At the Sufi ceremony of Zikr, we formed a circle around Fattah, who played guitar and sang. He taught us the simple dance movements and transporting chants. Holding hands, our thumbs all pointed left to facilitate an uninterrupted flow of energy around the circle. Fattah explained the meaning of each dance and translated the Arabic phrases for us. He invited us to sit down inside the circle if we grew tired. There we would experience the energy from the inside out.

For three dances, we chanted the simple phrases and danced the simple steps around Fattah. Dance number four included the phrase “La illa ha. Il Allah.” I was excited to learn this one. During many previous Zikrs, it had escaped my mastery. But I finally got it. “La illa ha il Allah.” While chanting these words we were required to drop our neighbors’ hands, spin slowly in place, with our individual hands held high. No sweat.
We came to the spin. “La illa ha. Ill Allah.” I uttered it perfectly. I sounded like a native speaker. But something was wrong with my feet. They hadn’t moved.

We repeated the sequence. This time I executed the spin flawlessly. My raised arms expressed the universality of the movement. I was at once a Christian parishioner raising my hands to receive the Holy Spirit, a Hare Krishna delighting in Krishna and a Sufi praising Allah. My spin was unsurpassable.

But something was wrong with my mouth. I was thinking Arabic, but I was saying “Fa La La La La.”

I asked Fattah to repeat the phrase for me. “La Illa Ha Il Allah, Dawn. Remember? We sang it in the last dance. It’s exactly the same.”

Fine. A second ago only a couple of people knew I was stuck. Now everybody knows.

We began again. I sang the phrase beautifully. I spun gracefully. But not simultaneously. Each time we approached the spin, I stiffened in concentration. The feet dutifully obeyed my commands. The mouth only managed la-la-la-la-Allah! The Allah was emphasized to prove to myself that I could utter at least one Arabic word while spinning.

I was frustrated. I was tense. I felt awkward. I knew for sure I had to learn this step. I knew I should be able to. I was proven wrong every time. In anticipation of the spin, I could no longer enjoy the rest of the dance. Mired in aversion and resistance. Closed off to the spirit of the music. This was my reality.

The more I resisted, the worse I felt. Just in the nick of time, my brain shut down.

I broke ranks, sat down in the middle of the circle, and created a new reality.

I hugged my knees and rested my forehead on them. With eyes closed, I let the melody of voices and guitar seep into my skin. I relaxed. I opened my eyes, and that’s when I saw the feet.

Everybody had them. They moved in and out of my field of vision like a slide show. Graceful feet, awkward feet, hesitant feet. My new reality was made entirely of feet. Some floated past on a pillow of air. Others dragged invisible 10-pound weights. Feet in Birkenstocks, feet in tennies, feet in sox.

The ability to spin in place while speaking Arabic was rendered moot in this feet-centric reality.

I raised my head to further explore the landscape of my new world. Faces floated by—moons orbiting around me.

I felt as though I were being honored in an ancient tribal ceremony. I inhabited a new reality, of my own creation. Where a few minutes earlier I had been a fish out of water, I was now the guest of honor. I was thrilled that they had all shown up to celebrate me.

One of the women returned my gaze as she danced by. Then her neighbor noticed me, smiled back in mid-chant, and floated away. It was contagious. Soon most of them smiled down at me as they danced and sung their way around the circle.

Some didn’t look at me at all, eyes closed in a self-induced trance. They drifted in and out of my vision, unaware of my invitation to dance. They were ballet soloists, focused inward. I noticed a second of disappointment that they did not play with me.

But I laughed with those who did, and our laughter harmonized with the music. They were celebrating around a campfire and I was the fire - sung to, smiled into, and danced around. But they weren’t celebrating me. Celebration was happening. The experience was impersonal and completely satisfying.

Stepping inside the circle, I had created a new reality. It was one small step in an evening, one giant step in a life. Bare attention made it possible. Feeling dense and awkward and knowing for sure that I had to learn the dance, I was headed down a road toward self-criticism. But without forming an opinion about them, I acknowledged the emotions I felt. Because I was being mindful of my feelings, I felt an opening. In that opening I saw the possibility that I did not know what I thought I knew for sure. In that split second of not-knowing, choices were presented to me. Suddenly, I had a choice in how to respond to the circumstance. I chose the path that led to celebration instead of self-recrimination.

Finding no resistance to hold them, the emotions passed right through me on their selfless journey through the atmosphere. Sitting down in the middle, I was still participating, but choosing a different way to dance. The circumstance that had threatened to deflate my mood had instead lifted my spirit.

My life is also my creation. Sometimes I’m hypnotized by emotions and habits. I act without seeing myself clearly. I drift away on my agitation, mistakenly thinking that something external caused it. That’s my reality.
In each situation, I can choose a different response, and create a new reality.

When I am mindful, the music of life invites me to dance. Sometimes I choose to boogie. And sometimes I dance by sitting it out.

