‘Oh-oh-oh,’ wailed Karen, ‘I think I’m going to cry.’
‘Plus,’ said Paul, ‘I’m pretty active in my local Zen centre in LA and I’ve taken vows of generosity…’
‘Well, it’s great when we can act from principles,’ said Martha, ‘but when we can do what’s right spontaneously, that’s even better.’
Her fingers meshed again, but this time on a vertical axis, the right hand swooping down to meet the rising spread of her left hand.
‘How about you?’ she asked Jason. ‘The great communicator.’ She turned to the group and wrinkled her nose humorously.
‘You’re the great communicator,’ said Jason. ‘Forget women who love too much. What about women who talk too much?’
A simmering disapproval passed through the group.
‘What about arrogant British men who shoot their mouths off?’ shouted Flavia.
‘This is typical Jason,’ said Haley, sensing the opportunity to graft her grievances onto the group’s burgeoning hostility. ‘I give up, I really do.’
‘You know,’ said Martha to Jason, ‘there’s a lot of aggression in what you’re saying.’
‘God, they didn’t give you that psychology degree for nothing,’ said Jason. ‘You do have a psychology degree, don’t you?’
‘My background is in Gestalt and EST,’ said Martha proudly. ‘I also trained as a chiropractor.’
‘Oh, well, we’re going to be all right from the neck down,’ said Jason. ‘It’s just from the neck up that I’m worried.’
‘What are you worried about in particular?’
‘Well, for a start, we were meant to end at ten o’clock and it’s already ten-thirty…’
‘Big deal,’ said Flavia. ‘Jesus, you should be grateful that Martha and Carlos are giving us so much of their time.’
‘No, no,’ said Martha, ‘I want to thank Jason for pointing that out. I’m not very good with time and anybody who wants to leave at the advertised time can do so. If I get excited and I see that things are cooking, I just like to stay with it as long as anybody needs me.
‘But tell me, Jason,’ Martha went on, ‘what are ya really mad at? Remember, the way you behave here is the way you behave in life, so what are ya getting in touch with here? Is it your relationship?’ she said, pointing to Haley. ‘Is it your parents? Is it your work?’
‘No,’ said Jason breezily. ‘As Haley’ll tell you, I’m a very superficial person, and I’m angry with what’s happening right now.’
‘Well, that’s great. You know, a lot of people have a problem with living in the present. But as I like to say, it’s a real gift, and that’s why it’s called “the present”.’
Several people expressed their wonder at the insight afforded by this pun. The African Queen strained to catch Paul’s eye, hoping for acknowledgement that she had already quoted Martha’s self-quotation to him in the hot tub, but Paul was still pondering whether Martha had been rebuking him for lack of spontaneity. He felt that he was a pretty go-with-the-flow, spontaneous type of guy, and he didn’t want the group to think that he was some kind of Zen robot.
Failing to connect with Paul, the African Queen sank back into the exasperation of realizing that if she hadn’t been a man in a previous lifetime, the flow of sacred feminine energy would have been strong enough to free her from the patriarchal cringe which had made her obey Martha’s deceptive authority instead of following her own perfect instincts.
‘Yeah,’ said Jason, ‘but sometimes “the present” is the spiritual equivalent of the archetypal pair of socks your granny gives you for Christmas.’
‘Have you got an issue with your grandmother?’ said Martha.
‘No,’ said Jason, temporarily thrown.
‘Ya see,’ said Martha, ‘I don’t believe it when you say that your anger isn’t rooted in the past.’
‘You sort of win the argument in advance by using the word “rooted”, don’t you?’ said Jason. ‘Where else can anything be rooted?’
‘According to Terence McKenna,’ said Flavia, ‘who happens to be a genius, instead of an arrogant British jerk, history is rooted in the future.’
‘What’s your fucking problem?’ said Jason. ‘Your English boyfriend walk out on you? He must be a happy man.’
‘You bastard,’ said Flavia.
‘Children!’ said Martha.
