In early December, I ordered a singing bowl for Rob from Butternut Squash– aka Jeri Gerard. We wrote about the bowl here. At the time, Jeri and I talked about what kind of bowl might be appropriate for Rob. She asked me some questions about him, then said she would try out some bowls for tones and pick one that she intuitively felt would fit him. She also told me that sometimes these ancient bowls are accompanied by the spirits of the monks who owned them. I thought that would be kind of cool, a Tibetan monk sharing our space.
So throughout late December and January, I’m waiting for this monk to show up. I don’t see anything. Rob uses the bowl at the end of the relaxation period in his yoga classes, a rich, sonorous sound that brings you gently out of a very relaxed space, back into the real world. When he starts his new meditation class next week, he’ll be using it then, too. But back at the homestead, I’m still waiting.
So one day we come home from the gym and Rob wants to know if, before we left, I locked the French doors that open onto the back porch. Yup, sure did, I reply. “But they the doors were unlocked and open,” he says.
I’m thinking, Okay, maybe I didn’t lock the doors. But I know I did. And on it goes like that for a couple of days – doors open that were locked, things missing that were in plain sight, a kind of trickster twist. For instance: The key that has been in the door of the cabana bathroom since we bought the house 11 years ago is now missing. We didn’t even known this key could be pulled out of the locks, that’s how permanent it seemed to us. But it’s gone.
It got me thinking. During the Christmas holidays, Rob and I were in the kitchen and I mentioned that I needed some cash and would head over to the bank the next day. Rob said I didn’t need to, he had cash, and held out a hundred dollar bill. My hands were full at that moment – opening cat food or dog food, or both – and I asked him to just set it down.
He put the bill on top of a container of raw almonds. I went about my business. When I turned around, the bill was gone. “Hey, Rob? Did you put that bill down?”
“On the almond container,” he calls from his office.
“It’s not there.”
“Of course it’s there.”
Uh, no, it isn’t. I search in the obvious places. I realize the almond container is close to the edge of the counter, that the trash can is right under it. I remove the bag and patiently proceed to remove every piece of gross garbage. No bill. I look in the silverware drawer, the cabinets, go through the garage again. Rob comes out and joins the search. We cast accusing looks at the cats, the dog.
The bill has yet to show up. That night I began to suspect the monk.
Rob thinks I’m creating a colorful fiction with this monk, and maybe he’s right. I mean, think of the possibilities. But. The doors, the key, the bills, and something less obvious, a shift in energies. Our two female cats, who hate each other, don’t squabble much anymore. The stray cat we feed strolls in and out of the house and none of the other cats care. I sleep better at night. Even when weird stuff happens – a spyware program taking over my computer, for example – I feel okay. I’m confident I’ll find a solution. Life feels good, exciting. I trust in a benevolent universe. It’s not that these things were untrue before, only that they are more true now. Something has changed.
So I wrote Jeri about the monk and she had a story about how, once upon a time, a woman returned one of these singing bowls to her because it was inhabited by
three spectral monks. Well, we don’t have three monks. But I feel certain we have at least one and now I’m formally inviting him to step out of the shadows, to make himself known.
