“It’s okay,” Alejandro said. “You’re not trying to show who you are, you’re just trying to make the thing.”
Berg nodded. He looked around for Uffa and then remembered that he’d gone over to the farmhouse to begin cooking dinner. Like a college co-op, the family meal was prepared by a different person every night, according to a monthly schedule devised by Rebecca.
“We’re just trying to merge with the task at hand,” Alejandro said. “That’s the best you can do. It’s like cooking a meal or walking in a field.”
Berg took a deep breath and lifted up the next piece of wood. He’d had a headache all day but it had grown more painful as the day wore on. The more he messed up the cuts, the worse it seemed to get. Right now it was burning white and sharp.
“Are you sure you’re okay to do this?” Alejandro asked.
“Yes,” he said.
Alejandro watched him for a moment, and then he said, “No.” There was a serious look on his face. “No,” he said. “C’mon. Here, put this down.” He waved at the piece of wood Berg was holding. Berg rested it against the bandsaw.
Alejandro led him out of the shop, through the pasture, and into the oak meadow east of the house. They walked for a while until they came to a smooth log. Alejandro sat down on the log and invited Berg to do the same. A soft wind passed through the meadow, carrying with it smells of the distant woods: moist dirt and fir and creek water. Alejandro took a deep breath and then closed his eyes.
“Oh you who are nobly born,” he boomed. “Do not forget your true nature.”
Berg shifted on the log. He had no idea what Alejandro was up to. He wanted to go home and take six ibuprofen and lie in the cubby. He knew he wouldn’t be able to rest well, that the headaches would inevitably disturb him, but it was better than sitting on this log and listening to Alejandro chant sutras, or whatever he was doing.
“That is what the Buddhist texts say,” Alejandro continued, more quietly. “Every Buddhist text opens with that address. They seek to remind us of our inherent dignity. Of the wisdom we already possess.”
This isn’t going to help, Berg thought, but Alejandro’s tone was very solemn and he didn’t want to be disrespectful, so he sat there, listening.
“Now Berg,” he said. “I want you to close your eyes and sit here in a posture that embodies dignity, whatever that means to you.”
Berg noticed he had been slouching and sat up straight. He felt more alert after he did this, more engaged.
“And now,” Alejandro continued. “I want you to bring your attention to the breath as it moves through the body. Just noticing it. Not trying to alter it, or change anything. Just watching it. And, as the mind creates thoughts, which it inevitably will, just naming them, observing them, and bringing your attention back to the breath.”
Berg tried to do this but found it challenging. He couldn’t keep his focus on the breath. It was too boring. There was nothing to notice about it. It was like sharpening a chisel, only more difficult and less practical.
“Noticing,” Alejandro continued, “if the mind says that it is bored or that it isn’t able to do this, and just naming that, and patiently bringing attention back to the breath. What we are trying to do here is cultivate a nonjudgmental awareness. All of our lives we are doing, doing, doing. Constantly judging. And this doing, this judging, it prevents us from seeing what is happening right in front of us.”
Berg felt his headache pulsing. That was what was happening right in front of him. He was going to have to tell Alejandro this wasn’t working for him, that he needed to go back to the shop. He was strategizing about how he was going to say this, how he was going to tell Alejandro he needed to leave without offending him, when Alejandro spoke again.
“Noticing,” he said. “If any pain arises in the body, and just watching that pain, trying to see it for what it is, trying not to push it away. Seeing if, instead of endeavoring to change things, we can just observe what’s happening, because it’s already here.”
After he said this, Alejandro was quiet for several minutes. Berg abandoned his plans of escape and tried, again, to focus on his breathing. He stayed with it for a moment, but then his mind became diverted. It was like a stream rushing down a mountain, forking every time it encountered an obstacle.
Berg was not sure how long they sat in meditation but, after a certain point, he seemed to drop out of clock time. Every so often, Alejandro would provide some kind of instruction.
“Your thoughts and feelings are like weather patterns,” he said. “See if you can just watch them pass, not judging them.”
When the meditation was over, Berg found that, while his headache hadn’t disappeared, it was not as painful as it had been earlier. They walked back to the house and joined the bustle of the kitchen. Marie was baking bread and Uffa was grilling steak. Sandy was in the living room, playing piano and talking to Lizzie at the same time. Rebecca, it seemed, was still out on the farm somewhere. Alejandro poured himself a cup of coffee and a cup of wine. He was the only person Berg had ever met who drank wine and coffee at the same time.
Berg began to clean the table, which was scattered with books and newspaper and glasses of water. Then Tess entered the room. She was wearing overalls, red Converse shoes, and a baseball hat. She had a smudge of dirt under her right eye, a blurry smudge, like a pencil mark that had been rubbed out with a bad eraser. Lately she had been carrying around a small wooden flute and she announced her arrival by wailing on one of its higher notes.
Alejandro put down his drinks, grabbed her, and spun her in the air.
“Pamba,” she shrieked. “Stop it!”
Alejandro set her on the ground.
“What did I tell you about inside flute-playing?” he said.
“You didn’t say anything about my flute.”
“I did.”
“This flute?” she said, holding it up.
“That flute.”
“This flute?”
Tess brought the instrument very slowly to her mouth as Alejandro stared at her. She blew one sharp note, giggled wildly, and sprinted away.
“Dinner time,” Uffa said.
CHAPTER 26
THE DAY OF THE concert, Berg got home late. He’d been out on a sunset charter earlier in the evening with a group of lawyers. He’d had a headache all day and he was feeling irritable, but he really wanted to make it to the show. He’d tried to meditate that week, but he couldn’t seem to find the time. Alejandro had mentioned that the meditation would be most useful if he developed a daily practice. But Berg found that it was hard to bring himself to sit. It seemed like there was always something else that took precedence over it.
Woody picked him up after work and the two of them drove over to the stadium. It was just up the road from Albert Worsley’s ranch, one of the other properties where Alejandro often milled wood. Worsley, Woody insisted, had also been a part of the drug-rehabilitation cult.
“He was one of the first people I saw when I visited,” Woody said. “Greeted me at the entrance with a bunch of other people and had me do the Niebor dance. That was the name of the cult, The Church of Niebor. They made everyone who showed up on their property do the dance right when they got there.”
“What was the dance like?”
“You kinda hopped around like a bee. And you made some strange noises. When you finished, they offered you coffee and peanut butter sandwiches. They were always offering you peanut butter sandwiches. They were really into that.”