Silent Retreat

One by one the travelers gather in a big old stone house on top of hill. At first it is only me an Edit. We are greeted at the door by a tall older man, Bill, and a shorter quiet man, Steve. They have warm eyes and big smiles. Bill gives us a tour of the house and takes us upstairs to the place we will sleep. Edit and I share a triangular room above the room where we will be meditating. The room is filled with books about heath, psychology, literature and other topics. I’ve been drawn to pyramids lately. Seems appropriate that I am in the pyramid room of the house. After

I set up my bed, I lay a blanket on the grass and instantly fall asleep. I twitch a few times as bugs land on my legs, arms, and upper back. When I wake up, the bright blue sky has been turned down to a lavender color with sweeping pink streaks.

Several more people have arrived and are bringing in bags and backpacks. Some people are setting up tents in the yard. I feel as though I may be one of the youngest here.

I watch as each person with curious eyes wondering who they are, where they’ve come from, what they are here. There are two guys, Tom and Joji, about my age, from Michigan. They seem kind of out of place like they would more likely be found at a Phillies game than a silent Buddhist retreat. There is a woman in a floor length floral dress who just sort of floats from one room to the next. There are a few people I recognize from meditation classes on Sunday at the art loft in center city. Susan, a peppy older woman with white hair, who owns the loft where we meet always calls me by my name even though I’ve only told her my name once.

Everywhere I look there is a new face. I don’t even know how many people are here. The house has been divided into many rooms with post-it notes marking the doors like the plaques on hotel rooms. A walk-in closet is a bedroom. Bathrooms are number #1, #2, #3, #4. We are assigned a time of day about 45minutes when we can shower in one of the bathrooms. The area that would b ea dining room or sitting room is the “meditation hall.” Another similar type room on the other side of the house is the “yoga studio.” The house used to be an old Quaker school house. It feels very “lived in” in an eccentric kind of way. The glass cabinets in the hallway have a pair of old white roller-skates and alice in wonderland figurines among the wine glasses. The art on the walls is a seemingly random collection of black & white photography, impressionistic paintings in big gold frames and other unique pieces. There is a thangka hanging over the window in the meditation hall, hung just for this special event.

I spotted the “teacher” arriving at the house in his vibrant red robe and went outside to greet him. His piercing blue eyes are set back deep in his face and he smiles kindly as he shakes my hand and asks my name. I am so happy to meet him. He is the doctor to the Dalai Lama. Bill told me the story of what led him to the dharma. He had many experiences of death which put him on the path – a near-fatal illness when he was younger, the death of his young wife, etc. These seemingly tragic experiences created a very fortunate life of living and working with one of the most incredible spiritual leaders of our time.

The woman who owns the house, Mariann, is running around like crazy moving furniture, setting up tea and hot water, opening windows, etc. She has a “punky Brewster” kind of energy. She looks about 50 years old but you can tell her spirit is much younger. She’s wearing tye-dye green pants and a tank top. Her hair is pulled back with an oversized clip and she has an orange scarf around her neck.

We gather at 9pm for our first meeting in the meditation hall. I have de ja vu as Mariann talks about the house. There are 15 of us listening attentively to her. We’re told that 10 more people are coming.

I feel so at home. Being here reminds me of all the retreats I’ve been on over the years and all the traveling I’ve done. Gathering with these people reminds me of all the times I’ve gathered with people on the spiritual path.

Why are we here? How did we come to be together in this place at this time?

It feels like family. Some people are assigned to cooking, other cleaning, some people are assigned to make tea and coffee, other to ring bells so we know when it’s time for breakfast or dinner. My assignment is lunch. And we’re all a little strange. And we all love the spiritual side of life. We all care what we do with our mind and we have a reverence for life.

I have my phone turned off and I feel a slight craving to check text, email, facebook – I get so addicted to that shit. I love the detox from technology when I travel. It’s one of my favorite things about being far away from home.

There is hustle and bustle in the kitchen as Mariann shows everyone how to prep for breakfast. Bill is still giving tours of the house. He’s been giving tours for almost 4 hours. He seems like a really patient and calm guy. I sit on a piano bench in the hallway watching them do their preparations. There’s just a piano bench. No piano. There are grey stone columns on either side of the hallway and at the far end of the kitchen. There are hardwood floors, a yellow-bamboo colored kind. A woman spills water on the floor. She says, “Ah, my first mess” and laughs. There are big silver containers with hot water. One of the silver water heater things makes a howling sound like the whales talking underwater. Everyone who walks by says, “what’s that sound?”

There are paper plates, napkins, cups with upside-down silverware. The monk passes by barefoot like he’s one of us. I guess he is. I get butterflies in my stomach when I see him. I think all monks, nuns, priests and holy people are special. I get tingly around them, like God chose them for a special purpose to represent him to be his ambassadors.

