Reflections of a Howling Dog

This text originally appeared in Brooklyn Aikikai journal

It’s 4:30 in the evening, and I am in a cold and empty dojo in Athens, Greece. I left Brooklyn on Thursday afternoon, traveled for twelve hours, and now somehow it is Friday afternoon. It feels impossible to account for this. I think about my suitcase still in Istanbul, wondering how and when it will be returned to me. About ten people show up to the dojo at the same time, twenty minutes before the sit starts, and we begin frantically setting up.

Aswhini prepares the tea, Patrick and David prepare the opening chanting ceremony, Sofia and I and a couple other Greeks set up all the cushions—twenty-two people, two rows of eleven, five feet between the rows. Each cushion is only a few inches from the next one. There is a space to walk around the outside perimeter of the cushioons. Behind each cushion is a folded paper towel with a tea cup and a sutra book. We finish setting up; the sesshin is set to begin.

There aren’t assigned cushions per se although everyone seems to know where they belong. On the far side of the dojo, closest to the kamiza, sits Sensei, Jenny Sensei, and David followed by some Greeks. Across from Sensei sits Komyo (the Zen monk), Ashwini next to her, more Greeks.

I walk into the room feeling shy—no one has told me where to sit, but again, everyone just knows where they’re supposed to be. I ask Sofia permission to sit next to her, and she says of course, as if it were expected. I sit down. Both cushions are small: the zafu (the round one) and the zabuton (the flat, square one) barely contain my hulking knees and oversized feet, which seem all the more grotesque given that I had to borrow a gi last minute from Nikos One, and the gi is too small. I can’t get good leverage on the zafu and just know I’m screwed from the beginning. I want to get a second cushion but don’t want to come off as greedy or rude.

Komyo opens the sesshin with a brief blessing. She speaks of how unlikely it is that these twenty-two people have come from around the world to be here sharing this moment together. She talks about a ruptured political world and the damaged environment, and how we will sit to begin repairing it all. I think about all the fossil fuels burned by all the planes and cars it took to get us here. She says our zazen (meditation) practice teaches us to sit still and experience life. To endure life as it comes. That’s it. There is some chanting, Sensei rings a bell, and Ashwini and a Greek man appear at the other end of the dojo, opposite from the kamiza, each with a tea kettle in hand. Sensei rings the bell again, and they bow deeply and sprint across the mat between the two rows of cushions with the tea kettles high above their heads. I almost laugh; it’s insane. They go first to the altar and pour a cup of tea for the Buddha statue. Then they go down the line pouring tea for everyone. You hold your teacup in your left hand and with your right you signal that you’ve been poured enough by motioning your palm upward. In order to minimize the amount of times the tea pourer stops, you are served in pairs, so Sofia has her cup all the way to her left side and my cup is all the way right, touching hers. She raises her hand after her cup is a fourth of the way filled, so I do the same. We are told to begin drinking as soon as we have tea, but it’s scalding hot. Still, everyone is chugging their teas like it’s the end of world. You are not permitted to put your teacup down until the person to your right has put their cup down; the tea cups go down like dominoes. Sensei yells from his cushion, “HURRY UP!”

When everyone finishes, we put our empty teacups back behind us, and then Sensei rings the bell and claps the taku (two blocks of wood), and the first sit begins.

I think it goes well. I’m prepared for this; this I can do. I am concentrating on my breath. I am a swinging door. I am trying not to fart. After forty minutes, just when the aching sets in on my knees and my hips, Sensei rings the bell and claps the wood, and we all stand up, bow, and begin walking.

We walk in file along the perimeter of the cushions, our hands clasped tightly to our breastbones. It feels good walking, waking up our legs. Sensei picks up the pace, we are almost running, and then suddenly he slows down to a comical slow-motion pace, so that we are more miming than walking. He claps the taku again after ten minutes, and we return to our cushions. He rings the bell; we bow low and resume our sitting postures. I’m still ok with all this. We sit again, another forty minutes. I am caught up on not having enough cushion. I am suspicious of the Greek kid a few years younger than me across the aisle who is sitting full lotus and expressionless. My feet are sticking off the end of my cushion. I am salivating and swallowing a lot. I wonder how loud it sounds. Is it distracting everyone? It’s ok though, everything is still ok.

