I have chosen to practice stillness. I do it for the simple purpose of creating a clear space to make skillful choices, those based on wisdom.
Please do not think this is an easy or simplistic road, and I promise that I do not tell you this because I wish to appear any better than I am.
I tell you because I wish to speak and move from a place of kindness, place that I hope will reflect the basic goodness that I believe, or perhaps only hope, we are all born with. If I can settle down enough to let heart guide me, rather than fear, the dominoes may fall that way.
Big Island East SIde
No, let me draw another image, take a fractal. It starts small in nature and mathematically repeats making designs of beauty. Tree limbs and snow flakes, broccoli and sea anemones are all examples of fractal design. Let me start small with one beautiful concept and move forward.
Let me be still.
Earlier this week I had a relapse of sorts. I fell into a vat of sorrow, distrust, fear, anger and hopelessness. Buddhists and Hindus call this by the Sanskrit word ‘samsara’. Guerlain, the Parisian Parfumerie, mistakenly named a perfume ‘Samsara’ and charged about $75 an ounce. Very chic. I am certain I have paid much more dearly in this life, and it is even sweet at times. They discontinued the scent, by the way. People were beginning to know the word in common parlance.
My vat of sorrow was the snake I had forgotten to look for.
Big Island West Side
Samsara is a word for the suffering that comes with not understanding my true nature, that is my relationship to ‘what is’. Samsara is simply the way things normally are, the human situation of wanting and not wanting things to be like this, right now. Not allowing for the fact that limitless prior events through time have converged upon this moment in the process of cause and effect.
I am only a tiny piece of this. One little short lived ‘cause’ whose effect is minute and probably ill chosen at that. Even when things go my way, and I am briefly happy, the fact that things will always change leaves me ultimately dissatisfied.
Change. The only thing I can really count on in the world of form, the world I live in.
Stillness is one way to step away from this deeply engrained and quintessentially human function of Want/Not want. It is not the answer, not the antidote, but it is a perspective from which I can possibly see more clearly.
Volcanoes National Park
What shoved me into that vat of slimy darkness was a random rabbit hole on the internet. No. It was less than that, it was a mouse hole. I looked up a definition and found myself reading history. The history that tried to envelope my soul was a list of 5 steps of Totalitarianism take over and how they were historically used in France, Russia, and Germany to destroy the existing governments. They sounded familiar and I grew ill.
Luckily I told a friend who guided me to look at a balancing note in history:
The Resistance Movement of WWII, The Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Suffrage (which my GGG Grandmother was part of), The Singing Revolution in the Baltic States, and work by Gene Sharp on Nonviolent resistance.
She reminded me to hold dear a true community and friendships. It saved me from my own small hell. I am grateful.
The Trees
Wanting things to be my way is not an option, neither is being separate from any of it. I often turn to the words of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj for a sense of wise balance:
“I look within and see that I am nothing, and this is wisdom,
I look without and see that I am everything, and this is love.
Between these two, my world turns.” SNM
Hopefully, it will be this wisdom that ultimately guides me, not the fear.
Walking in a small protected forest, I constantly plunge into the dizzying effects of a landscape given freedom. There is so much to see on a small scale and so much to see looking up. So much to hear in the silence.
In reality there are probably no truly ‘old growth’ habitats left, between man and the alien creatures who follow, the balance is constantly changing. None the less I am grateful to be here now, breathing the air with them.
The following story is a re-telling of one that is told in Buddhist text. Intending only to give a face and a feeling of depth to what is a simple tale. Consider it an alternative reality story, if you like. Some of it may seem familiar, but slightly changed. The ‘what-if’ is the other story of characters we never see, and how the story played out in their lives.
The story in it’s original guise concerns Sujata, who was a cow herder remembered because she brought milk mixed with rice to feed to a starving man. This man thus ended six years of being an aesthetic in his spiritual journey, and from this turning point developed the ‘Middle Way’. After obtaining several more insights, this man became the one known as Buddha.
Sujata was one of the few women mentioned in the Buddha’s life, but after 2500 years, what can be known of her? I have changed a few details, such as giving her goats rather than cows, but the story itself is about her imagined niece, Anya. There is also a tree, which has predictably wriggled its way onto the stage, it is not the much-revered Bodhi Tree, pictured above, only an old sister to it, who is now gone to dust. Let us remember her part as well.
The title mentions ‘Transmission’, which is the passing of wisdom from teacher to student, using presence, rather than words. I wished to view this as a conduit opened, rather than a vessel filled; one of limitless causes.
In reading this, I hope you will be moved by compassionate allowing, and the possibility of one more Dharma Gate to open. Thank You.
