Cast of Characters

Maple:
Maple was coming from a summer of living in an intentional community. This was her second time completing a 10-day course. She was blond and cute as a button. She had dreadlocks, a soft voice, was always barefoot, would never wear bras and smelled like she took baths on a need to basis. She wore a beige tank-top with spaghetti straps which completely gave away her nipples but would wear a long sleeve sweater over it when it was cold. Sweater was completely off the shoulders and she would tie it in the back to make it stay there. You could tell she was outside this summer a lot as her shoulders glistened in the sun, a beautiful, light, milk chocolaty tan. She seemed about 20 or 21.

Maple wasn’t her real name but she legally changed it to this name. Though Maple is such a grand and mature tree compared to her young age, the syrupy sweetness completely matched her personality. She would wrap herself in this lilac color, big blanket in the meditation hall and she looked like those catholic Virgin Mary statues, blanket softly falling all around her to the floor. I thought if I only walked around and looked at her from front I was sure to find a few crying children and women around her legs, lost in the blanket’s curves, looking up at her while she looked down as if to say ‘there now, I’ll take care of you. Don’t you worry.”

I liked Maple. She was sweet and soft. And she seemed to have gathered more life experiences than some people twice her age. When the technique started pushing us to our limits, people would burst out crying and ran out of the hall in uncontrollable sobs. It was too much pain coming up to stay still and quiet. One day, as I had my eyes closed and focused deep in meditation, I heard a huge hick up followed by the most infectious, girlish giggle. I knew it was Maple. I couldn’t help but smile. I liked her. It was nice to have her around. And if I had to bust out of the meditation hall with a grand exit, I would rather be giggling than sobbing.

Jane:
Jane slept in the bed across from me and she sat next to me in the meditation hall. She is tall with impeccable posture. Not once did I see her slouch- not when she was eating, not when she was walking, sitting on a chair or meditating. She stood tall and proud. Not a hair was out of place. She looked about my age, late 30s or early 40s. Had a ring on her slender finger. She always carried her clothes to the bathroom in the other building to change even though our beds were enclosed with cotton fabric on 3 sides for privacy. I pictured this woman wanting to have sex with the lights off. She struck me as prudish. She was always up at 4 am to meditate. She never slacked off her meditation. From day 1, she never changed her posture during meditation, she was solid like a rock, while everyone else was fidgeting to find that one comfortable pose.

She was constantly doing yoga by her bed during breaks. In fact during the short breaks at the hall, most women would run out and start doing downward dogs, sun salutations, the pigeon and any other yoga poses you can imagine. Earth mamas would simply lay down in a snow angel pose and soak up the earth beneath them. When they walked back into the meditation hall, their back would be covered in hay and they would walk towards their spot dropping grass all along like Hansel and Gretel to find their way back out. This behavior was simply too disheveled for Jane. She would do standing poses or sit on a bench, none of that roll in the grass wild antics.

She would never rush into the dining hall. In fact she would avoid it, taking walks in the meadow and showing up for food later. She ate mostly salad, did not toast her bread and ate very slowly, with eyes closed meditating no matter what we were doing. I was intrigued by her. When my back was screaming at me with utmost pain and begging me to shift, I would say “look at Jane. She is new and she never changes her posture. Try to be like her.” She made it easier for me to get up and show up and try to do better. She seemed so at ease with it. The last day when we chatted up I learned that she and her husband have been trying the raw food diet (hence all the salad eating) and are avid meditators and yogis. I wasn’t surprised. I had the best conversations with her in that last day and left thinking I would have liked to get to know this woman more.

Janice:
On my right, sat Janice. She was in her late 60s, a social work professor I came to learn on the last day. She was, like all the other older women, always in the meditation hall. They were not seduced by this-worldly distractions. They were there to truly do it. At 4:30 in the morning, when only about 10 women were there in the hall, 6 of them were the older women-- always dependable and clearly not in need of early morning sleep. Every morning, when the gong would go off, I would snuggle up in my sleeping bag thinking, so many people are skipping the morning meditation, I can skip once too. But then I would hear Jane get up and quietly leave and then I would picture Janice already in her place, standing upright and see my place empty in between them. Thinking of them there made it easier for me to get up every morning.

When I couldn’t quiet my mind or my insane back pain during meditation, my mind would be racing from thought to thought and inevitably would come to see myself in this picture: So here I was, clearly on the throne because of my family connections, of being born into the royal family. I was sure however my mom already gotten the true heir from another mother in the harem killed before he was 15 so I was the unlikely but only choice for the throne after the sultan passed away from a feverish illness.

I was sitting in this imaginary throne, short and chubby. A sad example of what a royal should look like. Because my back pain was so immense that I would contort myself into some supposedly comfortable position which looked like somebody pushed my neck down and it disappeared into my spine while right side of my body was slightly forward and straight, the left side was some sort of an S shape pushing back at my lower back and leaning left and down at the upper back area. I looked like one of those fake-disabled street beggars in Istanbul who dislocate their shoulders and legs for the day. I was sure I looked like Quasimodo asking Esmeralda for water. And of course to my each side stood Jane and Janice, holding tall and heavy spears covered possibly in gold. They were tall and slender, looked proud, strong and dependable. Clearly chosen among thousands and thousands of commoners as perfect specimens to represent the throne. And after where they ended up, probably thinking WTF?

I titled this black and white snapshot in my head “the Royal Guards.”