I stand up and look out the window. It’s a gorgeous full moon. I run outside to get a closer look. I feel so connected to the moon. I always have. I catch my breath when I see a full moon – it’s just magical to me. There is a golden haze around the big white glowing light. The crickets are singing loudly. A long-haired white and orange cat creeps by. I sit on the porch swing and rock slowly forward and back. I am reminded of the groundlessness teaching that I listened to yesterday by Pema. She says we can’t cling to things that ground us or we’ll be stuck to them and they’ll cause us suffering. I am weightless on the porch swing under the full moon listening to the crickets sing.

From the swing, I can see through the window into the meditation hall. I can see the alter in the front of the room with flowers and brass bowls and a picture of the Buddha. To my left there is another window with the top-half of people being busy doing preparations. I can see their mouths move, but can’t hear what they say. The light around them is a warm yellow. It feels like family.

There are colorful Tibetan prayer flags draped between two glass porch lights on the patio. There are wind chimes, an assortment of chairs, a glass table, and potted plants. There are four acres of land surrounding the house. Rolling green hills, trees, fresh cut grass.

I remind myself of my intention. I am here for self-love. I am here to increase my capacity to love myself and others. I was listening to Pema when I was driving here and she was talking about the practice of developing a friendship with our self. She said that this unconditional friendship with self is very important. I agree.

It’s getting late. Time to get ready for sleep. I make my way back to the pyramid room. I scan the books on the bookshelves. There is a Ram Dass book on top. I love him. I am glad he is here on this retreat with me.

Idiot’s Guide to Feng Shui, Reading Lolita in Theran, The Sedona Method, How to Think like Leonardo Da Vinci, How to Cook your Life

I love books. I love books and the moon and cats and meditation and tea and monks.
I am tucked into my bed, totally present and aware and peaceful. Maybe it’s the moments when I ignore my thoughts and come fully into the present moment that I am happy. I keep still. I fall asleep.

Yoga at 6am. About 8 women. A long narrow room, windows on each end, a stone fireplace on one side. Windows cracked. Birds chirping. Smell of grass and trees. Sound of deep synchronized breath, bending and stretching, straightening and lengthening. Working so hard to be ourselves. He says, “If you want to make the pose more dynamic…” I sink in. I feel the strength of my feet and legs. Feel the energy running down my arms and up through my head. How I wish I could bring all of this to Philly. How I wish everyone would stop working, stop moving and just do yoga in the park. How I want everyone to love their lives and just be happy.

I am aware. I move too much. I run around too much. Too much talking. Too much doing. I know I need stillness. Even in stillness I am moving. Rapid thinking. Pulsing heart beat. Rising falling breath. Even in stillness I am moving.

I rest in child’s pose. I feel love. Forehead to the floor. Body soft. I am sleepy.
I relocate to the backyard to reflect in my journal. I write,

“I think that I need to give even more honesty than I’ve been giving. More more more honesty. I think I need to give the most embarrassing shameful awful thoughts. I think I need to stop thinking my thoughts are so important. Need to stop thinking they are “my” thoughts. They’re just thoughts passing through. Thoughts everyone has. Who am I to be so righteous and protective of my thoughts?

I’ve been keeping thoughts inside like dirty rats in a cage. Why? My thoughts are not me. I am not my thoughts. What if I let the rats run free in the world? What would happen? Why would probably find happy homes somewhere. They’re certainly not happy inside of me.

I never pay attention this much in real life. That’s the problem. I’m so busy doing that I never pay attention. Such a shame. Such a sadness to miss so much.

When my heart is open everything is poetry and magic and love. Then it closes and I am in darkness.

The Buddha held up a flower as a teaching. Students became enlightened. That’s all you need. One moment. One flower. One breath.”

There is a girl walking back and forth on a stone path in bare feet holding a colorful ceramic bowl. A little bug crawls on my journal. Really little. Iridescent black body. Two little antennae. Legs too small to see. Wonder what he’s thinking?
Flowers surround my blanket. They are sitting in meditation, sitting in silence, just sitting there. You can tell they never get bored, never complain. Flowers are more enlightened than me. There are more flowers on the vine behind me. Incredible fuchsia flowers wide-open and unashamed, begging for sun like little sluts, like whores for the heat.

They ring the bell and it’s time for breakfast. I entire the silent hallway adjacent to the kitchen. I fill a bowl with greek yogurt and fresh blueberries. It tastes so good that I shiver a little, like the way you do when you have the first ice cream cone of summer. I like it so much that I eat it too fast. I can’t help it. I eat half-a-piece of bread embedded with seeds and dried fruit, a bright yellow banana, ginger tea.

Six people are sitting on the patio eating their breakfast in silence. The monk is one of them. It’s so lovely to sit quietly with people, so reverent.

It’s nearly time to start our first session. The monk enters the meditation hall and fills the brass bowls on the altar with water. It’s an offering. A devotion. An act of love. It makes me cry.

A white butterfly hovers and flutters over the green bushes outside the window.
The monk disappears.

