12.00

It's common for women to compare the way they control access to their bodies with the ritual keeping of a temple. Perhaps it's a way to trick ourselves into believing we really regard ourselves so highly. But it's a tired metaphor, one I find powerless, passive and, again, only hopeful. This body is not a temple to which any alms-bearing pilgrim can gain access. This body is not an artifact to be dusted, maintained, rebuilt, or worshipped by anything other than its own sense of organicity. It moves, it reaches toward what it seeks. Yes, it reaches for what it seeks... but not with conquest because conquest is only the antithesis of passivity. +++ I went into the temple before the three Buddhas. An old woman was there lighting incense and bowing with her hands together before her heart. Bent with decaying bones and wearing a necklace of cedar beads around her neck, she smiled at me, lit one wand, and called me to her by the fronts of her fingers. When I arrived at her side, she pointed at the scholars against the far wall and bowed to send me off. The shiny floorboards, cold from December, slipped smoothly underfoot as I crossed hurriedly to push the incense into the ash inside the brass bowl and bow with my hands at my heart to some unknown spirit. Returning to my pillow, my hair adorned with fragrant ribbons of smoke, I removed my eyes and set them across the line ahead of me into the next pyong. I bowed to them and left. Now my skin senses the dampness and my ears hear the sounds of a little city full of itself. The air is a bit salty and I know I'm in Seattle again. But when I tilt my head back to gaze at the stars I still see a throb of lights engorged by a river of humanity, which flows from all directions. You expect the places you go will be different—will shock you with their differences—but what's really a surprise is how home has changed and how long it takes to adjust to that, even after such short absence.

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