PracticeRoom

Marc writes:

I have had this practice surrounding breakfast cereal for the last year.

Let me start off by saying that in Manhattan, the grocery stores charge a fortune for breakfast cereal. So I am at the mercy of the drug lords: Duane Reade, Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, etc. Typically every week at least one of those locations has breakfast cereal on sale. Having absolutely no control over what it
will be, I go for the gold. I visit each of those drug stores at least once every week to check what is on special. Of course, on many occasions multiple stores have cereal sales, which has sometimes resulted in me keeping up to twelve boxes in my personal cereal inventory.  

My practice: every morning, I have a full delicious bowl of cold cereal and hot cereal. Each particular cold cereal will end up dictating the flavor of a hot cereal that I choose to mix with it.  Once I finish with a bowl of the cold cereal, I take one scoop of oatmeal and put it in the remaining milk & cold cereal particles. I always do a quick shot of water in the mix as well, and then put a handful of plump raisins on top. Into the microwave it goes and I enter the time for exactly 1 minute and 30 seconds. Once complete, I enjoy the warm oatmeal with the resonating flavor of what the cold cereal was.  

Special K with strawberries is amazing.  Kelloggs Corn Pops: also a hit.  Bran flakes? A total bust-the weeks with only bran flakes are the worst. But I hope this breakfast ritual never ceases. 

I strive for my eating behaviors to be natural and work as one. I think food can be more therapeutic for people than it usually is, and in this way, I see the hot & cold combo every morning as a filling, supercharged and healthy way to jumpstart my day. Being a dirty corporate monster, I see the ridiculous amount of waste I can produce on a daily basis and it disgusts me.  In my OWN life that I actually control, I seriously try to utilize everything I have to the fullest, and throwing out even something as simple as leftover cereal milk used to bother me. No longer!

I have forced my practice on others that enjoy oatmeal, and some have embraced the behavior and love me because of it.

Gabe writes: 

I like to drink something to pep me up in the afternoon, an espresso, a coffee, or a mate.  This might not seem idiosyncratic; many people drink coffee midday to pep them up.  I think my practice of mid-day drinking is unusual because barring exceptional circumstances it is the only time I will have coffee. 

I begin at eleven or noon usually, when the word COFFEE slips into my mind.  Packed into the word is desire, or the desire into the word: the word and desire are concomitant.  I don’t think about the taste of coffee, how it will make me feel, or how it smells.  I just think the word, COFFEE, and want it.  I want the word itself.  If it is early I decide not to have it yet, to wait until two or three.  I think about it though, and decide if I am going to drink coffee, espresso, or mate.  Then, at two or three, I have the drink I decided to have and don’t have any more until the next day, even if I want it before then.  

I battle with coffee.  I am fascinated with the desire it produces in me, and how that desire relates to my experience of the coffee itself.  COFFEE, more than an object, is a process of desire, a feeling of nostalgia, a yearning for that previous desire.  As a desiring of desire, coffee becomes a practice of memory.  When I have it, I focus and release myself to it, and bring the sensation—the experience and the memory of experience, the desire and the memory of desire—into a dialogue with the rest of my coffee memories, some dwindling and others staying.  I like deciding whether the coffee is good or not.  The goodness of the coffee then sometimes depends on everything but the coffee itself: the cup it is in, my location, the quality of the day, and my mood all contribute as much as the drink itself.  I do however, have a very specific sense of what I want espresso to taste and look like.  I know what I want mate to taste like, how it ought to flow and sound in the gourd. 

But this is just another way of enhancing the experience, another artificially imposed tension to increase desire, like waiting until two or three o’clock for the coffee.  I enjoy and appreciate coffee as the architecture of tensions built around an experience, without which, for me, coffee would lose significance.  Part of this construction of tension requires my resisting the coffee for a time.  Then, by having the coffee, I briefly bring it out of its reified place in my mind.  I think it’s my way of checking in to make sure everything, or at least coffee, is still real.

Wesley writes:

I go up to the roof of my building when I need to center myself or prepare for some big event. Sometimes I go up there just to think about things. I go up there with my really old mp3 player and look out at my neighborhood. At night it looks completely different. Up there, with all the lights on it looks more grand and peaceful than it ever seems to me on the street. Even in the summer when it’s ridiculously hot and gross, it’s always cool up there and there always seems to be a breeze.

I go up there to be alone, when I need to do things that are private. I practice martial arts up there. I listen to music. I preach sermons. Sometimes I just sit. It’s like my fortress of solitude. It’s strange to me how incredibly open and public it is, while at the same time so private and secluded. On the one hand, anyone could see me if they bothered to look up. But on the other hand, nobody ever does. I can be loud or quiet and nobody would ever know the difference.

It feels like I’m hovering above the world, rather than simply finding a corner of it to hide in. I’ve never put it that way before.

Edmund says:

I rise at 6:30a.m. (I won’t give the details about why,) and have to rush off to the bathroom. I get in the bathroom. I turn on the shower. I leave the lights off for a few minutes to let my eyes get used to the sunlight which is just beginning to come in the bathroom. While the water is heating up, I remove my clothes and do ten pushups in the nude.

I like to do this because, partly, I like the idea of beginning the day with some kind of physical activity. And part of it is I just can’t make it to the gym every day. It makes me feel like I earned my breakfast. It’s really kind of freeing, because we have such a sort of um, conservative image of our bodies, things to cover up, you wouldn’t think of running laps naked. I just like to feel unrestrained. Natural. Healthy. Just the way God made me. I also think it really makes my chest look nice, and I want my chest to look nice for my boyfriend. Because he likes my chest.

“B.M.” writes:

I have a practice about pooping. I don’t go until it’s ready to glide right out. It’s really pleasurable to not have to work hard. I’ve never been constipated. I think it’s mind-control. I can move my bowels by thinking about it. It’s some kind of Jedi mind trick, because you think to yourself, I’m going to have an excellent shit. You go and sit on the toilet, and then it’s immediate, it’s clean and it’s satisfying. It’s efficient. I like to have my body functioning at maximum efficiency. 

It’s not an issue of urgency, and not that I want to avoid the bathroom. I enjoy reading on the toilet as much as anyone else. Actually there are times when I sit down and think, okay, I’m going to read something to pass the time while I’m here, but before I even get the book open I’m done and then I think, well that’s silly, or sometimes I just sit there and read anyway. I never shit after I’ve opened a book; it just never happens that way. I like that it doesn’t involve muscular straining, it’s all in my head: when I wanna go, my brain calmly and rationally tells my gut that it’s time. 

I don’t know if it’s relevant, but the first time I ever shit on the big girl pot was because my mom bribed me with a single m&m.