I put pen to paper again:

“It’s not that there is not enough. It’s that there is too much sometimes. Too much perfect beautiful amazing breathtaking world. I think maybe I try to hold onto it. I think maybe I try to hold the whole world inside my body and I can’t do it and it makes me shake from the pressure. I think that I worry that if I don’t hold onto it, it will disappear and be lost. In my heart of hearts, I know that’s not true. I just can’t give up the holding. I want to hold the whole world.”

We filter into the meditation hall. Blue, black, burgundy pillows. Cross-legged people sit with straight spines. The man to my right is breathing loudly. The teacher enters, takes off his red robe and wraps an orange patch-work cloak around his body. He sits. Takes off his watch. Rests his palms in his lap and says, “OM is a lovely word.”

We all chant together in low hums until the room vibrates like the inside of a drum. Amazing the way that voices can merge into one sound, one instrument, one song of devotion. We become the chant. I feel the vibration in my chest, in my head. The teacher says, “Feel the presence of the Buddha.” We invoke the Buddha but the energy I feel is more Native American – maybe it’s the land where we are chanting now. Maybe the Native Americans chanted here hundreds of years ago.

We chant faster and faster. One mantra per breath. Some people believe that we are given a limited number of breaths in a lifetime and when we run out of breaths, our life ends.

Now the energy shifts. I feel like we are in the desert of Australia with the bushmen playing their didgeridoos. Then we fade into silence, the mantra still on our lips and in our hearts. I feel like I am getting closer and closer to myself. I feel fragile and new. I want to be unafraid of who I am. I want to be me. I believe I am an expression of God that is not fully expressed yet. I want to come out of my shell.

Nana

Nana’s name is Mary, like Hail Mary, full of grace. Nana’s name is Mary, like Holy Mary, mother of God. Nana is in a nursing home. An ugly scary nursing home. They serve roast beef with lettuce and slimy orange stuff on the side. Nana has been old and unhappy for as long as I can remember.

Nana is old like yellow newspapers, like stained clothes. Nana is always in pain. She complains about her eyes, her ears, her hips. Nana finally got a hearing aid and now she doesn’t yell “HUH?” as much as she used to. Nana knows me. She never forgets me. She remembers what I told her on the last visit and the visit before that. She’s been telling me on every visit for the last 20 years that she will be dead by the next time I visit. But she never dies. She just gets older and older. Like old churches. Like cheese.

Nana says “Don’t get old, Gabe. Don’t get old.” Nana says, “Don’t get old, Gabe. Don’t get old.” She’s outlived nearly everyone she knows – her parents, her husband, three sisters, a daughter, a granddaughter.

Nana is old like the rocks jetting out into the ocean, life crashing against them for years, wearing away a little bit of rock at a time, but never taking the whole thing.

Nana used to go to novenas with her sisters. She used to go to novena all the time and pray for 9 days or more. I don’t know what she was praying for. She never told me.

Nana is old like the period at the end of the sentence of my life. Is that what I will become? Is nana me in the future?

Nana has a great laugh. Her laugh makes me laugh. Nana keeps her room very clean and she likes pink towels.

Nana has pictures on the bookcase, the TV, the refrigerator. Pictures of me, Lee, mom, Carli and others.

Nana doesn’t tell stories about the past like other grandmothers. She just says, “I miss your mom. I miss your mom” with tears in her eyes.

Nana watches lots of TV, mostly game shows. She sits with her friends in the lobby of the nursing home gossiping a little, complaining a little, laughing a little.
All the ladies eat the meatloaf and the lettuce and the slimy orange stuff.

Nana has pictures of Jesus, the crucifix and rosary beads in her room. I know Nana prays but I don’t know what she prays for.

I think Nana is 88. I don’t remember. I lost track. All the years above me seem to blend together. I can’t much tell 50 from 60 from 70 from 80. It’s all a mirage of the future. My future self. My future life.

My past is much more distinct, like crispy crackers, like brail. I can read every line of each year. Remember each feeling and touch the texture. The past is like sandpaper, the future like steam.

Some say you can create your future. Is that true? Did Nana create nursing home, novenas, no siblings, no significant other? If she knew, if she chose it, why does she say: “Don’t get old, Gabe. Don’t get old.”

Nana’s name is Mary like Hail Mary, full of grace. Nana’s name is Mary like Holy Mary, Mother of God.

The Healer

I am in my mother’s body. Her big pink belly. I look down at myself through my mother’s eyes. I feel the warm pink belly between her hands like a taut balloon. I hold the belly, the belly I am in and not in. I feel my mother’s joy. I am her and she is me. I am inside her. The warm tight pink belly is full with a magical crystalline fluid and although I know I grow in there, I prefer much more to float up into my mother’s eyes, her arms, her heart. I can move freely inside of her for the time being, unrestricted, unconfined. I move with her as she moves but I don’t feel the moving. I only feel the bright warm weightless space inside. I know she knows I’m in here. I know she feels me. I know we know each other. I know we know each other in the most intimate connected way that two people can know each other. I know we exist in a space timeless limitless boundless. I know we share a space that is beyond the physical space, a space I have not yet entered through her. I know she feels the space inside her that we share, where we meet. Where I am her and she is me. I know we are inside of each other.

