SCABs

Don’t open your mind too much or your brain will fall out @_sarahalliday

By Sara Halliday

A timeless line from everyone’s favorite Australian comedy musician Tim Minchin. I met a man called David yesterday, a man who Marc had evangelized. Marc evangelizes about a lot of people, and I’m not saying it’s lost its impact, but it’s lost its impact. David, however, opened my mind so much that I felt like my brain had fallen out.

Yesterday was my favorite day at the SCA thus far. I’ve been at the SCA for 71 days and I have 221 days to go. They say you should put your favorite campaign up on the wall and try to beat it, so I’m putting yesterday on my metaphorical wall and trying to beat it, but it’ll take some doing.

What was so good about yesterday, I hear you cry? I spent the afternoon doing something called Street Wisdom, facilitated by the founder, David Pearl. I don’t know what oyster this Pearl came from, but it must have been a good one. If you haven’t heard of it, I want you to stop reading this SCAB, go to https://www.streetwisdom.org/, then report back.

The afternoon involved a series of 10-minute walks, taken alone, with a brief such as ‘walk towards things you’re drawn to, and make mental note of the things you aren’t’. In only half an hour, I had seen more than I imagined I could. It’s as though doors were opening in my mind which made me able to see details that might otherwise have been missed.

Walking around Brixton market I felt hyper-sensitized. At times this was a bit overwhelming, the colors, the sounds, the smells. It was described as ‘as close as you can get to taking drugs without taking drugs’ which hit the nail on the head for me. It was incredible the effect that just looking around could have on your perception of the world.

The final exercise was to take a question to the streets and allow it to be answered by your own thoughts and the things around you while wandering for 45 minutes. David rightly said that we allow ourselves to wonder, so why not wander. Doing both, accompanied by the skeptic on my shoulder, I took to the streets of Brixton. Question in mind, I began to see things which to some extent answered my question. These included a soft touch to a cats head, a sign which said ‘keep gangways clear’, and the Brazilian word ‘Cafuné’ – which means to tenderly run your fingers through a lovers hair. Come find me if you’re interested to know about my question.

Yesterday I tweeted that I felt like a switch had been flipped in my brain, to which David replied with ‘keep flipping’. So this is advice to you, dear reader (hi mum!). Keep flipping. Keep flipping these switches in your brain, you will open your mind to things that you never thought possible.

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