Go back to your list of things you’re waiting for. Choose one thing on your list that you long for or truly want to know. Imagine the moment you no longer have to wait for that experience. When the thing you have been waiting for happens. Imagine that moment. Feel it. Sense it. Smell it. Hear it. Taste it. See it in three dimensions. Feel fully into that moment. Now put it on the page.
You can share your response to this prompt below.
I imagine that moment when I can walk out my door and the neighbor across from me comes out her door, and doesn’t feel like she needs to duck back behind her door, to wait for me to leave. Not ever knowing her or meet her, leaves you wondering why.
I imagine that moment when I can smile at someone and the smile is returned. Without a look of judgement, or the thought that you may be crazy, because nobody smiles at another person, without some type of judgement.
I imagine that moment when I’ve educated myself, my white privileged self, to not judge another, because of their race or color, because of the propaganda stories I hear from the news or seen on television, or from another privileged white person.
I imagine the moment when smiles and communication are received and welcomed, by all. When you ask how someone’s day is, then take the time to listen and show that you’re truly interested in hearing what the person has to say.
Cindy, thanks for sharing this optimistic view of our future. It felt good to imagine it along with you!
Thank you, Laura.
You so eloquently expressed how I feel sometimes. Thanks for your writing.
Thank you, Cindy. I like to smile at strangers too : )
beth
I’m waiting for a partner who enjoys doing reasonably dumb things with reasonably priced vehicles. Cars and dirt bikes, compact sportfishers or fixed gears, it doesn’t really matter. Just a four-on-the-floor enthusiasm, living life no longer as a satire or a mockery of joy. Feeling joy without feeling shame, without feeling ridiculed. And I’m fully able to inhabit this body, this odd-looking off-kilter raw denim body. We prefer plinking to fucking around with military grade rifles. Annie Oakley guns and lots of cameras. We play with cameras all the time and I rebuild my darkroom. I am no longer living at a level of comfort that barely exceeds survival. I can buy a decent vacuum instead of cleaning the floor with hand tools. I can grow my own food in my own greenhouse to my standards. I will finally have a music collaborator.
Andy, I love the vividness and originality of your images. I really got a sense of you and what matters to you in life. Thanks for taking the risk to post for us so we could all enjoy this piece.
The humor in your writing is palpable and much fun! Thanks for eliciting a smile from these sometimes turned down lips.
Thank you, Andy. I really enjoyed reading your piece.
Beth
“There is a special way of waiting upon truth, setting our hearts upon it yet not allowing ourselves to go out in search of it…There is a way of waiting, when we are writing, for the right word to come of itself at the end of our pen, while we merely reject all inadequate words.
-Simone Weil-
The Rakasu
It became clear after months of sitting, that I was waiting. I just didn’t know what I was waiting for. I still don’t. But the sitting and not knowing have become a way of life.
Oh, I was able to make a long list of responses at the urging of the writing teacher to the phrase I am waiting for…….yet in the final analysis, I returned to one of my first responses for closer examination that centered on questions that arose during sitting meditation (zazen).
I had entered the zendo of San Francisco Zen Center out of desperation. My daily mantra before entering had become “stop the world’, I wanna get off”. And I did and immediately felt the fear of not knowing what to expect. This feeling that would return over and over revealing itself in different forms during the journey of no end, the same feeling that always accompanied my listening to that old Peggy Lee song, “Is That All There Is?”: Was it disappointment at never getting an answer?
I was looking for refuge, for safety from the deadly politics of academe. And I found it, though it proved to be more challenging than I could ever have foreseen. I entered at the street level of the basement where the zendo awaited me, a shocking, abrupt change from the bustling noise of cars and street walkers yelling on the corner of Laguna and Page in early morning, into the silence and darkness within.
I learned zazen and sat many hours in silence in the dimly lit space of maybe 50 people or more, sitting on black pillows, facing white walls, casting long shadows of the tall, black robed figures that were sitting along the edge of the room. The hum of silence. The hours turned in months then years.
