ABSTRACT
Locating myself in particular moments and spaces when these words were first put together, and later revised, helped me to experience the power of place for writing. Planting my feet on the earth (or the floor above that earth), I thought about those who had moved through this geospatial, metaphysical and intellectual space before me. I share from a voice recording as I prepared to write this final chapter:
I’m seated on a wooden stump, about twelve inches high – one of a dozen or so lined up on the top of a hill above the Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, California. 1 I’m participating in a retreat at this Buddhist center, which was founded by the Vietnamese monk Thich Naht Hahn, who took as his life mission the work of bringing an engaged form of Buddhism to the West. A half dozen other lay retreatants and I are living as the monks and nuns do: following a schedule of walking, sitting, working and eating meditation. All around the center are signs reminding us to be present wherever we are. Today is designated “lazy day” and we are free to do whatever we like. I took myself on a hike up to this lookout in this early morning hour, bringing along my trusty voice recorder, and I was inspired to dictate these musings.
The mist shrouds the ocean off in the distance. There are birds calling. I know there are blue jays, woodpeckers and humming birds, because I have seen them, but I can’t distinguish their calls, and I don’t see any right now. Except for the birds, what feels most palpable here is the silence: like a blanket, covering me and the hills around. The colors are muted, shades of green, punctuated by orange, yellow, green, blue-painted cabins down below. The chaparral is quite dry and I think about climate change and the work we did yesterday to clear the dry brush near the roads, as a fire prevention strategy.
I sit here, my feet planted on the ground, looking out at the hillside, wondering about the irony of thinking about this book rather than being fully present in the here and now. It seems I am retreating to my head when I should be in my body, in my senses, in the Now. Or is this very idea – that when we think we are somehow disconnected from our bodies and from the earth around us when we write – a product of Cartesian dualism? I plant my feet more firmly and realize I can be in both my head and my body simultaneously and that that connection may actually fuel what I want to say.
