Authors: Christine Lemmon
“That’s easy. I keep my apartment immaculate, meaning not a single sofa cushion can be out of place, and when it does get messy, I clean it immediately, before relaxing if I’m tired and before eating if I’m hungry.”
“The world will never reward you enough for your attempted perfection because it will continuously demand more on a daily basis, so you may as well surrender your quest for perfection now, at this age, before you become a slave to pleasing something that will never be pleased. You will burn yourself out, leaving no time for true joy.”
“Ruth?”
“Yes, dear?”
“I simply asked you why you came to the island.”
“Join me for an hour of yoga one of these nights, and I’ll show you. We all have our stories, and we all like sharing them.”
She knew there was only one path on the entire island, and she had already traveled it once with Denver, and again on her way to the restaurant. It would be simple to walk in the dark, she thought, but the others had warned her differently, and now she knew what they meant. The path
seemed much longer in the dark. It felt like it took a couple of years to walk from the restaurant to the bonfire site, then another couple of decades to pass the picnic table, and another forty years to reach the lighthouse tower, and then she had to leave the path to venture to the staff house. “It’s a choice,” she mumbled to herself, recalling what Denver had told her. “It’s not a stop on the path. It’s a choice
off
the beaten path, and it’s a choice I’ve made.”
Her arms, shoulders, back, and legs ached as if she had just run the senior citizen’s four-hundred-meter low hurdles and skidded into the finish line. As she walked up the steps to Old Mr. Two-face, she trembled because, at night, with the black shadows from the moving palms hitting its back and the rippling reflection of the gulf hitting its front side, he looked more like Old Mr. Schizophrenic.
Once inside her room, she shut her door and, for a moment, felt safe, like a bug hiding inside an azalea’s fuchsia petals just before they open. Then she turned the lights on and saw the hideous-colored room, so she turned them off again and lit a candle instead. She walked over to the tiny round window and peeked out at the black water. From the tiny piece of land she stood on, she stared way out into the Gulf of Mexico, which at night looked very dark. She hoped there weren’t any big waves out there, waves big enough to wash over the island and kill Old. Mr. Two-face.
Looking out at the water made her feel so small and out of control that she knew she’d be happier in a room on the other side of the staff house, facing the trees instead.
She couldn’t control her insomnia or her breathing or her ever-so-urgent desire to get down on her hands and knees and scrub the dirty floor of her new room.
She walked into the bathroom in search of a mop or broom that might serve the purpose, but after standing there, staring at nothing but ants in bumper-to-bumper traffic from the floor to the sink, she changed her plans.
She plopped down onto the mattress on the floor and slowly pulled Denver’s torn bed sheet over the yellow-stained mattress. She opened the never-ending letter to her grandmother.
Dear Grandma
,
Here I am, my first night on this island called Tarpon Key. I feel lonely, and all I have are my own annoying thoughts to keep me company. Is there no escaping ourselves? With no lock on my door, I also feel threatened and somewhat paranoid, as if I can’t protect that same self that annoys me. I hear a lot of voices down the hall, but I plan to stick to myself out here and just make money. I don’t want, or need, to get close to these people
.
I’ll learn their names, and that’s all. I do believe a woman can be an island of her own, and I will prove so this summer
.
As for my crazy panic symptoms, I thought that if I kept busy and forgot about my fear of death, they’d go away. Well, life is one big trial and error, so I’m still looking for something that might work
.
Now I hear someone playing the guitar. It must be Denver. He works in the kitchen, washing dishes and cleaning. His lyrics are kind of redundant. He’s singing over and over that, “Life is so hard, life is so hard.” I wonder why life is so hard for him? I also wonder if these people ever sleep? I guess I don’t mind if they don’t! Goodness, I should love people who don’t sleep. In my own freaky manner, I’m one of them
.
Today, a few of the cooks and Ray the bartender made similar comments to me. One, who has a wild-looking black mustache, said I look so “clean-cut.” Another called me “proper.” I’ve never thought of myself as clean-cut and proper. Then again, I’ve never been around so many men with ponytails and wild mustaches. Well, I’ll just stay in my room with my door shut every night, and they’ll think I’m sleeping
.
