A Path of Yellow Leaves

 By James N. Powell



One fair autumn morning, Yelda Basar Moers, a young law student and former journalist for Self, People, and InStyle, was on her way to a job interview when she heard a bloodcurdling scream, “Holy shit!”

Turning her head, two blocks up the street she beheld one wall of the South Tower of the World Trade Center melt into motion. It was, in her words, “protruding out of the rest of its body like slow-moving lava.” Then the tower went into a death rattle, spasms shuddering up and down its entire body, until the structure convulsed and came thundering down in a hurricane of dust. A mushroom cloud billowed upward, and a shock wave of fiery ash and dust raced up the street toward her.

Yelda screamed. Extraordinarily, standing near the roaring epicenter of this fiery avalanche, she felt utter silence.

“This,” she observed “is when that slow motion thing they talk about happened, when some devastating event hits you, and all the actions and movements, words and voices move so slowly that they are all palpable. You can reach out and touch them it’s all so tangible, when at the same time none of it makes any sense at all, and life has been reduced to some absurd play that you watch as if from a great distance—as a silent observer. In my slow motion moment, I ripped off my shoes, clutched them in my left hand, and threw my coffee in the air. The liquid, suspended, now made its way down. My eye caught a splash of red, the lapel of a woman’s blazer. She ran right past me, and I followed. We herded together with all the other pedestrians on that block, all of us sprinting so close to each other that we could have held hands.”

Yelda never looked back at that shock wave of smoke, ash, and pulverized debris chasing her. In slow motion flight, she shut her eyes. Deep inside she felt silent and absolutely alone, suspended in time, watching herself from above as her arms and legs flailed slowly forward through space, her mind horrified with the specter of death, her heart pounding and absolutely hopeless.

Yelda is a Muslim.

As an editor working in the wake of 9/11, during these past few years I have received a flurry of manuscripts penned by Islamic authors attempting to come to grips with that event’s challenge to their faith. Ahmad, a deeply spiritual soul from a long lineage of Sufi saints and scholars, came to me with a manuscript detailing his family’s closely held secrets of Sufi meditation. Ahmad was born in a small village in Pakistan that is now overrun with Taliban. He had to leave the village. The Taliban target Sufis, whom they do not consider to be Muslims. From Fargad, formerly employed by the media arm of the Saudi government, I received an immense work detailing the lack of textual support for terrorism in his reading of the Holy Quran. These and many other efforts that have come across my desk attest to the fact that countless Muslims are not standing complacently by as their faith is being hijacked by extremists. If some have seemed silent, it is only because the depths of disquietude to which they have been driven map a deeply interior journey, a journey in which they have had no other light nor guide than the relationship of their souls with the inner limits of their faith. No matter how bold their thinking, most of their inner struggles have remained within the domain of Muslim theology.

This is why Yelda Basar Moers’s journey stands as the most poignant and daring of the bunch, for she felt forced to leap beyond her faith into something akin to pure philosophy, questioning the very efficacy of belief itself and laying bare the deep yearning of her soul for something transcending religious conditioning, that her heart might open to pure spirit. This is her story.

The first night after the attacks, Yelda and her best friend, Karen, who is of Lebanese descent, searched New York for a place to eat. They found only deserted streets—and an eerie silence—before stumbling onto a Pakistani restaurant. Inside, they were welcomed by Arabic music, kilim rugs carpeting the floors, and Islamic art on the walls. “We felt,” she writes, “that if we could connect with anyone during this time, we figured it would be with someone from the Middle Eastern lands of our past, if even just to greet, and chat, and share. Karen suggested that we engage our server about the day. Where were you when the attack happened? The first plane? The second? The first fall? The subsequent aftermath?

“When we asked our waiter why the streets were so desolate, he didn’t want to talk about it. He shrugged and stepped away from the table.

“‘Why don’t you think he wants to talk about it?’ Karen said.

“‘Maybe he thinks we’ll talk politics?’ I said.

“‘Does he think we’ll point a finger?’ she said.

“‘Because they’re from that world?

“‘We’re from that world too,’ she said.

“But our hopes were left at that. The Pakistani server didn’t want anything to do with us. There was nothing to do but finish our meal and be on our way.

“When we left the restaurant, I hoped that this had all been a dream, that I had imagined it all. What I would have given to see a stream of yellow cabs, or of groups of fast-paced New Yorkers rushing on their way. But for a straggler or two, the desolate landscape was apocalyptic. New York, the bustling city I had come to love—was dead, or had gone into a coma.

“A few evenings later, my mother and I met Karen at Rue 57, a bustling French bistro around the corner from my building on Sixth Avenue. The familiar bright red awning, dark wood floors, wine colored leather chairs, and clustered tables, provided some semblance of normalcy because I was a regular at the restaurant and often dined there with Karen. Upon entering, I noticed a full staff, but no patrons. The hostess seated us at a table adjacent to the street.

“‘I think people are just scared to go out,’ Karen said.

“‘Or maybe they’ve left,’ my mother said.

“‘Do you know that I had to show my ID to get gum?’

“‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

“‘Nothing seems to make sense anymore,’ Karen said.

“As Karen and my mother spoke back and forth, I felt as if I were being sucked into the center of the room. A maelstrom paved its way through the floorboard, and slowly the rest of the restaurant succumbed to its force, and then inevitably I too was pulled into its funnel. My palms became clammy. My pulse had accelerated to such a degree that I had trouble breathing. A tremor was traveling up and down my torso while at the same time I was losing control of my basic faculties: what I chose to feel and what I didn’t, what state of mind I chose to be in, how I could act. I began to feel my mind and body were separating from each another. My body was involuntarily acting against the wishes of my mind. It was the first episode of what I called the Rumbling, a horrible byproduct of my post-traumatic stress.

“I asked the hostess to bring me a shaken dirty martini. It arrived quickly; perhaps she had sensed my panic. After a few cold sips, the Rumbling stopped. But I was still keenly alert to the sounds surrounding me: the exhaust of the taxi cab, the rattling of forks and knives. I looked at the white tablecloth and tried to compose myself.

“My appetite had left me for days so I opted for sushi rolls. Lately, the rice was the only thing I could digest. I’d peel off the seaweed and rice, eating only that, neglecting the filling. The server took my order and turned to my mother.

“‘The Potato Crusted Salmon,’ my mother said.

“‘I’ll have the same,’ Karen said.