Svaha
Niranjana River, India
Anya and The Smelly Man (or Transmission is a Two Way Street)
Anya was the much-loved daughter of the widow goat herder. At six, she was old enough to help with the herding, but still so young that it seemed to be mostly play. Her hair was dark, except where the sun had touched it red in places, as it had browned her face and tawnied her arms and legs. Around her neck, her Mama had knotted a string of blue beads; a knot between each bead, so only one would be lost if the string were to break during Anya’s forays into the world. Anya loved to run. She ran after goats and their kids until she was so tired she would fall into the grass, breathless and laughing. She would run after the boys of their village and catch them, tugging their small caps from their heads. She would laugh as they gave chase in return and she out ran them and climbed old Grandmother tree, so fast and nimble they could only shout and threaten. Anya’s Mama and her Daadi (grandmother), as well as her Chachi (aunt), would shake their heads, but smile and look at each other, lifting a shoulder. All three were widows now, and Anya was the only child left to them. Much was forgiven. People of the village, too, would smile when they saw Anya running by, even the boys who had much to complain about, took a tolerant stance towards Anya, if any adult should complain. One day, Anya followed some noisy birds to Old Grandmother Tree. When she stepped under the shade of her branches, which were sweeping nearly to the ground, a terrible smell caused her to jerk back and cough. But Anya was always curious and she wanted to know what might smell so bad where nothing had ever smelled bad before. She pinched her nose, opened her mouth to breath and slid under the branches to where Grandmother Tree kept things cool beneath her huge canopy. The ground was a floor of heart shaped leaves, some yellowed and soft lying on the older crisp, brown ones. She shuffled her feet a little through them, in case something did not wish to be surprised, and walked toward Grandmother Tree’s trunk. Against this trunk, which was very wide and strong, there sat a man. He was only sitting, like any man in the village might sit, with his back straight, against a tree and his legs crossed. He was, however, much dirtier than any man that Anya might see in their little village, so close to the water of the River Niranjana, as they were. The men, women and children of their village washed themselves, and their clothing, often in the slow, brown river. The man’s hair was twisted in long dirty strings, his skin was dark with dust and sweat, and his clothing, consisting of a simple cloth wrapping his lower body and another, draped over his upper body, were grey and nearly the same color as the tree trunk. He smelled very, very dirty. Anya was fascinated. She sat down a few feet away and watched the man. After awhile she forgot to hold her nose and a little while later she shut her mouth. She only looked at him. He did not look to be asleep or hurt. He looked happy with his eyes partly open; he seemed to be looking at the ground near his feet. He had a small smile growing on the edges of his mouth and his breath came very slowly. His feet were bare and hard looking, but his hands, which lay loosely one on top of the other, palms up, looked soft and clean. Anya and the small birds that had preceded her, watched the man for a long time. Anya decided he looked like a nice man, because he looked so happy. She rested her chin on her fists and her elbows on her knees, so she could watch more comfortably. The smelly man shut his eyes and Anya sat up straight. Then he opened them and looked right at Anya. They both smiled wide happy smiles and reached out to touch each other’s hands for just a moment, like old friends meeting. Then the smelly man went back to sitting very still, eyes looking only a couple of feet in front of him. Anya waited for a while to see if anything else would happen. She was still smiling when she noticed that the cloth that wrapped his upper body had fallen to one side when he had reached out to her. Anya could see that every bone in his chest was clearly showing through his skin. Anya jumped to her feet and ran fast, calling out to her Chachi in the house. Her Mama was too far away to hear, on the other side of the village with the goats. “Chachi, Chachi!” “What is it child?” said her mild and patient aunt. “There is a very nice man under the Grandmother Tree and I think he needs to eat. He is very hungry!” Anya’s Chachi narrowed her eyes and tilted her head when she heard this. Anya had never been given to exaggeration or stories. “How hungry?” she asked softly. As always, the softer and quieter her Chachi became, the more still and thoughtful Anya became. Anya thought for a moment and answered. “More hungry than I have ever been, more hungry than you or Mama have ever seemed to me.” “And how do you know this?” her Aunt asked, smiling. “Because he is only bones now, and it makes me feel very sad.” Anya’s aunt pulled back sharply at this, and paused, but only for a moment. She swiftly pulled out the pot with this mornings rice in it and spooned a bowl full, then she poured goats milk over it all and lifting her skirts with the other hand, walked briskly and confidently, toward Old Grandmother tree. Anya danced around her, back and forth to help hurry her along. Under the tree, Chachi gasped from the stench, but shutting her jaw tight and smoothing her face, moved forward to where a man sat, thinner and dirtier and happier than anyone she had ever seen. She squatted down at his side and he looked over at her with an easy smile. Chachi smiled back and pushed the bowl into his hands. The man looked down at the bowl as if he did not know what it was, then he smiled even more. With shaky hands, he lifted the bowl and bowed to Anya’s Chachi. They sat and waited for the man to finish eating. He ate neatly, for all his trembling. First drinking off the milk and then rolling the rice into small balls, which he slid into his mouth with what appeared to be unfeigned ecstasy. When he finished, he sat breathing loudly and deeply as if he had just run a long way. Then he grew quiet and handed the bowl back to Anya’s Chachi. “What is your name?” He asked. “My name is Sujata,” she answered with a smile. “Do you feel better?” “I feel much better, Sujata. Thank you! I will never forget your kindness.” “This was but a little rice, it was nothing.” He only smiled back and repeated “I will never forget” nodding for emphasis. Sujata, who was also Anya’s Chachi, tilted her head and said “Wait here with Anya for a moment”, as if, being fed, he could have now have stood and hurried away. She returned soon with a staff and small rolled bundle, which Anya recognized as her Uncle’s old clothing. These her Aunt had saved all the ten years of her widowhood. Together, they three, walked to the edge of