Speaker 1: Us was to be ours the singing bowl.
Speaker 2: In the hour before the mountains began to lighten, when
Speaker 2: the valley still held its breath, and the stars faded
Speaker 2: one by one like embers cooling in a vast dark
Speaker 2: hearth run woke. He woke the way he had woken
Speaker 2: for thirty years, without an alarm, without effort, his eyes
Speaker 2: opening to the pale, gray ceiling of the small room
Speaker 2: above the meditation hall, as though some deep and patient
Speaker 2: clock inside him had simply arrived at its appointed hour.
Speaker 2: For a moment he lay still listening. There was the
Speaker 2: wind moving through the pines, a long, soft exhalation that
Speaker 2: rose and fell like the breathing of the mountain itself.
Speaker 2: There was the faint tick of the wood stove below,
Speaker 2: still holding a small coal of warmth from the night before.
Speaker 2: And there was the silence, which was not truly silence
Speaker 2: at all, but a kind of fullness, the way a
Speaker 2: cup appears empty when it is in fact full of air,
Speaker 2: full of possibility, full of the morning to come. He
Speaker 2: rose slowly. His body, at sixty three years old, required
Speaker 2: a certain gentleness in its first movements, a rolling of
Speaker 2: the shoulders, a slow turning of the neck, feet, finding
Speaker 2: the wooden floor with care. The floorboards were cool beneath
Speaker 2: his bare souls, smooth from decades of feet crossing them,
Speaker 2: and he knew each one by heart. This board creaked,
Speaker 2: this one did not. This one held the warmth of
Speaker 2: the chimney that rose up through the wall behind his bed,
Speaker 2: and he often stood there for a moment in the
Speaker 2: cold months, letting the stone stored heat travel up through
Speaker 2: his feet and into his bones. He pulled on a
Speaker 2: thick wool sweater, gray as the morning sky, and woolen
Speaker 2: socks that his sister had knitted for him two winters past.
Speaker 2: He wrapped a soft shawl around his shoulders. Then he
Speaker 2: moved through the small room, a bed, a table, a chair,
Speaker 2: a shelf of books worn soft at their spines, a
Speaker 2: window facing east, and opened the door to the narrow
Speaker 2: staircase that descended into the hall below. The stairs were steep,
Speaker 2: and he took them one at a time, his hand
Speaker 2: trailing along the wall where the wood had been polished
Speaker 2: to a satin sheen by his own hand and by
Speaker 2: the hand of the carpenter who had built the staircase
Speaker 2: long before Arun came, and perhaps by hands before that
Speaker 2: he liked to think of that sometimes, the long chain
Speaker 2: of hands, all of them warm, all of them gone
Speaker 2: about their days, each leaving something imperceptible behind, until the
Speaker 2: wit itself seemed to remember them. The bottom of the stairs,
Speaker 2: he entered the meditation hall, and, as he did every morning,
Speaker 2: he paused. The hall had once been a barn, built
Speaker 2: by a farming family more than a century ago, when
Speaker 2: this valley was all pasture and hay fields, and the
Speaker 2: nearest town was a full day's walk away. The beams
Speaker 2: overhead were old growth, timber, dark and massive, joined without
Speaker 2: nails in the old way, and they gave off in
Speaker 2: every season the faintest sweet smell of aged wood. The
Speaker 2: walls had been lined long ago now with cedar planks,
Speaker 2: and the cedar had never lost its fragrance. It was
Speaker 2: strongest in the mornings before the day warmed. It a clean,
Speaker 2: resinous scent that a Rouin had come to think of
Speaker 2: as the smell of stillness itself. Visitors often noticed it
Speaker 2: the moment they stepped inside. They would pause in the doorway,
Speaker 2: and their breathing would change slower, deeper, as though the
Speaker 2: room were teaching them something. Before, a Rouin had said
Speaker 2: a word. Paper lanterns hung at intervals along the beams, unlit, now,
Speaker 2: their rice paper globes glowing faintly with the first gray
Speaker 2: light that came through the windows. Along the walls sat
Speaker 2: low shelves holding folded blankets, and in the center of
Speaker 2: the polished wooden floor, arranged in a loose and welcoming circle,
Speaker 2: where the cushions round suffus in deep reds and archers
Speaker 2: and soft browns, each one bearing the faint impressions of
Speaker 2: the many people who had sat upon them over the years.
Speaker 2: At the far end of the hall, where the morning
Speaker 2: light would eventually arrive, stood a low wooden table, and
Speaker 2: on the table, resting on a small round cushion of
Speaker 2: red silk, sat the singing bowl. Arun stood a moment longer,
Speaker 2: taking in the quiet room, and then he turned to
Speaker 2: the small alcove beside the door, where the wood stove waited,
Speaker 2: and he began his morning the way he always began
Speaker 2: it with fire. He knelt before the stove and opened
Speaker 2: its iron door, which swung on well oiled hinges with
Speaker 2: a soft, low sound. Inside, among the gray feathers of
Speaker 2: last night's ash, a single coal still glowed small and
Speaker 2: orange and patient. He smiled at it as he always
Speaker 2: smiled at it, thirty years of mornings, and still it
Speaker 2: pleased him, this small survivor, this ember, that had kept
Speaker 2: its warmth through the whole long night. He laid down
Speaker 2: twists of birch bark, then slender splits of kindling, arranging
Speaker 2: them loosely so the air could move among them, and
Speaker 2: he leaned close and breathed gently on to the coal.
Speaker 2: Once twice the bark caught with a whisper, and then
Speaker 2: the kindling, and soon small flames stood up among the wood,
Speaker 2: like yellow flowers. Opening, he added two larger pieces of
Speaker 2: split pine, closed the door and listened to the fire
Speaker 2: find its rhythm, a soft crackling, a settling, a low
Speaker 2: contented murmur. While the stove warmed, He filled the kettle
Speaker 2: at the small sink in the alcove and set it
Speaker 2: on top, and he stood with his hands folded, watching
Speaker 2: the windows slowly brighten. Beyond the glass, the pines stood
Speaker 2: in ranks up the mountain side, dark green, going to
Speaker 2: black in the half light, their tops lost and missed.
Speaker 2: The mist came down off the high slopes in the
Speaker 2: night and settled into the valley like something poured, and
Speaker 2: in the early morning it moved slowly between the trees,
Speaker 2: thick in one place, thin in another, always drifting, always changing,
Speaker 2: never in a hurry. Arun had watched this mist for
Speaker 2: thirty years and had never once seen it behave the
Speaker 2: same way twice. Sometimes it lay flat as water across
Speaker 2: the meadow. Sometimes it rose in columns. Sometimes it wrapped
Speaker 2: a single pine so completely that the tree seemed to
Speaker 2: float rootless in a white sea. This morning it moved
Speaker 2: in long, low ribbons between the trunks, and as the
Speaker 2: light grew, the ribbons turned from gray to silver to
Speaker 2: the palest gold. The kettle began to murmur, and then
Speaker 2: to h and then to sing its rising note, and
Speaker 2: Arun lifted it off the stove just before it reached
Speaker 2: its full voice. He warned the small clay teapot, swirled
Speaker 2: the water, poured it out, and added the tea, a
Speaker 2: simple green tea that came to him in paper packages
Speaker 2: from a shop in the town below, run by an
Speaker 2: old friend who knew his tastes. He poured the water
Speaker 2: over the leaves and watched them turn and open and sink,
Speaker 2: and he covered the pot with a knitted cozy and
Speaker 2: he waited. Waiting, his teacher had once told him, is
Speaker 2: not empty time. Waiting is where the tea is made.
