NOVEL
Prologue
September, 1990, San Francisco, California
I first met the Swami when I was five years old and my mother called me inside from playing in the yard to tell me that she was no longer my mother but a reincarnated holy man from India.
And now, thirty-three years later, she stands at the gate of Wishing Star Residential Treatment Center in the Mission district of San Francisco waiting for her daughter who never comes.
“Cody?” she cries incredulously when I emerge sweating and rumpled from the taxi, flinging some bills at the driver.
“Yes, Mama, it’s me,” I say, as she slams into me. She stinks. But beyond the stench of unwashed flesh lies a familiar scent—both hated and adored—the scent of my own DNA. That I’m actually holding my mother in my arms after so many years seems a raging miracle.
“Come,” she says, as we pull apart, a curious note of pride piercing the characteristically flat voice of the schizophrenic, “I’ll show you around the place.”
I follow her as she shuffles up the path, past a boy in a gorilla suit waving his arms at me, past a haphazard Garden of Eden where lemon trees groan with unpicked fruit, tomato vines strangle zucchini squash the size of tanks, and stained undergarments flap overhead on the clothesline like flagships.
Is any of this real? It may not be. For I am once again in the presence of the master mesmeric, the snake charmer who conjures up dreams before your eyes, makes you see the invisible, believe the unbelievable. Every instant spent in the aura of my mother’s genius becomes a journey beyond the borders of the known world, challenging the very substance of reality.
Is she crazy?
Is she divine?
Perhaps a little of both?
This enigma has consumed my life, has shaped me far beyond the womb; I am a walking, talking embodiment of the mystery. The years I spent running away from my mother have only brought me closer to her. And now I am here, following her up the primrose path, ready once again to enter the Garden of Eden.
I’ve seen this place in my dreams; this place of sin and redemption.
I’ve come here to save my life.
BUY MY BOOK:
http://www.amazon.com/Dancing-In-The-Mouth-Tiger/dp/1478746696
FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/dancinginthemouthofthetiger/
REVIEWS:
The emotional imagery is mesmerizing. I get a sense of this intricate family weaving that leads to Cody and how she is sorting out her life. The story telling voice shows wonderment and puzzlement at the same time. There is a historical tale but the important story is internal. Incredible writing.
–William, Sept 2015
Brook has created a fiery, utterly engaging and rich story. I could not put it down. Her writing reminded me of dancing: I could feel the emotion taking a hold of me, swaying me with staggering truths and painful authenticity. Then I would be lulled by beautiful steps (images) of nature and exquisite wise quotes.
It was thoroughly satisfying. I look forward to rereading it soon!
–Gina, Oct 2015
Superb! Brook is a talented and gifted writer. Her tale of Cody growing up in any anything but ordinary life is both captivating and beautiful. She weaves us through an intricate tale that is truly special and needs to be heard. This book consumed my life for several days - I couldn't put it down wondering where the story was leading. This epic story is a must read!
–Ashley, Oct 2015
Very enjoyable book to read. I was swept up from the beginning really enjoying the imagery and emotion the author shared. I felt as though I was reading a private journal, and although it is fiction it is full of emotion and interest in how life unfolds. Will look forward to the author's next novel.
–Tonia, Dec 2015
Loved the book. Shows so much human feeling in it.
–Amazon Customer, Feb 2016
Wonderful book!
–Suesan, March 2016
Enjoyed this book over a weekend. Didn't know where the character would go. Could see the struggle and questions she had. In the end she understood herself better and was content ... happy with herself. She is a good person. I also appreciated a realistic look at mental illness and those who are simply different.
And appreciated the good writing and editing - not so common today.
–Lynne, June 2016
STORIES
Elton and the Yeahbut
Elton was a typical boy. When the screen of his device flickered in his room and he hadn’t yet finished his homework, he said, “Yeah, but Mom, it’s my favorite episode…”
When the teacher asked him the next day “Where’s your homework?” He said, “The dog ate it.”
And when she said, “Come on Elton, that’s the oldest story in the book,” he said: “Yeah, but it just so happens to be true.”
When Elton’s dad asked him to mow the lawn, he looked up at the clouds and said, “Yeah, but it looks like rain.”
When Elton’s mom popped her head into his room to see if he’d finished cleaning and found him blasting tunes instead, he said, “Yeah, but I can’t HEAR you!”
And when his parents urged him to finish his broccoli at dinner, he said, “Yeah, but I don’t eat TREES.”
