One-Handed Meditation

You are supposed to keep your eyes just half open so you don't sleep and dream a beautiful girl in an orange sweater walking down the street, walking down the street, walking down the street.

After chanting and sitting and bowing, then walking off the stiffness in our legs, and then more chanting and sitting and the reading aloud of a koan, I am asked to vacuum the dharma room. A clean carpet, I see, is not provided by the inmates of the place. But our leader for the day calls it "Zen work" and I am amused.

I find a vacuum down the hall, next to a door with a handwritten sign advertising massage, and I vacuum the incense ash and sock lint and cat hair from the carpet. I do not bump Buddha off his altar with my elbow. Over the noise of the vacuum, I hear something and switch it off. A woman's footsteps outside, clock clock clock clock clock clock.