Monday, March 31, 2008

Wild Kingdom Continued

Check this out:

Dear Friend,
Let me start by introducing myself. I am Mr. Pang Xiusheng, Chief Financial Officer, China Construction Bank, 25 Finance St Beijing, China .I have a business proposal of $27,400,000.00 ( Twenty seven million Four Hundred Thousand United State Dollars ).For you. contact for more detail.
Kind Regards,
Pang Xiusheng.

I may be able to extend my time in India! Besides Mr. Xiusheng's generous offer, I had an email from an astrological site and an offer to extend some anatomy I don't have and therefor, these services I not be requiring.

To continue where I left off on the animal farm- More Wild Kingdom Moments (just like a Heritage Canada Minute, without the feeling of "I can't stand another minute of this, kill me.") :

There were three geckos in my room this morning, one I thought was staring at me but it's just the way they have of those little peppercorn eyes on the sides of their head looking all open. When I turned on my light, he blinked. I thought it was a nice touch to our goodbye morning (pardon me, our namaste morning to Jessie) but I would have preferred three roses in my room. All the yoga work continues, no attachment, no preferences. I'm working on it, I'm working it.

Many bugs have crawled across my Yoga mat, to say nothing of the ones that crawl across my bed. Black carpenter ants have decided I am their very own personal jungle gym. It's like they're playing their own deadly game of 'chicken' (uhm, you can't say 'their own deadly game of which lentil bean gets thrown out' - it just doesn't work. There's some things you have to expand your vegetarian consciousness for.) Who knew ants were such daredevils. Or lemmings. I imagine when I was an ant, maybe I followed the herd too but you'd think one guy would say "Let's climb the tree instead of Eufemia. The tree won't scream and swat at us."

I don't actually scream. I don't even go "ack!" anymore. There you go, it is a life-changing trip, an adventure in India. For one thing, I tossed the cockroach off my mat without flinching. I just thought "Buddy, I'll help you out. You're going the wrong way." FLICK. I ignore the mini-jumping spiders that are flourescent green in colour, they're almost translucent. The first one I saw I thought "Quick, flourescent green good or bad?" I mean what the heck's a poisonous colour in nature? Once again a subject not covered in my education. Who knew flourescent green existed in nature? I thought those colours disappeared in the 80's.

And why I feel I still have to explain the snake-drawstring, I dunno, but here: This is cobra territory, and Swamiji's nephew stood in front of a cobra at Swamiji's house - that's right, the place where we practice yoga - when he was a one year old. The cobra swayed and did nothing, because, being an infant, his nephew was not afraid. His nephew is now 12. That's 11 years ago, when Swamiji says "That time very badly for cobras here." I prefer the cobra story that goes "Well, now, lemme see, Henry Ford had just invented the car and that made camels obsolete, so maybe, what 85 years ago this cobra problem happen?"

I don't think anyone who knows me would believe I'm now a wild-child-at-one-with-nature, I have this thing about cities, I love the heartbeat of a city, like I love the breath of the woods, like I love the embrace of the ocean. But I have grown happily accustomed to doing my laundry at the same time as I shower, using the same water not just to conserve it but because I love it. (Also, I can finally thank my parents for that 1982 trip to Italy that taught me how to survive without a shower for many, many days. The number of days is irrelevant. You don't need to know. You might look at me differently.)

The jury's still out on which sound I would leave off my India soundtrack: angry cows, unimpressed camels, mating cats, fighting dogs, or whatever the hell it is those bats are doing in the Banyen tree. It's not a happy sound. Two baby bats flew past my head last night, playing 'chicken'. Ha ha. Guess who was the chicken? They flew within 3 feet of my head - that's a little close. So, now I know what bats sound like when they're making out.

Children of the night...what music they make.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know how you stand it! All I can think about is how I definitely DO have preferences: "No icky things" comes to mind.

By the way, I love when you post poems. I love seeing what other people love. You know?

Eufemia said...

Yes, I know! Me too! Me too!