Day Two: Prayers to the Woodblock Frog

It’s Day 2, and I want an Ashram. I want to chant Ham-sa over and over again, in India, like Elizabeth Gilbert. I want to become a devotee of something. Myself, maybe. I will set up an altar in the living room, where I will kneel every day and pray to my little woodblock guiro frog: “Oh venerable frog,” I might say, “in absence of some other physical representation of the divine, maybe you could help me figure out precisely what I should be praying for this time.”

The frog probably won’t say anything, but then, I wouldn’t expect him to. It’s crazy enough talking to a guiro frog without expecting it to actually console you.

This is in spite of the fact that, the previous night, my best friend tried to console me with the story of his rosebush again. It didn’t stick. This morning, I woke up to the sun streaming in through the windows, and wanted to be as far away from this place as I could. India might not be far enough. This is not geographical. (I have been a long-time subscriber to the belief that there is no such thing as a geographical cure.) Really, it’s just that there is no longitude or latitude that will carry me far enough away from me.

It is not that I have lost myself. I have not. I did not. I discovered more facets of myself with him (certainly, not all of them good) than I did with anyone. And yet, I find that I do not know what I want, and my previous attempts to define it seemed to have resulted in miserable failures. I thought I knew. I really did. And so I asked for it, quite blithely. And yet, here at the end, I realize that my wants are muddled, at best. They are a collection of mismatched items. They are gross contradictions. They are bits and pieces of tattered things that do not fit together to form a coherent whole. This is what Ashrams are good for. Battling the ego. Fighting it with a gleaming sword until it is suitably chastened. Then getting down to ground level and digging up the weeds so that you can actually see what you’ve got down there—whether you can plant anything in it or if it’s pretty well drained of nutrients and you’ve got to burn everything and start again.

I had to pause in the middle of that thought to call a lawn service company. I maintained a very professional tone of voice while inquiring about their rates, which was amazing, considering that making the call makes me want to weep. (Truthfully, everything makes me want to weep. It’s fairly tiresome.) I am the mistress of this enormous house, whose total square footage I have no use for. I am the mistress of the lawn. I am the mistress of the bills. I am the mistress of three floors of emptiness.

Deal with it, I tell myself. I will learn to love this house.

Back to the rosebush. My best friend reminds me that he has named his rosebush after me. He likes to bring this up from time to time. I’m amazed that it’s still alive, but that’s the point. He said when he first bought his house (the Chickenshack, as he affectionately calls it), the rosebush was so overwrought with weeds that he would have missed it had it not been for the fattest most beautiful blooms sticking up through the tangle. It was being choked out by all of the things around it trying to take more than their fair share of space, yet there it was, just the same. Brave little thing. He always says I wasn’t dealt a fair hand. Life gave me shit, and I used it for fertilizer. “Look at you,” he says. “You own a business, and you kept it going through 9/11 and a recession. You’re smart. You’re funny. You’re beautiful. You’re generous. Most people, coming from your background, would have turned out shit. But you, you turned out roses.”

And I nod my head. “That’s nice of you to say,” but what I really mean is, Rosebush, hell. More like cactus.

Actually, I feel like Frodo. I feel like I’ve carried a ring to Mount Doom, and I’ve thrown it in (but really, I didn’t—because I was still kind of planning on keeping it all along), and now, I’m just standing there in a daze, expecting that those massive jets of lava or the collapsing rock will finish me off, and really, that feels a-okay. “Here at the end of all things,” right? (Which, I realize, is an absurdly melodramatic thing to think. But letting go when you do and don’t want to is incredibly fertile soil for melodrama.)

So, the ring is destroyed. Now is the return to normal life. Only, that’s impossible. I’m not Samwise. I will have to go off with the Elves. I can’t do Normal.

And that’s the heart of the matter. The part that has gotten me into this mess. Normal frightens me. I was raised to believe that Normal was something for those people who were not exceptional. Rather, that Normal was not fertile soil for growing what becomes exceptional. Somehow normal meant soccer mom’s driving SUVs and trips to Dairy Queen. (Nothing against soccer mom’s or Dairy Queen. Honest. Please don’t write me pissed off letters. Soccer is lovely. And Dairy Queen is delicious.) It’s just—

Normal. Equals. Death of the creative spirit.

But St. Raphael—You still there, buddy?—says I may want to take another look at this equation. He thinks I may have it all wrong. He thinks I’ve confused SNAFU with NORMAL. He thinks I’m forgetting about Venn diagrams again.

And he’s probably right. Math was never my strong suit.