Sitting at the Feet of Thich Nhat Hanh
I am 27. It is 1989. I am in the belly of deep grief. My sister Sara died 2 years ago. Peace is not easy to find. But there are small glimmers of light and joy. I have lost most of my fear. I'm with my friend Pam and we are baby Buddhists. Thich Nhat Hanh is not well known yet. And we have waited on line for a little while to go into a very small space, an auditorium in Berkeley. Maybe 50 people. But by the time we get in there are no more seats in the audience. One of the monks motions for us to come onto the stage where there are a few cushions surrounding the monks who are already sitting. Pam and I sheepishly step on the stage and are now sitting at the feet of Thich Nhat Hanh. The effect is immediate. Being in his energy field is exquisite, and carries a peace I've ever felt before. I don't remember what he says or anything else about that night. I just remember the peace. —Maura
There’s nothing else to do but say goodbye
I receive news Flores has fallen and is likely in the final stages of dying. I return to Spain to see her. The town doesn’t look like it did, and she is in an even smaller apartment than before. I catch a glimpse into her former apartment and there are large, expensive portraits on the wall, like a museum but not the abstract paintings she once had, these are like John Singer Sargent ones with gilded frames. I am shown to a waiting area, but it’s not a hospital. My old boss Brian comes in to comfort me and then leaves. There is Serena Williams and Venus nearby, life guarding at a pool. There is also a couple in the post office struggling to make something work. They look haggard at the start but by the end, when someone asks them finally if they need something they both look as though they’ve aged ten years and there is no solution in sight. The woman looks exhausted. Then I hear Flores is coming out and I can see her. She’s walking better than I expected but she’s already far from me. I take her through a shop which has remnants and memories of our friendship but she can’t remember most. There are ornaments including one of me and Eden that I had made for her, and other mementos. She is tiring so we continue on and I realize it’s going to be time to let her go. I’m not ready but there’s nothing else to do but say goodbye. And she knows she is dying and wants to pay off the debt of the Posada’s vineyard which has run into trouble. She is waiting for a call to pay that off. So we say goodbye and it’s not what I wanted for a goodbye. But I squeeze her hand and feel her as I once knew her. And then I watch her go into an apartment that she hasn’t invited me into and I see her settle into her chair and only see the bottom of her apron and her white mocasined feet up on the chair foot stool, but I know she’s content, waiting for her call and the chance to pay off her friend’s debt before she dies. So I leave her, devastated because I won’t see her again. But it’s also ok, and I’m alive and moving forward, heading back to my life. —Devora
I receive news Flores has fallen and is likely in the final stages of dying. I return to Spain to see her. The town doesn’t look like it did, and she is in an even smaller apartment than before. I catch a glimpse into her former apartment and there are large, expensive portraits on the wall, like a museum but not the abstract paintings she once had, these are like John Singer Sargent ones with gilded frames. I am shown to a waiting area, but it’s not a hospital. My old boss Brian comes in to comfort me and then leaves. There is Serena Williams and Venus nearby, life guarding at a pool. There is also a couple in the post office struggling to make something work. They look haggard at the start but by the end, when someone asks them finally if they need something they both look as though they’ve aged ten years and there is no solution in sight. The woman looks exhausted. Then I hear Flores is coming out and I can see her. She’s walking better than I expected but she’s already far from me. I take her through a shop which has remnants and memories of our friendship but she can’t remember most. There are ornaments including one of me and Eden that I had made for her, and other mementos. She is tiring so we continue on and I realize it’s going to be time to let her go. I’m not ready but there’s nothing else to do but say goodbye. And she knows she is dying and wants to pay off the debt of the Posada’s vineyard which has run into trouble. She is waiting for a call to pay that off. So we say goodbye and it’s not what I wanted for a goodbye. But I squeeze her hand and feel her as I once knew her. And then I watch her go into an apartment that she hasn’t invited me into and I see her settle into her chair and only see the bottom of her apron and her white mocasined feet up on the chair foot stool, but I know she’s content, waiting for her call and the chance to pay off her friend’s debt before she dies. So I leave her, devastated because I won’t see her again. But it’s also ok, and I’m alive and moving forward, heading back to my life. —Devora
Why are the trees fighting?
