BEFORE CHAPTER ELEVEN
Let me begin by saying “The Heart Sutra” is an advanced teaching. To begin to realize the emptiness of things takes a fair bit of practice. THAT said, I encourage you to work with emptiness on a daily basis. The simpliest explanation and approach is to not take this existence too seriously and not take this existence personally.
Jane, a high fashion queen, finds herself in old age. The body and the mind loosing capacity to continue the catwalk. DO NOT COUNT YOURSELF OUT OF THIS INEVITABLE CHANGE - that is, if your body and mind should live long.
The sutra tells us, “…all dharmas are marked with emptiness.” The word dharma in this context means all things and that which holds all things together. Why worry about any thing - when all things do not appear or disappear, are not tainted nor pure, do not increase or decrease.
Contemplate the negativa of all things. No thing is real or unreal, no thing holds together or falls apart, no thing promises or breaks a promise to be, or do or become any “thing.” And yet, the smallest thing rocks us - agitates us, annoys us, brings up rights and wrongs and judgements and criticism, picking and choosing, liking and dislking.
When reading about the aging and changing of Jane Firestone note how these small things trouble her. What does she not know that would set her free? What do you need to know to be free? Is she ignorant? Are you?
CHAPTER TEN - TRAFFIC JAM & IGNORANCE
The matching colors of the flowers, the narrow gold lines that rim the gift box, both satisfy Jane’s eye. In hand she collects two bills she managed to pay, house keys and her dressy linen purse. Before she opens the door, she checks her hands, ‘bills, keys, purse.’ In front of the hall mirror she makes a slow turn of her outfit, ‘soft, suede flats, silver-gray socks, matching slacks, silver-gray cashmere sweater, her platinum hair swept back showing off her high-boned face.’ Next, her car. ‘Garage? In front?’ In front, she remembers. ‘I’m forgetting something.’ Looking around. “Oh, God. The gift. The flowers.”
With the bills on top, she places the box on the hood of her car, unlocks the door and slides across the leather front seat. “Ahhh.” She murmurs. The smell of the flowers and look of luxury. Her long sleek sinews loosen and sink into the plush of the cushioned seats. ‘Swanky.’ She smiles. ‘And reliable,’ she whispers in joy. With ease she stretches one leg out onto the ground as she takes one long look at Caribbean blue eyes in the visor mirror. She presses her soft colored lips, one across the other in a smile.
‘Beauty makes money. Money makes beautiful.’
As ever, she appreciates the beauty of money. What it can buy. Her beautiful face. The gold trimmed gift. A new hip. With a slight startle she notices she left the box and bills on the hood. With one hand she retrieves them. One last pat as witness to her forgetfulness she pushes the box and the two letters up against the back of the seat then starts the Town Car.
The wheels turn away from the curb with no difficulty as the long wide bonnet pulls out into the street. Heading towards Susan's shop she tries to fight off the ghosts in her head of the phone call, the ordinance, and her brainless forgetting.
‘This is damn silly. Everyone has forgotten stuff…coffee, keys…you name it. Use it to your advantage, forget the stupid phone call.’ She scolds herself to ward off the thoughts.
Jane loves driving. The speed, the luxury, the independence it offers her. The wide, soft seats, the automatic adjustments, the steering wheel set at the perfect angle. The sleek smooth design is one of a handful still on the road; a beautiful head turner much like Jane herself. The sovereign white, the cream-colored leather, the full-size chassis remains unmatched. Full of luxury, lots of horsepower under the hood and a sound system built for any audiophile. Everything powered on demand…windows, doors, seats, mirrors, dashboard navigation. Even the smell seemed to charm. Over the years she discovered power came from speaking up and getting involved. No shrinking back. ‘Maybe,’ she considers, ‘maybe I need to get involved.’
Hundreds of times in the casting studio she never knew who the client was. It was up to her to identify the right person. The one with the power to say “Yes!” To approach them, that one person with “yes!” Hand her book over in person. Years of stumbling, hesitating, finding her legs, then rising to her full height greeting strangers looking for the ‘right’ one.
