Not Zen 105: In Evil Circumstance

Rome overthrew Emperor Tarquinius. The senate ruled.

In the summer after his overthrow, Tarquinius endured the heat to ride across the lands of Italy. He gathered allies to retake the empire. The strongest of his collaborators was the Etruscan king, Lars Porsena of Clusium. He was a burly man, tough, well-spoken, and his own general. It was Porsena, not Tarquinius, who led the combined forces. In thick bronze armor, he rode at the front of his own three legions with supporting forces behind.

Porsena captured town after town. He annexed Roman territories and made them his own. He took Roman hostages. Soon, he besieged the city of Rome. But at the end of the fighting season, the war had fallen into a stalemate. Porsena retreated to friendly lands. He negotiated with the Roman senate.

Meanwhile, the Roman hostages labored in camps. They had a doctor to care for them. He was young and healthy. Yet one day he lay down in the grass next to his tent and would not get up.

One of the hostage women, Cloelia, came with her sisters and chaperone to persuade the doctor to rise.

"I can't give aid to evil any longer," he told them. "I save men but then Porsena kills them. I heal women but he forces them into slavery or marriage. There's no longer any point to what I do."

"Rebellion, I could understand," said Cloelia, who had been raised on the stoic virtues. "But not despair. Don't give up."

"You will be forced to marry, too," he said. "You're young and noble. You'll be forced or you'll be killed."

"Perhaps. In the meantime, I'll do what I can. You're our doctor. I understand that the Etruscans hate you and call you names. They throw stones. But if our enemies kill you for your kindness to others, then at least you will have died honorably. I'll fight to protect you if the moment allows it. That's the only honorable thing I can do for you and my sisters. But until then, someone else's evil is no excuse for yours."

"Will you fight and die for others? You, a girl?"

"Keep us alive for another week. Then we'll see."

Within an hour, the doctor rose and returned to work.

Cloelia was aware that most of the Roman hostages were to be ignored by the treaty between Porsena and Rome. Some men would be ransomed but no women. Cloelia and her friends had been separated from their local sweethearts, many of whom had been murdered. So the women would be raped or forced to marry Clusium men or both. 

The young woman gathered spies and allies in camp. She kept her plans close and kept an eye on the guards.

A week later, she grabbed the young doctor as she escaped with troops of women in tow. She commanded her force like an army. She deployed scouts. She eluded her Etruscan pursuers by crossing rivers and hiding in woods. She packed food on donkeys and dragged tents behind along so that her women would not be betrayed by the need to visit Etruscan towns.

In a few weeks, she was in Rome. Her band of hostages rejoiced.  But they arrived to find that a treaty had been signed. Cloelia and her friends had been given to Lars Porsena. Their lives had been decided.

Porsena demanded the return of his hostages. The Roman senate agreed. They threw Cloelia in jail along with her fellow maidens and the men who had helped them escape. The senators knew they needed to send Cloelia back or face another seige by the Etruscans. It was the Roman army that marched her band of noblewomen to the enemy camp.

"To be betrayed by our own countrymen is an evil that I can't stand," complained the doctor.

"Their evil is still no excuse," Cloelia replied.

"Are you clinging to your honor?"

"This betrayal is no excuse for me, either."

The prisoners marched, hands bound behind their backs, into the Etruscan war camp. The great general Porsena stood at the head of a column of soldiers. He saluted them.

"Who is the girl he led this mob?" he demanded.

No one had their hands free but they all looked to young Cloelia.

"Well done," announced Porsena. "This prison was guarded like any other. Only you escaped and with many of your fellow maidens as well. Therefore, I will grant you, Cloelia, the right to free half of the male hostages. Many will not receive a ransom, so they will have to be killed. Save who you will."

The choice was a great burden but Cloelia decided to free the younger half of the prisoners. That way, she included the poorest and also her friend, the doctor.

But the doctor refused to leave.

"I will work here," he announced to Porsena and Cloelia, "and care for the sick and the wounded. I will heal all who have been grieved by the war. The evils of battle do not excuse me from my duties. Cloelia had made me understand that this is so."

"If you're determined to heal, I can feed you," Porsena grudged. "But you must know that we will kill some of those you save."

"Nevertheless," said the doctor with his hands still bound behind his back.

Not Zen 104: The Main Thing

A young woman sat in a bookstore with her older brother. In front of them, a lady in a trenchcoat scavenged the pages of a discarded newspaper. Dark spots covered the lady's hands. She coughed, a wet sound.

