Igor The Bear

Diary

Igor The Bear used to be a wall of a samurai, the kind of man armies were built around because he simply would not move until the moment demanded he move everything at once, and when the wars dried up that same stillness curdled into something slower and greener. He found his enlightenment, if you can call it that, sitting cross-legged under a stand of pines with a joint burning down to his knuckles, the smoke hanging in the branches like it had nowhere better to be, same as him. Something in that heavy quiet cracked him open, and Igor decided right there, with half-lidded eyes and a mind gone soft as riverbed stone, that he would dedicate the rest of his life to Buddhism. He bought the robes, memorized three sutras, built a little altar, and now sits in meditation every morning with the very best of intentions, except the incense keeps getting swapped for something that smells suspiciously similar and burns a lot slower. He has not moved from that cushion in four hours, which his old sensei would call discipline and everyone else calls being extremely, gloriously baked.