Peru 13 -Tall and Skinny Eco-Aliens

Oct 26, 2011, after a chess game

One of the semi-devotees (he and family show up for meals and the odd ceremonies) plays chess, and after a 3-game losing streak (he's a fine player), it was satisfying to finish our afternoon chess session today with a tie. Perhaps it was the smell of burning plastic in the air that threw his game off – the irony of burning plastic at an “Eco” park.

My sweeping meditations (haha) have progressed quite well – yesterday I started in the bathrooms and ended up just at the entrance way of the inner temple – a flow from the gross to the sublime. By the temple a devotee asks me what I am doing as I sweep the tiled floor. Perhaps they have never seen a volunteer “volunteer” their free time with a broom. I replied “meditating” and that seemed to satisfy the query.

I have now narrowed down the physical structure of the aliens that created this pod community. On the surface this place claims to be a Krishna collective of humans, but I suspect the only humans here are the volunteers. This thought arose early yesterday morning, as I trudged along the pathway with a wheelbarrow full of crap – literally – for I was taking care of the volunteers composting toilet by transferring the contents to a corner composting heap at the far edge of the property. The wheelbarrow is of standard South American design – creaky loose wheel, not an inch of unbent metal on it, and in place of plastic handles two pieces of dowel had been jammed into the metal tubes, one of which would slide out if you slightly tilt the wheelbarrow the wrong way – very stressful if you are carrying an upright bucket of odoriferous that could at any second tip over. Anyway, as I manoeuvred between the bumps on the path, I realized I could hardly fit between the wheelbarrow handles. I am a skinny rake, so for me to have to squeeze between the handles is a bit odd. Then I remembered the homemade ladders here, with steps so far apart that even from my 6' frame I have to stretch to make the next step. Clearly, when the “Krishnas” assume their native alien form, they are very very tall and very very skinny.