Morning Routine
by Erik Visser ︎︎︎Let me introduce myself. My name is Adjoun, a bookish monk. I live in the library of the Kunstinstituut, a small dark corridor between two shelving units where I collect dust and reflect on death. Through the dusty windows I see the seasons come and go, now already for 20 plus years.
As monks we train ourselves in meditation to sit erect for long hours. One of my morning routines is to meditate at dawn. I close my eyes, tired of reading too much art theory.
But my mind already wants to start the day, re-organize the shelves, give Wekker and Vasquez a proper shelf, dust off the old Biennale catalogues, but ho! not yet, not yet.
First I sit straight up like a meerkat, the small mongoose animal, with its large eyes always alert. Everytime I feel my back slumping, I think of Timon, the wisecracking meerkat from The Lion King that I loved so much as a child, and I slowly adjust my back.
I sit erect again, all done in complete stillness. And no back complaints afterwards. Just silence and being.
As a wise-cracking monk, the office meerkat, I gracefully recommend this morning routine to everyone with experience in meditation.