Oops

The typo-ridden, run-on, and "too good to be true" emails (betwixt me and my ashram hostess, a 27-link chain started back in mid-August) should have tipped me off.

The woman is insane.

I'm out of here in the morning. I want to say like a bandit, so I'll say it -- LIKE A MOTHERLOVIN BANDIT. The thing about WWOOFing is that it's the job that isn't really a job. You can just say "F you, F you, You're cool, I'm out," and they aren't paying you, so there's nothing to be done. Even though I'm feeling a bit panicky right now (my intention was to stay here for 2 months, so I don't have much in the way of a plan B), this is actually amazing. It's like getting to quit my job all over again, except way easier. I don't even have to say goodbye, just disappear.

I wish I had a more dramatic story but this woman had us work all day for 2 days straight, and promised the same for the week to come. The WWOOF handbook states 4-5 hours per day max (in exchange for 3 full meals, which I don't think translates to some avocado on a slice of toast that you eat quickly while preparing a meal for 100 people under durress -- example from this evening, when the local white-people-who-fancy-themselves-Indian came over for a showing of a Ram Dass film). After my last work experience (that year+ at the beloved Seattle institution that need not be named), I know this place fits perfectly with my pattern of unhealthy choices, so I plan to leave a mega dustcloud when I bust out of here.

If this woman is unlike Ram Dass' guru, who KNEW ALL OF HIS THOUGHTS (it sounds crazy but in the movie - Fierce Grace - he gives a practical example, a believable one, and I know I'll be digesting this new information for some time to come -- I think that was the gift of this ashram), she will not eat my brains in my sleep tonight, and I will live another day to type of my times at the Moana Lodge in Plimmerton. Spending some dough on a single room so I can cry and laugh (good crying, don't worry - it's all good) and dance under headphones to my City Soul podcast (free on itunes, you must peep it!) in privacy. For now, off to madly email every WWOOF placement I can find in Nelson, the white sand beach sunny paradise land (and I hear cool city to boot) on the Northern tip of the South Island.

May Jesus watch me as I sleep (she says in her best ex-Catholic voice). Love!