B00BCLBHSA EBOK Read Online Free PDF

center of the world, and being showered with gifts.
    This morning the dove was still perched in its cathedral, its soft breast fluttering as it dreamed the stories that fed her imagination, while Zena’s body swam safely in the waters of the warm, silky, scented artificial lake she had created within the porcelain shores of her bathtub in North London.
    The bathwater covered most of Zena’s body and all of her modesty. There were just the two dark brown islands of her knees above the milky sea that she lay in, and of course her neck, face and head, her hair hidden away beneath a puffy, purple bath hat.
    Zena hummed. Why not? She was happy. It was midmorning and she was in the bath. It was part of her job to lie here and prepare herself to write her sensual stories. She was an indolent person, but when she thought of her preparations for her writing day, she compared herself to an athlete—in those few moments before a sprinting race when the fingertips touch the ground, when mind and body are in tune, and then—whoosh!—all the power of the body is unleashed. In her case, as she lay here, fingertips touched to the enamel of her bathtub, water cooling, she was preparing herself for the moments afterwards when her mind would be unleashed.
    Zena liked to rehearse the events of the day in her mind before she carried them out. It was an exercise in positive thinking, but it also helped to reinforce her sense of herself as some kind of North London goddess: she imagined something, and then it came to pass. And, a little like the gods and goddesses of ancient mythology, if something didn’t come to pass exactly as she had imagined it, she could sometimes be a little cranky, to say the least.
    This morning, she imagined receiving a call on her mobile phone. And, lo, the phone started to ring. Of course, this was because Zena had booked a call with a local journalist. But in imagining it, she was prepared for it.
    The voice on the line said, “Hiya! Zena? It’s Trevor here. This a good time to talk?”
    And Zena said, “Yes, baby. Ask me anything. Zena’s ready for it!”
    “Tell me about your day. What’s in store for you?”
    “Being a spiritual person, I usually spend an hour chanting in the morning.”
    “Football?” said Trevor, a little surprised. He wasn’t a sports fan himself. But the rivalry between London teams was notorious: Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur in North London, Chelsea and Fulham in the west, West Ham in the east, Millwall in the southeast. He wouldn’t have pegged Zena for a footie fan, but if she was, presumably she favored Arsenal or Tottenham. He just couldn’t imagine her chanting songs popular on the football terraces for an hour every morning, unless perhaps she did it to train her voice.
    “It’s part of my Buddhist practice, Trevor. Nuthink to do with football, you lemon. I chant to align the spiritual and the physical dimensions of my world.”
    “Oh, I see!” Trevor sounded relieved.
    “I’m interested in nature. See, I have a keen sensibility for the influence of taste, touch, smell, sound and sight on my well-being. I put fresh flowers on the windowsills. I burn incense on the altar in my house. I’m drawn to certain colors, like gold and purple—empress colors. Knowing how much influence even the most fragile elements of the universe can have on me, I try to influence the universe—not just with words. There’s more subtle ways. There’s the chanting…”
    “And the altar? You said you have an altar?”
    Zena laughed. “You think I’m gonna tell you I practice black magic, yeah? Only a little Zena magic, bro. The lady’s black but the magic isn’t.”
    Trevor laughed, too. He was also black, so he didn’t mind Zena kidding about the color of her skin—he knew she wasn’t doing it to see if it made him uncomfortable, the way she might with a white journalist. Just so long as she kept off the subject of football, he could get through the interview without any