The opposite of words

This morning I sat one meditation session at the Cambridge Zen Center, then I walked to Harvard Square, where I bought myself a large cup of dark hot chocolate at LA Burdicks. It was the first time I sat cross-legged on a cushion among other meditators–and the first time I sat writing at Burdicks–since the last time I wrote in this notebook: Sunday, January 5, 2020.

Today is exactly two months after my 53rd birthday. Before the pandemic, I’d established a loose habit of practicing at the Zen Center, then walking to Harvard Square and writing journal pages at Burdicks around my birthday, but the pandemic put a stop to that.

Oh my goodness, it’s good to be back.

I’ve always enjoyed writing in cafes, sustained by the soft stimulus of having other people in the room with you. It’s a collegial sense of anonymity: there is no need to talk to anyone, but your mere presence is enough to establish a friendly connection. You and I might not have much to say to one another–we might not speak the same language, and we might not have much in common in terms of politics or perspective–but we can sit companionably side-by-side, you sipping your chocolate while I sip mine.

This quiet companionship–this practice of sitting with strangers, quietly sharing the same space–is exactly what I’ve missed the past two years that the Zen Center has been closed. I don’t go to the Zen Center for a few minutes of friendly chit-chat before and after practice, although I enjoy that. Instead, what fuels me is the actual act of sitting with other souls I don’t need to talk to.

Perhaps this is a peculiar side-effect of doing language for a living. When I teach, I talk; when I grade papers, I read; and when I write, I’m steeped to my eyeballs in words, words, words. I love language–I make my living wrangling with words–but when I rest and reset, I crave the opposite of words. Although the Zen Center has offered a rich array of online practice opportunities throughout the pandemic, what my spirit has craved these past two years is the act of unplugging in person: something that can’t transpire over Zoom.

So here I sit at a tiny table for one while a woman in a wheelchair scrolls on her phone at the table next to me, a hipster in headphones taps at a laptop across the room, and a pair of women chats amiably in the corner, all while a steady stream of masked customers comes in, orders drinks to go, then leaves.

This cup of dark hot chocolate is exactly what I’ve yearned for these past two years. I can drink hot chocolate at home while Zooming with distant friends and virtual sangha, but the thing I’ve missed is a quiet Sunday morning spent sipping spiritual sustenance among strangers. It’s been a long time coming.

 

A certain kind of solitude

Two years ago, on January 5, 2020, I celebrated the day before my birthday by going to the Cambridge Zen Center, sitting one meditation session, then walking from Central to Harvard Square, where I sipped hot chocolate and wrote in my journal at Burdick’s Cafe.

We all have spent countless hours ruminating on the Before Times: the simple pleasures we took for granted before the pandemic changed our lives in profound and unpredictable ways. There are many things I miss from the Before Times, but this one will probably surprise you: I miss a certain kind of solitude.

Over the past two years, most of us have gotten more than our fill of remote, socially distanced, work-from-home solitude: the kind of isolation that comes from not going out, not seeing friends and family, not hanging around the office water cooler. But I miss the quiet anonymity of sitting alone in a crowded cafe, strangers buzzing amiably around me.

For the past two years, we’ve spent a lot of time alone together in the separate squares of Zoom screens, communicating with friends, family, and coworkers across our individual isolations. What I miss, though, is time spent together alone: time, that is, spent in the presence of strangers without any need to interact.

For the past almost-two years, I’ve gotten good at what I call duck-in interactions. Tonight, for instance, J and I wanted to try takeout from a new restaurant, so I followed the now-familiar drill: order and pay online, show up at the restaurant, scope out the register from outside to make sure there isn’t a line, then duck inside to pick up my order. Even allowing for brief, masked pleasantries, this kind of interaction lasts no more than a minute: duck in, grab food, duck out.

I miss the casual leisure of sitting in a cafe sharing space with strangers without worrying about shared air and exposure times. I miss the days when sitting alongside strangers was a welcome form of communion, not a potential source of contagion.

 

High octane

This morning J had to wake before dawn for a work call, so after I finished my morning tasks, I drove to the Cambridge Zen Center, sat one meditation session, then walked to Harvard Square to write my morning journal pages at Burdick’s Cafe.

Although I was sleepy at the Zen Center, the brisk walk to Harvard Square and a small cup of high-octane Burdick’s dark chocolate woke me right up. Practicing at the Zen Center always feels like plugging into a power source: even during meditation sessions when my body nods and dozes, I can feel my inner battery charging with every breath. There’s something energizing about returning to a familiar place and a familiar practice, like climbing back into a well-worn saddle.

When I lived at the Zen Center, I’d often go to Harvard Square, claim a table at a restaurant or cafe, and write in the bustling anonymity of a clean, well-lighted place. Burdick’s on a Sunday morning nicely suits this purpose. You can generally find a table for one if you wait for quiet couples to finish their beverages then bundle up to leave, and once you’re settled in, the waitstaff doesn’t care if you take a half hour or so to nurse your hot chocolate over journal pages or the morning paper.

Some days I bring stationery so I can write a quick, chocolate-fueled letter; today, it was just me and my notebook. Like meditation, journal-keeping is a habit I’ve practiced for decades, so doing it generates its own energy, like a turbine turning a gear. Meditation fills my lungs, walking gets my blood flowing, writing stimulates my brain, and high-octane dark chocolate gives me a buzz that lasts the whole day. This is how you weather a sleepy morning that started before dawn.

 

Concentrated

This morning for the second Sunday in a row, I woke up early, did my morning chores, then drove to the Cambridge Zen Center, where I meditated for one session before heading to Harvard Square, where I wrote my morning journal pages over a small cup of Burdick’s dark hot chocolate.

