Page 34 - 2019 EMERGING WRITERS FELLOWSHIP ANTHOLOGY1

made of beer cans. But in life I have found a great need for a green room, a place I could

change into whoever I needed to be that day.

Everything smelled of summer camp. The only thing I knew about summer camp was that
rich white kids in movies went to them. The only bunk bed I had ever climbed was my

youngest daughter’s, back in the days when I got to kiss her goodnight.

Judging by the bags and coats on the hooks, I was the last to arrive. I tried to determine
the identities of my mates by the particulars of the items holding space on their mattresses

and the slightly varied ways they’d made their beds. I checked my watch. Dinner time. I
wasn’t hungry but made my way to the cafeteria, grateful for the direction and purpose.

I loaded a plate with kale and quinoa and found an empty corner of a table, surrounded
by enough solo eaters to not feel self-conscious about it. Within minutes a woman sat in

the chair opposite. I assumed she was a first-timer looking for a buddy, but she smiled
and shook her head when I asked.

“This is what you do here,” she shrugged vaguely.

Her answer confirmed my suspicions. I was adrift in space, my comfort zone a distant

memory.

Nothing encapsulates Esalen more than meal time. No table was the same place twice.
People sat at random. Conversations drifted, overlapped, extended. It was a culinary

casting of coins, a I Ching reading. Whose table you joined or who joined you at yours
would prove to be divine fate or a mystic reflection of where you were at that particular

moment in time – or an organic herb-infused mix of the two. When not up for divinity,

there were outside spaces, seats facing the ocean, perfect for one, no questions asked.

Nothing was unpleasant, but my alarms bells were ringing. If no one was going to tell me
who I needed to be during this thing, how would I know which me was the right one?

I drifted in and out of the first few writing camp events, keeping my distance. Our cohort
of fellowship recipients traded friendly greetings, yet I retreated when they went off as a

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