Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart_ A Novel - Alice Walker [70]
Sure, said Kate. And your mother too, if you want.
Nah, said Missy. We’re not talking to each other. Maybe some other time.
I’m still sick, said Hugh, and I don’t weigh much more than a straw. But I’m on these new drugs and I’ve come out to my family. I’ve even got a beau. Can I bring him?
Of course, said Kate.
Lalika asked if she could bring “someone.” Kate said “someone” is just the person I want to see!
She and Yolo drove up and down the state looking for the right place.
Have you called all your people? asked Kate.
He had.
Alma said she could come, along with her namesake! Yolo could hardly imagine seeing them together. And hearing the story of how that had happened.
Aunty Pearlua said she’d come, if she could bring the two brothers from Australia, who, she said, were studying with her.
Hula? Yolo wondered.
Jerry was coming, and Marshall’s brother Poi.
And at last, after searching many days, Yolo and Kate found the perfect place, the perfect river. They found a campground north of where they lived, not far away at all, with small bungalows and an indoor cooking and eating area. In case of rain. There was a large firepit, circled by springy grass that would be great for sleeping and storytelling around the fire at night. And most marvelous of all, there was, visible from every place on the land, the most amazing, pure, deep, languidly flowing river. Its water so clear they could stand on the rocks above and watch rust-red salmon glide by. It was paradise.
You don’t understand about Buddha, said Grandmother. He would not mock those who take up arms against their own enslavement. Sometimes there is no way, except through violence, to freedom. Living in violence is not the best use of life, however. And he was interested in teaching that. How precious it is to have a human life to live! How sad to waste it in something so grim and blurry. A thought can be like a gun; it can slay the enemy. Music can be like a sword; it can pierce the heart of the enemy. Dance can kill. What needs killing is not the person; what needs killing is his or her idea that torturing another person will create happiness. When Buddha sat under the bodhi tree, he was sitting under Me. He was sitting under Me, she repeated, as tree. And he was sitting on Me as grass.
When you drink yagé, you complain about how bad it tastes. It tastes bad because you have killed it in order to have it. This is not necessary. For the Buddha, it was not necessary. Sitting under Me and on Me, he received the medicina. He did not have to groan and shudder and screw up his face, Grandmother said with a rustling laugh, before drinking something made of my dismembered body, and boiled over a slow fire. This is possible, receiving the medicina this way, if you open your heart.
That is why people take the time to learn how to do that; open the heart. That is why they go on retreat. That is why they learn to meditate. The very poor, as you have noticed, rarely have this option. The moment they try to open their hearts, after slaving all week for someone who drains them of hope, the powers that be rush to implant a religion, generally foreign to their natures, into them. That is why I am happy to offer my dead body for them to eat or drink, and why my material essence, though not living, remains pure and good for them to use. That is also why my ceremonies take place in the jungle, far from so-called civilization, whose primary intent is to rid the world of the Wild. Which is another word for Me.
What are you writing? Yolo asked in the middle of the night. Actually it was close to dawn. Kate glanced at the little serpent clock at the side of her bed and noticed it was almost five o’clock. The serpent was an anaconda that carried the world, with the face of a clock, on its back. She’d spotted it among a collection of curiosidads in a gift shop at the airport, after leaving the Amazon.
Did I wake you? she said. They did not always sleep together. Yolo had his own room, sometimes