The Pull of the Moon_ A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,44

in the bottom of my underwear drawer and I gave the book away. I thought, this meditation, it’s a fad. A foreign import, like falafel. We are Westerners, and we cannot do this right, no matter what anyone says. Our specialty is rock-and-roll, cars, blue jeans. Ice cream. We are not inner-oriented. We are oriented toward sofas and television, convoluted politics, escalating sizes of popcorn at movies featuring escalating levels of violence.

Something just happened here.

I undressed, in the dark. I stepped out of my sleeping bag and took off my clothes to lie down on the earth. I lay on my back and I rested my hand on my belly, then moved it downward slowly until I came to the slight rise of my pubic bone and the tangle of rough hair there. I could see nothing, and so the feeling was more intense; and I felt more the toucher than the one being touched. I moved my fingers down farther, then pushed one inside myself, pushed up high until I found the tip of my uterus. I held my finger there for a long time, pushed across a message from me to me. Thanks. And forgiveness. Then I pulled my finger out and rubbed it along the inside of my thigh. It felt like blood, what I rubbed there. I was sure it was blood, it felt too thick to be anything else. I turned on my flashlight, excited, to look; but no, it was not blood, it was just dampness, colorless and not magical. Only of course magical. I could smell ocean. I tasted my own self’s salt. And saw there was nothing to forgive myself for.

I lay down again, turned onto my front. I spread out my arms and my legs, and I thought, here. Here I am. I felt a pine needle dig into my thigh, and then I didn’t feel it. I smelled the rich smell of black dirt; I felt something else’s pulse in my chest; I understood with my belly that the sun was on the way within the next few minutes. I stood up and large hands moved into me and then separated themselves inside me, making me wider. I breathed in all I could take. And was, suddenly, myself again, overly aware of where the night space ended and I began. I sat down, waited for the pink of dawn to slit the bottom of the black horizon.

So.

So.

There is a feeling you have coming home at night when you are tired, and the key turns so easily in the lock, and your sheets are fresh from your having changed them that morning. There is a feeling you have after your baby has nursed and now falls asleep on your shoulder. That is something like what I just felt. Only, the me-ness seemed to be removed, so that other things could enter in. It was a feeling of finding one’s real place, I mean in the scheme of things. I felt as though I had, for once, the right perspective on death. It was a matter of the water drop seeing the falls, of losing the ego to the Wheel. But it was fleeting. I could feel my own longing for my own self return, my insistence on my own importance, at least to myself. It’s funny; I always thought that to lose one’s sense of self would be a horrible, disorienting thing. But it’s not. It is a movement toward the deepest kind of relief I have ever known.

I feel as though this was a holy and personal event I will never share with anyone. That it cannot be shared, and should not be. Occasionally, one learns quiet, and then how to keep it. Even me, who has always felt that everything must be shared, in order for it to be.

Late morning. I am still here, outside, being inspected by squirrels and birds high up in the trees. I am sore and creaky, and a thin line of pain runs from my shoulder into the middle of my back. But I am exhilarated. I can roll up my bed and go back to the cabin for coffee and then I can drive to a new place. And then to another new place. I am only fifty.

Dear Martin,

Today, on the way out of town, I stopped at a Kmart. After I was done getting what I needed, I went to look at the gardening equipment. I always enjoy doing this; it’s so