A TRUE WORK OF ART

Walked passed the mess in the garage near the door so many times.
Each time. "Hmmm. I need to make something to contain all those poles and garden stakes."
There are a lot of them. All different sizes and made from all sorts of things...bamboo I found by the side of the road, gray PVC conduit, cheap and doesn't rot, various types of pipes.

Every time I see them I think of Krishna's flutes. How many He has and all different sizes and sounds and made of different materials (in the spiritual world materials aren't material) like bamboo, or marble, or gold, or silver, or even made out of jewels.

But these are just garden stakes and fencing posts to keep the peacocks away from Tulsi Devi

and protect the flowers and bushes from the "gardeners."

They came today and it was a good day. They only killed one newly planted fern and only ringed one bush. It's the weed-eater. I try to protect everything with red flags, and cloth covers but they still manage to kill someone. It's Florida. They grow back and recuperate for the most part. Not always. Sometimes there are fatalities.

I walked passed the mess in the garage. It was a little after seven and was cooling off. Still light out. "Okay! That's it! I'm fixing this mess."

It turned out to be a little more complicated than I anticipated. It really would have been a good all-day-Saturday project. But once I started there was no turning back. Everything was out all over the driveway. It's been raining off an on for days. The sky looks clear.

They needed an encasement so the poles and stakes could stand upright against the wall. But it's a cinder block wall and drilling cinder blocks is not one of my favorites. Lots of hurdles. But finally the encasement was finished. It was amazing. I just kept working and humming a particular tune of Hare Krishna mantra. I didn't have to think about the mantra or the tune. It's like when you get a song stuck in your head. It was great. The mantra was there to stay. It was like the mantra was carrying me through all the steps of the building...the sawing, the drilling, the measuring. I just kept working by the light of the security light. Only thing is it's motion-activated and only stays on for five minutes at time. That was fun.

How do you build such a thing? But there it was taking shape. Each step of the construction leading to the next. There were just enough screws and pieces of scrap wood to finish it. Just enough.. Not even one extra screw to spare. Just amazing.

But what really amazes me is I didn't stop for a second. I didn't feel tired. I wasn't thirty or hungry. Not even "the other end" demanded any attention. Just the mantra playing in my mind and building the encasement.

Done. A true work of art!!

Must be late. I started at around 7:30 pm. Maybe it was 11 pm? Wow! It's 3:30am.

The poor neighbors. I'm sure they could hear all the sawing and hammering. Too bad they couldn't hear the mantra too.