‘Well, if I hadn’t gone to the audition?’ she taps on the steering wheel and comes out of her daydream. She finds herself at a dead stop in front of one of the bigger houses. She slows down and lowers her head to confirm what she recognizes.
‘Yes, two perfect sized foo dogs guarding the long walkway to the front door.’
She guessed, then imagined….’this is where the Baines’ live. “It’s pree…tee big,” she mutters as she sizes up the manicured lawns, the long walkways. ‘Should I go?’ This question hangs over her inclination to get involved. The house attracts her. The windows woo and entice her. This is a house owned by the powerful.
For over sixty years Jane lived and breathed in the competitive world of women. The fashion industry magnified her propensity to show up, but it also taught her how to get involved without being burned to a crisp. ‘This neighborhood business is nothing like the world of fashion. Just showing up gorgeous was most of the battle in the fashion world. What are the rules in a neighborhood?’
The invitation from Julie Berker remains like the last kernels of popcorn in a greasy popcorn box. Empty and not edible. But she felt something. An unexpected debate. She feels torn. If she attends, it’s her debut into what she senses is a neighborhood clique. If she refuses…she presses her lips in worry this time, recognizing this is as far as she knows.
Further down the street at the end of the block Jane turns West to Susan’s shop. The traffic slows to a stop. The street is narrow. Cars parked on both sides. Too narrow for oncoming cars to pass through. Jane hoists herself up to maneuver her Town Car through one lane. ‘God, I hope no one comes down the other direction. It’s impossible to pass on either side.’ She complains.
A slim, tight passage, a slit between pick-up trucks, vans and Coopers shored up on the curbsides. The house lots on this street are small. The houses are, too. Fewer garages, no driveways. More multi-family bricks, some as high as four stories, others chained together on one level. Two ten flat buildings rise and face one another in what might be imagined to be a contest. Paned windows hang recessed over the roofs of the row of vehicles below. Jane slows down. She sees red warning lights glowing from the rear of a stopped SUV. The size of the SUV blocks her view.
“What’s the holdup?” she grumbles. “This street should be one way.” Her words wind her up as she blows out a gust of frustration. Worry forms an airstream in her mind carrying the unbidden phone call, forgetfulness, the ordinance. ‘Maybe,’ she ponders against the flow of the dam of traffic. ‘This street is the reason for the meeting.’
Impatient, she wants to tap her horn, but restrains her impulse. “That won’t help.” She owns up to her current state. ‘Petition the city to make these side streets one way. Not a bad idea. I’d be for that.’ Not recognizing her attachment, she inches forward, braking and rolling to a stop. The red lights die off, movement ends. ‘What now?’ She begins to guess. ‘Someone is picking someone up. Dropping someone off. A school bus!’ From side to side, she moves her eyes looking for what is the hold up. She breathes noisily. ‘I’m stuck.’ She admits. She taps her fingers along the rim of the steering wheel in her usual superstitious way. She sees nothing ahead beyond the SUV in front of her.
Those red lights determined everything. No red lights, things remain in the dark. She considers. ‘I’ll call Susan.’ But decides not to call. ‘It’s not the end of the world if I am late. Calm down.’ She tells herself. ‘What’s the big hurry?’ She bargains with calm words against the frustration. ‘Everything can wait. What’s the problem?’
While Jane continues to fabricate, she makes an effort to sort them out, like a child picking petals from a flower. ‘One for me, none for you.’ She divides to conquer. ‘This one stays, that one goes.’ Her thoughts segregate along the line of good for me, not good for me. ‘This is good, this is bad.’ The attempt to argue out of her present situation fails. The aggravation of a traffic jam wins as her thoughts come in the fashion of her interests alone.
The red lights ahead flash back on.
‘I’m stuck here.’
The red light flashes off. “movement’ she thinks. She looks ahead and adjusts to a litany of gratitude. ‘No one hit my Town Car. Susan, my old friend, is patient. I didn’t slam into the car in front of me. No oncoming traffic. What’s the big deal?’
