Creature (2 page)

Back then it had seemed as if I was living a life after it had already ended. Now I could hardly take in enough.

Sometimes there is a great emptiness, like shaking a box nothing is inside of; sometimes the box becomes warm. It was like that when I arrived here. It was four in the morning and before coming I had been reading a book about being an adult. I had also been trying to read
The Flower Ornament Scripture.

I can’t picture you doing that.

It’s not weird, is it?

I guess not.

I don’t know yet what I’m walking around in. I feel lost. I like that. A sentence in the introduction to
The Flower Ornament Scripture
reads, “It could variously be said with a measure of truth in each case that these teachings are set forth in a system, in a plurality of systems, and without a system.” So there is a web, but that web doesn’t actually exist, and sometimes it is multiple.

Do you think you are walking around in a web?

On the way here, the person I was driving with asked me lots of questions about my life. I asked her lots of questions too, and though I thought I could go on for a long time in that way, I wanted to respect the silence of the place we were going to, so I watched what I could see of the ocean, then what I could see of the hills, their lumpy shapes above us, and then again at the line of the ocean running alongside.

On my first night, before the bell was struck to begin evening zazen, there were many sounds I had never heard before and they came through my head and my heart at strange angles.

Often, in my first weeks here, I would wake up from a nap, something piercing through me. There were many things moving through my mind and they seemed to combine into a single arrow.

I settled in.

One of my favorite times here, when I most feel a part of the community, is when we carry things together. Twice a week someone from the monastery goes into town to buy the things we need for the coming days, then comes back, usually during dinner. We have to stop eating to carry vegetables from the truck to the walk-in or to the pantry. I love everyone then. I also like when there are talks at night in the dining room, because it’s a chance to be with the others in a different way, in chairs, waiting for someone to begin speaking. I look around at people talking and laughing at a time when we are usually silent. I’ve never lived in community before.

Do you think it’s reality?

Yes, it’s real.

I’ve started a reading journal. I don’t have very much time for books, but I sit down with one whenever I can. Behind the zendo is a library. Behind that is where we wash our clothes. Sometimes when I’m reading I can hear the water come on and off, splash into the plastic buckets or the sinks. The library is very small; if four people are in it, it’s crowded. If it’s just you and one other person it’s intimate, like you had planned to read together. Once, when I got to the library, my driving companion was there, reading a book. We smiled at each other and I climbed the ladder to the reading loft.

What kinds of things do you write in your reading journal?

Yesterday I copied down: “Is the body a religious practice?” Do you think that’s silly?

What did you do today?

I sat and thought about a thing in so many different ways that I was able to turn it in various directions and look at it. This might be obsession, but if it is, it is a new kind of obsession, a new way for me of being obsessed with something.

That sounds vague. What were you thinking about?

It’s kind of boring. I thought about whether or not I am the kind of person who should live in a monastery.

In
The Diamond Sutra
it says, “However many beings there are in whatever realms of being might exist, whether they are born from an egg or born from a womb, born from the water or born from the air, whether they have form or no form, whether they have perception or no perception or neither perception nor no perception, in whatever conceivable realm of being one might conceive of beings, in the realm of complete nirvana I shall liberate them all. And though I thus liberate countless beings, not a single being is liberated.”

When I come across a sentence like that I usually get very excited, but lately this sutra has been frustrating for me. I am studying it, but it is disruptive. Every few days I meet with three other people and we read and discuss the sutra. Sometimes we chant it. We have been trying to find new ways to approach it, but it’s been difficult. For some reason, even though I enjoy the new ways, they make me laugh and I am afraid this laughter is disturbing the others. I don’t want to bring down our study. I laugh when we chant; the others sound so serious, and so nice. It’s as if we are throwing ourselves at the sutra; I feel, specifically, that I am throwing myself against a wall of it, though I am never injured, only come to know how flat and hard it is.

This evening after dinner I hiked up past the solar panels with one of my friends. It’s more of a climb than a hike, actually. On part of the trail is a rope so you can pull yourself up and also keep track of where you’re going; the trail starts to disappear. My friend was wearing sandals and I think it was hard for him, harder even when we were coming down. There are small prickly buds on the ends of the dry grass that get stuck on my clothes whenever I hike here. They got stuck to my socks and dug into my legs. Every time we sat down for a rest I tried to remove some of them, but I always collected more. I thought I could sense the ocean by the color of the sky, but my friend told me I was looking in the wrong direction. It still seems as though the ocean is in that direction.

On the way down, we became covered in dirt and had to go to the bathhouse. There, the lanterns shone softly. I hardly ever go when it’s dark out and I could barely see the other women around me, could barely see myself, when, after bathing, I combed my hair in front of the mirror.

I like picturing that.

Really?

Yes.

Do you feel distant from me?

Yes, I do.

The densho is calling me to evening zazen. Now someone is hitting the han. I love the han, the way the mallet sounds as it strikes the wood. The path is dark and someone is wearing a headlamp.

I’m sorry.

Why?

That we’re distant.

If we stop talking to each other, I’ll have to find a different way to communicate with you.

Will it really be me, if I’m not there?

I’m not sure, but I don’t know what else to do. Sometimes I feel close to you when you aren’t there.

In the zendo, we sit. Someone clears her throat, and the person next to me carefully changes his position. My shoulder blades are tense and I want to relax them. They are usually like that when I sit zazen. Outside, I can hear a person walking across the gravel, and even farther away, a person in the dining room, talking.

The land in this place is reminiscent of the desert. I think I needed everything that grows here. I’m happy, and I don’t know what to think about that. I know there isn’t a goal to find happiness, and yet I find it, even when things are hard. I don’t really want to leave.

