Lunatic Meditation.

Monday, December 12th.

If some of you remember, this was the day when the nurse was unable to find a vein to sample my blood for thrombosis after a foot fracture. She dug into my fore-arm several times leaving numb scars and started venturing into my wrist in vain (lol). What was to follow can be submitted to a selection panel of scenari for horror movies.

The nurse, a cute lady in her mid-fifties with a lunatic pair of black-framed glasses hanging on but threatening to fall off her nose any time, with a terrified look on her face, inspite of quite some years of experience as a nurse in France & overseas, dug on, in shame and panic. I sensed the need to encourage her and not to give into panic, though it was my wrist that was going through the torture. I was asked to clench my fingers tight, so as to help the veins bulge out. And like an annoyed sewing teacher, my nurse kept digging to find that goddamn missing thread. At one point, she thought she had made contact with it and tried to pull it out upto the surface of the skin and what ensued was eerie.

My fists were clenched so hard, I could have broken an arm. They were gripped tight, not only because I was asked to, but because of the fear, the pain and the will to keep my cool with courage. As I kept clenching my fist hard, something was to happen to burst the dam and make me lose my cool.

My ring finger without my brain's orders to do so, simply pulled out of the clenched fist. I realised this because of two signals sent to my brain, reporting a certain nervous disorder. One was the pain. The other one was visual. Hard as I clenched my fist, the ring finger was defiantly dismantling itself from its fellow fingers and stretching itself outward as if after a good night's sleep for a nice big yawn.

Obviously, I screamed. I'm not sure whether it was in pain or in shock of what I saw. My brain was going bonkers. And as usual, when it does so,( every so often) my eyes, nose and mouth wail.( This does ease the brain out a bit. So wailing helps me be the proud owner of this healthy brain).  

I was almost going to ask the nurse to give up, but if I didn't, it was because of one plain reason. Fear. Fear that I might upset our nurse into a terrible mistake. For she looked determined to have my blood after all the shame and panic she had felt. And I was, after all handicapped with only one leg to hobble around. She was all powerful with her syringe and her two good legs. From this vulnerable position, I had to coax her into an easy way of getting that darned blood out of my vein by being cooperative. Never mind the set backs of the previous attempts on the fore-arm. I was used to it. Nurses do find it hard to reach my veins. Experience told me that when they found it hard, I should let them try at least three times.

I timidly pointed out to her the abnormal behaviour of my ring finger, wishing it was instead the middle finger at least! (lol)

For which she replied, "Oh, I must've pulled a nerve, instead of a vein ! oops, sorry!"

That was some nerve ! Don't you think ?

At this point, I must've passed out. Or at least I pretended to have. And when I came to myself, my beaming nurse held my wrist with a test tube filling in with the scarlet liquid ever so slowly.

And then the big time wailing began. I mean the conscious one when the brain sends out signals to feel sorry for yourself. The womanly wailing. The booo hooo stuff. Boogie woogie stuff requiring the whole box of tissues.

Now my nurse sat there not knowing what to do and feeling very sorry. And I sat there feeling very sorry too, licking my wounds.

I was sorry for my nerve. (Or was it for the lack of nerve?) Sorry for being alone. Sorry for the grey skies and the torrential rain. Sorry for the fracture. Just sorry for everything under the sky. I also have a brain which when it reaches the Pandora box of woes, it pulls them out one by one, as I pull out the tissues to wipe out the boogie flow. And after a while, a long while, all boxes were emptied and the grey skies cleared.

My nurse still sat there and explained how something like this had never happened to her before. Something went wrong, she said, not knowing what possibly could have. Bewildered, she was.

My wailing too was a little unusual. A little too overwhelming. Where did my damn brain wander away, for just a slight nervous disorder?( Having said that, I still have trouble wearing a ring because of the discomfort caused by the nerve.)

Bewildered, we sat there, made peace between ourselves and drank a hot cup of tea together to sooth our nerves. We mutually felt that something had gone wrong with the two of us.

Though I hated my nurse for a short time, we became friends later on, after many a chatting sessions. Now I'm not sure Claire would have hit me to get a sample of my blood. See I can even say her name now ?!


Well, if I choose to tell you the story today ( Saturday, May 19th) it is because a few strange things took place on that Monday in December.

It was a full moon day. Though until now this seemed to have no relevance to our state of mind, many disturbing things seemed to have happened on this day.

Case N° 1 :  C******, a young newly married, unemployed father of a girl going on her second year, did his early morning meditation, did his X'mas shopping with his young wife, bought himself a book to read, went for karate classes and before the end of the class, without getting dressed, took his bicycle and made it to a bridge over the railway lines and threw himself on a train from the bridge and checked out.

It was on the same Monday.

Case N° 2/3/4 :  X,Y,Z checked themselves out in similar weird ways without any understandable reasons on the same day.

The doctor at the mogue had to report that many suicides just for the small suburban town I live in on one single day.

Case N° 5 : B**** (one of C*****'s friends in the meditation and karate class) sent an email to all her friends narrating her blissful experience early that morning, after meditation on the same Monday. Unable to sleep, she enjoys the full moon, strolls into her garden and narrates a very longy poem of her state of beatitude & rapture into which she enters, so disconnected from the reality, plunging her into a state of blissful, ecstatic void made of light and euphoric well-being, that she decided to splash colours in her workshop and invites her friends to go and take a look at her "amazing creation".


Well, I met with C****'s parents, who desperately try to find an answer to all this.

Two questions arise in my mind :

If meditation is a way of creating void in your head, could it be that when you do experience that so-called bliss, would you not be tempted to check out to reach that nirvana ?

Has the moon got anything to do with our wellness ? Our state of mind ? Did I wail like a wolf because of the moon?

I bumped into Claire, who is also a little shaken up after the eerie happenings in Pessac on that loony Monday.

Well, if you've got any answers about the Loony meditation, please write up. Please do throw some light if you can !

 That's all folks. No more loony tales.