THE WORLD BLOOMS ETERNAL
SPECIAL PREVIEW
by Jason Reiher
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Jason Reiher
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This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Early Praise for The World Blooms Eternal
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“With so much injustice in the world, what should a socially engaged artist do? Where to focus? Where to start? Through action and through dreams, 'The World Blooms Eternal' addresses all of it and Jason Reiher has figured out where to start: with the imagination and with the heart.”
- Diane Lefer
Author, activist, and winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction
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“The story is compelling, the writing excellent, and the ideas fascinating.”
- Emily Brightwell
Author of the Mrs. Jeffries Victorian mystery novels
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"From the vistas of Big Sur, mystical Sedona, and the stunning venues of San Francisco and New York City, 'The World Blooms Eternal' evokes a sense of place that melts into the narrative, the characters, and the forces of truth and destiny that spin at the core of the story."
- Craig Nelson
Managing Editor, Not For Tourists
THE WORLD BLOOMS ETERNAL
by Jason Reiher
Part One
The Flowers in Empty Air
Chapter 1: The Lesson
September 15, 1994 ~ Hudson River Valley, New York
It wasn't a premonition, but the lack of one, that tormented John the night before he would see Emily Sage again. What began long ago in his childhood and now reached into the late hours in his college dorm room where his insomnia kept him awake and restless, John had struggled, relented, and finally understood with such faith as one has that the heart will continue beating through the night, that no circumstance, no thing was immune to the whim of fate and ill-fortune, where a brittle tree branch, a change in the air, a question, a paper, a sound, a belief, a discovery, an encounter, a glance, a feeling, a decision, anything could destroy an entire world in an instant. But what he did not grasp then, and would not realize until several years later, was that these things could equally create one, that there was yet something eternal underneath it all.
In the ink black darkness, John reached for his bedroom window, hoping to see some light. With a step forward, fingering the cool glass, the world remained hidden, and he wondered if the trees and hills would still be there in the daybreak.
In four hours he was meeting Emily after not seeing her in nearly a year. He whispered her name, unsure if he still had a future with her.
What can I do? He thought.
Nothing.
Nine months ago, when she was gone to study abroad in the otherworldly climes of Thailand and Nepal, John received three letters in that time and talked to her only twice on the phone. She was progressively distant and hesitant, and even admitted it, attributing it to the time difference and fatigue from the Himalayan elevation.
He returned to his bed and the window gradually brightened.
We said we loved each other. He glanced at the clock. Three more hours.
John couldn’t wait any longer. He brushed his teeth, dressed, and stepped into the morning light. He watched it shine through the massive oaks that sprawled the campus and followed it through the winding paths past the tennis courts, between the dorms. Turning here and there, lost in thought, John heard the wind rustle and suddenly a giant crow swooped from a great height and cawed and struck him with its wings.
Startled, John flinched and turned and watched it soar over the treetops. The trees, lush from a wet, warm summer, gave way to the unfettered sky. The light, the colors, the endless depth mixed in his eyes, and he remembered the Chagall painting Emily showed him the night they first met three years ago.
The humidity that night, in the opening weeks of their freshmen year, had concentrated in her dorm room, and she invited him in and lifted her window to let a breeze in. He remembered her lips turning upward into a smile when she opened her volume of Modern European Art and asked him to join her and the Impressionists on her bed.
The flimsy springs gave under his weight and pushed them together with a playful squeak. She turned the page, the wind brushed her blond hair against him, and he gazed at Monet's Water Lilies over her legs. She asked him to peer into the water and look for the reflection of the sky in it, but to also find what was underneath. She turned the pages, tracing the bodies of Degas' ballerinas, the stems of Van Gogh's flowers, the expressions of Gauguin's nude Islanders. She showed him more, smiling, laughing, and whispering. Then she stopped at the Chagall painting, a self-portrait of the curly-haired Jew floating in a purple sky and holding his naked lover in a bed of irises and buttercups.
Emily circled the entwined and weightless couple. She told John that Chagall's desires penetrated his sleep, flooded it, colored it. So much so, that when he rose in the early mornings, his vivid dream mixture, still wet and raw, forced itself onto his canvas. She whispered that his wife Bella was his fountainhead, his lighthouse where reality and fantasy found each other, and that he was bound to her, and that it was unshakeable, even when they could not stay married, even in the intimate moments his second wife thought she shared exclusively with him, even after Bella died, to the end of his life.
“Why do I know this?” Emily asked John. “Because, he didn't stop painting. Some believe he was found dead clutching his brush. It's then, the moment we know we're going to die, we reach for what matters most,” Emily said.
“Ah,” she sighed. “Ah, what else is there, that we all find our Bellas, our paintbrushes, our dreams?” Then she turned to John, saying that she loves remembering her dreams, that it fuels her faith. She opened her eyes, her lips loosened, and she asked if he dreamed in color, or in black and white.
“I don't have dreams,” John replied. “Only memories, sometimes, rarely,” he mumbled.
He remembered how she sighed under the strands of hair that clung to her face, a few finding her cheek, one leaping from her jawbone to her neck.
“But we need to dream,” she wondered. “Don't we all want something greater?”
He watched her with unflinching eyes and told her that this world was enough for him, because he was in it and she was in it. Then he moved the hair from her cheek and kissed her.
John turned away from the sky, the memory fading. He resumed his walk across the campus and imagined kissing her, making love to her again. He looked back up, hoping to revive the vision, but the memory image was gone. He wondered if now, somehow now, he could take Emily to those magical, unreal places Chagall painted, places he didn't believe existed.