The wind breezes in her head. She snorts and laughs at herself. ‘I hate it when I don’t know.’ She asks herself a rhetorical question. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? I hate it when I don’t know. I don’t know why they called me. I don’t know what the ordinance means. I didn’t know I left the box on the hood. I don’t know what the problem is on this street.’
A moment of relief follows when she remembers personal attacks never help. ‘Mudslinging.’ She whispers to herself as she remembers her vow never to backbite or slander another model during a show.
Knowing she doesn’t know, brings a fleeting calm. She powers down the window and sticks her head out. ‘I can’t see what the hell is blocking the traffic.’ She adds to her list of guesswork thoughts. She turns on the radio. ‘Distraction rarely helps.’ Then she turns it off. Taps the edge of her seat. She is familiar with her impatience, her boredom in situations where she feels powerless. Left with two alternatives. Accept or take action.
She calls out the window to the SUV in front of her.
“What’s the hold up?” she yells.
No response. “Ok. That didn’t work.’ She moans as she gets out and stands on the door threshold. On her toes she spies a couple on the curb up the street, closer to what she imagines is the problem. They don’t look her way. She yells in their direction.
“What’s the hold up?” No response. “Are they deaf?” she mutters to herself as she slips back into the front seat and closes the door. Again, she taps the steering wheel. Agitated. ‘I’ll find out for myself.’
This time she opens the car door, hauls her long body upward. Back on the threshold. A dark green sedan with two cars ahead of her sits idle in the center of the street with the driver’s side door open. ‘That’s it! That car is blocking the street. That’s the problem.’
A flash of victory. Something she can do. Something she can repair and get out of this traffic jam.
She steps down. The phone call, the box, the ordinance, even the monotonous red lights and being stuck vanish as she takes charge. With her purse and keys in hand she locks the car with her fob and slides between the SUV and a pick-up truck. She takes long strides towards the dark green car. She looks in. The keys are in the ignition. The engine is off. There is a large black pebbled coach bag on the front seat and a large black clamshell eyeglass case in between the dashboard and windshield.
‘Something must’ve happened here for someone to leave everything open like this.’ A little alarmed Jane begins to look around for the owner. ‘Maybe I should just close the door for the poor soul who left it.’ Before she touches anything, she takes a step back and measures whether she’d be able to get her Lincoln through this tight space with the door closed. ‘It’d be tight,’ she thinks, ‘real tight. Nah, I don’t think so.’ She looks back into the open car. ‘Something isn’t right here. Who would leave their keys and purse?’
Jane leaves the car as is and looks for the owner. By the time she reaches the front of the vehicle she comes face to face with what feels like a brick wall, but it is a woman.
“What are you doing?” the woman points her finger at the green car.
Jane stops, stumbles back and catches herself on the door handle of the car. Startled, Jane dismisses the question and asks the woman, “Who are you?”
The woman without waiting for Jane to answer walks away. Before Jane realizes she is not going to get an answer, the woman is on her knees next to a parked vehicle. Jane hears her clap her hands and sing… “kitty, kitty….kitty, kitty.”
Compelled by what she sees, Jane walks forward to investigate. “Beep, Beep” she hears several car horns from the direction of her Lincoln. “Do they think I am the hold up?” She moves back to the middle of the street where she sees a long line of cars lined up behind her Lincoln.
“Gawd…this is getting bad.” On tiptoes she waves her arm to get someone’s attention.
“I live in the neighborhood. I can’t get through either.” After she yells, she mutters, hold your horses. Jane glances at a bald man’s eyes who in the most indifferent manner, shrugs at her explanation of being a neighbor. ‘Every man for himself, hey?’
A bit ruffled but still able to be civil, Jane turns back to the woman on her knees and hollers a question at her.
"Is everything ok?"
No response.
Jane hollers louder. “Excuse me. Is everything ok? Do you need some help?’
Nothing.
