The Poetry and Prose of Barbara Huntington

Tassajara Poi

By Barbara Huntington

With no carefully constructed plastic partitioned plate and having been suckered in by Bunkai’s humor and philosophy in Sack Lunch 101 (I usually avoid buffets), I find myself with a purloined large yogurt container, small white bags, and the traditional brown one, loitering in the sack lunch area after breakfast.

The tables are piled high with humus and baba ganoush, and tapenade—tempting tapenade!  After examining my yogurt container for possible hidden compartments, I decide on the layered approach: humus in one quadrant, baba ganoush, tapenade, some sort orangish dip, and…oh glory, guacamole! Oh no! More items than quadrants.   Oh well.  I pile on gherkins and a large dill pickle, kalamata olives, slices of avocado, tiny tomatoes…

Another table calls and I fill small bags with corn chips for dipping, a small slice of Tassajara bread (reverent pause), hunks of cheese, dried fruit, more and more and—ta dah! A chocolate chip cookie.  As I look in horror at the bulging brown bag, I remember my classmate’s question during our interview of the sack lunch guru.

“Bunkai, how do you feel about people who take more than they can eat?”

“I never judge how much someone can eat.”

But, just in case, I try to make my bulging bag look smaller by holding it under my arm and making a quick dash for the door as some other yummy item is brought out and attention momentarily averted.  I stash the bag in my backpack, checking over my shoulder for blue jays and squirrels and head for poetry class.

After our  last session of class, and tearful goodbyes with my compatriots who are leaving on the early stage, I don my jeans, hiking boots, and backpack, grab the camera, forget my walking stick and head for the narrows.  But my hikes are more apt to become meanders and soon I am alternately running and crouching in the garden, trying to digitally detain a swallowtail butterfly who weaves and dives among the alstroemeria and knows exactly when my camera is almost in focus, assuring that all my shots are of slightly blurry flowers, with a possible butterfly wing tip (or maybe that is a spot on the lens).

Departing the garden, I contemplate the word “meander.”  Isn’t that what Pooh did?  (Great flash of insight!)  From there I remember that when my sweet demented mom could not conjure up an answer to a question she always said, “Oh Pooh!”  This leads to trying to remember if I every did read the Tao of Pooh,  (and if it really matters), relegating my recent great flash of insight to the category of , “That’s kind of interesting.”

In this mindful state, I approach the ford.  After drenching my socks and hiking boots in a great show of “going beyond the need to balance on the rocks of the ford,” I see a sign! (this one is wood with three arrows.)  OVERLOOK—NARROWS—TEA.

Well, tea sounds pretty good, but it’s the way I have just come and my boots are still squishing so I head up the hill to OVERLOOK.   Ah Hah!  Another GREAT FLASH OF INSIGHT!  To “overlook” one must go up, and the path does just that in the hot sun.  With only three retraceable steps downhill, I opt for the NARROWS, once again impervious to the temptation to flaunt my ability to balance on slippery rocks, literally going with the flow, holding my lunch and camera over my head as I descend gracefully into the creek.

A deep, flat, Eeyore voice booms out, “Can I help you?”  as a red-haired resident passes deftly, without a walking stick, over the slippery rocks beside me.

I demure, asserting that it is “part of my practice.” Is that a grin replacing his doleful expression as he goes into a coughing fit and heads out toward the narrows?  Sighhhhh….

Then I see it.  A beach!  (No, not a beech.)  With sand! And a rock for sitting! And, through miraculous coincidence, my watch says one o’clock!  I have managed to memorize a few of the items on the center schedule and since one o’clock, LUNCHTIME, is one of them and I happen to have a lunch…

Pulling out my layered yogurt container, I quickly dip in my chips and scoop out indescribable mystery bites. Humus, baba ganoush, tapenade (with a touch of sweetness), a crunchy big dill, and Oh Glory! The Guacamole!  With kalamata olives and little sweet gherkins. In my own oryoki method I dip, close cap of container to minimize insect protein contamination, dip, close container…Wait!  That last bulge in the chip bag isn’t chips but two crackers with a cashew cheese roll inside…yummmmmm.  Oops, no more chips!

It is then I discover the joy of Tassajara poi.  1-finger, two fingers, three fingers, empty?????  I locate the Tassajara bread (reverent pause) and wipe that sucker clean.