“‘I really like it here, the restaurant I mean,’ my mother said. ‘It is the only good place in midtown, really. There is just not much good stuff here even though it is overflowing with restaurants.’

“‘Isn’t that surprising,’ Karen said.

“My insides were going to pop out at any moment, so I couldn’t contribute to the dinner conversation. As I continued drinking the martini, it seemed as if its effects lessened and the Rumbling came back. The blood running through my veins was pulsating so intently that I felt a heartbeat everywhere in my body. I put my hand on the corners of the table and focused all my energy on the conversation before me, trying to take some deep breaths. Ultimately, I felt I was a pilot in heavy, insurmountable turbulence, and I wasn’t sure if I could control the plane and keep it from succumbing to the forces of nature.

“‘I love the wasabi potatoes,’ Karen said.

“‘I’ve never heard of them, are they mashed?’ my mother said.

“‘They are really amazing. You’ll have to try them next time. I think you can get them as a side dish.’

“Darkness set in outside, and my mother’s disposition changed for the worse. Her abundance of smiles and overall beauty (she tended to glow during dinner outings, a social occasion she particularly enjoyed) was interrupted by a type of nausea whereby she now looked down and side to side, wary that someone was watching her. Perhaps she had understood the meaning behind those dim empty streets, for I could tell that she was getting nervous about walking down them even though we lived only two blocks away.

“‘Let’s get the check,’ my mother said. ‘Karen, go home before it gets dark. It’s quiet outside, and there could be crime.’

“My mother had lived through several military coups in Turkey and was accustomed to evening curfews during times where national security was compromised. It was as if it all came to her in a moment’s glance, the memory of those days. They had now revisited her because the picture before her was not so different. The empty streets, deserted restaurants, military patrol, it finally hit her.

“We managed to find a cab for Karen, and upon entering my apartment I passed out from a medley of exhaustion, gin, and vodka. While I lost myself in that welcoming slumber, my mother checked her e-mail. She was uneasy herself and couldn’t get to sleep. After an hour of reading articles on CNN, she got into bed next to me (my tiny studio could only accommodate a sleeper sofa) and shut the light. At the same time as she retired, I felt a surge of adrenaline shoot through from the bottom of my spine to the top of my head that was strong enough to jolt me from my sleep.

“‘I’m not well,’ I said.

“‘What’s wrong?’

“‘I can feel everything,’ I said.

“‘Like a panic attack?’

“‘No,’ I said.

“‘Then what?’

“‘I can feel every organ in my body,’ I said. ‘And can your heart just randomly stop? I feel like it’s beating so precisely.’

“‘Are you worried about your heart?’

“‘No, it’s not just my heart,’ I said. ‘It’s my lungs, my liver, I can even feel my stomach digesting, or maybe it’s my intestines.’

“My mother looked overwhelmed.

“‘I can feel the neurons firing in my brain. What must it be like to feel your brain? Can you feel your brain?’ I said.

“‘Yelda, you can’t feel your brain.’

“‘I don’t know what people say, but I am telling you right now that I can feel my brain,’ I said.

“‘Should we go to the hospital?’

“I felt like my brain was wobbling around in my skull, the mushy mess that was trying to make sense of these experiences, trying to register what had happened. I had to put two hands on my head to make sure it was still there, that I had not lost my mind. I could feel the blood entering and leaving my heart and entering my liver and exiting back to the surface of my skin in a rabid pace. My pulse, I couldn’t slow it down.

“‘Just take a couple of deep, long breaths, and try to just relax,’ my mother said. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?’

“‘No, I get these sudden feelings,’ I said. ‘And then they pass.’

“I pushed the lamp switch off, rested my head against the pillow, and drifted, until something, until a jarring noise interrupted me.

“‘Did you hear that?’ I said.

“‘No, what did you hear?’

“‘I think I heard a sound. It was a weird noise, like an engine.’

“Was it a plane on its way?

“‘No, I didn’t hear it,’ my mother said. ‘I don’t feel good.’

“‘I don’t either.’

“‘When you don’t feel good, you look for solutions, to make it better,’ she said.

“‘What do you think our solution is?’ I said.

“‘This apartment is too small, and the walls are suffocating,’ she said.

“‘What happens if there is a bomb or something nearby?’ I said. ‘How are we going to know about it? Do you have experience with those kinds of things?’

“‘You know what?’ she asked me.

“‘What?’ I said.

“‘I just want to get out of here,’ she said.

“We didn’t sleep the entire night. And in the early morning, we left the city.

They drove to her mom’s apartment in South Florida. There Yelda sat and gazed out over the ocean. Yet, even in this land of relaxation, Yelda found no respite from her waves of distress.

“News updates jolted me out of my chair in the kitchen, just as I was losing myself in the ocean’s voice. Investigators had discovered that some of the terrorists had been living in Coral Springs, less than an hour away from my mother’s apartment. Others had been trained at a flight school in Venice, another nearby city. We also learned that most of the nineteen terrorists had possibly been living in South Florida at some point during their stay in the United States. Even more dismal, the leader who had plunged the first plane into the North Tower may have lived in Hollywood.

“‘Where’s Hollywood again?’ I asked my mother.

“‘It’s about ten or fifteen minutes away,’ she said.

“‘So they’re here?’ I said. ‘Right under our nose?’

“That’s how it would happen. The moment I found myself winding down, another event or threat would surface, and I was back in that same hyper-alert, terrified state I had been in upon seeing the tower collapse.

“That night, the Rumbling was worse than it had ever been. Now that the terrorists were here, there was no safe haven. I now believed there was no such thing as safe, and it was best to stop looking for it.

“I wanted to go to the Trade Center site and help, yet this surge of energy inside of me had nowhere to go. My legs were mobilized, ready to run; my hands were ready to dig. But I couldn’t do anything; I was paralyzed in my helplessness. It was not in my head; my body physically couldn’t move. I called my mother, who came over with zealous speed.

“I began to cry hysterically, trying anything to dispel the terrifying angst that gripped my body. My thoughts began to race to the tower falling, a plane crashing into my mother’s condominium, the walls collapsing, the terrorists invading our building. I was trapped in some kind of horrific film I couldn’t get out of.

