A Thicket of Clarity

I saw The Man six years ago, at a CPR training workshop in downtown San Diego. He laughed when I shook the lung dummy the way they teach you to do.

"Annie, Annie, are you OK?" I shook and said the preferred phrase but exploded into hyperventilating crackup belly laughter. The dummy stared through my grin into some other dimension and I dropped her. I think I was nervous. The Man laughed, too, and I saw him in my peripheral vision clutching his stomach. No one else moved, said a word, broke a smile. Saving lives is serious business.

The next time I saw him was months later as I sat in a local center on a circular black pillow practicing zen, the nothing passage of non-time, sat and breathed and let thoughts grow, evaporate, change, and as I contemplated a nonsense koan intoned by the sensei, I heard a whisper to my right.

"Annie, Annie, are you OK?"

And in the wood quiet center I lost it once more.

I spoke with him after sesshin. We sat on an oak slat bench under a graceful live oak and compare life stories. His name was unusual. His look was unusual. He sat ramrod straight, the product of a decade of serious zen practice, and he wore his hair slightly long, slicked back with hair gel I could smell. It held the scent of incense and rosemary spice. He came from Venezuela, he said, from a small town surrounded by farm and art. He wore an old t-shirt imprinted with sacred geometry and khaki pants and though he was six years younger than me, he felt older than the mesa behind us, as old as anything I ever saw, dinosaur old, but that was the zen, the quiet in his voice.

We did small things together after that, things like drinking green tea and exchanging books about daily practice and old masters. I gave him prayer flags from Tibet for his two room house. He gave me a tiny carved Buddha, an antique, from ancient Cambodia. We shared that dance of the mystics, that measured pattern of attack and retreat, becoming close friends but never something beyond, not in a physical sense. But I dreamed of him, of his dark skin and thin face and sharp mind, how I wanted to push out the Buddha from his mind and pull myself inside.

One day we talked about it, about our desire to have something mundane and wonderful. I started the conversation, said Hey, I should tell you I think you're cute, you know? Such a dumb way to express something solid and darkly interesting, but he knew what I meant. And told me he thought I was cute, too, and funny and sexy and good in all those ways men like. And I blushed, and almost leaned in for the kiss, but he changed tone too quick, too surprising, and finished by explaining his life was his spiritual work. He took priest's vows the next year, and started driving long distances to a far away monastery to learn more secret monk business.

I did what you do. I stop seeing him, left messages with regrets when he'd call to invite me to a forest picnic or a Japanese concert. Forget it, I thought, I don't need that shit. Go be a monk, a priest, an emperor, whatever the pinnacle of zen is, be a service man, just be. But be it without me. Yeah. Without me.

Then yesterday morning he called and I picked up the phone. I thought it would be an Avon customer. But his accent spiked my brain and I said Hey, come to LA with me, come help me deliver a pig. And he laughed, the way I laughed the day we met, and I drove to his mesa lands and let him manage the pig as we fought traffic, fought desire, until a moment when I wanted to give up. The cars roasted in the road, sat and oscillated, and we didn't move an inch for twenty minutes. Frankie the pig started squealing, honking, yodeling for mama, and I shrugged my shoulders at The Man and began to sing my favorite song.

You are my sunshine
My only sunshine.
You make me happy
When skies are grey.
You'll never know, dear,
How much I love you.
Please don't take my sunshine away.

I started singing in a pig farmer voice, all full of life and grit and humor, but ended in some kind of lonely girl murmur, and The Man leaned toward me, stole my karma, left me delicate old like him. And the rest is yesterday's history. I don't know what today will look like tomorrow, you never know that.