Trees with long branches, brown and brittle attack each other with slight movements and white hot fire beams. I am watching from a window. It’s beautiful in an apocalyptic way. I didn’t know this could happen. I don’t know why this is happening.
~
I am betrayed
I have just discovered one of my closest friends has been collaborating with someone, a person or group, that wants to kill me. I cannot believe it. I go to her. She’s wearing white, reclining on a white blanket, her hair bleached blonde. Why, I ask. She doesn’t say anything, but I read in her expression that I got taken, that’s just the game, baby. She’s getting some kind of compensation, it’s sort of her job.
~
Is there a bell that needs fixing?
Somehow it is my job to check to see if the bells are in working order. These are not what you would think of as bells, but I don’t know how else to describe them. They are metal contraptions that make sounds. Although I did not hear the sounds, I know they make them. On this night there are four or five of them. They have inside of them, the housings, different mechanisms, which create different effects. They must be checked, and it’s a bit dangerous to be up there. I don’t know how I get up there but to get down when I’m done, I have to hang on the beam where the contraption is and then drop down to the ground. It’s not too high but it’s a just high enough to be a little scary every time. The bells are alright for now.
~
No dress, thank you.
I am watching a beautiful, accomplished woman getting rewarded for a job well done. I am also this woman. Her boss has bought a beautiful black and red dress, formal, strapless, ball-gowny. She has not put it on though. Everyone is gathered in a room where there is a ceremony to give an award for this work she’s done. This woman who’s me, stride up and takes the award, a kind of gold plaque. This gets a disapproving reaction from the crowd, since she/me is supposed to be wearing the dress. “But he bought you the dress!” It’s a convention she’s broken with.
—Allison
Being Jan. 26, 1969 + 53
I wake up in my bed, in my new house, on the morning of my birthday. I am alone in the house. No dog, no kids. I am rested and it is easy to get out of bed.
I have my morning coffee sitting in my warm bedroom, watching the squirrels scampering around and the birds flitting around the birdfeeder full of sunflower seeds.
I want to, I need to go for a walk in nature. It is a sunny day. I keep doing a little of this and a little of that inside the house, eating, straightening, cleaning, dealing with things, things,things. But finally I walk out the door. But my eye is drawn to the empty hummingbird feeder as I step onto the porch and I cannot leave without refilling it. But since I’m refilling this one, I may as well do the one in the backyard too. And why only feed the hummingbirds, so I refill the almost-empty feeder for the non-hummingbirds.
And now, finally, with the birds fed and behind me, I am walking through my new neighborhood, uphill. It’s several blocks to get to the trailhead. I’m going slowly. I feel it’s taking too long to get there, to get to the nature. And then I realize that this is the nature. I am the nature. This body and everything I see, of the earth. My awareness is drawn into the sun, fully out in late morning glory.
Step by step, house by house, I reach the trail. The incline continues but it soon evens out. The trees reach into the perfectly blue sky and I am breathing easier.
I come to a junction with three choices: down, forward and right. I am momentarily seized with indecision but decide to choose the one to the right, the one I haven’t walked before. Trees shade the trail but there are openings where sunlight falls and I stop at each one and turn my face to the sky, looking directly at the sun with my eyes closed.
I come upon a small creek and crouch down to look and listen more closely. It’s so beautiful, the sound. The water is running down the hill, pooling slightly below me. Maybe, I think, this trail leads to its source.
As I continue on, the path gets muddy. I am just thinking how I don’t want to get my hiking boots muddy when a voice inside me says, “What do you think boots are for? Use them.”
This voice might be my mother’s. But it might be mine. Sometimes I can’t tell.
The dream fades as I pull out my phone. —Allison
I wake up in my bed, in my new house, on the morning of my birthday. I am alone in the house. No dog, no kids. I am rested and it is easy to get out of bed.
I have my morning coffee sitting in my warm bedroom, watching the squirrels scampering around and the birds flitting around the birdfeeder full of sunflower seeds.