The young woman flipped the pages of her religious studies text. Next to her waited a pile of thick tomes on various faiths and philosophies. On the other side of that stack sat her brother with the arts section of a newspaper. He read the lyrics to a song. Then he set it down in his lap. He meditated. As he ended his meditation and began the next article in the paper, his sister put a hand on his knee.

"You've been at peace with yourself for years," she said. She winced as the coughing of the lady across from them started again.

Eyebrows raised, her brother waited.

"Are you enlightened or what?"

"Ah." He nodded. He closed the section he'd been reading. "I'm practicing, making progress."

"There are two different schools of enlightenment, right?"

"There are many schools and also there are approaches that aren't taught in a school." He chose one of her unopened texts and flipped the pages. He set it down. She showed him the pages of her current book.

"The writers don't agree." She pointed to a long passage and a picture next to it of a monk in a saffron robe. "But you've put this stuff into action. It's part of your life. You know what works. Is sitting meditation the main thing or is the Eightfold Path the main thing?"

"It's not right to focus too much on the sense of present awareness." He grimaced at the picture of meditation. "That's connection to the De. It's important but it's not the core."

"The important part is the Eightfold Path, then."

"Not even the whole Eightfold Path. I should be clear that I'm talking about me, my own, limited experience. At the heart of everything for me is the freedom from attachments. When you give up worldly expectations, you're at peace. You're almost there."

"Don't you need to integrate the rest of the principals?"

A heavy cough interrupted them. The woman in the trenchcoat had edged around her table and crept up on their spot near the wall. She put a hand over her mouth as if she might cough again. With the thumb and forefinger of her other hand, she pinched the corner of the newspaper section.

"How rude. Ma'am, my brother's reading that."

Without a word, again the lady tugged gently at the newspaper.

"You can have it," her brother said to the lady. He rose from his chair and gave her the section she wanted. The lady in the coat clutched it to her chest for a moment. She smiled. She glanced from brother to sister then bowed her head in gratitude.

"Even children live by the principles," her brother said. He sat back down, empty-handed. "They are always with us."

Not Zen 103: Job Well Done

Mildeep - Wikimedia Commons

Job Well Done

A colony of cerulean arbor birds, distantly related to bower birds, decreased in their numbers over the generations. Finally, there came at time when two great waves of sickness swept over the island where they lived. At the close of the second wave, six of the seven remaining birds fell dead.

The arbor birds had long ago seen a diminishing of their once-great powers of flight. Yet they were not yet flightless. The remaining bird flew to other islands in the sea. On those other islands, the remaining arbor birds had also fallen to sickness.  There were no others of his kind that he found alive, only a few bones. For a year, the lone arbor bird searched. Then he returned to his home island.

He decided to wait there for lost members of his flock to return. Wild birds had come in from outside of the island chain before. It could happen again.

To occupy his time, he built nests. That had always been his calling. Now he let it consume him.  Weaving complex patterns of reeds took a great deal of energy and concentration. Fortunately, materials were plentiful. Feeding took hardly any of his time. When he built an especially fine nest, he said to himself,

"Should a female return, she will admire my artistry and craftsmanship."

No female came. In fact, no bird of size visited the island, only warblers, finches, wrens, and gulls.  Years passed. His hopes waned. He explored the uses of color in woven flowers, which produced vibrant blues and pinks but did not last, in living plants, which did endure, and in the red and purple dyes produced by local mollusks, which were easy to find and stayed where he put them.

His nests grew large and stately. He produced walls that shimmered violet and indigo in the sun. He wove images of birds into them, at first himself, cerulean in color as he observed his form in calm waters but also his friends and family as he remembered them. He interleaved the shapes of gulls and wrens into other homes. Eventually he included images of starfish and other beach creatures.

"Even if it's only a male who returns," he told himself, "at least that male will see the beauty of all this."

More years passed and the arbor bird grew heavier with food and age. At the height of his powers, he had ventured to each island once a year to see if anyone had visited. Now he didn't bother. He spent the time on his art.

His nests were no longer homes, in truth. He experimented with shapes and styles, laying some of them open to the sun in a way he wouldn't if he'd meant for them to shelter eggs. That let him construct structures with flowers that bloomed in the middle, that showed different patterns of light and dark at different times of day, and that glowed phosphorescently with algae he kept alive with a rivulet of water.

He built a flowered home for a great colony of ants. He wove patterns in the leaves of trees.

