Mental Exercises for Humans
Nonfiction | Bryan Edenfield
0
The exercises are collected here not in the name of a new science, and thus should not replace your standard human routines (we are legally required to say this). Since our lawyers insist we cannot present these exercises as having any valid and measured cognitive benefit, consider this then a historical collection, a wunderkammer of esoteric advice.
1
Dip your body in snow cold water. Do not bandage your knees. Ingest the petals of a pink rose and eight pine needles one by one. Make sure you stand near moss. Make sure the wild rose bush is not sick with rust.
2
Go to the forest. Eat worms off the ground. Stack stones to find your way. Walk until your feet become calloused. Swim in a mirror blue lake as it rains.
3
Journey to the cratered scablands and search for a tortoise until a nearby automobile slides on the asphalt. Go home and prepare a song about the experience. Include the following phrases: naked house, purgatorial sighs, seraphic jaw, clovis fauna, saltless galaxy, bedroom logorea, shiver didactics, cicada citadel, nonsense bureaucracy. Study interdimensional trade agreements. Move to the nearest window and study refractions of light. Go on go on go on.
4
Discover a cave but do not enter (you are not ready). Make inappropriate jokes to your neighbor. If they shun you, isolate yourself for fourteen days. Don’t worry about the solstice; it’ll come again. When finished, wipe away the salt from your eyes and sit silently for thirty to forty minutes, depending on elevation (time moves more quickly at sea level). When finished, treat yourself to an analog puzzle.
5
Obtain a mathematics textbook (don’t worry, there will be no test). Have two children. In your will, bequeath the textbook to the youngest child. Include with it a statement concerning the long history of this textbook: it has been in the family for generations, and you wish for it to continue with the family for as long as they exist on this earth. Add embellishments to this story; make it your own. Meanwhile, hide within the textbook a notecard with a list of dates: this is a list of every single day you had a pleasing sexual encounter, but they don’t need to know that.
6
Turn surgical tools into jewelry and invent an imaginary friend named Sharon. You do not necessarily always get along with Sharon.
7
Remember a tragic event. Think about never speaking another word again. Now, go on the run from the law, but casually.
8
Find a coffee shop that is open after 10 pm. Go there for at least two hours, as late in the night as possible. Sit near a window, as far away from the cashier as possible. Using a pencil and notepad, invent a new language. Later, teach your loved-ones this new language, and insist on communicating only in this new language.
9
Write down all of your secrets. Write them with a pen you adore on paper you can live without. Journey to an undisclosed location, difficult to find. Bring a matchbook with nine matches. Burn your secrets. Return home. Begin creating more secrets. In a year's time, repeat the process. Continue until death.
10
Reminisce about bygone school days. If you are still in school, burn this text and shit on the ashes. You are not ready.
11
At your local library, find a best-selling novel about oceanography, and read it. It must be a work of fiction and it must be about oceanography and it must have been at least #50 on the New York Times Bestseller list. If you can find no such book, write it.
12
Boil water. Pour it into a ravine. Pray for the beetles below. If a wasp lands next to you within 48 hours, repeat the process. If no such thing occurs, research the neurological activities of wasps and compose a brief hand-written summary about why, in your assessment, no wasp landed next to you within the last 48 hours. Boil water and pour boiling water over the pages of the essay. Wait for the papers to cool (this should only take a few seconds) and then wad them into as small of a ball as possible. Wait.
13
Change your name so that you have no name; or, change your name so that your name is the sound a pebble makes when it is chucked into the ocean.
14
Hang a dripping washcloth in the freezer. Place a photograph of your enemy below the dripping washcloth and allow the drips to land on the face of your enemy. Count to nine hundred. Think of the color green: its hue, its connotations, its attributes, its atmosphere. Spend the next two hours constructing a riddle that unites the color green with a washcloth dripping in the freezer. Don’t tell it to anyone; don’t even speak it aloud. Take the now frozen washcloth from the freezer. Take the photograph as well. Write the riddle on the back of the photograph, then bury it in a nearby field. You have now forgiven your enemy.
15
Make elaborate and detailed plans for a party, just on paper, including contact information for any outside organizations or individuals that you have have to hire or work with (such as djs, caterers, chefs, ice sculptors, musicians, florists, glitter suppliers, city officials, sword swallowers, actors paid to stand still and wear masks, etc). Now you’ll have this in your back pocket, ready to go, if the case ever arrives, and people will be very impressed at how prepared you are.
16
Stop. Turn off all the lights and appliances, all the computers and gadgets. Unplug everything that isn’t actively keeping you alive. Sit in as much darkness as possible, on the floor, in silence (or the closest approximation possible). Remain this way for 15 to 240 minutes. Repeat every 24 hours.
17
Do something easy, like nothing.