On retreat you get up at, o, dark-thirty. Then after bells and sitting, you go to breakfast and eat at a time you would usually be unconscious. Gruel with raisins bits or some such. The other two meals have serious roughage and BEANS, lots 'o beans. See where I'm headed here. Imagine a room full of meditators in total silence desperately squeezing so they don't publicly embarrass themselves as the person in the maroon sweatshirt who farts in the dharma hall. Or you're bending over in qi gong and-oops, sorry, only you can't say anything.
So, as a last resort, I took my farty butt up the monstrous hills around the the center to fart out loud for a while. However, there was a woman on the trail behind me. I let her go ahead of me because a) she was younger and b) see above and I didn't want to scare her or expose her to downwind emissions. I talked to her, yes I did, and she admitted that she had a similar intention. So we walked together for a while and let a few rip, it was heavenly. She didn't mind, even though she couldn't match me. Now we're friends.
I apologize for this story and I promise I won't revisit any more issues of this nature, delicate reader. I will say though that once I was camping at a hot springs resort in California and woke up to DEER farting and belching right outside the tent. Ruined me forever thinking deer were so pretty like Bambi.
Alright, enough of this.
Reentering the world is weird. I don't want to work anymore. I just want to garden and read books and sit under a little cherry tree with the sun shining on my head.