humans are funny

Category: anxiety

  • I carried a watermelon? Peaches would have sounded so much better.

    I did my second stand-up show ever last night at The World Famous Comedy Store on Sunset Blvd (I call bullshit on the ‘world’ part. I don’t know if people in Nigeria really know about this place, but that’s how they sell it to you when they ask you to be in a show that requires you to bring paying audience members.) It did not go as well as my first show. People stared instead of laughed. There were crickets. Many of them.

    And it reminded me of a young man who used to live on my childhood street.

    He was older and cool. And every day after elementary school, he would say, “Laurenne is a blobule.” I didn’t know what that meant, but still I would cry. I thought he was wise (I mean, he was at least 12), so I figured I must have been a blobule. And I hated being a blobule. I wanted nothing more than to not be one. Blobules sucked, according to this mean kid.

    But after some years, I realized that blobules weren’t that bad. And, in fact, they didn’t even exist. But the kid had moved away. So, I spent lots of sixth grade recreating that situation. I could have said, ‘No, you’re a blobule” or ‘Blobule Shmobule’ or ‘Dorkface’ or I could have simply made up a story about how Debbie Gibson was my cousin (which I did later).

    This was one of the first of many conversations I would rebuild throughout my life. You know the ones that you rewrite in your head over and over until you almost convince yourself that you actually did sound a thousand times more intelligent than you really did (Otherwise known as an ‘I carried a watermelon’ conversation)? I’m a professional post-conversation rewriter. At least I used to be. Until a therapist told me that if everyone’s so worried about their part of the conversation, then nobody’s really worried about your part.

    Wise, those therapists are. Way wiser than that blobule who invented blobules. (Blobule isn’t even a good name. How naive I was to be insulted so uncreatively.)

    Flubbing your first joke in front of a crowd of strangers at The World Famous Comedy Store can guarantee you some intense in-brain rewriting, no matter what any therapist says. It’s agonizing.

    I have mentally rewritten my set about 4,352 times since I said it on stage just 24 hours ago. (If only I had added the word ‘Jesus’ more often, etc.) And before that I probably told my jokes to the invisible passenger in my car about 6,412 times. And neither made my performance any better. This whole anxiety-ridden journey has led me to some revelations:

    *A surefire way to tell whether you performed badly is if the very first thing your friend says afterward is: It was not you. Totally the crowd.

    *Not everyone thinks jokes about dead dads are funny.

    *The ‘comedian green room’ sounds cool but really means a roachy box with stained couches and stale snacks. Still, I felt pretty cool.

    *Taking anything too seriously makes it not worth doing.

    This stand-up thing could be really fun (jokes are fun!) or it could be this thing I do that is stressful and hard and has to be done perfectly for fear of my bastard ego, Lawrence, showing up to tell me how I could have done better, looked better, or made more people laugh, which is no fun at all.

    And, since I’m one who learns lessons, I should probably take this one and use it in as many aspects of my life as I can. I should have more fun. Always. And you should too. Because why not? Stuff without fun is so much less fun than stuff with fun.

    From now on, I must remember: It’s okay to suck at something. As long as you’re having fun while sucking. Jenna Jameson agrees. That joke wasn’t at all funny. But at least I had fun while writing an unfunny joke. Man, I’m a fast learner.

  • shhhh….


    From afar we looked like a lifestyle ad for Sears outdoor furniture, an eclectic group of 25 educated adults sharing dinner on a large teak veranda. But up close we might have looked angry, no one smiling or talking. In fact, we weren’t even interacting with each other, too busy counting our bites, feeling our breaths, or noticing where our bodies exactly met the chair and where our feet graced the wood floor.

    All 25 of us, from different paths and provinces, came together for 10 days of silent Vipassana meditation. And 10 days of serious meditation did not allow for dinner time chatter. I didn’t know this when I arrived. I actually had no idea what to expect, only having read a few web pages about the practice before I landed at the forest monastery in Byron Bay on the East coast of Australia.

    Originally I started this whole 9-month trip with the hope of becoming less anxious and more confident. The advertising industry did a number on my self-esteem, and I thought a year of traveling on my own might repair it. I promised myself I would make the trip a spiritual one and not a party one. So it was a no-brainer to spend 10 of my 34 days traveling Australia in a forest with a monk. Silent. I can’t imagine telling my 18-yr-old self that I would one day give up parties to hang out with Buddhists.