“The balcony was next to my bed, and I had a momentary impulse to slide the glass door across and jump outside. It was my only escape. Instinctually, I knew it was the only way I could never have one of these episodes again. Even as my body desired such an outcome, my mind said no, what are you thinking, this is madness. And they were fighting again, the involuntary responses of my body rushing up against the barriers of my mind.

“My mother walked to the wet bar in the living room and removed a giant bottle of gin that she had kept stocked in the liquor cabinet for years. She brought it to my room, poured a tall glass, and laid it down next to me. I could see how hard she tried to be calm, to not react to the pangs of my hysterical state. She held me in her arms and kept saying it’s ok, it’s ok, it will pass. And I kept telling her, how do you know? How are you so sure?

“And then I kept thinking, why? Why am I feeling all of this terrifying angst? I didn’t lose someone in the towers. I wasn’t trapped in one of them. I didn’t have to climb down hundreds of stairs to escape, or get caught in the dust storm. But when I saw that tower come down right before me, a part of me died. Just like the way that building collapsed, a part of me collapsed with it. And I wondered now if a part of everyone had collapsed with it, too.

“Until then I had never felt anxiety, panic, grief, or any loss of control. I had never seen a therapist, or had any mental issues, or suffered depression, or had any mental illness in my family. So why was I losing control? Why did it all fall on top of me like a ton of bricks? Why was this trauma overtaking me like a foreign being?

“The bitter taste of gin moved slowly down my throat, and though I could only drink it slowly, its effect was almost immediate. Lying in a daze, I told my mother to light a white candle, for positive energy, for hope, to clear any negativity in the air, for peace for the victims and their families. She said she didn’t have one, but she’d go buy one tomorrow. The alcohol rushed in quickly, and I was gone.

“The next morning I woke up and I couldn’t pray to God. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pray to the same God that the terrorists did. I couldn’t say Allah, when they said Allah. I couldn’t sit up, shut my eyes, enter that solemn space in my mind, and begin talking to God by saying bis millahirahmanirahim, in the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Because in that silence all I could see was the tower, and all I could feel were the incipient timbres of the Rumbling. My inability to pray didn’t mean that I didn’t believe that God existed. I simply felt he was not a part of my life anymore.

“Early in my life, my faith had begun with a simple belief in God. No one had told me to pray as a child, but I began doing it at a very early age. Praying was innate, instinctual, a habit that developed during the evening hours. When the house was still and the light in my room was shut off, I’d sit upright on my bed, look up, and talk to God. I always began with gratitude: Thanks for my dog Tootsie, my very own room, our house, my brother, and my parents, and then I’d pass along my list of requests. I felt the presence of God on airplanes, during takeoff, landing, and those times of intense turbulence. What other force could lift the aircraft into the air and then bring it back down? Of the many times I prayed to God as a youngster, which included these airplane trips, I was always sure to petition, God please make sure you don’t drop the plane. I also turned to him for what I called ‘grade prayers,’ God, please give me at least a B+ on my English test, I would say before sleeping. The next day he would deliver my request.

“I said a few prayers in Arabic, mainly for protection. Once, I even fasted for Ramadan as a teenager, but only for a day, not the entire month as expected. For the most part, I saw myself simply as a God believer, and my prayers reflected that. Though I began each night with a short Muslim prayer, addressing God as Allah, the rest of my words were conversational and in plain English. And it was fine, this little arrangement I had. God seemed to be ok with it, as long as I was utterly faithful in my heart and loyal.

“During my summers in Turkey, from the time I was born up until my graduating year in college, my family would stay at my grandmother’s house, right next to a mosque, and I would hear the call to prayer several times a day. Though I may not have prayed every time, including when it woke me up close to dawn, I’d still sit in a moment of silence and acknowledge the sacredness of the prayer and its purpose to connect to God. The sound, like an Arabic a capella aria, was beautifully exotic to me, and I gathered immense pleasure from listening to it in the early morning hours. It anchored me, and I felt as if I belonged somewhere else, a distant place with roots and stems and history, apart from the country I was raised in.

“As a child, I had a vivid imagination, but God was steadfast and true. Not once did my belief diminish or waiver.

“Until college. In my Near Eastern Studies history class, we were assigned to read both the pagan and Judeo-Christian bibles. It came to me that civilizations may have constructed God for their own benefit: to control their subjects, to instill fear, or to believe in a life after death. My strange new ideas were supported by other assigned readings in anthropology, such as Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, which theorized that the human gene is programmed to believe in God to ensure its survival and Darwin’s Origin of Species, which suggested that our innate belief in God is a mechanism that helped us survive and evolve.

“With this over-exploration and study on the topic, I began to doubt God, my God, any God. And with that, a string of unpleasant occurrences befell me: I received back-to-back poor grades, found myself breaking up with my boyfriend and in an unending quarrel with my roommate. My life resembled the pineapple upside down cake that I often ate at the dorm cafeteria.

“A week passed and on a dismally black, rain-infested foggy day, I succumbed to the notion that like that ominous day, I too felt dark, dismal, and lost. The unfortunate events were simply a manifestation of my foolish doubts, and my over-thinking was masking a deeply held faith. God was not something you thought about and analyzed, it was something you felt. So I got down on my knees in my dorm room and asked God forgiveness for doubting him. Miraculously, the next day, things got better.

“But as the days passed after 9/11, and the events registered and processed in my mind, the thought that the perpetrators of this event did it in the name of God and received their force, strength, and direction from him, confused me. So God became complicated, and at best, I could only put him aside. I was on my own now, left in the waters of my trauma, with no guidance from a higher being. Could I kneel again, ask God forgiveness for my doubt, and restore my faith?

“It wasn’t as easy this time. Something was terribly wrong. The connection was lost, and I couldn’t physically kneel or attempt to pray that way I had several years ago. Yet, I needed spirituality, something to believe in, to help me pass the days and quash the Rumblings. I needed someone who could give me truth, wisdom, and who had undergone troubled times, but saw humanity as positive and hopeful. I needed a substitute for God.”

For Yelda, however, this substitute could not consist just of another set of beliefs, another religion, another theology. If she could no longer pray in the name of Allah, neither did she have a taste for praying in the name of Jesus, or Krishna, or Buddha.

“We were living in troubled times,” she wrote, “but so had people in history; surely books of the past offered insight on how to overcome the hardships faced by war or trauma. So while I couldn’t look into myself to find answers because I was too mixed up, and couldn’t connect to others, I naturally turned to books, specifically to one about a man’s life in the woods.