After that sit is over, and we walk around in a Zen congo line again, the bell rings, the taku clap, and then this time Sensei, followed by Jenny and David, come down the aisle to our side of the dojo and sit seiza in a line, one after the other. There’s a new bell sitting in front of Sensei. Without my noticing, Komyo had exited during the walk, and now I realize where she is because Sensei rings the new bell and from the other room you hear a little bell ring in response. Sensei stands up, bows deeply and goes to the other room. The other two slide forward, and the next person down the line joins behind. It is time for “interviews”.
When Sensei’s interview is over we hear a little bell from the other room, and Jenny responds by clanking the bell in front of her two times and then getting up and going to the other room as Sensei returns to his cushion. Then the next person in line goes to join the other two sitting seiza in front of the bell. I am starting to burn by the time it’s my time to enter the line, and I am so happy to be able to get up—even though I have to sit on my knees, its a much needed relief for my hips. Although to my dismay, as I move up in the line, Sensei rings the bell and tells everyone they are allowed to briefly stand and face the wall, but not those of us in the middle, we remain on our knees. This feels like a grave injustice. I am next in line, and I hear the little bell from the other room and respond with two rings of my own. I bow deeply, and I leave the big room and walk the hall to the other room. I enter the doorway and, as instructed, bow deeply, falling to my knees with my palms up, raising them both as if I’ve had enough tea. I then take one step to the side and do it again. One step forward and I bow a third time, this time with my palms down in front of my head, and I announce myself—I am Sam Geller. Sitting in front of me is Komyo. She looks to be in her late fifties, with short white hair, giant monk robes with hilariously big sleeves, and a funny, distant, little smile. For a second she seems like she wants to dispense with the formalities, but I can’t quite read her.

“Welcome Sam, what is your practice?”

“…I’m not sure how to answer that question…”

“What do you do when you are sitting?”

“I follow my breath”

“Good, very good. How do you follow your breath?”

“I picture a swinging door in the back of my throat that lets air pass inward and outward”.

“That’s ok.” She seems a little disappointed. I’m confused. I say something about Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. She says that’s not how we do it in our school. I’m lost.

“Try when you inhale to open yourself up to whatever it is you are experiencing in that moment, and then let it go as you exhale. Follow that exhale as it goes outward.”

I think of the airplane, and how we descended in Turkey, crashing down through a bed of clouds and then out over the Mediterranean.

“Oh! That’s kind of like what I do sometimes. I think about water—an inhale is like the tide coming in and an exhale the tide going out. Sometimes I even think about water seeping into the room as I inhale and then going out as I exhale.”

She seems excited for a second and smiles.

“Yes, and there’s that brief moment where you pause before you exhale!” She searches my face for recognition. I stare blankly back.

“So, next time we talk with each other, tell me that your practice is ‘breath following.’”

“Ok, thank you.”

She rings her little bell; our interview is over. I stand up, take one step to my right, bow deeply, and head back out of the room. I return to my cushion, feeling like I got the short end of the stick. It’s agonizing waiting for everyone to complete their interviews. Some interviews last for ten to twelve minutes, and you can hear laughter in the other room, others like mine are over in a minute. It seems unfair to me. The pain is becoming really bad. I inhale, taking in the experience of the moment, which is mostly just pain but also a little bitterness. What the hell am I doing? Why am I here? This is not for me. I exhale and follow the breath outward as if I’m a plane flying over the sea. The pain is constant. Was I supposed to let go of the pain on the exhale? It’s not working. I grit my teeth and keep going. Once all the interviews are over, the bell is rung again, the taku clapped, and we stand and walk in a circle for ten minutes. As I pass by the little statue of the Buddha sitting peacefully in full lotus, it feels like he’s mocking me. We do two more sits, and then the first night is over. It’s ten p.m. I made it, just barely, but I know I don’t stand a chance of making it through the twelve hours the next day.

We are told that we begin at 8 a.m, but that we are expected to be sitting on our cushions at 7:45 sharp. I’m starving, so Patrick, David, and I walk to the apartment we are staying in ten minutes away and stop to eat at a bistro around the corner. I have a glass of wine (good for circulation) and a cigarette (bad for circulation) and a weird burger patty with mayonnaise and some grilled veggies (I had asked the waitress what her favorite main course was; she had said something about beef).
It’s 7:30 a.m. We arrive at the dojo in fine spirits. It is my third day in a row in the same pair of underwear. I get a second cushion and stack it on top of my other one. Sofia asks me if I have a hakama (traditional Japanese “trousers”). I say yes but that my suitcase is still in Istanbul. She asks me if I want to borrow one; there’s an extra. Yes, please. It’s like a child’s hakama though, and it barely reaches me knees. I feel like an oversized baby.

