Friday. I ride my old tan bike early to the clinic. Cool breeze. Heart pumps. Breath breath breath breath breath. Left pedal keeps sliding almost off so I lift up foot, and kick the side of pedal in place. Elder Latino man, safety vest and stop sign, walks in middle of road, stops cars. He gestures for me to cross. He speaks to me like a secret, Good morning Senora. Tears spring out of my eyes. All over town parents and grandparents are positioned near crosswalks to help children to the other side of the street before their own jobs and days that lay out before them like rooms.
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At Salud clinic Jody Davis, DDS had a rough week. She is training new people plus understaffed. Ready for the weekend. Her touch is delicate, like Laura Ann’s. That was a deep tooth. How does it feel, now that it’s gone? Good, I say. Now it’s good.
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When I open the silk envelope of all the colors, and slide the O’Kesa out I see the inscription Vanja wrote on the inside, Today is Good Day. Light incense, bow to cushion, turn right, bow to the multitudes, sit, arrange my legs. Breathe out. I feel separate. I yearn and twist inside. I feel incomplete. I should be doing more. I am missing something. Not keeping up. I want to get up from this posture. Nagging restless rutted. It hurts a little. I am feeling the absence of something. This feels like a big problem.
It’s not a problem.
I hear the neighbor’s electric tools. He’s building a swing set for his granddaughter. I think of how Steve is looking for wood scraps for a Jizo shrine to build for us. . My head shifts. A thick well of appreciation rises from nowhere, for all of it. The smell of incense brings me into my backbones. I whisper, this.
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Our teachers tell us, our world is as it is. This is obvious to you. Look again. What is happening is indeed happening! You know about this bold statement; this raw, intimate, tearjerker, in-your-face sentiment, often translated as “this.”
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What I mean to say is if I am willing to be with my grumpy, crappy, sore, tired gnarled being, and really land there and say hello…say, easy girl, then moments open up. That’s where the flash bucket lives. Here. here. The world of appreciation naturally swells and I want to sing a song of thank yous. Whether I am sitting on my cushion, squatting behind a tree, or sitting on porcelain in a little room lined up with all the other little rooms at the cineplex I land in the place where I land. Thusness, suchness, as-it-is, isness.
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My dad made this A–Frame dollhouse for me probably for Christmas because in the photo I am wearing a turtleneck and corduroy jumper. One whole side of the house lifted up by its hinges. Fine thin walls of pine between rooms. I tried to get in to see my dad behind a closed door where he was making the surprise dollhouse and he said, no, you can’t be in this room. Tantrums failed. Nights and weekends. Later, when I was allowed in the room, my father taught me to hand plane wood, thin curls left behind.
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Marlow Brooks brushed calligraphies for each room at Shambhala Mountain Center. Room 208 is a small room with no place to practice yoga, but it has a tub. If you turn over the calligraphy on the wall of 208 you will see written, in English, THIS.
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On Wednesdays Laura Ann offers me bodywork sessions. Talking about work, she says maybe this is enough.
My astrology report in the free newspaper, says, a good week for complements and gifts. It says, this is what I need.
Poet, David Whyte says this world invites us to have the conversation. All we need is to listen.
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Robin of Lyons gave me this great one speed bike. Barbara gave me improv. Edwina taught me to sew tiny stitches. Jean gave me the exact right color of green. Mike, he gave me a gentle push up the hill. Kobun gave me everything. Bhanu gave me a construction paper heart, crossed out the poem but kept the title. Vanja gave me robes from Japan and papers that go all the way back to Shakyamuni Buddha. Marcia and Hayley lifted the entire bed so I could see out the window. Steve made the bed. Rog said yes to our father’s bones. Laurie gave me a break on the cost of the brakes. Daryl made the flyers, gave me the password, and logged me in.
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The dollhouse was lent to a family. The father, my cousin, walked out the front door of his house house and kept going. Then the mother and children needed to find another place because the entire house accidentally burned. The house went in flames with the dollhouse inside. House inside a house. She found another place, and her little dog is allowed in all the stores and goes everywhere with her, even to my father’s memorial service. The children, who are grown, are doing well. They know how to play music.
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There are rooms I am not allowed to enter, and ones I can easily go inside. We speak or don’t with tears or fists in our eyes. There are rooms I earn, rooms I swallow. They appear and are gone. Rooms porous and rooms firm. Rooms in dreams, rooms of others. Spread all over my life people say, come in to this room, here. I have no idea why I am not allowed into some rooms. It’s not my concern.
In a dream I can slip through a wall. Sometimes I need to find the side door. And sometimes there is gentle body behind a door building a beautiful world, intricately made. I won’t be ready to enter until the cadence matches the plot. When I am ready, when I can see, then, surprise, one side of the house swings up on its hinges! The old man, a stranger, somebody’s grandfather, steps out into traffic for me and my one-speed, and says, hello, hello, a good morning.
~o~