Aftermath of Dreaming(15)
The weekly meditation group consisted of six of us who met every Wednesday night in En Chuan’s beige-walled, brown-carpeted, lots-of-plants living room. We sat on black meditation cushions in a half-circle facing him—though one woman brought her own special leopard-print pad—and En Chuan would talk to us about Buddhism. Steve and the rest of them had been going for months, so my first few sessions were mostly concerned with trying to get used to this higher level of cross-leggedness that everyone else was able to hold for what seemed hours on end, then stand up and walk around without charley horses or limbs that were asleep and half dead.
After a few months of going to meditation and getting inspired by the Buddhism, I decided to try not praying to Mary but to Kuan-En, the Buddhist goddess of love and compassion. Or I started meditating to her, is how I think the Buddhists would say it. I sat in my best effort at the lotus position and repeated her mantra (syllables whose vibrations engender love and compassion to yourself and all sentient beings, meaning animals, too, and plants, I think) over and over in my head.
A few weeks into this, once her mantra came easy and fast like a lullaby I could sing without knowing I remembered the words, a feeling would come over me, or up from within, of being comforted and held in Kuan-En’s warm arms. It reminded me exactly of how I had felt as a child when I’d pray to Mary after waking up in the middle of the night from a bad dream. I’d be all turned around in bed, still terrified from the dream and of falling over the edge, so while I groped in the dark to find my pillow at the head, I’d say Hail Marys again and again, and that made me feel safe immediately. That was how Kuan-En’s mantra made me feel—as if Mary were with me and meditating from within.
One night at the end of a session as everyone was putting their shoes back on, I pulled En Chuan aside and explained the familiar sense I’d get from Kuan-En’s mantra while meditating.
“She’s Mary,” En Chuan replied, looking at me with his dark, twinkly eyes. “That’s why Kuan-En’s mantra feels like Mary’s prayer—it’s just different forms of one energy. If it’s more comfortable for you to use Mary’s name, do. It doesn’t matter; either way, it will help you.”
I was so relieved—to continue meditating, but to have Mary part of it, too, because I just feel better with her around. Even though I automatically use the word God, I’m really talking to Mary, not the Big Guy in the Sky. I like that I can relate with whomever (or whatever) I’m praying to from a female point of view; and she was a female who actually got it all figured out. Even as a kid, I always knew that there was no way my experiences here on earth could ever be as difficult as hers. Of course, she didn’t live in L.A.
I decide to stop at the wine and cheese shop on Larchmont Boulevard to pick up one of their special mozzarella/tomato/olive paste sandwiches and a cappuccino to fuel my work this afternoon and into tonight. I’ll turn some music up loud when I get home—I figure since Gloria’s never said one word about my screams, music isn’t going to bother her. Maybe I’ll put on that blues CD Reggie gave me on the disc rotator, with Lucinda Williams and Roxy Music, and let the hours slip away in a harmonic reverie of working on jewelry that will keep me distracted until I see Michael again.
6
Downtown L.A. makes me miss New York. Or makes me try to pretend that I am there, depending on the way the light is hitting the buildings. Because on a really bright, flat-light day, there is no way around the fact that I am on the West Coast and not in Manhattan. Even though the buildings here were built by men from back there and from Europe who went through Ellis Island before coming to L.A. to create tall office towers and high apartment buildings with beautiful, scrupulously detailed work of marble, terra-cotta, and tile just like in New York. But once L.A.’s collective consciousness decided it should have its own style based on easy weather and roomy land, bungalows with courtyards sprang up and two-story stucco structures became more alluring than the Gotham-esque towers of downtown.
But not to me. One of my favorite aspects of designing jewelry is being downtown—daily, usually—in the jewelry district, a universe comprised of a few bustling blocks that looks like Manhattan’s Midtown filled with an international community. I’ve been here all afternoon and still have one more contractor in another building to see before everything closes: Dipen, an engineer from India who learned how to cast jewelry when he came to California ten years ago. He just moved offices, and I hope to God that means his schedule isn’t backed up.
As I make my way toward the tinted-glass double doors to leave 608 South Hill Street—a building filled with stall after stall and floor upon floor of importers, wholesalers, and retailers; diamonds and pearls; stringers, casters, and setters; gems and stones of all kinds; bronze, titanium, and platinum; wedding rings and colored gold all glittering—I almost don’t notice my cell phone ringing. I manage to find it in my bag, push the green button, and shout a “hello” over the cacophony of sidewalk noise I have walked into.
“Are you still going to that show tonight?” Reggie says, jumping right in.
A sort of friend, Sydney, gave me comps to the opening of her one-woman show because I helped her find musicians for it. I had asked Reggie weeks ago to go with me, but he refuses to see anything live other than blues because he swears the musicians are all dead and only appear to still be breathing.