III.
And the sound of the tinkling bell tells us it is back to our drawing boards and easels. That’s right! Boeb was carrying a small carved brass bell that he would strike gently with a wooden staff every time he had to signal that it was time for us to re-group. This was meant to be in keeping with the monastery and the mountain’s qi (energy, in other words). Like Qi-gong, yeah? Never mind my own private joke to myself.
Boeb announces “now we shall complete our apple with shading” to the loud, collective groans of 11 people, heavily overdosed on a diet of God’s forbidden fruit, since morning! I tell Eduardo (standing next to me), “if I have to draw one more apple or melon or any goddamn fruit today, I am personally going to unleash “Angry birds” on our collective fruit basket here – including on Alex’s apple”, which, by the way, was so F A T, it looked like it was really high on cocaine, enough to give the Empire State a run for its money!
Boeb decided it was wise not to proceed down that path, and told us instead “how about if you all watch as I finish our Apple, and also draw a cheetah?” We nodded ascent happily. Please go ahead and draw the entire fruit and animal kingdom, if you will. Have the cheetah eat the bloody apple for all we care! But Boeb's apple sure was a far cry from my own! 
The lovely, languorous lunch and the afternoon sun was, by now, casting its spell and all we wanted was a lie-down on the grass, or a cup of tea in that tea house down in the pagoda by the garden, as Boeb sketched away,
The lovely, languorous lunch and the afternoon sun was, by now, casting its spell and all we wanted was a lie-down on the grass, or a cup of tea in that tea house down in the pagoda by the garden, as Boeb sketched away,
Halfway through the cheetah, he urges us to unleash the power of “imagination” and to start paying attention to bringing “movement” alive on paper, and that we ape his cheetah. Obviously, I am in no mood for any movement at all by now – either on paper, or one that requires me lifting any body part from its horizontal status on the grass. I mean with this gorgeous day, the yellow-ochre monastery at our back and chinese lanterns hanging from every odd skeletal tree branch, who wants to IMAGINE a cheetah's movement?!
So I ask Boeb “Hey Boeb, how about we paint something REAL for once, and not an imagined apple or a cheetah, or something that will not run away in the next two hours? Like I don’t know, maybe this tree, in front of us – which looks like it is FIRMLY planted on solid ground and will be for the time we are done painting it?” J Two hours lying about in the sun, and my imagination is about as alive as the last brontosaurus that walked the earth. Everybody acquiesces and we start painting the skeletal tree in front of us. Each, her own version of it. Boeb’s incessant urging on color blending and shading, notwithstanding. We are such poor students and Boeb so desperately losing control of his class!
Finally, at about 4PM some, we are all done and the day light swiftly fading. My tree has gone from a skeletal tree with Springtime buds to a fully flowering summer day’s tree with a thinking man sitting underneath its shade. I suck at drawing but, well, I tried. My best. I really did.
And just as we are wrapping up our drawing and folding up the easels, a monkish looking old man, very Yoda-like walks amongst our group and inspects everyone’s drawings and says something weird and personal to each one of us. Like the Lord’s messenger on his secret mission! Yoda-man stops at mine and says “you have a child’s spirit in you; you have something special to offer to those whose lives intersect with yours, and your heart is young, but you have heart trouble.” At this, I furiously try to recall the last time I had an ECG done at an Annual Physical, and he says smiling “you know,” love” trouble. Pray to the Buddha, to heal your heart and your soul.” And he holds both of my hands in his and smiles the most beatific smile, one that shines with some sort of divine light.
I have to try all I can, to not start bawling like the child he claims I am. Even so, my eyes mist over, as my heart fills with gratitude over unexpected blessings such as these, and I think “Buddha has started to heal me, already”. On my way back to stash away the drawing gear, I knelt and said a prayer again, this time, of gratitude and not one borne of need and misery and desperate longing to do something about this erstwhile hole in my heart.
Eddie Vedder, move over. My wishlist is coming true - just yet.
Isn't it strange, how a stranger can see through the wall we build around us? Isn't it strange, how, at that moment, we feel the most vulnerable - a pin drop could unleash a deluge borne of our immeasurable turmoil, so far held precariously in by our cautious reaching out to the world. Sometimes, all it takes to begin healing is just one word.
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