In the Way

Find me in the Way, oh just find me in the Way.

In every fleeting moment on every obscure day. 

Keep me at Your rugged cross, firm throughout the fray. 

Bind me there, hold me close, and then let come what may.

It began with a cup of tea. Which is at once the most ridiculous way to begin anything and the same way I start nearly every morning. The steam rising from the cup made my nose run even harder and faster than it had been all night. I drained the cup, wiped my nose, went to class.

Class ended with an earthquake drill. Planned down to the minute complete with a two step process of at the first sound of trouble get under the desks at the second sound run outside. Trouble being the music department beating the mess out of some tin drums in the square near our building. I walked lazily through the chaos back to the apartment.

Tea began with two cups and a student ever bursting at the seams to speak and yet somehow unable to say all he wants. He handed me an eleven page essay on his experiences practice teaching. He beamed. What all I want to say is you can find in this one teacher. I flipped through the pages covered with hand writing.

Tea was put on hold when the beggar children crossed the busy street to the tea house where we sat. Like familiar guests they squeezed onto the bench, put their ripped plastic bags down, and made a show of everything that was in their pockets: a stick of gum, a coin, a broken USB, the days treasures. One girl, with pain in her black eyes, reached her hand up to display a palm that was sliced open and oozing with puss and blood. She picked up a wrong bottle. We took her to the kitchen to wash out the wound.

Dumpling making at the nunnery teahouse began with a quick rinse of my hands in warm water poured by my nun friend. She took off her apron and sleeve guards and I put them on. Back in the corner, a dim grimy hole barely large enough for the three of us, we rolled out the flour, stuffed them, pinched them shut, stacked them in rows in the steamer, chatted, drank tea, amused customers, until the meat and all of my language ability ran out. 

Visiting ended with a kilo of sunflower seeds in hand and a quick hug good-bye to my dear sweet nun friend who never fails to share her life, her work, her language, her apron, her friends, all her things with me. Humbled already I trudged back down the street.

The evening was punctuated by a text message: You are my teacher. If you are ill, we won't have your class. Classmates like to listen to your class. From a shy, bumbling student in a rowdy, obnoxious class at a moment when I least expected it, having not told them that I was sick, nor made any mention of canceling class... nor ever dreamed that any of them cared one way or the other. Confusion born of a show of love so closely resembling a command to get healthy.

It ended with a cup of tea, mint something warm, before an already dozy girl drifted off to sleep. Dreams of a Way where the lame can leap, the crippled are healed, the rough places made smooth, the earth doesn't quake and noses don't run, beggars are cared for, students are encouraged, nuns are acknowledged, messages are received, and endless cups of tea are drunk...

Find me in the Way, oh just find me in the Way.

In every fleeting moment on every obscure day. 

Keep me at Your rugged cross, firm throughout the fray. 

Bind me there, hold me close, and then let come what may.

spin me round

"Excuse me bola, is this the path we should take?"

The two chummy grandfathers decked out in their finest merit making gear implored us to wait for a minute in the late afternoon sun while they used a nearby public restroom.

"We will walk the path together," they said.

My friend shrugged. We waited. To the amusement of the two public restroom janitors lounging in bright orange coveralls on small stools nearby.

A courageous crinkled leaf let go of the nearly bare branch and spun in a loop to the ground. The whole city spins clockwise.

We met our new found friends exactly halfway around the city on one of the best marked and most frequented circles, the Lingkor. The whole place is circles though, just rings upon rings intersecting with rings. The whole mentality of these people is circles too, endless loops upon loops though which they cycle but rarely understand. So became obvious as the grandfathers took it upon themselves to explain the rotten tons of prayer flags littering the mountain, the gaudily peeling painted buddhas all over the rocks, the garbage and graffiti everywhere, the rows of nearly dissolved paper cups of water. That is, if the word explain can be used to describe the what was quite like the effect of a handful stones thrown into a still pond. Circles.