“Walden had the answers. I could feel it. Something instinctually pulled me to it. It sat on the top shelf of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in the guest room. Walden, Henry David Thoreau’s famous nineteenth century memoir of a life in nature was where I turned. Thoreau had built himself a cabin in the woods of a small Massachusetts town and lived there for over two years in solitude, to find the meaning of life. I couldn’t go to his cabin, but I could escape into his mind.

“I looked at Walden again and thought of the numerous times I had read it, nine, ten, eleven times. For me, nothing came close to it. It was my bible, my shrine, my self-help tome, all things spiritual to me. Though Thoreau lived a hundred and fifty years before me, we shared similar views on faith: a strong devotion to God, skepticism of organized religion, and a belief in spirituality through nature. This Transcendentalist philosophy supported each person to find his or her own path in life, intuitively, from the soul, independent of religious dogma. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau’s dear friend and father of the movement, said that if you stood in nature, you could feel God. He believed there were two places where you could feel the divine, there, and in your soul.

“My complete revelry and appreciation of nature began at an early age, when I collected Audubon encyclopedic books on trees and flowers and spent many afternoons trying to match the lush, tropical vegetation in our backyard with the photos in the guides, nearly impossible to do but for some species of birds of paradise and bougainvillea. Countless hours passed while I watched the backs of manatees surface above the canal waters that butted our property, standing in awe of their slow-moving and massive bodies. I also dragged my mother to trips down the Florida Keys, searching for sand dollars, blue starfish, and coral. But one of my favorite ways to pass the time as a child was to lean against one of our large coconut trees, and read.”

“With Walden between my hands like a book of spells, I thought of its magic, which I had seen for myself during my first visit to Walden Woods. It was in the dead of winter. I was a freshman in college, spending Christmas break with relatives in Boston. One bitterly cold afternoon, my uncle and I veered off the family itinerary and ventured by car to Concord, a town an hour away. A poet, he found my interest in Walden inspiring enough to take me there.

“After my uncle parked the car, we walked some time until we brushed up against the shore of Walden Pond. The potency of a clear sun didn’t thaw our hands and feet, but it did expose the sparkling purity of the water, water that with my bare hands I cupped to feel and smell. The shore was like a beach, the powdery sand clinging to my brown snowshoes. I eyed small ripples coming towards me with the passing breeze, and the pine trees that encircled the pond; they were alive and green. The pond’s expansive breadth impressed me, akin to a miniature version of Lake Michigan. It was probably ten or twenty degrees when we visited the pond that day. I was shivering under a pea coat, but was so transfixed by this pond—some elixir of the divine—that I stood before it for as long as I could. Thoreau said this pond was earth’s eye and that by looking into it the beholder could see his own soul.

“I dreamed only of what life would burst forth from the woods during the summer months, the sunlight breaking through the diaphanous hickories and hornbeams, the squirrels and minks scurrying about, and the glimmering warmth of the pond. I never saw this summertime vision of the woods, but with each instance that I had read the text, that feeling of the sunshine breaking through the leaves, and the sounds of bluebirds, or the purity of the pond, came back to me like a memory I had lived. Thoreau called that pond a lake of light, and with its green and blue hue, he deemed it an intermediate between earth and heaven, sky water. Walden was a safe, spiritual place; now if I could only visit it again, perhaps it could give me some great enlightenment.

“How to deal with the days ahead? Desperate for guidance, I read from the page leafs of Walden slowly, absorbing each word in its passages, a pencil and highlighter in my hand, underlining phrases I had not before, and reading closely the ones I had. I placed myself in the text, following his year, through four seasons, through the transformation of his mind and settlement in nature. Though I searched for nuggets of wisdom, I found myself spellbound by his lyrical musings, his depictions of the lake as a mystical being, his penchant for certain birds, the whip-poor-will, whose nostalgic song, as legend had it, could sense a soul departing, and the wood thrush, whose sweet voice he likened to the divine. The hickory cascading over his cabin was his pagoda and shrine, and the pines were the strings of a harp that chimed in the wind. We need the tonic of wilderness, he said.

“By nightfall I had read half of the book’s three hundred and fourteen pages.

“The next day I continued reading, but without transformation of my shaken up state. While reading I felt whole and calm, but as soon as my eyes left the page, I fell into the same pattern of stalking angst. With the last three chapters, though, a breakthrough arrived. Those chapters came together like a crashing symphony blazing messages of hope and rebirth. It all boiled down to one core principle.”

“Aristotle once said that you will never do anything in this world without courage; it is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor. Thoreau, never, to my recollection, mentioned the word courage in the pages I had read. Nevertheless, it was the word that rang in my ear as I read the last chapter. That was the theme; not nature, not God, but courage!

“It must have taken courage for Thoreau to build his cabin and to live alone in the wilderness. His mission was to discover what nature had to teach us, the meaning of life, and he would not yield until he learned this truth. He revealed it in the final chapter: “I learned this at least, by my experiment, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” To have the courage to live a life that one has dreamed of, to find the path where one belongs, that was his discovery.

“Courage, I kept thinking of that word. What is courage anyhow? Is it the mastery of fear? Is it pushing head first into something whose outcome is uncertain, not only uncertain but terrifyingly uncertain? Is it confidence? Self-empowerment? To think of the word was enough, courage. And when I said it, a swell erupted in my diaphragm, and a confidence to move forward without thinking of the consequences. I kept saying the word and instantly, I felt better.

“I was thinking that a book on nature and spirituality would provide me safety; that nature itself would provide me with a retreat, but instead, it emboldened me. It mobilized me to take action and not remain crippled by my fear of the Rumblings, possible new attacks, or death. What I needed wasn’t a safe place, but courage!

“But what of God? He was still nonexistent. Walden empowered me to be strong and fight the Rumbling forces inside of me. But Thoreau’s words didn’t bring me any closer to God. For now, he would be absent. Regardless, my newfound courage made me begin to question everything. What would happen to the city? Could I have my old life back? Was I on the right path? Was law really my passion? How could I live again in that tiny windowless studio? And could I return back to the site every single day? My law school was seven short blocks away from the embers still burning.

“Even emboldened with Walden, I felt doubts intruding and that things could get worse. It began back in New York, in my Constitutional Law class. The professor stood before the podium, relaxed and calm as normal, he was a chilled-out fellow, and instead of beginning his lecture on the assigned reading, he began talking about 9/11.

