Video by Nick Forrest.

In Which I Survive My First Silent Meditation Retreat
by Helen Mallon

There’s something wrong, I tell my therapist. I’ve got sand under my skin. It’s hidden under the freckles of my forearms, the soft place beneath my ears. I mess with it when my car sits at a red light. My fingers probe minute granules under their soft covering of skin. I’m edgy. Panicky. 

You do not have sand under your skin, my therapist says. He’s one of those hip atheists who think non-humans should be given the right to vote, but he still comes off as a hard-nosed rationalist. The Buddhists have it all over the West, he insists: You need to learn to meditate. You need to sit in silence until you discover there’s nothing in your skin but post-modern anomie. Your real problem is that it’s 2012, and you’re alive. Here’s a flyer. Sign up.

So in the dead of winter, I drive to the heart of Massachusetts to confront my inner sand at a Vipassana Retreat. That’s “Mindfulness” for those who don’t speak Pali, the language of Gautama Buddha’s writings. Mindfulness meditation appeals to me because it’s low-tech. You sit and notice your breath. That’s it. I won’t have to dredge up the night I went to my senior prom with PsychoTeacher. No one will ask me about childhood spankings. No prescriptions involved, just people sitting serene as apples in the meditation hall.

To my surprise, the retreat center people aren’t argumentative, like my therapist. You’ve got some scratches on your neck, says the lady who registers me. Do you have a sand problem? 

I am among friends.

Hello, sand, I say after arranging all my stuff in my room. I hate you.

At the opening session, they describe what the Buddha (way before Ritalin) called “monkey mind.” Monkey mind is the TV set in your head that flips channels from some candyfloss memory to the pain in your molar to visions of giant roaches moving in while you’re away on retreat. The meditation instruction is to notice it, then turn one’s attention back to the breath. We can’t always change our experiences, says the guy up front, but we can change our relationship to them.

I figure that if he knew about my sand, he’d offer something more optimistic. I want to get rid of it, and the austerity of the meditation center feels promising. I am a baby monastic. The people in charge call us “yogis,” and this fits with my sand-removal quest.

The retreat centers around one question: What is happening now? Everything, from the simple rooms, the hours of sitting, the walking meditation, the Noble Silence—we talk only during daily Q & A with the teachers—it’s all designed to help the mind rest in what is observed.

Which, like any Magical Mystery Tour, has to be experienced. Even though I kinda know that my fellow, silent yogis will not gossip behind my back, upon my arrival, I do engage in subterfuge. Packing for the retreat made me so anxious that I included scads of stuff to make the Spartan dorm room feel homey. Once there, I see people with wind-blown hair and chapped cheeks toting a single, serious backpack. I assume they’re fresh off some organic farm where they sleep alongside newborn foals, without electricity or Ethan Allen furniture. Afraid for my as-yet-unformed yogi image, I make surreptitious trips between my car and my room, so these outdoorsy types won’t judge my attachment to pillows and throw rugs.

I leave a trail of sand anyway.

I will say that the sneaking gives me the opportunity to watch anxiety arise and fade away in my mind, which turns out to be in line with the Whatever’s Happening Now aspect of meditation.

In fact, what’s happening is that my sand and I discover that all hell breaks loose (very quietly). I sit with my own heart, and it holds the microphone. The following symptoms are reported by various yogis during our brief talking times: Pop songs loop in the cranium like Buzz Lightyear clones. We feel inexplicable rages, intense exhaustion, chronic neck pain, sudden urges to run full-out. We drool with cheeseburger fantasies, and we are brought low by questions about the futility of procreating. I wonder despairingly if having sand under my skin matters very much.

I show up at our last Q & A group sobbing, with wet sand running down my face. I’ve been dreaming nights about sand castles and their notoriously short life spans. Is that all I am? Is there no solid core, no essential Me?

Oddly, with all this comes boredom. Although the sound of a hundred spoons clinking against white china bowls during a silent meal is pretty enlightening, there’s no media diversion. Sans Snooki’s End-of-Civilization baby or the latest on Romney’s tax returns, you can only read the condiment bottles in the dining room so many times. 

Between angst, ennui, and growing interest in the richness of moments experienced, I gradually relax into my sandy self.

I manage to resist the temptation to look spiritual when it comes to walking meditation. When people walk slowly and mindfully, they resemble alien-infected zombies in the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers. As the energy of the retreat settles around the end of Day One, people get quieter inside. They walking-meditate themselves to lunch or the bathroom. It is very tempting to think I have to keep up with the Joneses. I flee the zombie urge! If my faster pace causes people to judge me, I’m giving them a chance to improve their karma by noticing it. 

