Prologue: Lilacs

while progressing in a career involving writing. And . . . perhaps someday I would feel freed of the past.

Settled in the library, I tried my best to do what good students do— study. But I struggled to stay awake. The physical geography textbook bored me. Yes, I loved the desert and learning the names of the remarkable plant life, but I disliked reading about the causes and history of earthquakes, continental drift, and volcanoes. I skimmed the pages, nodded o², wakened, jotted a note, and wakened again. With highlighter in hand, I marked a sentence I hoped was a main point. I drifted o² again. When I forced my eyes open a few minutes later, I decided to try ³nishing “Paradise Lost.” Even though my professor boasted that this epic poem was Milton’s greatest achievement, that the language was a superb example of rhythm and rhyme, that this work inspired Keats and a writer named Joseph Hayden whom I had never heard of, I found myself drifting and feeling guilty for it. I was an English major after all. I should love Milton. I should be able to read this work and understand what I was reading, but I felt lost. Yes, there was Satan. Yes, there was Adam and Eve. Yes, even Almighty God was present in this work, but the language was stilted and hard, and I was tired. How would I ever get an “A” in this class?

I packed up the very books I had barely absorbed and headed over to the 3HO Sikh Ashram just o² campus for my late afternoon yoga and meditation class. I slipped o² my Birkenstocks, pulled a beach towel from my backpack, and set up for the hour-long class. This room had come to feel like a kind of home to me. I liked the high ceilings, the tall open windows, the four white walls featuring a photo of Yogi Bhajan and several colorful and dramatic pictures of the gods and goddesses from Hindu scriptures (even though the photo and pictures initially felt a little strange to me). I liked that an altar was set up in front, and some days sandalwood incense burned. Hari Bal Dev sat in full lotus position on a sheepskin mat in front of the altar. Several students on sheepskins or towels, like myself, prepared for the class. Some stretched their legs and wriggled their ³ngers and toes. Others sat in half- or full-lotus, stretching their necks to the right, then down to their chest, then to the left. Some stood and reached their arms and ³ngers toward the ceiling. I

lay down that day, listened to the doves cooing, the tick of the wind in the magnolias outside, the shrill of the crickets and cicadas.

When I ³rst started taking yoga, the exercises challenged and invigorated me and prepared me to meditate. Often during meditation Aunt Mildred and Fran Scharli—two women who had a great in·uence on me and had passed away—came to mind. I felt such grief I couldn’t hold in the tears. My instructors acknowledged and a¹rmed my process. They let me know that it was OK to cry and show my emotions, that yoga and meditation sometimes accessed parts of ourselves we had neglected and released emotions we had held in or buried.

I left the ashram and returned to campus for a three-hour creative writing class with Steve Orlen. Though tired, I felt invigorated because of my enthusiasm for writing. The discussions, the reading of poems by well-known poets and us lesser known-wannabes, ³lled me with the same kind of feelings I had during yoga class and during my own private prayers and community devotions at the Bahá’í Center. I felt as if the very molecules in the air were charged. I was not lost in chaos, not escaping my body and the moment to fantasy, a wine-high, or worry. I was sensing a completeness in the actual moment. There was beauty to the long table cluttered with our open books, beauty to the silence after Steve read Rilke or Neruda to open the class. Though I felt nervous about sharing my poems, I valued discussions of my work and that of other students. Each word on the page became signi³cant, each sound, each rhythm. The possibilities that existed for revising our creative work fueled me. I couldn’t wait to get home and revise my poems-in-progress.

By 9:30 I steered down Lee Street past Campbell Avenue toward Tucson Boulevard, where I had a choice to make, but it didn’t feel like a choice because I didn’t pause to ponder and decide. I turned right, away from my apartment. I turned right and pedaled, pedaled hard. I didn’t think. I didn’t allow myself to think. I just aimed straight for the 7-11. JunkieKim pedaling, parking her bike, not bothering to lock it, pulling out the six dollars and seventy-³ve cents tip money from Bentley’s. I bought ³ve pastries, a quart of chocolate-chip ice cream, and three butter³ngers. I paid. I placed the bagged items in my backpack. I thanked the cashier. I