The Prayer Flags

It's the first cold, wet day of the year. Yesterday, when it was warm and wet, still like an August storm, I hung the Tibetan prayer flags my friend brought back from Oregon on the balcony. They are bright colors against the leaves, which are still too green for October. It was very windy, so they sent lots of prayers up to the heavens. It was too windy, maybe, and so this morning the flags were hooked on the balcony above, stuck and unable to pray. As I pulled them down and then tied them a little more taut, so that they wouldn't fly too high and be snared again, my hands turned pink and prickly-numb. The balcony, already dark brown, was streaked with mud from too much rain in my plant pots. The fiesty little cat tried to get outside, even though it's too cold and wet for her; she doesn't listen to reason. She's from the East, like the flags--her mother a Siamese--but she was born here, not Oregon. My hands and the cat became streaked with the contagious cold mud, but the wet flags are smartly flapping again. It's good that they can pray for me, because I don't know how, now that I don't believe in the church.