by Ulf Wolf
Melissa hugged her even tighter, “Could you be a little bit more specific,” she said, knowing Ruth would actually appreciate the question.
“You have no idea,” said Ruth, still into the embrace.
Melissa knew not how to respond, so didn’t. Just held her daughter, as if trying to draw the despair out of her and into herself.
“I have an idea,” said Ananda.
Ruth unburied her head and looked at him with blurry eyes. “I know,” she said. “I know you do.”
“What is it Ruth?” said Melissa.
“I cannot wait,” she answered.
Of course, Melissa realized, of course this is what it was about. And equally of course she had no answer to it that would appease her daughter. “Ruth,” she said. “You are too young.”
“I feel like a coiled spring,” she said. “Bursting from not bursting.”
Melissa let go of her, and sat down on one of the beds. “I am not going to pretend that I know how you feel,” she said. “But I cannot lie to you either. Were you to go forth at this point, nothing would be gained. Nothing. In fact,” she added, “I would probably lose custody.”
That reached home. Ruth’s face, glistening with unwiped tears, turned serious, intent on her mother. “What do you mean?”
“They’ll think you’re crazy. And they’ll think I’m to blame. Charles would be in court before you could snap your fingers.”
“She’s got a point,” mumbled Ananda.
“I know,” said Ruth after a moment’s reflection. “That’s the problem.”
“What’s the problem?” said Melissa.
“I’m the problem. The world’s the problem. It’s a straitjacket, Melissa. This body. No, not this body, this person.”
“What person?”
“Ruth.”
“You?”
“No.”
“But you are Ruth.”
“I am not Ruth, Melissa.”
“You are the Buddha.”
“I am not even him.”
Melissa looked to Ananda for support. For clarification. She didn’t follow. He looked right back at her, but if there was something to say, he gave none of it away.
“I am an ocean in a bottle,” said Ruth. “A sky in a pearl.”
Melissa tried her hardest to comprehend, to imagine, to empathize with her daughter’s containment, but she couldn’t, and couldn’t, but then found that she could, as talons or tendrils or arms or craggy shores rising to contain and restrain. For several desperate heartbeats she could not find her breath. Above her a hatch was slammed closed, and sealed, and now she ached from the compression.
Smaller and smaller yet the same size, crushing borders nearing, closing, the same amount of her, in far, far less space, and less still. Was he doing this? Was her daughter?
She slipped off the bed and hugged her knees, twin apparitions of the faintly familiar. Shaking, she forced her eyes open, then forced them to look at her, at her daughter Ruth, who found the gaze and met it, steadily drinking her space away.
“Stop, please,” she said.
Ruth stopped. Melissa unfurled.
“That’s how it feels,” she said. “Only, there is no one to stop it for me.”
“How?” said Melissa after a while.
“I shouldn’t even be here,” said Ruth.
“Yes, you should,” said Ananda.
Ruth didn’t answer. Then said, “I’ll take that as a no.”
Melissa shook her head slowly, “What are you talking about?”
“Consensus. Not today.”
“Yes,” said Ananda. “That’s a no.”
:
Ruth held those horses for another year, did not even broach the subject. Not once. What suffering there was she suffered in silence. Whenever she thought of it, Melissa was relieved. Whenever he thought of it, Ananda was concerned.
Then, on the evening of her ninth birthday, just after opening her one present—a complete set of Beethoven’s piano sonatas (she had come to adore, that was her word, the German composer, and had hinted—and none too subtly—that she would like to have “some of his piano music”), and now putting it aside, she said, “I no longer agree.”
Melissa—as if expecting the subject to surface (it was that time of year), even bracing for it—froze. Ananda looked up from reading one of the CD sleeves. It was as if the Catalina conversation had only been suspended, and was now set free again. “We agreed, said Melissa. “You agreed.”
“I know.”
“You agreed,” confirmed Ananda.
“I know.”
“You cannot un-agree,” said Ananda.
“I can.” And truly meant it.
And of course she could. She could do anything, Melissa realized that, and so did Ananda.
“You have seen the world,” said Ananda.
“I have.”
“You know what it would do.”
“I don’t know that.”
“You hope,” said Ananda. “You hope that it will listen.”
“I do.”
“What will you tell it, Tathagata?” said Ananda. “What will the nine-year old girl go forth and tell the world.?”
“The four noble truths, and the noble eightfold path.”
“And the world will listen? That is what you think?”
“That is what I think.”
“Well, Tathagata, you think wrong,” Ananda declared.
“It must,” said Ruth.
“It will not,” said Melissa.
“How do you know? How could you know? Why do you say that?” Addressing the two of them. Almost shouting.
“I have been here nearly seventy years,” said Ananda. “I have seen the depths to which the world has sunk. I have seen the fears it has gathered and now wraps around itself as a wreath, eyes blind with earthy dust. Please believe me, it will not understand.”
“It will not understand what?” said Ruth.
“It will not believe a nine-year old girl,” said Melissa, “no matter how true her words.”
“I can convince them.”
“You’ll be deemed insane, and treated accordingly,” said Melissa.
“It’s a chance I’ll have to take,” said Ruth.