There are miles of paper dolls connected hand to hand, feet to feet, stretched out like an infinity mirror, forward in time, back in time. They are all the expressions of me, of who I am, of who I was, of who I am becoming. I slide along the paper doll continuum, moving in and out of the various versions of myself, slipping easily into the 5 year old, 15 years old, 20 year old versions of myself. Energy like the tail of a comet moves back and forth along the continuum of me. I slide forward into the future me, feeling the full rush of energy between all the versions of me, connecting them, linking them, as one continuous part of me. It’s as if I am nothing but a streak of light across the sky, a sun beam, a shooting star.

My future self infuses my current self and makes sense of my past self. All of it condensed into a single story line, a single streak of light. I look forward and back at reflections of me, of who I was, of who I am becoming and there is growth and there is change, but mostly there is just still movement, a movement that is not moving. Mostly it’s just like the space I inhabit inside my mother when she is pregnant with me.

So then she pushes me out into the world. Outside of her. Into the world. I can no longer move freely, no longer inhabit her eyes, her hands, her heart. I have my own eyes and hands and heart now. I’m not sure how they work. Don’t really like to move them. It’s all so heavy and cumbersome and stiff. It hurts to move in this way. It pains me to breathe, to turn my head, to open and clench my fist. She pushed me out of her. She pushed me out of her into the world.

I draw down a heavy blanket of numbness to cover up the feeling. I wrap around me a cloak of dull feeling. There is burning inside but the outside is covered like the colorful plastic covers surrounding electric wires. I am covered. I am separate.

And then I am lying on my back on an air mattress in the tower of my house, somewhere between 16 and 17 years later. I am warm and tingling from the rum swimming inside of me. I am lying on my back and he pushes himself inside of me and we are no longer two people. We are one person. I am inside of him and he is inside of me. I can move freely again. I can leave myself and go inside of him. I can feel his heart as if it is my own. I can see with his eyes, feel with his hands. I am connected. I am part of someone again. I am connected to someone in the most intimate connected way again.

And then I am aware. I am aware that I can go inside of you. I can go inside any of you and see what you are seeing, feel what you are feeling, think what you are thinking. I can feel your blood and flesh as my own. But mostly I can connect to you in the most intimate and connected way that two people can connect.

And then she dies. Like a balloon popping, mom dies and all that’s left is the air. All that’s left is the limitless space, the still movement, the vast emptiness where we are both existing in the tail of the comet, the heat of the sunbeam, the sparkle of the shooting star. I am no longer inside of her but somehow we are in the same space again. And she’s not inside of me but somehow we are in the same space. Am I am physical and she is not physical but somehow we are in the same space.

And then I begin touching people. I touch them and try to heal them. And they say they feel warmth in my hands. They call me a healer. They say ‘thank you for healing me.’ They bring me flowers. They send me notes. They say, ‘how do you do that?’ And what can I say? How could I possibly explain? Well you see…

First I was inside her and I could feel her and she could feel me and we were in this space like a private space, that space that connects all of us, and then she pushed me out into the world and I was cast out of the space and I couldn’t get back to the space, and then he was inside of me and I felt the space again and then she died and the space expanded and she became everything, and then I knew if I put my hands on people that I could go back to the space. And you see, this is how I ended up here with you, in your eyes, in your hands, in your heart, knowing what you need, how you feel, who you are. This is how I know you. Can you understand that?

I drop down into my hands. I dissolve into light. I travel out of my hands into you, like the breath, slipping in undetected. I close my eyes, I find the space that is you inside of you. The breath inside the breath. I move easily and freely. I know who you are. You cover your face, embarrassed. How can she see so much? How can she know so much? How does she do it? You say, “You know how to touch me.”

I know that I know how to touch you. It’s what I know. It’s who I am. I would not be me if I didn’t know how to touch you. I feel you, ya know.

People say that: “I feel ya.” What they mean to say is, “I’ve felt what you’ve felt at one time. I know how you feel.”

But I mean it differently. I feel you. I feel you as real as I felt myself through my mother’s hands as she touched her big warm pink belly. I feel what you feel.

We’ve been inside each other all along.

Pink Diary

I have a pink diary with a gold lock. The lock isn’t very sturdy and it’s easy to open the lock without using the key. The key is very small like a key that Alice in Wonderland would use to open a very small door. The cover of my diary is kind of like a door. It takes me away from this house, this room, this life and into a different one. In my diary, I am writing my life instead of my life writing me. In my diary, I tell the story instead of listening to the story being told. In my diary, I am the author, the writer, the creator. In my diary, I can write whatever I want. I can write good words, bad words, soft words, hard words, they are my words. I don’t need permission to write them. No one is checking my grammar or spelling. No one checks for mistakes. There are no mistakes. I can say whatever I want and its mine. It belongs to no one else. Sometimes when I feel like hurting myself or someone else I write in my diary instead. Sometimes when I am sad, I write that too. Once during a scary storm, I wrote a poem but I don’t write poems much.

