Life in the wild, meditation and chocolate chip cookies

Monday morning. I feel weak. Trying to get going, but I don’t know where to go. There is no sense of urgency other than when I feel the bloat in my bowels that came from someone’s dirty finger last night. I only had fried mixed vegetables with a scattering of cashews, which, by the way, did not hit the spot. I managed to make it home without procuring a bag of cookies, perhaps only because I felt like my stomach was still expanding. Turns out my friend’s meal was a little more toxic than mine. He spent the night in the hospital with diarrhea on IV fluid.

This morning, I had my first meditation session in what feels like months. It lasted a mere 20 minutes and even then I peeked at the clock once or twice. It’s a start, but definitely a poor one at that. Felt like I was sleeping for half of it. Breathe in the white light…love, kindness, compassion, patience and breathe out the blackness… anger, hatred, jealousy, impatience. Sometimes I don’t have enough breath in me to remember exactly what I’m breathing in and out.

I shaved my chest hair yesterday. I seem to do that every couple of years. Get bored looking at the same old thing. Unfortunately, I nicked my nipples in the process and they’re slightly irritated. Probably not the wisest decision to use a fresh Mach 3 razor when you’re shaving the hairs off your breasts. Now I feel slightly embarrassed to have such a bare chest, but I’ll probably feel at home in the gym. Until tomorrow…

The highlight of my morning, most mornings in fact, was entering my bathroom and hearing the zap zap zap from my mosquito racket as I connected with one of those bastards. They enter through the gaps in the wall fan, which when not on, allows for easily accessibility. I feel a bit strange talking to myself when I kill one.  Gotcha motherfucker! I didn’t kill a thing for months after my Buddhist meditation retreat earlier this year, but waking with itchy ankles and about five mosquitos swarming in the bathroom has changed me.

I even noticed that the daddy longlegs got some breakfast this morning. I don’t bother him up on the ledge near the fan. He’s near the shower, but high enough that he never gets wet. A mosquito got caught in his expanding web and I stopped my own business to watch his. One leg holding the mosquito and another madly tying him up. Then he’d stop, smell the mosquito’s bottom and start tying him up even more. Then he’d stop again and smell or perhaps nibble on his head. Life in the wild must be pretty, uh, wild.

Problem with living in the wild, it’d be pretty hard to procure oneself some chocolate chip cookies. And where could you stop to check email without wondering if some other fucker was going to pounce on you? It’d be a pretty hard existence. Get all sunburned and then try to either find a) a tube of aloe vera, b) an aloe vera plant growing in the wild, c) a female companion to help ease the pain or d) a cave to cry in. I’m kind of glad I don’t have to worry about getting caught in someone else’s web, to be quite honest.

Speaking of cookies has got me all hungry. I’d much prefer to eat something healthy, but most places with a cheap plate of fried rice don’t have free wifi. Nor do they have air conditioning or a comfortable place to call home for a couple hours. So I go to the cafe where the cheapest menu option is the croissant, but I’m not French so I opt for the second cheapest option, the cookies. Crunchy and delicious, the cookie monster in me is glad they don’t come in a bottomless bag otherwise I’d probably eat at least a dozen before my stomach signals my brain that I’m full. I try to balance it out with a pot of green tea.

Time to suit up and get out on the track before the sun starts setting. Yawn. Otherwise I’ll lie in bed a few more hours. And as tempting as that sounds, it’s just not that tempting without another body in it. So off I go into the bright sun’s rays to combat another day in the wild fending off predators and looking for prey. Eyes shifting left then right and then down to avoid the cars, motos and potholes. Quickly glancing the food carts to see if what’s in them stimulates any digestive juices. If not, carry on.