Will she drift from the ground when we kiss? He thought. Will houses turn upside down? Will flowers rain around her, engulf her, or carry her to the sun?
As he approached the student dining center, he plucked some daisies from the trail. He waited an hour on the steps, and when Emily approached from behind a crowd of students, he didn’t recognize her. Her face was bronzed and her hair cut nearly to the scalp. She rubbed a necklace of glass beads embossed with Hindi scriptures and gazed at him with pale eyes and a faraway expression.
He wondered if he should run to her, but she did not run, either. He approached her and handed the flowers to her and hugged her and kissed her and felt the warmth on her lips. She pulled back and smiled and held his hand and led him inside. She told him that many things happened over the summer, and there was so much she needed to tell him.
“First, you should know I don't eat meat or dairy anymore,” she smiled.
She made herself a plate of grapefruit, toast, and orange juice. After they sat, she told him she decided to work for a humanitarian organization in Geneva, Switzerland after graduation.
“But what about living in San Francisco together?” John interrupted. “You know, continuing on in the coolest city on the West Coast and in the center of an amazing technology revolution that's changing the world?”
“I remember that, and San Francisco is so lovely and I know you have ambitions with this Internet thing,” Emily smiled. “But so much happened this summer and I was transformed and it was beautiful and fulfilling,” she paused. “And things changed.”
John sat quietly and watched her eat the grapefruit. He told her that he wanted to support her goals and make it work. He would be flexible, wait for her, visit her if she had to live abroad, whatever it would take.
“No,” she sighed. “It's more than that.”
She glanced up. “One night in June, June 16, when I was in meditation at the Tengboche Monastery and in the most powerful experience I've ever had in my life, Lord Krishna entered my third eye and blessed me.”
She smiled and seemed to gaze into some faraway place. Then she looked at John again, and her smile faded.
“Then he told me that John Gabriel Rose was no longer part of my destiny,” she said.
John was about to laugh, but then he saw the serious look on her face.
“It was that clear,” she said, “that Krishna whispered your entire name.”
He stared at her. “But what about us?” He asked. “Remember how happy we were just thinking about it?”
“This is difficult for me, too. I know I’m going to miss you,” she said, “But you will see, too, how this was meant to be. You will. It's just – I,” she paused. “When I was abroad I also realized things about our time together. You know, we never shared and explored our feelings, and I'm not talking about our normal, daily joys and gripes and frustrations, or what jobs we want or where we want to live or other mundane concerns. There was that deeper intimacy, that spiritual connection, that we just didn't have. And we all need that, John, we do.”
“But,” John injected. “What about-”
“No wait, let me finish,” she interrupted. “Please, if anything remember this: open yourself, open your heart, to everything, to the world, the universe, let it in. Let it in completely.”
Emily held John’s hands and told him that the year before, she took a comparative religions class that prepared her for her summer revelations. She told him to look into it. She said she would be there for him whenever he needed her, then kissed him on the forehead and walked out into the sunshine, leaving him at the table with the daisies and his unfinished omelette and toast.
That afternoon, John sat in the back of his classes, in the far corners, and stared out the windows. He outran his teammates during soccer practice, pushed himself too hard doing crab walks and wind sprints, and threw up all over the midfield line. At dinner, he sat in a quiet alcove in the dining hall and barely finished half a bowl of soup and three saltine crackers.
Back in his room, he checked his phone messages. None were from Emily. The first message was from a dot-com in Cupertino; they wanted to haul him out to visit their campus for an interview. The second was from his mother, asking if he had a safe flight back to New York.
John called his mom. They talked for nearly an hour, but he did not mention Emily. He just listened to her voice telling him that she missed him already, letting him know that Fantasia coughed up seven fur balls from the time he left, and that Fantasia was fine, but that it meant she missed him too.
***
John sat in his bed, bending the corners of a poorly photocopied article on the genocide in Rwanda. They would be discussing it in his International Relations class the next morning. It had been published in an academic journal, cluttered with jargon and nuance, sheepishly pointing blame at numerous interests, and he could not get past the third page, wondering what Emily was doing, who she was talking to, and why she never called. His eyes lingered on the paragraph about children abducted into the armies. With a twisting in his stomach, he turned off the light on his nightstand, and after a long time, he fell asleep.
In the dull, aching middle of the night, John stirred from a strong wind blowing against his window. Half-asleep, half-awake, his eyes opened under a full, bright moon. Its silvery glow reached around him and his body was lifted from his tousled bed, then out the window, and into the sky. Rising above the clouds, he looked down on the sleeping city. A glint of sunlight on the eastern horizon caught his gaze, and he was whisked away with supersonic haste across the swollen Atlantic, drawn into the pull of Africa and the warmth of the afternoon as he approached.
He glided over the black waters, up the pebbled coast of Algeria, and down the Congo ravine. The shroud of the old world unfurled under him and the air rose from the fertile earth to greet him. Pythons wrapped in green acacia trees and the sparkling curves of Lake Kivu caught his eye. The Ruzizi Valley groaned, and he heard gunfire within. Pulled lower, into it, he smelled a village burning, and descending further, closer to the treetops, he saw the glint of bullet shells sinking into a muddy riverbank.
John suddenly stopped and gazed down.
A nine-year-old boy lay in the mud clutching a rifle, looking up at the sky as the blood drained from his chest. The boy gazed through the trees and saw John floating above him. He smiled because he thought he saw an angel, and then the dry lips over his bright teeth stopped moving.
