Thursday

This afternoon I went to the three-year-old birthday party of a good friend's son with the kids. It was in a park that meanders through an old pine forest, at the top of a steep embankment leading down to the Merrimack River. The pines are so tall there, and there is no undergrowth, just a rusty coating of old needles, and well-worn knobby roots. An unexpected openness in a hidden and private-feeling place. The late afternoon light was coming down through the tops of the trees. It was so golden, with a warm breeze, every dust mote and gnat lit up and visible.

I don't understand why things become stuck, and what releases them. What is the nature of the small rock in your heart, that rises up into your throat, that you carry deep in your meaty places, so much so that careful palpitation of any sort by another may not even find it? You feel it in yourself. You see it in your friends. You hear it in songs, and see it in images, and dream it, sometimes. It is not your childhood, it is not old griefs. Its a taproot. Don't bother with the three years of therapy to know what your parents did wrong. They did wrong. That was inevitable. What is that goddamn taproot? What is it drinking from, and what is it leafing into?

It was such a nice group of kids there. My own two, and a dozen others. I know all those kids. They're a good group and after the cake the sun dipped low enough that they were all magically backlit for awhile. Every stray hair on every head caught and glowing. And I am standing there among them, occasionally giving someone a push on a swing, helping find a lost daisy ring, picking up and dusting off the knees and behinds of those who met up with one of those knobby roots.

It is a kind and unkind life. I am thinking of good things and things that have made me sad and pained and sometimes they are the same things. Taproot, and small rock. Stuckness. And then, from the woods, amongst all these ordinary kids at a birthday party on a Thursday afternoon with pizza, and cake, and all the usual things, a Buddhist monk walks out in saffron robes. Barefoot and shaven head and the whole thing. It is not a sign. It probably has a straightforward and unmagical explanation. We pass by each other. I smile and say hello, and he returns the greeting. He wanders a little, stops and watches. His expression is unreadable. He leaves. I do not see how he goes.

Hours later and I think of his robes and the way they were almost the same color as the forest floor. The openness and light and intimacy of the place. The way we all stood and watched each other.

I think of my friends and my siblings and how I hope they know how I love them. How I hope they feel how I love them. I feel broken, although only a little. I feel like I want to be forgiven, although I don't know what for, or by whom. I feel like I know who I am and I am alright with that. I feel unworried and untroubled. I feel happy and I also feel like crying as if my heart were broken, although it isn't, and I don't. I feel like I know something that is the truth, although I cannot articulate it in words, even to myself. I feel like so many things are really absurd, and really and truly funny, although I don't think everyone understands it that way. I feel a sense of vastness and emptiness that is not disturbing, but comforting. I feel like there is something that happens when you close your eyes while awake and when you touch another person's hand that is essential. I feel like there is something just out of reach, but coming.

Release.