6. | had taped an interview on an electric recorder-transcriber, plus a battery-operated cassette recorder as a back-up precaution, which turned out to be an absolute necessity when the electric recorder conked out right in the middle. Later on, | bought a new one to replace it, but first | had to get rid of the old one. My desk consisted of a wooden door supported by a couple of two-drawer filing cabinets. | was just too damn lazy to take all the equipment and books off the desk so that | could move the desk toward me and pull up the wire from behind it. So | simply cut the wire with a pair of scissors. Bzzzzzt!///| was shocked, but not injured. Though the recorder had conked out, | had incredibly left the wire still plugged into a socket on the surge protector. Where the scissors had cut the wire, parts of the metal had melted away just a couple of inches from my hand. | might’ ve been electrocuted. Yikes/ | could’ ve been killed, and the cause would’ ve been a simple lack of the practice of mindfulness that | treasure so much. Instead, | had emptied my mind. Oops, wrong discipline. But | was still alive, and | thanked God for that. And then | heard a resplendent voice booming through the clouds: “SHUT UP, YOU SUPERSTITIOUS FOOL!“ HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015456