the river so that the man could bathe and put on the clean clothes. Sujata turned her back in modestly, but Anya, always the curious one, had to be reminded with a quick tap to her shoulder. Before the sun was high, they watched him walk slowly down the path and away from the village, staff in hand. They never saw him again, but they told the story many times to each other over the years. They did not forget either. In the ten years that followed, Anya grew in height and knowledge. She could herd the goats with her mother and find the best grazing to make the goats strong and happy. She could cook everything that her grandmother had taught her, choosing just the right spices to grind into smooth paste, which even Daadi called the best she had ever tasted. She helped keep their home clean and their things mended. In the village she was still as well loved, as she had been as a child. Though she stood tall and held her chin high, she always had a small thoughtful word for everyone, and though she always went her own way, no one called her proud or willful. If they called her anything, they called her happy, and they too smiled. Of the child that Anya had been, there remained the love of the wind in her face, of running fast and of sitting very still and watching. On the days when her Mama might leave her to watch the goats alone, Anya could sit for hours and hours, seeing everything, hearing everything to the last small chirp or rustle. Anya delighted in it all. At last, near the end of her 16th year, Anya’s Daadi took her aside and told her that she had good news. “What is that my dearest Daadi?” “I have found you a worthy husband.” “Oh!” said Anya, for she had not thought of this change in her life at all, even though the other girls her age were getting married, her life here seemed too complete to change. Her Grandmother looked at her long and lovingly before she took her hand and said, “You will not be too far away. I knew his grandmother when I was your age; they are kind and generous people. They are much respected in their village.” “It is also time for you to be married.” She added firmly. Anya bent her head and was quiet, and then she smiled, took a deep breath and let it go. Raising her eyes, she looked deeply into her grandmother’s eyes and nodded her understanding. Her grandmother realized she had been holding her own breath, and taking Anya into her arms, sighed deeply. The next weeks were filled with planning and stitching and cooking. Anya would go to her new life with new clothing, fresh spices and many goats. She would have new silver earrings and silver beads would be strung among her blue ones. Anya’s father had been a prosperous goat herder and careful of his gains. His widow, once she had put aside her tears and her daughter could stand alone, had followed the same path; raising better goats to go to better markets and diligently saving the profits. With great care and determination, the family had saved Anya’s dowry. All three women of the house had bent their heads and their hearts to the task of finding Anya the best match they could. The day came and an ox cart was hired to seat the four of them and all the gifts, dowry, food and flowers. Two small neighbor boys were hired to herd the goats, which were a part of the dowry, and all who could claim some relation, and several who could not, walked behind the cart to the bridegroom’s village, a half a days journey up river. As Anya sat in the cart, watching the river run back toward her home, while she herself traveled ever farther away, her family told her about her new life. “You will need to be obedient, don’t be too quick to do things your own way!” her mother told her. “They will love you for who you are, just as we do. Just be the Anya you have always been!” her Daadi leaned forward to add. Her Chachi was quiet, but held her hand and smiled into Anya’s eyes, whenever she looked up. At the same time the bridegroom, Rujul, who was as simple and honest as his name, listened to his three uncles giving him advice. Rujul was a year younger than Anya and not yet tall like his uncles. Though he did not know it yet, he was a head shorter than his new bride. “You must be sure she understands her place. Do not let her tell you what to do!” said his eldest uncle. “Remember you are your father’s son and be proud. Your father was a strong man!” said his youngest uncle. His middle uncle simply smiled and ruffled his hair, saying “You remind me of him today.” Then shaking his head at his two brothers, added; “He was graceful and kind. Remember that.” Then he walked away with his hands linked behind him. Rujul, who had lost both mother and father when he was very small, had been raised in his grandmother’s house, and had run in and out of his uncles houses, playing with his cousins. All of his uncles seemed like fathers to him, and he wished to please them, now that he was going to be a married man, just like them. He bowed to his uncles and with a beating heart, turned toward the sound of the approaching wedding party. The day was both long and short; seeming to go on and on, full of food and music, flowers and gifts, and suddenly, too suddenly, over. Anya and Rujul did as they were told for all the rituals, both careful and conscious of propriety. Their families seemed well pleased with them, smiling over the heads of the guests, at each other and nodding their approval of a marriage well chosen. Night came and now they found themselves in the small house that had belonged to Rujul’s parents. Long neglected, it had been scrubbed spotless, given a new roof, a new bed festooned in flowers, and bits of furniture from all the family. In the sudden quiet, Anya gratefully pulled the flower headdress off and set it on a bench. She then hitched up the heavy dress that she would likely never wear again, and sat cross-legged in the center of the bed. Her new husband regarded her in dismay and in uncertain silence. Anya leaned her elbows on her knees and looked at him, much as she would have looked at anything of interest in her world. Rajul felt himself grow hot and uncomfortable. Then Anya sat up and smiled, as if she had made up her mind. For a moment Rajul simply looked back at her, frozen in surprise. Then he turned his head quickly down and away, but not quickly enough to hide his answering smile. “Come sit down with me and talk, so we can become friends.” Anya smoothed the comforter before her. Rajul felt a bubble of lightness and ease float through him, lifting his head with it, as it burst into the air. Folding his stiff coat onto the bench with her headdress, he settled into the space she had indicated. They sat quietly for some time, in the stillness that had fallen. Looking into one another’s eyes, wonder and a strange clarity filled Rajul. Then, all at once, both smiled wide happy smiles and reached out to touch each other’s hands for just a moment, like old friends meeting.
