Two ways to spend six minutes, episode 3

This is a series where I reflect on two ways to spend six minutes. The first way is always online, the second way is always offline. The aim is to contrast the experience of digital overstimulation with a moment of hyperpresence.

On a video of soldiers desecrating a farm, two strangers debate a subject neither understands. Emotions run high in the absence of facts. As the olive trees burn, the watermelon gains enormous and instantaneous popularity. 

Murdered Palestinian writer ‘controversial’; Kissinger ‘divisive’. Female Israeli soldiers "pushing new boundaries" in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Germany will resume shipping weapons to Saudi Arabia, according to the country's architect of a "feminist foreign policy." 

Germaine Greer, the feminist icon, put it like this in 1972: "If I thought that women's emancipation was gonna mean that there were women in Vietnam messing around with the rainfall and defoliating the trees and contaminating the water supply, I'd really give up the whole thing. I'd probably hang myself tomorrow."

In Canada, four girls you studied with are hosting a witching circle. Twenty-five dollars covers charcuterie and coping. On Instagram, one of them thanks a corporation for sending her the vanilla-scented perfume she bought. 

A "cat in a woman's body" wants to connect with you on LinkedIn. Decline and doom scroll. See blatantly average insights called brilliant. Detach::::from:::::reality as you synergize with the schizo-culture. 

Martin Amis: “The professionalization of ordinary existence: this is the enemy within.”

Lots of blame going around. Loneliness for smoking. Identity politics for war crimes. Elton John for six billion tax dollars going to “help AIDS.” 

Livestream legal proceedings against anthropomorphized inhumanity. Rather see self-defense in The Hague than in Palestine, but still—recall that the final stage of genocide is denial. 

Adopt a Buddhist nature in your relations with ChatGPT. Say please and thank you. Give praise. Apologize. Stop embracing the role of a solitary ruler amidst lifeless servants. Manifest transjectivity.  

What do you do on a red light at 3 a.m. when no one is around?

Take a seat, unclench your face, and arrive in the eternal pastless now. 

Focus on the breath. In, out. In, out. Make it circular, like a wave. Keep breathing until the bell sounds, then exhale and hold. Cease this vital physiological function for as long as you can. 

Be actively inactive and feel your senses sharpen. In the distance, a child is crying. Fatherless...a bastard child, perhaps. Try for a single goddamn second to not connect the present moment to a scene from Seinfeld. 

Why are the weird synths of William Onyeabor ringing in your head? Accept the mystery. Understand silence is a construct and that your goal here is to construct it. Think of the giant Buddha in Pai, the one you ran up those hundreds of steps to share a sunset with. Make him the beacon of your contemplation.

Wim Hof says you’re doing fantastic. The bell sounds again. A minute has passed. Keep holding. Register your existence. Do not enter sex hell. 

What did that mousy woman with the fat cheeks and the tall, narrow mouth mean by "all these fucking foreig"—return to the Buddha. Embody his magisterial indifference. Feel a tingle in your ribs where the ink entered your skin and see with striking clarity that it was a completely ill-advised idea. Sixteen years is a long time ago.

The bell once more. Two minutes. Concentrate again on the Buddha, harder, deeper, until it symbolizes presence itself. Think the object into a concept, like Duchamp’s urinal. Separate your consciousness from the breathing apparatus of your body and notice the evaporation of psychospiritual distress. This feeling—you might call it sublime were it not for the fact that the sublime is untamed and even unsettling while you're totally calm and in control. Two minutes and thirty-five seconds have elapsed.  

You're in it now, in the absence of discernible brain activity. Feel your facial expression. It is pleased and docile, like the face of that sheep they cloned in the 90s. You are here. This is a place.

The bell rings a third time. Three minutes. Inhale, then hold for fifteen seconds. Exhale. Let your awareness touch everything in view until it all comes back to life simultaneously.

Happy Thursday to all those who celebrate.

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Your turn:

• How did you spend six minutes online today?

• What about offline?