For forty minutes the gunfire raged until smoke and silence filled the valley. Listening for any sound, John finally heard footsteps on the wet trail. A man with graying hair and a rifle slung on his shoulder approached the boy and stared at his frozen smile. Four other soldiers joined him and asked why he was standing there, and before he answered the captain of the troop walked up, raised his machete, and brought it down on the boy's neck. Everyone walked away, but the older man stayed and peered into the sky, following the direction of the boy's eyes beyond the trees.
John stared into the old man’s eyes and yelled, “I’m going to fucking kill you, you son of a bitch. You hear me? I’m going to find you and kill you,” he beat his chest.
The old man didn’t see him or hear him; he blinked his eyes and continued to gaze at the sky, motionless the entire time John shouted at him until the twilight and darkness emerged and finally concealed him.
When John woke, he did not know what had happened. He lay in bed, listening to the sounds of the trees and the birds. His housemates were already downstairs, brewing coffee and talking and laughing.
***
By early December, Emily had never visited or called. John called her drunk one night and left her a long, rambling message that he had a dream, although it was horrible, but that it was still a dream, and maybe something more, that maybe it was a spiritual experience. He asked her to call him so he could tell her about it. But she didn't. The next day when he awoke hung-over, he finally understood what she meant that morning in the diner when she said she would be there for him.
Later that night, he walked through the snow-covered campus, turning in his final papers, stopping and reading the flyers posted in the academic buildings: a lecture on global warming, Amnesty International petitions opposing torture in the Middle East and Asia, the upcoming premiere of Equus at the campus theater, and the Early Eighties dance on Saturday.
He stood in front of the bulletin board of the Religion department and read the flyer about the upcoming Comparative Religions Seminar that Emily mentioned back in September: Learn about the experiences that inspired the great figures of the world's religions, their personal journeys, prophetic visions and dreams, and their communion with the divine. Offered only in the spring, this course compares their origins and teachings, covering topics such as cosmic consciousness, oneness with the universe, and culminating in a field-trip to a Zen monastery. Taught by Prof. McGilly.
Maybe I should take it, John wondered. No, he decided, why should I take that stupid class, if all it's going to do is remind me of her?
For the last three months, from the day Emily broke up with him while carving into her grapefruit, John begged the world not to fall in love. He talked to friends over drinks and cigarettes in the late hours of the night, ranted to them while they played Nintendo video games at full volume, shouted to his teammates as they ran laps, whispered to the girls who secretly wanted to kiss him, and interrupted his classmates whenever they took breaks during their midnight study sessions.
He wrote about the problems of love in his midterm papers. For his computer science project, John wrote a massive thirty-page e-commerce program and named his two most important variables love and disappointment. He knew that when love was replaced by disappointment while his program ran, his professor, who had happily told the class he recently married a woman he had loved and pursued for the last four years, would still have to give him an A grade, because his program ran successfully without errors.
In John’s economics class, he mocked the theory of the rational man, arguing that people don't make rational decisions with everything they buy and sell, and he pressed forth his underlying question that was never addressed: why are we making all this shit? The pursuit of wealth is not rational, but a struggle over survival, power, and love. He concluded that if religion was the opium of the masses, then the material expression of love was cocaine and capitalism its crack pipe. He knew his neo-Marxist professors would agree.
John wrote a final paper for his Modern European Philosophers’ class, arguing that the human experience of love, everything desired, sought, discovered, relished, lost, suffered, and endured, everything was determined entirely by fate and had nothing to do with choice or the character of the soul. He concluded that wise men love only with caution, and don't try to pursue it; they don't rely on another person's love for happiness, because they know it is beyond their control, and wise people never give up control over their happiness.
John did not know at the time he turned his paper in, that his dainty, bespectacled professor was going to grip his paper in his hands when he read it three days later and return it ungraded with only fifteen words of comments on the last page: Why are you wasting my time? See me if you want to pass this class.
When John returned to his room, he checked his messages. His mother had called, reminding him that it was his brother's birthday. He knew, and she did too, that he wouldn't have forgotten. She was quiet on the phone. She told John that she just wanted to make sure he remembered. She told John that she loved him and forgot she was still on the phone when she paused and whispered to herself that he would've been twenty-five, that maybe he would've found a girl or even been engaged or married by now, and her voice trailed as she wondered where this girl was now, who she was with instead, and if she had any idea what her life might’ve been like had he lived and had they met.
John opened his wallet and took out a faded photograph.
Billy had been three years older than John, and was always beating up on him. When John was five, his parents showed him photographs of Billy hugging and kissing him when he was a baby, and he didn't believe them. No, that's impossible. That's another baby, he told them. Besides getting punched in the arm, the skin on his forearms twisted, choked in a neck lock, or pinned to the ground, John's only memory of Billy was watching him sit at the top of the elm tree that stood tall in their front yard.
From as far back as he could remember, John would stare and yell up to his brother perched in the swaying treetop, asking him what he was doing up there. Billy usually yelled back that he could see everything from up there. He told John not to be a chicken-shit and to climb up too if he wanted to be in the spider-man club. He told John what the neighbors were doing in their backyards, the colors of the cars coming down the street, and if there were any cats or balls on the roofs of the houses. Every time John saw Billy up there, he yelled back and forth with his brother, asking him to tell him what he saw. He wanted to see everything, and he wanted to be in the spider-man club, too.
When John was seven, he finally ascended the tree, driven by the words of encouragement his brother shouted as he worked his way up. Reaching the top, John clung to the bark and tried not to look down. Billy smiled and patted him on the shoulder and told him he was glad his little brother wasn't a chicken-shit anymore, but if he wanted to get into the spider-man club, he needed to do one last thing, You need to let go of the branch while you're sitting, and let yourself fall back a little, then catch yourself. John refused to do it, and Billy told him he wasn't going to be allowed into the club until he did it. John still said no, and Billy tried to show him how easy it was, and that is when he fell.
