The Empty Chair Read online

  ALSO BY BRUCE WAGNER

  Dead Stars

  Memorial

  The Chrysanthemum Palace

  Still Holding

  I’ll Let You Go

  I’m Losing You

  Force Majeure

  THE

  EMPTY

  CHAIR

  TWO NOVELLAS

  BRUCE WAGNER

  -

  BLUE RIDER PRESS

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  New York

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

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  Copyright © 2013 by Bruce Wagner

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wagner, Bruce, date.

  [Novellas. Selections]

  The empty chair : two novellas / Bruce Wagner.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-101-63074-7

  1. Spirituality—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3573.A369E47 2013 2013037030

  813'.54—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Also by Bruce Wagner

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  First Guru

  Second Guru

  Chronology

  About the Author

  to Muni Araña and Julius Renard

  I will die in Paris, on a rainy day,

  on some day I already remember.

  I will die in Paris—and I don’t shy away—

  perhaps on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.

  (César Vallejo)

  The author wishes to gratefully acknowledge the National Endowment for the Arts, NPR/Hearing Voices, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lannan Foundation, and of course, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, for their continued support.

  PREFACE

  I’ve spent a good part of the last fifteen years traveling around the country listening to people tell stories. Each spoke voluntarily and without compensation; none were public figures. Sometimes I went looking for storytellers, other times they seemed to come looking for me. Regardless of our methods we managed to find each other. The stories that interested me most were those that described a pivotal event or time in the teller’s life. My plan was to stitch together excerpts that moved me or made me laugh, until I had the proverbial American quilt.

  My plan changed.

  I decided to publish a book—the one in your hands—that holds just two narratives, unabridged. Both share a leitmotif of “diet Buddhism” (again, distinctly American) that serves as a backdrop for a variety of seekers slouching toward spiritual redemption. Though told years apart by a man and woman of divergent social classes, in many ways the tales are complementary. But there’s something else, far more compelling: an extraordinary bridge from one to the other, a missing link whose apprehension came as a shock, a coup de foudre, an almost traumatic epiphany. From that moment of illumination, the idea of binding both together was non-negotiable.

  Some of the material is a little dated. I had no inclination to excise or contemporize, so let once-topical references stand. While I tried to leave most repetitions, lacunae and narrative tics intact, editorial liberties were exercised under the flag of general readability. I am solely responsible for divvying up the transcripts, with the added benefit of being able to listen to the original tapes, into suitable paragraphs; for occasionally relegating parenthetical remarks to footnote status so as not to break the flow of narrative; for carving indents, spaces, and yes, parentheticals from the text (when doing so wouldn’t break the flow), the better for it to breathe; and responsible too for inadvertent—and sometimes advertent—wholesale homogenizations. I’m certain there are times when I went too far or didn’t go far enough, and if a heavy hand left too many fingerprints I offer my sincere apologies. I ask the persnickety reader to let narrative trump style. The “authors” here are vessels, not virtuosos. But you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

  Though if it were possible to hold all of the people’s stories all of the time in one’s head, heart and hands, there is no doubt that in the end each would be unvanquishably linked by a single, breathtaking detail, as are the two presented here . . . what I really wanted to write was “single, religious detail,” but stopped myself. There’s been so much sound and fury around that word these days that I hesitate to join the fray. At my age, one doesn’t have too many fighting words left. Still, I wonder. Have I let myself be bullied?

  I suppose if one needs to ask, the answer may be obvious.

  Well, then. Allow me to clear my throat and revise:

  If it were possible to hold all of the people’s stories all of the time in one’s head, heart and hands, there is no doubt that in the end each would be unvanquishably linked by a single, religious detail . . .

  I wish to thank all of those who shared their stories through the years with such abundance and openness of spirit. Not incidentally, I want to give thanks to the unknowable Mystery that made us.

  I don’t wish to offend anyone this early on, but I call that force God.

  There—I said it.

  Why not go out on a limb?

  There is a well-known story about the death of Marpa’s son. The great sage was inconsolable. After a week of mourning, his grief redoubled. One of his students cautiously approached.

  “Master, you have taught us that all of life is an illusion. If this is true, why do you suffer so?”

  “Yes, it’s true,” said Marpa. “Most illusions are petty, without bravura—the phantoms of daily life.” He smiled through his tears. “But this. This was a great illusion!”

  FIRST

  GURU

  A 50-year-old man told this tale. I shared a 3 a.m. hot tub with him at Esalen, in Big Sur. He had just finished a five-day gestalt workshop and now I remember that he touched on the phrase “empty chair work,” in conversation. I’d heard it before because I’d done a little gestalt back in the day. Frankly, I was surprised the practice was still around.