On the eve of Elton’s 10th birthday, the Yeahbut came for a visit, transversing thousands of miles of land, sea, and sky to perch upon Elton’s pillow. The boy was fast asleep, dreaming of ways to avoid taking out the trash in the morning.
“Greetings from the Wild Sweet Beyond,” whispered the Yeahbut into Elton’s ear, the words sounding strange on his silvery tongue, for he didn’t often speak aloud.
Elton awoke with a scream, frightening the poor the Yeahbut half to death, making his wool stand up on end and his soft brown eyes bulge with terror.
“Get away from me!” shouted Elton, diving under his blankets.
The Yeahbut hastily retreated to the foot of Elton’s bed, trying to regain his composure. He took a deep steadying breath. “Now, let’s try this again,” he began in his most soothing tone: “Greetings, my young friend.”
Still, Elton cowered beneath his blanket, one frightened blue eye peering out at the Yeahbut. “Are you going to eat me?” he cried.
“Now, why would I want to do such a ridiculous thing?” asked the Yeahbut.
“Because that’s what monsters do?” suggested Elton.
“Maybe,” said the Yeahbut with quiet dignity, “But I am NOT a monster, I’m a vegetarian.”
“A ‘vegetarian’?” repeated Elton, venturing slowly from beneath his covers. “What kind of monster is that?”
“I told you, I’m not a monster,” reiterated the Yeahbut testily, struggling for control, “I‘m a Yeahbut—distant cousin of the Yak, wild and wooly and inhabiting the higher regions of our planet, happily munching my days away in grassy mountain meadows, nipping heads off tender shoots and, I might add, the petals of young wildflowers.” He cleared his throat. “Any questions?”
“Yes,” said Elton, mustering his courage: “Why are you here?”
The Yeahbut’s wooly black brows drew together in a look so fierce that Elton wondered if he’d decided to eat him after all.
“I’m here,” thundered the Yeahbut, “because YOU keep calling my name!”
“What do you mean?” asked Elton, perplexed.
“You say ‘Yeah’ and ‘but’ all the time.
“Yeah, but I don’t mean it that way!”
“There you go again!” cried the Yeahbut, “Can’t a fellow get any rest?”
“I suppose not…” said Elton, a sheepish grin playing on his lips.
So, the boy and the Yeahbut talked far into the night and when Elton at last fell asleep, he dreamed he climbed up on the Yeahbut’s big strong back and flew to faraway lands, where there were colors Elton had never seen before and the sun burst through the clouds to shower the crags below with rainbows—up, up they flew, above the highest peaks on earth where the air is clear and birds fly free. There, Elton had adventures you and I can only guess at.
From then on, Elton told the truth, did his homework promptly, mowed the lawn rain or shine, cleaned his room, ate his vegetables (even if they looked like trees), and never once forgot to take out the trash. Elton’s mother kissed him on the cheek and his father patted him on the head, because Elton never again spoke those two dreaded words. For he had made a pact with the Yeahbut—if Elton agreed to stop calling his name all the time, the Yeahbut would come every year on Elton’s birthday to take him once again to the Wild Sweet Beyond and explore all the wonders of the universe.
Oh, the wonders.
Blind
He tells me he’s been to the Himalayas, to a mountain in Nepal whose name I can’t remember that’s even higher than Everest.
“So you climb?” I ask.
He nods then quickly qualifies, “Used to. These days, I’m more of a trekker. My daughter and I just returned from Nepal where we spent a whole month wandering and meditating. We stumbled across these amazing Hindu temples in the jungle—they just appear out of nowhere.”
“Gosh,” I breathe, sounding like a 1950’s sit com. “I’ve always wanted to do stuff like that—just never seem to get around to it.” Getting through each day is about all I can handle.
“I came back changed,” he says, seeming to disappear inside himself.
“Your daughter is beautiful—she looks like you,” I say, trying to bring him back, meaning it. It’s one of the things that made me answer his ad, the photo of him with his arm around his daughter, both smiling, their souls pouring out of their eyes.
His eyes, slate gray like the sky, flit away from me now.
We dance around the subject, like prodding a wound, the closer you get to the center, the more pain. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.
“20 years is a long time to be married,” I offer. “Be gentle with yourself.”
“Thanks,” he says, looking at me, really looking at me for the first time. A minimal acknowledgement and yet I think I see a flicker of life.
