EMBER by Marta

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-435020087790887201.post-86591646320626427542007-11-27T07:38:00.000-08:002007-11-27T07:40:53.501-08:00EMBER by MartaThis is what he looked like. Not tall, but taller than me. Thin, but not skinny. Well proportioned is perhaps the word. He was going bald, but still had his brown hair from about halfway down. Trimmed, but not military. His eyes were brown and very alive. His mouth was one of those ones they call sensuous. It had a fluidity. The lips could curl. He used his mouth to smile, smirk, to form his words wholly. He spoke with gusto. He had physical energy. He bounded to the door. He wrapped his arms around you. Everything was ten-fold with Natvar.  <o:p></o:p> He wasn’t fey at all, but not a he-man either. A pleasant place somewhere in between. A man who loved art and music and theatre and beautiful things. Poetry. He read us poetry sometimes. Greek poetry. Cavafy – who I’d never heard of. Now I see that a lot of gay men like Cavaffy. He writes about being gay. I didn’t know that then. I don’t think it would have made a difference. If Natvar liked something, I was convinced of its worth.  <o:p></o:p> He liked me a lot at first. He really noticed me, made sure that I felt especially welcome when I showed up for class. I stood out in his eyes. I knew it. And though I spent so much time alone, berating myself for just about everything – for not writing, for not having lovers and friends, for not having the rich meaningful life that I kenw was crucial, it felt right when Natvar noticed me as someone special. Both things were true. I was special and I was worthless. Both things went together. I didn’t try and make sense of that. It just was.  <o:p></o:p> And so when I first heard that chant – Jyota se Jyota it was called – when I first heard it a year after meeting Natvar, when I first finally showed up for one of his chanting nights on Monday – I hadn’t gone to them for a year. I wasn’t interested in chanting. I wanted to do yoga because I wanted to stay young and thin. I wasn’t interested in the rest of Natvar’s little school – the pictures on the walls, the guru he visited and talked about, the chanting nights. But then one night – nothing much was going on except Natvar and his school. I had hoped New York City would fill me up, but it was leaving me empty. Except for this little school on Eighth Avenue where I was going to more and more – first just one class a week, then two, then three – then Sundays to help clean. So why not try that Monday night chanting. Maybe something cool would happen. After all, my sister in Boston did unusual things like this – went to chants and had astrology readings, and read books about tarot. And she was way happier than I was. So maybe I had to do things that didn’t really appeal to me.  <o:p></o:p> So I came for the chanting night. And filed into the long narrow hall where usually Natvar gave his yoga class. Tonight though we just sat on the floor – about six of us – and Natvar played the harmonium – a box-like organ that he had brought from India – he had been to India! – and someone gave me a card with the words to the song printed on it. The words in Sanskrit were printed on one side and the words in English were printed on the other.  <o:p></o:p> In English, I read about how there is an ember inside of each person. A light. Smoldering. The guru is just someone who comes along and strikes a match to that ember – makes it leap up and become the real flame it has always longed to be. That’s what a guru is, said the song. Nothing more. Nothing less.  <o:p></o:p> The song was only a few minutes long. I liked its melody – very bright and cheerful, easy to sing along with and you could clap along with its jaunty rhythm. I could feel that ember inside of me, longing to be lit up. I knew what that ember was. No one else had ever mentioned it to me. Not in all the books I’d read. But it was that ember I’d been fighting for all along, that ember that had made me feel so much despair so much of the time. And now someone – this guru that Natvar loved so much – was saying that he knew about the ember. That he had had an ember like that inside of him once and he’d bowed down to a guru and the guru had given him everything, had lit that ember and made it burn. And that was the only difference between a guru and other people. A guru had already bowed down to someone else – not anyone else. Had bowed down to a true guru. You had to have a real guru. Not anyone would do. A true guru was someone who had bowed down to another true guru.  <o:p></o:p> I could bow down. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to bow down to anyone. But that was just the point. You had to do what you didn’t want to do. You had to set your pride aside. It was that pride that would hold you back. That pride that made you think you were worth anything.  <o:p></o:p> I would bow down. I would follow orders. Natvar’s guru said, in his books – I bought his books from Natvar’s tiny little bookstore in the lobby – that this would not be easy, and it would not be quick. You had to hang in there. There was a lot of impurity to burn up. That’s why seekers had to really buckle down and give themselves over for a long time. But if you could do it, if you could pass all the tests the guru was going to set for you, if you could hang in there then one day it would happen. The ember would burst into flame and nothing ever would be able to put it out again.  <o:p></o:p>  <o:p></o:p>MartaSzabohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07554422492794060801noreply@blogger.com