Lekshe's Mistake

A Heart Unlocked

You returned empty handed along a soft trail of suggestion. We left the sky undone, the wind, unopened. Darkness came, uninvited, draped itself over the door. We settled for shadows, disappearing too soon, a river of black overflowing its waterless banks.

I asked you for a word, in your own voice. Nothing. A gesture. Only the slight movement of your hand, signing a word that might have meant "future." Fading breaths say less than silence. A heart unlocked is not necessarily open.

Blank space is the vague inarticulation of a question, wanting an owner, forlorn dream, waning in the dim light.

The Most Change Ever

You wrote in a letter, postmarked Tibet, written on paper made of daphne bark:

"The sky here is Kodachrome blue. The air extracts no colour. The tops of mountains pierce the sky. I see pots of red geraniums on a rooftop below and a shimmering lake and the thousand room house of the Dalai Lama. My hands smell of yak butter. My shirt needs a button. All these things remind me of you. All these things remind me of myself. Why would you not come? Why did you leave? The monks in the gompa say you left with only a small day pack. Why do you take such risks? Where were you going? No one seems to know."

These are the same questions as before, at least we can think of new ones. Otherwise, when we are dead and people rummage through our shoe boxes of letters, they will wonder why we wrote the same things, over and over.

"Children in Kathmandu beg for ice cream now. Shechen Gompa is locked for the holidays. I don’t like locks on God’s house." You wrote this before, remember? In 1980, when you wandered into Nepal, after a treacherous trek from Lhasa to the border. I met you at the Ring Road on an elephant and we had a picnic outside the city in Godavarai Park. You had not showered in two weeks. I remember all of that with fondness.

I remember choosing a dress to wear, that morning. A yellow cotton dress with small pink flowers, matching drawstring trousers underneath, in the Pakistani style. What to wear for an elephant ride, a picnic? These were new questions.

I remember asking the cook, "Norbu, what shall we make? What else can be done with potatoes? How is the lucky knot made on this cloth?" These were things I didn’t know.

We put iodine in our cold tea and we wondered how many drops were safe. We had no idea.

The mahout fell asleep beside the elephant. He looked so small.

The sun set and we went home along the Ring Road. No one used head lights then. Could they see the elephant in the dark? We were unsure.

This year, we have to ask new questions. It is the year of The Most Change Ever. This is the year of new questions.

I Should Know Better by Now

I should know better.

Whenever my life constricts itself around a single issue or experience set, a red flare should send itself up, a bell should sound, and a large board, god willing and helpful, should drop out of the sky and smack me head on center. A small chorus of men dressed in tasteless, matching suits and shiny shoes should point to me and sing, in unison, “It had to be you.”

Even then, the fog of attending solely to a single, one-channel input is so powerful for me that I might miss the message. How can I be this old and this stupid?

I’ve sighed here, and heavily. If you were here, you’d be moved to pat my head or my shoulder, at least. I’d like that, of course. But I might also bite your hand.

The problem with not dealing with something is that when you finally let the dog out, he eats the couch, no? Every pillow is torn to shreds, every inch of piping undone, the legs are chewed beyond recognition. Good dog. Roll over. Now, play dead.

Not likely.

These are the Dogs that Do Not Die.

I have the small comfort of knowing I am probably not alone. Human beings everywhere this morning and all mornings (and afternoons and nights and the infinite seconds in between) must share this experience. We ignore for the longest time something essential–-for good reasons, mind you, perfectly explainable-–and then, because life is whole, because all things are connected, The Thing Ignored comes knocking, and when we do not answer, it breaks down the door and takes up residence. Every room is strewn with baggage and gifts.

If I’m sounding overly dramatic, it's because I am, and if I sound humorless, it’s because you can’t see the small smile at the corners of my mouth. It’s there.

Now, after this brief commercial break of clarity and sense, I am dutifully returning to my new job as devoted handmaiden to the Current Single Issue, consciously and unconsciously blocking all others and all connections, tearing this thing out of context, like a unlicensed surgeon holding up a heart, wrenched from a body, wondering with naive curiosity why in the world it’s not working.

I will retreat to day dreaming about the churlish old friend of mine who showed up at my front door, (who knows how long he was standing out there--days, weeks, months, years?) like the saint he is, setting in motion, without any intention or awareness, some years of disastrously pent up confusions. He has no idea. Bless him for the gift. Let me repeat the words, “Bless him for the gift,” because I don’t have the courage to tell him face to face.