I want to, I need to go for a walk in nature. It is a sunny day. I keep doing a little of this and a little of that inside the house, eating, straightening, cleaning, dealing with things, things,things. But finally I walk out the door. But my eye is drawn to the empty hummingbird feeder as I step onto the porch and I cannot leave without refilling it. But since I’m refilling this one, I may as well do the one in the backyard too. And why only feed the hummingbirds, so I refill the almost-empty feeder for the non-hummingbirds.
And now, finally, with the birds fed and behind me, I am walking through my new neighborhood, uphill. It’s several blocks to get to the trailhead. I’m going slowly. I feel it’s taking too long to get there, to get to the nature. And then I realize that this is the nature. I am the nature. This body and everything I see, of the earth. My awareness is drawn into the sun, fully out in late morning glory.
Step by step, house by house, I reach the trail. The incline continues but it soon evens out. The trees reach into the perfectly blue sky and I am breathing easier.
I come to a junction with three choices: down, forward and right. I am momentarily seized with indecision but decide to choose the one to the right, the one I haven’t walked before. Trees shade the trail but there are openings where sunlight falls and I stop at each one and turn my face to the sky, looking directly at the sun with my eyes closed.
I come upon a small creek and crouch down to look and listen more closely. It’s so beautiful, the sound. The water is running down the hill, pooling slightly below me. Maybe, I think, this trail leads to its source.
As I continue on, the path gets muddy. I am just thinking how I don’t want to get my hiking boots muddy when a voice inside me says, “What do you think boots are for? Use them.”
This voice might be my mother’s. But it might be mine. Sometimes I can’t tell.
The dream fades as I pull out my phone. —Allison
Waking Dream
I am in the bathtub with only a beeswax candle burning. My father sent me them for Hannukah but they are too pretty to spare five at a time in the menorah. I burn them each January one at a time from the bath till they are gone. A song called 'Water Witch' plays nearby from a new playlist..."I'm a voyager into the ether/I look for the songs in the dark/unafraid of the strong magnetism/of the pain that leaves permanent marks/I dream of a wild raging ocean/and a ship that is tossed on the waves/and the wreckage I find on the shoreline/and what's left of the ones I can't save..."
The song plays as an old friend I have since left comes up in a feed. I recall her letter to me from long ago, like a warning I could not yet see, nor heed: "I save radical neglect for those I love most." Anxiety spikes at the sight of her name, the music rises again as the candle flickers by my feet at the end of the deep, square tub. "The searches that break through my levee/and the well water that I have drunk/I am a witch of the water/I come like a thief on the night/Bewitched by invisible forces/ to lead you away from the light...in the place only mad women go..."
I emerge from the bath, shaken. I go to my laptop for some distraction, find a New Yorker article about Margaret Wise Brown which I know I must read immediately. "The Radical Woman Behind 'Goodnight Moon: Margaret Wise Brown constantly pushed boundaries--in her life and art" the headline goes.
I dive in: "Anointed by Life in 1946 as the 'World’s Most Prolific Picture-Book Writer,' she burned through her money as quickly as she earned it, travelling to Europe on ocean liners and spending entire advances on Chrysler...As a teen-ager, Brown attended boarding schools in Switzerland and Massachusetts, and her diaries from that period are full of declarations of intense love for female friends....Brown was most taken by the idea of writing for five-year-olds. Upon receiving her first royalty check, Marcus writes, Brown bought an entire cart’s worth of flowers from a West Village vendor, filled her apartment with blooms, and had friends over for a celebration."
"Follow me into the current/And seeking the magic below/Wade where no happy man searches/In the place only mad women go/I am a witch of the water/I come like a thief in the night..."