Still, I can’t shake the urge to emulate the folks in the front row of the meditation hall, who sit motionless and look very holy for hours on end. Possibly they were at the last retreat and never left. But the damn sand doesn’t let me sit still. I have to move, throwing off little showers of grit. It’s who I am. I can’t help it.

One morning, I notice a young guy in the dining hall. Apparently he is conducting an experiment with a banana peel. He’s thoughtfully pressing it to his forehead and feeling how it feels. I wonder if, like the banana peel, my sand is just there. Maybe it’s okay to leak sand and itch in random places.

Gradually, I discover that what we’re engaged in isn’t a self-improvement seminar. In meditation, you don’t stalk virtuous qualities like skittish antelope. Zeroing in on kindness or calm with the laser of concentration makes them tense up and disappear.

It’s kind of interesting to feel the granules under my skin, I decide.

Toward the end of the retreat, I walk in the woods. Without a destination, I’m free to stand on the half-frozen path and hang out with the complexity of a winter tree. I wait beside a large rock. I touch moss. I feel a unifying shimmer in the trees, rocks, the rise and fall of the ground, and in my bones, skin, and sand. Texture hums behind the three-dimensional world.

In the evening, we meditate again. I feel transparent. I am all the things that pass through me. I am sand, and I am earth. The person beside me breathes my air, and I breathe hers.

There’s nothing to argue about.

My first silent retreat is beautiful, grueling, sleep-deprived, and rewarding. I discover some things: I can feel the energy that courses through the world. Even with sand running down my face, I make people laugh in the Q & A sessions. (Should I ever be jailed or join an actual monastery, this will come in handy.) Being tired scares me for reasons I don’t understand, but it no longer seems urgent to run to my therapist. More noteworthy is the Twitter-shaped vacuum in my brain, the discovery of a week without Internet. 

Driving back home, I don’t expect to inspire Disney-World-tan-like remarks when I walk in the door (Wow! Standing next to you, I feel I’m in the presence of the Dalai Lama!). Still, some things have shifted in cool ways. A few weeks later, my husband, a meditation skeptic, comments that lately there’s been less grit in the bed.

Funny. I’m still meditating, and I’m down with the sand now. This morning, he forgot to make the bed again. Instead of yelling, I began smoothing the sheets. Light glittered, stirred up by my hand. A few grains of sand were doing a jewel dance.

Helen W. Mallon divides her time between Philadelphia and Cape Cod. She writes book reviews and essays for the Philadelphia Inquirer. She is completing a novel (working title The Conjurer’s Daughters). She has an MFA from Vermont College and serves as writing coach to private clients. She also conducts workshops in creative writing and writing and healing. Her short stories are available in eformat at http://bit.ly/HWMStories. Latest title: Casual Day at the Crazy House. Website www.helenwmallon.com Contact: hmallon@navpoint.com

Image credit: Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen

The Hive: APIARY Digital Edition

It’s no secret. When it comes to celebrating the best local literature we can get downright fanatical.  We publish two print magazines a year – but it’s not enough. That’s why we’ve created The Hive: APIARY Digital Edition. We’re cataloging the best local poems and stories, one by one.  Read them on our blog and check back at The Hive as we build a living, evolving digital library of work by some of Philadelphia’s most talented and hardworking writers.

On Saturday, May 18, at the Green Line Café at 45th and Locust, Leonard launches his new book He Looked Beyond My Faults and Saw My Needs, published by Hanging Loose Press.

You know Leonard’s a cool cat not only because he gives some of the best poetry workshops in town, but also because he is finishing up his book party with a dance party with DJ Afrodjiak. She spins for many an APIARY event and is responsible for your wild funtimes at our last launch party.

Gontarek is the author of four books of poems: St. Genevieve Watching Over Paris, Van Morrison Can’t Find His Feet, Zen For Beginners, and Déjà Vu Diner (Autumn House Press, 2006). His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Fence, Field, Pool, Volt, The Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, Hanging Loose, Poetry Northwest, Blackbird and The Best American Poetry (Paul Muldoon, editor). His poems also appear in the anthologies Joyful Noise! American Spiritual Poetry and The Working Poet. He has been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize, and has twice received poetry fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

He conducts poetry workshops at The University City Arts League, Moonstone Art Center, The Kelly Writers House and in the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership.

stone fruits
by Mallory Fisher

There are moments
when the sky overhead appears painted and the grass is only so burnt
when I forget the disappointment of not being loved and can take a full breath.
Lying in the park today and eating plush stone fruits
cherries and peaches and talking over books.
You listen to your shortwave radio.
We discuss plans with friends.
You call your cousin Douglas in Florida,
ask him to call your grandmother.
Your grandfather, Howard, was admitted to the hospital.
He has dementia and your grandmother cannot see the numbers on the phone.
Lillian has cancer in her bones and gets treatments to stay alive for Howard.
To prolong one’s pain to be for another must be a choice made in love.
Your letting me touch you even though you do not like to be touched.
My struggling to understand even though I feel like I may disappear.