At least I have the comfort of knowing he is completely unlikely to fall into a this same hole when he's standing up, bemusedly looking down at me digging deeper by the minute. Good for us all.

In truth, I am down on my knees (all kinds of images conjured on the spot for which I will make not a single apology) (well, not this week) reciting prayers of gratitude for ever having seen the sun at all. For ever have been given eyes. For having even the faintest, undeserved, brief glimpse of something so compelling, so lovely, so full of fire and awesome complexity as to leave me reeling and breathless.

I am humbled. I am left like the smallest of trees after a hurricane, leafless, bark stripped and in not such good repair, and wanting, at the price of my life to see that wind again, and immediately. If there was a rewind button, I'd have pushed it a hundred times by now to see that scene played precisely as it was, no commentary added, to appreciate it's forceful accuracy, beauty and impact.

And I see so clearly, how I am unable, how it is impossible, because of the truth of interconnectedness, to do this for myself, to give it to myself, under any circumstances. Even I cannot conjure a fantasy so far from the truth.

I am brought, then, completely against my will and senses, to a sudden and catastrophic state of wholeness. Arrogance, for this precious, brief period, is shattered, and I am trembling to see how small I really am, how vulnerable, and how utterly, utterly grateful I am that being the recipient of genuine love in no way depends on deserving it.

Mid-day Coffee

He’s not tall. Not exactly. Nor robustly strong, though I suspect he could swing an axe if pressed to chop a cord of wood. He’s smart. That counts for a lot in the long run. He’s kind. That makes up for anything missing. He’s funny, sometimes, and that pretty much sews it up.

He dresses simply, in the dark, sitting on the bed, one sock at a time, thoughtfully, listening to the sound of the rain on the skylight. He ambles downstairs and makes ginger water, hot tea and a small plate of toast, putting the marmalade in a tiny bowl with a small silver spoon. The spoon has three daffodils on the handle. He knows I like that spoon and this is his way of saying, “I remember.”

He brings in the paper and folds it neatly on the dining room table, opens a window so we can hear the creek while we sit. This is our conversation, mostly–-the sound of the creek overflowing its banks. The occasional fir cone that falls into the water. He looks up and at me to see if I heard it. I did. We smile.

I slide my foot across the hardwood floor onto his, and rub the top of his foot with my sock. He looks round from the right side of the paper and smiles. He reads again. I bump his foot with mine, three times. He looks round the paper again, his eyebrows raised. I like it that he does not speak. Not a word. He will finish the story. He will read the entire section before he looks at his watch.

I will clear the toast plate and tea pot and marmalade bowl, taking care to wash and dry the tiny spoon and to replace it in the same drawer. I will not take his cup. Never. He will finish on his own schedule. Could take hours. I will wait, working quietly in the kitchen, or writing something in the study. Later I will hear him, folding the paper, placing the cup softly in the sink.

He’s mine, then.

The morning will be ruined for All Things Productive. He’ll turn off the phone and lock the door. He will not play music or news. He will go upstairs and sit on the bed and take off his socks just as he put them on, earlier, slowly and with care. He will open the skylight, even if it’s raining. He will pull back the comforter and I will slide in, fully clothed. He will laugh and shake his head. Later dress and socks and flannel trousers will lay in a pile on the floor.

He will pull me close against his chest and slide his arm under my neck. I will smell his skin and his body will warm the sheets and my body. He will put his hand in my hair and stroke the curls. Not intending to, he will sigh.

Lunch time will come and pass. We will get up finally, and the fire will be nearly out. He will open the door to the stove and stoke it again. I will make coffee.

Ready

They are expectant, waiting to discover something that even I don’t know. I tell them I am not their teacher, but their teacher is coming. They check the syllabus again. Yes, right room.

We start with questions. Big ones. Can-opener questions that rattle the fundamental assumptions of youth. They ask a question and we unpack it like cargo from a distant port: contents, packing materials, strapping tape, bill of lading. Where did it come from? Who sent it? Why do they think it’s for them?

Then, carefully, we put the contents back in the box. They never fit quite the same.

Now, their questions come faster and we dig beneath each one, feeling the roots. How deep do they go? Are they well-nourished or weak and waiting to die? I encourage them, “Feel down there, under the ground, where your ideas live. You can’t see, just feel.”

The old bell tower sings and we stop. No one moves. Silence. 10 bells. Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring. Years go by.

I say, “It’s time for a break.” A shy red-haired woman in the back row says out loud, “No, wait.” Everyone turns. We wait. She collects herself and says, “How long?” I say, “I am coming back in 10 minutes. Come back when you are ready.” When I return, every student is in their seat. There is a glass of water on my desk.

