Read Time: 03:29
For a long time when I was little, I didn’t know all the words to the “Our Father,” let alone what the prayer meant. Memorization was new, and because I could only remember as much as I could get through in the first breath, I would repeat what I knew, over and over and over, exactly as long as it took everyone else to finish.
“On Earth as it is in Heaven.”
Years later at an immersion school, we would have to memorize the same prayer in Spanish. I was at the age where hearing something enough times lead to the belief that you could fill gaps in understanding with random but approximate words, the way we did with song lyrics and philosophy.
“Y perdona nuestras dudas como nosotros perdonamos nuestros dudas.”
More time has passed and now Churches are just wonderful architecture. Prayers are an empty vase we send to sick people so they have a place to display their modest bouquets of hope. Memorization in the age of The Google is not a skill, but a cocktail-party affectation.
The only place I am invited to some semblance of prayer anymore is during yoga classes which are filled with excruciatingly good looking and much younger people.
I don’t care for young people the way I care for older people. I think everyone younger than me should be relegated to jobs at Trader Joe’s, and when I meet in person, for example, the successful artist whose bio said he was born in 1993, I feel form on my face a million microexpressions of judgment, the likes of which even $800 worth of Botox can’t suppress.
One afternoon in yoga class, the instructor announces that my “breathing is incorrect,” and a red, humiliated feeling one should not feel during a meditative practice wells up in me. I assume she is trying to help by making such an assessment, but all I understand is that this woman, this woman whose only fatty aspect has been syringed into her lips? She just informed the entire class that I can’t manage a basic autonomic function.
And she’s not wrong–that’s the worst part. I actually do spend a bad amount of time in yoga class thinking about smoking cigarettes.
To end the class, the instructor gives us a mantra. Her cartoon lips drip monotonous, meaningless-to-me syllables: Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung.
We repeat the incantation. And we repeat the incantation. And we repeat the…and I’m saying, “Ma Ma Ma Say Say Say Hung,” and I don’t care that it’s wrong, so I keep saying it because our voices, voluminous, fill the space up to the roof beams, and no one can tell I’m so wrong anyway and the whole, low tone starts to soothe, rumbling slow through my chest.
Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung.
The instructor who we cannot see because our eyes are closed now, is, in my mind’s eye, a plumped and glossy, pouty mouth, bulbously but with perfect teeth articulating: Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung.
It sounds like a Lady Gaga lyric. It sounds Vietnamese. Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung. It sounds like a jazz singer working out phrasing with no words.
Mantras need doing 108 times, and who knows if we’re even at 40 yet. There’s still time to get it right, I think, though I’m lucky if I make it to the end Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung because usually I give up in earnest before then. It’s hard, man, Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung How are these even words?
Sure-definitely I do not know what it all means Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung big picture, or if this’ll fix my chakra? Plus we been doing this a minute now, man Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung if I could just get it right just a couple times, seriously, a couple times in a row Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung I should have it memorized by now what are we at like 80 now Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung seriously how can you not remember something when you’re listening so hard, Jesus Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung it’s the same every time and you heard it so so many times already.
Every incantation I get at least one syllable wrong; and every incantation I’m one syllable closer to getting it right.
HOME / ABOUT / RADIO / BACK TO TOP
Current Sh*t 