Speaker 2: He poured the first cup into a small handleless bowl
Speaker 2: of pale glazed ceramic, cupped it in both hands, and
Speaker 2: carried it to the window. The warmth of it came
Speaker 2: through the clay and into his palms, and he held
Speaker 2: it there a moment before drinking, breathing in the steam, grassy,
Speaker 2: faintly sweet, with something in it like the smell of
Speaker 2: new leaves after rain. He drank slowly. The tea was
Speaker 2: hot enough that he had to sip it, and this
Speaker 2: was part of its gift. It could not be rushed.
Speaker 2: From the window, he could see the whole length of
Speaker 2: the meadow that lay between the meditation hall and the
Speaker 2: forest's edge, and beyond the meadow, rising behind the pines,
Speaker 2: the long shoulders of the mountain, still wearing their last
Speaker 2: snow in the high creases, even now in the middle
Speaker 2: of a warm season. The town, such as it was,
Speaker 2: a single street of shops, a post office, a small
Speaker 2: church with a white steeple, a bakery that opened before
Speaker 2: dawn and filled the morning air with the smell of bread.
Speaker 2: Lay out of sight around the bend of the valley,
Speaker 2: and from this window there was no sign of it,
Speaker 2: only meadow and forest and mountain and sky. This was
Speaker 2: why he had stayed. He had come for a week
Speaker 2: end retreat when he was a young man of twenty four,
Speaker 2: restless and searching, and not even sure what he was
Speaker 2: searching for. And he had stood at this very window
Speaker 2: on his first morning, and he had watched the mist
Speaker 2: move through the pines, and something in him had quietly
Speaker 2: completely stopped running. He finished the tea, rinsed the bowl,
Speaker 2: and set it on the shelf to dry. Then he
Speaker 2: walked the length of the hall to the low table
Speaker 2: at the far end, and he sat down on the
Speaker 2: cushion before it, and he looked at the singing bull.
Speaker 2: It was not a large bull. It sat easily in
Speaker 2: two cupped hands, perhaps eight inches across its sides, rising
Speaker 2: in a gentle curve to a rim that had been
Speaker 2: worn smooth by decades of year. Its metal was the
Speaker 2: color of old honey, a deep, warm bronze, with darker
Speaker 2: patches where time and touch had left their marks, and
Speaker 2: lighter patches along the rim where the wood of the
Speaker 2: striker had polished it bright If you looked closely, you
Speaker 2: could see the faint hammer marks that covered its surface,
Speaker 2: Hundreds upon hundreds of small, overlapping dimples, each one a
Speaker 2: single blow of the craftsman's hammer, each one struck by
Speaker 2: a human hand. The man who made it had lived
Speaker 2: in a village in the hills of Nepal, or perhaps
Speaker 2: to bet. The story had traveled so far by the
Speaker 2: time it reached a roon that the details had softened
Speaker 2: at the edges, the way a stone is softened by
Speaker 2: a river. What remained was this. The craftsmen had been old,
Speaker 2: older than anyone in his village could clearly remember, and
Speaker 2: he made singing goals all his life, as his father
Speaker 2: had and his father's father. He worked in the traditional way,
Speaker 2: blending copper and tin and small measures of other metals,
Speaker 2: melting them over a charcoal fire, pouring the molten alloy
Speaker 2: into a rough disk, and then, while the metal was
Speaker 2: still hot and willing, hammering it slowly, patiently, over hours
Speaker 2: and days, turning it, singing to it, some said, as
Speaker 2: he worked, until the disk became a bowl, and the
Speaker 2: ball became an instrument, and the instrument became something more
Speaker 2: than either a thing with a voice Arun's teacher had
Speaker 2: carried the bowl out of those hills in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: wrapped in cloth in a canvas bag, over mountain passes
Speaker 2: and down long valleys, and finally across an ocean. She
Speaker 2: had been young then, and the bull had been her
Speaker 2: most precious possession. And when Arun had completed his years
Speaker 2: of study with her and prepared to leave the city
Speaker 2: where she taught, to go north to the mountains, to
Speaker 2: the small converted barn that a friend had offered him,
Speaker 2: she had pressed it into his hands. It is not
Speaker 2: a gift, she had told him. It is alone. You
Speaker 2: will hold it for a while, and then one day
Speaker 2: you will give it to some one else. That is
Speaker 2: how it works. That is how it has always worked.
Speaker 2: He had asked her how he would know when the
Speaker 2: time came and to whom he should give it, and
Speaker 2: she had laughed. She had a laugh like water over stones,
Speaker 2: and said, the bull will tell you. Bulls are better
Speaker 2: at these things than we are. That had been thirty
Speaker 2: years ago. The bull still sat on its red silk cushion.
Speaker 2: Arun did not hurry it. He had learned, among other things,
Speaker 2: not to hurry. He reached out now and lifted the
Speaker 2: bowl from its cushion and held it in his open palm,
Speaker 2: the way one holds something living, and he felt its
Speaker 2: weight heavier than it looked dense and cool, and he
Speaker 2: ran his thumb once along its rim. Then he set
Speaker 2: it back gently and took up the striker, a slender
Speaker 2: wand of hardwood, turned on a lathe, its striking end
Speaker 2: wrapped in a band of soft leather. He set the
Speaker 2: striker beside the bull, aligned with the cushion's edge, the
Speaker 2: way he had set it ten thousand times before, and
Speaker 2: he bowed his head to it, a small bow, barely
Speaker 2: more than a nod, the way one greets an old
Speaker 2: friend across a quiet room. And then he rose and
Speaker 2: went to prepare the hall. He moved through the space slowly,
Speaker 2: without hurry, and the work itself was a kind of meditation.
Speaker 2: He straightened the cushions in their circle, nudging one here,
Speaker 2: turning one there, so that each faced inward toward the center,
Speaker 2: and each had its small share of the room. He
Speaker 2: folded three woolen blankets and set them along the bench
Speaker 2: by the door for students who felt the morning chill.
Speaker 2: He filled a small copper pitcher with water and set
Speaker 2: it on the side table with a stack of cups.
Speaker 2: And beside the cups he placed a small plate of
Speaker 2: dried apricots and another of walnuts, because his teacher had
Speaker 2: taught him that the body two comes to meditation, and
Speaker 2: the body appreciates small kindnesses. Then he went to the window.
