The Reluctant Healer

by Andrew D. Himmel

  I headed toward the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Here, surely, I would be ordered off to the side of the road, if for no other reason than for general principles, those that prohibited stately triumphs of human engineering from being defamed by motorized flyspecks. And the bridge was so daunting that I wanted to be stopped, I needed to be stopped, but no one was paying attention, and I climbed the ramp and found myself levitated above the New York Harbor.

  “You fools!” I shrieked, and then, the winds crisscrossing the bridge buffeted the Vespa toward the oncoming traffic. I grabbed the handlebars and stiffened my arms, but this only increased the imbalance, so I rested my hands on the grips and transformed my arms into flexible but sturdy shock absorbers. Then, I stopped resisting the wind and instead beckoned its participation, and found that I could harness its force to my benefit. I traversed the Narrows and continued on Interstate 278 until I crossed the western bridge onto the New Jersey Turnpike, where I turned north and headed past Elizabeth, New Jersey, and on to the Holland Tunnel. This grotesque loop through the grimmest environs of the city was not the stuff of imagination, but I was less in the mood to contemplate wonders than to simply conquer, and if conquering meant surviving, then I triumphed. Or at least I thought I did, until I reached Manhattan on the other side of the Holland Tunnel, where I was stopped at a light and a beefy truck driver leaned out of his window and bellowed, “Get a fucking Harley.”

  That stung. Over the course of the next few weeks, I established a routine of venturing out to the New York suburbs on the Vespa, and by night I researched motorcycles. I needed a license, so I arranged for a driver’s test in White Plains on a scooter smaller than my own, a 150 cc model that appeared smaller and slighter than a tricycle. After buzzing around on this contraption through a dinky obstacle course established by the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, and after making a few turns on city streets without falling over, I received my motorcycle license endorsement. I was now authorized to operate any motorcycle anywhere, even a nine-hundred-pound Honda Gold Wing.

  After taking a few lessons and learning how to shift through gears, I was ready to make my purchase—not a Harley, but a BMW R 1200 GS, a peculiar Swiss Army knife of a motorcycle that promised to be as adept on highway curves as on unpaved roads. While I felt in total control on the Vespa, I was freaked out by the BMW’s unruly power and on more than a few occasions almost threw myself off the side of the road. There was an entire world of physics and strategy to a single-track vehicle, and I was dangerously ignorant. I took private lessons from the Motorcycle Safety Foundation in Brooklyn, and this helped me achieve a minimal competence, but I needed more.

  On the web, I came across The Rider’s Workshop, which billed itself as “an on-road boutique Appalachian two-day workshop for intermediate-to-advanced riders who want to develop more riding confidence and expert road riding skills.” The founder, Jim Ford, used helmet-implanted headsets and roadside “chalk talk” to provide expert guidance in real time. The description read:

  The “classroom” is miles of Appalachian Invisible Roads. Except for locals on tractors, in pickup trucks, or riding in Amish buggies, Invisible Roads are virtually unknown to outsiders yet offer compelling riding conditions, great beauty, and wild, natural surprises! These rural roads run along tilled farmland, pastures, remote ridgelines, and stretch along shaded creeks of clear splashing water. And there is very little traffic!

  I’m not sure I needed further encouragement, but the website summation sealed the deal: “Finally, and most importantly, The Rider’s Workshop is dedicated to mountain riding. Like Zen, the Art of Riding Smooth is an enlightened state of mind.”

  What would stop me? I was on a gift leave of absence. I had no responsibilities. Lindquist had not yet communicated with me since our last meeting, which was a relief. Frankly, I had no desire to see him again or to participate with healing and energy transmission. And Erica would be in support of me taking the trip.

  So I went. I chose the “Ohio River Workshop,” which consisted of two days of motorcycling through the best northern Appalachian back roads and southeastern Ohio. The workshop began in Thurmont, Maryland, near Camp David, so I set aside an extra day to travel from New York to the starting point. I packed a stripped-down assembly of necessities to fit into the side bags and top case of the Beemer, woke up at 6:00 a.m. on a crisp September morning, filled the bike with gas, oil, and air, and headed over the George Washington Bridge onto Route 80, toward Pennsylvania.

