The Lightness Page 5

  “For what?” I said.

  “The Feeling,” she said, as if that clarified anything at all.

  We followed her out of the tent and away from the clearing, along an almost imperceptible path that eventually sloped upward to a small platform made of rock, flat and open like a palm. An overhang loomed on one side, creating a sort of shallow cave, but the rest was wholly exposed, like a bald spot the mountain was failing to conceal. Serena unfolded her flashlight into a lantern. Janet spread a blanket on the rock, and Laurel dropped a large bag onto it.

  I felt a little dizzy again. I had no idea how high up we were. I took a few exploratory steps toward the dark perimeter, but Serena caught my arm. “Stay away from the edge,” she said. “Trust me, you wouldn’t want to fall from here.” I stopped and searched the striated darkness, but it was impossible to see the place where rock became air. The edge could have been anywhere. She pulled me toward what I hoped was the center of the platform and we sat.

  Janet called it sounds that feel good. Laurel called it a brain-gasm. We are what we think, Serena said, and the other girls closed their eyes. I pretended to close mine too, but really I watched as Janet drummed her fingers softly along the edge of a wooden box. Laurel rubbed a small piece of fabric between her fingers. Serena dragged her thumbnail along an old wooden comb, creating a neutral xylophonic clicking. I sat. I listened. For a while I felt nothing. But when I closed my eyes at last and focused hard on the sound coming from Serena’s comb, something started climbing up my back.

  How can I explain this? It will never make sense to you unless you’ve felt it. But here: it was as though there were strings connecting my ears to my tailbone in a giant V, strings that had always been there but that I had never noticed before, and then the strings lit up, ting, ting, ting, and grew denser, then brighter, and sour somehow, and then something was knitting itself between the strings like a web, snick, snick, something feathery, sneaky, warm. It wasn’t sexual, nor was it wholly unsexual. It felt like the shiver you get when someone massages your scalp with too light a touch and you’re both enjoying it and desperately reaching out with your very skin and hair for more—except distended and stretched, filling your head with the feeling of an itch being scratched, or almost scratched, an itch you didn’t even know you had there, there on the hot red underside of your scalp.

  Years later, I found out that the Feeling is a documented phenomenon, and was not, as I had thought, a magic specific to us—look how quick I am to say us, foolish thing—alone. The official term for it is ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response), and the little alternative versions of us who practice it these days get their Feelings via YouTube clips, watching some wispy woman with a soft voice apply makeup to her face, or click her long fingernails together, or name everything in the room in a frantic whisper. In one video, a slim-nosed blonde with a German accent fits a wig onto her camera so she can give the viewer a haircut. She combs the limp bangs that hang across the lens. She snips at them with a pair of sewing scissors. Can you feel it? she asks. Can you feel what I’m doing right now? It may seem like you can’t, but just see if you can. There. There. You feel it, don’t you? Yes, yes, yes, doesn’t that feel good?

  I watch it and think: we are all so desperately lonely.

  Serena told me once that giving herself the Feeling was the only way she could have dreams.

  “Without the Feeling it’s only blackness,” she said. “Not just nothingness, not just going to sleep and waking up. It’s like I’m dreaming the blackness.”

  “What’s the blackness like?” I asked.

  But she wouldn’t answer.

  After it was over, Serena reached into the pocket of her kimono and pulled out a silver box. From this she extracted a slim cigarette, placed it between her lips, and lit it with a little silver lighter. She didn’t offer one to me or to anyone else.

  “Those things will kill you, you know,” Janet said.

  “Don’t be boring, Janet,” Serena said, leaning back on her elbows and exhaling with exaggerated relish. “Anyway, what was it Shantideva said? Life is a party thrown by an executioner.” She looked at me. “So, did you get it?” she asked.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “If you don’t know,” Laurel said, “you didn’t.” She glowered prettily, and I remembered a cartoon I’d seen as a child: a singing goldfish, plump and shiny, made sexy with long eyelashes and purple eye shadow and a coquettish pout, its gossamer tail flicking suggestively around the screen. That was the earliest shadow of a sexual impulse I can remember—from a place near the base of my spine I wanted all of this: to possess it, to become it, and to squeeze it unmercifully in my hands until it died.

