photo by f. murphree
Thank heavens for the clouds tossing pillow cases over this unseasonably warm tropical sun, a hint of winter’s welcome return. A breeze muscles through a weedy hedge to reassure me: It really is February on Kauai.
I kick off the blankets at midnight, sweaty and muttering profanity. I roll away from my husband’s inquisitive sleep to keep from sticking sweaty calf to sweaty calf. He’s never too hot to cuddle.
Now, I kneel in the sand. Grateful to wear my favorite blue sweater with its three broken buttons — buttons broken the day the sweater fell from around my waist into a gutter to sleep through the night beneath a car tire in the rain – the first rain in Southern California in months. It blackened the water of a hotel tub three times before rinsing clean.
Gil Fronsdahl gave a dharma talk on three exercises to aid in learning to let go. He called them the three doors: The door of the wishless, the door of the meaningless and the third, locked from memory now. I bring it up because my wishes give me the illusion of being unhappy.
– I wish I lived in a cooler place.
– I wish I lived on a mountain near a river
– I wish I could drive across three states
I take Gil’s advice and when I feel my unhappiness beckoning, I try to name the wish that aims to catch me in its net.
Purple confetti moth
zigzags
over daisy petals – lights
on a twig.
Zips up wings – to
conceal iridescence.
Wishes are not now.
Now is that ruthless sun biting through linen to needle my neck. Now is the flip, flip, flapping of journal pages against my pen by a breeze that pulls the sheets over the sun so I may bare to be the only person in a blue, wooly sweater on a beach stitched with red bikinis.
Doors.
Gil’s second door is the door of the meaningless. Quit trying to make meaning from things. Oh Christ, here I go – that old tape rolling. “I am the one thing not belonging here.” Belonging, not belonging. It doesn’t have to mean anything. Who says who belongs where or in what?
Sand. Seeds. Sticks.
A single five- petaled daisy rooted in sand
Bravely, reaches toward light.
Now: Bee bees of sweat rise on the skin between my breasts, join, form a river, and trickle in a quick stream down my center to collect in belly folds.
Now: The wind lifts the top layer of my skirt above my thighs.
Now: The shadow of my pen builds an ark across the page not caring about wishes or meaning.
Now: A body surfer slips fins over feet, bobs on swells that move him out to sea.
Now: Hand-in-hand, an elder couple walks along the shore just out of reach of the curious suds.
Now: Three women friends sit in lawn chairs; one reads aloud to the others from a book titled, “Emotional Freedom.”