What You Don't Know

What you don’t know can’t hurt you.

Today I bought six pairs of shoes. Yup. Six. I think it’s a sin in every major world religion to buy six pairs of shoes on the same day. Five pairs are black. One is brown. That it itself should tell you something about how interesting I am not.

Why did I do this? Because there was a kick butt shoe sale at a local department store and all six pairs cost what I usually spend on one, that is, just under a hundred bucks. For a hundred bucks, more or less, you can get a pair of sensible pumps that you can stand in for eight hours which I must do on a regular basis. If you really work at it, for a hundred bucks you can get a pair of pumps so comfortable you could hike in them if you had to. On rare occasions, I have done that, too.

Or, today, you can get six pairs. So I got four pairs of perfectly sensible, qood quality shoes and two pairs of Naughty Girl Shoes. *grins

I felt I could tell you this because we will most likely never meet.

The joy of this gross overindulgence bordering on ludicrous, is that I will not have to buy dress shoes now for two years. Maybe three. Possibly four or even five.

Perfect.

I shouldda got the red stilettos. I doubt I could actually walk in them, but that zipper on the back was so cool. For $20 we could just hang them on the curtain rod, right? Of course then I’d have to buy fishnet stockings. And you know I couldn’t possibly do that.

You are my friends, so now you know. The rest of the world shall remain uninformed, all right?

Roses and a Zipper

It was a below the calf, black, full skirted dress with big, pink roses and a zipper up the front. (It was my favorite dress for a few years, until I bought the red, backless, belted summer dress with the tropical black print.) I paid fifty cents for that dress, which was made in the 1950s. I wore it with heels and cowgirl boots and I wore it barefoot. I wore it in every season. I wore it to play in and I wore it to class. I think I slept in it on a few occasions. It was a lot of fun for fifty cents.

I bought that dress the year I also wore bib overalls with see-through shirts (also from the 50s, also less than a dollar) and climbing boots. I wore mens sweaters and mens white shirts with silk ties, tucked neatly into jeans, slipped over the top of cowgirl boots. I had long hair then, well past my waist, usually tied into a thick braid.

Those few years were commuted on a red Bridgestone MB1, one of the first mountain bikes made. I nearly wore out a Nikon FM and two pairs of EB ‘sticky sole’ rock climbing boots. I owned a 7 colour Powderhorn prototype tent that never went into production because they decided no one in their right mind would sleep in a 7 colour tent. I loved that tent but it was heavy.

Those were the years of espresso instead of sleep and of dozens of pots of red amaryllis on the dining room table. They were the years of outside kilns, and handmade books and running six miles a day. They were the years of finger tip pullups on door jams and of spending weekends in Boulder canyon. Those were the years when I hadn’t yet learned that every action has a reaction, even though some actions have a really remarkably, wonderfully, amazingly long time between their execution and their comeuppance.

Tea and a Shower

Thorang La seen from the downhill side.

Coming down off the Thorang La, the eighteen thousand foot pass that tops out on the Annapurna circuit in Nepal, I think of the tea stall just an hour or so below the crest. There is a young woman there, stocky and money minded, who carries a doko of wood up the bare mountainside and builds a small fire in the dry wind, every day, more or less. I’ve been there before.

I think of the thick Assam tea, blended with sweet fresh milk and I’m ready long before I get there. My hands are wind burned and I lost my hat. Damn that hat. I could have retrieved it if I’d worn crampons, which I did not.

I am reminded of a day in glacier school, when I was lowering myself down so I could practice jumaring up. Not quite paying attention, I managed to get a braid locked into the pulley system. I was stuck. There wasn’t any use yelling, the wind along the surface of the snow above would drown out anything from this far down. So I hung there for half an hour.

Later, Jeff, the instructor, lowered himself down beside me. “Ehhhhhh,” he said in his thick Australian accent. “Got a problem?” I showed him the hair, tangled in the pulley system. “Lost your hat, eh? Well now, I can fix that.” He pulled out a Victronix knife and cut off the last 4 inches of the braid. I pulled myself up on the rope and he removed the hair. “See you up top.”

I was mad. But losing your hat on a glacier proved something, he was right. It proved you were not ready to be part of team that who’d trust their lives to you and a thin Perlon rope. I never forgot. This, in part, explained why, four years later (three after Jeff died in a fluke avalanche on a solo climb in Oregon) I was crossing Thorang La by myself. Again.