  For the next four hours, stopping only occasionally for gas and restroom breaks, I had not a single thought. Partly, this was due to restrained panic. I knew enough to know that I did not know enough. How to lean, how to accelerate properly, how to brake, how to combine all of these skills in the correct proportion and apply them with the proper timing . . . the margin of error was a tactile presence, a participant in an ongoing conversation, and pretty much my only companion until I arrived at a Courtyard by Marriott in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in the late afternoon.

  I unpacked my bags in the hotel room, then rode over to the Civil War battlegrounds and collapsed in the middle of the Bloody Wheatfield, which, 150 years earlier, had been the site of a chaotic series of attacks and counterattacks conducted by eleven brigades. I lay down flat on my back. I felt no negative energy, no presence of lost souls slaughtered in the prime of their lives, but I knew as I drifted off that I was not supposed to be doing this, that nodding off on hallowed ground was a grave infraction.

  I woke up hours later into the full dark of a chilly evening and was surprised that no one had noticed me or at least my motorcycle standing awkwardly above the tall grass. A gentle wind swept the blades around me, and I continued to lie motionless, aware that, although I had no particular insights at that moment, my burdens were dissipating. My life, I suddenly felt, had been like the bullet of a slingshot, held suspended and inert. But now, lying still, I was catapulted.

  I arose early the following morning and rode the final fifteen miles to the Super 8 motel parking lot in Thurmont, Maryland, where I met Jim Ford and the other three students—Cal, a garrulous cop from Baltimore; Tony, a British engineer who had settled in Rochester, New York; and Mark, a veterinarian from Ontario. Jim was in his late fifties, tall, striking, and he spoke calmly and authoritatively, channeling Chuck Yeager. He led us a few miles to a coffee shop on the outskirts of Thurmont, where we ordered big, beefy breakfasts and carbo-loaded for the hundreds of miles that lay ahead.

  This was true guy shit, a sturdy bond connecting us quickly. We were actually doing this. We carved out the time, we rode the miles to the starting point, we embarked on a giddy adventure that others lacked the daring to join. After caffeinating ourselves to the point of jitters, we headed out, through the Catoctin Mountain Park near Camp David, through twisty, perilous sweeps of pavement that unsettled me. But I heard Jim’s gentle voice through a radio-powered earpiece, prompting me in real time. “Initiate the lean through counter-steering,” “Stay in second gear; use the higher RPMs for stability,” “Clear the view,” “Focus on the vanishing point.” And as I followed these gentle prompts, I began to carve through the turns with increasing fluidity.

  We ended the day in Marietta, Ohio, where we parked our bikes and trundled into the Lafayette Hotel with our motorcycle-specific clothing scraping and rasping and our colorful helmets cradled in our arms like oversized lollipops. We showered and congregated in the hotel lobby, all of us clad in coarse jeans, sturdy boots, and rugged shirts.

  The five of us walked the stately streets of downtown Marietta, en route to the Buckley House Restaurant, a rustic Victorian-style bed and breakfast converted to an eclectic eatery featuring Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Moroccan, Turkish, and Northern Italian cuisine. When was the last time I hung out with a bunch of guys? God, I had become lazy, lazy sustaining old friendships and lazy cultivating new ones. We sat ourselves down, we ordered thick meat and red wine, and our conversation careened from the substantial to the inc
onsequential, covering energy sources, technology, law, politics, women, and the best shows to binge-watch. I don’t know whether we achieved penetrating insights, but on this night, on this adventure, I breathed like my lungs had never before been treated to oxygen. I did not forget about Erica, but she was morphing into the background. She was there, in the way that a provocative work of art occupies an important place in one’s living room. You sense its energy, you benefit from its presence, but you can regulate your emotional attachment.