It’s 8:00, and I’ve been sitting for fifteen minutes already, feeling good because I grabbed a second cushion—I got this—but also I’m already experiencing pain in my knees and hips. We chant different sutras for twenty minutes, the bell rings, and the taku claps. I’m worried because we’ve already been sitting for thirty five minutes—are we about to sit for another forty minutes? I’ll die. But Sensei is kind, and the first sit is short, and then we are walking in circles again. Then sitting for forty minutes. Then walking in circles for ten. This goes on for about three hours. I can’t fucking believe it’s only been three hours, and there are still nine more to go. It’s time for an interview. I enter the room, do all the bows, and announce myself.

“I am Sam Geller. My practice is breath following.”

“Good, Sam. well done. How is it going for you?”

“Well, I’m trying, but it’s hard to concentrate. I’m in a tremendous amount of pain.”

She nods in agreement.

“We tend to think about pain as a physical, solid thing, but really it’s just a collection of energy moving throughout our body. I ask you to think about, Where does the pain come from? What happened to the pain you felt before? Where did it go? That’s like a little koan.”

I’m confused but don’t want her to feel discouraged, so I nod and try to put on a look of someone who has been given a great piece of wisdom. She rings the bell, and I return to the cushion. But what the hell? Pain isn’t a collection of energy. Isn’t it like synapses in my body sending a warning to my brain that what’s happening is dangerous? Or that something is wrong. Where does the pain come from? I answer the question in my head: It comes from sitting in this awkward posture because I’m not very flexible, especially in my hips. Where did the old pain go? It stopped once I stood up from the painful posture. Did she say that was a koan? What the fuck am I doing? I try to zone out a little and distract myself. I close my eyes and in my head sing some new songs I’m working on, turning over lyrics. I’m dying though. I can’t do anything to mute the pain. Sensei had told us at one point that if we feel overcome with joy in the interviews not to hug Komyo, and I’m wondering what the hell is going on in the other interviews that someone might feel overcome with joy. The only way I would feel joy is if she told me that I was already enlightened and that I didn’t have to return to my cushion to keep sitting. But here I am still sitting. I glance up at the clock and then scold myself for doing so. It’s only 11:45. It’s unbearable. We are walking in a circle, my only brief moment of respite. Komyo had said something about how when we are walking our ki is connected in a chain and our bodies are like little pearls on a necklace. I feel myself attached to Sofia in front of me, following her as she marches with grace and self assuredness. The walking portion is the only time we are allowed to use the bathroom, you simply bow out at some point and go, but Sofia never goes, so I don’t either. We are back sitting.
Now Sensei is for some reason stalking the line like a jaguar, stepping slowly and deliberately, carrying a large flat bamboo rod. I am watching him out of the corner of my eye, thinking No fucking way, he is walking right for me, but before he gets to me some Greek bows, and he stops and turns to them as they lean far forward on their cushion, holding their elbows, and he delivers two thunderous strikes to each shoulder. Then they both bow deeply to each other, and Sensei continues on. He gets to Sofia, and she bows, and the crack of the bamboo on her shoulder is so loud and jolting that my ears start ringing. They bow to each other, and he keeps walking. I wait until he has almost passed me, but then I bow at the last second and lean forward. I can’t really lean that far forward from sitting posture, I simply lack the flexibility, so he grabs my shoulders and pulls me forward more and delivers four earth-shattering blows that for an instant take all the pain away form my knees and my hips and I bow and he fixes my posture for me and continues on. When I say an instant, I mean literally an instant, and now I’m back writhing internally from sore hips and knees. I would need him to strike me constantly to make the pain go away. I think about all the things I’d rather do then continue sitting. I’d rather jump into the Mediterranean naked on this brick-cold day. I’d scale barbed wire on the military building we passed on our way to the dojo. I’d go out and pick a fight and lose on purpose. I’d do anything. I can’t keep sitting though. It’s destroying me. But it’s lunchtime now. Oh thank God.
Except lunch is crazy. They bring out three tables put together, and we sit in our same order on our knees. We are each given three bowls that we are told to keep in a perfectly straight line the entire time. Rice on the left, miso soup in the middle, salad on the right. We are joylessly wolfing down the food at a pace uncomfortable even for me who is a very fast eater. Still, Sensei barks, “EAT FASTER!” No one looks at each other, no one says a word, or so much as smiles. I am livid. Why are eating like this? Why isn’t anyone talking or smiling? Why is Zen so giddy to remind us of the pain that exists in life but so unwilling to acknowledge the jokes that exist alongside. This is fucking crazy, and I’m really upset. After lunch, I am dejected.

