing what to say.

But it’s hard to practice this kind of sustained attention to blueberries all the time. I’m impatient. And I don’t like yoga. Five seconds in downward dog is five seconds too many. Don’t bother asking me what I do for work – we’ll both get bored. My brain is always waiting for a new tab.

It seems counterintuitive, but I wonder if slowing down will fix my chronic lateness. Amidst all the rushing I misplace things and forget where I put them. On Thursday it was the hairbrush which I use to fix my fringe into place; a fringe brush is just as much of an essential as house keys – Bristol is always windy and I don’t feel like myself if too much forehead is on show. I slammed the door when leaving because frustration had reached its limits within the bounds of my body and needed to exert itself outwardly. I run on the treadmill not for cardiovascular health or physical aesthetics but because something within me is begging to be freed.

The hairbrush was in my bag all along.

Forgive me: forgetfulness is one of the worst sins. But I can’t help it. Time won’t move forward without leaving some things behind. I stand in the doorway with my heart in my hand and can’t remember why. A asks whether my desire to document everything is born from a kind of narcissism. Maybe sometimes. I think it’s also a desperate attempt to not forget. My memory is full of scratches.

I spent all of October reading about Wittgenstein. I spent all of November having to remind myself what it was I read. But at least I have videos of myself reading.

J and I take two mugs of tea from my kitchen and walk to a nearby bench nestled away between a row of bushes. As I tell her about the ways I am tired of myself right now, a black cat comes over and brushes the side of its face against the heel of my shoes. J says “cats can sense sadness, it’s a sign.” I need something, so I take the sign.

Most of the time, the world does a decent job at distracting me. A confused older woman shakily steps off the bus and asks how to get to Rosehill, and a man whose clothes are marked with white paint says he’ll walk with her for some of the way. I think about how people with very little tend to offer the most. On the bus, I stare out the window as if the world were a gallery and each worn-down shopfront an old painting. A young boy beside me does the same while unwrapping a chocolate bar. I feel in that moment we are exactly the same. I know this is only partly true. But I need something, so I take it.

By Friday the clouds finally splinter and shards of white sun scatter across the city. We march outside and roll up our sleeves to make it easier for our souls to be cracked open by the heat. I see an empty space on a park bench. My instinct is to stride towards it quickly in case someone else gets there first, until I remember the grey hairs and remind myself to slow down. But then a middle-aged woman wearing an all blue nurse’s uniform takes the seat. She places a sandwich in plastic packaging on her lap and tilts her head towards the sky. She needs something, so she takes it.