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| El Roco looking the way I still kinda feel. |
Yesterday was a little horrific for my delicate temperament. I almost burned the house down!
I figure it was high time to prove I had survived Las Posadas and Nuevo Ano with the cousins, a pig roast, el pavo cocido durante seis horas, bacalao, alpiste, epazote, posole, apple strudel and being surrounded by lengthy garlands of tripe (oh, I DO have an imagination!)– I had survived all that and was able to get back to work! So I started in on this and that in cyberspace, feeling like I could slip back into things with gusto. More time passed than I knew and I remember that I wanted to make some tea. Then it hit me, I had some water on to boil!
I went to the kitchen to find toxic smoke and fire on the counter where there should have been just a kettle belching steam. Letting the magic of adrenaline do it’s thing, I speedily put out the flames, unplugged what was left of the kettle and opened up as many door and windows as I could. I was shaking in terror because the house I’m in is a tinderbox. Candles aren’t even burnt here very often! And I thought I was alone.. I did not understand why the dogs were not barking, even whimpering or why Dolores hadn’t smelled all the smoke filling up the house and come out to the kitchen to see what was going on. My Human had already left to cross the border earlier that morning- so not even he was there to detect that there was something wrong… He won’t be back until this evening. I did get help with the clean up, fortunately, but I felt so horrible..
My constitution was shot for the rest of the day. I was able to do few things after. All I wanted was a hug; simple reassurance that I don’t need to feel so damned guilty for completely destroying a perfectly good antique, poisoning the air with cancerous fumes and nearly incinerating the house… In my effort to distract myself/calm down, I curled up under the heating blanket and surfed to theoretical physics lectures about multiverses and articles about how light is not a particle or a wave or a wavicle.
Scientists are still learning that tangled and spooky things happen at the subatomic level, but only when you aren’t looking at them! Heh. I knew that!
Surfing went on to Padmasambhava- his Bardo teachings, a boy who was supposed to be in a state of meditation that let him neither eat nor drink for 10 months and finally drifting to sleep with the story of the Buddha in Khmer (thank you YouTube). But because of my nerves still dealing with the panic of the day, not even my sleep could hold me under for long. I was awake and all ears in the dark; uncomfortable and listening, hoping that all the noises that I heard in the other rooms were normal house-at-night sounds. I have yet to learn them. It is still going to take me much more time to really settle here in here.
Today was a much better, quieter day. After getting some tedious things on the way to being done and chatting with friends I feel more like myself. Tomorrow will be even better! Yeah. Onward and upward.