‘All I’m saying—’ shouted Jason.
‘Go, go, go, Jason,’ said Martha, ‘get in touch with that anger.’
‘All I was saying,’ Jason resumed, ‘is that I was in a perfectly good mood until I had to listen to you and Carlos Jung here blathering on past my bedtime.’
‘You have a bedtime at your age?’ asked Martha. ‘Or is it Little Jason who has a bedtime, and Little Jason who’s mad at us?’
‘I was interested that you use the word “archetypal” about your grandmother’s socks,’ said Carlos.
‘I wasn’t talking about my grandmother’s socks,’ protested Jason.
‘Sometimes we are correct to resist the idea of a personal crisis,’ explained Carlos, ‘because what we are in fact experiencing is a transpersonal crisis.’
‘Listen, Yungos,’ said Jason, ‘I’m not experiencing any sort of crisis, except that I’m about to gag from listening to the two of you.’
‘Why is Little Jason being such a bad boy?’ said Martha. ‘Does he wanna be spanked?’
‘Not by you, darling,’ said Jason with a curt laugh.
‘This is real dynamic,’ said Martha excitedly. ‘We don’t normally get the energy moving this much on the first session. I wanna thank Jason for getting us all stirred up.’
‘Any time,’ mumbled Jason.
‘Now is it past everybody’s bedtime,’ asked Martha ironically, ‘or do we wanna play one more game?’
‘Let’s play,’ replied a number of voices, now united against Jason.
‘You know,’ said Martha, ‘when we’re children we know how to play but we need to learn how to work. Now we know how to work but we need to learn how to play.’
‘But this play,’ said Carlos, ‘is work.’
‘Don’t tell them that,’ said Martha in mock consternation.
In the next game they paired up again and the shorter person had to start as many sentences as possible with the phrase ‘One thing I don’t want you to know about me is…’ Then they would swap again.
People milled about the room looking for new combinations. Carol, seeing Jason shunned, went over to his side and offered to play with him.
Haley, furious with Jason, attached herself to Paul, who she thought was attractive in a sincere sort of American way.
Peter couldn’t help agreeing with Jason that the session should end at ten o’clock, but he also found himself embarrassed by Jason’s manners and more conscious, because he had been mercifully free of this consideration for some time, of how much he was conditioned to react to other English accents. If he couldn’t throw off this habit, the most superficial layer of opacity, how could he hope to see clearly? Perhaps all he could hope to do was to see clearly why he couldn’t see clearly – was that the limit to freedom? He refused to believe it, but then why had his wild mind-annihilating passage on the massage table left this sociological tic untouched?
He was suddenly revolted by the idea of England, like an impacted tooth collapsed on itself and rotting. The prospect of returning there filled him with depression and impatience. Leaving Martha’s workshop was an incentive, but he could do that by stepping outside and standing on the edge of that mysterious ocean whose other shore was China, under the named and the unnamed stars, the pulse of Crystal’s presence as unmistakable as spring in the branches of a cherry tree.
There was only a sleepy old man in a tracksuit left to play with, and so Peter went over to Stan’s side and smiled at him weakly.
‘One thing I don’t want you to know about me,’ said Peter, who was slightly smaller than Stan, ‘is that I think I must be a very superficial per
son because I keep falling in love with different women. One thing I don’t want you to know about me is that I had the most amazing experience this afternoon and I’m already murdering it with sceptical analysis, but at the same time I want to give the irrational an intelligible place in the scheme of things. One thing I don’t want you to know about me is that although my childhood wasn’t bad it was dull, dull, dull, and sometimes I worry that I must be fundamentally dull as well. There wasn’t any cruelty but there wasn’t any magic either; perhaps that’s why the sort of thing that happened this afternoon feels like an alien invasion. One thing…’
‘Swap!’ shouted Martha.