  The next day, we rode the twisty terrain in Wayne State Forest near the Ohio River, which separated Ohio from West Virginia. The scenery was pleasant, not spectacular, but the curves of the road were challenging to the point of being sneaky. And I received an exhilarating lesson in the physics of motorcycling. “Focus on the vanishing point,” I heard Jim say through the earpiece. “The point where the road and the horizon meet. Then, continually clear the view from the vanishing point to your bike, and back again.”

  Each irregularity in the road prompted a Zen-like observation from Jim, which contained both real-time practical information and broader messages, which I believed were unintentional, but perhaps not. “Look to exactly where you should go, not where you might go. Force your eyes to look to the solution, not the problem.”

  We traveled the same roads the following day, but we were different riders now, with an understanding of the counterintuitive symmetry of nature, machinery, movement, and physics. On devilishly tight curves, I scraped the footpegs against the pavement and came to realize that, with the right proportion of lean and velocity, the bike would not fall. Occasionally, we traveled over graveled roads, where we stood on our footpegs to improve center of gravity and reduce the squirrely feeling that reduced traction can produce. In the late morning, a burst of rain pounded down and just as quickly disappeared. Jim prompted us to drag our boots against the pavement to test the grip of the road.

  Mostly, I came to understand it was about my eyes, about obsessively scanning the road, not the segment directly in front of me, because if I engaged in that practice, I would already be too late; the imperfection I’d located would already be upon me, and no degree of skill and dexterity would be able to help. Instead, the idea was to look ahead to the vanishing point, to clear the view, focus, plan, strategize. “Every curve is a study,” Jim said.

  In the early afternoon, we pulled over to the side of the road near the entrance of a gigantic steel plant along the banks of the Ohio River near Hannibal. The workshop ended, and we exchanged warm farewells. I crossed the river to West Virginia, headed north through Pennsylvania, where I visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece, Fallingwater, then pushed north to Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, where I stayed for the night at the Iron Corbel Inn, a rustic bed and breakfast with large glass windows, comfortable nooks, and overstuffed colonial furniture.

  The following day, I chose the “shorter distance” setting on my GPS and found myself in a remote environ of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I pulled over to the side of the road to take a photograph of an Amish farmer standing high on a tractor as it plowed through symmetrical rows of wheat and corn. The tractor pushed away to the horizon, and I was alone on a paved but remote road, where only the curvature of the earth prevented me from seeing beyond the vanishing point.

  I was filled with joy and consumed with fury. Why was this the first time I was doing something like this? The more exhilaration I experienced, the more I choked on the extravagant waste of my life. I was a moderately honest soul, a careful practitioner, and a conscientious professional, and for all of my fidelity to these admirable traits, I had accomplished nothing to mark my allotted time. I knew that my family, friends, and peers appreciated my humble diligence to an unpretentious style, and I played to them, and for all of this, I earned their dull respect.

  I feared their disapproval, but I concluded then that for so long I had had it all wrong and all backward. I needed not just to risk but to gain their contempt, to go on a rude rampage, teeming with audacity and, if need be, outright fraud, something that would function as a revolutionary act, a disruptive force, a provocative challenge that would forever dispel the shroud of tidiness from my life. I would smash things up on my return, because, finally, I had become petrified of the alternative.

  28

  The Mountain Wizard

  I returned late Monday evening, parked the motorcycle, and carried my gear and helmet up to my apartment. I texted Erica that I would spend the night at home, sorted quickly through my mail, and found an envelope from Lindquist. I placed the envelope on my night table, took a long shower, and fell asleep. I awoke at 10:00 a.m. the following day craving a western omelet and walked to the Manhattan Diner, where I found a seat next to the window overlooking Broadway. Children who looked too young to be without parental supervision raced by on skateboards. Across the avenue, nannies formed a semicircle with their strollers and gossiped loudly as the infants they cared for slept. As usual, I felt the pulsing energy of the city, but now I wanted to join.

