It was a poopy few weeks leading up to the eclipse. I missed several of my self-imposed deadlines for completing Stumbling toward the Buddha, 10th Anniversary Edition, which caused a lot of moping. Friendships were in upheaval. I suddenly hated the movies I used to love. White privilege was in my face. My car stopped working.

Please resist the temptation to tell me things will get better. Please don’t point out the inherent beauty of my rotten month. Please don’t offer to clear my lower chakras of the energy blockage that is obstructing light-filled messages from my guardian angels.

I’m not one to make lemonade from lemons.

Silver linings clash with my complexion.

Rose-colored glasses obscure my view.

Dung beetles serve as my gurus.

They eat manure, fight over it, and build nurseries in it.

If they lose their way while rolling a dung ball down the road, they climb on top of it to navigate by the stars.

And they wear dung as as flip-flops to protect their tootsies from the baking savanna.

With 8,000 species of dung beetles, you’ve got to figure they know what they’re doing.

If life continues to pile on like steaming elephant poop, I’ll burrow right on in and make myself at home.

While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.

#####

“No one could rival Arthur Less for his ability to exit a room while remaining inside it.”
—Andrew Sean Greer
--Less

Diversity training session in a small conference room. Except for the facilitator and me, everyone in the room was white. The facilitator instructed us to pair up with the person in the room we knew least well. I was a new employee. My co-workers barely knew my name. Circling the conference table like ring-around-the-rosey, they all paired up, leaving me standing by myself.

The facilitator and I exchanged a look of disbelief.

I don’t know what happened after that, because my soul walked right out the door.

I slow my pace as I round a curve into a densely shaded section of the nature trail. Even though it’s a suburban walking path only a block from my house, I always steel myself at this particular juncture, because it feels like the forest primeval is closing in. Mature maples and oaks muffle the grinding gears of UPS trucks. The canopy dims greens to shades of gray. I square my shoulders and advance into the shadows.

A stab of sunlight bounces off shiny colors at the base of an oak tree. Glass rocks from Michael’s are sprinkled on the ground, like spilled Skittles. I lean closer. Nestled in the crook of the trunk is a surprise. Someone has constructed a fairy land tableau. Two miniature houses. (Victorian, I’d say.) Gold foil-wrapped coins form a walkway. A fairy with dragonfly wings sits regally on a mushroom (a repurposed thread spool).

I cringe, but wanting to be a better person, reach for a positive attitude.

The scene is creative. It’s a surprise of happy colors here in the shade. And I have to admire the engineering required to construct a six-inch Victorian.

I feel lighter, having shed the weight of negativity.

I continue my stroll and reverse course for home. Directly across from fairyland number one, facing the direction I’m now headed, lies another miniature scene. Fairyland number two is a condo-plex on the ground at the base of the tree. A couple of clotheslines tacked waist-high on the trunk, with miniature shirts and dresses hanging there. Ladders running from the condos up to the laundry. Tiny path lights.

The fairies have gone too far.

The nerve of these pixies. They think the aesthetic of oak trees needs improvement. They decide these trees now belong to them, to use as they please. They sail in here all Christopher Columbus and stake a claim on somebody else’s land.

Indigenous civilizations already reside in the underbrush: Ants, worms, centipedes, spiders, beetles, mice, and other creepy-crawlies that I’m normally opposed to. After a night of foraging, they discover the plastic pixie on their front stoop, its dragonfly wings becalmed.

Centipede: Hey. What the hell is that? You think it’s dead?

Mouse: Nah. If it were dead, it would smell better.

Pixieland is a pile of glue, plastic, and dyes, as useful in the natural landscape as styrofoam cups. The cute Victorian houses will be reduced to rubble by marauding raccoons. The path lights will succumb to the ravages of ill-mannered cockapoos. The poisons in the adorable clotheslines will end up in the tiny bellies of spiders that were minding their own business. Will the fairies come back to clean up the mess their colony leaves behind?

I’m not used to sticking up for nature. Nature and I are not friends. But fairies should hang their laundry in their own backyard.