Jane, maddened by the dead silence, is put off by the silent rudeness. She turns back towards the dark green car, but before she moves, she looks at the couple standing on the curbside in front of the parked vehicle. A tall man with a small camera hung around his neck and a petite woman with both arms crossed tight against her chest gape at the scene.
“Is someone hurt?” Jane asks with hands up at the couple.
They shake ‘no’ in unison.
“Is everything ok?”
Again, they shake in unison.
‘No one is hurt but something is wrong.’ Jane infers.
This time Jane points out the dark green car and looks back at the couple.
As before, they jog heads in unison, ‘no.’
Jane puzzles about what to do.
Left to her own wits Jane walks forward and moves closer to the woman who has crawled underneath the car. She hears clapping sounds, slow beats between a soft, low wail…kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty. Jane hears the heartbroken cry. ‘Something is definitely wrong underneath this car,’ she thinks. She draws closer as the bewailing call lowers to a whisper.
Kitty. Kitty. Kitty. The clapping stops. Jane steps closer. Jane glances over at the couple on the curb to catch their eye. They draw Jane’s view downward to the woman underneath the front tire of the parked car. Scowling they warn Jane off.
‘What the hell?’ Jane responds in silence. ‘This woman is in pain yet this…the man is taking a photo, .the woman rolls her eyes to warn me off. Jane clamps her teeth trying to bite through the inconsistency of the woman on the ground and the couple. She squeezes her eyes shut trying to get a grip on what is happening.
‘Do the decent thing, Jane. Do the decent thing,’ she says to herself.
When she opens her eyes, the couple looks at her with disgust. “What an odd pair?” She thinks. Takes a step closer, close enough to touch the parked vehicle, but as before she looks again at the couple. Both the stout man and the petite woman wave her off. Jane hesitates, looks down at the sprawled legs sticking out from under the car. ‘What on earth is going on here?’ Jane turns away from the couple as she rubs the back of her neck and directs a question to the woman under the car.
"You sound…” she searches for a word, “sad. Is everything ok?"
"Mind your own business!" The woman screams back kicking her legs along the pavement.
Jane looks back in surprise to the couple on the curbside. They stand in unison with their eyes wide open. a stance with a message of ‘we told you.’ They stand. The woman with arms tight against her chest, the man snapping pictures.
‘What is this?’ Her patience dwindled. ‘What do they know that I don't know?’ She knows the woman under the car sounds sad about something. ‘Why else the wailing. The couple are smug. Tell me to mind my own business. This is my business.’ Jane confirms. ‘If this woman owns that green car…this is my business.’
Disarmed by the incongruity of the woman’s sadness and the couple’s smugness Jane reasons to herself, ‘Maybe she doesn’t know…maybe she’s forgotten her car is blocking the flow of traffic on the street?’
With this possibility in mind, Jane takes two tiny steps closer to the woman and in a calm voice says, "It is my business, Miss. You don’t realize that you left your car door open. No one can get by you. It’s a very narrow street. Your car is holding up traffic.” Jane points to the backup.
"Go away!" The woman snaps back as she drags her feet under the parked vehicle. Jane reacts.
"I will gladly go away when you move your car. You are blocking the street."
“No I am not.”
Jane stops. Wonders if the car blocking the street belongs to someone else. ‘Maybe it isn’t her car. Nah it has to be. She accused me of…I don’t know what when I was looking in it. It must be her car.’ Jane continues to try to put the pieces together. ‘It has to be her car. There is no one else around.’ A flicker of doubt arises. ‘Maybe that green car belongs to the couple on the curb.’ Jane scrutinizes the couple who together signal negating something, but Jane doesn’t know what. Jane turns and looks both ways up and down the street looking for someone else.
“Miss, do you own a green four door sedan?”
“It’s none of your business.”
Jane is astounded by the evasive responses but decides to bend down to speak to the woman.
“I don’t know what you are up to and frankly I don’t care. But your car is blocking the thoroughfare and causing a traffic jam. You need to drag yourself out from under that car and move the one you have left in the middle of the street.”