“‘Given everything that’s going on now, we should talk a little about the Patriot Act. Is it overreaching? How about Muslims in concentration camps? Does it allow for us to take away their liberties for a national threat? Though we haven’t studied it yet, I’m sure you are aware of the Supreme Court case Korematsu versus the United States. This is the Japanese internment case. The court upheld the government’s actions when they rounded up Japanese citizens and placed them in camps. It has not been overturned. Some say this case gives us precedent to put Muslims in concentration camps. This is a challenge we face. What do we think about this?’

“I chose not to react, or even listen to any comments. I convinced myself that I was hearing it all wrong, and then I engaged in the psychological phenomenon called blocking it out. Plus, the professor’s tone was theoretical; I didn’t buy that he really believed this was possible. He was simply trying to tie the subject to modern times. But then I heard it again. This time, it was not in Constitutional Law, but in my Law and Literature class. Law and Literature! In this class, the professor made it sound far more personal and real.

“We read classics like To Kill A Mockingbird and Herman Melville’s Billy Boy; Julius Caesar was also on the reading list. Today’s class: Bleak House, a Dickens epic about the failure of the English justice system.

“The teacher was an odd fellow, short and stout with a full head of white hair, a large head for his body, and cloudy, outdated bifocal glasses. His steps were deliberate, like a toy soldier as he paced back and forth the room collecting his thoughts before opening his mouth to speak. In his late fifties, he looked like he watched an inordinate amount of PBS specials and found security in a life of reading. When he arrived at our classroom, it was often with a library tote filled with numerous books.

“Today, the instructor seemed angry. His gaze was too penetrating, his mouth gathered together and tense, his already ruddy appearance increasing in pigment as he walked back and forth across the room with his hand on his chin. The restlessness of his thoughts appeared evident to the class, as they followed his movements. He steps slowed down until he finally came to a halt to lecture.

“‘In Bleak House we are confronted with the inefficiency of the Court of Chancery, of a justice system that doesn’t work,’ he said. ‘That of course was a court in the nineteenth century. But what about our present day legal system? With the Patriot Act, the government has much more of a reach in our lives. What would happen, for instance, if we put all Muslims in concentration camps?’

“Did he just say Muslims in concentration camps? Nothing like that could happen as there are way too many Muslims in this country. How dare he say something like that!

“‘But what kind of legal reform could we pass to prevent such an occurrence? To abolish the Patriot Act? Or should we question our justice system for even passing it?’

“How are Muslim students in the room supposed to feel? Is he prejudiced towards Muslims?

“Should I report him?

“I looked around the room and noticed that I was the only one shocked by his discourse. Students were seated, all facing him while taking notes or focusing their gazes elsewhere, with Bleak House on their desks. It was any other day for them. His words caused no chill in the room, but there was a chill up my spine.

“The extrasensory hearing that had been latent for some time returned and the sounds of the cars moving in the street began to bother me. My palms became clammy; I found it hard to breathe or to talk. I wanted to ask my classmate Melissa what she thought, but I couldn’t enunciate any words. She appeared undisturbed by his lecture, and once again, I felt alone in this process—in this new reality of bombs and attacks and concentration camps. A caffeine-type jolt overtook my chest, and then a restless humming, and with hesitation, I understood that the Rumblings had returned.

“Shocked and enraged, I left the class. And I forgot Bleak House on my desk. The fear of not only a terrorist attack, but the fate of Muslims if such an event happened again, overtook me as if the towers had fallen the day before. As Muslims or those of Arab or Middle Eastern descent, would we be both the victims of the terrorists and the targets of the government?

“Time had passed since the towers fell and the country was secure, but this highly educated professional was discussing the possibility of the government taking the rights away from its citizens? How could he even entertain such a possibility, even if he himself was against such a notion? These were not light terms. Muslims, as citizens of our country, were entitled to the same freedom as everyone else. This right was legally given in our Constitution and rightfully declared in our Declaration of Independence. Where had we come to? The entire notion of the free world as I knew it was slipping away. I had never felt foreign in my own country until now.

“Still, I loved my country. I felt so proud to be a citizen of the United States, to carry an American passport. And as a lawyer, I would be a defender of its laws, that’s how much I believed in it. The government had protected us from further attacks, and for that I championed them, but at what cost to our liberty and our citizens? Still, I believed in our nation, that it was good; there was nowhere else I wanted to be, so I hoped for better, brighter days and for these unsettling ones to pass.

“In the end, I didn’t report the professor, but I also didn’t return to the next session of class. I let it pass. The Rumbling passed, too, in the weeks that followed. But the thought of Muslims in concentration camps, of myself in one, never left me.

“It was now the midst of autumn, in late October. While finishing up law school, I was interviewing for a job in a prestigious law film. The trees in Central Park began to transform into balls of yellow fire. Because I lived right on the park, I ran every day in the fall, and the days after 9/11 were no exception. The runs were my only way to manage the stress and to keep at bay the haunting possibilities of our times. Nature, as it did during the days after the attacks, and in the pages of Walden, still gave me comfort, and for that reason, I had an almost primitive drive to immerse myself in it.

“I began on the south loop of the park, and as I ran towards the Bethesda Fountain, I found myself in a pleasant groove, only aware of the music in my ears. With each step, I fell further into syncopation with the beat and timbres of the music, until I slipped into it, my body taking over. I knew the way. I had run it so many times. As the route climbed up, I accelerated and thrust myself forward, swinging my arms harder. My heartbeat revved up, the heat from perspiration pressed up against my back and chest. The run was smooth and good now, easier, as I had broken into it. I was a third of the way through the loop, when in my periphery I caught a flash of yellow. I stopped. I never stopped when I ran.

“I was marveled. All of the yellow leaves of the trees before me had fallen in what seemed like a single day, and those leaves had shed so neatly along a concrete path. A path of leaves appeared, akin to a blaze of light. The concrete road had transformed into a golden path. So many leaves had fallen, from maples, oaks, and elms. The path was just off my jogging loop, to the left of it. It wasn’t one of those major attractions of the park like the Mall, the canopied row of trees displaying statues of famous authors beneath them. It was a lonely, quiet path. A little path, opened up to me, alone. But it emerged with such splendor and hope.

