a most unusual meditation

I have become conscious that I manically multitask, sipping coffee, lighting cigarette, typing left handed. But meditation aint like that is it? Kinda sacred, requiring the exculsion of all else. Besides, I have always thought of it as just sitting (before it became walking and a few other things I won't cop to here). Hmmm.

A few weeks ago I fell in love with a little orchid from the Mekong Delta. They had been cleverly potted in snail shells, which was cool until you put them on a flat surface. So I made a mobile. Bamboo and raffia, feathers (of course) and a couple of large crystals which were not that happy with the light on my god-spot. It's been christened the "questionably cathartic potatoes on a string" by a smug and cynical friend. qcpoas (there's a fine san click in that like "!darrell". If you do not know that amusing story, drop me a line, I'd love to share it).

Yeah, yeah ... I know what you are thinking. He's making shit with refuse from the gods again ... up the lithium dose. Give me a break, at least it's not hanging from a fresh piercing. That's growth innit?

Anyhoo ... It didn't like the light (or the cigarette smoke) in the study either.

So it grew a little, courtesy of the Bluebird whole food market and my apparent inability to visit there without shedding a few k. And moved to a new spot above the bath. It's very happy there.

So long as I have run the bath well in advance and can't hear the geyser filling, I like to meditate in the bath. With my head under the water I can hear my heartbeat. Makes me feel like I have achieved a new level of mastery.

So, I have taken to doing my "torture pillow" exercise, in the bath, with ice packs on my knee (to get that over and done with and to increase the load ... (I wanna walk in Spain and Greece and I can do without crutches on a camel in Giza)

... and meditating.

This morning the damned geyser was doing it's thing and my heart and I were not connecting. I opened my eyes and got such a gift.

I like the view of qcpoas from below; but this morning it was awesome. Wreathed in the rising steam the orchids looked fat and warm, wet and happy. The feathers were beaded with moisture and the overhead light had pierced the top of the central crystal, punching scattered pinpricks of colour.

Sorry heartbeat, you'll have to wait your turn. I blissed out in that little landscape for half an hour.

It's going to be a very good day.