Nothing
Done, All Resolved
Elizabeth
wrote:
Ikkyu's enlightenment came after
several years of study with Kaso in his small, rather decrepit temple
on the shore of Lake Biwa. As usual, he had awakened just before
dawn, the sun a thin orange disk above the distant smudge of hills.
He had carried water and gathered kindling, then stripped to his
loin cloth and walked purposefully across the pebbly foreshore to the
lake. Out he rowed in the little cedar skiff, drifting, watching the
sky lighten, just breathing, counting his heart beats, hearing the
plunk and splash of the oar blade working, the thin creak of the
bronze oarlocks turning on their shaft. He thought of Kaso's
admonition: Leave your dreams in the fire pit, sonny, the old man had
said. And had cackled and shooed the boy away.
This morning, with the sky just
beginning to blue, with the gentle lap of water on wood, the sudden
caroak of a crow startled Ikkyu. And all at once he knew, vividly
aware of what lay among the ashes of the pit.
Returning to Kaso, he told the old
monk what had happened, grinning, dripping, for he had fallen from
the boat in his haste to reach his teacher. Kaso said: "So, you
have become an arhat. Not yet a master, no. Not yet. Continue.
Continue. Go dry yourself." And Ikkyu had replied: "If I am
just an arhat, then I am content to be an arhat." Kaso
considered him for one long moment. "In that case," the old
man said, "you really are a master. I can teach you nothing."
He snorted. Nothing done, he said, all resolved. Now go, you're
puddling my floor."
Satori,
Elizabeth thought. Such a curious business. And arhat: one who has
overcome ego, or one who is worthy or one who is perfected. All
depends on whom you ask. So how does a master differ?
She
had seen Segovia play. A master. Flawless. She had also watched a
good deal of Julian Bream performing on videos. Another master? Or
perhaps just an arhat? How easily the terms---or certainly master---
carry over into any art or sport or what-have-you.
See
had seen Nureyev dance. And loved the old films of Fred Astaire.
Preferred Astaire to Gene Kelly. And writers. Joyce, for example.
Certainly masterful; but a master? Or teachers. Her mentor, John
Sherwood. Certainly a master. And Grace's Jack. "He seems a
master, certainly." But masterful?
"And
I do have a master's degree," she said. And a Phd. She shook her
head. So much paper, she thought. So much pedantry and dogmatism. "To
what purpose?"
Elizabeth
stood up from her desk, and walked the length of the room to the far
window. A landscaper had arrived and was grooming the neighbor's
yard. How odd. A warm morning in bright sunshine. Tide at the flood
from the sound of it. And where are my ravens today? She turned and
walked back to her desk.
Perhaps
some sand in my toes to clear my head. The woman cupped a hand behind
her frog candle and puffed out the flame. Just the one this morning.
Grace always going on about my candles. And these stairs. She gripped
the hand rail.
"I'm
not that decrepit," she said. Not yet anyway. Not yet.
"Bess,"
Grace called. "Bess?"
Well,
that's a bit frantic. "What is it, dear? I'm coming"
Standing
two steps down, Elizabeth heard the clatter of a pot in the sink.
"My
tea," she said, and bumped her forehead with her hand.
Grace
still stood at the sink running water on her hand when Elizabeth
shuffled her way quickly down the hall and into the kitchen. The
young woman leaned her hip against the counter, back to the room,
shoulders hunched. Two bags of groceries stood on the table, a knit
purse spilling its contents across the floor.
"Shimatta,"
said Elizabeth.
"Ummm."
"Is
the pot ... "
"Toast."
"And
... "
"I've
burned my hand." Grace turned her head. "I was angry and
just grabbed." She lowered her head. "Bess, how ... Oh,
never mind."
"I'm
sorry."
"It
is a bit disconcerting."
'Ummm."
Grace
turned the tap, dried her hand, went to Elizabeth and gave her a hug.
"Let me put these things away. We'll take a walk."
The
stone path led them through the salal and kinnikinnick to the first
of the low swales of sand. A narrow strip of wind blown white sand
led off north and south with the darker, firmer, sea packed sand just
now appearing, left behind as the tide began its ebb. A wind scurried
down from the north ruffling the feathers of a lone gull marching
back and forth near a tide pool.
"Which
way?" Grace said.
"You
pays your money and takes your chances," Elizabeth said. Twain
used that line in Huckleberry Finn.
But it's British, not American in origin. Does it matter? You pays
your monkey, she thought, a wistful, thin smile, a shake of head, and
said aloud, "and he do his dances."
"Who do?"
"Micki's line."
"You've left me at the dock,
dear." Just her thinking out ...
"'With rue my heart is laden, for
golden friends I had ...'", quoted Elizabeth. Past tense. Had.