Hey, I really am on a remote tropical island!
P.S. Will you be my guardian angel? I understand man is above angels in the heavenly hierarchy and God employs the angels, but will you ask God for a favor? Ask him if you can be my angel for a while. Thanks, Gram
.
Vicki closed the letter then and, as if preparing for an exam, she reread all the watering notes she had taken from Ruth before memorizing the dinner menu, which featured fresh broiled fish and shrimp steamed in beer, and entrees ranging from sixteen to twenty dollars. There was no printed menu. Instead, the wait staff recited it by memory to the guests. She practiced out loud several times, unsure how to pronounce halibut, and started to walk down the hall to knock on someone’s door for help, but then she turned around. She didn’t want to be with anyone right now, so she settled on her own pronunciation.
She tried to fall asleep but knew she wouldn’t, so with a few minutes left before midnight, she grabbed a flashlight and ran out Mr. Front Door. She picked up the trail like one might the subway. She got off at the very next stop, the old dock at the back end of the island, a stop that Denver claimed to be yet another major step on the journey.
Even in the dark of night, with nothing but a flashlight and help from the moon, the dock looked weak and frail, something only a ghost could safely stand on.
“Hi, Ruth. I’m accepting your invitation,” she said as she carefully stepped onto the dock. There were boards missing here and there, and it stood a couple of inches above the black, murky water.
“Well, that was sooner than I expected. Here, I’ll give you a hand,” said Ruth.
“This is the boat you practice yoga on? Will it actually hold two people?”
It looked like a piece of cardboard floating in the water. Ruth stood confidently on it, belonging there the way a fish belongs in an aquarium.
“It’s old, wobbly, and hopefully safe. It will challenge your balance,” said Ruth as she held her hand out to Vicki. “The story goes that this boat
belonged to John Bark and his wife when they first arrived on the island. Apparently, they slept on it while building their home. I’m sure it looked like a houseboat back then. The house part of it has since been removed, and no one wants to get rid of the rest. It’s a part of the island, and a great spot for yoga.”
Ruth grabbed a mat and unrolled it a few feet away. “On nights like tonight, we have the full moon to light our way. Sometimes, when it’s cloudy, I’ll practice yoga out here with nothing but a few candles lit,” she said. “Now let’s get started.”
Ruth stretched her arms like the branches of a tree swaying in a gentle breeze, leaning to the left to listen to a secret, then leaning to the right to share that secret, not saying a thing, just making a whispery sound in her throat. Vicki imitated the movements to the best of her ability, self-conscious that there were no mirrors to look into for reassurance.
“Do what feels best for you. Use me as a guide, but don’t try to do exactly as I am doing,” said Ruth. “I don’t use mirrors when I practice yoga because I like to focus on how I feel, not look.”
As she stretched her arms slowly over her head, Vicki’s mind rushed from thoughts of her dirty room to items she needed to buy back on the mainland to the greasy hamburger she had eaten for dinner. She promised she would bleach the floor tomorrow night, buy potpourri on her days off and skip the key lime pie tomorrow night.
“Hold this pose, and close your eyes, Vicki, and bring your awareness inward, thinking about who you are, who you want to be, not what the world wants of you. There is much wasted energy in our minds. Our thoughts can become out of control at times. Yoga helps you quiet your mind from this over-flooding of chitter-chatter. This will, in turn, relax your body.”
Vicki noticed an unstoppable conveyor belt of thoughts moving quickly through her mind. She tried stopping the conveyor belt and the thoughts, but it must have been running on Duracell batteries that wouldn’t die. Her twenties were full of pressures to discover who she was in life, what she would do professionally, how she was going to survive financially, how she would stay fit physically, and who she would end up with romantically.
She saw her past decisions making their way like cereal boxes down the conveyor belt, and she noticed herself yanking many of them off before they reached the cashier. There were so many brands to choose from that it made her shopping an overwhelming experience. She looked forward to her thirties because, by then, she would hopefully have a few favorite cereals and the decisions would be over. She’d have her career, her income, her workout regime, and her husband.