The cover of my diary is pink and squooshy like a plastic pillow. I like the texture. It’s shiny. I keep my diary on my nightstand next to my little prayer books. I like to write with my favorite pen – a black skinny stem with a fluffy fuchsia hair ball at the end with eyes and a nose. It kind of looks like a bird. A bird from a far away place maybe. Not a bird from around here. The fluffy ball is so soft – soft like my cat. While I think about what to write I like to rub the fluffy ball on my face. I like the way it feels. The fluffy ball seems so alive to me that I start to write stories about it in my diary. I draw a whole family of fluffies. Fluffy balls with faces and hands and feet. The fluffies live in the clouds. They hold hands and play baseball. They have big smiles and no worries. Sometimes I roll out the left-over wallpaper in the basement closet and use the back of it as a canvas. I draw endless scenes of fluffies in the clouds. Sometimes I draw a rainbow or a unicorn, too. I love unicorns almost as much as I love my fluffy pen. I believe in unicorns. I believe they are real. I think someday I will have my very own unicorn. I think I might meet a magic lady that lives in the forest and she will ask me what I want and I will tell her I want a unicorn and she will give one to me. My unicorn can fly. My unicorn is friendly and gentle and my unicorn is white with a golden horn in his forehead. His horn is 24 carat gold like mom’s jewelry. If I had a unicorn, I wouldn’t want anything else. I wouldn’t even need a place to live. We could just ride from place to place and stop and sleep on the clouds when we were tired.

After I fill up my entire pink diary, I ask mom for another one. The next one is blue. It doesn’t have a lock. I don’t like it as much but I fill it up anyway. Then I ask for another and another. I start writing a whole story about a faraway place like dungeons and dragons. There is a wizard in my story and lots of adventures. At night, sometimes Lee comes to my room and sits on my floor and I read him some of my story. He likes it. Sometimes he draws with me on the wallpaper rolls, too.

Sometimes I think our stories and pictures are more real than our real life. I don’t feel anything in the real world when I am writing or drawing. I would like it very much if I could step right into the diary or the drawings and live there. I would like to be a drawing, a 2-dimenison person on paper. I would like that very much.
My favorite thing to do with Lee is to make forts in my room. We take sheets and blankets and pillows and build rooms within my room. The forts are small and we have to crawl on hands and knees to get inside. We can’t stand up or the whole thing will topple down. The space is so small and so safe like a cave where baby animals sleep in the woods. Mom always makes us take them down but we just build them again.

Mom can’t get us to listen to her much. We’re kind of like those trick birthday candles – you keep blowing them out but they keep lighting up again. In the fort, I can touch all four walls from where I sit. I could never do that in my real house. In the fort, the walls, floor and ceiling are all soft. Not like my real house. In my fort, we can use a flashlight for light and there is no big glass chandelier overhead. I love the fort and I could stay in there forever. When you live in a fort, you don’t need many supplies. There’s no kitchen for cooking and no dirty dishes. There are no long hallways to vacuum or beds to be made. There is just a sitting space for talking and laughing and sleeping. That’s it.

Lee and I, we’re like best friends. We do everything at home together. I listen when he plays music on the piano. He plays Barbies with me when I have no one to play with. We’re happier together than we are apart. We fight a lot, too. I’m not sure why but it seems like brothers and sisters are supposed to fight. Maybe we get sick of each other. Maybe we get sick of the house. Maybe we fight because that’s what mom and dad do. I don’t know. But we always make up. Either because mom makes us or because we want to.

Sometimes we gang up and do things to drive mom crazy. It’s really fun. One time, we were hiding in a department store when mom was looking for us. We would’ve never got caught except that Lee knocked over a bookcase and it smashed on the floor. Mom was real mad when they called her name on the loud speaker and she pulled us out of the store by our ears. She said she could never take us anywhere. When we are bad at home, mom makes us sit on the stairs. Lee sits on the back steps and I sit on the front steps. The top of the steps are connected by a long hallway. If we both sit at the top of the steps, we can see each other and continue to make our naughty plans. Lee’s favorite thing to do when he gets in trouble is to ask to go to the bathroom and then go inside the bathroom cupboards and turn everything upside down. This really drives mom crazy. She yells a lot when he does that. She doesn’t ever hit him though. Sometimes she tries to hit me and I swing right back. One time, mom’s fingernail cut me real bad when she grabbed my arm. She was freaked out by the blood so now she doesn’t grab me anymore.

Besides my diary, my next favorite thing in my room is my closet. In my closet, there are beautiful sparkly costumes from all of my dance recitals and beauty pageants. I love sitting on the floor of my closet and looking up at the satin, sequence and bright colors. I think my favorite costume is the one with the purple pants, black and white top, purple hat and silver sequence wrist bands. I think sequence is prettier than diamonds because it sparkles a lot more and you can wear it all over your clothes. I have one leotard that is bright pink with silver and white beads. It’s so pretty. I wore that in a roller skating competition. The one good thing about mom is that she lets me take all the classes I want – dance, skating, painting, singing. I love to take classes. After I go to school all day, I go to classes all night. It makes me happy.

