14. Gaia’s Koan

Recent renegade revisionist recorders of history report how the rivers that ran from the northeastern Green and White Mountains of the Appalachian range became highways for inland treks for lost exile pilgrims trying to find a home away from the sea.  Also noted that local native inhabitants reported how these 17th century wandering sojourners would travel against the flow. Jake and Sundance didn’t worry about either perspective. Jake just liked to keep moving while Sundance felt he had to move towards something with some purpose in mind. But sitting in the shadows of Bunker Hill their own revolution was brewing. They just needed to find a cause.

 

A shadow slowly became lost her darkness becoming clear through the faded misty morning fog. Jake’s heart thumped as Sundance sought solace of a sanctuary somewhere away from the forthcoming encounter.  The muse slowly made her way to the two souls sipping warmed over sludge. It was Isabella. Her brown eyes brilliantly pierced through the filthy ground to ceiling windows of the pancake house zeroing with laser accuracy on Jake’s own eyes. Like a lost Labrador he put down his head and Sundance noticed how Jake’s ears flopped back at that moment as Isabella made her way through the restaurant’s doors. Jake, confused as usual, didn’t know what to do. His instincts said

 

“Run up and hug her!”

 

His ego said

 

“Let her come to you. She’s the one who walked out on you this time.”

 

Still debating on his course of action, since he had not thought this through in advance at all Sundance was already on his feet hugging Isabella and she was smiling and hugging him in return.

 

Sundance whispered

 

“You’ll need to forgive Jake. He didn’t think you would really come down to see him”

 

Isabella pushed back gently glancing at Jake, who was pretending not to notice this scene,

 

“Well, I am always in the state of forgiving Jake.”

 

“Well, come on over, sit down and have a cup of tea or something since I can’t recommend the coffee here.”

 

Jake finally stood at the booth where he was sitting, reached out for Isabella’s hand and she let him gently pull her to him as he kissed her on the cheek.

 

“It is so good to see you,” he said while sitting and waving his hand for the waitress for another cup.

 

Isabella looked to the same half attentive waitress and said

 

“I think I’ll have tea.”

 

“That’s new isn’t it? The drinking tea I mean.”

 

“Well, sometimes it takes a while for people to change and sometimes it only takes a split second.”

 

“Well, you look the same to me. Actually you look better than when I last saw you.”

 

Jake was really thinking

 

“Is she going to bring up the squirrel thing or the poem? Just be cool don’t get excited.”

 

Talking to himself usually calmed him down and he would either drift or it would help him focus. The problem was that sometimes he wasn’t always a good listener even to himself.

 

Isabella laughed with Sundance as they jointly smiled at Jake. Isabella responded,

 

“Jake, we all are in a constant state of change. Besides, you are just a horny bastard.”

 

Not wanting to lose control of this moment or their exchange Isabella quickly continued….

 

“So, Sundance here tells me you are on a mission.”

 

Jake excitedly jumped in at the opening, as he also really didn’t want to admit to an ulterior motive for coming to Boston and began one of his long stories about the weekend so far.  He glossed over the events at Babe’s Tavern and the Yale party and spent his breath explaining about Kerouac, Salinger and Walden Pond. He threw in discussions about Fenway Park and Yastrzemski for good measure. Sundance half listened has he now thumbed mindlessly through the stolen phone book pretending to look for Salinger’s or Kerouac’s address as he secretly listened to Jake’s fable.

 

Jake ‘s roundabout tale sounded much like the explanation of a child late to dinner responding to a mother’s concerned query,”Where have you been?”. …Or the response of an unfocused travelling salesman who files a travel report with no orders for sales to his manager.

 

Isabella finally jumped in asking

 

“So you guys staying anywhere in Boston or is this just a day trip?”

 

Jake delaying his response lit another Marlboro and exhaled

 

“I thought of calling your friends Riley and Ben and maybe stay at their place here in Kenmore Square.”

 

“Don’t you ever pay attention? “

 

Isabella’s annoyance stared to surface.

 

“I had told you that Riley’s mom had passed away and that they would be in New Hampshire for a while cleaning up her mother’s affairs.”

 

Sundance interjected

 

“What? Who?”

 

It was the first he had heard any of this but he wasn’t surprised.

 

Jake tried to explain

 

“Riley is one of Isabella’s former roommate’s. Riley is actually her maiden name that she kept as her surname after she married Ben. Ben is a Vietnam hero who is in law school at Harvard and….”

 

“Ok, Jake, I get it now…”

 

“Well then there’s Diana, my old neighbor. She is also at Harvard Law or something and she gave me her number just in case I was ever in Boston.”

 

“She what? What would you want with her number” Isabella challenged.

 

“Uh oh” Sundance thought we need to resolve this quickly so he added…

 

“Who knows we might not stay the day or we may end up sleeping at Walden Pond.”

 

Now there was the Sundance that everyone had come to know and love…the skilled mediator. The sparks that were about to fly were quickly diluted into some future that may never happen.

