Appearances
A story about bodywork
My wife Susie and I went to see Noelle, a bodyworker whom I trusted implicitly. She often surprised me and sometimes scared me. I knew that our session would go beyond your standard couples massage. I mentioned this to Susie, and she was game to try anything.
We showed up at Noelle’s studio a few minutes early. She greeted us with hugs and welcomed us into her space. Then she shut the door behind her, locked it, and asked us both to undress completely.
I looked at Susie. Her expression said, Well, of course. We piled our clothes neatly in separate bundles on the floor. Then we stood there naked and silent, facing Noelle and awaiting instructions.
Noelle looked at me. “Go ahead and lie down flat on your back,” she said. “You know savasana from yoga class, right — corpse pose, deep relaxation?”
I nodded. Slowly I got into position on the yoga mat in Noelle’s studio — arms and legs fully extended, palms up, feet parted, eyes closed.
“Good,” said Noelle.
The two women stood at opposite ends of the mat, towering above me.
“Now Susie is going to lie down on top of you, face down,” Noelle said. “She’ll be absolutely still — a warm, weighted, human blanket. She’ll contact you completely. She’ll soften you. The two of you will breathe together for a while, skin to skin, heart to heart. You’ll sink into complete release.”
Noelle paused. “Any questions?”
I couldn’t think of anything.
“I'm ready,” said Susie. She walked over to the mat and positioned herself into a plank pose directly over me with her elbows fully extended. After hovering there for deep several breaths with her eyes closed, she gently lowered herself on top of me. Waves of her heat covered me from head to toe as she gradually made full body contact, inch by inch. Finally her head came to rest on the floor, her face nestling into my neck. Her arms were bent at the elbows, her palms flat on the floor on either side of the mat. She spread her legs to let them rest outside mine.
While Susie made a dozen tiny adjustments to make this position work for us, my mind raced. I opened my eyes and looked around the room. I’m trapped. I won’t be able to breathe.
“Drop that thought,” Noelle said.
Susie took a long breath, slow and deep. I closed my eyes again.
“Okay,” said Noelle. “Can you stay like that for a while?”
“Yes,” said Susie.
I felt her heart beat. Her belly expanded and contracted. Soon I lost interest in my thoughts. Words and images receded like waves rolling off a sand beach. Other than breathing, Susie was motionless, a benevolent mass of flesh that brought me to stillness. We were one conscious animal with two poles of awareness.
How long did Susie and I stay there on the floor? I have no idea. Forever or a few minutes.
“Okay,” said Noelle. “We’re done for now. Please get up slowly and take your time. We’ll sit for a while and talk.”
Noelle opened a closet and removed three meditation cushions. She spread them out on the floor while Susie and I got dressed. Then the three of us sat down on the cushions facing each other. Noelle closed her eyes and nobody spoke.
“Okay,” Noelle said after a few minutes. “Let’s talk about the session. What just happened for you?”
Susie opened her eyes slowly. “For a while nothing happened. Then everything exploded. All I saw was bright colors and flashing lights. And then all of that stuff disappeared. I saw that nothing ever happened and nobody ever existed. I felt so relieved.”
I cocked my head. “Really? You’re saying that this is not real? We’re not really here?”
“Not real or unreal,” said Susie. “Just transparent. Here and not here.”
“Flickering in and out,” said Noelle.
“Fireflies on a summer night,” Susie said.
I felt an impulse to counter this. Then I remembered sitting in meditation halls and watching the borders of my body disappear. I said nothing.
Susie turned her eyes to gaze out a window and smiled. “Imagine that you’re on your death bed and you have a video recording of everything you’ve ever said and done in your whole life. You want to review your life, so you decide to play the video. Only you can’t play it back at normal speed because that would literally take another lifetime. So you play the video at a thousand times the normal speed. What do you see? Constant motion, constant activity. Objects fly in and out of your visual field. You change from kid to teenager to adult and then keep aging. People appear and disappear. Everything comes and goes, and it all happens so quickly. You wonder why you ever got attached to anything in the first place.”
“You’ve just reduced the whole of spiritual practice to high-speed video,” I said.
“Yeah. Works for me. Speed up the video and then slow it down again. Replay the whole thing at several different speeds. Does it make a difference? You just see the same thing over and over again: Nothing lasts.”
Noelle smiled. “Stare at anything for a long time,” she said. “A table, a wall, a person, a mountain. Even things that seem so solid and stationary start to vibrate. They phase in and out. Eventually you see light around the edges of things. Everything is a passing image, something your brain makes up.”
I sighed and rubbed my face with both hands. “This is pretty advanced shit.”
“Maybe it’s simple,” Susie said. “We don’t love people because they last forever. We love them because they’re here and gone. It hurts like hell, and it’s the only thing that makes any sense.”
“I’m not sure I can handle that,” I said. “It seems so pointless. It’s a mean way to run a universe.”
“Maybe it’s the perfect way to run a universe,” Said Susie. “Stuff just happens and it doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s pure spectacle.”
“That’s it?”
“It’s enough,” Noelle said.
“Everything just moves without meaning and then fades to dirt?” I said. “Maybe we’re better off just eating and drinking and sexing until we die. Pure distraction.”
“It’s all emptiness and motion,” Susie said, “but it’s not pointless. The question is: Did you open up to it? Did you keep loving even though your heart broke a thousand times?”
I said nothing and waited for the women to speak.
“Right now you’re either opening up or you’re waiting for something better to happen,” Noelle said. “Waiting for some point in the future when it’s better, when you finally get it all together. But there’s no such thing. Nothing never gets straightened out. The only thing that counts is how much you open up to whatever shows up.”
I looked at Susie. She sat with eyes closed, smiling.
“Give everything now,” Noelle said. “When you die, no one cares about your resume. They only remember how they felt around you.”
Susie and I went to bed early that night. We made love like teenagers, like our first time.