Falling down

Sometimes there isn't much to do in the day but be alone with myself and just enjoy a good coffee and read a book; other times I set out to do this and something else happens...

I chiselled my way out of my dreams drenched and exhausted from fighting the thief all night long with the warrior’s sword.
After a long cold shower I decided to be alone for the day and just do ordinary things like read a book and get a large coffee from a cafe and to sit and not think anything at all. And if it rained I would watch it falling and if the wind blew I would flow away with it in my dreaming, perhaps a green dreaming under the rain.

Ready to leave the house I was just picking up my umbrella when knocking came at the door that I had to answer. It was the kind of sound that touched a nice place inside of you and made you want more of; so when I opened the door and let in the scent of patchouli, and Jasmine, who was my wife’s sister following close behind, I was surprised.
“Hello,” I said, my senses overflowing with the smell of her patchouli.
“Good,” she said, in her no nonsense way, “I see you’re ready.”
“Ready for what?” I asked, wondering if I had the energy.
“To escort me to the temple of course,” she said, her hands on her hips, much like my wife does.
‘Oh-oh,’ I thought, ‘there’s no saying no when she’s like this.’
“Is it a mystery why we’re going there?” I asked, giving her a half smile and hoping she would fill in the other half. But no such luck, she was on a mission and I was her prisoner. So I began to read from my book: Oh how helpless one is to lift a finger no braver than a squeak....

‘Where’s the warrior when I need him,’ I thought but said out loud:
“How would you have me in this thing?”
She looked at me with a sideways squint and then grabbed my arm and we were off.
So before I could get my umbrella up and no sooner than we had stepped on the pavement the rains poured down and we were drenched.
Her clothes clung to her body and no imagination was needed to know the form under them.
“Eyes front soldier,” she commanded.
I was having trouble with the umbrella, and in a sudden gust of wind it collapsed, so I dumped it in a bin and we poured on into the rainstorm where even the frogs were under umbrellas.

A closed door goes a long way until it’s opened and then out falls yesterday to begin again what was locked away forever. So perhaps the trick is to never open any doors that have the feeling emanating from them: do not open this door.
But perhaps when you fall down the pavement coal-hole into the cellar and its pitch black and there’s only one door and you really want to get out of there because it’s creepy and you’re beginning to get frightened and your cries are absorbed by the thick stone walls and you’re on an escort mission to get somewhere then I guess it’s the perfect time to suit-up in your hero suit and become the hero and to take stock of what you have.

Anyway, what could possibly happen if the door was opened?
Suddenly you find yourself on a mission and you can feel the awesome power building in you; no coal shed can defeat you.
You are now in invincible mode and superman has nothing on you; so you do some exercises to pump up your muscles and suddenly the door opens and light seeps in to show granny with her coal bucket staring wide eyed at the maniac in her coal shed looking like hulk and black from the coal dust.
What would Buddha do in this situation?

So thinking fast I drop to my knees and hands in prayer I bow and say: “oh great wise one, thank you for coming to save me.”
“Get out of my coal shed,” she screamed and stared around for a stick to beat the intruder who looked like all the bad men she’d ever seen all rolled up into one horrible apparition.
So I scramble past her on my knees with her screaming out and beating me with the broom she’d found.
‘Got to get out of this crazy place,’ I thought and headed towards the door at the other end of the cellar that was lit with a flickering candle.

I scrambled through the door and up the greasy stairs to freedom, but at the top was a man in a dirty suit leaning back against the wall and grooming his teeth with a long sharp knife.
As I ease past him warily he asked me if he could interest me in some cigarettes.
I’m still soaked from the rain and the coal dust is running down my face in seams as I make for the front door calling out: “later,” to him, and then I’m out on the street to find the wind has died down and the rain has stopped.
Jasmine stands there in the hot sun, steaming and waiting for me.

“Will you please stop doing that,” she says sternly with her hands on her hips and her hair streaming wet and her clothes still clinging to her from our drenching.
“If only people would close their coal holes,” I said, feeling splendid after having escaped from another dark place.
We decided to go get cleaned up and dry and as we walked back almost everyone stopped to stare at us which was not too surprising seeing the state we were in.
Jasmine said not a word and I couldn’t blame here really, she does try with me, for her sister’s sake, but more often than not we come back too soon after some mishap and then I don’t see here again for some time.
But what can I say? If it didn’t suddenly rain and if people didn’t leave holes in the pavement for me to fall into then I do believe things would be different and we’d get to where we were going.
Never mind, it’s almost time for coffee.

Part two from a previous post https://steemit.com/warrior/@wales/the-warrior-from-out-of-the-blue

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