the rock where I needed to turn, I heard the hikers approaching from the other direction. I heard them thrashing their way through the brambles, still stomping in heavy boots, and as they came near I heard her ask, “Should we introduce ourselves? How does it work?”
“I don't know,” he told her. “What do you think? It didn't really get into that, did it?”
“No,” she said, and I missed the rest of their conversation because I rushed to turn away and out of their path, toward the bees and their blanket of buzzing—childish, but I had no interest in being nearby and in sight when they arrived at the mess of their camp.
11
A fter my arrival, time in the garden quickly became more about memory than measure, and my days went as shapeless and soft at the edges as my whole world is now. A few weeks into the job, my breakfast basket brought a note instructing me to perform tai chi outside my cave every morning. So for a few days I pretended I knew what I was doing, going through the motions of knowing the motions, until another note arrived requesting sunrise meditations on top of my cave instead.
I hadn't climbed up there yet, I hadn't discovered the surprisingly comfortable seat carved from stone, but that morning I found the footholds and scaled the wall of my home in the dim predawn minutes and was settled and ready to watch before the sun showed its face. I've kept that routine ever since, with a few exceptions when Mr. Crane had me briefly try something different. But always, before very long, he sent me back to my rooftop reflections.
As thin orange light filled the garden, I saw that the leaves and grass were still wet with night and I watched brown birds hop to the ends of branches to shimmy their feathers dry. A beehive tuned up nearby but out of sight, up somewhere in a tree, and someone close to my cave—A fox? A skunk? Maybe me?—released a slow, whispering fart, or else the wind blew in a way I wasn't expecting. Leaves drifted down from the trees and landed around me on that rock, and stayed where they settled until another wind rose and lifted them off. Insects landed—flies, beetles in various sizes and colors, a butterfly as purple as grape juice—and sat cleaning their wings and rubbing their legs and going about their own morning business as I went about mine. Most of my encounters with bugs until then had been smashing and scraping them out of the house or watching them splatter against my windshield while I was rushing to work on the few stretches of road where it was possible to go fast enough for a bug to be splattered. Cars, I realized from atop my cave, were too fast even when they weren't moving. Too fast for me to have noticed before all of these slower things, leaves and beetles and mornings unfolding at their own pace and with their own rhythms. All this had been happening every day of my life, while I'd been moving too fast and with too sluggish a mind to take note. While I'd been too busy shitting and showering and shaving myself, trundling myself off to work in a mental fog that lent itself to traffic-jam driving but not to being alive. I sipped the tea I'd carried up to the cave top in my wooden mug, and through its thin steam I watched that brown bird on the branch fluffing and smoothing its feathers with quick darts of its beak.
If not for my morning marathon of sneezing and wheezing from pollen and particles flown into my cave and into my nose and my throat overnight, and from the blankets I'd spent the night under and the tunic I was still wearing, that first sunrise on my cave top might have been perfect. And even with all that discomfort it was still pretty good. I drifted off into my head, not thinking about anything so much as trying hard to think about nothing; I was getting better at meditation but I wasn't there yet, I wasn't where I am now. Where I am on a good day, at least, when I'm adrift on the water and in my head alike, when I'm nowhere at all for long hours
“I don't know,” he told her. “What do you think? It didn't really get into that, did it?”
“No,” she said, and I missed the rest of their conversation because I rushed to turn away and out of their path, toward the bees and their blanket of buzzing—childish, but I had no interest in being nearby and in sight when they arrived at the mess of their camp.
11
A fter my arrival, time in the garden quickly became more about memory than measure, and my days went as shapeless and soft at the edges as my whole world is now. A few weeks into the job, my breakfast basket brought a note instructing me to perform tai chi outside my cave every morning. So for a few days I pretended I knew what I was doing, going through the motions of knowing the motions, until another note arrived requesting sunrise meditations on top of my cave instead.
I hadn't climbed up there yet, I hadn't discovered the surprisingly comfortable seat carved from stone, but that morning I found the footholds and scaled the wall of my home in the dim predawn minutes and was settled and ready to watch before the sun showed its face. I've kept that routine ever since, with a few exceptions when Mr. Crane had me briefly try something different. But always, before very long, he sent me back to my rooftop reflections.
As thin orange light filled the garden, I saw that the leaves and grass were still wet with night and I watched brown birds hop to the ends of branches to shimmy their feathers dry. A beehive tuned up nearby but out of sight, up somewhere in a tree, and someone close to my cave—A fox? A skunk? Maybe me?—released a slow, whispering fart, or else the wind blew in a way I wasn't expecting. Leaves drifted down from the trees and landed around me on that rock, and stayed where they settled until another wind rose and lifted them off. Insects landed—flies, beetles in various sizes and colors, a butterfly as purple as grape juice—and sat cleaning their wings and rubbing their legs and going about their own morning business as I went about mine. Most of my encounters with bugs until then had been smashing and scraping them out of the house or watching them splatter against my windshield while I was rushing to work on the few stretches of road where it was possible to go fast enough for a bug to be splattered. Cars, I realized from atop my cave, were too fast even when they weren't moving. Too fast for me to have noticed before all of these slower things, leaves and beetles and mornings unfolding at their own pace and with their own rhythms. All this had been happening every day of my life, while I'd been moving too fast and with too sluggish a mind to take note. While I'd been too busy shitting and showering and shaving myself, trundling myself off to work in a mental fog that lent itself to traffic-jam driving but not to being alive. I sipped the tea I'd carried up to the cave top in my wooden mug, and through its thin steam I watched that brown bird on the branch fluffing and smoothing its feathers with quick darts of its beak.
If not for my morning marathon of sneezing and wheezing from pollen and particles flown into my cave and into my nose and my throat overnight, and from the blankets I'd spent the night under and the tunic I was still wearing, that first sunrise on my cave top might have been perfect. And even with all that discomfort it was still pretty good. I drifted off into my head, not thinking about anything so much as trying hard to think about nothing; I was getting better at meditation but I wasn't there yet, I wasn't where I am now. Where I am on a good day, at least, when I'm adrift on the water and in my head alike, when I'm nowhere at all for long hours
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