Namaste, bitches! (Part One)

I recently lost a bet and spent a month and a half at an ashram.

Full confession: I drink too much coffee. I like my “caffeine can-do” rush.

At the ashram, there is no coffee. There is tea. Tea made of twigs and boiled sock water. This tea will not get you high. It will make you vomit, though.

I also like sweets. Cake. Cookies. Cakes shaped like cookies ... There are no real cookies at the ashram, there are only vegan cookies. One will not catch a sugar high from vegan cookies, one will merely catch a hot rush of anger when someone gives you reconstituted eraser and calls it cake.

There are no computers at the ashram.

On my fifth day of going through withdrawal from coffee, cookies and computers (the holy C3 as I now call them,) I threw a tantrum.

I had a tantrum because I wanted my computer. I wanted to at least look at pictures of cookies and coffee and I wanted to facebook about how awful the ashram was for not having such everyday items.

A monk took pity on me and whispered that he would take me to a computer. My tantrum immediately stopped -- not because I was happy but because the monk’s breath was so horrible it made my eyes cross.

He giggled as he lead me through the maze of the building, across the garden, through an actual maze of evergreen shrubs, down a hill, past goats, and into a small shed. He pointed inside the shed and I went in. And there, in the shed, was an abacus. And just as I realized I had been totally tricked he LOCKED ME IN THE SHED.

Those of you who have taken my workshops know that the ol’ “locking them in the shed” move is one of my own. And this garbage-breathed monk had turned my own tables on me!

The game was on. I broke out of the shed by shattering the window with the abacus. I hitchhiked into town, found a Starbucks, drank a venti double red eye and bought stacks of Via. Then I walked three hours in the rain back to the ashram.

I learned three lessons that day from my stinky monk:

1) Sometimes you have to be “trapped” to realize how free you actually are.
2) An abacus makes a great blunt instrument.
3) A three hour walk in the rain is refreshing if you've just had a venti double red eye.

More ashram stories to follow. Namaste, bitches.