This morning I rose with trepidation and sorrow. I am moving house during a pandemic because the world of limitless causes (action/reaction, karma; call it what you like) is guiding me there. None-the-less, sorrow comes with change, as a part of the body’s system of attachment and letting go, keeping itself safe, and fear comes with that process. All these words are cerebral; my head talking to me, superficial, and nearly artificial. The feeling, though, is visceral, as real as I can understand with my five senses, and I must survive it.
In the realm of ‘new seeing’, that thing that comes on the precipice of change, was my moment of insight. I stepped out into a cool, clear morning, which promised to beget a hot summer’s day, and saw the tree. Just an ordinary pine which I see on a daily basis. With a sudden clarity, I saw the Earth as a giant rock moving in space and the tiny film of water and biota that coats it. The biota that grows and dies in a continual process, that is almost unnoticeable from space, but it is our whole world, the one that we are constantly in flux with.
The tree was a huge and imposing living being that thrust up into the heavens, reached down equally into the earth and would out-live me by three or four life spans.
Just like that, I let go. I stopped worrying about the fibs the realtor told, the drama of my friends left behind, the anxiety of my sweetheart and his spread sheets, the concern about possible disaster scenarios, the impending election, the discomfort of change. It may not stay, this feeling of understanding from a new perspective, but I feel re-set. I feel my life-death process as sweet and inevitable, as it is. I feel my recognition of the process being boiled down to simple acts of kindness melded with forgiveness. I feel grateful.
From my tiny spot embedded in the film of life on a rock in space, I love you all. Nothing more.
The Blog that ate reality. (Only consider the indigestion.)
Perhaps this is closer to the electron vs. the tree product? I would not know. I am not sure at all what the blog is in terms of my real world. This is not due to diminished tech ability so much, but rather to a lack of curiosity.
I was given stern instructions to begin a blog, if I ever wanted to produce marketable writing and be able to sell it; to have an electronic presence. I made the effort, thinking that I would open a door to creativity and meet people of ‘like mind’.
I have a very different view today. Somedays I think I am shouting down a well, on others, I am walking along whispering to myself (which is cause for some worry).
Today, it seems I am talking to a very small group of ‘friends in the shadows’. It has a magical and unreal quality to it. I feel myself reaching out and taking a hand, or starting a conversation here and there. Sometimes I simply brush someones cheek with my knuckles and look deeply into their eyes with an attempt to understand who they are. I am looking deep into a mystery that eludes me. You.
Ever Onward
It is this sense of presence in an electronic world that has ignited my curiosity again. What is this web we weave? How does it penetrate creativity? Is the glue still kindness, or does the ego rule?
For me to even voice these words, feels strange. Clearly, the precipice of my ignorance is high and airy. I lean out and see only hints along a skyline. I know nothing. Perhaps knowing nothing, much more is possible. Perhaps I can fly after all.
Moving slowly forward, I seek the beauty in each little thing.
In the words of Rainer Maria Rilke:
"The core of every core, the kernel of every kernel,
an almond! held in itself, deepening in sweetness:
all of this, everything, right up to the stars,
is the meat around your stone. Accept my bow..."
He insinuated himself into the room, weaving and turning, flowing and slithering. The moon was his friend, neither revealing nor hiding any aspect; it provided the perfect backdrop. She knew he was a Wu. Xiang Gu, named for the fragrant mushrooms that grew beneath the oak tree, had heard and remembered all of her Grandmother’s stories about the Wu, the Shamans who could enter your dreams, influence your life, and change shape at will. She was terrified, or was she thrilled? She wasn’t immediately sure.
“You are young.” He stated it as if youth were her particular failing.
“I’m a woman!” she heard herself tell him this sharply, and then felt herself blush, her courses had begun only a month ago and womanhood seemed a particular prize in her short life. She was, none the less, glad that her red face was hidden by the darkened room, as the moon was by a passing cloud.
He snorted. “How many years? Eleven, twelve?”
“It’s not your business! Leave my room.” Her voice ordered him like a clear chime, but she held her coverlet bunched at her chin, balled up hard in her fists to hide the trembling.
He smiled at her and she shivered. “Already feisty, aren’t you? But this is useless, a useless excursion.” He turned his back on her and paced the small room, picking things up at random and setting them down with a clink, like men have always done in frustration, or through a dimly held rage. Then he turned back to her, and held out his hand. She shrank from him and he laughed again, the hand held steady, not touching, as if to cup the air around her. “They will bond you to the unworthy ones. Those will mark you for better things; your wounds will illuminate, you will SHINE!”
Timidly she lifted her eyes back to his face and saw the light that emanated from his hand, reaching toward her through space. His eyes glinted and his face held something vital, so odd and confusing. Xiang Gu gasped. Not at his demonstration of power, though that was shocking enough, but at the uncanny feeling of knowing him, recognizing him from somewhere she could not place, as clearly as she might have known one of her father’s fellow merchants or a teacher from somewhere nearby in their province. As she drew the next breath, the breath that was filled with ‘who are you?’, he was gone.