***
John had his second dream. He watched a young Iranian man hang upside down in a muddy prison while a soldier removed his teeth with pliers. He was a university student, the same age as John. He was the one holding the loudspeaker, his words and his actions running away from him in his pursuit of all things great: Islam, Allah, Muhammad, Respect, Family, Dignity...Freedom, and now he had disappeared.
Another tooth came out, the bottom left molar, and when it popped out, John jolted in his bed, thrust headfirst into the wall, and woke with a throbbing pain in his right temple. He got up shouting, splashed water on his face and opened his window. He rubbed ice on the ache and returned to his bed, but he could not sleep. His room stifled him and he struggled to breathe. With his head numb with ice and swelling, he threw on his jacket and left his room and walked out toward the far edge of the vast campus, not knowing where he was going or how quickly or slowly time was passing. He left the sidewalks and the main trails and followed the moonlight.
The wind chilled his face. He felt the eyes of the young man in his dream; he saw what he had seen in his brother's eyes the moment his body slipped and he seemed to float there, staring in John's eyes, mouth open, with no sound coming out, before he fell between the branches. He remembered the smell on the soldier's hands and the sound of the worn pliers as he gripped inside the young man's mouth and pulled, wedging his knees against the youth's face for leverage, and then hearing the tooth come out, repeatedly, one at a time. When John yelled, it did nothing. His shouts, his curses, did nothing to penetrate the violence echoing in the small cell. All he could do was watch as the soldier worked his way along the row of teeth, and he could not look away until his sleeping body jolted and slammed into the bedroom wall the moment the young man's lower left molar finally came out.
John walked further down the snowy path, and the cold made him dizzy. The shadows in the trees took strange shapes; he saw the African boy's smile when he glanced at the moon; he saw the rusted pliers when the branches shivered; he heard his brother up in the trees, clinging to the branches, look at me, look at me, howling in the wind.
Or was it the wind?
John shook his head. He slapped his cheeks, feeling nothing.
What's happening to me? He cried out. What would a doctor say? What would they do? Take me away? Shock me, drug me, cut something out? No, you might as well kill me. No, I can’t talk to them, but I have to talk to someone, yes, at least someone, tomorrow. I'll go to the clinic, and only tell them half of it, I’ll only let them know a little, just enough so they don't think I'm a schizophrenic. Oh God, could I be crazy? No, I'm still moral. I know right and wrong. Emily is crazy. Why did she leave me like that? Why in some temple? Yes, I'll go to the clinic and I'll even take that religion class. Maybe there's something there. There's got to be. God, I hope I'm not crazy.
Then he heard a sound falling from the sky, a vibration of strings on the wind and ringing through the trees. He slapped himself, but the sound persisted. He gazed up at the stars, and the sound became clearer. He followed it through the moonlight, weaving a path under the branches that led him up a hill and into a clearing, and it flowed from an opened window in the spriraling tower of the Music building.
John approached the grey stone building with its sweeping roof and lofty spires. He entered the tall oak door and climbed the granite stairs. The halls vibrated from the warm echo of the notes. He ascended. He entered the back of the dimly lighted concert hall, and there the music surrounded him. He saw her down below playing in the half light of the stage, swaying in and out of the shadows, eyes closed, lips trembling, her sound filling the entire space, just her and her viola.
John watched her face respond to the music. The sound poured forth and flowed back into her, illuminating her. He gazed at her and tried to remember if he knew her. Surely he would have remembered. The music swooned over him, and he had to close his eyes, and he felt it inside of him, joyous and full of life.
When she saw his silhouette in the distant corner of the back row, she stopped playing. The sudden silence shook him.
“Hello?” She called out. “You know, only music students are allowed in here this time of night.”
“I'm sorry, but your music -,” he said, trying the find the right words. He walked down and looked in her eyes. “It's beautiful. Can I listen a little longer?” He asked.
“Thank you,” she said, “but I'm not sure that's a good idea.”
“Why?”
“It's too distracting,” she said.
“You can pretend that I'm not even here. Please, will you?”
She looked in his eyes. She saw the redness, the glimmer of restrained tears, an unwillingness to glance away. She saw more than she thought she was going to see.
“Will you? Please,” he repeated.
“All right,” she nodded. She waited for him to sit down again, hoping he would return to the obscure seat in the back, but he sat directly in front of her in the first row. She sighed and took a few steps back into the shadows and looked at him. She took a deep breath and raised the bow to her strings.
The C note whispered first. Small, it floated between them, circled them. Slowly, the other notes flowed forth, from nothing, from silence, from a hidden yearning swelling gently within the tawny maple of her viola. She breathed, gradually pressing the strings harder. The sound emerged fuller, louder, brighter, swirling bright from the rising glow of light on her face; it pulled her from the shadows, and the sound rushed forth, tremulous, then wild and strong, and it filled her and filled the space of the hall.
The music swooned over John and pressed into him, penetrating him. He closed his eyes and she closed her eyes, and she played more, longer, deeper, swaying in the center of the light on the stage, the sounds rising higher, sustaining, layers of sound returning to itself, merging back, entering back upon the rush of new sound rising forth. John felt it in his skin, his hands trembled, he reached for his stomach, his heart, he forgot he was breathing, filled with sound, filled with light, filled with warmth, pulsing, reverberating, trembling inside. The music found no end, forgot its beginning, and the room unfurled and lifted, and in it, their bodies, the chair, the stage, the stone walls, the iron wrought windows, turned light and lifted, and the music poured forth, finding itself, so bright and so full.