As we wound our way to the top of a small mountain and around the city in a loop that resembled something much more like a strand of yarn tossed to the floor than a ring, my mind too began to spin...

Lazy thoughts looped around as the record of this past week rolled through: 

A friend here today and gone tomorrow with only a missing day as proof that she had been and was indeed gone again. 

A joyful reunion at a bus stop I almost never stop at with a friend who I could have sworn I might never see again. 

Classrooms where my students were teachers and their students were studying the letter 'p' in a wild reminder of the true meaning of back to basics. 

A house full of meat dumplings and mountain climbing trophies and a room full of idols watching to make sure the stacks of noodles dried properly. 

A walk down an alley only to have the disquieting experience of introducing my blind friend to a deaf girl I happened to recognize. 

Endless bags in tidy rows filled with all manner of dried what in another universe might be considered cheese. 

A kilo of fresh yak butter given by a generous student to a slightly horrified teacher then given to an excited monk and a teacher turned relieved. 

Text messages coming at haphazard moments declaring love from Sisters who can honestly share it. 

A tea with a student during which the afternoon sun was just a bit too comfortable and sleep treacherously close.

A monk who's really just a silly boy yelling my name across the busy street then playing a frightening version of human frogger just to get across and shake my hand. 

Local friends homesick in Beijing begging to send me something from the city.

An honest conversation about hard questions and elusive answers with a Brother who's favorite parable features a shepherd just crazy, or just devoted, enough to leave ninety-nine sheep in search of only one. 

Lessons... and teas... and noodles...

Another week, round and round.

"You will sleep so good tonight," my friend said as we downed the last dribbles of sweet milk tea and got up from the well placed tea house to finish our circle, by now sans grandfathers, around the city.

We parted at the intersection where I flagged down the first bus I saw and realized immediately that I was perhaps the last person that they could phsically stuff on... only to be astounded when about a dozen people got on after me. Leaned over a grubby yellow seat and a woman with a man sized bag in her lap my face rested on the cool window and I steadied myself against the erratic shudderings of the bus and was warmed by the people pressed next to me.

When the bus looped near my school I squeezed burst from the dingy exhausted doors and gasped for breath that wasn't being recycled immediately by others next to me.

Circles, rings, loops, coils, wheels spinning round and round and round. Dizzy.

I stood on the dusty darkening street as the remarkably crowded bus sputtered away and acknowledged that, though I can make no sense of the whirlpools of motion and thought that erode and define this city and people, they exist, and I too am caught in their inertia.

Nevermind... to move linearly in this place would be nothing short of fatal, anyway.

So here we go, round again...

Tune in.

Sometimes I don't want to hear anything. I want to hear nothing at all, not one sound, save for the voice of my Father. 

The air was crisp, the sun warm, the fallen leaves yellow when I stuffed my ipod headphones further into my ear and turned up a song of praise just loud enough to make everything I saw walking down the street appear as if it were in a music video... on purpose.

I needed an escape.  The noise of this world was a snare to me.

There went a bus I didn't even hear. Some people squabling in Chinese I also couldn't hear. Sellers hawking their wares, bicycles clanging, students giggling, billard balls clacking, cows lowing, leaves crunching, noodles being slurped... and I... couldn't hear any of it. To my delight.

Sometimes even your ears are weary.

So when I crossed the street and began my walk of escape down a baren dirt road next to the ditch near our school I wished with all my might I had taken a different turn. Because even though I could only see it, couldn't hear it, I did hear it... somewhere deep down the sound rustled the tatters of my ragged soul. It was one of the tiny beggar children I have come to befriend, standing in the ditch, clothes torn and sodden, shoes off, and face bathed in tears, wailing.

I took out my headphones. And the torrential rush of life flooded my ears and nearly made my eyes water. I had wanted to block it all out.