“I could feel the blood pumping through my heart hard, all my senses alert, both from the sensation of moving my body and brashly pausing, and the stunning, almost mystic vision before me. The leaves had ripened and fallen like fruit off a tree. It was an immense harvest of canary yellow, all the warmth, energy, and light of the spring and summer seasons absorbed by these noble leaves. Suddenly I felt like I was no longer trapped in my bare existence, that a secret world had opened up like a sprouting beanstalk in a children’s fairy tale, or a door opening up to a faraway place among wood nymphs, fauns, and elves. I had not seen magic for so long.

“I realized that I was in the church of nature, these trees its preacher, this path its revelation.

“What the revelation was, I was not entirely sure, or not yet conscious, though I knew it existed, that nature spoke to me, to my subconscious mind. Perhaps it was a message of awakened dissatisfaction, an indication that I was not living truthfully.

“I walked slowly along the path, which was elevated, moved up along a hill before it curved outward, to where I didn’t know. And I was curious to what lay beyond. The path was so strong with all of these leaves below my feet. I followed it because I felt it would take me somewhere new. Moving along this path of leaves, I thought about my own path. Where was I headed? Since the attacks, the trauma seemed like a catalyst that had brought to surface what lay buried deep down, sublimated desires and convictions, as well as our new reality. We could have died, but we are alive. We could die tomorrow. Nobody really knew what the terrorist planned to do with our city. Whatever life was here, had to be lived. Whatever true path existed, had to be found. Not in ten years, not down the road, but now. Whatever dreams were made had to be crystallized. Thoreau had said himself, ‘Nature is not indifferent to us which way we walk, that there is a right way.’

“I stepped towards a tall maple tree, my feet cushioned by the grass below, the wind pushing me along, until I found myself face to face with its elongated trunk. I pressed my cheek against its rugged bark and wrapped around my arms around its body. I turned my head up towards the sky, the tree’s parasol of leaves and height showcasing its wisdom and stature. I closed my eyes, holding it steady, and it gave me a momentary sense of peace. I let go and began running again, along the path, until it led me back to the jogging loop. The leaves crinkled below me, and in the final moments of that run, I thought more about my life.

“Materially, I was so close to getting everything I had wanted: an education, a job. But in my gut, none of it felt right. The path was etched for me, and I was following it steadfastly. What would happen, though, if the path was wrong?”

By November of 2003, two years after the attacks, Yelda had graduated from law school and was working as a corporate lawyer at a large firm. She found, however, that the law firm environment was one deprived of spirituality and humanity. It was not long before she became disillusioned, and with no faith in God. She turned once again to Thoreau.

“That night, I did something that I had not done in some time; I began reading Walden again, from the very first page.

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any other neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond…

“Deeply engrossed, I savored every word, just as I did during the days of 9/11, searching for some guidance once again.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them…Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day…He has not time to be anything but a machine.

“‘Machine!’ I thought. I marveled at how Thoreau’s words resonated with my life. Yes, Thoreau, I’ve become a machine. He recognized the world I had entered and issued a stern warning against it. This world of meaningless overwork and labor was an anathema to a spiritual life, to any life of purpose and enjoyment.

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

“‘Did I really need those $400 Chanel sling back shoes?’ I thought.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.

“If God wasn’t there for guidance, Thoreau was, and together with his words and the spirituality of nature’s presence, there was something wholesome and meaningful that I could attach myself to. That night, Thoreau’s words planted a small seed in my mind. Did I really need all of these things? Wouldn’t it be nice to slow life down? What was the purpose of all of this?

“So I took action. I’d simplify my life. The first step: stop spending. I began saving all of my money like a miser. If I ever wanted to leave the firm, a sizeable bank account was the only way.”

It was not long after that, that Yelda came upon a yoga catalog. “The peach hue of the front page was inviting, like a sandy beach in the distance…The booklet itself emanated a calming energy, and almost involuntarily, I found myself…marching towards the catalog. I picked it up, and after looking at the name on the front, Integral Yoga Institute, I sifted through its pages until I stopped at the Meditation section, zeroing in on a particular course: Meditation I Course, 4-week immersion. Oh, immersion, I liked that sound of that, and the fact that the course wasn’t a one-time workshop.

“The practice of meditation had always intrigued me. I was drawn to the stillness of the practice. I wanted to turn my mind off. To do nothing but breathe in a lotus position. And isn’t that what people did when they were utterly lost, they began to meditate? I thought it was a way that my mind could slow down, everything could slow down and start over. Though the purpose of meditation is to connect to oneself, to access your true self, I sought it as a way to tune into my subconscious. Here, I believed the past, present and future lay together in one big blob. The subconscious was the big compass in life. Somehow, we knew what was best for us, and we were connected to everyone else, a kind of universal consciousness. But our conscious state didn’t allow access to this other realm. Meditation did.

“Classes were held on the upper floors. Rising up the narrow, carpeted stairwell, my feet felt comforted by the plush material and my mind by the silent walls, which were painted in earthy colors. With each step up I fell further into an allaying energy.

“The meditation room glowed with candles lined up against window panes. The weather outside was frigid, so stepping into this toasty room already qualified as a retreat. A mystical symbol hung on the center of the wall, a geometric drawing of circles within one another and a star in the middle. The center design was beautiful, particularly its jewel colors and how the shapes folded into one another. Surrounding it were the symbols of many known religions, the crescent and star of Islam, the David star of Judaism, the symbols of Hinduism, Shinto, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, even the Native American faiths. Neatly piled in a corner was a stack of seat pillows and thickly woven blankets. I took one of each. Natural order reigned over the room, the steady flame of the candles, the pristine carpeting, the perfect circle all attendees formed while seated.

“Our instructor arrived to class in head to toe white. His pants and top were loose, and looked a bit like pajamas. I figured it was a modern monk’s outfit. He sat at the top of the circle, near the hanging symbol, pointed to it, and told us it was called a Yantra. ‘Everything comes back to the one,’ he said.

“‘With meditation, we leave consciousness and journey to the depths of our being,’ he said. ‘We transcend the mind and body to enjoy our true nature. Only when we know who we truly are, can we have peace. And only when we master the self can we know who we are. As the Bhagavad Gita says, he who is disciplined in Yoga, having abandoned the fruit of action, attains steady peace.’

“He looked down for a moment.

“‘Who here knows what this means: abandoning the fruit of action?’

“He looked straight at me.

“I had no clue.