  “I got it,” I said.

  “Good,” Serena said. “Because the Feeling is only the first step.”

  “Oh.” Laurel sighed. “Don’t.”

  “The first step to what?” I asked. I wanted to kick her again.

  “We’ve been discussing it,” Serena said. She exhaled another stream of smoke at the sky. “And we’re going to learn to levitate this summer.” Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact, as if she were telling me that they were going to the beach this summer, or planning to perfect their bocce game, or finally master the French subjunctive. “Since we’re here,” she said. “At the Levitation Center.” She spread her arms. She had the glint of a zealot.

  “Since we’re always here,” said Janet.

  “It’s what this place is for, after all,” said Serena.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors,” said Laurel.

  Yes, I had heard the rumors, but which rumors did she mean? The small scratches, the movie star, the mental hospitals, the geological phenomenon? “I thought only certain people could do it,” I said. “The chosen ones, or whatever.”

  “We’re going to choose ourselves,” said Serena.

  “Since no one else ever would,” said Janet, tugging at a little plant that had risen between the rocks.

  “Speak for yourself, darling,” said Laurel.

  “It’s dangerous,” said Serena. “It will be difficult. Do you want to?”

  Did I feel a sense of foreboding in this moment? Did I have any idea, any inkling, of what might happen to us? Did I think what she was offering me was truly dangerous, or even remotely possible? Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. I wasn’t even thinking about levitation. I wasn’t even thinking about my father, although later I would, later I would tell myself that levitation was the key to truly knowing him at last, the key to his love, and to my own belief—to everything I thought I wanted. But at that moment I was thinking of nothing except for the girl in front of me with the dark hair and the dark smile and the dark eyes sunk deep into her head and her two dark friends, who were waiting for me to answer.

  “I want to,” I said.

  “Good,” she said. “We’re going to get everything we want this summer.” She looked into my eyes. “I promise.”

  And why not? Even before I understood what Serena was really after, the appeal of levitation was obvious to me. Every girl wants more from the world. Every girl wants magic, to transcend the mundanity of her life. Every girl wants power, and Serena more than most. I had felt that about her immediately. Of course levitation, as a power, has a relatively limited phenomenal scope. But it is more than merely lifting into the air. It is a symbol of freedom (all little children dream of flight). It is a symbol of control (ditto). As in so many cases, the blurring of the sign and the signified simply cannot be helped.

  For instance, the first thing TV witches learn to do is levitate objects. Pencils, mainly. This often serves as the first indication that they are irreversibly unlike other girls. (Girls love to be unlike other girls, because of the lies we are told about what other girls are like.) Powerful mystical items are frequently found floating over their pedestals. When someone becomes infused with a sudden energy, whether internal or external, mystical or common—rage, love, nuclear radiation—they are likely to be rais
ed up into the air by the force of it. Storm, etc. I’ve gotta crow. Spread beneath my willow tree. The films of Tarkovsky. And so on. This is only in the kind of stories where the rules of physics are malleable, of course. Though one could argue that the rules of physics are always malleable, just like anything else, if you press hard enough, if you use the right instrument.

  The monks continued working on the mandala for the next three days. Whenever I could, I would go and admire the way they mapped out the symbols and signs I was beginning to recognize, the way they stepped around the circle like surgeons, never disturbing a grain. When the mandala was finished, it was roped off for a few hours. Photographs were taken, oohs and ahhs uttered, and then, after a small ceremony, the ropes came down. As soon as the monks bowed away, Serena slipped from the gathered crowd. She ran her hands through her hair, adjusted her dress, and stepped forward to be the first one to slide her bare feet through all its articulate arteries.