We’ve been sitting on bench in the Rose Test Garden for a half hour. When I first approached the designated bench and called out his name he didn’t look up from his book so I sat beside him, asked what he was reading. When he held up a volume of Yeats, I said: You remembered because in my ad I’d said I liked Yeats and sleeping under the stars. I asked him to read me a poem: Silver apples of the moon, golden apples of the sun.
He produces tea from a little case along with a tiny pot and two tiny cups. He shreds black strands from a solid block, pours hot water from his thermos, a heavenly scent rising in the steam.
“My brother imports the stuff from China,” he says and while we wait for it to steep he tells me the name of the tea, but I can’t keep a thought in my head.
“It’s delicious,” I say, sipping. “I don’t normally do caffeine, but this feels so smooth.”
“Be careful,” he cautions, “Stop when you’ve had enough.”
“No jangles so far,” I laugh.
I’m trying so hard. I really want him to like me; want to penetrate the gray fog clinging to him like a stubborn ghost. He seems worth the effort, having spent decades saving rivers, a man of integrity and soul.
Don’t ask me how I know this. I just know. I see it in how he compares to the others; I see it in everything he’s not. I see it in the creases of his Anglo Saxon face, the hawk-like nose, the craggy brow. An Irishman with Taoist leanings—because Taoism lacks “dogma,” he says. The sort of man you could build a life around.
“I’d thought it would be warmer,” he says, zipping up his vest. “And there might be flowers.”
“No roses yet,” I say. It’s only April and roses won’t come until the Portland Rose Festival in June when the park explodes with color and scent. “But look!” I say cheerfully, pointing to the purple masses dotting the park, “Azaleas!”
We walk to stay warm, stopping at the scooped out grassy bowl of the amphitheater, because I used to tumble down it with my sister when we were kids.
He has memories of the place, too. Of watching a concert long ago on a summer night.
“Forest Flower,” he says, with a faraway look. “That was the name of the song. It was the most beautiful jazz I’ve ever heard. It went on and on forever. Of course, it might’ve something to do with the pot.” (Back then, not now, he qualifies.)
That’s when I carefully (like dismantling a bomb) slide in: “So how long since the divorce?”
I can see on his face what is costs him to say, “Two years.” I see his whole world collapsing; that it wasn’t his idea to leave his wife and his Japanese garden. I wish I could help, but I know I can’t fix him, can’t fix anyone.
I have issues of my own. Internet dating at my age (at any age?) is like attending a Walking Dead convention.
And then we reach the Shakespeare Garden, talking about poetry, agreeing on messy first drafts. I tell him I tried to join the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland when I was 18 and I know I’m making a fool of myself, but I can’t help it—he’s the best one yet—and then we reach the street.
“Well, got to go,” he says, explaining that he’s on his way to visit a buddy on the Pudding River who carves Buddhas from red cedar. “He’s helped me a lot since…” he says, never finishing the sentence.
On the street, he stops next to a modest scooter (no Harley here) and I tell him I’m parked up the hill (please God, make him ask to see me again) and then he’s seated on his scooter looking uncomfortable.
“Well, I hope you got something out of coming all the way up here? Maybe you had something you needed to do in this part of town?”
Sure, I say I nodding and smiling, I love this place, even without roses.
And then he’s off with a wave.
Was it the mascara? Was I not granola enough? Did I talk too much? After all, you’re the one who gave me caffeine and when you said you loved Shakespeare, I just couldn’t help reciting Helena’s speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; therefore is winged cupid painted blind…”
POETRY
Tahoe Requiem
For Bob
We’re out on the lake
In a boat
Scattering your ashes.
They drift down through that bottomless blue
Like silt, like silk
1,640 feet into infinity.
Your dog, Layla, sniffs the bag
In your lady’s hands
Empty now at last.
A wayward ash
Lands in my hair
One last caress.
How could you have died?
How could you have died?
How could you have died?
You were too beautiful to live
The gods were jealous.
Wedding
Once
Outside with the wind singing in trees
Stuffed with cheesecake
Floated with champagne
Bubbled up on a breeze
of Erik Satie
We danced in a pool of sun
Danced with no meaning,
danced with no face
Only the beauty of it,
the sweet good taste
of his touch.
And I was cradled, cradled, cradled
In that pool of good grace.
And when I am an old woman
Cradled in the womb of understanding
and rocking towards the
friendly shores of death,
This I shall never forget
It will be a pocket memory
nestled in an old woman’s
apron dream.