“It’s a chance I will not permit you to take,” said Melissa.
“How are you going to prevent me?” said Ruth.
Melissa said nothing. Ananda looked from one to the other. Ruth said nothing. Melissa looked down on her hands, then back to her daughter, “By never speaking to you again,” she said.
Ruth looked stricken. She looked over at Ananda who now actually smiled. She looked back at Melissa who held her gaze, daring Ruth to disbelieve her.
“That’s not fair,” Ruth said finally.
“When the time is right,” said Melissa, “I will do whatever it takes, whatever I can, to help you. I believe you, I know you, and I know what you must do. But I also know that you must succeed.”
“Fair or not,” said Ananda. “Melissa is right. And you, Buddha Gotama, know better than to dishonor your agreements.”
“It is so hard,” said Ruth.
“We will know when the time is right,” Ananda said. Melissa nodded her agreement. “And then we will know how.”
:: 66 :: (White Mountains)
In March of 2020 they took a trip to the White Mountains in eastern California. Ruth wanted to speak to the Bristlecones, she said.
Melissa, who had heard of Bristlecone Pines only fleetingly—she couldn’t remember where, though she tried to—borrowed her daughter’s Mortimer and did some research, from which she emerged astounded.
“Five thousand years old?” she said, looking up at Ruth who was studying the Mortimer over her shoulder.
“And mostly heartwood,” said Ruth.
“What’s heartwood?” said Melissa.
“True wood,” said Ananda.
Early spring the weather had yet to turn too hot as they drove through high desert and salt flats.
Signs pointing east spoke of “Death Valley” not too far away in that direction. They looked at each other, each softly shaking a head. None of them opted for a detour.
The little motel in Big Pine had two adjacent rooms for rent—in fact, had most, if not all, of the motel for rent—so Ruth and Melissa settled in one of them, Ananda in the one next door.
“Are you really going to talk to them?” said Melissa, as they unpacked the few things they had brought, hanging things up on the odd assortment of leftover plastic and wire hangers provided—or not cleared out—by the motel.
“Yes,” said Ruth.
“So you believe,” began Melissa, but then realized that she didn’t quite know what she was asking.
Ruth did, however. “It is not a matter of belief,” said Ruth. And then, as if she had been meaning to tell Melissa for some time about this, “So much, today, is just that. Belief. No, not even belief, that’s too strong a word. Opinions, more often than not masquerading as beliefs. Or hope, that’s what it is. At its base, today’s belief is nothing but opinions or hope, and vague hope at that. Wish.”
Melissa didn’t answer. She knew what Ruth was talking about, could feel the meaning viscerally. Didn’t want to think or analyze the words lest her instinctive certainty took wing.
Ruth, working her sweater and jacket them onto un-matching hangers, continued as if addressing them, but Melissa knew each word was meant for her.
“Life is life is life,” she said. “Some life has tongues; other life has leaves. Whether tongue or leaf, life knows life. Life knows the presence of life. Life sings life.”
“Sings?”
Ruth finally worked her sweater onto too large a hanger. Then turned and looked at her mother. Her eyes more startlingly blue every day, Melissa thought. Her hair darker and darker, nearly the blue black of distant Indian cousins now. Such an incongruous combination, a little unsettling.
“It is not the right word, I know that. But no other word comes closer. It is the song of the floorboards when the low notes of the church organ begin to breathe. The ear is fooled into believing that nothing speaks, but your feet know better.”
Melissa wondered how Ruth knew, but it was the perfect analogy, for she remembered knowing this the first (and only) time her mother had brought her to an organ recital. The Pasadena Presbyterian Church, if she remembered correctly, on Colorado Boulevard. The low notes, those notes her feet heard way before her ears, if indeed the ears truly caught on.
“I know,” she said.
“It’s not so much a vibration,” said Ruth, “as it is a layered ocean.”
Melissa sat down on the edge of her bed, waited for more.
“We talk through surface ripples and waves,” said Ruth. “But we know through deeper currents. And there are currents deeper still, cooler, slower, more patient. We have our roots in those currents, same as the bristlecone.”
Melissa tried to picture it. Tried to be this picture. Succeeded.
“Precisely,” said (or thought, Melissa didn’t catch which) Ruth.
“How do you learn? How can you hear?”
“Not with your ears,” said Ruth. “With your roots.”
“But I don’t have any roots,” said Melissa.
“You don’t?” said Ruth, in mock surprise.
“I do?” said Melissa.
“Of course,” said Ruth.
“How can I learn?” said Melissa again.
“Listen, but not with your ears.”
“Like when you appear in my head?”
“Like that, but deeper. As if your history appeared in the present as roots.”
“You’ll have to show me,” said Melissa.
“That I can’t do. I can only point.”
She had said this before. She can only point. She will only point. These were the words of the Buddha Gotama, she knew that; had read that. He would only point. The looking, the seeing, the experiencing, was up to her. Up to the pointed-for.
“What do you expect to hear?”
“From the bristlecone?”
“Yes.”
“I expect to hear the song of true heartwood.”