  3

  Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the story of the Buddha begins in a dream. Like any worthwhile fairy tale, it has a prince, and a crone, and a guide, and three journeys. There is, however, no happily ever after. Buddhists don’t believe in that sort of thing. Happily, I mean, or ever after.

  Long ago, Prince Siddhartha Gautama was born to the king and queen of the Śākya clan in the ancient Indian kingdom of Kapilvastu. On the night of Siddhartha’s conception, his mother, Queen Maya (there she is, starry teeth and all), dreamed that an enormous white elephant, resplendent with six tusks, had entered her body on the right side. The priests who interpreted this dream told her that it meant her son would be exceptional, either as a great king or as a wandering ascetic. So as Siddhartha grew, his father—who, like most kings, rather preferred kingliness to asceticism—worked hard to make Siddhartha’s life perfect, so he would never think of leaving it. Thus, the young Siddhartha experienced no strife of any kind. He witnessed no decay, no pain. If an attendant fell ill, she was removed from the palace immediately. If a gardener’s hair grew gray, he was replaced. Imperfect flowers were cut at the root before the prince could happen upon them. Siddhartha lived in a world of endless health and beauty and joy. But he was not allowed to go outside the palace walls, and as he grew older, he also grew curious. Finally, he convinced his father to let him see the land they governed.

  The king was nervous. He instructed Siddhartha’s driver, Channa, to show his son only beauty. So, Siddhartha saw mountains and rivers, he saw sky deep as ocean. But on the way home, Siddhartha saw something else on the side of the road: a peasant doubled over in pain, his body thin and covered with sores. What’s wrong with that man? Siddhartha asked. He is sick, said Channa. His body is diseased and weak. Siddhartha, confused, was silent until they reached the palace gates. But soon he begged to be allowed out again, and this time, despite the pains Channa took to avoid it, Siddhartha saw an old crone hobbling along the road. What has happened to this woman? Siddhartha asked. Why does she walk this way? Channa lowered his eyes. She is old, he said. She has lived a long time, and her body has been very nearly used up. Upset, Siddhartha asked to be taken home immediately. But after a time, they ventured out once more, and on this trip, Siddhartha saw something he found more troubling than ever before: a body lying cold and still on a stretcher. Channa told him the body was dead, and that it would not rise again. Will I die also? asked Siddhartha. My wife? My son? You know Channa’s answer.

  Siddhartha went back to the palace very depressed. He began to obsess about these things—sickness, old age, and death—that he could not control. His father forbade him from leaving the palace and ordered the guards to stop him when he tried. But one night, after a feast, everyone in the palace except the prince fell into a deep sleep, and Siddhartha saw his chance. He kissed his slumbering wife and son, looked around one last time, and snuck out into the world of suffering.

  He wandered for a long time, thinking, learning, studying with different teachers, acquiring followers and losing them. He fasted for six years. He meditated for more. Finally, feeling himself close to the understanding he sought, he sat beneath a tree—an ancient fig at Bodh Gaya, which grew only perfect, heart-shaped leaves—to consider the nature of human suffering. Mara, lord of desire, appeared with an army, but their arrows turned to flowers that fell harmlessly around the meditating prince. In a rage, Mara sent his three beautiful daughters to tempt the prince from his seat, but Siddhartha was not swayed. Finally, Mara demanded that Siddhartha prove that he was worthy of enlightenment. Siddhartha simply reached down and touched the ground.

  The next morning, as the sun rose, Siddhartha cut the last veils of ignorance from his mind. He realized that all concepts were impermanent, empty and without inherent existence. He realized that human suffering came from clinging to false ideas—self, happiness, continuity—and that it could be overcome only by waking up to them. He realized the true nature of reality. It was through these realizations that Siddhartha achieved enlightenment and became the Awakened One: the Buddha.

