June 17, 2008--Reprieved From Last Summer

Doodlebugging

I was still sipping on my second cup of coffee when in a rush someone we hadn’t seen before plopped herself down on a stool at the counter in our favorite Vermont breakfast place. She announced to the waitresses hunkered together during the mid-morning lull by the coffee pots that she had only a few minutes for a quick couple of slices of French toast before she needed to head out to Maryland, where she lived, an eight hour drive without traffic she said for all to hear, and wasn’t it true, she wondered out loud, that the police start to give out parking tickets at the stroke of ten.

“Not that I’m usually in such a hurry,” she felt the need to have everyone know that about her in that otherwise laidback environment, “but the last thing I need is a ticket and I do want to get on the road before traffic builds. I have a lot to think about.”

To begin to accommodate her urgency, one of the waitresses filled a mug and slid it across the counter in her direction. And leaning toward the open kitchen door, she called in her order, “Small stack of FT, no meat.”

Our new companion picked up the Local section of the Valley News that the last occupant of her stool had left behind. I could her muttering to herself. “I don’t know,” I think she said, “all this time and so far away. . . I never thought . . . but then again, you never know . . . I would be good if . . . some world.”

In spite of all the caffeine surging in me I was still feeling mellow—that’s what two weeks up here will do for you—and was a little concerned about her driving all that way when seemingly so agitated. So in her direction I said, “I think the weather at least is supposed to be pretty good today.” I thought that might calm her. “I don’t know about south of New York, but I heard on the radio that it won’t be raining between here and there so you should have pretty smooth sailing.”

I thought talking about the weather was innocuous enough so that she wouldn’t be further upset by my listening in on what she had said about her upcoming drive or by whatever it was she was reading in the paper that had so riled her up. If she turned on me I could always say I was just chattering on to myself about the weather—usually the most benign and uncontroversial of subjects.

As I was thinking about that, out of the corner of my eye I could see her bend forward so as to be able to look past Rona and right at me. No knowing what was coming I kept my eyes glued to the bottom of my mug, looking at the pattern the grinds had left. “Don’t mind me,” she said, “I’m just having one of those mornings.”

Relieved, I then turned toward her and said, “I know what you mean.” Though in truth I really didn’t. I had no idea what was agitating her and it has been so blissful here that I had managed to forget days like the kind she was referring to. I was just trying to seem mindlessly empathetic.

“It was such a good conference and they had me so beautifully set up that to tell you the truth I’m feeling unhappy about having to leave. Not to mention the eight hour drive.”

“I know what you mean,” I repeated, unimpressed with myself that I couldn’t think of anything more interesting or original to say.

“I’m not sure that you do.” It was obvious that she too wasn’t that impressed with me; and again uncertain where this might be going, I raised my guard again and resumed swishing my coffee. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that my head is so full of things, overwhelmed one might say, and I could use another day here in the mountains to assimilate more of it. But I have to get home. I’ve got two dogs in the kennel and they need to see me and I need to see them.”

“I know what you mean,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying, though when it comes to dogs I must admit I don’t have much understanding about this kind of deep need on the part of either the dog or the owner.

“But maybe I’ll get some thinking done on the drive home.”

“You mentioned a conference,” I finally figured out something different to say.

“Up at Killington.”

“Nice up there,” I offered.

“Of dowsers.”

“Of what?” I asked, not sure I had heard her correctly.

“Dow-sers,” she said being sure to pronounce each syllable distinctly. Seeing my puzzled look she quickly added, “I know, you’re thinking it was a gathering of aging hippies and New Agers. Folks sort of like me,” she shook her shock of thick gray hair so as to make proudly sure I knew she went back that far and might be as much into crystals as dowsing. I must have shrugged my shoulders. “Well, there were for sure some of them among the more than 300 who attended.” That impressed me. “Some folks up here call it doddlebugging, which is fine with me, but dowsing goes back to the dawn of civilization and is practiced not just here in rural places but on every continent where access to water is a matter of life and death. Dowsing is widely practiced even today, you know, in spite of having all sorts of modern instruments.”

I knew at least that much. In fact, when I was a kid my family every summer rented a house in the Catskill Mountains to get away from the heat of the city and to protect me and my young brother and cousins from the danger of polio epidemics, and up there I recalled being fascinated by an old man who looked like he was 100 who was the area’s dowser.

“I remember someone like that,” I told Janette, she had by then introduced herself, “it was said he could find water where no one else could. He would show up as if by magic with a Y-shaped tree branch from which he had stripped the bark and walk around with it out in front of him with his eyes closed like he was blind; and when it quivered and pointed itself, that what it looked like—as if the dowsing rod was pulling his arms toward the ground—without saying a word he would just point at the spot. And sure enough, everyone said later, they would drill and before long find water. I loved following him around. It seemed so miraculous to me. Even at that time when I was no more than eight or nine I knew I was witnessing something remarkable.”

