THE OX ARRIVES

Was awakened this morning, in the first hour of the new year, by a mosquito. I was irritated, and later consulted my feng shui calendar, which indicated that today was mostly auspicous or neutral, but that the hour from 1 to 3 a.m. was very bad. Indeed! I tossed and turned and sprayed DEET and tried breathing exercises. I may have slept, but can't be sure. I was partly disturbed because I started reading that damned "Eat, Pray, Love" book again. At the ashram, she is having all kinds of issues, which might have been more interesting if she'd used the third person in her narrative. More relevant to the present moment though, one evening she meditates to ignore the mosquitoes that are sipping her troubled blood. My mosquito was quite harmless I'm sure, but would you trust mosquitoes in India? Do they have malaria in India? Why am I reading this book? She says all the bites faded quickly. She was lucky: a couple weeks ago when our night visitors were out in large force, my complexion acquired a frightening adolescent appearance for a few days. While she has many interesting observations about meditation and spiritual quest (that's why I'm still reading it!), there are way too many problems of her own. I think I would have avoided her if she were on one of my own recent retreats --speaking of which, while trying to ignore my pathetic buzzing Year of the Ox harbinger by thinking about what to do in the coming year, I made a decision to go back to Wudang in September. Now the year begins to map itself out. I have a vision, a plan, a framework for the next cycle.

What's your plan?