My friend Christine is in my painting class. Sometimes we act silly in the bathroom when we are cleaning our brushes and the teacher Gloria yells at us. We like to laugh but Gloria likes for us to be real serious. One time, Gloria took us on an art trip to a museum in New York City and I laughed so hard I nearly peed my pants. Christine was fooling around in one of the museum rooms and she accidently kicked off her shoe and it went flying through the air nearly knocking a painting off the wall. Lucky for us, Gloria didn’t see or we would have been in soooo much trouble.

I write about Christine in my diary. I want to remember the stuff we do together. I wonder if I’ll have the diaries forever or if someday they just won’t matter anymore. Grown-ups don’t seem to write diaries. They always seem to busy. I wonder if I’ll be too busy to write when I grow up too. I hope not.

The Sidewalk

It’s a short walk to school. I take the walk everyday for eight years. My eyes memorize the pavement because that’s mostly where I look. Most of the sidewalks are uneven. They are chunks of grey slate bumping up against each other. From the looks of the sidewalk and the pothole-filled roads you would think we have earthquakes here in Scranton. But we don’t. Mom says the roads freeze and break because of the snow and the cold. It’s cold for most of the year here. And grey. Most of the houses are grey, too. People don’t really take care of their houses. The girl Amy who lives down the street from me, her roof is held up by 2X4’s. She’s the same age as me. We have more money than she does so we celebrate birthdays at my house. Mom gets a magician and balloons and a cake. Amy seems happy. Amy’s mom works at McDonalds. We always see her when we go through the drive-thru.

I know that we are getting close to school when the sidewalks change. The sidewalks around the school and church sparkle with little silver flecks of light. I think that these are the sidewalks that they have in heaven and that’s why we have them in front of the church – to remind us of heaven. I feel like the world changes when I walk on those sidewalks. I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. I feel like I am stepping into a world that is clean and good and safe. It’s nice to be off the grey, uneven sidewalk. The uneven sidewalk makes me nervous. The kids say things like ‘step on a crack, break your mother’s back.’ That makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want to break anything.

Sometimes when I get really angry I can’t control myself and I break something. This heat wave comes over my body. It starts at my feet and rushes up my legs. It’s like a force, like a fire hose. It comes up my legs, fills my body and rushes down my arms. Then my arms and chest become tight. I just have to kick or punch something or I’ll explode. One time I punched the window in my bedroom and it smashed. I just stood there looking at the window. I couldn’t believe I broke it. I wasn’t even scared of what mom and dad would say. I was kind of shocked by the whole thing. After I punched the window in a cool feeling came over my body, like a cool breeze or a summer swimming pool, and the heat gathered in my stomach like a simmering fire – reminding me it was there but I didn’t need to do anything about it. It was just hot in my belly while the rest of me was cool.

The nuns say that hell is hot. They say it’s hot like fire and people are burning there. I know how these people feel. I think of hell as a cavern under my basement, a red and orange cave with a river of lava. I imagine people like slaves in the cave. They are hungry, tired and dirty. They are covered in black ash like my grandfather who worked in the coal mines. The nuns say that we will go to hell if we are bad, that I will go to hell if I do bad things. There are so many bad things that I’m not supposed to do. I ‘m not supposed to talk back, to curse, to get bad grades, to kiss boys, to wear anything other than my blue and white uniform. I’m not supposed to chew gum, cheat on tests, think bad thoughts or tell lies. I do my best to follow all the rules, reminding myself about the dark place I will end up if I make a mistake. When I step off of the sparkling sidewalks, I step onto a large black parking lot and into my school. The school building is a big brick building and the church is even bigger. In between the church and school is a rectory for the priests and a convent for the nuns. The rectory and the convent seem like magical, mystical places to me. I’ve never seen inside of them. I imagine that the priests and nuns learn all their secret magical things in there – how to turn wine into blood and bread into body, how to communicate with God and tell God which ones of us are being bad and which ones are being good, how to read the chants from the bible and tell us what they mean. Sometimes I wonder if God and Mary and other saints appear in the convent or rectory to talk to the nuns and priests.

The nuns are much scarier than the priests at my school. The priests are kind of laid back and funny. The nuns are very strict and scold me all the time. Sister Mary is the principal. She is tall and skinny and wears glasses. It terrifies me to be called to her office. I’ll do just about anything to avoid it. I mostly get sent to the office for dress code violations. I just can’t stand to wear the same thing every day and try to sneak in with other clothes sometimes. I always get caught. I feel the same fire in my legs and arms and belly when I get scolded by Mister Mary that I do at home sometimes when I fight with mom. I wouldn’t dare smash a window at school though. I’m certain that a trap door would open up in the floor and I would slide right down into hell if I did that.

Sitting all day in the little seats makes my butt numb and gives me a headache. There are metal radiators that hiss and rattle in the winter. The room is very hot in the winter. Spring is better because we can open the windows. Breathing the outside air makes me feel like I am alive. I feel like I could die when I’m stuck in the hot stuffy room with the windows closed. I don’t know how the other kids stand it.