In the next month Xiang Gu’s life changed, again. Her mother had died the year before, shortly after her father brought Second Wife into the home. Her mother had only borne one child and that a girl, which had been bad fortune enough for all of them. Some said she died of that sorrow. Xiang Gu never agreed; her mother’s contorted face was caused by physical pain, the foam on her lips attested to the fact that something bad had entered there. Her Grandmother had agreed, but kept her council, carefully watching the new wife.
Things would have been very hard were it not that Xiang Gu’s grandmother loved her so well, and that her father treated her so kindly. She had been her father’s only child, and though a girl child, he delighted in her, he saw she was bright, curious, and laughed with ease, just like her mother. So, he gladly brought her into his life of merchant, letting her play in the boxes and bins of things ready to be transported to some far shore. Seeing her curiosity, he eventually taught her to read and write and add figures, to the outrage of his wife and mother. He shook his head at them, but agreed that it would be their little secret.
Her father, however, though still kindly, had grown distant, with her mother gone and the new wife at her own zenith, he stayed longer at his work, alone with his sorrow. Xiang Gu spent most her time now with Grandmother, she always knew she was safe with her. But, sadly, Grandmother died as well one night, the same month that saw her stepmother conceive. Bad luck, but after all, everyone said, she was a very old woman. Before the month was finished Xiang Gu found herself contracted as the third wife to a man whose life was all but spent. His first two wives were long gone and he lived with his eldest son and that son’s two wives and children. When her step-mother told her this, she wore a very happy little smile, as if she knew some small joke. Dancing a gold bracelet between the fingers of one hand, her step-mother displayed this piece of her mother’s jewelry and then hid it away, over and over; a mesmerizing sleight of hand.
“I know your new husbands’ family very well. I am certain they will enjoy you.” The sound of her voice smooth and sweet; the mice in the walls huddled together and covered their eyes. Second Wife smiled her slim, uncomforting smile, and turned her back with a swirl of silk, to glide away.
The day that she turned 13, Xiang Gu entered her husbands’ home. The eyes, of her new step-son’s first wife, were narrow and hard as they welcomed her, the second wife was quiet and distant. The step-son, the man whose home this really was, assessed her top to bottom, without any hurry. She drew her wedding robe close about her and stepped back, bumping into the chair where her husband had already fallen asleep. She could hear her step-mother’s tinkling laugh as she left by the door beyond, along with the departure the wedding party. Her father had held her hand and kissed her cheek, but she had not been able to reach him in his eyes.
At first this new life had seemed easy, if lonely. Xiang Gu spent her days caring for her elderly husband as he told her stories (the same ones over and over) or gently stroked her hair as if she were a cat. She slept alone in the small chamber within his rooms. Her new husband seemed to never wish for more. She sometimes wondered if he knew she was his new wife, or thought she was his first one, long gone. The other wives in the house had chores and children, so they mostly left her alone with a single servant to clean and serve.
Xiang Gu was still a child when she arrived, for all her protestations of womanhood. She was small and thin like a child who might run through the house or climb a tree in the garden. However, she grew quickly in height and in curves over that first year, and her step-son began to notice. She would find him waiting for her in the hall or he would visit his father and watch her as he spoke. He would look at her as if she were a thing, not a person. He would run a finger down her neck and smile. It made her sick inside.
Then change followed her here too. Xiang Gu began to read aloud to her husband. It was a simple thing; he had found her reading one of his scrolls to herself, and since his eyesight prevented him from working out the words himself, he was thrilled.
“Read to me, Little Cherry (as he chose to call her, she decided he could not remember her given name), this story is old and full of magic. I always loved it!”
And so, they would sit for long quiet hours in mutual happiness as Xiang Gu read book after book, quietly finding more to read from the family library, so they were never, yet, forced to read the same story twice. Until something very bad happened. As she read aloud, a sound of something falling to the floor caused them to both look sharply up. Across the room stood the step-son. He had knocked his father’s walking stick from where it rested against the wall, but he did not bend to retrieve it. His eyes and mouth were open wide as if in some sort of horror, as he stood watching them. His father began to giggle.
“Yes, son, she can read! You have given me a gift indeed in a wife who can match my mind.” For once her husband was not wavering or confused and his son’s face changed from horror to outrage. His father leaned forward as if to make sure of hitting the mark, “She reads far better than you ever did. I imagine she will be able to aid me in checking your book work as well. I know you have troubles with the numbers.”
The son kicked the stick into the room and turned to depart, pulling a tapestry from the wall as he left. Xiang Gu felt a cold wash of fear as she sat, unmoving by her husband, who continued to chuckle to himself for some time, before falling asleep in his chair as he often did.
That night was the hardest one of her brief life, not even the deaths of her mother and grandmother could match the pain of what came next. After the servant had helped her put the old man in his bed and cleared away their supper, Xiang Gu prepared herself for bed, alone. He was waiting for her within her alcove; the son and his lifelong hatred of his father, his fear of being unworthy, and a rage he could no longer house within himself, were all waiting to fall upon a girl who could read.
