By Trais Pearson

“Have you seen shapes yet?”

She flinched, and willed the slumber from her eyes with slow, deliberate blinks.

“I’m not sure.”

“You would know,” he responded instantly and unequivocally, but then paused and softened his posture, tilting his head towards his right shoulder.

“Oh,” she pondered, “Well, maybe not yet then?”

A rooster crowed somewhere amidst the crowded rice paddy that began outside the backdoor of the bungalow and seemed to stretch for unbroken miles to the next stand of hills covered in towering, rail-thin teak trees that seemed to stand upright and glare suspiciously at their neighbors. She silently cursed the infernal fowl as she had each and every morning of the meditation retreat, and every time it broke her concentration or interrupted her sleep.

“Never mind.”

He pulled the fabric of his white linen shirt away from his stomach and laid his palms on his knees, which were locked in the lotus position.

“I just thought you would have seen them by now. It’s been eight days.”

It’s not a contest, she thought. But instead she said, “I’m trying. I really am.”

“What time do you wake up?”

“At four. When the bell rings. Or sooner, when the roosters start…” she looked out toward the paddy, and yawned.

“Do you though?” he asked, with an almost begrudging sense of curiosity.

“Yes.”

“You don’t lay back down, do you?”

She was constantly impressed by his English, which was better than any Thai she had yet met. But she seemed to sense an anger thundering beneath the placid surface of her lay advisor. His jet black hair was too dark for a man his age. His wife—tall, blond, and Dutch or Swedish?—seemed to haunt the bungalow, banging pots in the kitchen every time they met to discuss her practice, although she never actually seemed to cook anything.

“No. I get up. I brush my teeth. That usually helps.”

“Then what?”

“Then I start meditating.”

“Tell me about your practice.”

“I follow my breath, in and out, phu-tho.”

“And your eyes?”

“Closed. But not tightly.”

“Good. Tell me about your discipline. And be honest—with me, with yourself.”

“Well, I only stop for meals, and for chanting. And for the walking meditation. I really like the walking meditation. It’s hard to fall asleep when you’re moving.”

“And your sleep?”

“Maybe… not so good.”

“You are not sleeping well?”

“No. I—,” she stopped at the sound of a banging pot.

“Please,” he shook his head, “never mind that.”

“I really don’t know whether I have slept at all since I got here.”

“How so?”

“I’m so tired. But whenever I’m about to fall asleep I hear noises.”

“Noises?”

“Yes. Like frogs. Or… roosters. Or, like… someone banging a stick against a metal post.”

“Hmm.”

“Sometimes,” she lowered her voice, “it sounds like someone screaming—but far away.”

He nodded, slowly. He seemed distracted, but she continued.

“Or my name. Sometimes I swear I hear someone saying my name—Jessica—in like a loud whisper if that makes sense? It wakes me up. There’s no one there—I know—but I’m sure I heard it.”

Her eyes begin to tear up. She looks down at her hands crossed in her lap.

“The mind is a monkey, swinging from one thought to another.”

He made a gesture with his thumbs connected and one hand seeming to swing from the other. There was something hypnotic about the movement and she started to doze off before catching herself and jolting upright again.

“The mind, you see. It’s like this. If you try to make it stand still, it will rebel. This is what you are experiencing.”

“Are you sure?” She gazed past him into the hazy sky over the golden hued rice paddies, just as a breeze tickled the ends of the growing stalks and danced across them like an unseen giant. “Because… I think I’m going crazy.”

“Like,” she paused, unsure whether she should continue.

“Please,” he gestured reassuringly with an open palm.

“Like, all these people shuffling around in silence, in bare feet. Everyone’s wearing all white clothes. And, like, sometimes I think: am I already in an asylum?”

“A two-week retreat is very challenging. And you are free to go at any time. There is no shame. You would not be the first, I can assure you.”

“I’m scared,” she said, as the oscillating fan pushed air across her face and sent a chill through her. “I don’t know who I am any more. I think I need to see my mom.”

“All the constituents of being are impermanent—” he started.

“Please stop. I just can’t—”

“This too shall pass,” he parted his lips in the closest thing to a smile that she had yet seen on his face. “That’s all I meant.”

 

Trais Pearson is the proud author of a sizeable but obscure collection of scholarship on modern Southeast Asian history including articles, works of translation (from Thai), and a book, _Sovereign Necropolis: The Politics of Death in Semi-Colonial Siam_ (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020). His first (and only) piece of fiction in press, “Dispatches from the Office of Institutional Advancement,” was an Honorable Mention in the Saturday Evening Post’s Great American Fiction Contest 2024. 

|Website|      |X|