Leaving Missoula

Vipassana and Idaho

When I said this newsletter would occur more regularly, I lied. I haven’t written because I felt like I didn’t have anything to say, or rather I knew that this particular newsletter was coming and I couldn’t articulate my feelings. I left Missoula last Friday night, and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I think I should feel something like shame, but I don’t. I am moving. That is what I do. That is my verb.

Since I turned 18, I haven’t lived in one place longer than three years (my longest stint was in Los Angeles, and I love that city but it was never going to be my forever place). Months ago, my friend Z— asked why I didn’t write about living in Montana, but I think there is the fantasy of living in Montana and there is the reality, and the reality is that it feels the same as my life in Idaho except that this year has been so lonely, so quiet, I find myself with no one to talk to besides my dog. I save the fantasy for my fiction.

I am back in Idaho, back in the state that raised me, the one I spent my adolescence trying to leave, because I did not want to be from nowhere, I wanted to be somewhere, by which I meant New York, or the East Coast, but it turns out that I hate the East Coast and New York makes me feel claustrophobic. What I am is a girl from Idaho, and no matter what I do, I keep finding myself here. I’m ok with it. I have my friends and family here, and really the only thing that’s important to me now is having a sense of community.

To put this in perspective, I recently returned from a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation course in Lava Hot Springs, ID. This is what some people might call a “retreat,” and indeed you do retreat from the rest of the world but this is not a retreat with spa water and journaling and healing crystals. Oh no. There is no talking, no cell phones, internet, writing, or reading. You’re not even allowed to make eye contact! You sit for 10-hours a day, and by the afternoon each day I was certain that my whole body was going to split open like the Christmas Vacation turkey. It’s physically demanding and there’s no dinner, and my stomach was growling so loudly I thought I would do unspeakable things for some bread just so that my body would shut up.

I know many people find the silence challenging but I’ve been so alone for so long that just sharing a room with 40-some people seemed like the most social thing I’d done in years. I could live in a commune, I thought. A commune with no internet, a landline, typewriter, and coffeehouse just up the road.

Friends, I thought I knew what meditation was, but it turns out that I did not. I took a Poetry as Spiritual Practice class with Chris La Tray (I recommend!), as I am having a real spiritual fucking year, and one day he asked us to write about what it was like to live in our bodies. What was it like to inhabit our body. And I could not do it. I could not write about it. But over those long meditation days (and I mean long—if you really want to know how many hours are in a day, wake up at 4:00am, sit down on a small stack of pillows, and focus on nothing but your nose all day) I think I knew embodiment in a whole new way. This kind of meditation is physical. I scanned my body over and over again, just observing sensations. Occasionally, a thought would come up. I replayed a bunch of twee Grey’s Anatomy songs in my head, as well as the Charmin Ultra jingle. You are not supposed to crave a certain sensation or have any aversion to painful ones; just observe things the way they are because they pass and my thoughts would look something like this:

I have pulled my neck muscle sleeping and I feel no aversion! At least I think I pulled it sleeping. Am I the first to get an injury meditating? I do not like sunshine sauce. I think I am allergic to lettuce. Jesus, there are a lot of ground squirrels here. Are they the same as prairie dogs? I do not feel tingling in my right wrist. There is sensation in my thumb. Why are there no hawks? I am so thankful the manager gave me ibuprofen. I think my neck will be ok. A hell of a drug. Am I going to start craving ibuprofen? This ibuprofen is good shit. I must remain unattached. Bridget and I knew in middle school that hot girls were unattached and we were very attached. So attached we could hardly move, we said. I miss her. I simply cannot scan my knee one more goddamn time. I do not care I hate my knee I AM EXPERIENCING AVERSION WHY ARE THERE NO GODDAMN HAWKS TO EAT THE GROUND SQUIRRELS?? The girl next to me has beautiful hair. Certainly, the gong will chime any second now. God, I don’t even like apples but I will eat all the apples at teatime. I will eat as many apples as I can get away with.

And then the gong would chime and we would get a break, and I would climb the hill and study the black ants on the purple thistle, and I would kneel down and smell the rocks, which were sour, and thought that if anyone from the normal world were to walk in right now and see me, they would think I needed to be locked up. But I walked up the hill, pretending, at least, that none of us were actually studying each other. I am ok with moving back to Idaho, I decided.

I have to admit there was a bit of whiplash on the last day when we could finally talk to each other. My voice cracked and the words starting pouring out but I doubt I made a lick of sense. I wanted friends but I didn’t get anyone’s number because I had to go get my dog and give a couple a ride back to Boise. Plus, there was a staple in my tire and so I had to drive three hours to Walmart and wait for another 1.5 hours to get it repaired, and by the time I really wished I had a way to get in touch with people, I was already back in Missoula, packing up all my things into boxes. It occurred to me that I would probably never see any of them again, just as there are hundreds of people in my life that I will never see again. A lesson in anicca. You experience this life-changing event together and then you say goodbye and get in your car and drive away. The times, they change. These things change you. Don’t be so attached.

I have never liked change and I’ve always chased big feelings. At one point S. N. Goenka, the man responsible for spreading the Vipassana technique, said that we are addicted to the feeling of not getting what we really want. I’m paraphrasing here and only because I remember writing something similar down in my journal years ago. Sometimes, the feeling is exquisite. Montana is in me always, a feeling of unattainable sky. One day I will be back, less lonely, and until then I am wandering, waving goodbye, thinking up the next adventure, not knowing what I want but knowing the feeling is there.