‘One thing I don’t want you to know about me,’ said Stan eagerly, ‘is that I’m impotent. One thing I don’t want you to know about me is that I sometimes wish my wife would take it easy with some of this New Age stuff. One thing I don’t want you to know about me is that, that, well, that I don’t wanna die. I’m not allowed to say that at home ’cause I just get an audio book about being over-attached to my earth suit, but I wanna say it now: I’m real scared of dying.’
Stan swayed a little on his feet, as if he’d been punched in the face by his own honesty. Peter was pierced for a moment by compassion.
‘Time’s up,’ shouted Martha. ‘Now listen up! We haven’t got time to process this work tonight, so I want ya all ta remember what you said and how it felt to trust another person. Trust is a real big issue for most of us and we’ll be looking at that tomorrow morning. At eleven o’clock we’ve got an appointment with some of the body work staff down in the baths. For those of you who haven’t been to Esalen before, nudity might be an issue for you, so if you wanna raise it in the group tomorrow I’d encourage you to do that.’
‘And also,’ said Carlos, ‘try to write down any dreams you have tonight. Remember your unconscious is your best friend.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ muttered Jason.
‘That’s right,’ said Martha. ‘And we’ve got a storm system coming in right now, so there’s gonna be a lot of negative ions in the atmosphere which means real exciting dreams.’
‘Finally,’ said Carlos, taking out his half-moon glasses and unfolding a piece of paper, ‘I would like to read you a very short poem I wrote about old age:
“Old age is when your back goes out more often than you do.
Old age is when the little old lady you are helping across the road is your wife.”
‘Or the little old man is your husband, um, if you’re a woman, of course,’ said Carlos.
‘Isn’t that great?’ said Martha, carrying most of the group with her in bleating acquiescence.
Peter glanced at Stan. Stan smiled fixedly.
Christ, thought Peter, old age is when you smile in terror because the idea of death gets in everywhere, like sand in the desert, whispering under the door, and snaking its way into the saddlebags.
As the group filed out of the Big House, Frank stopped several men, including Peter, with the words ‘Do you have a problem with your back?’ and, if they answered no, press-ganged them into helping shift Martha’s new white Range Rover from the rock onto which Carlos had driven it. When he heard why he had been asked about his back, Jason cried, ‘I think I’ve just slipped a disc,’ and staggered groaning into the night.
Frank, Carlos, Peter and Paul stood outside in the thick drizzling darkness.
Paul crouched down and peered at the chassis with an air of calm expertise.
‘Can’t see a damn thing,’ he said, still staring.
‘I can’t believe she bought this car,’ said Frank, the perplexed disciple.
‘Why not?’ asked Carlos.
‘It’s so big and ostentatious. In LA it’s a target car.’
‘Well, eh, don’t tell her that,’ said Carlos.
‘Oh, no, God, this is just between you and me.’
‘Maybe she’s influenced by the fact that I have the same car,’ said Carlos.
Each man felt he had to have a suggestion which would establish his mastery of mechanics, physics or engineering. The car remained immobile.
Peter couldn’t think what to say. Paul had already asked if the transmission was in neutral, the one thing Peter knew somebody always said on these occasions.
‘Perhaps we should wait until tomorrow to move Martha’s car,’ he finally blurted out, and then without the slightest effort added, ‘We could show that we were all prepared to collaborate as a group to overcome our individual problems.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Frank.
‘Way to go,’ said Paul, finally getting up from his crouching position.
‘Yes,’ said Carlos, ‘tonight we learned that play can be work, tomorrow we will show that work can be play.’
Peter was amazed by the ease and success with which he had learned to manipulate the new language at his command.
He was learning, he was definitely learning.
10
Crystal changed course abruptly and headed down the steps and onto the lawn. She was determined to keep up the noble silence of her Dzogchen workshop for at least one day.
If she overheard one more person say that light was both a wave and a particle, or talk about left-brain and right-brain activity, she was going to throw up. Who did they think she was? She had been turning physics clichés into spiritual metaphors before most of them had given up jogging for t’ai chi.
