Something I Was Afraid to Eat

This is one of the pieces I wrote at the “Two Things I Love Best” food-writing retreat. The prompt was, “Tell me about something you were scared to eat. 

I was living in Ketchikan, Alaska at the time. 13 feet of rain a year. Yes, 13 feet. Not 13 inches, 13 feet. That’s 156 inches a year, twice the precipitation of Seattle.

There were dozens of kinds of rain in Ketchikan: the misty rain that was ever present, except on very rare sun days, the soft gentle rain that we disregarded completely as we walked through town, played softball at midnight in the fading summer sun, or trolled for salmon out on the Tongass Narrows. Then there was the rain that got your attention--the pelting rain storm that slammed you as you struggled to walk down the street, the bitter cold horizontal rain that got inside your waterproof gortex rain suit that covered every inch of you from head to toe.
 

It was always wet in Ketchikan. All we ever wore were rain boots. My fingers and the pads of my feet were always white, creased and doughy; I would have sold my first-born child, if I’d had one, for just one peek at the sun.
 

I’d moved to Alaska from Santa Cruz for my first “real” job: being a radio news reporter for the Alaska Public Radio Network, at KRBD-FM in Ketchikan, the southernmost island in Alaska’s famous banana belt. To get the job, I had faked my audition tape. I’d never worked as a radio news reporter as I had claimed on my resume. But I had been volunteering at KZSC-FM in UC Santa Cruz, hosting a rhythm and blues show, featuring artists like Esther Satterfield and Aretha Franklin. I loved radio and spent my spare time interviewing people and producing mini-documentaries, cutting the tape by hand with a white grease pencil and a razor blade. The fact that I could fake a fictitious news report meant I had the skills to do the job, and I was hired at a whopping salary of $16,000 a year, which seemed to me like I had struck gold and was going to be rich.  

My Creativity

For most of my life, I experienced a constant, bubbling cauldron of creativity within me. For decades, I was a prolific writer, author, talk show host, radio producer and all-around communicator who was never at a loss for great, interesting ideas—in fact, I usually had far more than I could realize at any one given time.

Creativity often woke me up at night with a new idea; we’d hang out in the wee hours, fleshing out a vision when it was quiet and the night was full. Our relationship was intimate and passionate. Creativity embodied that rare combination you search for in a lover—reliability and excitement. I could always count on her to arouse me, to awaken me, to leave me feeling satiated and happy. Together, we produced literary and auditory babies that we launched out in the world. And like parents everywhere, we watched them grow and flourish with pride.

In the last decade, however, our relationship has grown flat. The daily demands of family life, the pressures of being a breadwinner, and the brain-numbing aftermath of chemotherapy severed my relationship to my first love. Where there used to be an exciting cauldron of ideas, there is only empty space, and it isn’t the kind that feels fertile with possibility. When I sit down to write, a blank, reluctant page usually stares back at me. I can still go through the motions because I’ve have long years of practice, but I’m rarely excited about what I write. None of my words gain anything resembling traction; I don’t have many ideas, I don’t care about the ideas I do have, and I don’t have the energy or desire to follow through. People tell me that writers often have a long, dry spell when they are gestating a new idea, but I simply feel barren, not pregnant with possibility. And so I’ve grieved the loss of this relationship. Perhaps, I’ve had to tell myself, that part of my life is over.

Beginner's Mind

I have always loved to sing. Some of my earliest memories are of both my parents singing to me, and later, full-hearted singing on family car trips, learning my parents’ vast repertoire of old folk songs, while making up crazy verses to “The Deacon Went Down in the Cellar to Pray.” My dad was an instrumental music teacher and ran his own music studio: Davis Studios of Music and Dance. Stacks of band instruments—trumpets, accordions, flutes, trombones, clarinets, a saxophone, and even a tuba—sat under the Baby Grand in our living room. Music was everywhere.

My parents forced me to take piano lessons, but I hated to practice. After a few years, I quit. Unfortunately, I continued to be a musical dilettante. I played French Horn for a year in Junior High; then I quit that, too. As for singing, my carefree relationship to my voice ended when Mrs. Stout, my elementary school music teacher, listened to me belt out “My Country Tis of Thee,” pulled me aside and whispered, “Just mouth the words, dear.” I didn’t sing again for years.

Many of my writing students come to me reporting similar injuries. A journal that was discovered or read. A cruel comment by a teacher, a parent, a sibling. An English paper covered with red marks. A vicious critique of a vulnerable first draft. A stinging rejection letter. It doesn’t take much to squash our creative voices, and that goes for both singing and the written word. It takes a huge risk to try again after years—or even decades—of having our voices shut down.

The Initiation

I prostrated on the orange shag carpet, my face pressed into the long, polyester fibers. I responded to Mahatma Fakiranand, an Indian man with a shaved head and a face like a skull. “Yes,” I said in answer to his question. “I would cut my head off for Guru Maharaj Ji.”

I was fifteen. I had cut 10^th grade and walked a mile to the Elberon train station. Caught the train to East Brunswick, New Jersey. Walked however many blocks it was to the premie house. How did I find it? I don’t remember. This was decades before smart phones and GPS, Mapquest and Google Earth. But somehow, I got there. I snuck out of the house, pretended to go to school. And I got on that train, determined to become a devotee of the living Satguru.

My brother was already a premie. After majoring in LSD and driving a used hearse around the University of Colorado, he had dropped out of college and gone to India, following the 14-year-old boy who promised we could realize God if we practiced the sacred path of satsang, service and meditation.

I was an unhappy hippie girl with huge casaba melon breasts, living with a mother I hated. Every night after work, she came home from her job as a school social worker, made dinner, and tried to talk to me, but I had already shut her out. I could feel her talons digging into my flesh. I was her last hope. My brother was gone. My father had abandoned us, moving to Esalen and later, San Francisco to find himself. The campuses were on fire. The world as we knew it was burning down. I was trapped at Long Branch High School and I wanted out. The ashram seemed like the way to go.