I started taking an All About Judaism class and last week was on mysticism.

Usually I like the class a lot, and I take a lot of notes. But in mysticism none of the words were spellable, all I wrote down was “shebeeti” and “sheriti” and now I’m not even sure if those are two different words or two attempts at spelling the same word. The class was still useful though, because to be honest before the class I thought I wasn’t into mysticism, and after just two hours, I KNEW I wasn’t into mysticism.

We spent the last part meditating. She explained that the most common side effect of meditation is weight gain because your bones become dense with love. Then before we had a chance to ask questions about that, she told us to close our eyes, and to imagine God’s name on our bodies. It’s not the first tattoo I’d choose, but it’s way easier to spell than shebeeti so I was game.

Sometimes, lately, to be honest, I feel bad about my body. I guess it’s just proof I’m a girl, but lately to be more positive and more masculine I’ve been trying to think of things I do like about it and the complete list includes my eyebrows, my thumbs especially my left thumb, all ten of my fingernails, a birthmark on my right arm that looks like a division symbol ÷, and my left ear. That’s plenty of skin space for a name. I closed my eyes.

“We’re writing God’s name with honey,” she announced. “It’s a pile of honey, it’s landing on your head and dripping into your scalp.”

Obviously this was horrible news.

“The honey is back behind your eyes. It’s the most gold honey in the world. Now imagine it filling your lungs. Slowly. It’s viscous, this honey. So incredibly viscous and it’s filling all of your lungs.”

The woman sitting behind me started choking.

I learned about the word viscous in seventh grade, at an after-hours science lecture. My middle school would invite scientists in various fields to come talk in the cafeteria once a month, and if you went and listened and took notes you got extra credit. I never missed one. Not because I loved science but because science is one of those subjects that can suddenly take a turn at any moment. Everything’s going fine, you’re learning about ecosystems and cells and gravity and then HEY! here are mols, velocity, centripetal force, and you’re going to need all the extra credit you can get.

For the last ten years I’ve used the word viscous to try and make myself sound smarter but I knew that now it was just going to remind me of this woman choking and the feeling of my hair being incredibly sticky.

Now the honey was moving in between the muscles in our calves. The woman behind me continued to cough up negative energy into the air, which at this point was probably thick with flies.

When our socks were completely saturated we got to open our eyes and see who was still awake, and write down anything we wanted. We didn’t get to weigh ourselves before and after to see how much love we gained but I'm sure it was substantial.

Thinking about honey isn’t really my jam. Instead I like to imagine I’m in a plane, in the window seat, and we're taking off from LAX. It’s just huge in every direction, ocean and city and mountains and sky and I imagine that whatever is stressing me out is the size of a contact lens. Or a sequin, or an earring back. That makes the bad thing seems unbelievably small, so small I can’t even see it and I get distracted and start looking for shadows of whales in the ocean.

It works great when I’m stressed about a woman chocking to death in my All About Judaism class, or when I’m stressed about how mols work, or how shy I am, or how unfortunate-looking my ankles are, but it doesn’t work as well when there's a spider in my shower or I need to pay my utility bill.

Portland General Electric doesn’t accept a human body full of honey as payment, even though by my calculations a bodyful of honey is probably worth about $105. That’s if you just replaced your blood with honey, not the rest of you. Organic honey, not raw, adult male body, before meditation. Ask in the comments if you have any more questions about how I got this number.

Here is today can also make you feel better, if it's easy to make you feel better.

I also found the word "maymonetize" in my notebook, which I think is my spelling of Maimonides.