At the end of the day, we step back out onto the black pavement, then the sparkly sidewalk, then the uneven sidewalk again. I don’t even have to look up as we approach my house, the Victorian beast on the corner of Oak and Wayne. I can feel her. I can feel her sitting there waiting for me to come back. Stepping into her is like stepping into the belly of an animal. I enter reluctantly, looking forward to the following day when I can take the short walk again to school, looking forward to the few minutes between the brick building and the beast when I get to be outside on the sidewalk in the fresh air, with my feet on the ground.

Heart of the House

The air is tight and thick around my throat. I’m dropped down into a hot tight place. There is less room for my body, less space for my breath. I try to take up as little space as possible. Such a big house. Such a little space for me. Maybe if I breathe less, move less, the rumble of the house will stop, slow down at least. Maybe I can be the perfect balance point, the eye of the storm in this chaos. Maybe if I stop breathing, stop moving, I will disappear and every fiber of my being will merge into the fiber of everything around me. Maybe I will just become part of the wallpaper, the carpet, the dark brown wood.

I am breathing now. I am open and alive. My body is free and spacious. I stretch like a lazy cat taking up more space unimpeded by hot tight air. I take in more breath, deeper breath, pure powerful energy. Everything is coming aware, awake and alive.

I drop in again. My tummy tightens. My chest collapses. Someone took the air out of the room like someone scooping water out of a boat with a bucket. The air is so tight. Its hard to look side to side, my eyes heavy in my head.

The room seems frozen in time. The scene frozen. The people frozen. I walk around them like mannequins in a department store. There she is at the kitchen table. Her cigarette smoke frozen in air like a snake dancing out of a woven basket. There he is frozen in joyful play, the cat equally frozen like an animal stuffed and posed on display. The scene unfolds one frame at a time, slower than slow motion. One gesture. One breath of smoke. One swoosh of tail. One smile stretched as eyes blink closed.

I don’t think any water flows through here. I don’t recall any rain. I can hear the thunder, dark and deep. I can feel the branches scrape the window trying to push their way in like prying fingers. I run away in my mind over and over again. The stairs in the house lead only to a hallway which leads down another hallway which leads down another set of stairs which connects to another hallway which leads back to the first set of stairs. A labyrinth. A maze. A Salvador Dali painting.

If I cracked the window maybe I could feel some air on my skin but the windows won’t budge. They are painted shut with 100 years of paint. Maybe I could part the curtains and find the source of light. The curtains won’t open much though, the fabric thick like burlap covered with ugly pictures.

What is brand new? Is there anything I haven’t seen before? A drawer? A keyhole? A piece of jewelry?

Does a house have a heart? If it has a heart, the heart of this house is in the dark bottomless closet under the front stairs. A portal. An energy vortex. The hole where Alice falls flailingly.

I find a picture in the closet. A framed picture about the length of my arm from wrist to elbow. It is a picture of a person – maybe Mary, maybe Jesus – and on the front of the body is a glowing pulsing heart covered in a crown of bloody thorns. The figure -- half woman, half man – is smiling a peaceful smile and the arms are floating up about waist high, palms facing up. It’s not an invitation for a hug or some other embrace. It’s not a limp gesture like someone shrugging their shoulders. It’s just a posture of surrender and serenity – if a posture can communicate that. It’s just a person, standing before me with an aching bleeding heart and a smile. It’s just a person with a glowing light around their pain. I think the figure is wearing a blue robe. I can’t say for sure. And the hair is long, shoulder length. And the features are neither masculine nor feminine. The hands are soft. If I could touch them, I think they would feel like my mother’s hands. The nails are clear and clean, like the eyes. The eyes are light blue or green, I can’t say for sure and although the details are so hard to describe the total effect is that I feel like there is a person hovering before me, not a picture at all. It’s not as if the picture is alive or some 3D optical illusion. It’s as if it is a person in a 2-dimensional frame, with a big fat exposed heart.

I want to cover up the heart with the robe and say, “Put that thing away!” It’s just hovering there. Not quite in the chest, but not quite detached either. I want to throw some water on the heart, put out the pain, but there is no water in this house. Maybe the heart will catch fire and burn the whole house down. Maybe that’s why the painting is here. Maybe God knows the evil that lives in this house and he has sent this saint to burn it all down. Could it burn me down too? Would the house burn around me or would I burn with it? I have the funny feeling that the house would burn down around me and I would be left standing on a pile of black ash like the piles of black coal stacked up around this city.

I like the thought of standing on a pile of black ash on the place where the house used to be. I like the idea of everything I know and everything I love burning to a soft quiet black ash. No more stormy nights. No more crazy chaos. No more screaming suffering in my ear. Just soft quiet black ash. I would dip my thumb into the soft black ash and make a cross on my forehead like they do on ash Wednesday in remembrance of everything that burnt down. I would make a cross on my forehead and stand in the ash in my dirty dress and breathe the air that couldn’t come through the windows because they were painted shut with 100 years of paint. I would make a cross on my forehead and stand in my dirty dress and look directly into the source of light that couldn’t get through the heavy ugly curtains that are now settled like soft fallen snow around my feet.

