Angel in the Graveyard
while progressing in a career involving writing. And . . . perhaps someday I would feel freed of the past. Settled in the library, I tried my best to do what good students do— study. But I struggled to stay awake. The physical geography textbook bored me. Yes, I loved the desert and learning the names of the remarkable plant life, but I disliked reading about the causes and history of earthquakes, continental drift, and volcanoes. I skimmed the pages, nodded o², wakened, jotted a note, and wakened again. With highlighter in hand, I marked a sentence I hoped was a main point. I drifted o² again. When I forced my eyes open a few minutes later, I decided to try ³nishing “Paradise Lost.” Even though my professor boasted that this epic poem was Milton’s greatest achievement, that the language was a superb example of rhythm and rhyme, that this work inspired Keats and a writer named Joseph Hayden whom I had never heard of, I found myself drifting and feeling guilty for it. I was an English major after all. I should love Milton. I should be able to read this work and understand what I was reading, but I felt lost. Yes, there was Satan. Yes, there was Adam and Eve. Yes, even Almighty God was present in this work, but the language was stilted and hard, and I was tired. How would I ever get an “A” in this class? I packed up the very books I had barely absorbed and headed over to the 3HO Sikh Ashram just o² campus for my late afternoon yoga and meditation class. I slipped o² my Birkenstocks, pulled a beach towel from my backpack, and set up for the hour-long class. This room had come to feel like a kind of home to me. I liked the high ceilings, the tall open windows, the four white walls featuring a photo of Yogi Bhajan and several colorful and dramatic pictures of the gods and goddesses from Hindu scriptures (even though the photo and pictures initially felt a little strange to me). I liked that an altar was set up in front, and some days sandalwood incense burned. Hari Bal Dev sat in full lotus position on a sheepskin mat in front of the altar. Several students on sheepskins or towels, like myself, prepared for the class. Some stretched their legs and wriggled their ³ngers and toes. Others sat in half- or full-lotus, stretching their necks to the right, then down to their chest, then to the left. Some stood and reached their arms and ³ngers toward the ceiling. I
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