Fear

Well, the buddhists started playing together again. School's in session, which means the University Buddhist Association's meeting. I can't tell you how much I starve for this contact with other buddhists. I've talked about this before. It's a relatively new feeling. I used to do this mostly alone, in my little basement room, with my Target buddha, my kitchen timer, my health store incense and my little chime bowl that came from the Barnes & Noble Feng Shui kit my father bought me for Christmas ten years ago. Occasionally, I'd drop by Hokukuan,when the kids were at their dad's. But mostly I did it alone.

Now, though, I'm forty. And most of the people I know and work with in Little Dixie are fundamentalist Christians or Catholics--which is all well and good--but I want to sit around occasionally and not be the resident weirdo at least once a week. So here I am, in the basement of the student union with Seido and the other weirdos, Wednesday afternoons, 4:00 to 5:30. Lilly's shrink changed her appointment time to Wednesdays at 4, making it impossible to go any more, though. And then Lilly decided she wanted to play jazz piano, and the teacher's only slot is at 5. So there you have it. No more sangha for Mom.

But it really bothered me. So I had my father pick up Lilly from her shrink and take her to her piano lesson.

Bless him, he didn't question it.

"What do you need to do?" He asked.

"I have to go to the weekly Buddhist Association meeting." I said, matter-of-factly.

"Oh. Well, draw me a map."

I felt guilty at first on the way to Seido's office. It was cold and sunny, the light beginning to get warm and yellow, the snow on the ground reflecting the colors. I decided to cut across the quandrangle. I thought about something I'd read in Shambhala Sun that Chongyam Trungpa Rinpoche had said--that your senses, rather than being distractions, were your friends, because your senses showed you the infinite. It's so true. The slush, the students, the red brick buildings with their slate roofs. How beautiful. I got happy, like a little kid stamping in puddles.

At his office, I knocked on the door. (shave and a haircut) Seido opened it. "No toon can resist it," I said, shaking my head. He looked at me a little perplexed. I have Who Framed Roger Rabbit almost memorized (it was the only video we had in Miami for years and my children probably watched it a thousand times). I'm pretty sure Seido thinks I'm a total idiot.
"I'm here to help you with the cushions."

"What a nice surprise!" He was in high spirits. He looked better, like he'd been eating. And he'd shaved his beard. "How have you been?"

So I told him. 9 years. I've never told the man anything, I realized. Told him all about Lilly, grad school, etc.

"It's the culture." He said, shaking his head. "You've lost her to the culture." He holds forth on this at some length. In some ways, I agree, but you know, young women have been starving themselves since the middle-ages--so this may just be something young and weird. I think we blame a lot on the culture, when it's just sort of the same old wine in new bottles. I mean look at those Roman bastards. And we haven't changed so much. We're really just a bunch of bastards, and we struggle not to be.

We walk over to the union, set the cushions out. There's a beautiful young woman waiting for us there, with a notepad and a digital voice recorder. She has that sort of seamless cheap panted slick look the J-School girls all have. The smile that's used for a purpose. Reptilian. As Lilly says calmly, "Just because I say someone looks like a lizard, doesn't mean they still aren't pretty."

The other person there is Kevin, a faculty member.

"Do you mind if I observe?" She asks Seido.

"Why don't you sit with us?"

She gamely picks a cushion and breathes with us. Seido breaks it off early. During the meditation, someone comes in, stands at the door and comes in very quietly.
It's strange. Someone trying to move around quietly and slowly is more distracting than someone just coming in loudly and quickly. Bam. Plop. Click. It's over. I become convinced, sitting there, not moving, that this is an angry fundamentalist Christian gunman who is going to shoot us all. I become utterly, terrifyingly, and crazily convinced of this. What should I do? Should I just keep sitting? Will that be the ultimate exhibition of form? Maintaining my mudra while I'm shot? Should I turn and look at him? I fall back into the sort of terrifying thought patterns I did when I was 4 and I thought there was a bad person who lived outside my room who could listen to my thoughts. He wouldn't do anything bad to me as long as I pretended not to know about him. So as long as I kept pretending the gunman wasn't there, he wouldn't shoot us. Right? He just kept standing there, a shadow in the doorway.

Seido ended the session early. I turned and looked cautiously around. It was a photographer. I mean, I thought it probably was, since photographers and reporters usually go arm in arm...but...funny....fear. Fear of illusions. But fear feels, real, doesn't it?

That's my 1/2 hour.

Auditions

A long, long time ago, I went to Tanglewood.

I went accidentally.

My friend, Jennifer, played the flute. All she wanted to do was become a floutist. She practiced all the time. She drove two hours to the city twice a week to take lessons with the principal floutist of the symphony. She was technically perfect, but she could never get the feel of it, the soul. This was to become one of the tragedies of her life. I always marveled at it. How she could be so proficient, yet sound so mechanical, when she obviously loved it so passionately? I thought maybe she was sabotaging herself somehow--holding herself back. She just couldn't send her spirit into it--just couldn't connect. The terrible thing was...she knew it. She knew what was missing.

She wanted to go to Tanglewood. She was originally from the East Coast and knew all about it. But she didn't want to go there alone. So she dragged me along to the auditions.