  A therapist of mine used to have an extra chair in her office that played an active role during our sessions. The idea was to project something onto it—a childhood nemesis, an old lover, a father long dead, even things like your job, your car, your depression, your cigarette habit—whatever was charged enough to engage. You’d begin a kind of dialogue, often bitter, that held the promise of catharsis. While suddenly notable, the gestaltian “empty chair” happens to be coincidental to the title of this work. But who knows? I’m not too proud to say it’s possible that the phrase and its metaphor crawled into my brain for a nap and woke up just as I was wondering what to call my book.

 
; The gentleman was staying across Highway 1 at a monastery I wasn’t familiar with. Toward the end of the soak, I said I’d been on the road awhile, listening to people talk about momentous events in their lives in view of compiling an oral tribal history of these emotionally United States. He immediately volunteered.

  It was almost a week before I heard from him again. (It isn’t uncommon for initial enthusiasms to dampen or dissolve.) He was calling from the hermitage on the hill. He invited me to visit his room, one of the spartan trailers the monks rent out to guests. I was already a few hundred miles away but something told me to turn back.

  The sessions took place over a weekend. The storyteller demonstrated great stamina—our only breaks were for meals and when he took leave to pray.

  Then Jonathan said to David,

  Tomorrow is the new moon:

  and thou shalt be missed,

  because thy seat will be empty.

  1 Samuel 20:18

  The following interview took place in 2010 and was redacted in the fall of 2013.

  I’m a gay man who happens to have had a handful of relationships—“serious” ones—with women. The last of these partnerships was unique in that it was the only union to produce a child and a marriage certificate, though not in that order. I’ve never spoken of the events that caused us to separate (we never bothered to divorce) and for whatever reason, this moment in time seems to have presented itself as ripe for the telling. Bruce, I’m not interested in knowing why you stepped into my life. I should say, my tub! You know—the wherefores of the universe conspiring to provoke this “confession.” I only know what I know. And what I don’t know, I have learned to leave alone.

  I’ve lived in the Bay Area for what, 30 years? My wife and I met on a six-week silent retreat at Spirit Rock, that’s up in Marin. We were Buddhists then. She might still practice, though I strongly doubt it. Anything’s possible.

  I’ve always wanted to teach, but it never panned out because of my allergies—I’m allergic to getting up in the morning and going to work! Never graduated university. I’m self-taught, a bit of a pedant. A few people have called me that, more or less. I’m a perfect example of an autodidact. Isn’t that the most horrid word? If I had matriculated, I suppose my specialty would have been medieval literature but that’s never going to happen. It’s pretentious though I’m prone to use it as an icebreaker—I’m even using it with you! Playing the ol’ medieval literature specialty card. The truth is, I’ve always gravitated toward the spiritual. So what happened was, I renounced my fantasy tenure to become a roving ambassador for my own brand of Zen. If the Buddhists call sitting meditation “zazen,” I call my theosophy “vanzen” because I live in my van. I can’t conceive of a life without the ol’ Greater Vehicle.

  My van is my Higher Power, as the alcoholics like to say, and my lower companion too. (Not as big as your SUV but I’ll bet it’s got a tighter turning radius.) I’ve actually converted it to a library because any self-respecting auto-mobile-didact needs his moveable feast. The bookshelves are Brosimum paraense—that’s bloodwood—embellished by ornamental carvings commissioned from local artists along the way. I’d hunker down in whatever community, hand over a plank to the right artisan when he came along, and say: Have at it. I’ve got the handiwork of a monk from Tassajara, a skater from Morro Bay, and a docent at the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. Cherished volumes are held in place by color-coded bungee cords: red for Bio, blue for Fic, orange for Relig, and so on. Honestly, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t a reader. Books have always been there for me in my darkest hours. I’ll admit my collection’s a little biased. I have an estimable selection of San Francisco authors, oh yes I do. And a lot of the Beats. A lot.

  You see, everyone knows Jack London was born in San Francisco and went to school in Berkeley but did you know his mother channeled spirits? Oh yes she did. Went nuts too. Shot herself and lived to tell the tale. Dante wrote about the suicides but there’s a hell right here on Earth for those who botch the act. I believe the professionals put them in the “attempters” versus “completers” camp—like rescue versus recovery. She was so bonkers that the authorities gave him a foster mom, who just happened to be a former slave. Make a pretty good movie, wouldn’t it? It’s got the whole deal: genius kid, daydreamer dad, whacko mom, and ex-slave foster. Like one of those movies Leonardo DiCaprio used to star in when he was young. Leonardo’d make a pretty good Jack. Now that’s a film I’d go to see.