Image credit: Soo Sunny Park

The Hive: APIARY Digital Edition

It’s no secret. When it comes to celebrating the best local literature we can get downright fanatical.  We publish two print magazines a year – but it’s not enough. That’s why we’ve created The Hive: APIARY Digital Edition. We’re cataloging the best local poems and stories, one by one.  Read them on our blog and check back at The Hive as we build a living, evolving digital library of work by some of Philadelphia’s most talented and hardworking writers.

Pleas/uuur
by Dominique Wagner

i like when your shoulder
blades show – through your shirt.

———-you are oh.
———-s(ohh) new.
———-watching you sleep, my(i) th/s(igh)s.

your back is heavy.

i like when you tangle your ankles in my calves.

————–when my palms kiss the plate
————–burns on your arm. when your
————–fingers graze on lace.

i notice the loneliness on your chest, on your pelvic bone.
the creak in your jaw(h), your neck is my neck – when on top -

are you hungry
i like licking your stomach.
are you hun.n.n.gry
your mind is distant.

Dominique Wagner is a student at Temple University currently pursuing her BA majoring in English Literature and minoring in Philosophy, alongside with a Certificate in Creative Writing. She has been featured in the 2011 poetry series at Bucks County Community College, and published in Temple University’s undergraduate literary magazine Hyphen. Before studying at Temple University, she studied Fine Arts at Columbia College Chicago. Born and raised in Bristol Borough, she is currently residing in South Philly. More poetry is available at bareboneandcoffeecups.blogspot.com.

Image credit: Lara Jade

The Hive: APIARY Digital Edition

It’s no secret. When it comes to celebrating the best local literature we can get downright fanatical.  We publish two print magazines a year – but it’s not enough. That’s why we’ve created The Hive: APIARY Digital Edition. We’re cataloging the best local poems and stories, one by one.  Read them on our blog and check back at The Hive as we build a living, evolving digital library of work by some of Philadelphia’s most talented and hardworking writers.

Also check out this “urban apiary” he snapped on 15th St. last summer.

The Royal Blue
by Jeff Mark

Slowly, quietly, controlled, and bold.
A shirt inflates like a balloon but it covers my chest
filled with cool breath.
Heighten every sense of perception;
right now.

To the bank and remove clothes—
lay back onto the river and it will take you.
It will take you where rivers go.
I paddle controlled to the bank, dress,
and go on living.
If you’d like to know, this is what one hundred dollars looks like:

$
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111
1111111111

In case
you’d like to know,
this
is
what
celebrity looks like:

0000000000
0000000000
0000000000

0000001000
0000000000
0000000000
0000000000
0000000000
0000000000
Now we both know; we can be through with both.
And any millions of either.

All written out, I feel we can find better things.

My hand moves up to feel me,
to smooth out the billows of a ballooned shirt
moved only by a chest
moved by drawn cool air.

Back to the river,
back to the undress;
down and on floating because
below the river knows
the way to live.
Slowly, quietly, controlled, and bold.
And in case you’d like to know,
this is what one hundred ends looks like:

……….
……….
……….
……….
……….
……….
……….
……….
……….
……….

This doesn’t seem anything to be afraid of.
That is not what the river’s end looks like.
It is royal blue.
Heighten every sense of perception.
Water stays on skin,
it soaks and stays;
watch deep red fade impossibly slowly to deep
purple then over minutes
—billow the balloon—

into deep royal blue.

In
case

you wanted to know,
this is what the river’s end looks like:

,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,

One hundred things next to look forward to.
This doesn’t
seem anything to be afraid of;
underneath, the river knows.
Balloon the chest,
heighten the senses;
slowly, quietly, controlled, and bold;
and look
between the day and its due,
for the night, the bright,
the royal blue.

Jeff Mark‘s prose and poetry have recently appeared in Transient, Spitoon, and Prime Mincer.  His first novel, Into the Everything, has a really deep title so everyone should buy it and expect the text has as much substance.  Though the House that published the book has gone the way of the Dearly Departed, Amazon.com has some nice used versions that seem awful cheap.  He is a Professor of English and the Director of the Creative Writing Certificate Program at the Community College of Philadelphia and generally finds writing bios in the third person more taxing than writing novels.

Image credit: Ekkehard Altenburger

The Hive: APIARY Digital Edition

It’s no secret. When it comes to celebrating the best local literature we can get downright fanatical.  We publish two print magazines a year – but it’s not enough. That’s why we’ve created The Hive: APIARY Digital Edition. We’re cataloging the best local poems and stories, one by one.  Read them on our blog and check back at The Hive as we build a living, evolving digital library of work by some of Philadelphia’s most talented and hardworking writers.

