Zazen - By Vanessa Veselka Page 0,61

bedrooms and I saw yurts and straw bale shelters tucked in the woods. I heard their names as I went: Coryn, Marco, Daria, Asher, Miranda, and the one I met at The Cycle, Black Francis.

We took a trail through the pine trees where a creek cut, jagged and half frozen through the new snow. Tamara pointed to a small hutch covered in tarp with lines running to it.

“Most of our power is solar and we pull the rest out of the creek. The batteries get charged there and we run it into the house.”

She led me back up through the woods past where the yurts and tree houses were. We talked about being teenagers. She grew up near Los Angeles in some suburban corridor between a mall and a freeway. She got pregnant halfway through high school by some skater kid who bussed tables at the Olive Garden and had an abortion.

“I’m sure we did it just to have something to do,” she said, “Nothing ever changed there, nothing ever happened. I swear time doesn’t even fucking exist in those places.”

We ran over the names of some of the bands that were around then and I knew some of them, they were mostly political hardcore.

“I was super vegetarian then and used to go to the Krishna house feeds all the time but I never believed in reincarnation.”

She opened the wax paper took a piece of salmon, wrapped it in its metallic skin and ate it.

“I loved LA though,” she said.

I hate LA. I’m all for the earthquake.

“It’s nothing but cement and razor wire,” I said.

“Right and I felt like if I could be alive there, nothing could kill me. It was exhausting though. I lived in a house with fifteen other people then. All the bands stayed with us when they came through on tour. A lot of Italian political hardcore bands, some Dutch. There were a lot of fights with the police then. They would come down to whatever demonstration we did in riot gear and we’d throw bottles at them. A few people would get arrested, a few would get stitches and everyone walked around the next day acting like heroes. It got pretty ridiculous sometimes. We had to fight the skinheads at the benefit shows and it would go on the news as a riot like we were all the same people. It seemed for a while, though, like something was coming to a head. Riot cops were shutting all the stores and marching through the streets in the thousands. I really thought that we were close to some big shift and that it was all about to happen but it didn’t. That winter one of my best friends killed herself and like half the house started shooting dope. By spring there was nothing left of it and the bands coming through were more like jocks than anything else. It was like the whole thing dissipated worldwide at once. That’s how I met Mirror. She was part of a younger set that was all into queer politics and being vegan.”

Tamara put away the remaining salmon and smiled.

“You know, she would kill me for telling you this,” she said, “but when I met Mirror she was a brown-haired runaway hippy chick who listened to Ani Difranco.”

“I am so glad you told me that.”

“You should definitely tell her.”

Tamara pulled off a glove and shook it. There were small chunks of snow in the weave and she picked them out.

“I still can’t imagine you with the Olive Garden skater boy but I can see you in Los Angeles.”

“Yeah, when I came here it was shock, all the cold and gray. I went out to the coast and the water was freezing. The beaches were rocky, black and sharp and it seemed like everyplace I’d felt strong and free and alive was gone forever. I felt like someone else completely.”

I also knew what it was like to be somewhere foreign, waiting for the person you used to be to show up. It was something that connected us.

We came out of the woods and followed the creek back down to where we started. She took me through the outbuildings near the smokehouse. Inside one were several fifty-five-gallon drums with lines running out the bottom into five-gallon containers. It looked like a still. There were small electric heaters on the ground. Clean white t-shirts hung on nails.

“This is where we store and filter the fryer oil to make the low-grade biodiesel. We pick