Keep it Simple

I'd love to say that I live simply.

If you glanced at the titles piling up on my bedside table Buddhism for Mothers, Awakening the Buddha within, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, Baby Buddha: a guide for teaching meditation to children you'd think I'd have earned a Masters in the subject by now. You'd think that I'd be a guru at living in the present moment as all these books recommend and you'd think I'd be able to use meditation as a way to help me rechannel the crazy pace of my life.

But I failed the meditation class I signed up for last spring.
Ok, I didn't get a grade of course but I could not stay focused on my breathing. I paid sixty bucks and showed up to about half of the sessions because in the middle of fifty quiet meditators I just couldn't stop my mind from rattling.

"Breathe in, breathe out listen to your breathing," the yogi invites us with the voice of a harp.

"Ok, ok breathe, breathe. Does that man next to me have a cold? How can I concentrate when he's coughing."

"Imagine you are sitting on the banks of a river. Now imagine this river is your thoughts and you are watching them float on by."

"Ok that's a good idea. Breathe, breathe. Goodbye thoughts. I will watch you float away down that river. Cheesy, so cheesy. This guy is like the woman in our birthing class when the Docta and I had to do a guided visualization and the lady asked us to imagine a babbling brook with birds chirping and chipmunks chattering and the Docta could not stop laughing. Do they all use the same metaphors? Ok stop you're so cynical, back to breathing. shit, the library book on meditative breathing i didn't return it. stay focused. (one eye opens scans the room, is everybody else in meditative bliss already? look at them they are statues. peaceful statues already) panic. eyes slam shut. breathe in, breathe out. hurry hurry you're not doing this right. hey why didn't Rims call back? i hope that cop didn't give her a ticket for talking on the phone. What's the deal with Chicago police, I wonder when Washington will make cell phone use illegal? Ok this is not working how do i stop thinking? i need a fricking mantra. Tonight I'll re-read the chapter from Meditation for Dummies and pick one out..."

I'm recalling all of this now and re-evaluating my efforts to live in simplicity because I just finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert's book Eat, Pray, Love. After a horrible, horrible divorce Gilbert sets out for Italy, India and Indonesia on a quest to achieve balance in her life. In India, she spends four entire months in an Ashram mediatating for hours and days on end. And I think to myself this sounds amazing. I could use this..but could I do it? I remember a friend of mind spent a month in Thailand doing a similar thing. She sent me postcards detailing her life there, the detox diet, the yoga marathons and the hours she spent doing chores in spiritual contemplation. I'd like to say i'd be up for this but do I have the mental stamina and focus this type of journey requires? Either way I'd like to get back to simplifiying my life again. But how my friends? What do you do? How do you keep it simple?

Something Between

This is not your typical rompecabeza.

This puzzle begins whole, a picture that snaps into shape the night of my cousin's wedding in a rustic open-air church in Xcaret, Mexico.

I'm standing behind my cousin Teto, next to my tia Lilia who sits next to her daughter, who sits next to my brother who sits next to my prima Imelda and so on and so forth, a chain of family wrapping itself around every pew.

The Bride's side is so full my cousin Yanina jokes that, "este barco se va por este lado, the boat's gonna tip this way."

My mother is at the podium reading a verse. In the distance you would swear that she was my Abue or any one of my six aunts. What I see Teto hears, it is the sound of his dead mother's voice calling to him through my mother's visage.

"Let us remember those who have departed Rosa Maria," even though it has been many years since her death this bull of a man with the back of a tight end heaves and sobs as though it were yesterday. I rub Teto's back, I squeeze his hand.

As we file out of the church he is still deep in the memory of his mother.

"When I heard your mother's voice," he tells me, "se me rompio el corazon, it broke my heart."

The first piece in this puzzle.

The second piece he tells me is that on his drive back from serenading my cousin Mayumi on the eve of her wedding alone in the darkenss my tia spoke to him once again,

"Porque no le cantaste Adivina mi'jo, Why didn't you sing her the song Imagine my sweet son?"

"Ah si Mama, seria perfecto, yes mama it would have been perfect,"as he crawls into bed it is this song that hums him to sleep.

Adivina the same song that plays tonight as Mayumi kneels before the Virgin Mary on her wedding day, the coincidence is all too much.

And the final piece of the puzzle is me he says.

"Prima do you remember your Quincenera, your fifteenth birthday, when I serenaded you con Mariachis on Abue's front porch so long ago? I will say that your profile today in this church is still as dulce, sweet, as it was 19 years ago."

"This is the puzzle mi hermana that comes together here as I sit in this primitive place on Mayumi's wedding. I look out at the silhouette of this family and I say to myself that I am not alone on this journey. I have all of you. And you have all of us. These tears are not of sadness."

I'm not sure why Teto's words of all the beautiful things that were said that evening are the ones that I have chosen to go to sleep with at night now that I am back from my trip. I think it is because he reminds me that there cannot be love without loss and there cannot be loss without love.

If I stand back for a moment what does this puzzle look like that my cousin has put together before me?
I decide there is not a clear picture of one person, mi tia, my mother, my cousin or one geographical place the church on a hill, my abue's homestead, the balcony of an eager bride but rather something entirely new, an indescribable feeling altogether something beautiful vacillating between love and loss.

P.S.

I know that I cannot do justice to the words of my cousin Teto in this story. It is lost in translation. I find it impossible to adequately describe the profound feelings I felt on my trip to Mexico just days ago. After reading this piece, the Docta reminds me, "Bud there are a million back stories to every story that you tell here. I'm not sure people are going to follow this."

I tell him, "you are right and it doesn't matter. This is a story I have to tell for myself and thank God it makes sense to me."