I ambled down the dry side of pass and tied my handkerchief over my head to prevent my scalp from getting sunburned like it had in Lhasa. I drank the last bit from my water bottle. I could see the tea stall in the distance. Finally.

I sat on a wooden box in the tea hut and rubbed my hands while the sauni made tea. She talked in Nepali and I followed, more or less. I drank three glasses of tea and she told me about a hot springs, just a day’s walk downhill.

The next night I arrived at the spot she described and set up my tent, out of site. One thing I’d learned in my first two years in Nepal was to hide my tent unless I wanted visitors all night and before sunrise. I read by lithium lamp and slept a bit. Full moon.

I woke up to the sound of dogs barking. First one, then two, then a dozen. I sneaked out and made my way down the hill to the hot spring with a towel.

The hot spring was a stone paved rectangular space, about ten feet by ten. There were three, one-inch pipes that protruded from the stone. From each pipe came the hottest water imaginable.

I slipped out of my dusty clothes and undid my braids. I stood under the water in the full moon light. This was my first hot shower in about a year. Since the water was running whether I was there or not, I knew I could stay as long as I liked. I did. I stayed and stayed and stayed.

The soap was slippery and the stones were slippery and I was slick as a seal. I washed off months of dust and months of effort in that water.

A water buffalo ambled by, loose and on the lookout for an unfenced garden. I could hear his heavy breathing as he passed on the paddy above. A dog came down, sniffing, but retreated when he felt the hot stones under his feet.

The moon set and I dried off and walked up the hill to my Powderhorn prototype tent. I slipped into my down bag and lit a candle lantern. I unzipped the sky light and blew out the lantern. I fell asleep to the sound of jungle bugs and a few porters, jostling each other, drunk and singing songs about girls they missed in the village at home.

Out in concourse F in Chicago. Not actually sure if I am at Midway or O’Hare. One of those details that might matter under some circumstances, but probably not these.

From the window seat on the inbound plane, I saw intricately patterned land, laid out according to need and want, and Far Flung Plan. The surface of the land was marked, experience and history traced along its skin in calligraphic notation.

There were stories in those lines, those colours, testament to the people who live there and all their plans. I wanted to tell you about this, to ask you about things I saw, but did not recognize. I wanted to watch your eyes scan the horizon. I wanted to see how your body responded. I wanted to feel your breath on my shoulder as you leaned to look.

Lekshe's Mistake: part I

Outside the abbot’s door was a deep wooden box with an undecorated lid. It was locked. He kept the key in his sleeve. On the side facing the wall, there was open carving in a delicate design. Why the latticework faced the wall was unclear. Perhaps it seemed immodest? Perhaps it was a distraction. At any rate, no one moved the box to examine it. It was forbidden and it wasn’t all that interesting, anyway.

I slept inside the box every night from the time I was 5 until I was twenty.

No one knew this except the abbot. Women were forbidden at Maha Kunzang Osel Ling. There were one hundred and twelve monks living there and not even the cat was a girl. Women did visit on occasion. They came from the village at the foot of the hill and brought offerings of tsampa and ghee. (It was on one of those visits, people later speculated, that I had been left in the temple.) But at sundown, the gates were locked and women could not enter until daylight. I was, they were to say later, the only exception in three centuries, at least.

When the kunyay came to clean the shrine, he found me sitting in the great hall, in front of the Buddha Shakyamuni, still and silent. This was not owing to spiritual precociousness as much as it was to the fact that I had not eaten in three days and that I had some sense that if I moved, I would fall over. Looking the golden Buddha straight in the eye seemed as good as any other means to stay awake.

The kunyay carried several small lumps of tsampa in his sleeve and he gave me some. It was stale but not unpleasant.

I was too afraid to say thank you or anything else. The kunyay was not unaccustomed to new arrivals being speechless, nor was he aware that I was a girl. When he carried me to the abbot’s room, I saw that the abbot, in his wisdom, or possibly just his vast experience, knew immediately.

He was reading a text to a small group of Khenpos. They were sitting on the floor cross-legged, leaning towards the abbot with an appropriate amount of interest and respect. The abbot was reading, at a remarkable rate, a long passage that included a fair amount of Sanskrit. Without missing a syllable, he motioned for the kunyay to seat me on a cushion near the wall. He looked at me (while continuing, somehow, to read) over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses. His eyebrows were raised and I knew he knew. He looked left and right, as if to see if anyone else knew. They did not.

This was the beginning of our friendship and a wonderful secret.