“‘It means not becoming attached to the results of what we do, the gain or loss that we will receive. The scriptures warn us that those too attached to those results cannot enjoy what they do. When things don’t work out, they’ll be down, and when they do, they’ll get more desperate. I would recommend that you consider reading the scriptures as part of your Yoga practice.’

“Wait! The Bhagavad Gita? I didn’t know much about Hindu scriptures, but I knew that was the name of the spiritual text that Thoreau revered in Walden. So much did he hold this text as holy and great that he deemed the literature of his times trivial compared to it. Thoreau received much guidance from these scriptures, and I too was inspired to discover the wisdom that poured from his pages. One day, I would. But for now, whatever wisdom I was seeking was no longer from books. I told myself, from now on, whatever transformation awaited me, it would come from me. Books had served me in the past, but to get my life back on track I needed answers from something higher.

“Our instructor asked us to sit cross legged. Our meditation would begin shortly. He showed us breathing techniques, how to breathe from the back of the throat and how to hold the breath before exhaling; how to make it longer and deeper. I sat, and for the first several minutes I was conscious of my breath. From under my diaphragm, below my belly, I gathered air that rose all the way to my shoulders, up to the back of my throat, releasing slowly from the back of my throat though my nose. I could hear the whooshing sound of the breath as it moved its way back and forth from my throat to my belly.

“My breaths expanded, until I slipped into a space, where I didn’t know. I was fully awake, I didn’t fall asleep, but I left my body. For ten minutes, I entered a peace. I felt heat emanating from my body. I wasn’t sure if it was an out of body experience. I didn’t float above myself and observe the room from the ceiling, that would have completely freaked me out, but I felt I had traveled somewhere. It was a mystery to me what happened. Was it possible that I had entered a different dimension of consciousness? Or experienced an altered state? Or slipped into a subconscious realm?

“I was so intrigued with where I had gone that I began practicing every morning and evening, for twenty minute sessions. On a yoga mat, I sat Indian style, my hands resting on my knees. I shut my eyes, and took deep, long breaths. I gently gathered up as much air as I could, like a giant swell rising with the tide, and then exhaled slowly through my throat, taking comfort in the sound of the air as it moved like molasses through my throat. As the minutes passed, I felt a glowing energy surrounding me; I was wrapped in it. Every day it felt different, but most days it felt like a ball of warmth, and at times I could see it like a golden orb; a sun figure. An immense bliss overcame me; the positive energy of the orb overwhelmed me. I felt safe, I felt protected, I felt calm and peaceful, and most importantly, I felt assured—all the things I had wanted to feel for so long. I wondered what the presence was. And then I began to think, was it God?

“I didn’t know what God was anymore or what had happened to him, but I religiously kept my meditation ritual at dawn and dusk, and continued beyond the four weeks of the class. I didn’t have a guru, I wasn’t in an ashram, I didn’t say om, I didn’t chant, or say shanti, I just sat in my apartment, on a yoga mat, breathing deeply, following my breath for twenty minutes until I’d escape to an unknown place of stillness and peace. Slowly, the heaviness that followed me like a dense fog began to dissipate; I felt lighter. How did I recognize that this presence was God? It was by instinct, or perhaps by memory. Most importantly, I felt connected to the universe. I wasn’t living alone anymore, and having all of these things happen to me. I was a part of everyone. And everyone was a part of me.”

Yelda’s spiritually was further deepened when she traveled to Sedona with her Jewish boyfriend.

“When Native Americans spoke of Sedona, they spoke of the Good Red Road, that path of the return to the spiritual world. The Yavapai believe that the city is where their people were created. The first woman emerged from Boynton Canyon, and a spire of a female figure named Kachina soars over that area. Sedona was so sacred that the Yavapai refused to live in it. They would venture forth into its canyons only for religious and spiritual ceremonies. I had heard of the energy vortexes of Sedona, and that the city was a spiritual center, much like Stonehenge and Machu Picchu, but only when I actually visited it, did I learn that it wasn’t just the so-called New Age packers of the 80s who declared it spiritual. Hundreds of years before, the Native Americans had done so too.

“When my boyfriend Andrew and I approached the city, we were blown away. Blown away. Riding down the highway, Thunder Mountain emerged, a monolith red rock cliff so giant and expansive and bleeding in spellbinding colors of red and gold and beige, that at first, I didn’t even believe it was real. The sheer beauty of it shook me. As we approached our hotel, we noticed so many of these towering red rocks, each wholly their own, spaced apart among the evergreen ponderosa pines and cypress trees. Bell Rock, Courthouse Butte, standing tall and proud and resembling its naCathedral Rock, Sugarloaf and Coffee Pot, they all appeared like individual beings with their own personalities, except that they were massive and red and craggy. Red, the color of fire and blood, how could they not hold life force energy?

“The next morning we arrived at Airport Mesa, a large mound of mars red earth touted to be a vortex site of masculine inflow energy (sites were either masculine or feminine, masculine meaning they enhanced self confidence, taking charge, risks and decisiveness, feminine the opposite aspects such as compassion, intuitive guidance and patience; and inflow or upflow, inflow boosted introspection and settling issues of the past, and upflow allowed one to tap into the universal consciousness, or talk to God through prayer or meditation). As a masculine inflow site, Airport Mesa would foster resolving the past and stepping forward.

“We hiked up the steep trail until we hit a saddle between the hills. I kept turning my head around, desperate to spot a twisted juniper tree. I couldn’t imagine meditating or engaging in any kind of connection with the universe without first seeing one. They were the physical evidence of the vortex force. The stronger the energy, the more of an axial twist in their branches. Instead of going straight down, the lines of growth follow a slow helical spiral along the length of the branch. This spiraling effect can sometimes even bend the branch itself. But the juniper trees scattered about didn’t look twisted. In fact, many looked as normal as a tree could be. As we approached the vortex site (we knew we had arrived because there was a marker at the exact spot), I kept hoping the natural juniper phenomena would appear before me like the tree of knowledge, with a shimmery sacred luminescence of an aura around it. And then I noticed a very strange looking tree.

“It crept out of nowhere with branches curling in like tentacles. There was no trunk, and all of its roots spread themselves out above the earth like limbs. The top of its body was the only part that looked normal. It had spiny leaves, like a fir. Most grotesque were its bottom roots. They twisted on top of the earth and looked like human legs. I had never seen such a tree. It didn’t look like a tree at all, but like a creature out of some fantastical story.

