| Aug. 10th, 2005 @ 08:03 pm The real Rosie Chao, part 1 |
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Current Music: nick drake--things behind the sun
After 8 days of silence, I was finally able to speak this afternoon at lunch. I made my way to the table where Rosie Chao and the woman who wasn't Rosie Chao were sitting. My first words would be in the form of a question to the real Rosie Chao.
Every morning, for eight days, I watched as Rosie Chao got up from breakfast and walked out to the retreat center garden and knelt silently before the pond, staring into its depths. She had a look of such peace and serenity. I just had to know what it was she was thinking.
The garden was just outside the common room, just off the room where we shared our meals in silence. One wall was all windows that faced out toward the small garden with a pond in the middle. Each of the chairs in the room faced the windows. Many of the retreatants sat there after breakfast, drinking their tea and contemplating the beauty of the day. I contemplated the serenity of Rosie Chao.
Even my retreat director--the only person I spoke to during the eight days--commented on it. "You must have noticed" he said, "the asian woman who kneels at the pond every morning". He knew I had. He had me figured out at our first meeting together when I told him about the woman who wasn't Rosie Chao.
And so, eight days later, I found myself sitting across from the real Rosie Chao, breaking my silence with the question, "what did you see in the pond?"
"Oh, I have many friends there!" she answered, clearly delighted with the question.
"You mean the goldfish and the frog?", I replied. I had looked in the pond myself after a few days, and discovered that there were all sorts of things going on there. There were a couple of goldfish (not big enough to be carp yet) swimming around, birds and little furry rodent things that would come and drink, and a little green frog that hid under a lilly pad whenever I approached.
( pond )
"Oh yes!" she continued enthusiastically, "I asked the frog, 'don't you have a little friend to keep you company?'
"'Do you not have a wife, mister frog?'"
"And the next day, there was a second frog! So I asked them, 'what, no baby?'"
And indeed, the next day she finds a little frog with them--the happy family. Neighbors to the goldfish who aspire to be carp. And this is what she contemplated every morning.
The silence was broken. And so ended the retreat.
( Mr. Frog ) |
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