  I opened up Lindquist’s envelope and found a check payable to me for $5,000, along with a note scribbled on a yellow sticky: “I’d like to arrange for another meeting. Please let me know when you would be available. I have an idea.” I then checked my email and voicemail messages and was surprised that Erica had not sent any communication to me. I was more surprised by an email from Sondra Whitfield: “I understand that you’ve probably returned by now. Please call me immediately.”

  I finished my meal and called Sondra from the park across the street.

  “What’s going on?” Sondra asked.

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Erica. Where is she?”

  “I’m not following you,” I said.

  “Josh and I showed up for our Friday afternoon session, and Erica’s offices were empty. The lights were out, too. I checked my email. Nothing from Erica. No explanation, no message, nothing.”

  “That’s . . . surprising.”

  “It’s more than surprising. You need to find out if she’s okay and then call me back.”

  “I just got back last night and stayed at my place. I haven’t spoken to Erica since last week.” It dawned on me that during my Appalachian trip, I had never tried communicating with Erica in any way, and she’d made no attempt to contact me either.

  “Will,” she began.

  “I’m going to have to call you later,” I said and disconnected the call. The nannies stood up and formed a neat line as they filed east toward Central Park. Loud buses barreled downtown. I wanted the noise of the city to quiet down for just a moment. I called Erica. No answer. I grabbed a taxi and went to her apartment. I pushed the door open and turned on the lights. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  “Will,” I heard Erica call out. Her voice seemed bland and untroubled. I walked into her room, where she was seated on the bed with her arms propped on her knees, holding a cup of tea. She was alert but vacant. I climbed on the bed and sat next to her.

  “I’m a jerk,” I said. “I didn’t call you once over the weekend.”

  “Will,” she said, “my kundalini is rising. Badly.”

  I almost laughed. Was this some gourmet pasta? Did a cooking experiment go terribly wrong?

  “Kundalini . . . ” I said.

  “I’m so tired . . . I haven’t moved much in days.”

  “Erica, what is going on?”

  She leaned back and placed her cup on the side table. I thought she would sit back up and embrace me. Instead, she continued her descent onto her pillow. “Not now, Will, I just can’t. I’ll deal with this; I know I need help.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Let me sleep.”

  Her face was ashen, as if it no longer had the capability of absorbing sunlight. “When was the last time you went outside?” I asked.

  “We’ll talk later,” she said.

  She ceased communicating and closed her eyes, and I assumed that she was n
ot far from falling asleep. I got up slowly from the bed and walked around the apartment. The air was stale, and a joyless pall had filled the space. Nothing looked out of place, but the environment was streaked with menace.

  Erica’s computer was open, and I clicked the Return key, bringing up a Google search page for “kundalini.” Erica apparently had already searched through twelve pages of results. I could not recall the last time I had ever ventured beyond the first two pages of a Google search. I clicked on page eighteen, then page twenty-seven, then selected three or four other pages and randomly selected a few results to review. Some sites described kundalini as a coiled serpent resting at the base of the spine, which, when awakened, was capable of producing transcendent insight or unremitting trauma. Other sites warned that unleashing kundalini could produce psychotic disorders and suicidal thoughts. And still other sources warned that 99 percent of everything that has been written on kundalini is nonsense, and those who seek the truth must be careful in their research.

  The top of the Google page read, “Page 27 of about 7,500,000 results.” I wondered how informative the 7,500,000th result would be. I forwarded the search to page thirty-seven, and from there, advanced page by page, until I came across a site entitled Kundalini Answers. I clicked the link and came across a photograph of an earthy Oregonian with an expression suggesting straight talk and a sense of humor. Matthias Kristen. The name was just peculiar enough to merit a phone call.

  “Yes, sir,” a gravelly voice answered.

  “How did you know I was a guy?” I asked.

  “Your voice. You’re either a guy or a girl with some serious respiratory issues.”

  “But you couldn’t have heard my voice before I called . . .” Forget it, I told myself. Chalk it up to a lucky guess. “Are you Matthias Kristen?” I asked.