Please. Please Just Let Me Clean the Toilet -- Devon, England

It doesn't matter how badly you paint as long as you don't paint badly like other people. 

~George Edward Moore 

I'm starting this post from the yoga sanctuary of Aetherius House. The room is topped with a gable roof, so only the practitioners standing in the middle can fully extend their arms overhead. This makes my typical vinyasa flow sequence difficult to teach, as every time I ask the students to rise into Urdhva Hastasana, several hands thwack against the ceiling beams. Also, yoga studios generally leave a bit of free wall space so that beginning and intermediate students can practice inversions (headstand, forearm balance, handstand) with this steady, stable support.

In the yoga sanctuary of Aetherius House, the only flat wall space has been unapologetically commandeered by photographs of Dr. George King and by a painting of the Master Jesus with a flying saucer descending over his right hand.

Master Jesus, you are SO throwing off my yoga groove. 

To my right sits an altar with three small wooden crosses and a pink candle.  Harriet has told me (upon multiple occasions) that I am not to clean this altar whilst dusting the sanctuary. It is a holy piece of wood and only she has permission to touch it.

Damn. I wish the toilets were holy, too. And maybe the vacuum cleaner. Why couldn't Dr. George King have put Harriet in charge of the vacuum cleaner? 

I see birds flitting past through the window in front of me, their cheerful chirps blending with the odd sound of traffic, the ticking clock and tapping of my fingers on they keyboard my laptop. The windowsill is lined with holy rocks from Holdstone Down and a fat, contented, marble Master Buddha.

I feel like the Aetherius Society is to religion what The Avengers is to the superhero world. It simply takes all the religious figures and bungs them together into a giant steaming pot of leftover religious soup. 

Delicious. 

The house is filling up again. Amber (an American general administrator of sorts) arrived late last night with a few stories and a box full of juicing vegetables. She's a semi-permanent resident of Aetherius House who has been taking care of a friend's mother for the past few weeks and is now back until around June. 

"Has anything changed with the fridges?" she asked.

"Changed? Umm... I'm not sure. Leftovers seem to live in this fridge -- " I gestured to the small cooler behind me. "-- and everything else gets bunged in there," I nodded towards the larger cooler in front of me. "It's pretty empty at the moment, so all of your veggies will probably fit just fine. Harriet's out shopping, so you get first dibs on shelf space."

"How long have you been here?" Amber raised an eyebrow.

"About three weeks."

"Then you should know that I do not get first dibs."

"Fair. Fair enough."

"If Harriet's gone shopping, I'll take my veggies out back."

Amber has reclaimed her small bedroom in Harriet's office and another volunteer is arriving in Ilfracombe via National Express at 21:45 this evening. Large numbers of helpers usually add to chaos, but in this situation, I think we all evenly share the burden of Harriet's spiritual/emotional/financial turmoil. 

So I'm glad for the extra help.

I've needed to escape more often these past few days. My eccentric host has been training me to update her website and asking me to help with general office work. This would be fine under normal circumstances, but when it comes to Harriet... well...

"And if you just click on this button here... yes, all of these pictures are for the website. Yes, you can use this one, I like this one of me. It seems open and friendly and it's important to present an open and friendly face on the website, don't you think? Mmm. I keep sowing all these little seeds to put ourselves out there. I have three B&B accounts, facebook, a website... it's all so much and I don't know if I can... "

This is where juicy, raindrop tears start pouring out of her big blue eyes. I sit uncomfortably in the second office chair, unsure of what role she wants me to play as she yoga breathes through her spontaneous spring shower. In the end, I choose to slump my shoulders and lean in with a sympathetic glance and a slightly cocked head.

She certainly doesn't need you to say anything, Bourget, I thought as I "mmhmmed" to her "It's so hard".

"Amber and Tess are coming back this week," she said as she dabbed the final tears away from her prolific ducts, "and they both love to cook. We've been eating very well with you here -- we never eat this well. We usually just eat soup."

I nodded. Harriet is always telling me how they usually just eat soup. A simple yogic diet of bland veggie soup, lentils, rice and liver flush.

"But since they both love to cook, you'll need to spend more of your hours on the website and cleaning."

My heart-face coordination immediately showed the panic I felt. I don't mind scrubbing toilets and I don't mind updating websites, but I do mind scrubbing toilets and having Harriet come up behind me to say,

"Aimee, I've just thought of something. Would you please hang up the laundry? and remember my special trick for the knickers. If you just hang them through the leg holes, they'll take up much less space and you'll have more room to put up the sheets from the double room. Much more efficient, mmm. Whatever you can do to make life easier, I always say. Oh, this is filthy. Just a little job. Would you dust the railing? yes, and the heaters in the sanctuary, but make sure not to touch the altar. I'm the only one allowed to touch the altar."

"Got it," I stab the toilet brush into the bowl and dance to the side to avoid the flying droplets. "Laundry, knickers, railing, heaters, don't touch altar."

"Yes, and I was just thinking, could you -- "

Just... just let me clean the toilet. Please. Please just let me clean the toilet.

I walked to the beach with Michael before our soup dinner that evening. He showed me how to slow down shutter speed to make the waves blend together.

If only I could do that with Harriet's requests/demands. Just let them all blend softly together and not feel so poked by each one. Ach. So many things to learn.