Page 36 - 2019 EMERGING WRITERS FELLOWSHIP ANTHOLOGY1

The card’s questions followed me to bed that evening and were there on my pillow when

I woke the next day. They were there when I slid out of my clothes in the chill morning air
and let the hot waters of the baths saturate my bones as the sun broke free from the

horizon. The slight sulfuric tinge in the air took me home to the Big Island, back to my
hula dancing days, chanting along the smoking lip of Halema’uma’u Crater to pay homage

to the goddess Pele. At breakfast, a Buddhist teacher and I inhaled bowls of oatmeal
sweetened with berry compote and a requisite side of kale and discussed mental illness

and scars of the soul in context of my deteriorating relationship with my eldest daughter.
On the way to a yurt for the morning’s presentation, I fell into a conversation about

politics and riffed off a few anecdotes on life as a female political consultant. In workshop,
I followed a writing prompt down a rabbit hole that left me cross-legged on the floor,

weeping and hyperventilating as words exploded from my fingers, the sister daughter

child in me taking over. Later, I found a solitary chair in the middle of a plush field and
went invisible.

As a child I’d had a pet octopus named Squiggly P. Quiziker. I used to envy his ability to

change color, to blend with his background. Being shamed for being white in a brown
family, I used to implore my freckles to band together and spread so my mother might

one day see herself in me, so I might be able to one day claim my birthplace as my own

without being questioned. Over the years I’d taken many cues from Squiggly, adopting
mannerisms, changing my speech patterns, changing costumes as if they were personas.

My repertoire of selves survived in isolation – I kept them apart with a vigilance reserved
for Shakespearean rivaling families. But here at Esalen they were all speaking at once,

their voices harmonizing, contributing to the conversation that was me.

In my chair I returned to what the critic said about proximity and agency. Perhaps I had

done nothing to diversify the 2019 Writing x Writers Esalen Writing Camp. But every
person in attendance contributed to the chemistry of the whole, to the diversification of

our perspectives. Of that I was and will always be a part. I can say for certain: I had agency,
and the proximity it forced upon me was proximity to myself. Here, among these wise

sages, this group, I was on ground zero. Here, I did not need a green room. My masks

Page 37 of 48