Interpolation

(It seems I may need a few interpolations now and then, which insist on interrupting the 'what happened next' ...  at least during this process of composition. )

I’m good at writing poetry and good at writing non-fiction. I’m bloody hopeless at writing writing fiction! My very few attempts at novels soon bored me silly. (If I can’t even interest myself …) I did manage to get a couple of short stories published long, long ago. They were in fact scarcely-disguised autobiography.

So I want to say this is a good indicator that I’m not making up the weirder stuff I’ve been writing, and will write here. 

That, however, doesn’t of course prove those things true. It might just indicate that I believe my own delusions. That’s the definition of a delusion, after all. Or that – as I am fond of saying – magic is just science for which we haven’t yet found the scientific explanation. (The esoteric community always has a triumphant chuckle when science finally endorses facts we’ve always known.)

There are some things I simply can’t explain in any rational way.

For instance —

When I was given this Buddha many years ago, by a friend who had been visiting Asian countries, he begged me to always put it high up. He told me that Buddhists are strict about placing statues or other depictions of Buddha at the highest possible point in a home, with the idea that nothing should be placed higher. I promised, and have done my best in every home I’ve inhabited since. 

A friend pointed out that in his present location he looks ‘rude.’ I do see what she meant, but that thing in front of him is actually a lotus he's grasping. In any case, I can’t turn him frontwards, where this would be more apparent. I have tried!

It doesn’t matter how many times I turn him to face the front, nor exactly where I place him on top of that  highest cupboard: he always, gradually, turns — without any human agency — to face the window, the source of light. Other items placed there do not move.

There may be some scientific explanation. I just can’t fathom what it might be. Whereas, it does make sense to me that Buddha would always face the light.