“‘Did you see this?’ I said. ‘You have to agree that this is pretty spectacular. This is the closest you’re going to get to seeing proof of the vortex energy besides funnels of spinning air.’

“‘Maybe all juniper trees are twisted. That may be how they are.’

“‘Look at that tree, Andrew,’ I said. ‘Have you ever seen anything that comes close to looking like that? Trees are not meant to be that twisted up. It’s just not natural.’

“‘Nature can create some pretty funky stuff.’

“Taking our eyes off the tree, Andrew and I switched our gaze to another bold sight—this one before us in a sweeping panorama. The red rock denizens of Sedona showcased themselves, with massive sandstone buttes and steep-sided flat hills, crimson in color, but with the sun, bright orange, yellow and caramel tones melting out of the rocks. We faced the king of all of them, Thunder Mountain, its massive, craggy limestone red surface puffing out like the chest of a proud male frigate bird, vying for attention. Surrounding it were smaller inhabitants, Sugarloaf, Bear Mountain, Coffee Pot and Chimney Rock. They were alive, breathing and living, evident in their rich hematite color, and each with a golden apex, the sun hitting the rocks at its most divine point.

“The dry air of Arizona—I took it in—the balsamic notes of juniper trees, reminiscent of bitter pines. Since it was winter, the air was chilly, fifty degrees, fresh with the morning sun clear in the sky.

“Andrew and I sat on the rusty earth, at the edge of the mesa. I closed my eyes, and Andrew did the same. I was ready to feel the vortex. Would I begin vibrating? Would I sink down in to the funnel of its form, or feel the spiraling motion of energy around a center of rotation? Would I twist like the juniper trees? And what did I really want from the universe anyway?

“As these questions flew through my mind, I began to breathe deeply. I took in a bout of crisp juniper air, felt it move up my diaphragm and expand into my lungs and held it inside for as long as I could, and then exhaled slowly. Instead of keeping my hands on my knees, I moved them to each side of me, touching the sandy soil, burrowing my hands into the earth, and then resting them back on my knees. The breaths got longer and longer until after a few minutes, I began to leave the conscious realm and my surroundings into a still meditative state. Entirely relaxed and deeply rooted, my spine felt as if it reached below my buttocks, burrowing down into the soil, until it was settled like a thick, robust root of a tree. The cool, fresh air hit me together with the lingering scent of juniper. My inner self almost suspended, I had entered an altered state.

“I tried to focus on the intense energy emitted, and to absorb that energy. A universal energy pattern of an astounding magnitude lay beneath me at the vortex site, so I tried to tap into that, opening myself into it, ready for any insight that may or may not flash before me. As I sat in this quiet space, my senses sharp and ready, the scent of juniper and pines was far more palpable, the sound of the cool air decipherable, as if someone was whispering in my ear. The energy was subtle, and I felt comforting cape around me. There was no anxiety here, no worry, for I didn’t have a care in the world. So I sat there for some time, enjoying this peace until an image of the yellow path of leaves appeared, the one I had seen several weeks after 9/11. I wanted to follow it, to be wrapped in those leaves, and for them to take me to a better place. So in my mind, I followed that path like a blaze of yellow light. And it came to me. Of all the things I could ask for, I knew what it was that I wanted.

“When I opened my eyes, I felt as if I had flown away and returned. This was the moment to speak—I treated the vortex site as a portal into the connected consciousness.

“‘Place me on the right path.’

“I faced the red rocks in the distance. If I felt something during my invocation, I would have to say it was subtle and tranquil—but I would never know for sure. The stunning scenery of the red rocks and the mystical presence of the twisted juniper trees were enough of a sight to give way to an otherworldly experience. Part of the magic of the unknown is perhaps just that—it’s unknown.

“Next we drove to Boynton Canyon, tucked away in the Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness, a site everyone raved about. Locals said that if you couldn’t feel the vortex energy anywhere else, you could definitely feel it here.

“Our destination was Kachina Woman, a hoodoo rock spire in the shape of a woman, next to a knoll in the box canyon. The figure also marked the vortex site. Many surmised this site was the strongest since it was sacred to the Yavapai. Kamalapukwia, the first woman was created there, and from her, the Yavapai believed, all their people descended. When I looked up to Kachina, at the outset of the trail, her startling resemblance to a woman was remarkable. Her head was almost perfectly sculpted, with a hairpiece, eyes and a nose. She appeared to be watching over the area, a protector. Behind her was a sky of deep cerulean blue. The boulders stood expressive with stature, their red limestone layers showed experience, and time, and wisdom.

“Andrew was emboldened by the immensity of the long stretching canyon before us. Its fortitude impressed him, and he couldn’t wait to get to the spire. Beginning on the Boynton Canyon Trail we climbed up the loose terracotta soil, rising among purple tinged prickly pear cacti and red-barked manzanitas until we took a right on the Vista Trail. We were led to a lush chaparral of green, pines, rolling cliffs, hills, valleys and low growing shrubs. The Munds Mountain Wilderness lay before us, and beyond that, the Mogollan Rim, an escarpment, the edge of the Colorado Plateau.

“As we continued hiking up towards Kachina woman, I began to feel an enormous surge. With each step, pulses of energy emanated from the rocks below me. We nestled against a knoll, on it a marking—Vortex Site. Standing there, the positive charge of energy, the verdant vista before me, the two of us alone in the early morning solitude, I felt a sense of peace, and that peace turned into bliss, and then I began to cry. Tears were falling down my face, and I turned away from Andrew, and tried to stop them. Rummaging through my travel bag, I found a packet of tissues and wiped them away. But as soon as I’d wipe my face, a new bout of tears streamed down, and all I could think of in the silence was that someone was speaking to me. As I stood there, I felt the universe speak to me. It wasn’t something I heard in my ear, but a pulse I felt in my heart and my gut.

“‘Yelda, you’re on the right path.’

“It didn’t matter what I did, or who I married, or even if I got married. I could be at peace even if I were alone. I was at peace if I never had children. I was at peace if I had to adopt. Everything I’d been searching for was here. Stripping everything away—my relationship, my vocation, my status—beneath that was something wholly fulfilling and satisfying, and that was my self. And that was enough.”

More information on Yelda's writing can be found at the following link:

http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3687216-yelda
related blog posts:

http://slowloveblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-being-fable-of-phoneme.html