We are each assigned different cleaning tasks. I am assigned to wash the windows. Here everything turns. I spend the next hour in pure bliss, standing on my feet outside with the sun shining on me as I squeegee the water down the glass in orderly fashion. Patrick trims the hedges, Nikos Two sweeps up, and Nikos Three gets out some tools and sands down some wood. Nikos Two sneaks a quick cigarette, and Nikos Three calls out to him, and he runs over and holds it for him as pulls off it. I am truly happy. I joke to Patrick that all we need is a couple of beers, and it would almost be like we’re free men. I don’t think he gets it. If only I could communicate with the Nikoses; they look like they have some jokes. There is no pain, only smudges on a window, and I know just what to do about it. The sun and breeze feel great. I wish this moment would never end. But now it’s over. We’re back sitting on our cushions. The pain is back, and so is the bitterness. And now Komyo is sitting at the other end of the dojo, facing everyone with a little table in front of her and a glass of water. It is time for her Dharma talk.
She reads a thousand year old koan about a monk or something and gives a little history lesson about this school of Zen, and she interprets the koan and waxes philosophical about Zen, enduring life’s pain, becoming one with Buddha nature—whatever. It’s fine, but it goes on for over an hour, and it’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. My hips are exploding. I close my eyes and everything is red. I open them and it’s grayish blue. The pain in my body is white. It’s debilitating. I am in anguish. Her talk ends with her saying something along the lines of how our lives are just stories that we construct to conceal true reality. I am screaming inside my head. How can she talk shit about how life is story telling and how it’s false as she sits here for seventy five minutes telling and interpreting stories of her own? Oh, so my life is a lie that I’m telling myself but your fucking Zen bullshit is somehow True? Zen is a story too. How dare you. What’s so bad about stories anyway? That’s who we are. Also, I’m good with my ego, that’s a part of who I am. It’s not so bad—me and my ego will be just fine as long as I can move around and not sit here in excruciating pain and death. Seriously, this is bullshit. The only reason I haven’t gotten up and walked out already is my ego, so what the fuck. I’m not here because I want to be here, and this whole thing is dumb as hell. And fuck this Greek kid sitting expressionless across from me in full lotus, he sits there like a stone while I am on fire.

When Komyo’s talk ends, I can’t even stand up, but I somehow manage to stagger upwards and walk around in a circle cursing the whole thing. This stupid fucking thing. It occurs to me that the pain has turned into a furious anger, and it has consumed me. This awareness does nothing to ease the pain or the anger. And just in time, it’s dinner. Same thing as lunch. Three bowls in a line—rice, soup, salad—and we eat as fast as we can and no one smiles. I look at an older Greek lady pleadingly, and she makes eye contact, and for a second I think she understand but she quickly looks down at her food as Sensei shouts, “HURRY UP!” After dinner, there are twenty minutes of cleaning, and then we go back to sitting. More bamboo stick beating, and I want it not to ease the pain but to fuel the anger and bitterness. It’s somehow past 8:00, but we are still sitting. I’m freaking out. I’m shifting around in my seat, which doesn’t help at all, and I feel bad that I’m probably distracting everyone. But I’m in a rage. I haven’t felt like this in a long, long time, maybe never. This isn’t who I am. I’m no saint, but I’m generally happy and am not used to sitting in sustained anger like this. I’m ready to blow my top. And now it’s somehow time for another interview. I can’t believe this. Weren’t were supposed to be done by eight? Now its 8:30, and twenty two people are going to have an interview. Sensei goes first, and his lasts like fifteen minutes. I’m furious. I’m getting ready for my interview. I’m planning out what I’m going to say to her. I am going to make her account for this nonsense. I’m calling bullshit on her war against stories. Bullshit the fucking joyless meals. Bullshit on her Where-does-pain-come-from koan. The whole thing. I’m going to give her a piece of my mind, and it’s going to be insane because I am a raving lunatic ready to burst out. I am aware how irrational it is for me to be so angry at her—she is small and almost elderly and has such a gentle souI. But still, my anger coalesces around her. I enter the room and bow and I’m shaking vigorously in pain and anguish.