She did not call out, at least not that she remembered. A life of having been taught the movements of respect and honor, for family, for men, for elders, did not contain the instructions for fighting back. To cast your eyes down, to obey, to bow, to kneel, to self-efface; those were the actions of a good daughter, a good wife, a good step-mother. In any case, he was too unsure of what he wanted himself, for there to be some sense to his actions, something definitive which she might have acted against, or even objected to. He wanted to beat her, to rip her clothes from her, to own her, to destroy what she was, to bewhat she was. He was confused, and when there is no direct path, it is difficult to find your way to where you are going, or to avoid what is there when you arrive. In the end he raped her and this probably saved her life, since the change in his body chemistry brought him back to himself somewhat, and shocked at his own excesses, he departed, pulling his own torn robe, bloodied with innocence, about him. She lay there, bleeding from her mouth and a long cut by her ear, where she had fallen against something, and from between her legs, where the dull, then sharp, then dull, beat of having had everything intimate and sacred striped from her, refused to be forgotten.
In the morning, the second wife found her, Xiang Gu chose to call this one ‘Elder Sister’; she was the kinder of the two, and so, out of respect and because the words ‘Second-Wife’ had already left a bad taste in her mouth, she had called her Jeh-je. Xiang Gu might have been surprised on an ordinary day, since Jeh-je had never entered these rooms since her wedding day. As it was, the thing that did surprise her was the gentle concern that creased the young woman’s face, and the sudden softening of her eyes.
“Come, Little Cherry” (Did no one know her real name here? She thought wearily through the haze of pain.) “Come, I have dreamed of a Wu in the form of a snake. He told me how to save you.” The woman tenderly washed and bandaged her, then left to tell the household that Little Cherry had a fever and must rest. When the son woke at last, from his release of expansive fury followed by deadening alcohol, he did not question when Jeh-je told him Little Cherry was ill, nor when she informed him how much it would cost to obtain the correct medications. He hung his head. She wordlessly laid a cool hand on his neck for a moment, and then swept the coins briskly into her bag.
It was said that Little Cherry died of her fever. Her husband was briefly, but sincerely stricken. Although she had never borne a child, he insisted that her name be included in the family records, an unheard-of concession. Confucius taught otherwise. His son did not object, which caused his father to draw his lips very thin, and to eye his son with a momentary and calculating contempt, before sliding back into his own distant thoughts.
Jeh-je had made many trips out of the home, during the time that Xiang Gu took to heal from her most superficial wounds. The scar by her ear would be spoken of all of her life as an identifying mark and sign of courage, the deeper, unseen, scars began the galvanizing that would make her into something powerful indeed.
At the start of her 14th year Xiang Gu made a brothel in Canton her home. It was located along the coast and was patronized by a somewhat higher class of clientele than some, occasionally foreign, mostly not, nearly all traveling by sea and busy in the world of trade. Jeh-je paid the Madame well for the privilege of keeping Xiang Gu away from the customers until she was older, or until she, herself, agreed. The Madame was intrigued with Xiang Gu’s story and was happy to use the girls’ scholarly skills to maintain the other quiet business she kept: trade of luxury items, including, but not limited to, the unsanctioned trading of Turkish opium for tea, and providing miscellaneous silk, art, and trinkets of any kind for the foreign traders.
Before she left, Jeh-je bent and kissed Xiang Gu’s cheek. She whispered, “I will think of you. Your Wu will protect you. Remind him that I did my part.” Xiang Gu nodded and her eyes filled with tears which she angrily wiped away.
“I, too, will remember.” She told her. Then Jeh-je was gone, and only the story remained.
It is an uncertain thing to have a Wu care for you; is it a gift or is it a curse? Do the attentions of a Wu lead you into more dangers or protect you from them? Xiang Gu thought about these things, but then she was a bright and resilient girl who thought about a lot of things. She found herself happy to be far from anyone who knew her, and her position of book keeper, gave her a new and pleasing status. She was asked by one of the lady workers to teach her how to add up her earnings, another asked her to write a love letter to a young man. In return they would tell her their own stories, each unique, they would bring her special treats, and include her in the few hours they had of ease. She had entered a world of family and friendship. She tried to forget the Wu.
But a Wu is like a sliver in your thumb, or a grain in a back tooth that your tongue cannot dislodge. Xiang Gu would have dreams that she could not hold onto, that troubled or frightened her but refused the light of day. Once she saw a snake in her room and smacked it with a broom. This one got away, but at least it never returned in that form. In moments when she did not expect to see a Wu at all, such as in her bath, she would catch his face in a mirror and watched as he blushed and fled, or seeing him departing from one of the girls’ rooms, as he boldly frowned at her and stalked away, she would wonder what he wanted.
“Who was that, just with you, Mei-mei?” She asked.
Mei-mei laughed. “Him? Still a boy! But he brought me gold. She flashed the small ear hoops still in her hand. “Maybe he will come back. Why do you ask?”
“He looks like someone from home.”
“Then maybe it is better to not be seen?”
“Probably.” Xiang Gu nodded thoughtfully. She wondered if he meant to been seen, though, or not. Once again, she reflected, he had seemed flushed, as if caught out.
Xiang Gu worked hard for the Madame. She not only felt grateful, but she loved the freedom to write and calculate, to use her mind. Eventually she saved enough earnings to purchase the narrow scrolls and ink for herself. There she wrote what few things she knew; the story of her childhood, the story of her brief marriage, the stories of each of the women with whom she now lived. She felt at peace, she was happy for the first time since before her mother died.