"Should I stop?" he wondered. "No one will ever see any of this. I can admit that now. But the forms are beautiful. Making them feels right."

In his old age, he took to flying again each day. He moved from place to place around the perimeter and through the heart of his home island. When he saw a particularly good work of art, he would alight on a high branch and watch it for a while to let joy fill his heart. Sometimes he would chuckle at his early efforts. Sometimes he would shake his head at a creation that was particularly fine or mysterious. He could surprise himself, on rare occasions, when he found a structure that he'd built but didn't remember.  What had he been thinking? Why had he woven a pattern so complex? Why had he built a structure so small, so simple, yet not a nest?

One day, he sat and studied a piece of art that changed with the sunlight. At sunset, he said to himself,

"This is enough. Even though this will fade, even though I will die, to have done this is enough."

Not Zen 102: Raging Water

In a long, narrow stream there lived a community of crawfish. Amid the shale and clay, among the sands and pebbles and algae, they hid in their lairs and hunted young carp, catfish, and minnows. A crawfish, newly established in her territory, staked out her spot under a long rock. The water was clear and fast.

For a while, she waited while fish glided above her. The current had changed from the day before. It carried her prey above her and to her left. She shifted positions. Finally, a large minnow slipped into her cove from above the rock. She struck at its tail.

Whether the fish felt her coming or whether it got lucky in the current, she missed her strike. With a flick of its fins, the minnow escaped to the shallows. The crawfish howled with frustration. Not content to let the moment slip away, she emerged from her position to chase her prey.

She and the minnow dodged and struck at each another. They stirred up pebbles and silt. The cloudy waters made it difficult for the minnow to evade her but made it hard for her to strike, too. Downstream, the rest of community noticed the disturbance. Even in the steady churn of the currents, they could tell there was a problem. One of her neighbors crept upstream to find out what was going on.

"Why are you thrashing about, sister?" she called.

"I am trying to catch a fish, of course," the crawfish replied from the murk. "The waters are so muddy that I can't see a thing. I track and fight, track and fight. If I could see again, I would make an end of it."

"The cause of the muddy waters is you, sister."

"Not at all. It's the fish."

"Your imagined battle is long over." The visitor could see over the territory of her neighbor. There were no minnows, nor were there any trails in the silt to reveal where such a creature once swam. The clouds of disturbance centered on the thrashing crawfish. "Your fish fled."

"It's here somewhere," said the crawfish. "I'm sure of it."

"Anger has clouded your vision. Test yourself. Test me. Make yourself at peace for a moment, sister, and see if everything doesn't become clear again."

Not Zen 101: The Shame of Praise

from: wikimedia commons, pwbaker

 The Shame of Praise

At a meeting of many religious groups, there was a procession each morning from the lodgings to the conference halls. Monks, nuns, and other clerical figures marched along a city street for a few blocks before they could meet and debate.

One of the attendees was a Zen acolyte. On his first morning walk, he stopped to give assistance to a woman who needed help putting a large, black dog back onto its leash. A group of bishops, priests, nuns, and monks watched while the student hooked the dog to its chain. The lowly acolyte was upbraided by his Zen master for slowing the progress of the group.

“Can't you see that you're delaying important people?” yelled the Zen master.

“Being who they are, they will wait for an act of kindness,” replied the unrepentant student. He seemed to pay his master's criticism no mind. The representatives of other religions nodded in agreement with him. They often disagreed with the Zen master anyway.

On the following morning, the student stopped the procession to open doors for a pair of men who carried a heavy couch between them. This time, to the surprise of all, his Zen master praised his acolyte's kindness effusively even while the boy held the doors.

“They should thank you, those men there,” he told his student. But the student was so flustered that he let go and nearly hit the last man with the edge of the door. He turned away, flush with embarrassment. He tried not to listen to the gratitude of the working men or to his master.

The other religious leaders shook their heads.

“Yesterday, I thought your master was crazy,” said one as he pulled the boy aside. The group resumed its march. The acolyte and the other man lagged at the back of the procession. “Now I think he's teaching you a lesson. He's teaching all of us. Look, you're a good person, aren't you?”

“I-I'm trying to be,” answered the student uncertainly.

“Well, I think you are. You're doing right things for right reasons.”

“But my master was mad about that yesterday.”

“He knew it wouldn't stop you from helping other people. But he also knew how you would react to his praise today. It made you embarrassed. And you stopped helping because of the praise. You let go.”

