The first few days
With very little sleep, I’m roused with the sound bowl gong thing to hurry downstairs. OK, I’m lying. Rey shakes me awake. Everyone else is already down there, so I guess I’d better hustle my act. Morning, isn’t my fastest speed, but I’ve got to find a gear because Chi gives me a dirty look once I stumble down the stairs with one eye still shut. Silence. We start meditation & of course I struggle to sit still. Breathe Laurie.
Afterwards, there is a lot of Chi talking & us sharing back, mostly with questions. Whenever anyone shares he goes on long tirades, quite aggressively about how the thinking we have is faulty. He’s very passionate about his views & I start to realize it’s his way or the highway.
We get a small bowl of diced fruit with ground up almonds & seeds on top & a cup of warm tea for breakfast. The sound of our stomachs growling is the morning entertainment.
We do a haphazard yoga/tai chi/stretching combo that has no rhythm or we go for a short walk in the forest around the house. It’s logging country & the roads are mostly sandy & washed out. There are a lot of eucalyptus, cork, oak & chestnut trees. The resident dogs come along & what a straggling pair of mutts they are! Little ankle biters, absolutely filthy & yappy, the dogs dart around us, but Chi has forbidden us to interact with them, so when they jump up on us, we have to just ignore them.
During our breaks we are encouraged to sit out in the backyard, without reading or writing & listen to our thoughts. I grab a plastic lawn chair & sit with my face to the sun…searching for warmth. Sometimes, I poke around the yard to mentally criticize the neglect the place has fallen to. The yard is a disgrace. When they take the green top of a pineapple, for example, they just throw it out into the yard. There is a compost bin, but it’s also heeped with broken roofing tiles, bags of cement that have hardened from the elements & just plain garbage.
Honestly, it’s tough not to talk with the other people. At times Chi rants, off on tangents & Chia only speaks when spoken to. He’s starting to seems like a bully.
The young girl who was in the hotel initially, Katherine from Sydney Australia, becomes a comrade. We exchange secret looks & smirks at times. When she asks me how to spell my name by mouthing the words, I write my name in bold letters & show her. It feels like being back in grade school, afraid of getting caught by a teacher. After the next break she passes me a folded up piece of paper with my name written on it in big bold fancy script & the words, FUNNY, LOVELY, SMART, KIND, DRIVEN, BRAVE, written around it. I beam happily at it, alone in my room later. Communication in any form is something to cling to.
