The Raven's Roost

 You don't see "magic eye" 3D things around much anymore, but I really liked them when they were popular. I was actually pretty good at seeing them, I think mostly because I'd come across a short article in Omni about them, with an example you were supposed to write in about. I remember it specifically seemed designed to weed out fakers, because it asked, "what is the five-letter name of the animal in the puzzle?" and the answer if you could see it was actually "wasp," which is, of course, four letters. But I digress. The useful tool it featured was a couple of black dots to focus on until they seemed to be overlapping, which would let you know that you were focused properly for viewing the magic eye thing. I found it easy to do. My Mom even bought me a whole book of those things once, which was a lot of fun to go through. Most of the images were animals, I think it was the theme of the book. Anyway.

I seem to remember well before that, even, doing a similar eyeball trick as a kid. I had insomnia a lot, and like most kids with insomnia was told either that I was asleep and dreaming I was awake, or that I didn't have insomnia I just didn't want to go to bed like I'd been told. One thing I used to do to pass the time after lights out was basically to cross my eyes and focus inside my eyelids in a certain way that made me feel like I was floating. 

This morning I remembered that the two are the same. That very same focused but unfocused state.

Also "magic eye" is technically an autostereogram, which is a hell of a good word.

 Google News can, of course, be uncanny in its ability to find articles for you. I was not entirely surprised when it provided me with a piece about how to actually sleep on an airplane - a skill I clearly don't possess and wasn't sure could be cultivated. I'm not afraid of flying, exactly, I'm afraid of falling. At any rate, despite my best efforts sleep has always evaded me on flights so I went to read up and see what magic this might be.

The lady writing the article suggested a combination of meditative breathing and ... gong bathing? WTF is gong bathing. I know what meditation is but I clicked the link in the article and downloaded her favorite and recommended phone app for gong baths, then after reading the reviews paid the dollar upcharge for the premium version to get ads off it and fired the thing up. The one I downloaded is by "Rehegoo" if you want to look it up, I elected not to dig up links for different platforms here, though I know it's on iTunes and Android. Insight Timer also has some gong bath meditations available.

Gong bathing is one of those things you'd think I'd have heard of before. I can see now how it would be relaxing AF, though in the app I'm running the gong interval is a hectic five seconds - gotta fix that - there's only one gong sound that annoys me. The rest are actually quite soothing, especially paired with a background sound like ocean waves or rain. That will help, along with my earbuds, divert my attention from the engine sounds. I don't have noise cancelling earbuds, but the pair I own do block out quite a lot of ambient sounds. Let's just say I would not recommend them for going running outdoors - you won't hear fuck all going on around you. 

Japan is weird about melatonin but I'm going to have some on me anyway. From what I've read, unless you're trying to bring a large quantity into the country, (as one Redditor said, "amounts that would make a Yakuza boss blush") Customs doesn't care that much. But then again you also have to hope you didn't get Mr. Stick Exactly to All The Rules Guy. 

So while I have my doubts about whether it will heal me on a cellular level as some websites claim, it's nice to have something new in my Anxiety Toolkit. And listening to gongs on my phone looks a lot less weird than pulling my hoodie over my face and hugging my knees.