“I did? Oh, yes.”

“You're a fine person when you do right things in the face of criticism. But when you are enlightened, you will do the right thing at the right time, regardless of criticism or praise. You will be affected by neither.”

“And don't forget to say thank you when praised,” said a nun who had dropped behind the main group and had overheard.

“Shh,” said the Zen master. He turned from his walking and raised a finger to his lips.

“Thank you,” said the student, not at all quieted. His master turned back, laughing, to his partners in the procession.

Not Zen 100: Wrong Questions

Sun Flare by Yoko Nekonomania

Two women hiked through the woods in the spring. Flowers grew on either side of their path. Some had been planted. Others had taken root from wild varieties.

Both women had studied the ways of enlightenment, one of them for most of her life. During their hike, the less experienced practitioner asked the more experienced one a question. As is traditional, her teacher unasked the question. She explained that it was not the right line of inquiry.

Her student reminded her, "There are no stupid questions."

"Do you really believe that?"

"Of course. Don't you?"

"Only in a limited sense. What about ..." The teacher turned to a bush full of thorns for her example, "... this question: 'why do roses smell purple when they grow on the surface of the sun?'"

"That's nonsense." The younger woman folded her arms. She didn't laugh. "It's not a fair question."

"So you can at least agree that some questions are nonsense. Good."

The younger woman's brow furled. "Are you saying my question is nonsense?"

"Human minds are wonderful things." The older one resumed their walk, hands clasped behind her back. They left the rose bushes behind. "Our brains let us interrogate abstract matters. So our questions can be based on models of reality that are, in fact, wrong. We take some of those questions for granted. But the fact that we ask them shows how off the track we can become."

"Like me."

"Yes. Me, too," she allowed. They passed a chrysanthemum bush. She caressed one of the flowers. "We are not just thinking wrong. We are not just taking our first step wrong. We have a problem before we've started thinking about taking our first step. We've been given a set of sensory illusions and learned assumptions that bear little relation to how things are."

They spent a moment admiring the bushes. Then they strolled further along their path past patches of lilies in bloom.

"You're saying that my questions come out of a wrong impression of the world?" The younger woman swept her arm to indicate the beauty around them.

"So wrong that it can be difficult to contemplate. It is like thinking that this white lily is white."

"But it is white. I can see it is." She press her fingertip against a petal. "Anyway, you just said so."

"To people, it may seem white. We now understand that it does not seem that way to a bee. They see things differently in lights at higher wavelengths"

"In the ultraviolet." The student nodded and moved along.

"Yes, thank you. Our senses are limited. Our minds our limited. Those are why your impressions of the world are wrong. They are impressions you share with everyone, including me.  I am trying to tell you the correct regard for those impressions."

"All I asked is who you think created the universe."

"And the depth of the wrong assumptions in the question remains astounding."

Not Zen 99: Teasing

A herd of mustangs ruled a peninsula with lands bordered by the forest and the sea. The horses raced from grasslands to beaches. They swam in shallow waters, played in the sands by the freshwater streams, and rested in the shades of oak and maple groves. For years, they followed their dappled lead mare. She made the herd decisions. She found them cordgrass and giant reeds to eat. She uncovered safe ferns, explored shrubs and sweet maple saplings, and located new springs of fresh water.

One summer, this boss mare gave birth to a chestnut foal. Although her son was healthy, he was born late in the spring. For months, he was the youngest in the herd.

"Why do the other foals pick on me?" he asked her one day.

"They're trying to play," she said. "You're the smallest now. You're strong and soon you'll be big. Your feeling of being picked on will pass."

She pushed her son with her nose. It was a gesture she had used with her other children. She had nudged them playfully for as many years as she could remember. It got the same response from her chestnut son as it got from her earlier foals. He laughed.

Weeks went by. Her son grew strong. But he did not grow out of the teasing.

"Why does everyone hate me?" he wondered.

"They don't," said his mother. She nuzzled him, nose to nose. "Now that you're strong, you are playing too rough with the smaller horses. You need to be more gentle."

"They're not gentle with me!" he complained.

"Nevertheless," she replied.

More weeks passed, then months. Her son grew stronger. He grew wilder. His father, a roan stallion, barely tolerated the immature males. Her son made himself especially difficult to endure. Other immature males teased and tested one another. They bickered, they pushed, and they nipped at the other young horses. That was hard enough. But with her son, the teasing turned into fighting. Others would laugh and chase one another out of play. Her son turned angry and violent.