And finally, finally, the notes came down. Her fingers quivered from exhaustion. She felt her heartbeat in her neck pressed with the viola, and suddenly she breathed in again and opened her eyes into the light, and she looked down and John's face came into focus, and she watched him, his eyes slowly opening as hers opened, gazing into her eyes, staring at her.
She slowly released the bow from the strings and the sound thinned and drew back into the dark insides of her viola and left the air. She stepped back in the shadows and her arms collapsed and hung by her sides, and she breathed in deeply, exhausted, and the hall now silent, but for their breathing and the wind rushing through the window, felt cool again.
She kept her gaze on him and swallowed and parted her lips and whispered.
“Well, what did you think?” She asked. “Tell me. What words come to your mind?”
The wind drifted through the window.
“Sadness? Love?” She asked.
“Eternity,” he said. He stood and stepped into the light.
He told her his name was John and reached his hand out to her hand and touched her for the first time.
Her name was Jessica Bloom.
***
In April, the ground thawed and fresh green shoots were sprouting. John signed up for the Comparative Religions class that Emily had recommended the last time they spoke in September, and four weeks into it, he was disappointed.
His professor was not the illumed savant that Emily described. She was a heavy smoker who liked to pair her late night readings of the godly works with a warm, sharp whisky or cognac. She talked in a guttural voice that gave him headaches, especially when she leaned in close to his face and stared at him through her highly magnified glasses.
Her classes did not probe the mysteries of Muhammad, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, their experiences in solitude, their dreams and visions, their mountain tops, Bodhi trees, fasts in the desert. Her classes were uninspiring, nothing but hour long debates outlining how social and economic forces formed the world's religions into what they are today: the fracturing into Sunni and Shi'ite populations along familial ties and trade routes, the separation of Therevada and Mayahana under similarly shifting tides, the influence of Roman warfare on Christianity, and the wild proliferation of Hindu gods exploding from the foaming mouth of India's consciousness.
John stopped hiding his frustration in class, he sat quietly during the heated debates, he stopped raising his hand, and he started skipping classes, spending his time with Jessica instead. He even intended to skip the field trip to the Mount Tremper Zen monastery, until the professor warned him that it was required.
The night before the field trip, facing a deadline to resubmit his essay to pass the Modern European Philosophers class he took in the winter, John found out that Emily had met a French man during her summer in Tibet, and that she was going to live with him in Switzerland after she graduated. Sitting in the crowded cafe, trying to get last-minute advice to finish his paper, John watched the dazzled eyes of his classmate as she described this man. But he wasn't listening anymore; he imagined Emily and this man embracing in a room lighted with candles, pressing down on a straw-filled mattress, surrounded by groaning yaks and mountain goats, the voices of a native, ancient dialect drifting in from the windows, infusing their own intimate whispers, and incense and Llhasan prayer flags swirling in the wind.
When the friend left at one in the morning, John decided his paper was done. He walked into the social sciences building and pushed the paper into his professors' mail slot, not entirely sure what he had written, hoping that it would be good enough, and that he would get to graduate on time.
Stepping into the cold air, he checked his watch. It was already too late to call his mother back, even with the time difference in California. She left another message about booking her flight for his graduation. She asked if the airlines would let her take Fantasia with her on the plane, worried because Fantasia was too claustrophobic to stay inside a pet carrier and get packed away inside the plane's belly; she wanted to know if the stewardess would also let her carry-on a small litter box, something to take care of Fantasia's unpredictable flurries of diarrhea. She told him she was getting a graduation bouquet for both Jessica and Emily, and wanted to know what kind of flowers Jessica liked. Emily was your girlfriend for three years, and she still calls me, she said. Who knows, you two might still get back together.
“Dammnit,” he had muttered out loud to his little machine. “Would you stop talking about Emily already?”
John reminded himself to tell her he didn't want to hear another word about Emily. He watched his breath freeze in the air the moment he stepped out of the building, and he wandered the campus. Soon, he realized he was near Jessica's dorm apartment. Then he walked up to her door, stamped the mix of snow and dirt off his shoes, and knocked.
Jessica opened the door and stood in the entryway, wearing her rain boots and pajamas and a heavy coat pulled over her shoulders. The wind rushed in and she brushed her dark hair away from her face. She stared at him with her brown eyes.
“What are you doing out here so late? It’s freezing outside,” she said.
“I had to go for a walk,” he said.
He looked at her and smiled.
“Last night was special. I’m glad I spent it with you,” he said.
“Yes, well, the last few weeks too have been unexpected, crazy, fast –“
“Incredible,” he said. “It’s only five weeks before we graduate, you know.”
She nodded. She didn’t ask him about his plans as she did the night before, about moving back to California, and maybe moving out with him too. She didn’t say anything because John didn’t answer her that night, or the time before.
“Well, I know it’s very late, and I’m sorry I woke you,” he said.
“I wasn’t sleeping. Really, I wasn’t,” she said.
“Are you ready for graduating?” He asked.
She smiled and laughed, “Of course not. Are you?”
“You’re right. It is cold out here”
They stood quietly.
“Do you want to stay here tonight?” She asked.
Her brown eyes gazed at him. He nodded and held her hand. He stepped through the glow of the doorway, entered her room, and joined her at the still warm center under the sheets.
Later in the night, after the kisses, the long embrace, moving with her, holding her above him in the warm shadows, John stirred, half-asleep, half-awake with Jessica's naked body pressing against him.