“We cannot always control life, but we can always control our breathing, said Ruth. “Now this is the Standing Forward Bend,” she added softly. “Never stop breathing. Close your mouth and breathe through your nose, making a quiet sound in your throat. That’s it. Making this sound will help you control the flow of your breath. Very good.”
Vicki wanted badly to open her mouth and breathe, fearful that she might suffocate with it shut. She wasn’t a fish, and she didn’t have gills, so why should she breathe with her mouth shut? Was Ruth trying to kill her? As she attempted the sound in the back of her throat that Ruth wanted her to make, she felt an allergic reaction to yoga and a hypersensitivity to her own breathing. She had to stop, or it might kill her.
“Listen to the sound of your breath, Vicki. It should be constant. Inhale as we raise our arms, and exhale as we lower. Try not to breathe out too quickly. Avoid the slightest strain and don’t push too hard.”
Vicki felt like a tree standing on a sand dune on the brink of immediate erosion, her branches shaking and her trunk devoured by ants. She glanced at Ruth, grounded and still, and felt concerned that if she fell out of pose, so too might it disrupt Ruth.
“Get to know your breath, because it will tell you about yourself. Some days your breathing pace will be shorter and other days it will be faster,” said Ruth calmly, as she bent down and let her arms hang toward the wooden floor of the houseboat. “Try to coordinate your movement with your breathing pace. Now doesn’t that feel good, natural?”
Vicki could stand it no longer. The movements were simple, but the combination of the breathing and the attention given to it made her feel like a key lime tree carrying coconuts. “No!” she blurted out, in a tone as sour as an immature key lime. She fell out of the pose and collapsed on the
ground as hard as a coconut falls. “I don’t feel good, Ruth. I think I’m sick. I’ve got a headache. I can’t do this anymore.”
Ruth came out of her pose without looking alarmed or disappointed at all.
“I feel ridiculous,” added Vicki. “I don’t know why I have trouble with the breathing part. I guess the slow breathing was a shock to my system.”
“My guess is that you’re always speeding through life. Am I right?”
“Yes,” she answered, a conductor confident that her interpretation of life and the speed at which to live it had been the
only
interpretation. Slowing down had never crossed her mind.
“How would you describe your daily life? First thing that comes to mind.” Ruth sat on the floor with her legs twisted like roots of a banyon tree.
“A dot-to-dot from one errand to the next on a never-ending daily list of things to do.”
“What a place to live!”
“What do you mean by
place
?”
“We build our own dwellings, Vicki. We can live inside a shack that is constantly threatened by this and that and always in danger of tumbling down, or we can live in a fortress.”
Vicki laughed. “What are you talking about? You live in that old bungalow I passed on the trail.”
“No, Vicki, I live in a castle, but I once lived in a shack.”
“I’m listening, Ruth. I’m trying to understand this one,” mused Vicki.
“I worked many years on Wall Street.”
“A stockbroker?”
“No, administrative assistant to a group of stockbrokers in a gorgeous skyscraper. I answered phones and took messages with the same intensity you see in my scrubbing tables. The piles on my desk formed skyscrapers of their own, and I never turned down a single task. I didn’t know how to say ‘no,’ and that went for both my private and career lives. There was never an end to the things I had to do. My back ached from the inactivity of sitting at a desk all day. Soak in a nice hot bath? Forget it. Enjoy lunch outside on a park bench? No way. What were the colors of a sunset? I
couldn’t tell you back then. I used to show up in my cubicle before the sun rose, and I’d leave after it set. My eyes burned from staring into a computer screen for hours. I was the superhero Java Queen, until one day I started feeling achy all over, and it didn’t go away. I went to doctors without getting any diagnosis, and it stressed me because I didn’t have time for that, my health, of all things. I had too much to do. It didn’t strike me until I got out here that I was spending my health making money, then spending my money getting my health back.”