Speaker 2: There were six of them along the eastern wall, tall
Speaker 2: and many paned, and he opened them one by one,
Speaker 2: lifting the lower sashes on their old rope and pulley balances.
Speaker 2: And with each window the mountain air came in. It
Speaker 2: was cool air, washed by the night, carrying the smell
Speaker 2: of pine resin and wet earth, and the faint green
Speaker 2: sweetness of the meadow grass, heavy now with dew. It
Speaker 2: moved into the hall without hurry, pooling first near the
Speaker 2: windows and then spreading, and Arruns stood and felt it
Speaker 2: touch his face and lift the edge of his shawl,
Speaker 2: and he breathed. It in the hall changed when the
Speaker 2: windows opened. It became part of the outside, or the
Speaker 2: outside became part of it. The bird's song came in
Speaker 2: on the air, the chatter of chickadees in the lower branches,
Speaker 2: the fluting call of a thrush somewhere deep in the
Speaker 2: trees and beneath the bird song, the faintest sound of
Speaker 2: the creek that ran along the far side of the meadow,
Speaker 2: never loud, never entirely absent, a thread of water music
Speaker 2: woven under everything. By the time he had lit two
Speaker 2: sticks of cedar incense and placed them in the holder
Speaker 2: by the door, the first light of the sun, the
Speaker 2: true sun cresting the ridge, at last, came through the
Speaker 2: eastern windows, and they lay across the wooden floor in
Speaker 2: long golden bars, and the dust moats rose and turned
Speaker 2: within them like tiny, slow galaxies, and the hall was
Speaker 2: ready up. Aaron went back to the alcove, poured himself
Speaker 2: a second small cup of tea, and sat down on
Speaker 2: the bench by the door to wait for his students,
Speaker 2: holding the warm cup in both hands, watching the light move, entirely,
Speaker 2: content to be excited exactly where he was. They began
Speaker 2: to arrive a little before seven. He heard them before
Speaker 2: he saw them, the soft crunch of gravel on the
Speaker 2: path that came up from the road through the pines.
Speaker 2: Footsteps paced unhurriedly, the way footsteps sound when the person
Speaker 2: walking is in no rush to arrive. He did not
Speaker 2: get up to greet them at the door. He had
Speaker 2: learned long ago that the threshold of the hall belonged
Speaker 2: to the students. Each person should cross it in their
Speaker 2: own way, in their own time. Unhurried by ceremony, he
Speaker 2: simply sat and smiled and let them come. The first
Speaker 2: was a young woman he had known for about a year.
Speaker 2: Her name was Claire, and she came every morning. The
Speaker 2: center was open, always first, always alone. She was perhaps
Speaker 2: twenty eight, and she worked at the hospital in the
Speaker 2: larger town over the ridge, night shifts. He under stod
Speaker 2: stood something to do with the laboratory, And when she
Speaker 2: arrived in the mornings, there were always shadows under her eyes,
Speaker 2: soft and purple as dusk, and her shoulders carried a careful,
Speaker 2: braced quality, as though she were holding something up that
Speaker 2: she could not set down. But she came every morning.
Speaker 2: She came in her soft gray sweater and her loose pants,
Speaker 2: and she took off her shoes at the door and
Speaker 2: placed them neatly, side by side. And she chose the
Speaker 2: same cushion each time, the one nearest the window where
Speaker 2: the light fell, and she sat down on it and
Speaker 2: folded her legs and closed her eyes, and something in
Speaker 2: her face, in the small muscles around her mouth and
Speaker 2: eyes would begin very slowly to unclench. She did this now,
Speaker 2: Aroon watched her settle, watched her shoulders lower by a
Speaker 2: fraction of an inch, watched her take her first long
Speaker 2: breath of the cedar scented air, and he felt, as
Speaker 2: he always felt, a quiet gladness. The hall was doing
Speaker 2: its work before he had done a thing. Next came Walter,
Speaker 2: who was eighty one, and walked with a cane, slowly
Speaker 2: and deliberately, placing the cane first and then his feet,
Speaker 2: unashamed of his pace. He had been coming for eleven years,
Speaker 2: ever since his wife died, and he had once told
Speaker 2: Arn in his dry and gentle way, that he had
Speaker 2: spent his whole life in a hurry, hurry to build
Speaker 2: the business, hurry to raise the children, hurry to get somewhere,
Speaker 2: and that it had taken him seventy years to learn
Speaker 2: that there was nowhere to get to. Now, I walk slow,
Speaker 2: he had said, and everything catches up with me. He
Speaker 2: wore a cardigan in all seasons, and a soft cap
Speaker 2: that he removed the door, revealing a crown of white hair,
Speaker 2: and he always paused inside the doorway to take in
Speaker 2: the room as though he had never seen it before,
Speaker 2: his face opening into a smile of uncomplicated pleasure. He
Speaker 2: lowered himself on to his cushion with care and a
Speaker 2: few quiet sounds of effort, arranging his stiff legs, And
Speaker 2: then he too became still, and his stillness had a
Speaker 2: depth to it that Aran had always admired, the stillness
Speaker 2: of a man who had made his peace with time.
Speaker 2: Then came a mother and her daughter. The mother, whose
Speaker 2: name was Priya, had been coming for a few months.
Speaker 2: The daughter, whose name was Mira, was perhaps seven years old,
Speaker 2: and had only recently begun to come along her own request,
Speaker 2: which had surprised everyone, most of all her mother. Mira
Speaker 2: was a small, serious child with two dark braids, and
Speaker 2: she sat on her cushion with a dignity that was
Speaker 2: somehow both solemn and completely natural, her hands folded in
Speaker 2: her lap, her eyes wide open rather than closed, watching everything,
Speaker 2: the lanterns, the light, the dust, moats, the bowl. Children
Speaker 2: Roon had found often meditated better than adults, because no
Speaker 2: one had yet told them it was difficult. Priya settled
Speaker 2: beside her daughter, one hand resting lightly on the little
Speaker 2: girl's back, and the child's breathing slowed to match her mother's,
Speaker 2: the way a small boat comes to rest beside a
Speaker 2: larger one in still water. Three more students arrived, a
Speaker 2: retired school teacher named Helen, a quiet man named David,
Speaker 2: who worked at the bakery and always smelt faintly of flower,
Speaker 2: and a woman named Rosa, who was visiting her sister
Speaker 2: in town for the summer and had been brought along
Speaker 2: on a whim two weeks ago and had returned every
Speaker 2: day since they entered. They removed their shoes, they found
Speaker 2: their places, Greetings passed among them in murmurs and nods
Speaker 2: and small smiles, and then, without any signal, the murmurs faded,
Speaker 2: and the rooms settled into a warm and expectant quiet.
Speaker 2: Aaron rose from the bench, walked the length of the
Speaker 2: hall through the bars of morning light, and sat down
Speaker 2: on his cushion before the low table, facing the circle
Speaker 2: of his students. For a moment, he simply sat with them, breathing,
Speaker 2: letting the quiet deepen. He never spoke much. At the beginning,
Speaker 2: words his teacher had told him. Our stones dropped into
Speaker 2: a pond, sometimes necessary, sometimes beautiful, but always a disturbance.