"When I get my cat."
"Is your cat injured?"
"I told you! It's none of your business."
Jane makes no immediate reply but considers the possibility of this woman's position.
"Right. The cat is none of my business. But your car is blocking the street. And dear lady, that is my business! Come out from under there and move your car!"
"I told you." This time the woman shimmies out on her belly from under the car and from her knees gets up to a stand. Jane takes one swooping step and towers over the truculent woman. Jane squints down into her face and repeats. "Yes. Now I tell you. Move your car, like a good little Missy.”
“STOP repeating!” the woman shouts spraying her spit into the air towards Jane’s face. Jane fills her chest with air to hold her ground. The woman looks up into Jane's old, strong, chiseled jaw and blinks to see what she is up against.
Jane is bigger, much bigger. There is resolve in Jane's face, some deliberate shield against insult and injury. The woman blinks numerous times making every attempt to regain a foothold.
“You won’t hear the end of this!” the woman threatens as she brushes by Jane’s tall figure. Slams herself into her car and guns down the street and runs the stop sign.
In the wake of what felt like a mental dust storm, Jane squints as she bends down to see what the woman was looking at underneath the car. She turns one last time to the couple on the curb. They are gone.
“Hey! C’mon. Move your car!”
The yelling draws Jane away from the parked car and the Great Matter underneath it.
“What just happened?” Shell shocked she blurts out.
“C’mon! Lady…move it!” Jane raises her hand in the air for the yellers to see, motioning to them she is heading back to her car. She continues to hear protests.
“It’s about time. Hurry up! We can’t wait all day.”
“First the morning phone call from a complete stranger. An unexpected letter about who can live with whom. The inconvenience of a traffic jam. But this! This! This is indescribable. The crazy woman underneath a parked car. And THAT couple. I am speechless.”
Jane unlocks the Lincoln, gets in and starts the engine, looked to see her gifts were still there and started the engine. ‘The woman under the car had us trapped. The couple on the curb. In cahoots. Weird. They seemed afraid of the woman.’ under the car.
When Jane reached the corner to turn towards Susan’s shop, she remembered she needed to mail her letters, which was never an easy task these days since the convenience of a corner mailbox had long disappeared. When she turned toward the post office, she saw a dark green car pulling into the traffic and felt a stitch of uneasiness. Is it her? she thought in a fright. No. It’s not her. Jane decides to pull over. I’ll mail my letters and pick up some sandwiches from one of the nearby cafes.
Jane, unhappy in the morning echoes which lacked a clear sound, was left unable to find a quick riposte to refresh her mind. The wind cleared the sky of clouds making for a pretty, faint blue pattern above and along the thin line of the horizon. But a fresh wind was unavailable to Jane as she fingered a text to Susan alerting her, she’d be late but arriving with lunch.
Late. On the way. With lunch. Don’t eat. Jane fingered the words, pressed send and listened for the great swooshing sound signaling the message went through.
Through what, she wondered as she had no idea how any of the phones really worked and held a strong belief that no one else did either. In her accosted shakiness, Jane began to redeem her poise with the aid of the swooshing sound. There remained, however, a desire to check, to make sure the message she just sent reached its destination. I’d ask Susan to make some tea, she thought, knowing her request was both witless and would indicate to Susan she was coming bearing gifts.
The morning was full of unexpected, clueless junctions leaving a strong inclination for something to work out without any more forks in the road. Put the kettle on…Jane tapped in the letters of each word on the smooth surface of her phone and finished with one stronger tap on the word SEND. She liked the feeling that came after this sound, it was the sound of relief suggesting her efforts paid off and something worked as Jane thought it should. She wanted no more staggering delays or unexpected dust devils.
Her text was friendly, unassailable as was the surety of turning the key in the ignition to start her car. Before she put the car in drive, her phone binged.
‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ Jane read, pleased on two accounts, the phone message was received without mishap, and she imagined Susan grinning like a Cheshire cat knowing she was coming with gifts.
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