bopis

Under the reptile scales of the date palm lotus-sat the Botanical Garden Master. Morning and her fingernails caught the sun. Her fingers stood as candles from her thighs. I approached her. Maybe she failed to notice. Maybe she knew so much about me that she did not condescend to care. What issued from her mouth was not the Aum exhale. She was breathing out No. With every long breath, No. In need of confidence, I sat alongside her and meditated on her No. How to accept No to fill life? How to grow content with life by sucking substance from it? No is difficult for artists in search for what is newest, what is – could it be a misnomer? – original. Whybecause No is an old word. A word before mothers and sires. No is especially hard for artists seeking what is oldest, what it is that came first. Whybecause No is an ancient word, but when they ask it if it is the oldest, No says its name like it’s the most recent fruit that suddenly made a garden out of the world. Heady with enlightenment, I said to the Master, "Teach me." She opened her mouth, blew out her answer to my nostrils. I thought of a score of foolish rejoinders, among them “Please, please teach me,” “Please do not teach me,” “Where is this garden,” and “By whose authority do you know all you know?” But the only words my tongue beat from my mouth was “Who then could embrace the No?” Her answer was so thoroughly cloaked in a cough that she could have said anything between All the Just to All of Us. Either way, I disbelieved her and went my way, my back heavy with someone’s laughter.

Etiquetas: woman19