Sitting one rather than four Sunday morning meditation sessions means your practice is necessarily concentrated. You can’t space out for minutes at a time, figuring you’ll pay attention later. Knowing you have only thirty minutes to sit following your breath, you pay close attention to every minute, saving nothing for “later.”

This, in my experience, is the difference between living at a Zen Center and simply visiting. When I lived at the Cambridge Zen Center, I quickly grew accustomed to the mundane nature of Dharma room practice, taking it for granted and not paying as close attention over time. When you live in a Zen Center, it’s easy to show up in body but not fully in mind. When you drive in from the suburbs to sit a brief half hour, on the other hand, you take care to pay close attention to that time, recognizing it as a precious respite in a sea of hurry.

A cup of dark hot chocolate is like this too. Burdick’s chocolate is rich, intensely flavored, and delivers a day-long buzz: a whole day of energy in one small cup. If I lived next door to Burdick’s, I might take it for granted, growing too accustomed to a mid-morning pick-me-up. Instead, a concentrated cup of dark chocolate is an occasional reward I give myself on those Sundays when I get up early and go to the Zen Center as planned: a good start to a new week, capped with something strong and just a little bit sweet.

 

A secret strength that allows us to see

This morning after sitting a single session at the Cambridge Zen Center, I slipped out of practice and walked to Harvard Square, where I treated myself to a small dark hot chocolate, just as I did several weeks ago on my birthday.

This time, I brought a full-size notebook, tucking it in my purse so I could sit alongside the anonymous women of Cambridge: young women in pairs, chatting, and middle-aged women like me, shrouded in invisibility as we sit writing or reading over our solitary beverages. Early on a Sunday morning, men seem to venture into Burdicks only briefly to purchase coffee or chocolates to go, or they hurry in to join a wife or daughter after having accomplished the manly work of parking the car.

This, I’ve decided, is one of the key differences between women and men in our culture. Women willingly go places alone, sit alone, and are perfectly content to be left alone as long as they have a book, magazine, or notebook to occupy themselves. Men, on the other hand, need women to accompany them. A man needs a woman to pull him out of his isolation, to drag him into chocolate shops he’d never venture into on his own, and to make introductions and small talk and niceties. A man needs a woman (in other words) to do the emotional labor of socializing.

A lone woman–particularly a lone woman of a certain age–embraces her invisibility; she cherishes it, in fact, after so many years of being the object of others’ eyes. A man, on the other hand, needs a woman on his arm–the younger and prettier the better–to become visible, to be noticed, to make both an entrance and an impression. A lone man loitering is a threat–an object of suspicion–but a lone woman slips unobtrusively under the radar. The proverbial fly on the wall was, I am certain, female. Who better to observe and record the actions of others than a creature who is small, insignificant, and overlooked: a mousy creature, not a preening peacock.

There are, of course, exceptions; the differences I’ve outlined between women and men are, after all, conditioned, not innate. When I first arrived at Burdicks this morning, there was a young man sitting alone at a table across from me. Before I could wonder whether he was waiting for a wife or girlfriend, however, this young man pulled out a camera: a large SLR with a fancy lens that served to justify his presence. Snapping a shot of the delicate, dangling lights overhead–the same lights I’d surreptitiously shot with my phone, with no fancy lens necessary–this young man promptly packed his expensive camera into his backpack and left: mission accomplished.

When I chose a table this morning, I didn’t sit alongside this man or at the row of empty tables near him; instead, I squeezed into a single table between two lone women, one on either side. The ways that women and men behave in public are conditioned, not innate, but they are conditioned deeply. Men take up space with their backpacks and large cameras, and women (especially those of a certain age) shrink into the spaces between, our invisibility a silent, secret strength that allows us to see.

 

After dark (chocolate)

Don’t believe Leslee‘s talk about psychoactive substances, crack houses, and chocolate highs. Yes, the newly remodeled (and reopened!) L.A. Burdick Cafe in Harvard Square, Cambridge might be “a veritable meth lab of the psychoactive cocktail that is chocolate,” but Leslee is a mere dabbler in the dark art that is dark chocolate, drinking a tiny demitasse yesterday afternoon while I downed a large. Yes, I’m a heavy user: my name is Lorianne, and I’m a hot chocoholic.

While we imbibed a beverage that doesn’t need alcohol to be intoxicating, Leslee and I talked about many things, one being our similar experiences moving closer to Boston proper. Now that Leslee lives in Belmont and I spend at least four days a week (sometimes more) in Newton, we both are finding it much easier to have a social life. If I were currently in Keene and Leslee were still living in Grafton, we each would have had to drive over an hour to enjoy a cup of hot chocolate in Cambridge…and then we each would have come down from our respective cups on our long individual drives home. Instead, last night’s Burdick’s run involved me grabbing a book to read and my Charlie card, walking from J’s house to the T, and arriving in Harvard Square several chapters later, with time to spare for shopping. How perfect is that?

I’ve never been much for night life, but it’s nice to know that when or if I want to zip into Cambridge for a large, late afternoon cup of hot chocolate, it’s an easy round-trip. On the walk back to the T after hot chocolate, more shopping, and chili, sangria, and more conversation at the Border Cafe, I was happy to know such simple pleasures are close at hand. This afternoon, J and I rode the T to an afternoon Bruins game, checked out the First Night preparations on Boston Common, and arrived back home before dark. While much of Boston is staying out late to ring in the New Year, J and I are staying close to home. After the psychoactive excesses of yesterday’s Burdick’s run, tonight’s “after dark” agenda involves a houseful of pets, a widescreen TV, and a DVD or two. The night life in Boston affords many different ways to live it up after dark.