Eventually, yet again, the one certainty of life caught up with Xiang Gu: change. Some men came in a group one night. There were six of them, all sunburned and strong from their shipboard life. They were generous, and the girls liked them. They came back two more times before leaving port. Xiang Gu mostly stayed above in her little work alcove and sleeping room, but on their last visit, on her way to the kitchen, she happened to pass the door of young Mei-mei, as one of them departed. He was beautiful and exotic in his way, wearing silks that clashed, but accentuated his slim form, and he wore gold on his neck and arms, as if it were of no account. Xiang Gu ducked her head and moved swiftly down to the lowest level where she shut and bolted the kitchen door, for this one had looked at her in such a way, and her traitor body had responded. With her back to the door, she placed a hand over a heart that beat too quickly.
They came back periodically, but Xiang Gu stayed in her room with great care. One of these nights, Madame came to see her. She stood in the room and asked Xiang Gu to stand, nodding approvingly as she walked around her. Xiang Gu had grown tall and she held herself straight, her neck long and sinuous. She was not haughty, she was certain, and the certainty had grown, bit by bit, story by story, from each girl, from her own story, and showed itself in her posture and her eyes. Xiang Gu knew exactly who she was, and she had, consciously or not, made up her mind who she was going to be. Not. Property.
“Will you meet with him?” Madame asked carefully. She remembered this one’s story, and was ready, still, to let her choose. Xiang Gu spoke with much more certainty than Madame had anticipated. It made her smile.
“I will take tea downstairs. Will you join us?”
“It will be my pleasure to watch you take tea, my child.” And she left with the message curling around her mouth as she went to find the man, who thought he owned his world, but was mistaken.
Her second husband, the one who had captured her heart, once asked her as they rested in his bunk, sated and sweet, if she knew a Wu.
She raised herself on an elbow and looked at him with a smile. “Why would you ask me such a thing?”
“Because there was once a Wu who foretold my good fortune. He described you to a T.”
“What did he look like?” Her husband wrinkled his brow and thought.
“Strangely familiar.” He said at last.
As her son bent over her to adjust the covers, Xiang Gu saw her Wu enter the room, weaving and flowing through the shadows, as was his way. She lifted a finger toward him to stop him from moving closer and he stopped short, a look of intense curiosity on his face.
“My Son” she said, her voice husky with the pain of cancer. “You have done enough.”
“No, My Mother, you will be well again, let me care for you.”
She only looked at him, waiting, watching. At last, he finished with his pulling and smoothing of her coverlet and looked directly into her eyes. He saw something there so strange, that startled, he went to turn and look behind him. With an effort, she grasped his arm to prevent him, and her old strength rolled through her. He smiled to see it.
“Ah, Mah-ma, see, you will grow strong again.”
“No Son, you have been my guide and protector, but you are no necromancer. I will not allow it.” Her eyes were focused beyond him and she would not release his arm. “The time is correct for this. You have loved me well. Now go.” And her son, the Wu, turned and wove his way from the room, leaving himself at her bedside as he did so. She released his arm and her son turned slowly to see the empty air behind him. “Simply an error in timing, my darling child. You always had trouble with that.”
“But Mah-ma!”
“No! I have only one more wish.” And here she stopped to pull in enough breath to speak.
“What is it?” He asked gently.
She quirked up what she had left of a smile, “Teach your daughters to read!”
Some of this is history, a true story, if vague, contradictory, and hard to find (she was called by so many nick-names, you may not find her at first); read it if you like. Some of it is retold with a look to magic in the ordinary, not that Xiang Gu was ever ordinary.
She negotiated her own marriage with the pirate she chose. She settled for 50% of everything. She spent her own, early life as a pirate, at sea, with hundreds of ships, thousands of employees. She made rules that honored women, as well as the rights of her employees, and she maintained the right to exact death if crossed; a pirate to her core. She ended her life where she began it, in Canton, now owning a brothel and gambling place, having married thrice, borne four children and obtained amnesty from the crown, (The Qing Dynasty who gave up trying to capture them), for herself and her crews. She negotiated to keep her gains and to allow her crews to find employment in the Navy. She flouted tradition and won, but was oddly lost to history.
Xiang Gu was born in 1775, became a pirate around 1800, retired in 1810 and died at home with family in 1844. She happily raised that family on stories, including her own. She taught that to love life, was to embrace change. She also taught that to survive life was to bend just enough not to break.
This is a giant oak from Hatfield, in the UK. It is huge and moving in its grandeur. I thought I would show it to you, as the following start to a story has such a large and lovely oak in the background as well.
The Birth of Paris
She has been waiting such a long time, since her body grew too old to function, too old to stay in this place of air, earth, and water, woven into life. Or has it been a short time? She reminds herself that the body and its memories are not who she is; they are only a function of biology, of molecules responding to the laws of the universe. Her ‘being-ness’ though, that is the Great Awareness that she should have melted into by now. Still she remains. She waits. Nahasdzaan Shima, named for Mother Earth, waits and wonders in a place between.
Long before Shima lost her corporal image of herself, she heard a whisper. It came in tendrils of passing dreams and in scents on the breeze. Something was moving in the ground; something was coming forward from a place of stillness, a place of long rest. Something had allowed itself to be recognized at last, to awaken, and to function in the world of humankind: something very old, and very interesting. The aspect of Shima that still held this memory, also held the long slow smile of knowing it.