She had been a child of the alternative scene, amazing the questing hippies of her mother’s endlessly shifting and yet monotonous circles with the precocity of her questions. When she was nine, during her mother’s Zen phase, they had gone to Tassajara, a remote monastery in the hills behind Carmel.
‘When will impermanence end?’ Crystal had asked a balding student from the Bay area.
He smiled comically as if to say, Who will rid me of this turbulent child?
‘Are you attached to non-attachment?’ she persevered.
‘Quit bugging the man, he’s trying to be mindful,’ her mother said, bowing apologetically to the student and dragging her away.
It was at Tassajara, visiting the shrine of the monastery’s revered founder, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, that she’d had her first taste of that magical reality she had been pursuing ever since.
Standing in the clearing where Suzuki was buried, she bowed to the shrine and asked him with childish earnestness to teach her something about Buddhism. Mosquitoes clouded the air around her, landing on her face and whining in her ears. Too frightened of being bitten to stay in the clearing, she immediately ran down the path, flailing her arms and slapping her face to get the bugs off. Halfway down, she was overcome with guilt at having shown so little equanimity and given Suzuki no time to offer her an answer.
She doubled back, determined to withstand the distraction of the mosquitoes for at least a minute or two in case he had something to tell her. The air was still smudged with bugs and they still danced around her, but this time they remained a foot away from her face, like a ring of debris around a planet, as if she were radiating a force that held them in place. She stood in the clearing, amazed. Unable to understand what was going on, and unable to mistake it, she burst out laughing, like a spring that gushes out of the ground when the right rock is kicked aside.
By the time she was twelve, and her mother entered her Spanish phase, Crystal had already meditated in four different countries and six different traditions.
In Spain they attended an ‘English-speaking’ meditation class.
‘Relax de ties, relax de boathooks,’ said the teacher solemnly. ‘De mint is your enemy, de mint is fool of false contraceptions. Let go of de mint! Let go of de contraceptions!’
They’d had to leave because they were laughing too much. After that, one of them only had to say, ‘It’s all in the mint’, or ‘mint over matter’, and they would both giggle helplessly for several minutes.
Then adolescence hit. She suddenly stood critically removed from her mother’s enterprise, and at the same time inescap
ably immersed in its fascination and self-importance.
How vulgar to think that every guru was corrupt, how naive not to realize that most of them were.
Why did her mother pursue her spiritual longings so indiscriminately? Again and again Crystal saw her set out with fawn-like credulity, only to end up stalking disappointment like a tigress, bringing it down expertly and living off it for days; ferocious, possessive, alone, while it putrefied beside her. Her mother’s aspirations to communal life always collapsed into a territorial craving for her ‘own space’. At the same time Crystal’s family life kept shifting from tribal kinship to semi-nuclear isolation. One month she would be circle-dancing in a yurt with a community of seekers; the next she would arrive back to an empty apartment, some tofu leftovers and a note from her absent mother, who was out at a part-time job, or being empowered by some dubious class on the other side of town, or doing ‘service’ by nursing an acquaintance through a repetitious crisis.
Crystal’s diagnosis that her mother lacked psychological stability because her analysis had been interrupted carried with it a measure of anxiety. The interruption had after all been caused by the pregnancy of which she was the result. She undertook an analysis of her own to complete the one she had interrupted for her mother. She also hoped to snuggle up to her unknown father, if only in the cool laboratory of his profession. The elegant formulas yielded by this tight familial matrix proved less liberating than she had hoped, and this search for a distinct identity curved back into the capitalized Universe in which she had been brought up, where Self and Reality came in those giant sizes which are only stocked in the hypermarkets of the Divine.
Liberation seemed to lie beyond a self-knowledge that described her, however precisely, as a product of her past. And yet without it she would end up like her mother, too unstable to live with any other kind of knowledge. She interrupted her own analysis on the grounds of youth and expense. Her analyst said she was leaving because she had been trying to reconcile her parents by finishing her mother’s analysis, and that next time she should come back for herself. Slick bastard. She didn’t pay his last bill. They were moving again anyhow.
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