dangerous compassions

I call you / from the comet's cradle

Friday, April 21, 2006

quietly happy

I went to Vedanta wearing jeans to protect my knees because I knew I'd be knealing in dirt. First I stopped in at the auditorium, a horrible name for it, to pray. I pray for peace every time. I love being alone in there, when the lights are off, and my shoes off, sitting in the front row. I sat until my breathing was entirely calm. I put my forehead on the floor three times, which is all I allow myself. And I left quietly happy.

Then I got a wheelbarrow and wheeled it to the front, where I pulled weeds for an hour. Swami doesn't like the morning glories, but I do, so unless he asks me to, I ignore them and just pull the bad weeds, like ugly feral grains, crabgrass, baby oak trees, and prickley nettles, which didn't hurt at all, even though I didn't have any gloves on.

It was cloudy then sunny then cloudy. I picked huge weeds clinging tight into the ground and little tiny ones that could have been well-picked with tweezers. I saw a spider, some bugs, and an aggressive worm that was coming right for me, behaving less like a worm and more like a true animal. I said, "Go away! I don't like you! Go away!" and pushed some mulch at it.

When I got hungry, I wheeled my wheelbarrow to the scrap pile and dumped my weeds. And I washed up, picking mud from underneath my nails, and peeked in the library to see if there was any sign of Swami. I wanted to tell him no one ever updated the calender online, but he wasn't around. So I ate some teething biscuits in the truck and drove home.

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