The Vipassana Diaries: Bus

To get to Vipassana, I had to take a bus from Montreal to Hawkesbury. You could tell who was going to Vipassana by their sleeping bags. Two people hadn’t bought tickets ahead of time and barely got a spot. I was relieved to avoid this last minute stress. Since it was my third time applying, I still had in the back of my mind that somehow it was still going to fall through. 

The girl beside me was going. She had her luggage on her lap. We chatted a little bit, about it being our first time. About having kids or not having kids. About having dogs or cats. About having partners. Then she fell asleep.

I went to the bathroom and I saw my bum in the mirror. It was full and white, with small zits on it. Bums and hands are only bums and hands because we call them that.

Everyone on the bus had a bum and hands. When I was little, I always used to think about this.

Think of all the bums in this room, I would think.

Back from the bathroom, I texted frantically with my friend Rhetta from Montreal. Boyfriend this. Yoga that. I kept postponing when I was going to turn off my phone. Just one more text. Finally I decided I should probably save some battery for when I got out.

The Montreal bus drove us to Hawkesbury. Hawkesbury seemed like a hole of a town. The sky in Hawkesbury did not look as beautiful as skies usually look.

I looked around and wondered if anybody here would be my friend if I met them somewhere else besides Vipassana. Soon it wouldn’t matter because we wouldn’t be allowed to talk. Besides my incessant hair twirling and fawn eyes, probably I was relatively ordinary looking. I was wearing a long black joe fresh skirt, a tank top, a jean jacket and birkenstocks. But I felt like I was the weirdest person there. And I felt lonely.

With small tears in my eyes, I called the Boatman one more time to say I love you. The Boatman said, oh yes, it is a bit sad, but you will be okay.

A tiny school bus picked us up to drive us to the centre. It didn’t seem possible that all of our luggage and bodies would fit. My obnoxiously enormous black suitcase went on first. I noticed a bald middle-aged man with a cane and a limp.

This might be hard for him, I thought.

Packed onto the bus, everyone opened the windows and everyone’s hair blew frenetically. I wondered if I knew what frenetic really meant. I worried if I’d said good-bye and I love you enough times to enough people. That is probably what people worry about as they’re dying. Saying I love you before they turn off their phones.

The End.




 

 

Erica (me), ink on paper, July 10, 2014 by the Boatman Follow the Boatman on TUMBLR: http://verysatisfied.tumblr.com   Follow me on Twitter: @mypelvicfloor My $2 self-help book Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook

 
The Vipassana Diaries: Day Zero
The Vipassana Diaries: Food Belly
Vipassana Diaries/Ashtanga Memoirs: You Cling To Things Until They Die (Ham Wraps, S.I. Joints Etc.)
Why I Like to Pee Outside

Erica (me), ink on paper, July 10, 2014

by the Boatman

Follow the Boatman on TUMBLR:

http://verysatisfied.tumblr.com

 

Follow me on Twitter: @mypelvicfloor

My $2 self-help book

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook

 

Compost Girl

How I became the Compost Girl

On Friday afternoon, I took on an act of environmental heroism. One of my bosses was going straight out of town that evening so she didn’t have time to dump the compost at home.  My other boss was overburdened with her own small child, along with a big pile of recycling and laundry bags full of the children’s nap sheets and the dirty rags we use to wipe up their mess and the Lysol. My two remaining co-workers who both have cars didn’t think twice when my bosses said that this week’s compost would go into the trash. But not I.

“I’ll take it home,” I immediately volunteered.

“On the bus?” said my laundry and child-burdened boss.

“Why not?” I asked.

“You’ll get kicked off,” said Co-Worker One with Car.

“No, I won’t. Metro Transit owes me big time.” I explained that I carry around a carefully documented list of all the days that Metro Transit has made me wait excessively in horrible Halifax weather, and the three and a half times they made me late despite my unfailing punctuality at the bus stop. When I die, I will bill Metro Transit for the time and misery they cost me and all the money will go to vegetarian party sandwiches at my funeral. Metro Transit dare not say anything about the compost.

“The other passengers might give you dirty looks though,” said Co-worker Two with car.

“They deserve it for massacring my ears with the hideous music blasting out of their headphones,” I replied smugly.

“Well, that’s very noble of you,” said Co-worker One with Car, smirking.

“Yah, you’re like a superhero,” said Co-worker Two.

“Compost Girl,” said Co-worker One.

Both co-workers with cars started laughing until tears formed in their eyes.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” I said. “I’m just taking one for the environment. I’m an environmentalist.”

“Can you please write a blogpost about this, Compost Girl?” said Co-worker One. “I mean, if you had a blog."

Co-worker One is the only one who occasionally reads my blog. My bosses don’t know about it because my blog is so edgy and controversial that it would definitely get me fired. Add the Adventures of Compost Girl to the existing heaps of menstruation, vibrators and potty training theories and this blog will only get edgier.

I poured the mountains of decomposing napkins, lasagna, Moroccan bean soup, mediocre hummus and whole grain crackers into triple layered Sobey’s bags. There were three bags in all. I lugged the bags down the hill to my bus stop on the Bedford Highway. The bus was nearly empty, but a construction worker and Muslim couple were sitting at the back where I sat down. Nobody looked up when I sat down and as the ripening odours wafted through the back of the bus, the couple continued their faint dialogue and the construction worker kept flipping through his Metro newspaper. The bus driver let me off at the corner of Robie and University Avenue.  I trudged the two kilometres home in Halifax’s standard un-Christmasy foggy drizzle. As I walked, the plastic bag handles dug into my palms and left red creases. After I dumped the compost into the green bin in our driveway, I smelled my hands. They smelled like vomit, but it was nothing a little biodegradable dish soap couldn’t handle. 

The End. 

Notes from 2016: I feel like I did this a second time. On the bus ride home, I'd somehow switched my phone into accessibility mode. I fumbled frantically to try to get Siri to stop yattering away at me. My bus stop came and Siri was still relentlessly dictating all my options which was extremely discombobulating. After I got off the bus, I decided to go the the Rogers store on the corner of Spring Garden Road to see if they could fix it. It wasn't until I'd gotten the customer service people to adjust my settings and finally silence Siri when I realized I'd completely forgotten about the two bags of compost. I must have left them on the floor of the bus. That day marked my last attempts at environmental heroism.

 



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