"Now even the stallion hates me," he said.

The mare remained silent. Her son had observed the truth. He had developed a bad relationship to the other males, his father included. He would find no help anywhere but his mother. He'd made enemies even among other mares.

"If you could refrain from violence in reaction to teasing," she offered, "in time everything would be better."

"I'm just teasing back."

"When you do it, it's bullying. Don't you see the difference?"

"There is no difference."

"Ah," she said. She stepped closer to him. "I can see that you don't understand what the other horses are doing. When you were the smallest, you were teased in a way that makes you misunderstand your situations now."

"I tried to stop the teasing. I told you that."

"No, that's the wrong way. The other horses' feelings are hurt when you don't tease or don't allow them to tease you. You are showing no trust in them."

"What does teasing have to do with trust?"

"When you don't respond correctly, it shows that you don't trust them. Then they become angry. If you let someone nip your tail or knock you in the shoulder, you show that you trust they will do you no harm. It's a matter of confidence on your part. You need to understand they're not trying to fight you. A gentle poke between friends helps to establish trust."

"Teasing is mean."

"It can be. It can be cruel or a test of strength. Usually, it's neither. Teasing is the first step to establishing friendship. When you allow teasing, you show trust in another's intentions. It is a judgment that the other horse is honorable. When you react appropriately with a similar push or nip, you show that you, too, can be trusted."

"This is a strange way of thinking, mother."

"You haven't thought this way before, so you've overreacted. You pushed the teasers too hard. You've been hurtful. That's a double violation of trust. The other horses expect you to push them or chase them, not to kick them or shout insults."

"Is that why everyone's angry?"

"When other horses your age stopped teasing you so much, you thought that was good. I did, too. But we were wrong. It was a warning sign. They no longer teased you in order to make friends with you. They approached you only when they wanted to do you harm."

"What can I do?"

"Approach them. Tease them. Let them tease you back. Earn their trust." She pushed her son with her nose. He snorted.

She nipped his mane. He laughed.

Not Zen 98: On Reflection

"These folks who are supposed to be wise spend an undue amount of time on reflection," said a young woman as she threw down the book she had been reading. She'd been leaning against the wall. She pushed herself away it.

Her grandmother turned the page on her magazine. It crinkled. Her gaze passed over her grand-daughter.

"At first I thought they must be talking about meditation," the grand-daughter said. She strode to the front door. "Then I read them again and again and there's no mistaking that they are talking about mundane physical reflections. They mention the moon all the damn time. It's always a reflection of the moon."

"Yes, images on still water," her grandmother confirmed. She closed her magazine and laid it in her lap.

"But why?" The grand-daughter ran her hands over the coat she'd left next to the door.

"It's an allegory." The old woman propped up her feet. Her grand-daughter snorted at her words without turning her head. "Those teachers are referring to the inter-dependence of things. They sometimes mean the immediacy of things as well."

"The immediacy part is true, I suppose." The young woman put her arm into the sleeve of her jacket. "It's the immediacy of the speed of light."

"They mean something more. I don't use the analogy much. If I did, I would say that both the immediacy and the interdependence are true. The image of the reflection can't exist without the water, the light, and the object in the image. Neither can those exist as they are, in the moment, without the reflection."

"All things are unified, yes. That's hardly a profound point." She finished with her jacket. Hands by her side, she waited.

"If you say so. You are full of such reflections yourself. I see your teachers in you. I see your mother. I see your son, who needs more of your attention."

"I'd rather not talk about that." She jammed her hands into her pockets and stared out the window above the front door. She caught a glimpse of the pale image of herself in the glass and turned away from it.

"You are an original," her grandmother observed. '"But you are a reflection of others, too."

"This is a pretty good explanation, grandma." She put her hand on the doorknob. With a sigh, she turned it. "I suppose this is your own, original take."

Her grandmother shook her head. She leaned back in her comfortable chair and closed her eyes.

"I'm sorry that you've missed the point," she said. She listened for the door but didn't hear it swing open. She peeked at her grand-daughter, who was still waiting with one fist in her jacket pocket. "Each idea is fashioned after another. Not a single person has ever existed without others."

Not Zen 97: True Believers

A flock of crows nested among the other flocks. Together they occupied not only the largest willow-oak but the neighboring oaks and all of the other trees anyone could see from high up in the forest. Each group had traveled for weeks, met other groups, flew together, and joined more.

