Excerpt from the recently finished short story "Open House"

The day after we met, Tara and I had come upon an artist market while searching for some breakfast. It was September on Cortes Island, we were both attending a workshop on meditation. It was early and our feet were soaked by a heavy dew in the tangle of grasses. While the artisans were in the midst of setting up Tara floated amongst the stalls fingering pieces of jewelry, pottery, and wooden carvings. She felt the density of the silver pieces and the cold of the metal. Her fingers explored the different textures of the rough un-glazed pottery. Her palms slowly rose and fell like a scale, measuring the weight of a carved block of wood. She was more of a tactile person than visual. She held everything, sensitive to texture, weight and form. Once out of her reach much was forgotten, including myself, as I would one day learn.

Just before we left the market, she had purchased a wooden bowl. Highly polished, carved from a block of a Maple. The swirls and imperfections of the wood’s grain pushed from beneath the thick lacquer, a Braille history of the tree. She held the bowl in the upturned palm of her hand, her fingers brushing and circling around the interior. She played it like a monk, turning the hammer of a meditation bell. Against her pale hand, the tones of the wood were dark.

Leaving the craft area, we chose a cafe further down the road. At the counter I paused and turned to her, raising an eyebrow. Modern day intimacy requires that the second thing you know about a person is how they take their coffee. I had no idea. We both had tea.
We sat outside at a cedar picnic table. In the moist coolness the steam rising from our cups quickly dissipated. In search of warmth I wrapped my fingers around the paper cup; we had asked for mugs. “I hate that word disposable,” she said lifting the paper cup to eye level between us. “This concept of throwing something away, when all it really means is somewhere else.”

N. Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, House Made of Dawn includes the line “a druidic procession”. These were not words that I expected to see in this poetically written and at times brutally violent prose of Native Indian culture. Momaday creates stunning imagery that ground the story in all the landscapes: physical, social, and imaginary. But Druidic? The words stayed with me.

In a recent writing group, after we had finished discussing House Made of Dawn, we were tossing different topics around for a free form timed writing practice (see earlier entry for a broader discussion on how this works). Everyone went silent when I offered ‘Druidic Procession’. It was different and our group leader seized the pause to say, let’s write.

Here is what I came up with during the 15 minute exercise during that week in Taos, NM.

When we walk as a group in meditation, single file, stepping in near unison over the flagstone and amongst the tangled roadway grasses, I wonder if the casual observer would take us more seriously if we wore matching black robes with giant hoods. Instead we slip by in shorts, cargo pants and sun dresses. The dust shows imprints of flip flops, sandals, running shoes and loafers: Sperry, Birkenstock, Teva, Nike, Prada and Crocs.


Not that being taken seriously is important to us. I personally knew much ridicule when I was younger. Cloaks and robes, the raiment of Priests and nobleman fascinated me. In particular the enigma of a shrouded face when hidden behind a mask of shadows. The face can peer out without giving away any secrets. I was surrounded by these images in the books of King Arthur, Merlin, or Tolkein’s Gandalf. I desperately wanted to be more than an awkward 6’, 125lb character more likely to be cast as the bean stalk for Jack. I needed mystery.

My brother had this giant army surplus coat that could be combined with a hooded black sweatshirt. A wardrobe staple of most kids, the kind of with a swim team logo on the back and white strings that if you pulled tight enough, would pucker your face with just the nose and the upper lip poking out. When these two items came together with a vivid imagination my costume was complete. I would stand like a gargoyle along the walls of imaginary stone buildings, or bow my head and walk in a slow druidic procession.

To anyone watching, it was a ridiculous sight. My older brothers would shine daylight onto my charade. Where was magic when I needed it most!

So now I walk in shorts and a t-shirt, feeling the balls of my feet press against the still warm and carefully swept flagstone. I feel the smooth hardwood floor while my eyes trace the intricate patterns in the wood. Together with my fellow writers we don’t need a hood or require a false sense of mystery, calming our minds is adventure enough. Each day as we come together to sit, walk then write, we will take our own procession through this sacred place. The sagebrush and adobe our henge, and anyone watching will feel connected with our footfalls as we pass by.

Natalie Goldberg leads a walking meditation in Taos New Mexico

Last night I had trouble sleeping, eventually rising to read, filling a glass of ice water before settling into the green striped wingback chair in my small second floor home office.