Speaker 2: Use them like salt, she had said. A little goes far. Welcome,
Speaker 2: he said at last, his voice low and warm, carrying
Speaker 2: easily in the still room. There is nothing to achieve
Speaker 2: this morning, There is nothing to get right. We are
Speaker 2: simply going to sit and breathe and be here. The
Speaker 2: bowl will begin us. The silence will do the rest.
Speaker 2: He reached for the striker. This moment he had experienced
Speaker 2: it perhaps ten thousand times, and it had never once
Speaker 2: become ordinary. The moment before the sound, the moment when
Speaker 2: the room held its breath. He lifted the bowl from
Speaker 2: its red cushion and held it in the open palm
Speaker 2: of his left hand, his fingers spread flat, so that
Speaker 2: nothing touched the metal but the base, so that nothing
Speaker 2: would dampen the voice that was about to rise from it.
Speaker 2: He raised the striker in his right hand. He took
Speaker 2: one slow breath and let it out, And at the
Speaker 2: bottom of the breath, when the lungs were empty and
Speaker 2: the body was still, he brought the leather wrapped end
Speaker 2: of the striker to the rim of the bowl and struck.
Speaker 2: The sound bloomed. It began as a single, deep, note, low, round, full,
Speaker 2: like the voice of something very large and very calm.
Speaker 1: And it did not.
Speaker 2: Stay where it was struck. It rose, and it spread,
Speaker 2: and it filled the hall the way warm water fills
Speaker 2: a bath, rising evenly on every side, touching every wall,
Speaker 2: every beam, every person. It was not loud, but it
Speaker 2: was immense. It seemed to come not from the bowl alone,
Speaker 2: but from the room itself, from the cedar walls and
Speaker 2: the old beams and the mountain air, as though the
Speaker 2: hall had been waiting all night to speak and had
Speaker 2: at last been given its voice. Beneath the deep, fundamental tone,
Speaker 2: there were other tones, higher ones, shimmering ones that rose
Speaker 2: and fell and braided together, like light moving on water.
Speaker 2: If you listened closely, the sound was not one sound
Speaker 2: at all, but a chord, a small all choir of harmonics,
Speaker 2: each singing its own note, all of them in perfect
Speaker 2: and mysterious agreement. This was the craftsman's secret, the thing
Speaker 2: his hammer had built into the metal over all those
Speaker 2: hours and days, a voice with many voices inside it,
Speaker 2: a single tone that was also a whole song. The
Speaker 2: sound moved through the room and through the people sitting
Speaker 2: in it. Uruin had felt it ten thousand times, and
Speaker 2: felt it still, the way the vibration entered through the ears,
Speaker 2: but did not stop there. How it seemed to travel
Speaker 2: down through the chest, through the belly, into the very bones.
Speaker 2: How the body, which was after all mostly water, took
Speaker 2: up the resonance the way a still pond takes up
Speaker 2: the touch of rain. Claire, on a cushion by the window,
Speaker 2: felt it move through the tension in her shoulders, and
Speaker 2: the tension begin, almost shyly to loosen. Walter felt it
Speaker 2: in his old bones, like warmth.
Speaker 1: Mirah.
Speaker 2: The child sat with her eyes wide and her mouth
Speaker 2: slightly open, and the sound went through her, and she
Speaker 2: sat perfectly still inside it, astonished and entirely at home.
Speaker 2: Ourn lowered the striker and set the bowl back on
Speaker 2: its cushion, and the sound went on. This was the
Speaker 2: bull's great gift and its gentle mystery. It did not
Speaker 2: stop when the striking stopped. The tone hung in the air,
Speaker 2: full and round, and slowly, slowly diminishing, fading by degrees,
Speaker 2: so gradual that you could never catch the moment of
Speaker 2: its going. It thinned from a river to a stream,
Speaker 2: from a stream to a thread, from a thread to
Speaker 2: something finer than a thread, a filament, of sound than
Speaker 2: the memory of a filament. And still it was there,
Speaker 2: still present, still holding the room, until at last it
Speaker 2: was gone. And the silence that remained was not the
Speaker 2: silence that had been there before. It was a deeper silence,
Speaker 2: a ringing silence, a silence with the shape of the
Speaker 2: sound still in it, the way a cup holds the
Speaker 2: shape of the water that has been poured out into
Speaker 2: that silence. Renon said, softly, follow your breath, and they sat.
Speaker 2: The morning session was always an hour, and the hour
Speaker 2: passed the way such hours pass, at once very long
Speaker 2: and strangely brief. Arun sat with his students, breathing with them,
Speaker 2: and his attention moved through the room the way the
Speaker 2: light moved, touching each person in turn. He watched Claire's
Speaker 2: breathing slow and deepen, until her her shoulders had come
Speaker 2: all the way down from her ears, and her face
Speaker 2: had softened into something younger and unguarded. He watched Walter
Speaker 2: sit like a mountain, perfectly upright, perfectly easy, his hands
Speaker 2: resting on his knees, a half smile on his face,
Speaker 2: the smile of a man keeping company with his own heart.
Speaker 2: He watched Mirah, who lasted nearly twenty minutes in perfect stillness,
Speaker 2: remarkable for a child of seven. Before her attention wandered
Speaker 2: outward to the dust moats and the bird's song. And
Speaker 2: even then she did not fidget. She simply watched the
Speaker 2: light quietly. And that, too, arun thought, was meditation, perhaps
Speaker 2: the purest kind. He guided them only occasionally, in a
Speaker 2: few soft words, dropped into the long silence, like pebbles
Speaker 2: into deep water. Notice the breath where it enters. Let
Speaker 2: the shoulders be heavy when the mind wanders, Thank it,
Speaker 2: and come home. The breath is always here. It has
Speaker 2: been with you since before you were born. It will
Speaker 2: carry you home every time outside the morning moved, the
Speaker 2: mist lifted from the meadow in slow spirals, and was gone.
Speaker 2: The light through the eastern windows crept across the floor,
Speaker 2: climbing the western wall. A breeze came and went, stirring
Speaker 2: the paper lanterns so that they turned gently on their strings. Twice.
Speaker 2: A chickadee landed on the outer window sill, regarded the
Speaker 2: room full of still humans with bright interest, and flew
Speaker 2: on the creek, sang its thread of song beneath everything.
Speaker 2: When the hour had nearly passed, a Roon lifted the
Speaker 2: bowl once more. He struck it softly, a gentler touch
Speaker 2: than the open, a calling back rather than a calling together.