 

Though Isabella did make the point over and over and over that she had exams coming the next week and she could in no uncertain terms be distracted from her studies. She had worked so hard at convincing her father to free her from the Catholic all-girls college of Maryville to Boston University that she didn’t want to jeopardize his commitment to pay the extra tuition. She convinced her father by saying she decided to study Sociology and conveniently Maryville didn’t have that major. She had no idea what academic discipline of Sociology encompassed at the time or if it would prepare her for any viable career. Fortunately on her first visit to Boston with her father she didn’t admit that she didn’t know that Boston was by or near water. Even more fortunately she didn’t tell her dad that she wanted to major in Geography.  The transfer was just a good way to get her away from the Sisters of Good Intentions at Maryville. (This was the order of nuns that was rumored to have discovered Salt Peter for women during the 1950’s.) Boston would be the place to nurture Isabella’s own self-awakening and her own pilgrimage. Jake was convinced that no matter how many volumes are written on the relationship between fathers and daughters that these books would just about cover the tip of the iceberg of such a subject. He had no idea how prophetic that this observation would become. There was no way Isabella would compromise this good thing of getting to Boston and making the home of dirty water her new home!

 

It wasn’t too much of a task for the boys to convince Isabella to stay with them a while. Jake said

 

“Hey it’s the Sabbath somewhere in some religions today.”

 

Sundance worried where this might be headed.

 

“ I saw a sign on a brownstone on Back Bay coming over here and it was some type of Buddhist temple, church thingee and there is some type of service today and the sign said ‘Visitors Welcomed?’ So, let’s go visit.

I need some Karma!”

 

Both Isabella and Sundance were unsure about this somewhat great notion but then maybe it would distract Jake for a little bit. Sundance hoped that it might shut Jake up and Isabella thought she could use the time to think about how she was going to deal with her unplanned two visitors. Isabella preferred structure and plans though she admired Jake’s freewheelin’spirit.

 

Always the expert on everything, Jake reminded the two that he read Siddhartha at least three times. But, the only things that Jake really knew about Buddhism is what he had read in Kerouac’s books On the Road, Dharma Bums and Big Sur. He was proud that he memorized a few Buddhist Zen Koans. Actually Al and Billy originally shared these koans in their letters and yearbook inscriptions. But Jake was good at rationalizing and he touted how he had a copy of the Tao Tse Ching and something called The Upanishads. He figured if it was eastern in origin Jake believed it must be good.

 

Sundance succumbed

 

“Well, since I won’t be at mass this weekend at least I can say I went to some kind of church.”

 

Isabella never did get her tea as they headed out to Back Bay.This not quite holy trinity meekly wandered into this early twentieth century brown-stoned bay windowed temple and found three vacant spaces on cushions in the back of an over sized living room. Silence. No words. Shoes removed. Everything solemn unlike the reunion-like bantering amongst congregants found in Catholic churches before their officiants commenced the melancholic half celebratory liturgy.

 

“Gong, gong, gong”

 

A bald headed young man arises with hands in a prayer-like pose folded pointing to the full house that had gathered. Eyes closed, softly

 

“Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum.Om Mani Padme Hum.Om Mani Padme Hum…..”

 

Jake, Sundance and Isabella stare around the room…almost everyone present have their eyes closed and are slowly repeating these words in unison. One or two stare as if in a daze and no words slip from their lips.

 

“Ah, this must be what they call the mantra”

 

 Jake surmised. He wanted to whisper his awareness to his friends but chose the better path and closed his eyes. He could hear Isabella and Sundance’s soft voices. He imagined they would all become one. Then something discordant was happening as he leaned his right ear closer to Sundance hearing him muttering

 

“et cum spiritutuo”

Over and over.

 

“You can take the boy out of the church but you can’t take the church out of the boy,”

 

Jake smiled.

 

All the voices gradually dissipated easing into quiet no sound no air, no movement. The smell of a sweet incense sneaked through the air in the room. The souls were lifted.

 

Jake being Jake couldn’t help himself squinted peaking to see the congregation in unified truth-filled mindfulness. He glanced again at Sundance who’s head now bowed forward and became jealous of Sundance’s quick adaptation to this practice.

 

He thought

 

“Boy, is he into it!”

 

But just at that moment …..

 

“Chortle, chortle, grrmmpphh, harrumph, snorggle, chortle, chortle…”

 

Jake laughed to himself

 

“He’s snoring! He’s snoring!”

 

And as Sundance’s chortling became louder Jake could no longer control himself breaking the solace shouting out punching Sundance in the arm….

 

“You’re snoring! You’re snoring!

 

The congregation became quickly unsettled and annoyed. The peace that had almost instantaneously filled the room had burst just as quickly. Sundance slowly shook the cobwebs from his head and Isabella pinched Jake’s arm

 

“Did you see what you just did? Did you hear yourself?”

 

“But he was snoring! Sundance was snoring!”

 

Jake’s voice raised up louder and louder when the bald headed crimson robed leader made a firm yet soft motion with his hand pointing the trio to the door that they entered. They gathered their things laughing like three mischievous Our Gang characters running out the door and running and running - faster, slipping, falling, picking each other up, running until they realized that no one was chasing them.

 

The three meditation thieves found themselves on a grassy knoll on the banks of the River Charles huffing and puffing. The soft mindful breathing became a fast faded memory. The river’s banks had now become completely filled with people and activities of all kinds as the brownish-blue current reflected the sun’s increasing glow. Sundance and Jake automatically removed their jackets in unison to have something dry to sit or lie down on in the sun and watch the river flow. Isabella didn’t sit, saying,

 

“Look, let me get my books and a blanket. You guys need some rest. Wait here and I will be back soon.”

 

No objections could be heard from the two wearied worn-out wanderers curling up like terrible-two toddlers in dreamland as Isabella disappeared from the river’s edge.