As the flocks grew larger, more fights broke out. Sometimes the conflicts erupted between small groups that arrived to rest early and larger ones that arrived late and tried to take the best roosts, already occupied. Sometimes struggles erupted over matters of philosophy or the different cultures of the flocks. On the night previous, in a different part of the forest, three war parties had fought over matters of protocol. Two crows had died with a dozen more wounded.

A young crow with his eye to repeating the battle approached a veteran warrior from his troop.

"Old fellow," said the young. "Tonight we must correct the wrong-thinkers."

"If by that you mean 'kill the others because they speak oddly,' no."

"Come, now. You fought on our side when it was a matter of territory. Why will you not join us in holy glory? Are not moral principals greater than a mere the mere twigs and stalks of these boughs?"

"Yes, you and your friends talk a lot about ideals. They are vast, powerful things."

"They are everything. You must live your life for some cause greater than yourself. I have heard you say those words, old crow."

"And I do. I live for others."

"That is not what I mean."

"Yet it is exactly what I mean. Ideals accomplish progress. They help us make tools, heal ourselves, and achieve feats of endurance. But as great as they are compared to any one crow, they are limited. They mislead. They deceive us into a cycle of violence."

"Comrade, we fight for the glory of all creatures."

"You, young fellow, give life to your ideals. Without you and your friends, the concepts would be nothing. Do you not see? Even if your cause encompasses the whole universe, it is small in comparison to the mind of a single individual. All ideas, all transcendent loves, all undying passions, all unbearable depressions, all towering fears, hopes and inspirational ideas that our folks have ever held are combined in a single mind."

"Only one cause can be the just one, comrade."

"Many causes are just. As great as such concepts are, as much as we use them to improve ourselves, they are also so small that they all fit inside any reasonably bright child. The energy that moves you is so slight that it's in every individual. When you kill another, you kill a world of great ideas. You diminish our greatness."

Not Zen 96: Choosing a Path

wikimedia commons

Choosing a Path

One morning, a grandmother took the village children out to do chores. She left three girls to sweep the warehouse floors. She assigned four boys to clear branches from the cart path. Then she took her oldest granddaughter to the jungle hedge at the town border. She handed the girl a machete and unwrapped another for her own use.

"Our job is to cut a shortcut for the carts," she said. "It's not too far to the road from this point."

The grandmother was frail. She took a slow, deliberate hack at the base of a bush. In two strikes, she knocked it down. Then she had to stretch and rest. Her granddaughter imitated her with whacks at a neighboring weed. But the girl chopped high first, then low. She tried many angles. Her strikes were fast and many but they were not effective.

"You'll learn," her grandmother assured her. "Follow me."

The old woman knocked down the next shrub and then another. Beside her, the granddaughter launched into her job with eagerness of a novice. She continued to experiment with the blade. She changed her chopping tactics every few minutes. After a while, she managed to cut down a spirea bush.

"I need a break," she said. "Why do I have to do this? Why not one of my cousins?"

"Why are you still in the farm school?" the grandmother asked. She felled a small butterfly tree. "You could have graduated by now and gone to the city. Is it a boy?"

"Maybe." The girl paused to rest.

"Does he like you?"

"Yes."

"And do you like him?" The old woman cleared another bush and carried it off to the side.

"I don't know."

"How can you not know something like that?" The grandmother raised an eyebrow. The girl, embarrassed, returned to her job with fury. "You are making things bad for your parents. And your boy can't be too pleased. You used to like school. You were smart. Don't you want to go to the city classes?"

"I don't know."

"You must make a decision. It's past time."

"I don't see why I should have to decide," replied the granddaughter. "Why can't I do nothing? Or do everything? You've done a lot You worked in a factory. You graduated school. You had children. You left town. You came back. Now you make pots and people come from far away to buy them. In your life, you got to do many things. Why should I have to chose one thing?"

"You misunderstand the choices," said the grandmother. "You must begin your life somewhere and make progress. To stop and start all the time, as you are doing with this underbrush and with your schooling, is to live a life of frustration and failure."

The girl renewed her attack on the plant in front of her. She saw that she had made no progress but her grandmother had gotten halfway to the road.

"I don't know that you are right," said the girl. She wiped her brow. "Even if you are, where should I begin?"

"Begin with a decision, any decision. Choose the boy or the school, either one. Or take the boy with you to the city. Do something."

"What if I make the wrong decision?"

"So what?" said her grandmother. "You'll fix it. The starting point doesn't matter. You need to pick a path and start swinging."