What do you think will happen then?

That I’ll go back to being anxious.

Isn’t that part of what you are doing there, to be okay with whatever is happening?

Yes. What’s it like where you are?

It’s hard. Someone I love is sick.

A few weeks ago, a visiting Benedictine monk who was giving a talk in the dining room spoke for a few minutes about reading. I might get this wrong, but I think I remember him saying that in his tradition the word is supposed to send a person into the great silence. Just a little bit of reading is enough. When I read I usually want to do so for a long time, but to read a little and then to be with that reading in silence sounds very nice.

Something about him reminded me of you, or what you might be like when you are older; I think the ways you both move around in your bodies.

Lately I’ve been having a hard time knowing what’s good. I don’t even know how to write. Maybe I am only a reader. I try to force things, force stories. I have to work on a story for many, many months before it makes sense.

Still, someone gave me the opportunity to copy a piece of writing onto the wall of a gallery. I’d never done anything like that before. I called it a hunger text, because it was about a woman who didn’t have enough money for food. On the day I painted my hunger text on the wall, I wore an old-fashioned lace shirt that had once belonged to my aunt. I also wore a long wool skirt. The text was projected onto the wall, and I painted on top of it. I found it both relaxing and exhausting to do this all day.

I will write about this experience, I thought. Now I am writing about it, but I’m not sure what there is to say, and whether or not saying it will be interesting for anyone to hear or read. I felt comfortable painting the text while wearing the old-fashioned shirt and the skirt. I wanted to make a costume for myself, even though I wear this costume at other moments too, like when I go to the grocery store, or to a restaurant. Maybe I wanted to be another kind of writer, one who performs putting her text on a wall, as if it would be fun for someone else to see me do this.

Now she is painting an “A” on the wall, and now an “e.” Now I have painted the word “foot.” And now “pleasure.” The woman in the text is projected onto the wall too, limping across letters, eating bugs. Can you see her? What am I doing there, leaning across her, leaning across those letters, while standing on a ladder, with the text projected on my back, and my arms, as my shirt is white, and see-through, and when I am there the woman is on my back and arms as much as she is on the wall.

Here, I have put a hungry, abject woman on the wall for you to ponder; a woman who still feels pleasure. If you read part of this text, you’ll only know a little about her. If you read all of this text, you’ll still only know a little about her.

I walked across the floor of the gallery, dragging my foot. No one else was in the room; this part of the performance was only for me. This must have been more interesting than seeing me paint letters on a wall. Watching me paint letters would only be interesting for someone who has some special attraction to me. I suppose if I were attracted to a person I could watch him or her paint letters on a wall all day, or at least for a part of an afternoon. I am in a relationship, but I am sure the person I am in a relationship with would be bored by having to watch me paint letters on a wall for more than ten minutes. This is understandable. But it felt good, the dragging of the foot. I liked doing it.

When I got home, my partner was eating an egg. This is what he does when I’m not around. He also eats fish. I was harsh to him, but without speaking. I expressed myself through the violent putting away of a pan. Later I sat on his lap and dreamed about the future. This was together alone.

In our reveries, we both forgot the other was there. I was very far away. I was thinking about how dark it was getting outside, but I clung to his neck, which must have meant that I was also very much in the room. When I told him what I had been thinking about, he didn’t believe me. “How could you look so far away and be thinking about something so mundane?”

“But darkness is never mundane.”

“I need to work now,” he said gently, nudging me off his lap.

I wanted to wash my face and my feet. I wanted to be invited somewhere.

“This is evil,” I said out loud.

The days went by and I occupied myself with reading and writing and lying around on the porch. In my mind I was very close to the days before when I had written my hunger text on a wall. Every moment felt charged with a thing that had just happened, or a thing that would happen once something else had ended. Lying around on a porch sounds lazy, but it doesn’t have to be. It depends on how you feel about it. Because my wrists hurt, I was still charged with the copying of my piece of literature.

Finally I did start to feel lazy, so I walked a few miles along a surprisingly empty road to a university library, though I have no affiliation.

I collected the books I wanted to read, and then found a comfortable place to sit, so I could read them. This place happened to be next to an elevator, but that’s not what made it comfortable.

“I want to see myself here,” I said out loud.

The woman in the chair next to me jerked her head around.

“This is a library,” she said incredulously.

“I know. That’s why I said it.”

“Look in a window. At your reflection.”

“I don’t do that anymore.”

“Study your arm.”

“You don’t understand what I’m talking about.”

The woman stared at a row of books for a few minutes. They were hardbacks. Then she got up to watch a documentary about a writer. I could see the screen, but I couldn’t hear anything. The woman was wearing headphones.

I will force this into a story. I got cold when I thought this. I started shivering. I was in a place where I couldn’t control the temperature, which upset me. I wanted to be comfortable so I could focus.

I moved into a sunnier part of the library and continued reading. Right away I was able to see the specter of the story. Now I am moving through literature, I thought. I would like to move through something abject. Like when you touch something warm and you get warmer. But, I am abject myself. I don’t need to touch another to feel this way. I possess it inside, like a little clamshell.

I was tempted to move in a way that would make the others in the library think of me strangely, the way I had moved when I was in the gallery.

I looked at my hand. How can I re-imagine you?

This can not be a portrait. The page is the size of a mirror, but that doesn’t mean anything. Once I looked at my arm and wanted to write about that. Write about the arm when the whole body is being abused.

Tonight, the night I am writing this, I am sick and tender. My body is warm and it hurts my throat to swallow.

Not knowing what is good for anyone, I start writing.