He slipped his hand under her hair, feeling the gentle vibration in her throat, bringing his hand further down, pausing over her chest to feel her heartbeat, along the curve of her breasts, down further still, across her soft, smooth belly, gently over the rim of her bellybutton, down further, further until she also stirred and hummed and pressed herself fuller against him. He moved his hand across her hip and lifted it until only two fingers continued along her thigh, even slower now, reaching the border of her thick, wide scar. He circled it, tracing its long, sinewy edge that stretched nearly to her knee.
Jessica took his hand, pressed his palm on it, and held it there. He wanted to pull it away, but resisted the urge. He let her drag his hand across the mottled and jagged textures. He flinched, wondering if it was painful to her.
“It doesn't hurt,” she whispered. She brushed his fingers along a protruding ridge shaped in a long, curved line, and pushed his fingertip into an oval crevice that was smooth and hard. Then she guided his hand away.
“Do you want to know?” She asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Only if you're ok with it.”
“It happened when I was seven,” she whispered. “One day after coming home from my friend's place, walking through a prairie field between our houses, I was attacked by a dog. I remember his narrow mouth and eyes and his black coat, speckled and chewed in parts. It was hot outside and the sun was overhead and there was no shade and I didn't see him in the weeds, until he was crouching before me.
“I was following an old chain-link fence through the field. Then he came out and stared. He was so quiet. I should've known. He wasn't a dog anymore, not angry, not friendly, nothing but a shadow of something that used to be alive.” She pressed John's hand on her leg again, and he felt her trembling.
“He didn't move. I didn't move either, and I felt nervous and lowered my hand to him and he snapped at me. I turned to run and he jumped on me. I fell. He bit me.”
She lifted John's hand from her thigh and guided it up, past her hip, her ribs, to her shoulder.
“He bit me. Right here.” She pressed his fingertip into a small cleft near her neck.
“I was face down in the dirt with him on me. I pulled myself under the chain fence, but I could only get halfway under when he bit my leg. He didn't let go,” she swallowed. “Not until he chewed a part of it away.”
Jessica breathed deeply.
“And he attacked me again. I couldn't pull myself through the fence, and all I could do was try to kick him, but he was too heavy. I stopped moving because I was too weak. I just lay there as he tugged on me and I could only cry and wait for him to finish. After he left, I finally pulled myself up. I put my hand on my leg to try to stop the blood and I walked home, and when I went in the door, my mother screamed and grabbed me and I passed out. That’s when she took me to the hospital.”
John clenched his fingers tighter around hers.
“It's a miracle you survived that,” John whispered.
“The doctors gave me a bunch of shots to stop the pain and sewed me up. My dad showed up at the hospital with such a worried look on his face. My mom met him outside the door and he kept asking the doctor and nurses if I would still be able to walk all right, and then he held my hand and looked at me and asked me if I was in pain. I started crying. My leg was wrapped and he wanted to look at it. The doctor tried to stop him and he insisted. After they removed the gauze, he turned red and stood up and went to the phone. I couldn't see the wound and I asked him if I was all right, and he nodded, but never looked at me. He called my friend's dad and told him to meet him at the field and bring his twelve gauge. I remember before he left, when my mom pleaded for him to stay and look for the dog tomorrow, he pushed her away and said something like: No, that ain't gonna happen - no sonuvabitch hurts my girl, you hear me? No sonuvabitch!
“And then he left, and he didn't come back until the next day, and I remember crying all night, but not because of my leg. Not that pain. I couldn't feel my leg anymore. I just wanted him to hold me.”
“I'm sorry,” John said. “That must have been the worst day of your life.”
“Every time I see a dog, I get this jolt in my spine that paralyzes me and then this emptiness in my stomach that lingers all day. I don't walk through fields anymore by myself. My scar is nothing to me, but it's what is not there that matters; the muscle did not grow back completely. The doctors are still cautious. When I stand too long, or walk or run too far, I get weak and feel soreness and pain, and every step reminds me how fragile life is, how delicate, how unpredictable, how easily it can be taken from us, and that we're one crouching shadow away from being consumed or destroyed. But it wasn't until I turned thirteen years old, at the same time I took up my first stringed instrument, the violin, that I realized how fragile, and delicate and unpredictable love is too. And, so, it must be cherished, because it is not forever, it is not indestructible, so we must cherish it and honor it and fight for it when we can, when we have the chance, otherwise it will just slip, and if we let it, we'll find our lives with a little less meaning, a little less joy than what was possible. Let the world take love and happiness away, and it will have to if it must, because I will not turn away from it.”
“Even with the pain that comes with loss?” John asked.
“A life without love is not happiness,” she said. “And the mere absence of pain is not, either.”
“Then what is it?” He asked.
“It's still emptiness.”
They closed their eyes.
“Do you ever feel pain when you play?” John asked.
“Yes, sometimes,” she said. “But not always.”
They listened to each other's breathing, felt their chests rise and fall.
John turned toward her.
“Did you feel pain that night we met?” He asked.
He closed his eyes again, and listened to her breathing.
“Yes,” she whispered.
They drifted to sleep, and when she woke again, while it was still dark, she touched his fingertips.
“So can I ask you? Have you ever been hurt?” She asked.
She listened to his breathing.
“Hurt in your own way?” She asked.
She felt his arm tighten around her. She waited for him to answer, but he was asleep. She gazed at his him in the darkness, she breathed in the smell of his skin.
Through the night, she whispered; she dreamed; she spoke in her sleep with a persistent thought lingering in her mind: Will he pursue me? Invite me to California? Will he? Will he? And when John awoke early in the morning from a dream filled with her music, he felt Jessica's breath on his neck. He did not hear anything comprehensible from her lips, but deep in his head, past the eardrum, her voice echoed: Will he? Will he? Will he?
