Today is going to be my day where I just huddle in my room and read and knit. It will be good. I might get some laundry done today, but you never know. I have been meaning to do laundry for the past two weeks, after all.
So I'm reading this book: Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's charming, she's charming, it's a good read, in my opinion. So, towards the middle of the book, she's talking about problems she has with meditation. So she decides to try Vipassana meditation, which is where you meditate in complete stillness - no mantra, no moving, nothing. She sits in a garden in the evening and then she realizes she's going to get eaten by mosquitoes if she stays put. But she does it anyway and rides out the discomfort, achieving her little euphoria, etc. She stays there for two hours.
At the end, how many mosquito bites does she have?
TWENTY. TWENTY FREAKING MOSQUITO BITES IN TWO FREAKING HOURS. HOW IS SHE SO LUCKY?
Okay, some explaining. This may not be a big deal to anyone, but this is kind of a big deal to me, considering that mosquitoes must consider my blood to be gourmet or something. If I had meditated without moving in evening - in India, where, quoth Richard from Texas, the mosquitoes are "big enough to rape chickens" - I'd be drained of blood. I'd lose a pint, at least.
Let me put this into perspective for you. I once went to a bonfire about a year ago towards dusk at the end of summer. I had on jeans and a hoodie to protect myself, plus a lot of bug spray. The mosquitoes bite me on my neck, on my hands, THROUGH MY CLOTHING - totally disregarding the smoke from the fire and the spray. I spend about an hour there before I get fed up and leave. In the morning, how many mosquito bites do I have? I counted them. EIGHTY-SEVEN.
HOW CAN SHE SIT IN INDIA AND ONLY GET TWENTY MOSQUITO BITES IN TWO HOURS WHEN I ALWAYS GET EATEN ALIVE?
AAAAAAAAAAAAH.
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