As I recalled this, Janette, smiling, nodded at me. “I’ve been interested in dowsing for a number of years. I’m not a dowser per say but a retired school psychologist. I became interested when I learned that it’s much more than just about a way to find water, that it’s useful as well in understanding human behavior. That captured my interest. I saw it as another tool I could use in my work. Another possible way to gain insight into the lives of my troubled students. So that I might become more helpful in assisting them.”

I had no idea that anything more was involved than what I had experienced as a boy. “Some claim,” she said, softer now so that just Rona and I could hear, “that skilled dowsers can find centers of energy in the human body.”

“You mean find tumors and such?” I couldn’t help but sound skeptical.

“No not that. Not responsible ones anyway. You know of course about those theories, which I think have been scientifically validated, that there are specific places on the body and in the larger world where energy is most concentrated.” I told her that I did know something about that—the Qi energy of fengshui, which also forms the basis of acupuncture, energy that most Chinese believe represents how the structure of the world is made up of a set of complexly related interacting forces.

Sensing I was again perhaps sympathetic, though a bit academic in my interest, Janette continued, clearly deciding to take a chance with me by pushing further to confront my skepticism. “At the conference there was panel about human auras. I know, I know, this may be a little much for you.”

It was and so, as to keep us feeling in harmony with each other—not wanting to get too far into the aura business--as socially acceptably as possible, to shift the subject, I said, “You know it’s almost 10:00; and you’re right, they do begin to ticket cars at that time. Unless you begin to feed the meter. And you haven’t even finished your French toast.”

“I know,” she added with a broad and friendly smile, knowing well what I was up to, “and I have an eight hour drive. Thank you for reminding me. I mean it, really, thank you. But still if you have another minute, let me tell you a little more about the auras. They’re important too. The car can wait. Not everyone can see them but those who can, and many who can have been tested, can see versions of colored halos surrounding many people’s heads. I can’t. Though in certain circumstances, if the light is just right,” she was holding up both of her trembling hands beside her head to illustrate, “I can see one, maybe if I’m especially tuned in, two colors.”

She was peering at me as intently as anyone ever had. I began to wonder that maybe the light conditions in the Creamery were to her liking. And so I made sure to sit up even straighter on my stool to present myself, so to speak, in the best possible light. “By analyzing the nature of the colors they perceive they can learn important things about the nature of your state of being.”

Mine? Was she attempting to do that right now at the breakfast counter? Realizing this I did whatever I thought might help to send out the right sequence of colors—I held my breath thinking that might concentrate my energy; I switched to hyperventilation when I sensed the maybe the wrong emanations were getting to her; and then I thought perhaps a third cup of coffee would boost my capacity to radiate energy. After all isn’t that what caffeine ultimately was supposed to be about?

Whatever Janette was or was not perceiving about me, using whatever tools were at her command, and assuming the light in the Creamery was just right for a reading, I was still not quite awake and in spite of weeks of living in this serene place, I was still unsure about the underling state of my being, I knew more repair work was necessary, I was in truth unhappy that Jeanette hadn’t left five minutes ago to rescue her car. In my still-unintegrated state, I was as averse to learning what she could uncover about me as to hearing, out of self-involved curiosity, what she might be able to reveal about the alignment of my various energies.

Intuiting all of these conflicting thoughts and emotions, Janette gently said, “Not to worry. I can see that you are for the most part whole. I mean, well.” I was happy to hear this but a little concerned about the for the most part part. “This is not an official so-called ‘diagnosis’ mind you. I don’t do that. I am still learning, as I mentioned. And I’m still not fully convinced about this aspect of the art. But it is clear to me, on the basis of this week at the conference and my previous studies, that as with traditional medicine and psychology—perhaps I should say ‘Western’—that there are those who possess greater or lesser ability and talent. And I met some of the former. That’s why the drive home should prove to be so interested. There is a lot to process.”

With that she popped up from the stool with so much Qi vitality that I thought if I had the ability to read auras I was certain hers would be throbbing. “Got to run,” she said, tossing ten dollars on the counter, and bolted through the door and out onto Main Street.

It was twenty past ten but I felt certain that her car had not been ticketed.

Rona, who all this time had been uncharacteristically quiet, then said, “You know, you’ve been looking for additional things to do since you have more time. Maybe as a second career you should become a dowser.”

Not certain if she was making fun of me because of my seeming interest in what Janette had to say—Rona more than anyone knows that I have never shown much interest in metaphysical things such as fungshui—or knowing what I was up to when I preened to present my auras in their best light, not sure what Rona was really saying, to read her meaning I tried to look as closely at her as Jeanette had at me; and since I suppose the sun was in just the right position, I noticed that she was bathed in a nimbus of many colors.

Seeing that and feeling so good about what it must mean about Rona’s state of being, I turned to touch her; but before I could gather her to me, she reached over to embrace me, almost toppling both of us off our stools.

Wobbly by still managing to embrace, she whispered for only me to hear, “You do remember, don’t you, that you’re quite colorblind.”

I said, “Then it must be the coffee.”