While I’m reading, a sentence will force me to stop in admiration. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.

***

"So agitated was his body that the cold kept its distance."
———Chloe Chun Sein
——--Churn

Wearing a summer dress, I started for a walk around the Plaza. While I’d been inside, the weather had changed. Fall had crept into the air. A frosty breeze ruffled the summer plantings in the pots hanging above the streets. I desperately needed a coat, until the instant I actually noticed the cold. Noticed—without the desire to escape. Resistance evaporated, leaving behind pure sensation. As the chill kissed my face and teased my bare arms, I softened into its embrace. So welcoming was my body, the cold fell in love.

STUMBLING TOWARD THE BUDDHA, 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

In the 10th anniversary edition, author’s notes give you a context for the stories I told in the original 2014 edition. Who was I in 2014? Who am I in 2024?

I had to re-read the original book in order to compose the author’s notes.

My initial reaction caught me off guard.

This is great! Had there been anyone nearby, I would have jumped up and yelled, listen to this paragraph, listen to this damn fine sentence. There was no denying it. My writing was good. MC Hammer good. “You can’t touch this.”

There’s nothing more satisfying than praise from my harshest critic—me.

In this spirit, on to the next step, composing the author’s notes.

I breezed through author notes, first draft.

Editor’s (Jessica Conoley) response, “What do you feel? Say what you’re not saying.”

Her response struck a cord. I dug in.

Author notes, next dozen drafts. What I was not saying erupted all over the manuscript. No matter the subject of any essay, the author’s note ranted about racism.

I hadn’t seen this coming.

The note for a story about meditating in a park screamed that the park was named in honor of a real estate developer whose covenants prevented homeowners from selling to black people, but nobody cares, since Kansas City boulevards and neighborhoods memorialize slave holding confederates, and was the last city on the planet to name a street after MLK, which by the way …. The rant continued for a page and a half.

Rage—although, granted, deeply satisfying—touches only the surface of feelings. I want my writing to be layered.

In search of deeper emotions, I employed sure fire self-reflection methods. Binge on sugar. Write for ten minutes. Binge on fashion videos. Meditate five minutes. Binge on Netflix. Write for ten.

When I published Stumbling toward the Buddha in 2014, my audience was majority white. (Still is, but I’m deploying a desegregation plan.) I knew my readers personally. They were crazy about my writing, and they promoted me like crazy. They sang my praises to their friends and friends of friends—all white. They invited me to hold readings in their living rooms, spiritual centers, wellness centers, and art galleries.

To this day, they remain engaged and loyal.

I resent their loyalty.

White readers do not know me. They do not know, upon entering a room, I scan it for a non-white face and finding none, feel marooned. They do not know, daily life triggers PTSD, and the traumatic stress is never post.

Some readers might never know me, unable to bridge the divide created in 1619.

The root of the disconnect also lies at my doorstep. A re-read of 2014 Stumbling shows me the essays are less vulnerable, less self-revealing than I thought they were. Stumbling frequently strikes a race-neutral tone. “Fun and Games,” for example. You can’t tell the author is Black. You’ll read about yoga, My Weekly Reader, Ed Sullivan, and pineapple-Canadian-bacon pizza—none of which tells you a sister wrote this story.

Is that inclusive?

Or dismissive?

What’s the difference between transcending an issue and ignoring one? I don’t know.

Race-neutral feels less than truthful, and readers who come to my pages for authenticity, deserve authenticity.

I revised the author notes.

I replaced references that were deferential to white readers: Exit The June Taylor Dancers; enter The Fly Girls. Alluding to the unrecognized courage of young people, I swapped out generic language for specific, citing my great-great-grandfather, who escaped enslavement at the age of fifteen. I wrote about feeling Included at a Buddhist retreat, because our silent ranks were black, brown, red, and yellow, as well as white. I described a racial humiliation inflicted by my white mother. I marshaled my fury to express outrage on my father’s behalf, the career erasures he faced as a black author in a white literary world.

Revisions taught me how I erase myself from my own stories.

My heart is broken.

Twenty-seven thousand rewrites later, the manuscript for the new edition was suddenly finished.

Finished?

Impossible.

I double-checked.

Done.

Lesson learned by reflecting back from ten years on? The white gaze is a low-grade fever. I won’t let it sap my creative energy. Subconscious concern for white readers bleeds hesitation into other subjects I write about, from metaphysics to family history. At the beginning of this process I saw that my writing is good. At the end, I know it will be better.

I emailed the manuscript to Jessica, stood at my laptop, and grinned.

I did it. I dreamed up this project, and I did it. I made something. I wanted to tape it to the fridge. I wanted to holler. Wait. I did holler. I ran around the house, clanging a bell I dug out from the junk closet.

“Honey! Honey! I did it.”

Ben and I whooped. We croaked “Eye of the Tiger.”

How could I possibly celebrate this moment?

Shop? Dance? Sing?

I wanted to do one thing more than anything else in the world.

Write.