I Found Buddha at the Laundromat
We’d said goodnight to the moon, the room, the telephone and the red balloon. We’d tuned into the night, zoned out to the noises everywhere. So, why was my mind whirring as loudly as the husband’s fancy, disco-light computer, like the needle on the vinyl going round and round, never halting but relentlessly scratching at the door to my brain, the one that was supposed to have shut for the night. My legs doing the can-can, flipping the duvet off and on and back again in rhythm with the breakbeat shit I always hated at raves. That godawful limbo between the glorious stampede and awkward two-stepping, the space between total fucking release and cautious reservations. A feeling that followed me into the next morning.
I found a boulder, its surface perfectly flat and smooth, welcoming everything that, at that moment, I was not. I sat, cross-legged, eyes unfocused on to the lush green sea of grass palms and weird red insects and bugs that appeared to have escaped Lynchian, twinned peaks. Breathing deeply in and out, nostrils flaring comically, eyes possibly twitching, lips definitely snarling. I wanted for this to be a meditation but it did not compute with the image or the ideal I have been sold. I didn’t feel my thoughts, my anger or my sadness dissolving with every breath cycle. Couldn’t find serenity in my surrounding. Instead, I watched a group of swallows scatter and spastically sail and dive through the air and in all directions, like thoughts out of my head and into my vision. The giants that swallowed me whole.
I approached a horse, roaming freely and contentedly feasting on the first grass of official spring, and lay my hand on its flank, yearning for empathy. A creature bigger than myself in all possible ways, to lean all my weight on. And I swear to you, she threw me a sideways glance, seemingly appalled by my impudent selfishness, my interrupting her peace in search of my own – and walked off. Even the horse, in all its tranquil, equine power, could not bear my overwhelm. So, I went back to my spot on the boulder, to watch the grass dance and the light change, and my dawg – oddly relaxed in the company of my misery – leaning back into a hot, pebble stone massage. I cogitated the lines on the back of my hands, the deepening paths in my palms, recognizing them to have been born from many a moment like this – and many more of its counterparts.
I’ve read enough Zen literature, have been through enough schools of yoga to know that the glory, the sweet spot in meditation, is not in the actual stillness we seek to obtain, but in recognizing and accepting all that comes up in the process. That’s why I wasn’t at all surprised to find Buddha at the laundromat some days later. On spin cycle. When the industrial-sized machine shook and rattled in place, and the digital countdown – the very cyphers that haunt me during sleepless nights – suddenly turned into a soothing concept. Marking the time left for all the dirt to be washed clean. And then, just for a moment, that was the end of one cycle, and the beginning of the next.
9---8---7---6---5---4---3---2---1---0