9. I ate a fly

Meditation is not about thinking of nothing unless nothing is your topic of meditation. It is the act of deeply contemplating and focussing one's thoughts or attention. It could also be said to be an act of muttering/speaking to oneself (whether silently in your mind or out loud), over and over and over again. A bit like how cows chew cud, swallow it and bring it up to chew on again later. Successful meditation should deepen the understanding of a specific topic or open the mind/soul to be influenced by the spiritual.

I will not throw up.

I will not throw up.

I will not throw up.

This is not meditation. This is trying to convince yourself by concentration and gathering your will power. A bit like trying to go to the toilet when you're constipated. Or trying not to fart when you feel the gas pressure building up in your bowels and you really need to go but you're in a packed room giving a presentation to a bunch of Very Important People.

Or not.

I will not die from eating a fly.

Flies are not poisonous.

Flies are just insects.

Insects are just extra protein.

These are facts of life that while true, my stomach and mind refuse to believe. Truth does not always invoke belief, nor do beliefs always indicate the truth. Facts do not equal truth and truth does not equal fact.

For example, the chicken coming before the egg. While either theory could be true, if the dog ate the chicken after it laid the egg, then the egg could never be hatched without incubation and then there may be no chicken following the orphaned egg. Rather if the fact that the egg was not a chicken egg but was instead a snake egg, then it would not matter whether the chicken came before the egg or not, because the chicken could have been running down the hill, followed by the rolling egg which was startled out of the nest by the cucumber that the chicken thought was the snake that had just laid an egg and was frightened by the eggs that fell out of the basket of the person who owned the dog which ate the roast chicken the person had put on the dining table for dinner the night before, whereupon the empty stomach caused the person to open their mouth to complain of hunger. And accidentally eat a fly.

A fly?

Yes.

A fly.

A shiny bottomed blue blowfly.

It was crunchy.

It was salty.

It was also slightly hairy.

It was icky.

It was yucky.

It was also very scary.

This is not meditation. This is a form of reflection and where panic meets the sarcastic brain that must make irrelevant heart wrenching comments on the importance of morals, principles and Responsibility. That's right, my readers. Responsibility with the bright orange capital R. Don't ask me why R's are orange. They just are.

For when eating a fly, the brain must for some reason cross reference the incident with the moral of a story like the one below:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the message was lost.

For want of a message the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Therefore, dear readers, rather than start pulling your hair lest you go bald at the irrelevant information here, it is far better and healthier to empty one's bowels and release the build-up of gas in the toilet prior to any important presentation you may have to give to Very Important People. Also, ensure you drink sufficient fluid and partake of goodly amounts of daily fibre in order to stave off the immeasurably troublesome problem of constipation. Avoid the use of overly long and wordy sentences with slightly more archaic English language structures unless you are in the process of using the psychic pokémon ability Confusion upon your readers who may not have English as their first language but then again maybe do and then may still not understand what is going on. One can only hope, perchance, that the readers will be as smart as editors say they truly are and understand these great slabs of wordy text play.

Or not.

But that doesn't matter.

I don't blame you either way.

I find this nauseating to re-read myself while trying to pick bits of a fly out of my mouth.

Friendly reminder.

After cooking dinner, do not place your freshly roasted chicken where the dog can get it. Never turn your back on the dining table when your dog is eyeing said roast chicken. Even if you saw a snake laying (or eating?) eggs in the chicken coop and you dropped a cucumber that scared both the chicken and the snake to go running down the hill chased by the eggs that were accidentally upset from the basket in the process.

Whether you believe this to be illogical or entertaining, ludicrous or improbable, surreal or disgusting, or all of the above, stop it. Truly. Stop laughing at me. It's not funny.

All I mean, my dear snickering readers, is to say that neither contemplation, meditation nor reflection have helped me to calm down, because... after accidentally eating one fly, I opened my mouth to get its carcass out and then another flew in and this time, I swallowed before I realised what was going on.

I ate a fly.

I'm going to go throw up now.