  “Or, maybe,” my father said, sitting on the edge of my childhood bed the night after my very first meditation lesson. “Who knows exactly what Siddhartha realized, and in what order, and at which moment. But these things became the backbone of his teachings. The Four Noble Truths.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Life is suffering. Suffering is caused by clinging to things. But there is a way out, and the way out is the Eightfold Path. Which I will also explain someday, if you want me to.” Then he stood, said good night, and left, lingering in the doorway for a moment before shutting the door quietly behind him. That night, I barely slept. How could I, considering the depth and breadth of human suffering? How could I, considering the metaphysical teachings of the smooth-skinned Indian prince? How could I, considering the sounds now coming from my parents’ bedroom, and the feeling of these clean, untucked, untouched sheets sliding soft against my tender legs?

  In the morning, I rose slowly from my bunk and dragged myself into one of the open showers; I leaned my forehead against the chipped yellow tile as the water ran. I was not used to staying up all night. I might have even fallen asleep that way, naked and leaning in my cheap shower shoes, had it not been for the girl singing atonally in the stall next to mine. (Poor cat, quite strangled.) When I emerged, my towel carefully organized to cover as much of my body as possible, most of the Garudas were still in the dormitory, getting ready or resisting the same. Nisha was giving Harriet an extravagant cat eye. Jamie was still curled in bed, her covers tight to her chin, her eyes open. A girl named Evie was methodically winding her blond dreadlocks into a pile on top of her skull; when she was finished, she looked as though she were wearing a second, expressionless head, the exact same size and color as her own. Janet and Laurel were not there. Janet’s bed was neatly made: hospital corners. Laurel’s was a nest of blankets.

  I got dressed and tried to shake off the feeling I had, sudden but acute, that they’d disappeared, not just from the room, but from the world—or worse, that they’d never been there at all. Despite Laurel’s pictures still tacked above her stirred sheets, despite Janet’s damp running shoes at the foot of the bed, I was half-convinced I had imagined them, simply desired them into being. It was the obvious explanation. Girls like them, a girl like me. We are what we think. Whom did I imagine I was fooling?

  But when I entered the main shrine room, there they were, corporeal and everything, seated in their usual corner. No one else had arrived yet, not even Shastri Dominique, and the room looked large and mouthlike. I hesitated. Janet waved me over and patted the cushion beside her.

  “We like to get to meditation early,” she said as I approached.

  “We are very particular about our cushions,” said Laurel.

  I looked down at her cushion and found it to be indistinguishable from the others.

  “Just wait until the sun clears the northeast peak,” Janet said. The other girls were filing in now. Shastri Dominique bowed low at the door, found her pla
ce at the front, and struck the bowl.

  After a few minutes, I turned my head to look out the window and noticed that Harriet was staring at me, her brow knit. I felt a flicker of pride, sour and dumb, like the sensation of stealing something small from someone deserving of theft. I flashed her what I imagined was a winning smile and focused my attention back on the front of the room. I didn’t understand Harriet’s problem. These girls seemed all right to me. Especially when, fifteen minutes later, our cushions were drenched in a yolky light, a light that left my limbs warm and loose for hours.

  If I had known what was going to happen that summer, maybe I would have paid more attention to Harriet. Maybe I would have left these strange girls alone, no matter what they knew, no matter how pretty the light on their cushions. If I had left them alone, maybe none of it would have even happened.

  No, here’s the truth: I would never have left them alone, even if I had known what was going to happen. Never. There are some things I simply cannot resist.

  Later that morning, the danger of fainting more or less behind us, the Garudas went on a hike. We assembled after breakfast at the flagpole on the east side of the lawn, and a nearly neckless white guy introduced himself as Colin and pointed up at the flag. This was called the dream flag, he said, so named because it had come to an important teacher in a dream: blue and yellow twisted together as if each were crashing on the shore of the other. He explained that yellow was the earth, and blue the sky, and the curl of the wave was the Buddhadharma penetrating them both. Janet reached over and poked Laurel at the word penetrating, and Laurel pinched her back, but they both nodded at Colin’s explanation, as if they already knew much more than he was saying. (The use of penetrate to mean “insert into” dates back to the 1520s, but the connotation of affecting one’s feelings dates only to the 1630s: a hundred years of being touched but untouched.)