Take me, for example
by Joanna Grim

Take me, for example. I keep my curtains drawn during the daytime to stop the sun from heating the room. I keep the curtains drawn until sunset, when I pull them back and watch pink and orange clouds form and fade in the chemical blue sky. Take me, for example. I dress in black in August as if mourning some death that is expected but has not yet come. I sleep next to you, heavy and long. But truly, I am watching you sleep. Take me, for example. I am flesh and odors and bones. I am false dreams and false sleep. The spectacle that waits behind the curtain.

Joanna Grim is a writer living in West Philadelphia. In May 2012, she received her MFA in fiction from the New School. She teaches writing workshops for Philadelphia youth with Mighty Writers. Her work has been previously featured in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

Image credit: Dawn DiCarlo

The Hive: APIARY Digital Edition

It’s no secret. When it comes to celebrating the best local literature we can get downright fanatical.  We publish two print magazines a year – but it’s not enough. That’s why we’ve created The Hive: APIARY Digital Edition. We’re cataloging the best local poems and stories, one by one.  Read them on our blog and check back at The Hive as we build a living, evolving digital library of work by some of Philadelphia’s most talented and hardworking writers.

The Making of Epiphanies, Unnoticed

by Lauren Yates

Until last September, I had never participated in Philadelphia’s local slam scene. My performances were exclusively with The Excelano Project, the premier spoken word collective at the University of Pennsylvania. However, my impending graduation made me realize that I could not perform with Excelano forever. 

After a slam, the featured poet said that he would like to book me at his home venue, and that I could sell my merchandise. All I could think was that I did not have any merchandise. That needed to change. 

Looking back, it should have been obvious. I had dozens of poems, and had previously published books for other authors. Through Blurb Publishing, I had compiled a chapbook to commemorate the tenth anniversary of The Excelano Project (Van Gogh’s Ear for Music) and a chapbook of Excelano alumnus Joshua Bennett’s poems (Laid Bare). I simply downloaded the software from Blurb’s website, pasted the work into a blank template, designed cover art, and submitted the document for publication.

Since I already had the software down, it was just a matter of selecting poems. I have only recently hit my stride with figuring out my poetic voice, so it was really a process of elimination. I took the remaining eighteen poems that I considered “good enough,” and extracted themes from them.

The three major categories I found were terse language (Spare), poems in parts (Part), and poems from the past (Nostalgia). The main title—Epiphanies, Unnoticed—came from the idea that people constantly have internal revelations that no one else can see. 

My approach was somewhat unusual because many poets choose to write new poems to a specific theme. The poems I included span from 2009-2013, so whatever continuity lies in the book comes from my preferences for certain words, topics, and forms.

Below is a poem from the book.  

Dismantle
As told through a game of Operation

I. Water on the Knee

As she falls from the fire escape, bones cake the concrete.
Whiskey floods the streets. The cemeteries scowl,

“How dare she outwit G-d, this manmade freckle.”
“There’s a one drop rule for our kind.”
“Take your meat without foreskin.”

II. Spare Ribs

At the birthday party, we eat
macaroni and cheese baked with shell pasta.
This is not macaroni and cheese.

III. Broken Heart 

He’s met other girls at the bus stop
for teriyaki wings and jasmine tea.

Him—daring in the ways I wasn’t.
Her—daring in the ways I’m not. 

She sits in his lap at the bar.
They exchange “fuck me” eyes.

I jazz-square my lonely.

IV. Charlie Horse

In the dancehall, sangria
spills from paper cups.

Men sink teeth into her lovely;
it gives fake names and numbers.

V. Bread Basket

“When you double-park, buy hot chocolate.
Bribe the doorman shivering outside.” 

VI. Writer’s Cramp

Do not lend yourself to being worshipped. 

VII. Wrenched Ankle

You think making the bed means assembling a bed frame.
Your stripper heels have dollar bill slots.

Whorehouse Mephistopheles,
would your shoes be ironic if they weren’t see through?
Imagine them as mirrors instead. 

VIII. Funny Bone 

Your privilege fits like a Peter Pan collar.
You say you dress in black to be “artistic.”
Really, it lets you do your laundry in one load. 

Lauren Yates is a Philadelphia-based poet and a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn, Lauren directed its premier performance poetry collective The Excelano Project. In 2012, she coached Penn’s slam poetry team to third place at the Wade-Lewis Poetry Slam Invitational.

Lauren’s work has appeared in APIARY, Emerge, Eunoia, FRiGG, Marco Polo, The Bakery, and The Legendary. In addition to writing poetry, Lauren enjoys baking quiche, belly dancing, and pontificating on the merits of tentacle erotica. “Epiphanies, Unnoticed” is her first book.