Um . . .

I have tried meditation several times, off and on through the years, and it’s never really worked for me the way I want it to. I really wanted it to work. But sometimes — to the utter dismay, if not disdain, of the teacher — it simply puts me to sleep. And sometimes I get so freaked out focusing on my breathing that even that feels hard.

I don’t think I ever tried any meditation where the leader had us chant. You know, Om. Which I initially spelled “ohm,” but that’s a German guy who gave his last named to the unit of electrical resistance he discovered.

No H, just Om. My friend Veronica, whom I haven’t seen in many years since she moved to be closer to her children, once explained its significance to me, and I wish I had either paid more attention or remembered better. It was something about Om being the deepest essence of the divine.

Veronica, I should also note, was the originator of the Petunia Star Theory of Being. Veronica used to serve as my dog Reprieve’s day care, and she lived next door to a woman who for whatever reason named her black Lab Petunia Star. Reprieve and Petunia Star loved to run along the fence between them. On days when Petunia Star wasn’t on her side of the fence, Reprieve would sit, often for hours, by her side of the fence waiting for Petunia Star to come along and play. And sometimes it worked! If you want something bad enough, and put the mental work into it — sitting for hours projecting into the universe if that’s what it takes — you can get what you want. Or so goes the theory.

Back to the Om, though. Since I can’t remember what exactly Veronica said, I have turned to the internet, where on yogajournal.com Yelena Moroz Alpert wrote this:

“Om” is more than just an invitation to start your practice. It is said to be the primordial sound born with the universe. As we exhale the A-U-M, its vibration links us to the original source of creation. When done properly, the sound reverberates from the pelvic floor upward through the crown of the head, filling the body with pulsating energy that simultaneously empowers and radiates tranquility.

Perhaps my meditation efforts failed because I wasn’t one with the universe. Now, Ms. Moroz Alpert also tells me that she had a very hard time buying into the Om, that it sounded very whiny when she first tried it and for a long time she felt self-conscious.

Without even seeing how I do with the Om, I have, by default, moved to the Um.

That I can do with great conviction, and frequently, and I’ve been doing so for quite a long time, but it’s only recently that I have uncovered its meaning for me. It means that I am overwhelming myself with my mental to-do list, and when I stop to try to organize it, all that comes out is “Um.”

I stop in the middle of going somewhere. Um, what was I doing? I am trying to think a thought. Um, what was I trying to think about? I try to think two thoughts simultaneously. Um, that’s not going to work. Um, um, um. I chant it morning, noon and night. Mostly out loud. Um.

I so rarely know what I’m doing these days. Um, what was I going to do? I am on my way to feed the cat, but I am trying to organize my day. Um, what do I need to get done? I go to write my list to see if I can track whats needs to get done. Um, what was I just going to write down?

It may not be the hum of the universe, but it is certainly the mantra of my life these days.

After years of trying to make me feel bad about myself, the Washington Post has extended some grace recently, running a column on how one doesn’t really have to declutter (or at least one columnist decided she didn’t) and touting a procrastination lifestyle that sounded just like mine: writing down a note to call someone instead of just picking up the phone and calling. If I can get the thought from my brain to the paper before it gets lost. Um, what was I just thinking?

It’s just in the last couple weeks I’ve realized what that little Um is trying to do. It’s trying as hard as its two little letters will work to help me focus. Frequently I follow it with a corollary admonition, often also out loud: “One thing at a time.”

I keep reading, in the Post and many other places, that no one is good at multi-tasking, especially the people who think they excel at it. Of course, everyone thinks they can look at their phone and still be present in someone else’s moment, but that’s just not true. Um, what?

These days, I can barely single-task, and I do much better at that if I’ve started with, “Um. One thing at a time,” and then do that one thing without concern for anything else. This works until my brain, which isn’t as good as heeding “one thing at a time” as I am — perhaps I should try meditation — starts thinking other things, and I rush in a panic to download them to paper before they disappear in a vaporized mist, leaving me only with a vague sensation that there was Something Important I, um, needed to do.

Some of this is probably age. Lynn and I have taken to watching shows from the ’80s, and in nearly every scene she wants to know who one of the guest actors is, because they look familiar. Either a name comes to me immediately or I no longer concern myself with it, because, um, I need those brain cells to remember what needs to happen on the morrow, not back in the ’80s.

Some of this is probably stress. It’s been a supremely stressful year, mostly over things that are beyond my ability to control. They are other people’s confidences that are not mine to share with you all — which turns out to be how I achieve catharsis. Write it in the blog and suddenly it seems manageable, that’s what I’ve learned these last few years. But for now these stresses belong to others and I’m part of that, but it’s not mine to tell you about, um, no matter how much I might want to.

Some of it’s probably the angry state of the world. It seems to permeate everything. Politics, obviously, but also customers and clerks, the dark, angry TV shows and movies that Hollywood was churning out as entertainment before it screeched to a striking halt, and the drivers who roar past me in an angry belch of exhaust right as the sign wants us to slow to 40 in order for them to be at the Walmart stoplight as I pull up and we, um, both wait.

So life is angry, stressful and aging. Um, what would you like me to do about it? One thing at a time, I guess, as best as I can manage. Perhaps I can try centering myself within the universe — or I can write a note that I intend to do so in my organizing notebook. They’re the same thing, I’m pretty sure. Um-hm.