Amy Blackmarr

The summer weekend was sultry when I decided to go on retreat in the yard. I was feeling irrelevant. What was I here for, anyway? Nothing I was doing seemed important. Getting through the days was a monotonous chore, and I was bored with my work and tired of myself.

But Thomas Merton said to plunge into the heart of suffering. Maybe if I sat in the yard on a blanket and fasted and asked for a vision, I’d get a message. A bolt of lightning. A sign from God. Any old miracle would do, just something to shock me out of my complacency. I had friends who talked to dead relatives, left their bodies and flew to Russia for the night, and woke up on the ceiling. I didn’t know how long it would take for my revelation, but I figured twenty-four hours without food in Kansas heat would probably do it.

I swept the floors, straightened the clutter in the den, and shut off the computer. I unplugged the phone and vowed to keep my mouth shut until a miracle happened. I wouldn’t talk to anybody or e-mail Kelly or go to the post office.
I filled a milk jug with water, went outside where the yard dissolved into meadow, and spread a blanket over the prairie grass near a red cedar. Here I would sit, suffer, and wait for something extraordinary to happen.

Instantly I was miserable. I was hot and thirsty and all I could think about was air-conditioning, Mexican food, and the work I wasn’t doing. Max circled on the blanket, settled into a tight curl, and looked at me. Red bounded over and stuck his nose in my ear. Floyd stayed where he was, which was smashed under the propane tank, where it was cold all the time.

I watched buzzards circle overhead, listened to the woodpeckers hammer at the trees, chewed a mint leaf. Small planes flew over, headed for the airport near Lawrence. I struggled to keep from dozing. My bangs were plastered to my forehead, and all over me were bugs—flying bugs, creeping bugs, zinging bugs, biting bugs. The breeze was stiff but inconstant. The air felt like bathwater. My back ached from sitting on the ground, and the top of my head was baking. Life’s too short for this, I thought. Whatever is wrong with me, I’ll get over it. I went back in the house and ate the Girl Scout cookies I’d been saving in the freezer.

It wasn’t long before I started feeling disappointed with myself. I hadn’t really tried, after all. I hadn’t really been committed. I hadn’t done my best. I hadn’t lived up to my potential.

Besides, I’d have some satisfaction telling Mom I’d sat on a blanket all weekend in the yard. “Honestly,” she’d say, and shake her head.

I smothered myself in bug spray and put ice in the thermos and took the blanket back out to the red cedar. A Dakota Indian I knew said his people stood four days and four nights without food or water, and they prayed and sang and danced the whole time. I wondered how long I could stand and pray for a vision. A conversation with a wolf would be nice, I thought. The Dalai Lama. St. Peter. Even Thomas Merton.

It’s very hard work, standing for hours on a hot day. It’s boring, even when you’re trying to be reverent and open-hearted and think about sacred things. After a while, I gave up and sat down. Eventually I grew sleepy and lay down. I dozed. I dreamed about chickens sitting on a fence telling jokes. I woke up laughing.

The crows had set up a racket in the woods. A stick fell on my head. I thought of climbing trees when I was a girl. I remembered climbing the pecan tree in our front yard and sitting on a limb, watching the cars go by, watching Miss Ibba’s gardener trim the camellias, watching Miss Mildred, in her fur coat, drive her Cadillac around her front yard and pick up trash and toss it across the street into our yard.

A red-tailed hawk flew over, carrying something in its mouth. As it came my way the hawk swooped, and a dark shape fell into the grass behind me. I got up and searched around. At the corner of my blanket was a dead baby squirrel.

I was watching an old Perry Mason episode one day when a witness told Perry: “A blind man often accuses the whole world of darkness.” It reminded me of something a Zen master said to me once: “You’re always looking for God. Go sit by the pool and drink a margarita. See.”

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