Free A Year at River Mountain by Michael Kenyon Page B

turning and the hiss of brush or scratch of pen or quill, ownership and mystery on speaking terms. Monks have always sat hunched and shivering with cold while they copied the contents of some vision, startled by a door crashing, invaders on horseback, but so embarked and hungry that even as boots echo in the halls, they hold to their squinty path between laziness and passion.
    It would take only a single well-armed man to hold Leopard Pass. This thought arises because I’m afraid of losing what might already be lost.
    What value have I for the world? Today I practiced in the forest, alone except for the wind and twirling leaves and didn’t want the day to gather darkness, but it did.
    R USHING G ATE
    It sounds dry, the page turning in a room, thumb and forefinger of the left hand rubbing the page to make certain of a single leaf. When the thumb pulls up two or more pages the sound is large and chaos threatens. The creak and kink of the page, so pleased to be turned, separates two faces that have been nose to nose in obscurity for years, even centuries. Perhaps it’s the first time they have been apart or the last time they will be separated. They lie flat, gazing at the ceiling, stunned by light and solitude, and as suddenly as life began it is over and they’re plunged into darkness, dark word to dark word, every page trapped, the boards shut, one book in a shelf of books.
    Do I miss you? Yes I do. Turn the page. Do I miss you? Still yes. Turn a new leaf. Let’s see what I can imagine.
    Turning seventy. Going away. Unseen.
    A BODE OF THE F U
    Out with the tribe, I would have said, talked about this and that over croissants and espresso. About theatre and ambition, what we have and haven’t done, how to advertise ourselves so we may survive a little way into the future. No.
    I wanted to see Song Wei — afraid she might have been cast out — so left my digging in the field to go down to the river.
    She sat on a rock, legs wide, pots in a circle on the gravel around her, her sleeves pinned back. The river noise masked my approach and she jumped when I called out. She was washing pots, her hair loose to her waist, a black curtain against the yellow robe, wet at the tips. Almost immediately her brother came over and crouched at her side and looked up at me. Sly gargoyle blink and grin.
    A BDOMEN K NOT
    â€œNo names,” said the master. “No names for the channels or the points.” He studied the edge of his robe. Dust furred the folds. He turned to me. “That woman will show you a change of course. A new direction.” He shook his head. Thin wisps of hair moved in the icy breeze. “Ah, it’s cold today,” he said. “It was warm yesterday.”
    â€œI do not wish to go on a journey.”
    The two other monks, my brother travellers, were still, their heads bowed. Even with three braziers burning in front of the statue, the wind penetrated. The master’s face was half in shadow, the lit part serene, the dark part anxious. This would be our last meeting before we left.
    When he cleared his throat we looked up. “Go to the river,” he said. “Consult the River Map.”
    I lay on a mat. My partner chased qi along the tributaries of my body. Fire, earth, water — his fingers guiding me down. The smell of apples cooking, apples and rice. When I woke (it is always like waking, getting up from the mat) it was already dark, the path to my cold hut marked by a deep drift of yellow leaves.
    G REAT H ORIZONTAL
    When we read the river map yesterday, Song Wei was performing a ritual on the bank. I paid more attention to her arms rising and falling than to the dripping knots. Then half a moon last night and a storm, so many swooping leaves that sunrise vanished in gold fractions, no sooner swept into piles than lifted in whirlwinds. One spun across the bridge toward the far shore, another twirled in the storehouse courtyard.
    A child shouted, “Uh!