The auditions were in the city--two hours away. And nobody in our state had heard of Tanglewood except us, so we were the only two people there. They were held in an old high school gym. Jenny went first. Then it was my turn. I wasn't really there to get in, so I didn't put very much effort into my violin playing. After I was done, the guy holding the auditions (who turned out to be the director of the camp, Scott Schillin) winced and asked me, "Do you do anything else?"

"I have the lead in Oklahoma..."I told him.

He smiled and launched in to "Surrey with the Fringe on the Top" singing Curly's part. We went through all the songs--played for about 45 minutes. I got into the vocal program. Not because I could sing particularly well, but because he liked me, I think.

It turned out to be a bit of a mistake on his part. I didn't understand that I'd been let in because of my beaming personality, and refused to act grateful. I thought I should have access to the master classes and protested when we were not all allowed to audition. It was a very difficult summer. It was the summer when I came up very hard against the fact that there were other people who were better than I was. That I had limitations. That there was this whole class of beautiful, rare, gifted artists who, no matter how hard I tried, would always be a cut above. I was used to getting all the attention, and it wasn't going to happen here. A lot happened. And it's probably another story.

But last week, Lilly auditioned for the vocal program at Tanglewood...and Lilly can actually sing.
The auditions were in Chicago. We drove up ahead of the snow. My new years resolution is to be 15 minutes early for everything this year--and we arrived at 5 til three. Her auditions (we thought) were at 310. An old army jail had been converted to a music building--the cells whitewashed and carpeted and turned into practice rooms. The place gave me the creeps. Gas stations and jails can almost never be redone. Unhappiness seeped through the cold walls. Bad vibes.

"We thought you weren't coming," the woman at the desk told us. She was knitting a little pair of blue socks. Baby socks? "We rearranged all the other kids."

"But we're early!" I said.

"It's 5 til 3. Your audition's at 3."

"3:10." I corrected her.

"3. It's all right. She can still audition. What will you be singing?"

"Sebben Crudele." Lilly answers, nonplussed. Both she and I had double-checked the audition time.

"And your second piece?"

"Second piece?" echoed Lilly. "I thought we only needed one."

"It says very clearly you need two pieces."

There's another mother. Her daughter has just gone in. This mother is squat, british, with a kind, seamed face. Through the doors I can hear her daughter trilling an aria from Cosi fan Tutti. She sounds amazing.

"Isn't there something else she knows--from choir or church or something--something she could sing a capella?" She asks us.

"Well...I could sing Samba..." Lilly ventures.

"Jazz is unacceptable." The blue sock knitting woman says. "It'll just have to be one. And is your accompanist here?"

We stare at her.

"You don't have an accompanist." She states. Looks at us like we're idiots. Sighs. "Well, I'll ask Phyllis if she can play this." She takes the sheet music and leaves.

She returns. "Phyllis can play this in her sleep. She's played this hundreds of times."

Great, I think. Not only are we late and unprepared, the one song Lilly will be singing, 240 girls have already auditioned with.

Lilly goes into one of the jail cells to warm up. I try to make small talk. Mistake.

"So," I ask. "Is Scott Schillin still the director?"

"I've never heard of Scott Schillin. Phyllis Hoffman has been the director for years and years and years."

"What about Leonard Atherton. He was the director of the vocal program."

"Are you sure? I've never heard of him, either."

Did I actually go there? I wonder. Did I dream this up.

"Did you go there?" the British lady asks me. "What was it like?"

"Well, apparently it's been about 200 years, but it was magic."

"You went on voice?" Blue sock lady asks me.

"Yes."

"You still sing?"

"No. I wasn't very good." I laugh.

"Well, let's hope your daughter's better."

Geez.

Lilly comes out. "I think I'm ready." She's wearing her snow boots. She's wearing a black cable knit cashmere sweater--one of my old ones. There are moth holes in the sleeve, but she refuses to wear anything else. Black tights. Black short skirt. Her auburn hair swings around her sharp little jaw. She's put on 4 pounds since the anorexia thing started. She's a little softer around the corners, but not by much. She doesn't look like a person anymore. She looks like an anime character. All eyes and legs. Oh, Lilly. Why couldn't we have gotten it right? She's always so dead on it in terms of schedules and details, I didn't even think to double check her. Just drove her up to Chicago. Nick's the one I always have to bird dog. Never Lilly. I feel as if I've been punched in the gut, looking at her.

"Break a leg," I tell her.

"oh--should I wear these?" she asks about her muddy boots. I run and fetch her real shoes.

We stayed in Evanston that night. At the Hilton Garden. Went to see Frost/Nixon. Walked arm and arm in the freezing snowy night, the muffled streets. I took her out to eat at a fancy restaurant to celebrate. Got the rack of lamb. She got the acorn squash. But she picked at the creme brulee on my plate and snatched some of the lamb--with her old greedy bad manners. And that hasn't happened in a very long time. So, all in all, in spite of the fact that we spent about $350 we didn't have driving there, eating, and staying in the hotel for a 5 minute audition we proceeded to bomb--I consider it a success.

That's my 1/2 hour.