Cheese, oh cheese, in a little white bag.  Cheddar, tangy cheddar, and… something white.  Only one bag left.  Dried fruit! Figs!  Oh, I give a fig!  I do!  I do!  And dried plums! (Who would dare to invoke the horror of calling them prunes?)

And….

A chocolate chip cookie.

ALL GONE!

Words drift into my brain.  “I never judge how much someone can eat…”

The blue jay, who has been gradually hopping closer and closer, looks at me in disgust and takes flight.

A group of hikers greet me as they start out on their hike to the narrows. Nature calls, but with poison oak off the path and hikers on it, I decide not to pick up the phone.  Since I am out of provisions, I decide to return to base camp rather than to forge ahead and face possible starvation. Besides, a meander back to the courtyard for a little nap sounds good right now and if someone asks why I didn’t get all the way to the narrows, I think I will just answer, “Oh, Pooh!”

The Eye of My Storm

“Take a deep breath”—the answer to angst from moms to gurus.

“But that’s easy for you to say, you are so calm and together.”

We were sitting in my office and the young premedical student in front of me was reaching for another tissue, shoulders heaving. I was comforting her, but my mind caught on her comment. Me? Calm? Sure I saw it as 99% veneer, but somehow there was an eye to my storm and for a second her comment caused me to see it.

There have been a few of those moments in my life—so fleeting I doubt their existence a few minutes later, but I long to hold on to them and so they go.

A few years ago, a Zen teacher referred to me as a spiritual tourist.  Because it hurt, because it clung, I knew there was truth in it. I seethed and festered around it then, but have embraced it and have come to regard myself as a spiritual Pop-Eye—“I yam what I yam.”

But what has this to do with Lama Surya and the Joshua Tree retreat?

I must go back further.  My background is in good, solid, prove-or-disprove-the hypothesis science, but there has always been a longing for spirituality.  As a young women I equated that with religion and to test its validity on its own grounds, I spent my senior year in high school studying Catholicism.  The next two years were Judaism, Hillel, kosher, –until I was served a big piece of ham (shudder) by my future father in law and religion went on the backburner.

Life: Divorce, my first husband’s death in a speedboat race, second marriage, children, the Bahai Faith for almost 30 years, my husband’s Parkinson’s, empty nest, grandchildren.  Becoming older, death of a young nephew and his bride in a head-on collision, of my father to pancreatic cancer, of my stepfather in 20 days from H1N1, and now I face my 90 year old mother’s Alzheimer’s.  Our tragedies come to each of us, life and age bring them, and they are only slightly different flavors.

Still we yearn.  After my husband’s diagnosis, I began going to Zen Centers and meditating.  It was good.  That initial sort of awakening hooks you in.  I began to read Buddhist books and found one by Lama Surya at a new age shop in Encinitas.  Then I learned he was coming to a signing and I showed up.  I gave my email to someone and when I learned folks were meeting in Vista, I took a chance and showed up.  The people were beautiful, we sat on a lovely outdoor veranda overlooking a garden, and chanted. When I learned the Joshua Tree retreat would occur during my spring break, I accepted serendipity and drove through the hills and windy passes full of turbines, past a snow covered mountain and into a silent world of desert beauty, early morning chanting, communing with a jay at breakfast while she ate almonds out of my hand, luxuriating in real vegetarian food.  One morning, after chanting and a talk by Lama Surya, I walked out to observe a circle around the sun. Others seemed to take no notice; I took pictures and felt honored.  Another time in a guided meditation, my mind slipped off the edge.  Later, perhaps nanoseconds, perhaps because my mind needed to make sense of what can’t be described, I envisioned myself a giant Buddha statue, crumbling as I bent over me as I meditated below.

Afternoon walks in the desert brought different sensations as I found a desert baked Gila Monster, cruelly riddled with bullets—strange rocks, birds, Joshua trees in full bloom, washes with the detritus of car seats and cook pots. Climbs in futile search for an elusive vortex led to vigorous walks to get back for afternoon sitting.

The next year I took off a week when it didn’t jibe with vacation.

There is always change. As care-giving responsibilities increase, the economy suffers, the need to make plans or find funds may keep me away.  I don’t know, yet.

I take a deep breath.  Spiritual tourist, spiritual Pop-Eye, truth or self-illusion– I don’t know.  There are places that are special.  Joshua Tree is one of them. Perhaps it is also in the eye of my storm.