A Year at River Mountain

A YEAR AT RIVER MOUNTAIN

Also by Michael Kenyon

Fiction

The Beautiful Children
(Thistledown Press, 2009)

The Biggest Animals
(Thistledown Press, 2006)

Durable Tumblers
(Oolichan Books, 1996)

Pinocchio's Wife
(Oberon, 1992)

Kleinberg
(Oolichan Books, 1991)

Poetry

The Last House
(Brick Books, 2009)

The Sutler
(Brick Books, 2005)

Rack of Lamb
(Brick Books, 1991)

A YEAR AT RIVER MOUNTAIN

MICHAEL KENYON

© Michael Kenyon, 2012
All rights reserved

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www.accesscopyright.ca
or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Thistledown Press Ltd.
118 - 20th Street West
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7M 0W6
www.thistledownpress.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Kenyon, Michael, 1953-
A year at River Mountain [electronic resource] / Michael Kenyon.

Electronic monograph in HTML format.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-927068-32-8

I. Title.

PS8571.E67Y432012          C813'.54          C2012-904711-2

Cover and book design by Jackie Forrie
Printed and bound in Canada

Thistledown Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing program.

Thanks to my teachers, both in the world and in the great flow. Thanks to Seán Virgo for editorial support and friendship.

For Lorraine

And here memory, that ingenious stage director, performs one of its impossible, magical scene-changes, splicing two different occasions with bland disregard for setting, props or costumes.

— John Banville

If there is no changing of images, no unexpected merging of images, there is no imagination and the act of imagining does not occur.

— Gaston Bachelard

Contents

A
UGUST

S
EPTEMBER

O
CTOBER

N
OVEMBER

D
ECEMBER

J
ANUARY

F
EBRUARY

M
ARCH

A
PRIL

M
AY

J
UNE

J
ULY

A
UGUST

Yin Metal

Middle Palace

T
HE VALLEY RUNS WEST AND EAST
and the temple is on the small hill on the north side, the hill being, so we think, so they say, a stone eye that fell from the mountain, biggest of the chain that rises behind River Mountain Monastery. The hills to the south are many and rounded and carry on their backs a green carpet of trees over which the sun and moon travel left to right. There is an immense plain south of those hills, blue smoky horizon to grey smoky horizon. The west part of our valley this side of the river is wet, much of it marsh in winter, full of bamboo and birds and creatures who prefer their feet wet or whose lifecycle involves a spell in the water. Streams crisscross the northern slopes, though most are dry at this season, the most faithful pouring spring water past the doors of our huts and shrines into the river as it cuts through the yellowing fields and gleams now on its way to the gorge and the eastern coast. We farm the fertile banks and tend the higher rice terraces. From the winding river to the temple behind me runs an ancient path, on and up the mountain, used by miners, then by itinerant priests and sages, long before the founding of our order. The wind is huffing among our buildings and bright clouds sortie across the sky.

This is where we live, for the most part, in a village of huts above the plum trees, unless we are in retreat on the mountain or on a journey somewhere to enlarge our souls. And our life here is divided. Our south-facing selves attend every flicker of change, while at prayer in the temple, we face north and darkness, barely alive to events in the world or even on the river.

C
LOUD
G
ATE

You will perhaps want to know how I got here, where exactly here is; you will want to know what I'm doing. I have offered my description of the valley, the hill and the mountain; the chain behind still holds snow, even now at hottest summer. I have been in a state since last August, when I realized that a woman (the woman we are expecting within the month) had bewildered me. My peaceful life here, you see, has been disturbed by eagerness. We are never quite as clumsy as when we are at the end of another identity, another role, the final performance, wanting the run to continue, yet tired of the same old entrances and exits, wanting to press forward with a new part, yet pulling back at the same time, regretting the past. The company of the company. There we are in the theatre seats, waiting for our notes, the director midstage, hub of the wheel. What a world! Waiting for the spark to ignite us, bind us together. It is what has formed around me here, monks for players, master for director. I sense I'm not the only one bent during prayer, head cocked like a bird, listening for Imogen's approach. Last year we were bereft, even the master, when she left us to go back to her country, leaving her trace in any number of cities on the way, for she never rests long in one place.

I know I'm extremely foolish, believe me. You will be pleased to hear that. I think you will be pleased. I want to please you because you once loved me, and I always like to please those who loved me. Perhaps you remember me from a play or from a film?

Here none of us have names, which means it will be difficult for you to keep track. When I speak of someone it will be in terms of role or function, or of specific point combinations, deficiencies and excesses of energy along certain meridians. Teaching happens in silence, through copying and practice: a double hander where one tracks a pattern in the other's body and reads the feedback. The monastery grounds are a contrived echo of our human mysteries and frailties. In fact, long ago the old gods made a copy of the mountains and rivers and the first monks built a wall around it and now, off-limits to all but the gardeners and the master, this garden contains the secrets of the order, laid out in paths and bridges and sculptures and plantings. The tasks of the gardener monks are as mysterious as the garden itself.

The walled garden. The wild lands. The paths between shrines. The gates.

The monastery is a delicate mechanism and each of us must function according to his special gifts and potentials. We are at a tipping point in our destiny. There is much accumulated darkness among the peoples of the world.

Monks disturbed in their lives are left alone, and spend their time in one of the remote shrines or in the storehouse's empty room. So it is with me. I have retreated to West Shrine. When Imogen comes again, at her usual time, soon now, I will be clear again and able to complete the rounds and routines of my days and nights, and participate in the vigils, prayers, practices, chores, without being jittery and anxious.

Often I hear the sound of water slapping, as if against the thin wooden hull of an old ship; perhaps it is a heron in the walled garden; perhaps it is the memory of Active Pass or of last spring's floodwaters against the underside of the bridge deck.

A half-moon hangs in the sky and a cricket is chirring. It feels comfortable and natural to be writing, near to the oil lamp with its constellation of flying bugs, under the stars, to someone beyond this world.

S
KY
M
ANSION

Easy to hold these two points — Sky Mansion, the window of heaven below each underarm and
Guimen
, Ghost Gate, slightly forward and to either side of the top of the cranium. First one side of the body, then the other.

The bronze bell wakes us at four in the morning for prayers and silken movements and meditation, our daily study of the pathways of the elements. We eat as the sun rises, then some of us work in the fields, some at spiritual tasks, while others copy the texts. At noon we rest and eat and pray. We walk in the forest shade to digest our food and recognise our moods folded within the day's mood. Afternoons we practice what we have studied, palpating a series of points on another monk and in turn having the series run on our own skin, and reverencing, in light of what we find, all we have learned about the human body. From a single point we derive the whole. But the whole must be woken first. We are animals with hand-paths (heart, small intestine, lung, large intestine, triple warmer, circulating sex) and footpaths (kidney, liver, spleen, stomach, bladder, gall bladder). At the end of the afternoon we gather to chant, and evenings are for individual rituals and meetings with the master. We retire at dusk, when colour is about to drain from the world. The younger monks stay up longer because they see colour longer than those of us with grey hair and failing sight.