When she saw me turn, cross the ditch, and come pick her up out of the lethargically moving water, she stopped crying. Her brother and even younger sister stood a little ways off near where her missing shoes were, splashing in the filthy muck. I buttoned the only button left remaining on her grimy shirt and turned in time to catch her older brother as he jumped up to hug me. Something about spinning a child around in the air makes the rest of the world stand still. I explained that I was sorry I hadn't brought any money out and so instead we squatted and played a guessing game drawing numbers in the gravely sand and wrestled a bit and then laughed as a single rubber boot floated by in the ditch and the older brother splashed dove to get it and stuffed both of his feet in. I asked them if they were okay now, invited them to go on my walk with me, and at their refusal I wished them farewell after helping them put their busted too small shoes back on.

I reached in my pocket to again mute the world.

But I pulled my hand out empty and instead, before I even realized I had done it, grabbed two of the bulging plastic bags held by the panting grocery market lady who I love who also just happened to be struggling down the street right next to me. She, so thrilled for the extra set of hands, chattered at me in Chinese that was far too quick to be comprehensible and while I was being mesmerized by the endless stream of what I may never be able to understand I followed her right into the army base. As much to my surprise as theirs.

We dragged the bags squirming with fish and loaded with cabbages back to the kitchen area, caused a bit of a scene when I, immediately realizing that I shouldn't have been where I was, decided to quickly leave and was commanded to just wait a moment by the dear woman. When she had been paid by some astounded looking men in uniform, she clasped my shaky hands in her cool, swollen, chapped ones and we walked back through the main gate, her chattering all the while and I blushing, where we parted.

Two steps later I had silenced the world with my music once again.

Only to feel my phone rining in my pocket. Nearly tempted to curse my other senses which had been betraying me, I turned off the music and answered the call.

It was my student who was away in her hometown doing her practice teaching. Her class was studying animals and her only request was could I please please just one time sing the animal song I had taught them? So there I stood on the street, next to babies squatting with spilt pants to pee, women in bright orange overalls sweeping the endless barage of garbage, a man with a bicycle cart full of miniature cacti, and the typical odd menagerie of life, singing softly into my phone so as not to attract any additional attention, 'Old Macdonald had a farm... e-i-e-i-o'. An enthusiastic 'Thank you teacher!' ended the phone call.

When the dump truck horn blared past belching soot a moment later I didn't even hear it.

And so the veiny, green turning yellow leaves cascaded to the ground, clipped from their branches by the brittle wind, and the sprinklers danced around creating misty showers, the dimming sun light beamed across the damp lawn of the park, and the grandmothers hobbled, young men on bicycles glided, taxis sped past. I sat on the haphazardly painted white metal bench and watched it all happen according to a beat that only I could hear. And it was all I could hear.

And as I sat and gulped in the peace and beauty of the moment I was in like one who had just escaped drowning I realized that even when I had my music turned off, somehow slicing through the noise noise noise, I had heard His voice: play with beggars, carry people's bags, sing to your students...

May it always be all I can hear.

Free is in my budget

All for free: sunshine, rain, wind that blows, crunchy yellow leaves, dust... all for free.

All for free: the occasional bus ride, apple, meal, pen, photocopy, thermos of tea... all for free. 

All for free: grace. All of it. Free. 

The sparse street lights left modest pools of dim yellow light on the nearly blackened closing down for the night street. A blue and white cab pulled up to the curb where I was standing and I got in the front seat.

The nearly bald somewhat elderly driver with a round face and orange jacket stumbled over my school's name several times before, with slurred speech and eyes glinting with mirth from the light of the dashboard, he maneuvered the taxi across the dim street in the correct direction.

Pedestrians moved like shadows on shadow as the taxi rolled drowsily  through the streets. He was chatty and as the outlines of buildings slid past in the darkness we had the following conversation in my painfully stark Chinese:

He: You're beautiful
I: Nope
He: Where are you from?
I: America
He: Are you a teacher?
I: Yes, English
He: English is so good
I: Yes
He: Do you have a boyfriend?
I: Yes
He: Is he Chinese?
I: No
He: How old are you?
I: I don't know
He: Do you drink beer?
I: No
He: I will tell you my phone number and you can call me then we can be friends is it okay?
I: Sure

I: I don't speak Chinese. 
He: hehehehe

He mystified me as he actually obeyed traffic rules, drove a reasonable speed, and stopped at the lights. I saved his number in my phone as "crazy taxi" an adjective describing the overall night rather than the driving. He, in no rush to actually get me to my destination, pulled up next to another cab, rolled down my window and proceeded to gleefully declare our friendship as I sunk lower in the seat and covered my face with my hand.

