Chris: Dawn Reading
I awake before three. I am not surprised by the time as I went to sleep at seven, after noticing that I was drifting off between words in my book. A spider walks gently across my forehead, lingering on my ear. I am not startled. I remember that the spider is nothing more than the canvas curtain bristling in the window above my bed. After a brief meditation I try to go back to sleep, but my efforts are not met with success and I step outside, book in hand. It is now around five and still dark. I search for a comfortable ledge and find one separating the grass courtyard behind the hotel from a stone courtyard adjacent to the kitchen. I place my Gita upon the ledge and scurry up after it.
After reading my book for a while, initially by head lamp and later with the rising sun, all the while: the Sikh temple chanting melodiously over loud speakers, cats and crows stopping to be admired, varied odors wafting through the morning air, and people passing from courtyard to courtyard only to return five minutes later, I head in for the start the first day.
Chris
P.S.:
Everyone visited the Sikh temple today and they were very inviting and relaxed. I might read there tomorrow morning.