Zen Buddhism

Travels.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 12 Comments

I’ve been away and now I’m home, the mist this first September morning flecked through with cold, writing in bed and drinking coffee, my cat Acer purring between my legs, jubilantly happy in the way of well-fed toasty-warm cats.

The (brilliant) oncologist and the (amazing) surgeon and so many others (gratitude, gratitude, gratitude) eradicated the lymphoma in my body, chopped me up and stitched me together, exorted me on. Now, after a summer of learning to walk and eat and sleep again, relearning how to be a body in this world, existential questions propel me to a remote part of Vermont, seeking answers to the questions I’ve always had — what are the meaningful threads that hold this life, my life, together? For nearly a year, I’ve held the imminence of my death against my chest, a sputtering candle, and the questions are rubbed raw.

Because I am myself, too, always, I’m seeking the ending to a book I’m writing. And because this is the way my mind works, I’m seeking the details of cause and effect, how these stitches work into the whole cloth.

A friend loans me his tent. The first night, I wake freezing, hands knotted between my knees. I no longer have a once-cheery immunity against minor cold. I stumble down to the farmhouse, sit on the porch talking, drinking coffee. A stranger remarks that I looked chilled. I am cold down to my bones. He brews tea and offers me a steaming cup. I drink it quickly, heat, steam, strength.

“A world which increasingly consists of destinations without journeys between them, a world which values only “getting somewhere” as fast as possible, becomes a world without substance.” ~ Alan Watts

Parenting

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

On a Philip Larkin jag, I think of his lines as I’ve driving with my 19-year-old up the switchbacks climbing the mountainside from the Connecticut River to Danville.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
 
We’ve been to see an old man — a doctor and a Zen Buddhist — whom I’ve convinced has answers, actual answers damn it, to the riddle of her and me and her father. My daughter hates the old man. Actually hates him.
 
It’s December and cold as hell. The sun sparks from ice at the edges of the river where the wide current is just beginning to freeze. The sun is nothing but cold comfort, so low in the sky warmth is merely a memory.
 
Driving, talking, we pass a particular bend in Route 2 where, decades ago and years before she was born, the Volkswagen bus my daughter’s father was driving broke down on the edge of the road. He had downshifted, stalled, and in that moment, the engine froze and refused to start. For years, the bus was parked behind his sister’s village house.
 
I stop in Danville for gas and wash the salt and road dust from the windshield, remembering the ugly tan color of that Volkswagen. From here, the road home is familiar all the way. I’m always writing about roads, always writing about journeys, sometimes just down to the post office to open the mailbox to see what’s there — or not. 
 
Staring at the keys in my mitten, I remind myself my daughter’s journey is her own. Or, back off. Then I hold out my hand to her and ask, You want to drive home?
 
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