The Potala loomed darker than ever in our rearview mirror and the stars twinkled bright overhead.

I couldn't help but giggle behind my hand as he continued to chatter away at me, chuckling to himself, and at one point reaching over to turn up what could have been a theme song for the 1970's on the car stereo. By the time we arrived at my nearly deserted school gate, in the alternate universe I currently live in, we probably had become friends.

So he nearly drove right by then stopped at my school gate. I reached in my pocket and pulled out the crumpled ten yuan note to pay the fare. He refused to take it, I left it on the dashboard, he grabbed it and stuffed it back into my hand...

He: WE ARE FRIENDS. You don't pay.
I: Really?

First, and possibly last, free taxi ride of my life. Awesome.

Free... that's definitely in my budget.

When the team leaves town...

Shambala

Class topic: Can and Can't

Me: Tashi, what is your biggest dream?
Tashi: My biggest dream is to go to Shambala.
Me: Do you think you can do this?
Tashi: No, I can't.
Me: Why?

Tashi: I can't because I don't know where it is.

****************************

Shambala. Shangrila. Paradise. Heaven.

He knows that he doesn't know where it is.
He doesn't know that he doesn't know Who it is.

Shambala. Shangrila. Paradise. Heaven.

*****************************

His response had made me burst out laughing in class, had made me translate the Tibetan word and then the Chinese word for the English ones, had made me smile and ask them all whimsically, "Maybe you don't know where it is, but can you find it?"

However, as the rest of the day unraveled into bowls of steaming dumplings, around cups of thick sweet milk tea, through conversations with students past and present, over a dinner of oily vegetables and curious students, and ended up in a pile on the dingy carpet of my apartment... his response wrapped like a thorny vine pricking my soul till it now bleeds. He wanted to go there, but couldn't... couldn't because he didn't know where it was... Who it was.

But I knew. I know.

And if I could rewind any day of my life, return to any previous moment, sit down in a time machine and end up at any point in the past, it would have been that one... and it would have gone like this:

Me: What is your biggest dream?
Tashi: My biggest dream is to go to Shambala.
Me: Do you think you can do this?
Tashi: No I can't.
Me: Why?
Tashi: I can't because I don't know where it is.
Me: Tashi, your dream is beautiful, and you can go. Do you want me to tell you how to get there, how to get to Him?

But I can't go back in time. Only forward.

Forward holding the hand of Him who is outside of time and through some divine joke has chosen the clumsiest of vessels to transport the most precious of messages to the most painfully captive of prisoners.

Shambala. Shangrila. Paradise. Heaven.

Let there be a room waiting for Tashi there.

reverse reverse

And so my day ended.

I laid down knowing that I would awake to snow like someone careless with powdered sugar on the mountaintops.

Just then, a slobbery gust of wind and rain blew the curtains away from the teahouse door immediately signifying that the brief visit had come to an end. We declared our joy at getting to see each other, our promises of later visits, and dashed out and then off into the sheets of rain our separate ways.

The cold and nearly empty thermos of sweet tea was content to take up room on the small table as she whispered to me about her family. Her aging parents still doing all the farm work, her monk brothers who were professional idol and incense makers, her sister's five children, her younger head strong brother, all know whom she has believed and all in her tender though loaded words: disagree. She brushed a slightly greasy strand of hair away from her symmetrically almond shaped eyes and nervously twisted a ring on her finger... it's difficult she only just mouthed. I squeezed her hand. There was nothing else I could think to do.