“How’s it going?”

I’m ready to tell her. I’m going to tell everything. I begin.

“It’s going really, really bad. I’m in so much pain. I can’t fight it. I can’t do anything.” That’s all I can muster. My eyes are welling up.

“When you try to fight the pain, you give it more energy.”

And that’s it. I break down. I start weeping. Tears pouring down my cheeks. I can’t talk. I somehow manage to say, “Anger has filled my body. I’m so upset.”

“You can’t let anger take you over. You have to gently hold your pain and then release it.”

And I’m just crying and shaking my head. Somehow I squeeze out a few more words.

“I can’t. It’s bullshit. I’m overcome with bitterness.”

She seems shook. I’m crying still.

“What do you want out of your practice?”

I can’t believe her. I can’t answer her. I’m crying too much.

“I… I can’t… I can’t answer that right now. I can’t talk to you.”

Now she seems as distraught as me. She’s desperate.

“What are we going to do? What are you going to do for the rest of the night? How will you carry on?”

“Just… just ring the bell.”

“I won’t ring the bell yet. We need to address this. How are you going to get through the rest of the night?”

“Please, I’m begging you, just ring the bell.” I’m sobbing.

“Ok, ok, I’ll ring the bell, but promise me something first. Promise me you’ll be gentle. Promise me right now you’ll be gentle with yourself. Please try to be gentle—gentle with your anger, gentle with your pain—promise me.”

“Ok.”

“Promise me.”

“Ok.”

I’m crying. Is she crying too? It’s so surreal. I can’t even tell what’s going on.

She rings the bell. I’m a fucking wreck. I can’t go back on the mat like this. But we’ve also been told we are not allowed to use the bathroom or anything after our interview. We must come immediately back to the cushions. Still, I wash my face, blow my nose, try to compose myself. I stretch out my knees. But then I quickly return. Even still, I have returned right after the person who interviewed after me, which creates a confusion about how the two of us are supposed to get back to our cushions, in what order. Or at least she’s confused. I don’t care about anything. But I’m back on my cushion. I have to use both hands to move my feet into position because my legs simply won’t work on their own. I sit down. I’m not crying any more, but my nose is stuffed, and my face is red. I’m breathing loudly through my mouth. Gentle, gentle, I repeat to myself. Gentle with my pain. Gentle with my anger. Just try to be gentle. I look up, and Sensei is standing above me like a jaguar, and his bamboo stick is poised. Fuck it, fuck her, fuck gentle. I bow to receive the blows. He hits me so hard I can’t think or feel anything. On the last blow, he misses a little and clips me right on my spine. We bow to each other, and tears start streaming down my face again. Now I am sitting in a room on a cushion in a foreign land full of strange Greek people who I haven’t even met yet, and I can’t stop crying. I’m not even trying to stop because I can’t. My body is on fire. I’m breathing through my mouth trying not to shake too much, but I’m convulsing. The interviews are over and the bell rings, the taku clap, and we are walking in a circle. I am still crying, my head is down. Sensei yells, “EVERYONE KEEP YOUR POSTURE! KEEP YOUR HEAD UP! STAND PROUDLY! AND KEEP WALKING!” It seems to me that I’m the only one who has fallen apart. I am destroyed. It’s 9:30 at night, and we are for some reason returning to our cushions to sit again. Sensei yells, “FINISH STRONGLY! THERE’S ONLY SO MUCH TIME LEFT! THIS IS THE MOMENT TO EXPERIENCE HERE AND NOW! DO NOT WASTE IT!” I don’t even know.

It’s over at 10:10 p.m. Everyone is getting ready to leave. Sofia looks at me and touches my shoulder. I look down. Sensei comes up to me and asks me if I’m ok. I’m not, I tell him. The pain is unendurable. Either I have a lower threshold for pain than everyone else, or I am simply not flexible enough to be doing this, and it’s destroying me. He tells me about how many times he’s been destroyed, how he had to sit for ten years before the pain went away. All the agony he’s experienced. But look, life is going to get painful at some point. People are going to get sick or die, someone might abandon you, and in those moments of extreme pain and anguish your Zen training will help you, if you keep practicing. While you will still feel pain, you will not be drowning in it. Otherwise you’re just a dog caught in a trap, howling out. You can train yourself to be in the pain, but also above it as well. He says I’m actually doing really good. In my head I swear I will never do zazen again, except for tomorrow. Fuck. I limp home, the pain hasn’t gone away. We stop for a glass of wine at the bistro, and I drink it silently. I go to sleep wondering if the pain will be gone by the morning.
I wake up. There is no pain. We have breakfast and we are sitting on our cushions at 7:45 again. Day three of sesshin, day four in this pair of underwear. This time I have three circular cushions. I’m not even sure how I’m going to use the third, but I’m just desperate for something to make it a little better. I fold it under my right knee. And we sit. Then we walk in circles. Then we sit again and walk in circles. Then it’s time for our last interview.