***
After a long bus ride deep into the Catskills, John and nine other classmates arrived at the Mount Tremper Zen Monastery. They gathered around Sister Abigail and were led into the zendo's bright open space, and the only movement was the quiet breathing of the row of monks who sat motionless in their lotus postures, staring intently at the wood floor in front of them.
John sat and watched a thick trail of smoke rise from the incense urn at the front. The stillness was pervasive, and after the students settled, it returned and filled the room with the deep, silent ocean sound of OM. John's attention was drawn to a large blue chair in the front and a window that looked out at a young blossom tree with budding pink petals, tilting to the direction of the wind.
The Abbot named Marco Shiketsu Koren Roshi entered. With a calm face and dark eyes, he surveyed the assembly. He smiled and rubbed his head of shaved, grey stubble, and his eyes stared into John and held his gaze on him.
"In Kyoto, Japan, at the turn of the thirteenth century, an illegitimate seven-year-old boy named Dogen Zenji lost everything in his world when his mother died,” the Abbot’s voice cascaded over the room.
“Orphaned and filled with grief, Dogen turned to the Buddha - pored over his writings. Yet, after many years, he realized that scriptures on paper were not enough, so he sought out the wise men in his country. He climbed the cliffs of Hiei and prayed with rugged mountain men. He sailed the edges of China, seeking out wrinkled old priests - searching for the answer to life.
“Did he find it?” The Abbot gazed around the room. “When the world unfolded before him – one of the Buddha’s passages bothered him: In our wanderings in life, we are filled with cloudy eyes seeing flowers in the empty air; when our cloudy eyes are cured, the flowers in empty air vanish."
John stared at the Abbot. He felt the old man’s voice.
“Why did that bother him?” The Abbot asked.
John could not look away because Shiketsu Roshi was staring at him.
“You all have your mountain, your dharma. Your destiny lies inside, waiting, dreaming – wake it! Do it now, because you are in the now. And what is now? The now later and the now tomorrow? If not now, when? If not now, then never. Climb your mountain, and you answer the koan. Answer the koan, and you climb your mountain.”
Shiketsu Roshi stopped, and waited for the echo of his voice to fade.
“Now your professor tells me you practiced zazen - I can see this with your good postures,” he smiled.
“Let us practice again. Perhaps it helps to repeat a mantra. You can contemplate a koan: what is the sound of one hand clapping?'" Shiketsu Roshi held his hands together. "Or something else – what is within you? Why do the thoughts chase you? Do not ignore them."
The Abbot settled into the old chair and closed his eyes.
Two of the monks rose from their lotus postures. One was short and thin and the other was tall and large. They each pulled down a long bamboo shaft from the far wall, and Sister Abigail moved to the front of the room.
“Please note that two of our monks will walk by you during the zazen,” she said. “If you feel stiffness, give them your hand signal. They can strike your shoulder on each side with the bamboo staff to release your tension; there's no pain if your muscles are tight."
John turned to one of his classmates. "Are they going to hit us?" He whispered.
“Shhhh," she said. "It’s only if you give them a hand signal. Now be quiet. We're supposed to be meditating."
John raised his hand to ask about the hand signal, but the tingsha bell chimed. The zendo fell silent. The cherry blossom held still. The zazen had begun.
***
Breathe in.
Breathe out. Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
What is Jessica doing?
Wait, stop thinking.
Listen to your breathing.
Empty your mind.
Breathe in.
John heard footsteps. The floor creaked.
Why are they walking around? He thought. Are they actually going to hit people with those sticks? Breathe in. Stop thinking. Just empty your mind and be still. What if I signal accidentally? That huge one was closer to me when we started.
Breathe out.
Think of a koan. Yes, something to distract your mind. Breathe in. The sound of one hand clapping. What my face looked like before I was conceived. What about Jessica's face? Should I invite her to come with me to California?
John listened to the wind. He heard one of them stepping closer to him.
Breathe in.
He felt an itch on the tip of his nose, but he did not rub it.
Damn, this itch is killing me. What if I blow on it with my bottom lip, he thought. He heard the shuffling of feet, and the wood planks creaked under the shifting weight of the monk standing over him. He's still in front of me, he thought. Oh, I bet it's the big one. Is he watching, waiting for me to signal? Shit, just don't move. Don't move. Focus on the breathing.
John's nose tingled. Dammit, why won't he leave? He thought.
He couldn't resist any longer. He rubbed his nose.
He rubbed it a few times, hoping the monk would realize it was a real itch and not a signal.
John stiffened in his seat. The wind swirled on the rooftop and one of the students coughed. He heard the wood floor creak in front of him.
Why is he just standing there? Is he watching me? What the hell? Stop worrying. Breathe in. Just clear your mind and focus on the meditation. Don't be an idiot, and stop worrying about the stick. Breathe out. What is it so important about flowers in the empty air? Why flowers? Think about the flowers.
He saw them in his mind. The Lily and the Rose. Chrysanthemum, Iris, Snapdragon, Alstromeria, and the Bells of Ireland. They surrounded him. They floated in his head.
What am I going to do with my life? A glimmer of light twinkled in John's head. What am I going to do? The waves of the Pacific were pulling him back. His years on the East Coast were nearing an end, and that east coast also included Emily. Will there be anything left? He remembered the last time he kissed Emily during their junior year before she went abroad; on a hot September night, laying on her bed, the rain from her half-opened window sprinkled their faces, and they kissed through the night. He contemplated the flowers again, and Daisy petals floated down from above and the smell of lavender filled his nostrils.
