A buddha sits in Brooklyn, and in my fantasy he climbs from his seat in the middle of the afternoon to sip white wine from a Dixie cup. By night, this room was where a half-dozen or more of my blog-buddies slept last weekend, unrolling bedrolls and sleeping bags and then dutifully packing them away each morning, our diverted eyes creating virtual walls of privacy when any one of us was changing or meditating. By day, this room transformed from virtual bedroom to impromptu party-pad, the place where we sat on the floor drinking wine and talking. Buddha never joined these discussions, and he certainly never slept; he aways sat stony and aloof.
In retrospect, I wish I had been less like Buddha and more like my friends, surrendering myself wholeheartedly to late-night poetry readings and the rowdy recitation of limericks. I wish I had photographed more bare faces, feet, and hands, the tangible proof of embodied presence; I wish I’d insisted that we women with pedicured feet take a photo of our touching toes, the painted petals of our grounded togetherness. In retrospect, I wish I’d danced with a small handful of others, but instead I sat serene and aloof, a Buddha who hadn’t bonded enough with the bottle to melt her inner resolve. Like Ray Smith in Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums, I spent too much time last weekend hanging and holding back, wishing I could surrender to spontaneity like wild-eyed Japhy Ryder. Instead of being fully and truly present in Brooklyn with my buddies, last weekend I was distracted with the work I’d brought, the downside of teaching online being the fact that your virtual “class” follows you everywhere.
Now that I’m back in Keene, I’m still distracted by the work I didn’t get done last weekend and the work that has accrued in the meantime: a moonlighting teacher’s work is never done. Now that I sit in my quiet apartment with just a silent Buddha statue, the dog, and me, I harbor lingering fantasies about what didn’t happen in Brooklyn. In retrospect, I wish I’d truly believed our time on earth is precious and brief and acted accordingly, tossing work aside to party with the best of them, stone-faced Buddha notwithstanding.
This is my belated contribution to this week’s Photo Friday theme, Fantasy. Click here to see the photos I shot while wandering Brooklyn streets: enjoy!
Sep 18, 2007 at 2:50 am
Next time. There is always next time 🙂
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Sep 18, 2007 at 4:11 am
(o) xxx
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Sep 18, 2007 at 7:06 am
There’s an ache in this post, and in Dale’s most recent post, that resonate with me. I’ve been saying that I miss you all more than is reasonable, and I think part of that ache is the sense that I wasn’t ready for it to be over — I wasn’t ready for everyone to scatter. Now maybe I’m finally brave enough to tell everyone how much I love them, and you’ve all gone away.
I love your fantasy about the Buddha stepping down from his dresser and joining us in a glass of wine, though. And there bloody well better be a next time, because some part of my heart is already there, waiting for everyone to arrive.
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Sep 18, 2007 at 11:10 am
Oh Lorianne.
(o)
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Sep 18, 2007 at 11:54 am
Hopefully the next opportunity will come when you’re less busy with work. Hard to switch that off when you’ve gotten yourself in gear for a heavy workload (no doubt hard also to switch back into gear if you got off). Our bodies/systems just won’t keep up with our will, alas!
I’m glad several people had a wildly spontaneous and ecstatically present time. If you’re not in that space though (had my own distractions) it is hard not to say “but why can’t I be like that?”
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Sep 18, 2007 at 12:30 pm
oh yes, there will be a next time….
(o)
… and I might even get another pedicure to celebrate it!
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Sep 18, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Yes, Rachel, there’s an ache in this post…and Leslee, I think you’ve pinpointed what it is. In the aftermath of last weekend, everyone else, it seems, has been glowing about how great a time they had, and I’ve felt a bit left out of that. It’s not that I didn’t have a good time…but it was definitely a distracted time, not the in-the-moment love-fest that some folks attended. 🙂
I guess Rachel’s remark about not being ready for the weekend to end points to the crux of it: during the weekend, I (unlike Rachel) was eager for the weekend to end, not because I wanted to say goodbye, but because I had so much “stuff” to come back to, and I knew it. So it was hugely disconcerting to feel like the only one looking at my watch, so to speak. Everyone else seemed to have a carefree weekend away from work, etc, and I didn’t. So hearing everyone describe their wondrously in-the-moment experience is a bit weird: can I have what they are having? 🙂
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Sep 19, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Oh, but Lorianne, you were there! 90% of life is just showing up. I would have been too shy to! (Or maybe my hermit tendencies are just stronger than yours.)
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Sep 21, 2007 at 9:18 am
You were what you were. That was your experience. What good comes of judging it? 🙂
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Sep 25, 2007 at 1:04 am
Ah, Lori, how many of us ever believe it, even for a second?
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