Speaker 2: And the note rose again, warm and round, and the
Speaker 2: students surfaced from their stillness, slowly, the way swimmers rise
Speaker 2: from a deep place, unhurried, reluctant, and glad. At once,
Speaker 2: the tone faded, the silence held, and then one by
Speaker 2: one they opened their eyes. There was always a moment
Speaker 2: after the closing bell when no one moved or spoke,
Speaker 2: a moment of collective lingering, as though the room were
Speaker 2: reluctant to release them or they it. Then Walter chuckled softly,
Speaker 2: the way he always did, and said, as he said
Speaker 2: most mornings, Well there it is again. And the spell
Speaker 2: relaxed into smiles and slow movements, into the stretching of
Speaker 2: legs and the soft sounds of people returning. They drank
Speaker 2: water from the copper pitcher. They ate a few apricots
Speaker 2: and walnuts. Claire came to a roun and pressed her
Speaker 2: palms together and bowed, and he bowed back, and she
Speaker 2: said quietly, I slept four hours last night, and I
Speaker 2: feel more rested now than when I woke. She said,
Speaker 2: it not as a complaint, but as a small wonder,
Speaker 2: and a room nodded. The rest you take in stillness
Speaker 2: is a different kind of rest, he said. The body
Speaker 2: knows it. Priya thanked him, while Mira stood at the
Speaker 2: low table, gazing at the singing bowl from a respectful distance,
Speaker 2: her hands clasped behind her back, as though she were
Speaker 2: in a museum. May I touch it, she asked. Aaron,
Speaker 2: You may, he said, and she reached out one small
Speaker 2: finger and touched the rim very lightly, and then looked
Speaker 2: up at him with an expression of solemn surprise. It's warm,
Speaker 2: she said. It likes the mornings, a Roon said, gravely,
Speaker 2: and she considered this with complete seriousness, and nodded, as
Speaker 2: though it confirmed something she had already suspected. When they
Speaker 2: had all gone, footsteps receding down the gravel path, the
Speaker 2: door standing open to the day, Aroon moved through the
Speaker 2: hall in the pleasant aftermath, straightening cushions, refolding blankets, washing
Speaker 2: the cups. This too was part of the practice, and
Speaker 2: he did it with the same unhurried attention he gave
Speaker 2: to everything. The hall after accession had a quality he loved.
Speaker 2: He fell wider, somehow, more open, as though the walls
Speaker 2: had expanded to make room for what had happened inside them.
Speaker 2: The incense had burned down to its ash, the light
Speaker 2: had moved, the bowl sat on its red cushion, to
Speaker 2: all appearances, perfectly ordinary, keeping its counsel. Mid morning, he
Speaker 2: carried his tea, the third steeping of the same leaves,
Speaker 2: softer and sweeter now out through the back door of
Speaker 2: the hall to the small porch that faced the meadow,
Speaker 2: and he sat in the wooden chair there and watched
Speaker 2: the birds at the feeder. He had hung the feeder
Speaker 2: years ago from the branch of the old pine that
Speaker 2: stood apart from the forest halfway across the meadow, and
Speaker 2: it was never still for long. Chickadees came and went
Speaker 2: on their quick business like flights, each taking a single
Speaker 2: seed and carrying it off to crack it open elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Polite and efficient. A pair of goldfinches, bright as pieces
Speaker 2: of the sun, clung to the feeder together and ate
Speaker 2: at their leisure, unbothered. A nuthatch worked its way down
Speaker 2: the pine's trunk, head first in the way of nuthatches,
Speaker 2: defying gravity without comment, and once a stellar's jay, deep
Speaker 2: blue crested magnificent and loud, swept down from the high
Speaker 2: branches and scattered the smaller birds, and then, having asserted
Speaker 2: its importance, took one seed and departed, and the small
Speaker 2: birds returned, and the whole brief drama closed Like a fan.
Speaker 2: Arun watched it all with his tea cooling slowly in
Speaker 2: his hands, and thought of nothing in particular, And it
Speaker 2: was good. Later, when the sun stood high, he went
Speaker 2: to his garden. It was a small garden, no more
Speaker 2: than a few raised beds behind the hall, where the
Speaker 2: ground caught the southern light, and he tended it the
Speaker 2: way he did everything, modestly, attentively, without ambition. There were herbs,
Speaker 2: time and sage and rosemary in one bed, mint in
Speaker 2: a pot of its own, where its wandering roots could
Speaker 2: do no harm, a great unruly bush of lemon balm
Speaker 2: that the bees adored. There was a bed of greens,
Speaker 2: and another of carrots and beets, and along the fence
Speaker 2: a tangle of sweet peas that he grew not to
Speaker 2: eat but for the smell of them, which, on warm
Speaker 2: afternoons drifted across the whole yard, honeyed and faintly pink.
Speaker 2: If a smell can be said to have a color.
Speaker 2: He knelt among the beds and worked the soil with
Speaker 2: his fingers, pulling the small weeds that had come up
Speaker 2: since yesterday. Feeling the earth cool and crumbly and alive
Speaker 2: beneath his hands, he pinched back the basil. He picked
Speaker 2: a handful of mint and a sprig of time, and
Speaker 2: laid them in the basket he carried for his midday
Speaker 2: meal and his evening tea. The bees moved through the
Speaker 2: lemon balm in their contented, drunken whay, and the sun
Speaker 2: warmed his back through his shirt, and from somewhere up
Speaker 2: the mountain came the far off knocking of a woodpecker,
Speaker 2: slow and deliberate, like someone hammering a small nail into
Speaker 2: the sky. His teacher long ago had asked him what
Speaker 2: is the difference between meditation and weeding a garden? And
Speaker 2: when a room young and earnest had searched for a
Speaker 2: wise answer, she had laughed her water over Stone's laugh,
Speaker 2: and said, there is no difference. That is the whole secret,
Speaker 2: There is no difference at all. He made himself a
Speaker 2: simple lunch, rice greens from the garden, a little tofu tea,
Speaker 2: and ate it on the porch, and afterward he sat
Speaker 2: for a while with his eyes closed, not meditating exactly,
Speaker 2: just resting, just being an old man in the sun,
Speaker 2: and the afternoon gathered itself gently around him. The afternoon
Speaker 2: session began at two, and it drew a different crowd.
Speaker 2: The morning sitters were the regulars, the devoted, the ones
Speaker 2: who had built the practice into the architecture of their days.
Speaker 2: The afternoon brought the others, the curious, the passing through,
Speaker 2: the ones who came at odd seasons of their lives.
Speaker 2: Aroon loved the afternoon sessions for their unpredictability. You never
Speaker 2: knew who would come up the path to day. There
Speaker 2: were three. The first was a man named Tomas, a
Speaker 2: carpenter from the town, perhaps fifty years old, broad shouldered
Speaker 2: and weathered, with forearms like rope and hands that told
Speaker 2: the whole story of his working life. Scarred and thickened,
Speaker 2: the knuckles swollen, the fingers slightly crooked from decades of
Speaker 2: gripping tools. He had been coming on and off for
Speaker 2: a year ever since his hands had begun to ache
Speaker 2: badly enough to worry air. Since a doctor had used
Speaker 2: the word arthritis and the word rest in the same sentence,
Speaker 2: which de Tomas had sounded like a small surrender. He
Speaker 2: came Aroun understood not for enlightenment, but for his hands,
Speaker 2: to sit with them, to be with a body that
Speaker 2: was changing, to make friends with the future he had
Speaker 2: not chosen. He sat heavily on his cushion and laid
Speaker 2: his hands palm up on his thighs, as he always did,
Speaker 2: and they rested there like two tired animals, and gradually,
Speaker 2: as the session went on, the fingers would soften and open,
Speaker 2: and the lines of discomfort around his eyes would ease.