  Mark Twain was a cub reporter up here, wrote for The Call. Legend has it he dreamed up his stories an hour before deadline. Rather Hunter S. Thompson of him! Did you know Kipling came to America just to find Mr. Clemens? Not to San Francisco—to Elmira, New York. I believe that momentous rendezvous took place sometime between the writing of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn but don’t hold me to it. Lord, but Kipling was a fan! Just in complete awe. Came all the way from India to see him, can you imagine? I’d love to have been a fly on that wall. Now there’s another movie . . . though this one might be better as a play. If I was a terrible playwright (which I would be if I ever tried my hand), that’d be one hell of a theatrical theme—Kipling and Twain in New York. There’s the title too: “Kipling and Twain in New York.” Readymade. Though maybe “Kipling and Twain in Elmira” would be better. Makes you a little more curious, draws you in.

  I got all kinds of ideas today! Aren’t you happy you came back?

  He abruptly yet politely excused himself, leaving the trailer for half-an-hour before we resumed.

  Did you ever have a love like that? Like Kipling’s for Twain? Starts as an intellectual love, then becomes something else? Crosses over into something else? You read a book and wham—Cupid’s arrow goes right in. And suddenly you’re compelled? To make a pilgrimage. Love is what made Kipling travel all that way.

  I had a love affair like that. Once is all you need! I must have been all of thirteen. He was a monk, a Trappist monk named Thomas Merton. You’ve heard of him? I think everyone’s heard of Merton. Though all they usually know is The Seven Storey Mountain. Or maybe about the terrible way he died. But I wasn’t as fortunate as Lord Kipling. By the time I got the idea, my beloved monk was already dead. He was in the Far East, if memory serves—was it Burma? or Thailand—taking a bath when a fan fell in and he was electrocuted. Right then and there he entered the pantheon of famously ignominious literary deaths. You know, Barthes and the bakery truck, Randall Jarrell and W. G. Sebald versus automobile, Tennessee and the frisky bottle cap . . . though some folks say it wasn’t a bottle cap that did him in at all, but rather what they call “acute Seconal intolerance.” Which is French for overdose.

  Did you know that a lot of writers have been knifed? Beckett was stabbed on the street, almost killed him. And Sartre too, by a crazy man who was always asking him for money and tried to break down the door of his apartment. The door was chained but he nearly cut off Sartre’s thumb. Sartre never had any money! That comes as a surprise to most people. It worried him right to the end. A few days, maybe a few hours before he died, he was asking Simone de Beauvoir how they were going to find the money to have him cremated.

  Anyway, I was crushed—I mean, about Merton. Death by fan . . . I guess we should feel lucky they don’t keep fans up there by the Esalen baths! And he was handsome too, like a movie star. At least I thought so. And a monk. And a poet. And a—oh! I was only however-old-I-was but boy that hit me hard. My first serious crush. And say what you will, but the root of crushed is crush. That’s the human comedy for you. I suppose it would have been more romantic if Merton had been knifed like the others. Or shot, like Rimbaud. Anything but death by fan!

  Father Thom struggled with celibacy all his life. I really do believe God made us that way, with all our base instincts and perilous urges, and out of His mercy bestowed conscience and shame. I’m afraid I failed Him early on! I was too young to understand God knew I would fail and I was already forgiven. The older I ge
t, the more I subscribe to Tolstoy’s views. You’ve read The Kreutzer Sonata? The later works? By that time in life, Tolstoy was opposed to sexual intercourse, he really thought the high road was to let the whole human race just die out. Life of the party, huh. Though I bet the folks at Esalen would give him a workshop! They’re pretty much open to anything. I’ve got some wonderful books on the topic in my van. Did you know celibacy was optional in the first thousand years of the Church? O yes. “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison”—Revelation 20:7. Don’t get me started! Thom Merton was a Renaissance man, he had one of those far-reaching, magisterial intellects, good Lord. The man could toss off an essay on Zen just as quick as a raft of poems. He was a marvelous poet.

  Here’s a favorite of mine:

  I always obey my nurse

  I always care

  For wound and fracture

  Because I am always broken

  I obey my nurse . . .

  I have a book in the van, at least I think it’s still in there—unless I’ve loaned it out, which I’m almost certain I didn’t because mostly I lend my books to impoverished kids or homeless folk, and this one wouldn’t be high on that list—it has the somewhat daunting title of History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church. How’s that for pedantry! Now, I’m a Catholic but each faith struggles under the yoke. The OED tells us sacerdotalism is the assertion of the existence in the Christian church of a sacerdotal order of priesthood, having sacrificial functions and invested with supernatural powers. These were the Middle Ages . . . there is an absolute profusion of intriguing texts from that time by the so-called Christian mystics—Hildegard of Bingen (the monks here are completely gaga over Hildegard. Sinéad O’Connor would have made a great Hildie B), The Scale of Perfection, Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Teresa’s The Way of Perfection (lotta striving toward perfection in those days), and my own personal fave, The Cloud of Unknowing—and O! Better not leave out Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend . . .