Tenacious Magic ~ Chapter 22 (Part 2 of 2) ~ FIN
L'Aigle Noir...again * Graveside * "It feels good to be seen" * French kissing * Mothers and Boddhisattvas * White rose, red rose * A nightcap with Katherine
Dear friends,
I’m finished. It’s been eight months of wrangling writing from across 12 years into something like a novel. Tenacious Magic is coming to a close. Personally, this last installment is my favorite of them all. I wrote most of it during and after a trip to Paris in 2018. You can really feel the alchemical magic of that great City of Love.
Last night, to honor the completion of the story, I went to the Hudson River and made an offering (pictured above). I took a totem, a slate rock that says, “My book is my samaya.” The phrase came to me as an answer to something I’d been deliberating: how to deepen my practice and commitment to a spiritual life.
In Tibetan Buddhism, one of the ways you can do that is to perform Ngöndro, which involves 100,000 physical prostrations, recitation of 100,000 mantras, plus other prayers and disciplines. I was torn…I really hate regimens like this. I just couldn’t see myself doing it. Something about it didn’t feel nourishing; it felt to me like other ascetic yogic disciplines that deny the body and the feminine.
I was deep in the consideration of making this vow—samaya—one day hiking with my daughter along the Hudson River. I realized my impulse to commit was genuine; but the form should be personal. I realized that the area of my life that was calling for my discipline was art—writing—my expression of Spirit. My daughter and I started playing around with the slate pieces on the banks of the river, which were natural chalkboards. I wrote, like a kid at the blackboard, “My book is my samaya.” I felt immediately nervous in a good way. I knew I’d found my commitment.
This slate has been in my kitchen window for months. I’ve returned to it when my conviction faltered. Though the story still needs editing and stewardship into other mediums (movie anyone?), I feel in my heart like I have made good on the original promise…not to a lineage…but, to my soul and other souls involved.
So, last night, I offered all of this to the river and the mountains that have sustained and guided me. It’s been hard work and has asked a lot of me (and my daughter and my partner). Eleanor is now 12 and is a great writer in her own right, more talented than I will ever be. She encouraged me, gave me space, and as you’ll see in this chapter, has played an essential role in my life as a guiding and grounding force.
I am also grateful to Ari Kuschnir, my true love. He has been instrumental in this happening—activating me and inspiring me through good times and bad. In this chapter, which takes place in 2018, I call in a real love for the second half of my life. That magic worked because I’ve found him. Thank you,
. I feel blessed to have embarked on this adventure with you—a truly different thing altogether.I feel grateful to have had the experiences recounted in this novel. And also…to put them behind me.
All is Love and Love is All.
Now, back to the story…
“In a word, she would have a new purpose in writing—a purpose not only to gratify and instruct, but to initiate and create.” –A.R. Orage’s summary of Katherine Mansfield’s final artistic aspirations
Fontainebleu, April 2018
We stand on the sidewalk with our luggage, my daughter, Eleanor, looking up at me expectantly. Hannah and her son, Marc, have dropped us at our hotel in Fontainebleu and are on their way back to Paris where they live. We’ll catch up with them again in a couple of days. I look at Eleanor, “It’s just you and me, kid.” She rolls her eyes and smiles impishly. We love to travel together and she loves France like it’s her soul’s home.
I glance up at the black eagle on the old iron gate of our hotel, L’Aigle Noir, and feel my heart leap. We’re doing it. We’re here! Doing what? I’m not sure now. What I knew back in New York was that my lingering questions about Katherine, Gurdjieff, and even H, could only be answered here in Fontainebleu. I knew I needed to visit the cemetery and sit at the site of the graves. I needed to walk the grounds of the Prieuré. It felt imperative to come. As we enter the lobby and check in, there’s a light scent in the air that stirs a distant, ungraspable memory. Even this feels like a sign that we’re in the right place.
It’s raining when Eleanor and I step out for dinner an hour later. She is giddy with excitement at the change of scenery and the promise of a burger. I feel overwhelmed by my sudden physical proximity to Katherine and Gurdjieff’s lives and deaths. If it was up to me, I’d jump in a car and go to the Prieuré now. But, I promised Eleanor that we’d relax tonight and visit the cemetery and the chateau in the morning. I think how good it is that I’ve brought her; how motherhood can ground spiritual impulses in a good way. What’s important right now? I have a hungry child to feed and there’s a carousel on the way.
We make a quick stop for a ride. Spinning through the evening drizzle, the glowing lights and music of the carousel charm us. We’re feeling the magic of France. Maybe it’s also the magic of being on a real pilgrimage. I realize I’ve never been on one before. Not like this. As excited as I am, sometimes doubt creeps in and I feel alarmed at my impetuousness; the sheer irrationality of it. “I’ve dragged us so far afield! And for what?” is the thought that accompanies these moments. Pascal has the antidote: “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of…” I tell myself this over and over again.
As the carousel spins and my thoughts wander, I feel suddenly like I might be spinning through a portal into another dimension where it is once again 1922. It seems possible that any minute now I will see them, hear them, feel them; not just in my imagination. Then, I will finally know the truth of my relationship to this woman, Katherine, whom I feel I know almost as well as I know myself; and this man, Gurdjieff, who haunts me like a lost lover. And maybe what I learn will shed some light on who I am and who H was to me.
***********
Back in the room after dinner, Eleanor is sprawled on the bed happily watching Moana on the laptop. I sit at the small desk in the room re-reading an essay: an account by A.R. Orage of his last conversations with Katherine at the Prieuré. I am absorbed in the reading until I notice movement at the curtain. It’s enough to make me look.
Briefly, I see a vision of Katherine standing there peering out the window down into the courtyard. Suddenly, it dawns on me that she and Murry might have been here at this very hotel—possibly in this very room. I gasp as I realize she might have used this writing desk herself. I pick up the phone and call down to the front desk. When they answer I ask breathlessly, “How long has this been a hotel?”
“Ah, Madame, the history of the hotel is written on the brochure in your desk drawer. But, I will tell you briefly that it was a hunting lodge during the time of Napoleon and it has been a hotel since the 1700s.”
I thank her and hang up. Sitting there in the old room I think to myself, “Of course, she was here.” I know we are guided.
“Well, Katherine. We’ve come. We’re here. What now?”
*******
The next morning, Eleanor and I have breakfast in the hotel dining room. The scarlet carpet and white table cloths are probably from the 1920s and our waiter seems tired and grumpy enough to be a relic himself. We are the first ones down and have the lavish buffet all to ourselves. We plan our day over eggs and toast, passionfruit, tea, and hot chocolate. Eleanor is understandably unenthusiastic about the trip to the cemetery, so I bribe her with the promise of ice cream later. It really doesn’t take much convincing, though, she can tell that I’m excited.
“If you really want to, Mama, we’ll go.” She says it like I’m the child.
It’s a long walk to the cemetery, but we’re New Yorkers used to walking miles a day. The route runs right along the canal we saw the previous evening in the gardens of the Palace of Fontainebleu. Strangely, I barely need the map. My body has an instinctual pull in the right direction as if I already know the way. I play with this inner knowing and let it guide us. Eleanor holds my hand as we walk along the seemingly endless canal—the Grand Canal.
She now chooses her own outfits and today she’s wearing a jean skirt, colorful tights and little brown suede boots I love. She keeps tugging at the cardigan sweater until I ask her if she’s cold. She says ‘no.’ She always says no to this motherly question. She is too distracted by the delights of the garden to be cold. As we walk along the reflecting pools, two swans flying along with us, landing periodically to allow us to catch up. Something about the swans is familiar.
Two white swans sit preening on the surface of the first pool. As they watch, the swans flap their wings and with some effort alight from the water and fly on to the next pool.
“Oh, let’s follow them!” Katherine suggests. We follow them.
As we walk, Eleanor tells me about the story she is writing: a tale of two sisters stranded after a plane crash during World War II. They find a portal to a magical land where two horses await them—one black, one white. “Like yin and yang,” she explains. The entire plot has been worked out in great detail, chapters named, characters developed. I marvel at the sophistication of her imagination and listen attentively.
She is deep in her imaginary land when I slowly become aware of another presence…a third party. It’s Katherine. I am sure of it immediately. She has been with us since last night and now she’s walking with us to the cemetery—using my body to get there, my senses to experience this moment in time, this place again. I can feel her enjoyment of my body; healthier, stronger than her own. She seems to be luxuriating in the easy movement, the easy breathing, how agile and pleasant it feels in motion. I smile at her pleasure.
She’s also listening to Eleanor’s story and treasuring the little hand in mine…hers. I feel her enjoying the motherliness of the moment. She is charmed by Eleanor’s tale, but more by the innocence and purity of the love flowing between us. Ah, so this is what it’s like…
The sensations are extremely clear, and I have the idea to get out of the way. I take my own senses out of the field of awareness and become a vessel for her. My consciousness is still present, but I’ve temporarily handed the controls over to Katherine. For the first time, I realize something—Maybe I wasn’t Katherine in a past life; maybe I’ve merely been a vessel for her visiting spirit. The realization puts many things that happened all those years ago in perspective. But, I don’t have time to reflect before I am snapped back to present-moment awareness. Katherine wants to be here now.
She looks through my eyes up at the sky and at the old trees. All of my senses are heightened (perhaps, doubled) with this additional consciousness. She is elated to be here walking; alive in a sense, embodied again. I realized another layer of why I am here: I’m walking to the cemetery not for myself, but for her. This is her pilgrimage. The moment this dawns on me, I feel her approval—she seems pleased that I’ve finally worked it out.
I had been holding an umbrella over us to keep the light mist at bay, but Katherine wants to feel the rain. I put it away and we walk on through the damp woods with the trees as a canopy far above our heads. Eleanor keeps talking animatedly and several times runs to the edge of the water to look at her reflection or throw a stone and watch the ripples. Once, she nearly topples in and I rush to grab her, temporarily pulling my consciousness forward. Protective mom is in action. I feel Katherine’s delight in this moment. We both chuckle when Eleanor seems completely unfazed by the near disaster and returns to her storytelling.
On we walk, the three of us, beyond the canal and deep into the suburban neighborhood of Avon. Katherine marvels at all the changes along the familiar route. I remember a quote of hers, “Life never becomes a habit to me, it is always a marvel.” I have a visceral experience of this as her.
Many twists and turns bring us eventually to the Cimetière d’Avon; now surrounded by simple houses and industrial buildings. It’s not very grand or noteworthy. I pick a few small wild flowers and walk in, following my feet towards the back of the lot.
I see the two large monoliths from a distance and recognize Gurdjieff’s grave from photographs. Right in front of his, I find the grave of Katherine Mansfield. I stand there for a moment reading the inscription and a plaque nearby; placing the wildflowers neatly next to those of a previous pilgrim. It’s a strange sensation to look at a tomb and feel the aliveness of the spirit of that person within you at the same time. She seems to almost laugh, or scoff, at the gravity of it all.
“Living humans have such a limited perspective,” she says. This is the first she’s spoken to me and I can hear her clearly. She seems intent on interrupting the sentimentality I think I should feel—preventing me from shedding even one tear for her. She won’t have it. She also seems not to care for the inscription on her tomb from Shakespeare’s Henry IV. As I try to make out the words through the lichen, searching for some deeper meaning, she pulls me onward towards Gurdjieff’s grave.
“Come on, come on. It says, ‘but I tell you, my Lord fool, out of this nettle danger, we pluck the flower, safety.’ It was virtually meaningless to me then and totally meaningless now. Murry chose it.”
I put down my bags on the bench at Gurdjieff’s grave. Eleanor asks if she can run around and I allow it. I’ve never thought children should be quiet and well-behaved in cemeteries. I used to play in one as a child and always felt it gave the residents joy. Eleanor runs off to explore.
“Alone” for the first time since arriving in France, I can shift roles from Mother to Mystic. I’m aware of two journeys simultaneously—the one I’m on for myself, and the one I’m on for Katherine. Inextricably linked, now they seem to be collapsing into one. We are at ground zero—physical proximity will never be closer. I feel the magic spell we’re held in intensify. Lives overlap, weave one into the other; fading in and fading out; memories shared and history repeated. One moment I become me again; checking in with Eleanor and attentive to my own questions of the soul and relationships. The next, I shift into a subtle awareness of Katherine’s presence and her needs.
I decide to attend to Katherine. I give myself over completely to her experience. It feels like the deepest internal listening and presence…true friendship. I check one last time to make sure Eleanor is ok and then slip into a trance state…
I feel floods of Katherine’s grief. An urge arises to lay down on the grass covering Gurdjieff’s grave; outstretched, stomach down. She wants to lay on top of him. The grass is fresh, green, and damp. I lay there as she lays there with her lover and cry for all that she feels she’s lost. Anger is present, but feels distant; as if she’s moved beyond that in the afterlife. Katherine’s words come through me as a whisper into the earth. I speak them to him for her:
“I understand now. I didn’t then…You did, but I didn’t. It doesn’t matter, does it? You guided us. You held the Truth that lifetime after lifetime we find each other and light the flame of eternal love. We keep the fires of sexual magic and healing lit. You healed me..and helped me heal myself. The dying was secondary. I know that now.
I was living half a life before you came around. I had been broken—my marriage was an escape. You showed me the way to live again and gave me eternal life in the process. I know now that you and I are sacred lovers, my darling. We come to remind mankind what is possible between two human beings, two embodied spirits—what happens when souls unite while seemingly in two bodies. We complete the circuit and in the process, set off a chain reaction that keeps the practices alive, keeps the knowledge of this alchemy, alive. It has been so long suppressed; so long hidden; so long denied. I died in this life because of the culture’s sick and twisted ideas about sexuality and a woman’s place. I knew that on one level, but now I know that what happened between us was the the antidote, the answer. At least until things change…
I regret that I didn’t have a chance to capture it in writing; to spread the love to millions of others. Perhaps, the time wasn’t yet right. Perhaps, the time is now.
Thank you for helping me remember who I am and why I was here before it was too late. I can see now that my whole life represented the longing of a priestess for her power and purpose. I needed a very special partner to remind me of that—someone who could meet me, teach me the ways of magic, and re-ignite in me the radiance and remembrance of the sacred vessel that I am, this body is. I was blind to my own power. I projected it onto you, but I can see now: I was always your equal. You chose me and anointed me because you saw that in me. I realize that I also healed you.
It’s all about love in the end, isn’t it? All that heady, occult philosophy and at the end of the day it was always about love, relating, being. We engaged in the Great Way of Being together…a gift for all mankind.”
Katherine had died so suddenly that night at the Prieuré. She needed to thank him, had never gotten the chance to seal their alchemical process with a deep bow of gratitude and a confirmation of the knowing that had been awakened in her. When I parted ways with H, he knew how I felt and what our relationship meant to me. We still had our disagreements and in the end, he had taken something from me. I wondered that for Katherine, too. Was something still unfinished?
Katherine and Gurdjieff. H and me. We are not unique or special. We are the reprise in the oldest song known to man: sacred union. It is the highest potential of human passion—two beings engaged in the act of creation; as close as we get to knowing The Creator. The union of opposites—Two into One, back to Source—creating a Third, through a spiritual pregnancy that results in the birth of The Divine here on Earth. The igniting of the Kundalini is the birth of the Soul into Being.
That humans complicate this process is no surprise. I feel compassion for all of us. I think of Jung who said, “Everybody acts out a myth, but very few people know what their myth is. And you should know what your myth is because it might be a tragedy and maybe you don’t want it to be.”
I can feel the tears I am shedding are cleansing for all of us, just like the rain that’s gently falling. I know it’s time to move on. Now, I take the reigns…“Katherine, I think we’re cleaning up this myth we’ve been living.”
*******
I gather Eleanor. Part of me still wants to see the Prieuré, but I sense she’ll never make it. She’s already been more-than-patient and I can tell she’s hungry. Long walks in the rain and visits to foreign cemeteries are a lot for a seven-year old. I decide to surrender my need—telling myself I can be satisfied with the already-beautiful communion I’ve experienced. I take out my phone to navigate us back to town for lunch and the ice cream I’ve promised.
But, the cell phone is dead. Trusting my internal GPS, and not wanting to let on to my savvy child that I don’t have a plan, I cheerfully grab her hand and head in the direction I intuit is back towards town.
We walk…and walk. She begins to sense my growing distress as the streets wind on and on through residential areas, parks, and schoolyards. “Where are we going? When will we be there?” she asks with curiosity at first, and then frustration. I find a single Jolly Rancher in my bag, which buys me another ten minutes.
Just as I’m about to be desperate, I turn a corner onto…Rue Katherine Mansfield. I can’t believe my eyes. We’ve been wandering—”lost”—through the suburban sprawl for half an hour. Only, it turns out we have been guided straight to the Prieuré. I am jubilant and Eleanor becomes curious again. The road slopes blessedly downward and Eleanor skips ahead of me. With my eyes peeled and my heart open to memories, I scan the landscape for familiar landmarks. Inside me, Katherine is again registering disbelief at all the changes. “So busy now,” I feel her say.
Over a tall brick wall I spot the top of a chateau. My heart races, “There it is! There it is!” I say, jumping up to see more of the building.
Eleanor asks, “What, Mom? What is it?”
I search for an explanation she can understand, “You know those people we just visited at the cemetery? Well, this is where they lived. This is where Katherine lived before she died and also when she died…” Eleanor is interested, like all children, in death. So, she follows me as I walk up to the entry gate. I had read online that the place is closed to visitors, but a small guard house is empty, so we walk straight in and onto the grounds of the Prieuré.
I look Eleanor deep in the eye, “Stay right here. Mama needs just three minutes. And then I promise we will get out of here and find food.”
“And ice cream.”
“And all the ice cream you can eat! Thank you, sweetie. You are helping me here. This is very important to me.”
I sit her down in the soft grass and run across the lawn to get closer to the building. I stand there on the foundation of what could have been the barn, her loft, the cows. I run through the kitchen garden and feel her presence in the earth. I greet the tall evergreens and smile fully at the thought that perhaps they remember me. I search for the spot where the Study House might have been but it is long gone. I am filled with the feelings Katherine must have experienced here on this same spot of earth almost 100 years ago.
I spin around, breathe the fresh air, try to ignore the tall apartment complexes now marring the view, and transport myself as best I can back in time. I bow my head and say a prayer,
“To Gurdjieff, to Katherine. Thank you for all you did to live as mystics and awakened people on this planet. Thank you for your suffering, for your creativity, for your passion. Thank you to your teachers and their teachers and to all the mystics, saints and sages of all ages who have opened the doors to a fuller understanding and a better chance to reach that state of knowing we will all reach one day and call home. Thank you for bringing more love and more light into this world. You are remembered.”
I turn around and run back to my precious daughter. Mission accomplished. Before we leave, we stand there holding hands and I feel Katherine’s presence exit my own. I feel much lighter as it happens and then suddenly, I spot something in the upper window of the chateau—someone looking out at us from the window. It’s Katherine. I smile.
“Are we good?” I ask her aloud. “Are you glad we came?”
Eleanor supposes the question is for her, “Yes, good but a little boring…”
Katherine studies us sweetly from the window and then I hear her say in her characteristically brassy way, “It’s good to be seen.” I take that as a yes.
Eleanor and I walk out the gate and back onto the main road. Almost immediately we come upon a stretch of restaurants. Within minutes we are sitting happily at a café—a pizza and two Oranginas on the way.
*****
The next morning, Eleanor and I pick up our bags and make our way to the train station, bound for Paris. We are both ready to be in the big city.
Paris with Eleanor is exquisite. At sunset, we walk across a bridge onto the Isle d’la Cite, stopping to gaze up at the intricate facade of Notre Dame, Our Lady, glowing golden in the last light of the day. Eleanor is jubilant. She skips and runs around the plaza playfully, feeling the buzz of what is, to her, the most important city in the world. We find a small, sophisticated café for dinner. She looks at the menu and announces with pride that she’d like to try the snails. We order them and she eats one dramatically. Nearby tables laugh at the spectacle.
All around us on this warm spring evening couples stroll hand-in-hand; something we don’t see so often in New York City. Eleanor notices people kissing on the bridges and at the cafés. She looked at me mischievously, “They’re french kissing,” she observes accurately.
“They call Paris the City of Love,” I tell her. She squirms and makes a grossed-out face.
The next day I am lost for something to do until I find a handwritten note on the back of the map I’ve borrowed from Hannah. It reads simply: “Palais Royale = Heaven.” So, off we go.
The Palais Royale is a giant park surrounded by an elegant palace. It was briefly the home of the royal family before they moved the court to Versailles. I remember when we get there that the upper story contained the apartments of the most elegant and desirable concubines of their day. I can feel Voltaire’s famous description of history as being “filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.” Passion is in the air, even now. They’re still here, I think, blessing this place with passion and pleasure. I imagine the women freely expressing their desires and receiving the desires of their lovers with complete acceptance, curiosity, and even joy. Maybe it’s just springtime in Paris.
Eleanor is now pointing out lovers on the street with glee. She’s released her initial shyness and is embracing it all with charmed interest. Her growing comfort with the displays of affection around us feels healthy; a shedding of a layer of the puritanical ideas of our own culture back in America. The little girl in me shudders at the shame she internalized around her own formidable sensuality as it began to develop and I know this is something I will not pass on to my daughter. I allow Paris to heal the young me, too.
A couple wander nearby. They looked to be in their mid-fifties, but they flirt like teenagers. She hangs on his arm and plays with her hair while he dotes and caresses her back. I watch them with interest—their bodies mature, but their interactions as fresh and spontaneous as the most youthful of lovers. I recognize another faulty belief I’ve internalized that there is no romantic love late in life—or it is extremely rare. Part of me has already forfeited the match, hung up her racket. Suddenly, I revolt. Why? Why not love like mad until the very end…I am Love.
While Eleanor plays in the fountain, I write in my journal longingly of the love I seek; the lover I want to call in for the second half of my life. Whoever that is, we will initiate each other into a love we’ve not known yet in this life; something different than the love between Katherine and Gurdjieff or H and me. Those relationships were epic and magical, but they were a means to an end and they were marked by a toxic power differential. I feel a desire now for something more balanced, harmonious, and mutually empowering. I want to be as Love in Love.
We walk for miles through the city. We pass the Hôtel de Ville and see the coat of arms of the city. H had once pointed out to me that the motto of New York City is bold in it’s one word direction: Excelsior, “Ever Upward.” I can’t think of a better expression of that spirit than the city that never sleeps, home of skyscrapers and overachievers. I jot down the words on the Paris crest, “Fluctuat nec mergitur.” Stopping for macaroons later, I sit at the café table with Eleanor and looked up its meaning, “She is tossed by the waves, but does not sink.”
I smile to myself. The story of every woman’s life.
**********
Our last night in Paris, Hannah comes to visit at the apartment I’ve rented. She arrives with a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of good wine. It’s late and Eleanor is already asleep. She apologizes that she’s had a busy week and would have come earlier if she could, but she had a showcase to attend for her theater students; a semester’s work for them, and for her. I am touched by the profundity of her achievement as a teacher—coaxing reluctant young people onto the stage, giving them confidence, teaching them new skills, offering her gift.
We both realize it is the first moment we’ve had together without kids, without her spouse. Just old friends. I make her some pasta and we drink wine at the high table in the kitchen looking out over the Boulevard Mourland. I catch her up on our adventures in Fontainebleu and Paris.
Recognizing the brevity of this precious time together, we move swiftly from pleasantries into a deeper sharing. Hannah confesses the sorrow that’s been sitting on her: a troubled marriage, the extreme difficulties of raising two small boys with a husband who is in and out of significant depressions. She speaks of his selfishness and her exhaustion. I feel her carrying the weight of the world.
I remember how carefree we were when we met at twenty: the laughter, the big plans, all hope and ambition. Part of me mourns the loss of innocence, but as I listen I marvel at how beautiful she seems to me now; how life and its hardships have mellowed and softened her. Sitting in front of me is a woman, a mother, someone who’s been through hard times and come out stronger. I can feel how her experience—as hard as it is—makes her wiser and more compassionate.
She is tossed by the waves, but does not sink.
“I found it very difficult, becoming a mother,” I offered, “It’s a threshold experience. Everything changes on the other side, irrevocably. For better and sometimes for worse. There’s so much I miss about life before. I’ve had very dark times—feeling trapped—especially before Paul and I found a resolution.”
“Do you remember when I stood in your kitchen so certain I’d never have kids. That part of me still comes out sometimes and she is pissed.”
“Oh, I have that, too. It’s like the ‘me before.’” I shake my head at the challenge of it all. “Look, I adore my child and can’t imagine life without her…”
Hannah nods in complete understanding, “Of course. That goes without saying.”
“Maybe I say it for myself; to remind myself. It’s so hard to be a mom when your soul wants to be so many other things. I yearn for liberation in this life, Hannah, and here I am tied physically and emotionally to this plane by many things, including my child’s needs. Of course, this is never how it was meant to be—nuclear families, gender roles, battle of the sexes, the transience. We are supposed to living in community. Being a mother in isolation is not good for us and also not good for the kids.” She nods and I pause, “I would never give it up…she teaches me so much and she is an angel…but, I struggle. I do. And we don’t talk about that so much. It’s still taboo to say, ‘I find it hard to be a mother.’ Or worse, ‘Sometimes, I hate it.’”
She laughs at the drama and also with relief, “You’re the only person I know who can say, ‘I yearn for liberation in this life,’ with sincerity. Oh, Dolly.”
“It’s interesting as I sit here, I feel something unsettled in what I’m saying. It doesn’t sit right.”
“Why not? In what way?”
“Well…I can hear myself sounding selfish even as I claim such a high-minded, spiritual goal. It’s oxymoronic—is that a word?—paradoxical? It’s out of integrity. There’s something whiny in what I just said, a young part sneaking in.”
“The ‘me before’?”
I sit and feel inside myself for the place that is vibrating with a soft aliveness, wanting to be noticed. Yes, there it is: a young and angry part of me, resentful, put upon, and desperate for what? Attention? No, that isn’t quite it…desperate for help.
“I think what we both need is help. To know we’re not alone…Do you remember years and years ago when we were in San Francisco?”
“Of course! Our maidenhood!”
“Yes. You once told me you had channeled me and I was ‘apt.’”
“I remember that. You were…still are…I can feel you across the ocean.”
“That’s part of why I came to France, Hannah. You know I came to visit the grave of Gurdjieff, but that isn’t the whole story. I’ve been channeling Katherine Mansfield—a writer, an artist—who lived a century ago and followed his teachings.”
“Well, what does she need? My understanding is that spirits come when they have left something undone…”
“Unfinished business.”
“Yes.”
“Well…I could write a book. There’s a lot. But to this point about art and motherhood….She was ‘successful’ on the conventional level. In a way I think I would be thrilled with…but she was never a mother and she longed to be. She had the artistic freedom and success we yearn for and what she really wanted was to be a mom.”
“How strange life is. I never wanted to be a mother and now I have two of the most beautiful boys in the world. Lex has been waking in the night screaming. He screams until I come in and hold him. He’s three now, too old for that. But, I had an intuitive sense the other night, there in the dark, holding his little limp body as he stroked my hair, that he was checking on me. That the cries weren’t a fear in him or about his need. He was calling me to him in the night to make sure I was still there…to make sure I was ok.”
My heart aches, “I believe you’re right. I know that level of wisdom in Eleanor. Children come in whole and they can remind us what that’s like.”
We both sit silently for a moment in a state of gratitude and humility for the beautiful, sensitive children we’ve been given to steward. I feel her feeling love for her boys as I find a deep well of appreciation in my heart for having been granted this gift of motherhood.
“See, this is the part of me that can sense the selfishness in what I was expressing earlier. This part of me with the open heart and bowed head knows that this path of motherhood is perfect for my soul now and it is the path to liberation I seek. Not beyond the body, but in the body, in this world. This love of the mother for her child is so pure and complete.” We sat in that space of love, both of us touching it, sensing into it.
“Do you know the Boddhisatva vow?” I ask her. She shakes her head, “No.”
“It is a vow a soul takes to work selflessly for the liberation of all beings; to commit so completely to being of benefit to others that they would pass at the chance for enlightenment themselves until all beings have become enlightened. I think of a beatific figure holding the door open, allowing all beings to pass through before they do. Not missing a single soul.
In my best moments, I identify deeply with this impulse. I like to think I’ve taken that vow; that my soul is committed to working here on this earthly plane for the benefit of all sentient beings. I feel such a calling in that. And the part of me that rails against my perceived constraints is not that. That’s ego. Not that it’s not important. She is hurting and needs to be heard, she needs help, she could genuinely use a break. She’s probably born out of generations of women in my family line who felt they sacrificed their own dreams in the raising of children. I get it. That is a valid and important pain, but it’s not who I am. It’s not all of me, certainly not the highest in me.”
“What does liberation look like with children? For the children? Through the children?”
“This is a good question. It’s not that motherhood is in the way, it is the way … for those who choose it, of course—or are chosen by it. One destination, many paths.”
“I know that’s true for me,” she said quietly. “I love these boys. I may have given up on the old dreams, but I know new dreams will come. Will I ever be an award-winning actress on stage? Who knows? That’s what I wanted once. I’m not sure that’s even what I want any more. I do know I still want to create, to write, to tell stories, to embody the lives of others. I want to make my art in the world. Do I need award for it? To be known for it? I tell you, I felt pretty good tonight watching my students perform. I was so proud of them. And I know I made that possible.”
“That feels so generous. Less egoistic. I feel this way about writing. I had an insight not long ago that I only want to write in a way that awakens the senses, awakens others, and myself in the process. Anything else, seems a waste of time.”
“Well, that’s one thing I know…mothers are much more efficient in their work…and art. We don’t have time to waste.”
“Yes! What a gift. If I’m not unlocking doors or opening doors within myself or inspiring others, I’d rather be with my kid. I know at least that my presence benefits them. They need me.”
“I never thought I’d be a mom, Schuyler. I wanted to be an artist.”
“But, we are! We’re doing it. Maybe not in the ways we imagined or at the scale we imagined, but we are,” I felt it important to remind us both. “Can you believe it’s 2018 and it still feels like a choice we have to make as women—to be a mother or have a career in art or anything else? I mean, less and less. Obviously, women all over the world do both and well. But the struggle is real! The tension, the decisions and the sacrifices, they’re real. And we need to be talking about them, because to go on pretending that we can do it all on our own without help without a complete reevaluation of our values as a culture, just reinforces the status quo. I’m committed to changing that for women, for men, for our kids. I’m tired of the resentment. I want to give help and get it. I want to love myself for the dreams I have achieved and those I’ve had to shelve. And I commit to never blaming my children on any psychic level for what I have or haven’t done in this life. Here we go,” I pause as the last part comes to me, “I commit to a change of perspective. I commit to trusting that higher power I spend so much time praying to. And in that surrender, I release the need for the struggle. That feels like a path to me.”
“As a boddhisattva?”
“Yes, as a boddhisattva.” We raise our glasses and toast the change of heart we both feel.
“Do Boddhisatvas drink wine?” Hannah asks playfully.
“Good French wine? Definitely.”
****
Hannah and I leave each other feeling deeply connected. I finish packing the suitcases and climb into bed with Eleanor. She is angelic sprawled there, mouth open, breathing deeply, her face serene and body in a state of deep relaxation. I fall quickly to sleep.
I wake before dawn. The apartment is noisy with traffic and filled with light from the street lights. Eleanor is still sleeping peacefully next to me in the bed. I lay there listening to the cars outside on the Boulevard Moorland and feel like there is one last thing for us here. I review the trip in my mind—all the connections and healing, the magic, the spells broken and new ones cast. I’d felt so clear about coming—had bought the tickets without the money to do so. I’d made the pilgrimage I’d wanted to make; had followed my desires; and had spent precious time enjoying Eleanor. I search deeply inside myself for what is still incomplete. I sit up in meditation and open myself to an answer. When it comes it surprises me.
I see two blossoming flowers—a red rose and a white rose—and I know them to be me and Eleanor. Both flowers are opening from bud to full bloom, softly, sensually and naturally. I realize that both of us have been in a process of evolution; opening to a new level of love within us. And I know that every woman is a flower like this—capable of blossoming into her own beauty and fullness…at the right time and given the right conditions.
Eleanor, I am guided to understand, is entering a new level of awareness of what it means to be a young woman, a new curiosity has been awakened, an opening up of the eventual possibility of one day being in love…and it not being icky at all. And I am remembering romance...the end of love as a means to an end. In the City of Love…romantic love…I have come to realize that the lover I seek now will not save me or lead me to liberation. He will not fill a void in me or prove to me that I am worthy. I will do all of that myself; am doing it even now by living my life to the fullest.
To find liberation in this life, a woman must become her own beloved. She must stop looking outside herself for the approval, adoration and validation she so eagerly seeks over a lifetime in the eyes of another: her father, her boyfriends, her lovers, her husbands. She must come to see that she doesn’t need love, she is love. For that is the ultimate destination and the journey of the feminine: to dissolve in love; to become the vessel for divine love she was born to be. Whatever she does in the world, whoever she chooses to sleep with or make a home with, she is already complete. And whether her soul is searching for romance or spiritual knowledge, there is nothing that can be got outside herself. She already possesses infinity; all she needs is a guide and the keys to remembrance. Sometimes these are held by a man, and that can get tricky. But the trick is one she will always survive if she’s aware and her devotion is sincere. Then, the trick itself is the gateway to the recognition of her own power...a power she was all too ready to give away because no one ever told her the truth: that she is everything she needs.
Coming to this realization in the middle of the night in Paris, our last night in this exquisite city, I feel complete. I know who I am and what I want. Something changes in the atmosphere of the room and I sense Katherine.
I get out of the bed and walk to the kitchenette for some water. I sit at the small kitchen table where Hannah and I had sat hours earlier and invite Katherine to join me. She seems relieved, more relaxed than I’ve felt her.
“What a surprise…” she says.
“What do you mean?” I ask across the table into the stillness of the dark room.
“I am the lover I was looking for. At the cemetery. I thought he was it. My heart was still bleeding for him. I thought I could stop the torture of that painful heartbreak by acknowledging our eternal union. I thought that would complete the cycle. I thought I would stop missing him then.’
“But, you didn’t?”
“No. I realize now I’ve been stuck in the idea that he completes me or maybe I’ve been defining myself in opposition to him. By struggling against him—the struggle of the magicians. How…limiting.”
I feel so complete, I now want to help her, “You know I’ve learned that whatever you project onto another you have to ultimately reclaim as your own. What he is-in some sense-is an aspect of you. What if you conjured him into your life to show you how powerful you are? You were working on healing yourself, only you didn’t have time…”
“Ah…that’s where I understand something you don’t. Time as you think of it is meaningless. I’m still working on healing myself…only not in the physical sense. This is as real as anything else, my dear. And you and I are also aspects of the same intelligence. I think the one I ought to have thanked is you…We’re doing it, aren't we?”
I laugh, “A real women’s liberation movement!”
“What’s that?”
“Never mind.” I say with a grin.
“You know…in The Work, Gurdjieff’s teachings, there is the theory of octaves…Paris was the outside force, the shock, that seemingly took us all to the next octave in our relationship to Love.” She looks out the window, “I used to live not far from here…I had such adventures in this city. So many love affairs…”
“French kissing?” I joke.
I look at the sleeping angel in the bed across the room and my heart swells with maternal love. Katherine looks at me approvingly. She seemed bigger, more diffuse, more etheric. She wants me to get this: how blessed I am and how dear this daughter is. In the dark she seems to stand and rustle the curtain again; looking down onto the street. Her parting words enter my awareness,
“You can lay the past to rest now…look at your life and feel joy. You are a channel for love. Your only job is to get clear, to radiate, to be confident in the full expression of the love that you are. Not a personal love, but an impersonal and infinite love. It is not you, and it is all you are. Bring it through. Give. Give. Give. But you cannot give what you have not received, so receive, receive, receive! Stop blocking the love that wants to come through you. Make your story bigger. Make it epic. Stop the world in its tracks. Now is the time to be full of the love that you are as a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a lover, a friend. You are that. Let it flow.”
She bows to me and then leaves for good. We are complete. The tenacious magic that bound us is dissolving. I say the final words to break it, “To remember ourselves with love, as Love: it is the feminine way.”
I snuggle into the sleeping child and feel gratitude for life’s cycles—the unconditional love and vast patience of a Universe determined to help us learn and grow whole. Maiden, mother, crone…and back again…over and over. “Thank you…Merci,” I say aloud to no one and everyone; feeling received by that Great Mother—beyond comprehension, beyond time—complete and surrendered in the City of Love.
FIN.
~~~~~
Wow; “chicken skin” all the way...profound, powerful and a joy to read. Thank you, Love💝
This chapter and ending was so healing and evocative, Schuyler. Thank you for bringing it to life ❤️🙏