He thought about the pending job offers. More Internet companies were interviewing him. They wanted him. But was he going to graduate? His Modern European Philosophers' professor called him in to discuss his paper, and they ended up yelling at each other. The professor said there wasn't time for another rewrite; was he still going to pass him? The colors mixed in his mind. The vision of his dreams reappeared, and yellow dandelions drifted across the boy’s frozen smile, and the old soldier gazed up and blinked. He remembered the look in his brother's eyes, calling out to him with his opened mouth and no words coming out as he fell between the branches. The Dandelions tickled John's cheeks. He thought of the hot, dusty shadow of the feral dog in Jessica’s field, inhaling the sun-drenched afternoon and filled with madness. He thought of Jessica's laugh and the deeper timbre of her voice at night, the warmth in the darkness, the viola playing on tight strings, wondering if she can join him in California. Why am I afraid to tell her about my brother? Does she even know about Emily? And she is wounded. I have to hold her hand now when we walk – I must. What am I going to do? Everything's moving too fast, he thought. Nothing's making sense. Too fast. What should I tell her? What do I do? It's too fast. Is it real? Is any of this real? I'm not ready to do anything. I just want to believe in something. I just want to be-- John opened his eyes and saw the monk with the gleaming staff raised high over his head. The shadow of the stick raced across and came down in a blur.
CRACK!
The monk raised the staff again and pointed to John’s other shoulder.
John clenched his eyes and leaned forward.
CRACK!
Part Two
Destiny On Paper
“Shanghai Noodle Company was founded in 1924. During that time all noodle products were handmade daily. Today, all products are made with state-of-the-art automated equipment. During the 1930's, fortune cookies were created and became popular item because they brought hope and joy to the community during difficult times.”
- The Shanghai Noodle Co.
Chapter 2: Jessica's Diary
July 11, 1995 ~ San Francisco, California
Swaying to the edge of the waterfront, John and Jessica held hands, laughing and turning again in the cool wind to face the Golden Gate Bridge. They stopped at the rail and John put his arms around her.
“I'll never get tired of seeing it,” she said.
John pressed his nose in the space between her neck and shoulder. He smelled the lingering aroma of the dewy grass from their morning in the park where they pressed each other's bodies against the earth. He kissed her there, and it was warm under her scarf.
“I wrote in my journal that the bridge vibrates,” she said. “They say halfway across you can feel it trembling. Let’s go there after we eat.”
“I wish we could, Jess,” he looked up. “But I need to go to the office and finish this ridiculous program going into beta testing next week. It’s unbelievable how many hours I'm working. Still, my boss had the nerve to give me shit that I'm not doing enough. He fired two guys last week, and they were putting in sixty hours a week there. He said they were too slow. Do you know what he said? Everything's faster now – the code, the opportunities, and if you're heading to the exits. Then he laughed and slapped me on the back - what an asshole.”
“I'm sorry you have to work with him,” Jessica said. “He sounds like a real jerk. Why don’t you move to a different department, or find something else?”
“I wish it was that easy – yeah, maybe I should,” John said. “Don't ever work for an asshole. There are better things for us in the world.”
“Yes, better things,” she touched his face, “and you've been so irritated lately. Is that it, or are there other things?”
“I'm not doing what I wanted,” he said, “what I thought I'd be doing, maybe what I should be doing, and - it's a lot of things.”
“What things?” She asked.
“It’s nothing - there’s no point talking about it.” He looked at his watch. “Let's go eat. We still can still enjoy our lunch, right?” He kissed her and looked around. “It's too bad there aren't any more secret groves around here like at the park,” he smiled. “Then we could've had another special picnic inside,” he grinned.
“I don't know what you call secret,” she smiled. “That place wasn't as hidden as you thought.” She held his hand.
John took Jessica to the farmer’s market and they ate inside the bustling tents. They strolled up the pier and into the briny market with the fresh catch splayed on ice and fish fry hissing on open flames. Surrounded by the fish-mongers, he kissed her under a ringing triangle bell and promised to bring her back for another meal, where they could sit down and enjoy the entire day together, another day, sometime soon - then he left.
Jessica walked back to their apartment in Russian Hill, pausing on several benches and leaning against the buildings on the way up to rest. Her leg ached and she stopped and pressed into her thigh with her thumb. She smiled at the children who skipped past her on their way down.
Inside the apartment, she put the food away and stepped into the living room. She was tired and sat at John's desk. She massaged her leg and looked down from the window and saw a cut-out of a newspaper article about the resurgence of paramilitary groups in Guatemala: A Rebirth of Death. She lifted it and saw underneath it a page where John scribbled a reminder about three deadlines at work, a phone number for Dr. Maury, and notes about his last conversation with his mother about Fantasia, where she had asked him to research if stool that came out as large, green pellets was something serious. She glanced at the phone book and saw a paper sticking out with other phone numbers: Dr. Humboldt, Dr. Sayers, Dr. Flynn. She opened it to listings for psychologists and saw where he circled names, numbers, and the words anxiety and depression. He had written the words delusional perceptions and visions across the top of the pages.
What is he not telling me? Jessica thought.
She watched the sunlight shining on the building across the street.
And what is he missing about me? My life? Our life? I've asked him so many times. Why won't he look at my journal?
She sat on the couch and took her journal from the coffee table, her Journaux Intime de Lumière. She opened it to a blank page, one of many. She paused and wondered what pages sixty-two and sixty-three would look like in the future. Filled with photographs of her and John somewhere? A poem? Something John gave her, or something she gave him? A memento? A dried flower plucked from a hilltop where maybe he would kiss her in a new way, or touch her, or whisper something that would make her smile?
When? She asked herself. And when will he read my journal?
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