Speaker 2: The second was a woman named Grace, a high school
Speaker 2: teacher in her forties on summer break, tanned and unhurried
Speaker 2: in a way she clearly was not during the school year.
Speaker 2: She had arrived two weeks into her holiday, looking by
Speaker 2: her own cheerful lifes admission like a person who had
Speaker 2: forgotten how to stop. I stood in my kitchen for
Speaker 2: twenty minutes the first morning of break, she had told Aroon,
Speaker 2: because I couldn't remember what people do when they aren't
Speaker 2: doing anything. She was a natural sitter once she stopped,
Speaker 2: and she came now most afternoons, and a Roon had
Speaker 2: watched her slow down day by day, like a wheel
Speaker 2: spinning down each session, a little quieter, a little more
Speaker 2: at ease, her face, reclaiming some softness that September always
Speaker 2: took away. The third was a girl of perhaps sixteen,
Speaker 2: who came in looking like a person executing a difficult favor.
Speaker 2: She wore a black sweatshirt despite the warmth of the day,
Speaker 2: and had the guarded, watchful expression of someone prepared to
Speaker 2: find the whole thing ridiculous. She introduced herself in a
Speaker 2: mumble as Sam, and added with the air of someone
Speaker 2: making a full and honest disclosure. My grandmother made me come.
Speaker 2: She said it helped her when she was my age.
Speaker 2: I said I'd try it once. She said this last
Speaker 2: part with emphasis once, and Arun smiled and said that
Speaker 2: once was an excellent number, a traditional number, in fact,
Speaker 2: the only number anyone ever started with. This got the
Speaker 2: faintest flicker of a smile, quickly suppressed. She took a
Speaker 2: cushion at the edge of the circle where she could
Speaker 2: see the door, which ourone noted and respected. Everyone deserves
Speaker 2: an exit. Half of trust is knowing you can leave.
Speaker 2: He struck the bowl. The sound rose in the warm
Speaker 2: afternoon air, deeper somehow in the heat of the day,
Speaker 2: round her unhurried, and Roon watched it do its quiet work.
Speaker 2: He watched Thomas's hands pall up on his thighs and
Speaker 2: saw the fingers soften. He watched Grace settle like sediment
Speaker 2: in still water, layer by layer, And he watched Sam
Speaker 2: watched her brace against the sound for the first few breaths,
Speaker 2: watched her jaw work as some stubbornness in her refused
Speaker 2: to be impressed, And then watched with enormous gentleness and
Speaker 2: no surprise at all, as the resonance moved through her anyway,
Speaker 2: beneath her defenses, under the whole scaffolding of sixteen year
Speaker 2: old armor, and her shoulders came down, and her breathing deepened,
Speaker 2: and her face, when he glanced again some minutes later,
Speaker 2: had become the face of a child asleep in back
Speaker 2: seat of a car, open and undefended and at peace.
Speaker 2: He said almost nothing that session. The afternoon light did
Speaker 2: most of the teaching. It came through the western windows,
Speaker 2: now long and amber, and filled the hall with a
Speaker 2: gold so thick it seemed you could rest your hand
Speaker 2: on it. The dust motes drifted the bull's closing tone
Speaker 2: faded into a silence so complete that the sound of
Speaker 2: a single bee blundering against a window pane seemed enormous,
Speaker 2: and everyone smiled at it, and the session ended in
Speaker 2: quiet laughter, which was also a good way to end.
Speaker 2: Sam left without saying much, but at the door she
Speaker 2: paused and looked back at the bowl on its red
Speaker 2: cushion and said, with the air of some one conceding
Speaker 2: a point in an argument, it was ok. And then
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the steps, barely audible to no one,
Speaker 2: I might come back. A roon watering the herbs by
Speaker 2: the porch heard it and smiled into the time. His
Speaker 2: teacher's voice came back to him across the decades, as
Speaker 2: it often did. People think we teach meditation. The bowl teaches,
Speaker 2: we just set out the cushions. Tomas stayed a moment longer.
Speaker 2: He stood before the low table, flexing his big hands slowly,
Speaker 2: looking at them the way one looks at old friends
Speaker 2: one has been worried about. They don't hurt right now,
Speaker 2: he said, with the cautious wonder of a man afraid
Speaker 2: to say it too loudly. First time in weeks, first
Speaker 2: time in months. Maybe he shook his head slowly. I
Speaker 2: don't understand it. You don't have to, Aroon said. Understanding
Speaker 2: is one kind of knowing. There are others. Tomas considered this,
Speaker 2: turned it over like a piece of wood, checking the grain.
Speaker 2: Then he nodded, put on his hat and went down
Speaker 2: the path through the pines, walking a room, noticed a
Speaker 2: little more slowly than he had come. The hours between
Speaker 2: afternoon and evening were the hall's own private time and
Speaker 2: a roon. He swept the wooden floor with a soft broom, slowly,
Speaker 2: enjoying the small ritual of it, the whisper of the bristles,
Speaker 2: the gathering of the day's dust into a single, small pile,
Speaker 2: the way the floor emerged from the sweeping somehow brighter,
Speaker 2: as though it had been paid a kindness. He closed
Speaker 2: the eastern windows against the cooling air and opened the
Speaker 2: western ones to the long light. He refilled the bird feeder,
Speaker 2: scattering a few seeds on the ground beneath it for
Speaker 2: the toehees, who preferred to eat at floor level, being
Speaker 2: in their way humble birds. He brought in an armful
Speaker 2: of split wood and stacked it by the stove. Though
Speaker 2: the evening would be mild, the habit of readiness, was
Speaker 2: old and pleasant. He made tea, a different tea, now,
Speaker 2: a roasted barley tea his friend in town had given him,
Speaker 2: dark and toasty and faintly sweet, the taste of late
Speaker 2: summer afternoons. And he sat for a while on the
Speaker 2: porch with the bowl. He did this sometimes in the
Speaker 2: quiet hours, carried the bowl outside in its cloth wrapping,
Speaker 2: and unwrapped it and simply sat with it in his
Speaker 2: lap like a cat. He did not strike it. He
Speaker 2: ran his thumb along the rim, sometimes feeling the faint
Speaker 2: hammer marks. And he thought about the old craftsman in
Speaker 2: his mountain village, dead now for a century or more,
Speaker 2: whose hands had made this thing, and whose name was lost,
Speaker 2: and whose work was still at this very moment, changing
Speaker 2: the lives of carpenters and teenagers and tired young nurses
Speaker 2: in a valley and ocean away from where he had lived.
