Burning Electrons

What a day, first my knee squirts all over my room, then it leaks onto my pants while we were in the Vaishali museum, and my balance was so bad that I didn’t trust myself on the wall at Ashoka’s excavation; I almost fell over when I tried to stand up after meditating in the museum with the Buddha’s urn.  Then, while we were in another smaller museum, I got a text message that my ex-wife’s dog, Georgie, died.  He was my special friend.  I really loved that dog. He always made me laugh.

We had just walked in to one of the back rooms on the left side of the museum when I got the message.  All I could do was lean against the wall and try to breath slowly and not cry too loudly.  At lunchtime I decided to just stay on the bus and be quiet with myself and think about George; we took him to the vet last week because he seemed to be having more problems with his arthritis and they told us that he might have a spot on his liver. Susan said he just bled out. I’m so bummed. I just wanted to sit quietly.  I wasn’t there for Georgie and I wasn’t there for Susan, I let them both down.  I was so bummed.

Its hard to write this in both the present and past tense.  Reading over the notes that I wrote while I was in India, experiencing the events of the day, and then trying to write stuff from the present. It is hard to keep the tenses straight.  Am I writing it now or am I writing it in the past.  So it gets mixed up. But I wrote that I really wanted Georgie to jump up on the couch and crash his head into my lap the way he used to do.  He was my good friend. It must have been terrible for Susan. I wish I had been there to hold both of them.

I also wrote in my journal that I might not be able to ride anymore and that I would have to sell my bike. Damn, what else is left?  I can’t do any of the things I used to like to do. The things that defined me as a person.  So what is left?  That is the kind of stuff I was writing about in my journal, that when I can’t ride anymore it makes no sense to hang around any longer. I wrote that I would rather have people remember me as an active, vital person and not some decrepit old geezer who can’t even go up or down the steps without being able to touch the wall or a bannister to keep his balance.  I don’t want to be a pathetic old geezer. I’ll try to ride another season, but if I can’t do any of the things I like to do, I’d rather just  put my karmic seeds back in to the universal pool.  Maybe I’ll be reborn into Amitabha‘s pure land.