When I go in, she looks at me and says there’s something she wants to say to me.

“Thank you so much for being here. For coming back. You are an inspiration to me, truly, and to everyone else out there. Thank you. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.” And she bows to me. I can’t believe it. I bow back.

“How are you feeling today?”

“A little better I guess. It’s still early though. The pain is bearable for now, but I’m afraid of what will happen when it worsens soon.”

“You can’t do anything about pain. Pain is going to come, and it will pass also. Suffering is a state of mind that you can do something about. You can let go of suffering, even though you can’t stop the pain.”

As the day progresses, the pain builds up slowly. There is less rage, though there is some anger. Still the pain is unendurable, and then we are walking, pearls on a necklace. I am flipping off the Buddha statue as I pass by. Fuck me? No, fuck you! says the Buddah. Yeah fuck you, and fuck me too.

It’s time for another Dharma talk. It’s the same thing. She’s such a good speaker, very insightful, but it’s simply too much. It’s too long to sit. In general, I can endure the first twenty to twenty-five minutes, and then the last ten to twenty-five are excruciating. No sit lasts more than fifty minutes, but the Dharma talks last between sixty and seventy five. But to make it worse, the pain has a cumulative effect, so by day three I’m suffering at eight minutes in. So this Dharma talk is just too much. I look at her while she’s talking. She looks right back at me, and I’m crying again out of pure pain, tears falling, and she nods. She is saying, “You don’t breathe. Life breathes you. You don’t live. Life lives you.” It’s moving, but the thought occurs to me that I’m sitting in a room full of people also sitting in a room, and from a bird’s eye view everyone seems calm and perfectly still except I am a dragon, I am completely on fire. The image makes me smile but the pain is so great that it quickly returns to a grimace. Komyo says you can’t force a separation of your heart/mind and your body. It just has to happen. To prove the point, she says, “Try in this moment to separate yourself from this life. Try to bring yourself away from your cushion, from your mind. Try to separate yourself from your pain.” I’m crying I’m so upset again and looking at her, I feel betrayed. She looks right back at me again; she sees it all; she continues on.

I identify the pain in my hips and my knees, and then separately I identify the suffering in my mind and my soul. I see that they aren’t the same. I imagine how it would feel to only have the pain without the suffering. I understand how that would be bearable. But I cannot turn the suffering off, and therefore I can’t endure. It’s too much. I break down. And then her talk is over. We are walking in circles. I stop crying.

We sit again. I am just a howling dog caught in a trap, but I try to be gentle about it. Some more tea. And then its over by 3:00 p.m. Komyo is saying the last words, Jenny Sensei is thanking her and everyone else, and Sensei is saying how the training must continue but that for now, it’s over. Sofia tells me it was nice sitting next to me. I mean, she’s either being polite or, or I don’t know. There is no way in my mind it could have been nice sitting next to me. But that’s the thing. You are the center of your experience and may wrongly assume everyone knows what it was like for you, but everyone else is just thinking about how they were falling asleep or twitching or something.

Nikos One, who had picked me up from the airport and had spoken to the lost baggage people on the phone for me in Greek, tells me that they finally contacted him and that my bag will be delivered tonight. Sensei hugs me and tells me he’s proud of me, and that I did a good job. We have a nice lunch with delicious cheese and pastries and couscous and people talk and even make jokes and smile. We get a little rest, and the Americans and Jenny and Komyo all go out to Sensei’s favorite Greek restaurant, and we drink wine and eat amazing food, and Komyo wants to talk politics, and we laugh about some funny moments during the sesshin.

After dinner, we bowed goodbye. Komyo was leaving the next morning. She thanked me again. I thanked her. She said she hoped our paths would cross again, perhaps in Brooklyn next fall, and for some crazy fucking reason that I can’t account for, I looked her in the eye and said I’m sure that they will.