I can’t imagine this for too long, can’t dream it too deep or I might burn the place down myself. Who is this figure in the painting? Why is it here? Why was it hiding in the back of the dark closet under the front stairs? I see my reflection in the picture frame glass. Something about this painting, this person speaks to me. Something says, “I see you.” I squeeze my eyes closed. The image hurts my eyes now. Makes them burn like they burn when mom is smoking in the kitchen. The heart seems like it growing bigger and heavier. Is it moving? Is it beating?

I can’t look at it anymore. I put it back in the closet. Does a house have a heart? If it has a heart, the heart of this house is in the dark bottomless closet under the front stairs.

Bodhi Tree

I went to the Bodhi tree. I sat at the base of the tree in amazement, in wonder. I sketched a drawing of the tree in my journal. I picked up one of the sacred leaves off the ground and pressed it into the white pages. The tree itself is a descendent of the original Bodhi tree where the Buddha sat when he became enlightened. I couldn’t believe I was sitting in the exact same place where the Buddha sat some 2500 years ago. The garden that surrounds the Bodhi tree is surprisingly unassuming. It’s not like the big Lotus Temple in Delhi or the Taj Mahal in Agra. It’s just a garden and a tree and a few visitors – a colorful mix of Asian, Indian and White people. It’s quiet there. Not deliberately quiet like church or a library. Just quiet like a garden. I don’t think anyone stared at the tree quite as much as I did. I was mesmerized. I was much more intrigued by the tree where the Buddha sat than with the Buddha himself. There was something about the aliveness. The tree was alive. The Buddha was dead. The tree was breathing. The Buddha is a memory. I felt the same way sitting and staring at the tree as I did the day my mother died and again when I was standing in the forest in South Africa. I thought, “I know you! I know this feeling. I know the experience that the Buddha had when he was sitting underneath you. I felt that too.”

It’s a connectedness. It’s a familiarity with nature, like nature is your friend and nature loves you. It’s a feeling that we come from nature and return to the essence of nature when we die. That’s what happened when mom died. She went back into the nature, back into the essence of everything. I felt her in the air, in the leaves of the tree, in the caterpillar. And I felt that essence standing in the forest in South Africa and again staring at the Bodhi tree in India.

The Bodhi tree is difficult to get to. It’s out of the way, off the beaten path. You really have to go out of your way to get there -- take a train for 20 hours, then ride in a taxi for 8 hours, then take a rickshaw for 20 min to the garden. You have to really want to go there, to make the trip. It really was the only thing that I wanted to see in India. It was the most important site to me. The big temples and statues and grand structures are pretty, but I’m much more impressed with the essence of a place. And for me, the essence of India all stemmed from the spirituality of the land and that spiritual essence was grounded for me in a tree in the middle of the desert.

India is hot. It was hot and dry and dusty. Brown everywhere. The tree was green. The leaves were shaped like hearts, little beating hearts falling from thick dark branches creating a blanket of hearts around the trunk of the tree. I smiled when I saw the leaves. Of course they look like hearts! Why wouldn’t they!

I recognized the tree when I saw it. Not recognized the site of it but the feeling of it. I felt at home. I was so far away from “home” so many thousands of miles from home all alone in the desert of India and yet I was in a “known” place. A guide took me up to the cave where Buddha sat for twelve years before he walked down the mountain across the river and sat under the Bodhi tree. The cave was black inside. Empty. Cold. No one was even there. There were a few tattered Tibetan flags marking the mountain but even less people ventured to the cave in the hot sun than they did to the tree. I imagined sitting in the cave for 12 years, listening to the bustling valley below. Wondered what it would be like to sit for 12 years and listen. That’s not what led to enlightenment though. There was no enlightenment until Buddha left the cave, crossed the water and sat under the tree to find the “middle way.”

So many times before and after my visit to the Bodhi tree I have sat at the trunk of a tree looking for comfort. So many times I have rested my hand on a tree to say, ‘hi friend. Can you give me a little support right now?’ So many times the tree has graciously and unconditionally offered its love and support to me. One time, I was walking in the woods, feeling lonely and I sat down on a rock in despair. I felt a branch touch the back of my shoulder like a friend putting her arm around me. I sighed in gratitude and thanked nature for reaching out. Another time, I was arguing with my boyfriend in Los Angeles and I decided to go for a walk to clear my head. I was raging inside with anger and frustration. I walked a few miles over dirty cement streets surrounded by street lights, head lights and cars wooshing by. It wasn’t until I got to the top of a hill where the road opened out to a golf course that I caught sight of a big beautiful grove of trees and I sighed again, saying a quiet thank you inside. I immediately felt the shift in my body. Felt all the anger release. Felt myself come into balance and found my breath once again.