Taking a short break from novels and memoirs, I am working through some magazines that have accumulated in a pile behind the chair: Writers Digest, Photolife, American Poet, Tricycle Buddhist Review, and on the recommendation of a writing teacher, my most recent subscription, Poets and Writers. The March/April 2007 issue is the first that I have cracked open. About 1/3 of the way into the magazine I am being reminded how much more I need to read. The magazine provides in depth profiles of authors. On Page 52, a profile by Frank Bures on writer Tom Bissell quotes another author Philip Caputo: “anyone who wants to become a writer will not become a writer. The only people who become writers, are those who have to. You almost cannot do anything else”

While the sentiment in this quote is not completely original – what is important is how it resonated. In the 24 hours since I read that line, the question it raises has never been far from me. Do I need to write, or am I caught up in the perception of wanting to write?

Sitting an outdoor café this morning, I commented to a friend that I had not slept well the night before. She probed if there was something on my mind and I answered truthfully that I didn’t think that was it. I continued to say that perhaps it was just that I was supposed to be up at that hour. In the silence after midnight, beneath a single floor lamp, with only the muted bumps of the dogs shifting outside my closed door, I was meant to read those words, to be pushed by them to pick up the pen with a new level of intensity.

In Buddhism we speak of Karma, and the ripening of Karmic seeds. Karma is action, we are the result the choices we make. At the exact moment that I read that passage, there was a convergence of a receptive mind, the cocoon of a silent house, and an active need to make a commitment. Had I read the profile any other time, I am unsure if the quote would have challenged me?

In a similar way, the choice to go out this morning put me at that sidewalk café, at that little wobbly round table, still thinking about the quote. I wanted to ask my friend if there was something that she felt a deep seeded need to do. A segue to vocalizing my own answer.

Instead I enjoyed the silence as we finished our oatmeal dusted bagel, comfortable without the need to talk. All the while my internal monologue renewing a belief that it is not just our actions, but our thoughts as well that create our karma. Looking beyond our table, a young grill chef with a starched white apron placed pink carved slices of chicken and carefully formed beef patties onto a wire grill. Across from us an older man slid a paper grocery bag to the side of his table to make room for his newspaper. His care with the bag suggested anticipation of its contents. People with diverse agendas slid by, cars like pistons moved in and out of the their spaces, all here at this moment to bear witness to the unspoken energy of my commitment to keep writing.

Writing Practice - "To Connect With...."

“It is practice, not perfect,” the instructor says as we contract our bodies for another thirty seconds. Folding in, we compress ourselves. The imperceptible space between the moist skin and the humid infused envelope of 105-degree air that we twist and lean into -- vanishes. We practice, pushing the musculature back to a state of cartilage. My focus switches from the instructor’s step-by-step chatter to a dualistic inquiry of the reflection, seemingly separate from me in the 10’ mirrored wall. A seam between the giant glass sheets cuts into my shoulder amputating the increasingly heated raised and flexed arm muscles. Synaptic bursts shift this 6’4 ½”, 200 lb frame. All around me others flow, winged sinewy bodies that press against the meniscus of our comfort zones. Yoga, a Sanskrit word: to connect with, a yoke tied to this apparent continuity of self, to this physical body, to all of us in this room.

We pull saturated air through the nose, it becomes breath in the olfactory channels, heating, oxygenating unused capillaries in the lowest branches of the lungs. The head leads as the spine arches, head falls back, push a little further, “back, more back, all the way back”. On Japanese knees the rows of bodies flutter in unison. The choreography of Bikram Yoga: swimming, floating, sinking, flying, massaging, squeezing, wheezing, crushing, a spastic dance in a sweat lodge for the un-initiated….

But what is this ‘self’ that Yoga prescribes to connect with? Back to the mirror my teeth are clenched. I relax my jaw into a mask of impassive concentration. It is to join with our natural luminosity. Looking around I see the radiance brought to the physical world in the sheen of moisture that clings to our skin. Droplets of water collecting in shallow tidewater pools of the collarbone, settling on the ridge of the brow, a watercolor wash along the topography of a softened submerged shoulder blade.

It is as much about connecting as a simultaneous release. The 90 minutes are an intimate embrace to exempt tension, a muscular masturbation to liquefy the muscles, a meditation to expunge the mind. A massage pangram of all the organs and glands in this magical biological organism we inhabit. Connecting with an inner radiance conveniently labeled oneself. Connecting with this same quality in the others that fill this room, this city, and this world.

Through twenty-six postures, the expelled salty baptismal waters drip and fall to the faded blue and red pool towel that bunches and swells at my feet.

Journal Entry from First Bikram Yoga Class