Speaker 2: The craftsman would never know he had hammered his hundreds
Speaker 2: of blows, sung his songs over the cooling metal, if
Speaker 2: the story was true, and sent the bull out into
Speaker 2: the world like a letter with no address, trusting it
Speaker 2: to arrive where it was needed. It had been traveling
Speaker 2: ever since it was traveling still. Some day he knew
Speaker 2: it would travel on from him too. His teacher's words
Speaker 2: came back to him, it is alone, you will give
Speaker 2: it to some one else, And he wondered, as he
Speaker 2: sometimes wondered, who it would be. He watched the afternoon
Speaker 2: light move across the meadow and felt no anxiety about
Speaker 2: it at all. The bull would tell him. Bulls were
Speaker 2: better at these things than people were. He thought of
Speaker 2: his teacher, who had been dead now for nine years.
Speaker 2: He thought of her the way he always thought of her,
Speaker 2: not with grief, exactly, but with a kind of warm
Speaker 2: and spacious gratitude, the way you think of some one
Speaker 2: who is, in some real sense still in the room.
Speaker 2: She had given him the bull and the hall had
Speaker 2: given him a life, and the life had given him
Speaker 2: ten thousand mornings like this one. And he could not
Speaker 2: locate anywhere in himself a single thing he would trade.
Speaker 2: The sun lowered toward the ridge. The light through the
Speaker 2: pines went from gold to amber to something deeper, a
Speaker 2: glowing rose gold that set the tips of the trees alight,
Speaker 2: and the shadows of the trunk stretched all the way
Speaker 2: across the meadow, and the first coolness of evening came
Speaker 2: down off the high slopes like slow water. Iron carried
Speaker 2: the bowl back inside, set it on its red cushion,
Speaker 2: lit the paper lanterns one by one, and the hall
Speaker 2: glowed like a lantern itself. Wore at the heart of
Speaker 2: the darkening valley. The evening session and was always the
Speaker 2: smallest and the deepest. Only four came to night. Walter,
Speaker 2: who often returned for the evening sit the day's bookends.
Speaker 2: He called the two sessions. Rosa, the summer visitor, who
Speaker 2: had taken to the practice the way dry ground takes rain, Helen,
Speaker 2: the retired school teacher, who said the evening sits helped
Speaker 2: her sleep better than anything in sixty years. And Claire,
Speaker 2: which surprised him. She had never come to an evening
Speaker 2: session before. She came in quietly, still in her soft
Speaker 2: gray sweater, and he saw that the tiredness in her
Speaker 2: eyes had a different quality to night, softer, less defended.
Speaker 2: She took her cushion by the window and folded her hands,
Speaker 2: and when she caught Aroone's eye, she gave him a
Speaker 2: small smile that said, without words, I needed one more.
Speaker 2: He nodded. No explanation was ever required here. The cushions
Speaker 2: did not ask questions. The evening session was held mostly
Speaker 2: in silence and in candlelight. A roon lit three beeswax
Speaker 2: candles and set them in the center of the circle
Speaker 2: and turned down the lanterns, and the hall became a
Speaker 2: cave of warm, flickering dimness, the beams overhead lost in dimness,
Speaker 2: the windows gone black and reflective, holding small, doubled flames outside.
Speaker 2: The last light died on the ridge, and the pines
Speaker 2: faded into the dark, and the first stars came out,
Speaker 2: fate at first, and then gathering, the way an audience
Speaker 2: gathers as a performance begins. A roon struck the bull
Speaker 2: in the daylight hall. The sound was warm water, filling
Speaker 2: the room evenly at night. It was something else, something
Speaker 2: older and stranger and more intimate. It rose out of
Speaker 2: the candle light dimness, like the voice of the valley itself,
Speaker 2: deep and round and slow, and it seemed to carry
Speaker 2: the whole day inside it, the mist and the bird song,
Speaker 2: the bees and the lemon balm, the carpenter's hands, the
Speaker 2: teenager's surrender, the long gold of the afternoon. The harmonics
Speaker 2: shimmered in the dim air like the heat shimmer above
Speaker 2: a road, and when the tone began its long, slow fade,
Speaker 2: it did not fade into silence, but into the night,
Speaker 2: into the sound of the creek and the wind, and
Speaker 2: the pines, and the small ticking of the cooling stove,
Speaker 2: as though the bull's voice were dissolving into the voices
Speaker 2: of the world, which had been singing all along, underneath
Speaker 2: everything too quiet to hear. Until now they sat for
Speaker 2: a long time. No one spoke, not even Roon. The
Speaker 2: candles burned lower. Once an owl called from the forest,
Speaker 2: three soft notes, a pause, three more, and the sound
Speaker 2: came through the open western windows and laid itself across
Speaker 2: the silence like a shawl. Walter's breathing deepened into something
Speaker 2: near sleep, and a Roon led it. He had long
Speaker 2: ago stopped distinguishing between meditation and the honest rest of
Speaker 2: an old man. At the end of a day. Rosa
Speaker 2: sat utterly still, with tears sliding unhurriedly down her face,
Speaker 2: not sad tears. A Roon knew the difference, had seen
Speaker 2: both kinds over thirty years, and she did not wipe
Speaker 2: them away, and no one commented, and they dried on
Speaker 2: their own the way rain dries off stone. When the
Speaker 2: time came, Roon lifted the bowl a final time. He
Speaker 2: held it in his open palm in the candlelight, and
Speaker 2: looked at it, the honeyed bronze, the hammer marks, the
Speaker 2: rim worn bright by thirty years of his own mournings
Speaker 2: and by mornings before his. And he felt, as he
Speaker 2: sometimes felt at the end of the last session of
Speaker 2: the day, a great wave of quiet affection for the thing,
Speaker 2: and through it, for the long chain of hands, the craftsman,
Speaker 2: the teacher, the students, the hands that had built the barn,
Speaker 2: the hands that had plained the floorboards, the hands that
Speaker 2: had stitched the cushions and knitted his socks and hammered
Speaker 2: the bowl in a mountain village a hundred years ago,
Speaker 2: all of them present, all of them, in some small way,
Speaker 2: in the sound that was about to rise. He struck
Speaker 2: it gently and let the tone bloom one last time.
Speaker 2: It filled the hall, and the candle light dark, and
Speaker 2: the circle of quiet people, and it faded slowly, slowly,
Speaker 2: the way the light had faded from the ridge, the
Speaker 2: way the day fades from the body at the approach
Speaker 2: of sleep, by degrees, without loss, without any moment you
Speaker 2: could point to and say there. That is when it ended.