I inhale the essay, think of my friend and her radical neglect. Wish I could place it in her hands. Then I hear my husband calling to me - or maybe he doesn't call at all, but in that way that 16 years affords us, I know he's calling me to come for our daughter. I leave the essay and go to her, tussle her red hair with a heavy hand. She begs to sleep in my bed. I tell her no, then console her with a promise to read Goodnight Moon. But first she insists, The Hungry Caterpillar and The Little Engine that Could. I begin them earnestly, with a determination to read them as Margaret Wise Brown might have. She interrupts me during the Hungry Caterpillar to say, "They must eat a lot to keep from dying during hibernation." I nod with gravity and we continue. Then we reach the end of Goodnight Moon, "Goodnight stars/Goodnight air/Goodnight noises everywhere" and she leans her head against my breast with a contented sigh. I look away, then back and she is no longer 7 but 17; I check to see if her hand is still in mine, then find her palm in mine and exhale a contented sigh.
Oh I sing to the flow/of the river/to the shadows of black and of blue/for the thunder that echoes above me/is the rhythm that I'm riding to/The tales of the ones who are heavy/The lonely, the lost/and the gone/Are the searchers that break through my levee..." —Devora
I am in the bathtub with only a beeswax candle burning. My father sent me them for Hannukah but they are too pretty to spare five at a time in the menorah. I burn them each January one at a time from the bath till they are gone. A song called 'Water Witch' plays nearby from a new playlist..."I'm a voyager into the ether/I look for the songs in the dark/unafraid of the strong magnetism/of the pain that leaves permanent marks/I dream of a wild raging ocean/and a ship that is tossed on the waves/and the wreckage I find on the shoreline/and what's left of the ones I can't save..."
The song plays as an old friend I have since left comes up in a feed. I recall her letter to me from long ago, like a warning I could not yet see, nor heed: "I save radical neglect for those I love most." Anxiety spikes at the sight of her name, the music rises again as the candle flickers by my feet at the end of the deep, square tub. "The searches that break through my levee/and the well water that I have drunk/I am a witch of the water/I come like a thief on the night/Bewitched by invisible forces/ to lead you away from the light...in the place only mad women go..."
I emerge from the bath, shaken. I go to my laptop for some distraction, find a New Yorker article about Margaret Wise Brown which I know I must read immediately. "The Radical Woman Behind 'Goodnight Moon: Margaret Wise Brown constantly pushed boundaries--in her life and art" the headline goes.
I dive in: "Anointed by Life in 1946 as the 'World’s Most Prolific Picture-Book Writer,' she burned through her money as quickly as she earned it, travelling to Europe on ocean liners and spending entire advances on Chrysler...As a teen-ager, Brown attended boarding schools in Switzerland and Massachusetts, and her diaries from that period are full of declarations of intense love for female friends....Brown was most taken by the idea of writing for five-year-olds. Upon receiving her first royalty check, Marcus writes, Brown bought an entire cart’s worth of flowers from a West Village vendor, filled her apartment with blooms, and had friends over for a celebration."
"Follow me into the current/And seeking the magic below/Wade where no happy man searches/In the place only mad women go/I am a witch of the water/I come like a thief in the night..."
I inhale the essay, think of my friend and her radical neglect. Wish I could place it in her hands. Then I hear my husband calling to me - or maybe he doesn't call at all, but in that way that 16 years affords us, I know he's calling me to come for our daughter. I leave the essay and go to her, tussle her red hair with a heavy hand. She begs to sleep in my bed. I tell her no, then console her with a promise to read Goodnight Moon. But first she insists, The Hungry Caterpillar and The Little Engine that Could. I begin them earnestly, with a determination to read them as Margaret Wise Brown might have. She interrupts me during the Hungry Caterpillar to say, "They must eat a lot to keep from dying during hibernation." I nod with gravity and we continue. Then we reach the end of Goodnight Moon, "Goodnight stars/Goodnight air/Goodnight noises everywhere" and she leans her head against my breast with a contented sigh. I look away, then back and she is no longer 7 but 17; I check to see if her hand is still in mine, then find her palm in mine and exhale a contented sigh.
Oh I sing to the flow/of the river/to the shadows of black and of blue/for the thunder that echoes above me/is the rhythm that I'm riding to/The tales of the ones who are heavy/The lonely, the lost/and the gone/Are the searchers that break through my levee..." —Devora