The more I sat , the less my knees hurt, the less my heart beat out of my chest, and the less I pleaded “please ring the fucking bell” to end the sitting session. The more I sat, a question slowly arose: “”what am I doing here?”. Over the next several months and years the question morphed slowly but surely into “What am I waiting for”.
I had taken the Buddhist precepts a year after I began sitting with occasional visits to my stalwart, tough-old-bird of a teacher, some of whose wisps of silver hair are sewn into my rakasu, the bib-like symbol of Buddha’s robe that I had sewn that is worn around the neck. It was to be formally returned to me by my teacher during the soon-to-become-Bodhisattva ceremony (jukai), It was during the ritual that I made a vow to live by the precepts, commitments to an ethical, compassionate way of life. My Buddhist name was given to me during the rituaI, written in calligraphy by my teacher on the inner white silk lining of my dark blue rakasu with an accompanying poem, both intended to give clues to questions that would arise during my chosen path. I was named Kozan Shingyo, the Japanese meaning, Tiger Mountain, Intense Practice, and the poem: Once you grasp the meaning of zazen, you are like a tiger when she enters the mountain.
What was it about grasping the meaning of zazen, the actual sitting, the looking inward to one’s self, that was to be understood deep in my heart about living this human life? I’ve sat zazen on and off now for about 25 years and astoundingly am only now realizing and discovering deeply in my bones that it comes down to the waiting. Not waiting for an answer or something, some thing. It is in the waiting itself, expecting nothing, breathing in and out, waiting for nothing, living here, now, this human life, this moment.
Yes, I still wait at traffic signals for the green light. Only now I breathe deeply,exhale, and watch the blue heron with a wing span of what seems like 100 feet sail above the intersection of Tryon and Kildaire Farm Road, just observing, both of us, all of us.
Anita, I loved this piece about your beloved practice. I had the honor of being invited to a friend’s lay ordination and it was so special. I love the idea of imagining you sewing every stitch.
Thanks Laura. I do long to return to Tassajara where I took my first writing class from/with you.
Oh, I can’t wait to go back to Tassajara as well. I’m scheduled to teach there with Tova during the summer of 2021. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Thank you, Anita. I enjoyed reading your reflection on waiting. Beth
“I am waiting to return to New Orleans, the place where I was born, the place where my soul lives, and the place where my own personal culture was created.”
There is something about a flight to New Orleans that feels different from other flights. Most passengers are onboard anticipating a good time. There is a lightness of spirit onboard – a kind of goodwill and anticipation.
On more than one occasion, I’ve heard spontaneous applause when my flight lands in New Orleans.
I love coming in from the north over Lake Ponchartrain. I try to get window seats on the left so I can take in the NOLA skyline as we approach. I know exactly where everything is in that old city – I even know where things used to be – pre-Katrina.
I think of the food I will eat soon: chargrilled oysters at Acme, a roast beef poboy from Mothers – with debris, red beans from Radosta’s on Mondays – and coffee from the Community Coffee shop at the end of the street, where the same six men — gray, retired and loud — will be sitting every morning talking politics and local history, their New Orleans accents leaving no doubt that they’ve lived here their whole lives.
The air will be heavy and humid, sitting on top of everybody and everything in the city – buildings sagging under the weight of the moisture. The city smells – like earth and mud and mildew – like pots of gumbo and freshly baked French bread – like the oil tankers and dead fish on the river – like dried booze and urine on the sidewalks of the quarter – like the fried beignets dusted in powdered sugar and the chicory coffee that washes them down.
All of that and more communicated in the smell of my grandmother’s bedsheets that were hung out to dry in the backyard under the mimosa tree and next to the climbing mirliton plant.
Amy, your piece made me want to book a flight to New Orleans. If only…
Amy, I love your love letter to New Orleans. So evocative, especially the last sentence. Thank you.
Beth
You had me at chargrilled oysters. I’m am starving after reading your vibrant descriptions Thanks! Gotta go eat now.