The Monkey Mind

The next move, Lisa suggests, will help to quiet the monkey mind.

My monkey mind immediately scratches behind my ear, looking for possible escape routes. Orlando? Technology? McCarthy era? A power point show of flashing images Hanoi, Hong Kong, Bali, the garden. Make a note of Pickway, OH. The carpet in the bedroom is beyond salvage. Cleaning out Max’s room. . .what to save? Less clutter. The closet. The laundry room.

The monkey scrambles over to my purse and starts pawing through the broken pens, gum wrappers and wadded receipts to fling out zippered bags full of lipstick, hairclips and lint. Is it time to downsize? We’re away so much anyway. How long would it take to clean out the house? Starting in the attic or basement? Could enough money be raised from a yard sale to fix the guest bathroom? Have the floors refinished?

Zip! The monkey jumps to the ceiling light and sits picking nits off of a half dead monkey that wasn’t even in my line of vision. “We used to be poets.” How am I getting back to the airport? What time is school on Monday? Need to update my website yesterday. Tax extension. Time to start the lettuce seeds. Urgency. This is insomnia with the lights on.

Unable to be still for more that a nanosecond, the monkey pinches its companion (yelp) before swinging down on one arm to land on an imaginary motor bike. Varoom Varoom. It cartwheels off to dance foot to foot before taking off through an open window. One look over its shoulder. Daring me to follow into the woods.

Breathe.

Lisa Lofthouse is my cousin and a master yoga teacher. Twice a year she conducts a yoga retreat workshop in the sweet sloped outside of Asheville. I went last weekend to try and get my pieces parts back together after a whole lot of travel and probably a little too much street food. For more information about her workshops, go here.