Thirty-five years before the now (my how time flies), two very determined people were preparing to have a child. It was not their cognitive intention to co-mingle their respective genetic materials, but since the universe supplies limitless causes throughout time (flying or not), without any preamble or discussion, it was probably unavoidable.
William Buller (whose good-name had French roots, meaning ‘Scribe’), was academically inclined, but not a scribe at all. He was a young Department Head at Cambridge, with deep interests in Celtic Studies, in a century when this arcane subject was barely surviving, due to the fact that human survival had become a far more insistent topic than it ever had been. In public he was very dry, a little vain, and not inclined to laugh. His Cambridge persona was something he had inherited, along with a hefty bank account and a very traditional, but often empty, stately home situated somewhere northeast of London, perhaps near Kettering? He seldom mentioned it.
Will had met the woman named Bijou Dubois, while on Easter Holiday in London, where he let down his hair, so to speak. Her name was apparently also from French roots, by way of Haiti. Will had cultivated a group of friends from his college days who also had inherited uncomfortably large amounts of credits (they seldom mentioned it), but far fewer societal restrictions. Among them he could comfortably explore what he thought of as his ‘true-self’; something with lots of unexamined, and momentarily undisguised, appetites. In many ways Will was a very simple man.
Bijou was a bright young woman who had seen more of life than she had strictly wanted to, before leaving home. Now she wanted to see the world and this time on her own terms. Bijou was an exchange student from Haiti, studying in London. One of Will’s friends had her as a student in his classes there, and hoped to have her elsewhere as well. He had invited her along to these parties with that outcome in mind. Instead, Bijou and Will did one of those things that people sometimes do, regardless of the differences in their ages, cultures, economic situations, or sexual inclinations; they fell in love. Will’s friend was momentarily perturbed, but he was nothing if not a man of the age, and gracefully gave up the suite he had taken in anticipation, just down the road, for his friend and company.
This is where terms such as ‘whirl wind romance’ are coined and earn their authenticity: in the scattered clothing, the foolish comments, and the primal longings of the heart. They had only 10 days before classes resumed, so Will, after having used his friends’ suite well, took Bijou back to his ancestral home. He boldly knocked up, frightened, and then reassured the elderly staff, and preceded to show Bijou the life that she was pretty sure she had been born to.
On the last day, a day of unusual warmth and sunshine in the burgeoning spring, they chose to have a picnic lunch, out the back, across a wide lawn, over the hillock, and some yards beyond the folly. There grew a ponderous oak of unknown age. Beneath its shade they took their repast and made their child.
Before anyone assumes that our dark, small, delicately featured, Bijou had any specific intentions when she forgot to bring her birth control on holiday, remember the words ‘whirl-wind’ and also remember the most primitive parts of the human brain, and how for some indefinable reason, no matter how difficult life becomes, no matter that you end up raising children with the Neanderthal in the next valley over (and loving it), or you bring home the cheese monger from another continent who will never learn to speak your native tongue (except in the most intimate of situations, when you are sure you have just resolved all of the worlds philosophical conundrums, but failed to care), remember that humanity would rather fall in love and reproduce than remember any other thing on earth. Cut her a break.
The point of this, however, is not love, however it may seem so. The point of this is the oak, or rather, the oak and its complimentary fungus, growing slowly and resolutely in the grass beneath. Sweet William and his darling Bijou forgot about the blanket that the cook had packed for them, and the butler had pointed out before handing off the picnic basket. They talked and laughed and drank wine. They nibbled sandwiches and each other until the need for or even the location of the blanket was superfluous. They scrambled and rolled and… Let us just say that the molecules that it took to conceive a child were similar in size to those molecules of bits of the tree and its loving fungus. It might be good to consider the oak as a vast storehouse of learning and wisdom, and its mycorrhizal fungi as something like the Internet. Or perhaps not.
There now, enough said. In the months ahead, the discovery of a certain child in a womb was considered a sweet thing, and set various other things in motion. A wedding was had, a small cottage in Cambridge was purchased, a man, 21 years older than his wife, knew himself to be smitten and didn’t mind, a young woman of only 20 years felt blessed and contented and at ease with the world. A child was born whole and healthy, and named for the most romantic thing her mother could think of, and everyone was happy. It is one of life’s most wonderful realities; no matter how lovely or poorly things seem to turn out, they are bound to change.
Returning to the now, where the story began: the oak is long dead; its trunk was cored by some eager graduate students some 5 years after the birth of Paris, they had discovered it as one of the last English oaks surviving, and chose coring as a direct route to determining its age, Will and Bijou had split only two years after the birth of Paris, when Bijou was invited on a longish holiday to the continent, by a ‘friend’ of Will’s, that she never remembered to come home from, and Paris has long since learned to take care of herself very well and has reasoned that she has nothing in common with her parents, although she too is now smitten, perhaps just as they were, with a young doctor named Alan.
Also, just as an aside, Nahasdzaan Shima, with whom this story began, will soon have some of her questions answered. Due to the fact, that every action has a reaction, and that limitless causes have preceded every single bit of happenings in the known universe, of which this is only an excruciatingly small detail, a tiny window into existence; everything is still as it should be. Interesting.
The Myth of Trees 