She had sent a message saying she was across the street, I had sent a message begging for any other time to see her, then immediately changed my mind, laid my work aside, slid back into my well worn shoes, and out the door once again but this time on an invaluable mission to visit a dear sister who I hadn't seen since last term. And the joy to which I was met with upon entering the teahouse where she waited for me made even putting the dirty socks on again worth it. So we went about the business of chatting over tea.

Finally, a moment, after a long, nearly continuously interrupted day to just breathe and finish the odd scraps of lesson planning that needed to happen for next week. But it was only a moment... the phone is going to go on strike after what it's been through today.

Even my weariness couldn't quell my urge to stop. Secretly I had always wanted to have the opportunity that lay before me on the uneven sidewalk in the dimming light as the cool breeze sliced my fingers and swirled the crowds of dirt lined against the curb. There was another student perched on a stool playing a serious game of Chinese chess with two grizzled and even more serious old men. A chance of a lifetime for a foreign teacher who walks by serious games of chess like it's her job with a longing to stop and watch or play but possessed only of a debilitating ignorance. Which promptly fled in sight of my student. He promised, between serious moves that involved a lot of grunting from the old men, to teach me how to play... leaving the doors swinging open on their hinges for future sidewalk games. Pleased and quite finished, I went back to the apartment.

So I found myself racing to the school gate only four and a half minutes late for a dinner meeting that had been arranged on the fly. I have always been able to distinguish this tiny student of mine from all the others at a distance simply by the way she wraps her long black hair behind her head in a bun. We walked through the cool breeze to a hole of a Chinese restaurant as she told me about her teaching job, about how she misses Lhasa, some questions of English letter writing, her family... a conversation continued over too much food and bursts of laughter more genuine than anything coming out of the blaring television set in the corner. Afterwards, I saw her to her bus then turned once again to head back to that place I had woken up in what seemed now like nearly a century ago.

We walked back together to where I could catch a bus and the idiotic phone rang and meetings were canceled and new ones were made and flies buzzed over a heap of trash nearby. She looked at me: teacher, then we go back to my house together? And I couldn't do anything but smile and hug fiercely this girl who after spending nearly five straight hours with me would so so gently request more. So gently in fact that it took every ounce of restraint left in me not to just agree and spend the rest of my life in that small room in the intestinal alleys of Lhasa. But it wasn't to be, and there wasn't a moment to lose before meeting another student for dinner.

On the roof the sun was warm nearly blistering and it was obvious by the fact that she had brought her dictionary with her that she had many things on her mind. So she looped around and around, words like birds dipping through the air, as we squatted on the dusty rooftop. She arranged her fears and doubts in circles around us and I dutifully followed the swirls; picking the fears up and presenting opportunities, dusting the doubts off and displaying strengths. We were interrupted by wild giggles in the alley below and we couldn't resist peering over the wall to watch as a group of children turned some plastic baskets into race cars. Race cars that we dodged a few moments later as I left to find the remainder of the day.

Past a pile of pink and purple plastic pails I turned left into an alley and left again into a house that had begun to feel more like a home to me after my countless visits over the last year. Delighted to find my ever cheery, slightly freckled student at the top of the stairs we began what would be just another day together. She slid her glasses up on her nose with her middle finger and flipped her tidy black braid over her shoulder and together we set about the work of washing, cutting, peeling, frying, boiling our lunch of vegetables over rice and sweet milk tea. The cracked mirror hanging on one wall reflected back the chatter of the next door neighbor grandmother as she stared and commented on how big my body was, reflected back the foggy Tibetan lessons, reflected back dozens of text messages and phone calls from what felt a little like everyone in the city, reflected back the stacks of bottles and books and clutter that filled the tiny room. The mirror had seen enough. My sweet student and I headed up to the roof.

The clouds hung like a thousand gossamer veils over the mountains. Cold. I racked my brain for any excuse I could think of that would be valid enough to keep me in bed the rest of the rainy morning... but instead of a reason I got a text message and my day began....

No, today doesn't really make any more sense in reverse.