(backdated, and supplemental)

Mondays at the monastery are considered "lazy days", where only the bells for meals are invited (rung). The monks are free to pursue whatever personal growth/cultivation thing they choose. Nothing was missed today because of the fire, except meals, which were more of a scrounging in the kitchen for leftovers affair.

I went for a walk in the afternoon, and when I got back just before six, I was told that we were definitely evacuating at 8:00, and that they had found someone who had a big enough house to take in all of us who were left or who had come back from evacuating the previous day.

For me, it was a big whatever. Not that I didn't believe we were evacuating after so much back and forth, whenever I heard we were evacuating, I took it seriously. But I just didn't see what the big deal was. The smoke didn't seem so threatening and I thought the worst was over. I think other people were more sensitive to the smoke than me and could feel it in their eyes and throats. But really, the sky was clear except for the one plume of smoke over the ridge. How bad can that be?

So we finally evacuated, but we were sticking together and I wasn't returning to San Francisco. I had been having irrational thoughts regarding the fire and the evacuation along the lines of someone was telling me that entering a monastery was not an option. Like I finally decided to see if it's something I can do, and I get there and there's a fire and I have to leave. Who wouldn't take that as a sign?!