    This being one of my first spiritual experiences, my stomach felt braided as I approached the monastery driveway. I was scared to be without music for ten days. And without the news. I really did almost cry when I found out I’d be in a silent state during Obama’s inauguration.

    Mainly I was scared of monks. Religious people make me nervous, I guess. Perhaps it’s because they believe in something so strongly, and I can’t relate. Or perhaps it’s because I feel like they can read my mind. I didn’t want any monk to know my thoughts. What if I happened to imagine a vibrator while in the company of a monastic?

    Thankfully, Pannyavaro, although a very opinionated man, happened to be a calm and welcoming monk. Upon arrival, I saw him in his short robe watering the flowers. His black socks pulled up to his calves made me smile. Plus, the place itself was instant calm. The tranquil green forest seemed to give Xanax to the butterflies in my stomach.

    I sat on my bunk bed in silence while the others bustled around and settled in. I found solace in the fact that everybody looked a bit nervous. Maybe everyone shared my fear of monks.

    That night, as we gathered in the meditation hall for the first of many times, Pannya spoke while we drank in his words as if they held some secret ingredient that could cure us of any ailment. I noticed we were leaning forward like sunflowers.

    “We clean out our closets,” he said. “And we clean out our nails. But we never clean out our minds.”

    He had a point, I thought. Over the next 10 days we learned how. It was a long process, much more complicated than I can explain here. But it was worth it. My brain feels lighter, the build-up scrubbed out by my meditative toothbrush.

    Basically, the practice enables precise attention to the body– where it’s exactly located, how it moves when it breathes, how the feet move during walking, etc. For example, if I am standing and I drop a pen, I will be saying to myself as I move slowly to pick it up: “bending, bending, reaching, reaching, feeling pen, feeling pen, grabbing pen, grabbing pen, retracting arm, retracting arm, standing, standing.” This is how we treat every action, every single action… for ten days straight. And then we follow those actions with the labels that bring us back to our anchor position: “standing, standing, breathing, breathing.”

    It requires moving and eating slowly. It requires hours of sitting and walking meditation. It requires an enormous amount of strength and willpower. The magic of labeling movements became apparent to me when I would catch myself thinking. At first I woudn’t notice my labeling had been shoved out of my mind by some sort of thought. But after becoming close with my body, I would notice a lack of movement in my stomach, a tightening, the manifestation of anxiety. Then I would realize that my mind had taken a detour, and I had let a wood carving in the yard remind me of a toy from childhood which then led me to think about my cousin from Indiana, which then led me to wonder whether or not she ever got divorced, which then led me to think about relationships which then led me to wonder if I’ll ever have one again and yada yada yada. That’s just what brains do… they wander. And if you don’t stop them, they can wander all day, formulating thoughts about the future and ultimately leading to worry or restlessness. It happens to most people, but most people don’t stop to notice. They do notice, however, that sometimes they’ve just driven to work or just eaten breakfast and they don’t even remember doing it. It was because their brains were off wandering about, causing them unneccessary grief.

    Vipassana is not just about clearing the mind. It gets much deeper than that. Supposedly, experienced meditators see their feet or torso become invisible (or I guess they don’t see it.). I spent time at the first stage, just becoming more and more aware of my thinking and catching it before it took off in ten directions. By catching it and not judging it, it stops.

    It sounds crazy and maybe it is. But it helped me tremendously. I feel empty in a good way. And more patient. In ten days of doing nothing, I was never once bored. Paying close attention to my abdomen rising and falling is something i can do while waiting in line or waiting for Catalina to finish curling her hair. I can already feel a new patience emerging.

    I have to admit that during day 8 I cracked and ate a piece of toast really really quickly without labeling my bites. And although I wasn’t supposed to be noticing the others, I had names for them like ‘loud snorer,’ ‘Mrs. Roeper pants,’ and ‘yellow crocs.’

    I wasn’t the best meditator, and I didn’t reach enlightenment. But my life has definitely changed for the better. I would recommend Vipassana to anyone and everyone. We’ve all got some brain crud that needs clearing.

    If interested, check out buddhanet.net
    Donate to Pannya and his wonderful forest monastery here.
    More Vipassana info here.