Speaker 2: It thinned to a thread, and finer than a thread,
Speaker 2: and it was gone, and the silence it left behind
Speaker 2: was vast and warm and complete, a silence you could
Speaker 2: wrap around yourself. One by one without a word. The
Speaker 2: students rose, They bowed to a ruin, and he bowed back,
Speaker 2: and they moved to the door in the soft dark,
Speaker 2: putting on their shoes, murmuring their good nights. Walter paused
Speaker 2: and laid his hand flat on the door frame for
Speaker 2: a moment, the way one pats the shoulder of a friend,
Speaker 2: and then went out into the starlight. Claire was the
Speaker 2: last to leave. At the threshold, she turned and said quietly,
Speaker 2: I think to night, I'll actually sleep. And Aroon said
Speaker 2: sleep well, Claire, and she went down the path with
Speaker 2: a small flashlight bobbing, and the light disappeared among the pines,
Speaker 2: and he was alone. He did not leave the hall.
Speaker 2: He snuffed two of the candles and let the third
Speaker 2: burn low. He sat back down on his cushion before
Speaker 2: the low table in the near dark, and he did
Speaker 2: something he had done nearly every night for thirty years,
Speaker 2: something no one had ever seen him do. He listened
Speaker 2: to the bowl, not to its sound. The sound was gone.
Speaker 2: He listened to the place where the sound had been.
Speaker 2: He had discovered long ago, in the first year he
Speaker 2: had the bowl, that if you sat quietly enough in
Speaker 2: a quiet enough room, the resonance seemed to linger far
Speaker 2: past the point where the ear could follow it. Perhaps
Speaker 2: it was imagination, Perhaps it was memory, the body remembering
Speaker 2: what the ear had heard. Or perhaps, as he had
Speaker 2: come to believe, sound never truly ended at all. It
Speaker 2: only grew finer and finer, spreading outward, thinning into the walls,
Speaker 2: the floorboards, the beams, the pines, the mountain, until it
Speaker 2: was everywhere and therefore inaudible, the way the whole sky
Speaker 2: is invisible at noon because there is too much light
Speaker 2: to see. He sat and listened to that, to the
Speaker 2: echo of the echo, to the ringing of the silence,
Speaker 2: to the day dissolving into stillness, until the listening and
Speaker 2: the stillness were the same thing, and there was no
Speaker 2: longer any difference between the bowl and the room, and
Speaker 2: the night and himself. The candle burned down to its
Speaker 2: pool and went out on its own, with a tiny
Speaker 2: curl of smoke that he smelled more than saw bees,
Speaker 2: wax and wick, a homely smell, a bedtime smell. The
Speaker 2: hall was dark now except for the starlight through the
Speaker 2: western windows, which laid faint, pale bars across the floor,
Speaker 2: mirror images of the golden bars of morning, the full
Speaker 2: circle of the day, he thought, sitting in the dark.
Speaker 2: It began in light and ended in light, just a
Speaker 2: different light. At last, he rose, his knees, protested mildly,
Speaker 2: and he thanked them for their long service, as he
Speaker 2: did most nights, Half in jest and entirely in earnest.
Speaker 2: He closed and matched the windows, one by one, and
Speaker 2: with each one the night sounds grew fainter, until only
Speaker 2: the faintest thread of the creek remained, and then not
Speaker 2: even that. He checked the stove. The fire burned low,
Speaker 2: banked for the night, its coals settling into the deep
Speaker 2: slow glow that would keep one ember alive until morning.
Speaker 2: One ember was all he needed. One ember was all
Speaker 2: he had ever needed. He took one last look around
Speaker 2: the dark hall, the cushions in their circle, the blankets
Speaker 2: folded on the bench, the lanterns hanging like pale moons,
Speaker 2: the bowl on its red cushion at the far end,
Speaker 2: invisible now, but present, more present somehow for being unseen.
Speaker 2: And he bowed to the room a small bough, barely
Speaker 2: more than a nod, the way one says good night
Speaker 2: to an old friend across a quiet room. Then he
Speaker 2: climbed the stairs. He climbed them slowly, one at a time,
Speaker 2: his hand trailing along the wall, polished by all the
Speaker 2: hands before his. And at the top he entered his
Speaker 2: small room and closed the door. The room was cool,
Speaker 2: the window open a few inches, and through the opening
Speaker 2: came the night air of the mountain, washed and cold
Speaker 2: and sweet with pine, and the very faint sound of
Speaker 2: the wind high in the trees, that long, soft breathing
Speaker 2: of the mountain, rising and falling. He folded his clothes
Speaker 2: over the chair, he pulled back the wool blankets, and
Speaker 2: before he got into bed, he stood for a moment
Speaker 2: at the window, as he ended every day the way
Speaker 2: he began it, looking out The sky over the ridge
Speaker 2: was full of stars, not scattered, but poured, dense and drifty.
Speaker 2: The whole pale river of the galaxy laid across the
Speaker 2: night sky, from one ridge to the other, so many
Speaker 2: stars that the blackness between them seemed the exception. The
Speaker 2: mountain stood black beneath them, solid and sleeping somewhere far off.
Speaker 2: The owl called once more, three soft notes, and was
Speaker 2: answered fainter from farther up the valley. And Iran stood
Speaker 2: and listened to the small exchange until it was finished,
Speaker 2: and the night settled back into its enormous quiet. He
Speaker 2: thought of the day behind him, the ember and the stove,
Speaker 2: the mist and the pines, Claire's shoulders coming down, Walter's
Speaker 2: slow smile, mirror's small finger on the warm rim of
Speaker 2: the bowl, the carpenter's painless hands, the teenager's quiet I
Speaker 2: might come back, the candles, the owl, the mong last
Speaker 2: fading of the tone into silence. An ordinary day, thirty
Speaker 2: years of ordinary days, and not one of them wasted,
Speaker 2: and not one of them the same. He got into
Speaker 2: bed and drew the blankets up, and the mattress received
Speaker 2: him the way the earth receives rain, without comment, without resistance.
Speaker 2: The room was dark and cool, and smelled faintly of
Speaker 2: cedar rising up through the floorboards from the hall below,
Speaker 2: where the bowl sat in the stillness on its red cushion, silent,
Speaker 2: now holding its voice. The way the mountain holds the
Speaker 2: morning mist, keeping it patiently for whenever it was needed. Next,
Speaker 2: a Roon lay on his back and let his breathing slow.
Speaker 2: He felt the days warmth still in his muscles, the
Speaker 2: sun on his back from the garden, the weight of
Speaker 2: the bowl, and his palm as though he had only
Speaker 2: just set it down. He listened to the wind and
Speaker 2: the pines until he could no longer tell it apart
Speaker 2: from his own breathing, And he listened to his own
Speaker 2: bath until he could no longer tell it apart from
Speaker 2: the silence, and the silence up been beneath him like
Speaker 2: deep warm water, and he let himself sink. Somewhere below
Speaker 2: in the dark hall, The last faint resonance of the
Speaker 2: evening bell faded into the wooden beams, and the beams
Speaker 2: passed it to the walls, and the walls to the
Speaker 2: earth beneath, and the earth to the mountain, and the
Speaker 2: mountain to the night, and the night to the stars,
Speaker 2: and Aaron slept