Iambic pentameter. Da dah da dah da dah. Have to read it out loud to
get the gist ... 'With roux my stew is thickened,' and Micki's
laughter trilled like robin song.
"Damn these ghosts and goblins."
Take your walk, old woman. Get on with it.
Taking the older woman's arm, Grace
said, "Let's just walk, Bess. No worries."
"Fiddlesticks," Elizabeth
said.
They plodded across the soft sand.
North or south? East or west? It matters not a twit which direction
I go. North or south, up or down. You do the hokey pokey and ... I
have the world entire to myself on this fine morning, a good morning.
A good morning to shuffle off. I am of an age that teeters on the
thin wire of mortality. No matter. I'll live 'till I die and not a
moment longer.
Walk, woman. "Do you know the
hokey pokey," she said.
"Not off the top, Bessie."
She watched the wind-lifted sand now
scouring the beach, just ankle high. Like emotions abrading one's
sensibility.
Leave it alone, Bess.
All these years, and the salt still
stings.
Leave her be.
Yes. Well, the sensible thing to do is
to take a northward heading. Come back with the wind.
Prudence.
Phooey. Why not strip my shirt open
and fly south. Strip my britches, too. I could wander about
aimlessly, could wander about naked as a jaybird, if I chose,
mindless, insensible.
But prudence. Responsibility.
Yes. So fine. I'll keep my clothes on.
And beat up the wind. Was that the phrase? We are so nautical these
days. Grace and her Bernar-d. Just how she manages her nudity with
such aplomb is a wonder.
Standing in the parlour with her
morning tea, Elizabeth had watched Grace as the young woman wandered
the back yard, nude. Elegant was the word, Elizabeth thought, that
best described this lovely creature's form. Not classical, no. Those
women tended towards the dumpy; but perhaps that's unjust. We live in
an age where skinny is celebrated, but fat proliferates. She's a good
deal leaner and, well, svelte. That silly word. Slyphlike a bit
clumsy, but descriptive. The faint dimples just below her iliac crest
adding a whimsical touch. The dimples of venus they're called.
Curious.
Grace held clippers in her right hand
and was trimming the two rows of raspberries. The robins had wreaked
havoc with the vines that morning, eating the berries, breaking the
tender limbs in their frenzy. Juncos twittered about through the
shrubbery.
"The gluttons," Elizabeth
said. Her small breasts and the silly line about eggs that she had
forgotten as quickly as she had heard it. A joke of some sort was it?
Pear shaped anyway. Her boyish hips. Not a good sign for maternity.
Want those hip bones wide for child bearing. "Probably a myth,
that." She sipped her tea. And that slight bend of the spine.
Scoliosis is it?
And, as Grace had turned, she had
scratched at a thigh, and then at the edge of the rise of her mons
pubis. Another mound celebrating Venus. That goddess again. Just a
mass of fatty tissue. Pubic hair all neatly trimmed. Some women get
waxed, I'm told. However that works. Walks like a red Indian, one
foot in front of the other.
As Grace stopped, shielding her eyes
with a hand to follow gulls on the wing, she turned to the window,
saw Elizabeth, smiled, and gave a parade wave with a lopsided grin.
Elizabeth raised her cup in salute.
One would think that nudity would bring vulnerability; but this tall
wahine exudes confidence. A satori of sorts, this comfortable
movement of hers. She is without ego, certainly that is what allows
such self-possession. And that seems a contradiction. To be without
egocentricity; but, at the same time, be self-possessed. Like slack
water it is. Between the tides there is that calm. And between the
horns of life's dilemmas there is always a solution lying waiting to
manifest itself. The middle path. No problem insoluble; only
intellect, imagination without the wherewithall.
Elizabeth and Grace walked north
against the scouring breeze, the wind just strong enough to lift the
fine particles of sand and create the illusion of floating. Gulls
came whirling overhead. Waves washed overlapping arcs of white
foamed water up the beach and then receded.
This is best, she thought. I'll head
into this little tempest and have it at my back when homeward bound.
She lifted her chin and closed her eyes, caught the tang of salt and
sand and sea wrack. The sun warmed her back, the earth spinning it
higher and higher, the brightening sky.
They came to the logs encircling a
small fire pit. The debris of imbeciles now gone, gathered by those
more caring.
"Leave your dreams in the ashes,"
she said softly.
Mori had left the man who had taken
her in without so much as a by-your-leave. Had left him dying in that
shabby village. So she said. Or someone said for her. A bit of a
quandary, that.
"It needs explaining,"
Elizabeth said.
"Your antecedent seems to be
ambiguous, Professor."
"Mori. She left Ikkyu to die."
Grace, nodding, took up a driftwood
stick, stirred the ashes of the firepit, spreading them, mixing sand.
"Perhaps," she said, "she
simply left him to his death."