:
They set out the following morning, a good hour before sunrise. Melissa drove, Ananda studied the map and gave directions. Ruth, in the back seat, quietly saw what could be seen in the diminishing darkness the other side of the car window.
The road, as it happened, was well marked, and soon they were serpentining up the broad mountain side of the White Mountains, home of the world’s largest congregation of bristlecone pine.
The sky drew less dark, then less dark still, then pink in the east, then streaked with flame as the oncoming sun blushed strips of cloud barely above the horizon. There was no wind, just the slow, majestic turning of planet that by minute degree intensified the brightness of flame, until the flame extinguished into white and the tip of sun—a steadily growing arc, massive even at such distance—heralded morning.
The half-light struck the old bristlecone and sprung it alive.
They all saw it at the same time. Alone, atop a small slope, perhaps fifty meters off the road. Neither Ruth nor Ananda told Melissa to stop, it was a given.
She stilled the engine, and they climbed out into the thinner, cooler air. The world was still asleep, and the only sound that reached their ears was the soft and occasional crackle of the car engine cooling from the journey.
The bristlecone grew lighter and lighter with the Earth’s continued turning, and the three of them set out to greet it.
The terrain was rocky and dry. No path here. Just stones and tenacious little plants, brown and green asking not to be stepped on. Careful where you place your foot lest you slip. One mindful step after the other, repeated, and repeated again, they made their way up the hill, where it stood, looking their way, as if expecting company.
And so they arrived, the three visitors, none moving now, just looking at this ancient citizen. At ancient wood, still standing. Ruth finally stepped all the way up to it and touched it with both hands. Closed her eyes, and sang the deepest layer of ocean this planet knows.
:
Melissa heard nothing but soft wind rising. It was coming out of the east, as if sunlight had harnessed the air, or the other way around. Soft air on cheek, a small chill against her neck. A whisper in her ear. I am air. I am sun.
Ananda to her left had closed his eyes.
Melissa could not tell whether Ruth had, too; her hands still on the ancient trunk, her face turned away, head tilting down, slightly, as if listening intently or respectfully.
Then Melissa, too, closed her eyes—or her eyes closed themselves.
Out of the silent distance, the cry of a bird. Not an anxious cry, or an agitated one. A greeting perhaps. Soon answered. Other priorities, other lives lived, other tales told.
Then there was only the wind again, light-carrying toucher of cheek and stirrer of hair, rustler of pine, waker of brushwood.
With this gentle wind, Melissa heard how much she enjoyed life at this moment.
If it was a note, she didn’t notice its arrival. Perhaps it had always been with her, always beyond reach, until now. Part of her makeup all along. Perhaps they could have been, but were not thoughts. Not articulated as such, anyway. But there was a note, for a note is a vibration, is it not? And there are spectra. And there are layers, one deeper than the other. Perhaps a vast or distant enough ear can hear the once a day oscillation of the Earth turning, perhaps an ear larger still can hear the once an aeon turning of our galaxy.
This note, however, called for ears less colossal.
The difference between a note and just any sound, Melissa could have thought, but didn’t—instead it arose as unarticulated epiphany—is the constancy of oscillation, the core of beauty. The continuous scraping of tectonic plates, for example, which is quite audible to the larger ear, is not a note, it is a noise. The constant indigestion of the Earth’s core is no song, it is a complaint, a peevishness.
What she heard with her larger ear was a note. First one, then another. Several, long and slow each. A song.
The next notion that arose was that she was not hearing as much as seeing the song, though she will later never quite resolve the difference, if any.
Perhaps, she did think, I am listening to language, though no message beyond the unutterable beauty of the wave reached her, as if beauty itself stood guard, and would not let meaning through; it was not meant for her ear.
Perhaps, she thought, I am listening to conversation. This thought, however, was more like the brief glitter of firefly than statement of being, soon gone, leaving her lost to beauty.
When Ananda finally spoke, it might has well have been a stone, or a twig, or a moss speaking, Melissa had such trouble locating a source of the word. Then he spoke again, the same word: “Melissa.”
She finally opened her eyes. Ruth was looking at her, Ananda, too.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was miles away.”
:
There it stands, atop a small, pathless incline perhaps fifty meters away. A solitary tree, this copse-less bristlecone. Was it him I heard? Was it he that called?
We all see it, as with communal eyes, as with communal ear. Melissa stops the car, parks as far off to the right of the road as she can, even dipping the wheels over the bed side, kills the engine, looks back at the beckoning tree.
We careful our way up the soft slope, sidestepping rocks and anxious shrub, step by deliberate step approaching the soft light surrounding him that I wonder if Ananda sees, too?
I look over at him but he is too busy placing feet just right to look back, but then he looks up and I know he, too, sees the soft glow of true heartwood.
Arrived. First we stand, a small congregation, and very still, as if awaiting an invitation, though we were already invited, expected even. In awe of his age, that is how we stand.
Then I step up to him, and place my hands on his trunk, fuse my hands to his trunk, fuse my being to his, and then I listen.
He had a name once, he tells me, but it is so old it has crumbled under the weight of years and turned to distant dust, though he wishes he could gather and de-dust it, and so greet me properly, for he knows mine, he says, and then he says it, Tathagata.