Agorafabulous!

by Sara Benincasa

  After a couple months of filling out weekly charts and downing all those organic smoothies and reading stories of gentle healing and sitting through marathon therapy sessions with Dr. Morrison, I felt a lot better. I wasn’t totally healthy yet, but I was getting there. I’d learned a few breathing techniques and had begun doing slow, mindful walking meditation in the backyard at night. I saved the latter practice for after dark, when my deliberate perambulation was less likely to freak out the neighbors. I’d gained a little bit of weight and looked less bony. After some helpful reshaping by Gee, my hair was even growing back. As soon as I perceived that I was healing, I decided to start worrying about something else: money.

  My parents, glad that I had re-mastered the use of the common bar of soap and ecstatic that I had begun to drive short distances on my own, gave generously without asking for any recompense. They covered the costs of my psychiatric appointments, my medication, my clothes, my groceries, the electricity I used at their house, the gas I put into the car they lent me, and the remaining rent on my old apartment in Boston, which my mother and my uncle Joe had cleaned out once and for all (kindly making no mention of any disgusting things they encountered therein). I couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling that the closer I got to normal, the closer I got to freeloading. It was understandable that an insane, frail wretch of a daughter would restrict her activities to mooning about the house and making all her meals in a blender. In the early days, I had barely been able to generate a coherent thought, let alone an income. However, I was starting to resemble a reasonably sane human again. The new medication had kicked in full-blast, and my appetite improved all the time. I slept better, and it became a bit less difficult to talk myself out of bed, into the bathroom, and into the kitchen in the mornings. I even alternated showers with baths now, because you could read self-help books in the bath.

  “You’re doing well,” said Dr. Morrison. “You might consider getting a part-time job. It would add some structure to your day, and you’d be around people. And saving some money is the first step to getting out on your own again.”

  “Also there’s this thing called reiki I read about in Sacred Living magazine,” I said. “It’s like, someone puts their hands right above you and heals you? Like Jesus, but you have to pay and it’s Japanese? I could save money and go get that done.”

  “Well yes,” Dr. Morrison said. “You could also save to do that.”

  He suggested I make a list of what characteristics I wanted in a part-time job, in order to help me focus my search. I scribbled one in my journal that evening.

  What I Want from a Job

  Money

  Happiness

  Self-worth

  Increased spiritual fulfillment

  A boyfriend

  It was a tall order, and not one I was sure a gig at BJ’s Wholesale Club could fulfill. I decided to think outside the box.

  I applied to a garden center, reasoning that the outdoor work would do my mood and my body good. During the phone interview, the owner asked me if I was familiar with the inspirational works of Dale Carnegie.

  “Well, Mike, I can’t say I’ve read any of his stuff,” I said. “But I see his books in the section where I buy everything I read.”

  “What do you read?” Mike asked. He sounded maybe a decade older than me. His deep, manly voice betrayed his New Jersey upbringing, but only slightly. I’d never expected to be asked about my literary preferences during an interview for a job at a garden center. I pictured a tanned, well-muscled (but not steroid-fueled) outdoorsman who retired at the end of the day to a house he’d built himself. In my mind’s eye, the house’s primary feature was its giant library, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves ( just like in Beauty and the Beast). Of course Mike would have put those bookshelves in himself. My intellectual, overeducated side was intrigued. My salt-of-the-earth guidette Jersey girl side was turned on.

  “I read a lot of books about . . . philosophy,” I said. “I’m interested in self-improvement. And, um . . . nature. Horticulture. I’m taking a break from college because I’m considering changing career paths.”

  “Fantastic,” he said, and it sounded like he meant it. “Well, you’d learn a lot about self-improvement and horticulture here. All my employees are required to read at least one of Mr. Carnegie’s books. And my door is always open to discuss his philosophies about winning friends and influencing people.”

  “I’d like to do that with you. Talk, I mean. About friends. And people. And influencing.”

  “Sounds great to me, Sara. Why don’t you come in for an interview?”

  I went in for an interview. The grounds were spotless and immaculately organized. All the employees, clad in green T-shirts and cargo shorts, were as well-groomed as their workplace. A smiling young man directed me to the main office, which was housed in a lovely cedar cabin. As I walked down the hallway, I encountered a dozen framed posters, each emblazoned with a different inspirational message from Dale Carnegie.

  I entered the office and saw the handsome, tastefully brawny man of my dreams sitting behind a desk. His olive skin had been gently browned by the sun, and the muscles in his forearms flexed gently as he typed at a computer.

  “Hi,” I said sweetly, sticking out my hand. “I’m Sara. I hope you’re ready to talk about books!”

  “You’re looking for Mike,” the guy said, ignoring my hand. “He’s in there.” He cocked his thumb in the direction of another door.

  Mike was portly, middle-aged, and visibly disappointed by my appearance. He thanked me for coming in, but told me he needed to hire an employee capable of lifting something heavier than a watering can.

  “That’s not very inspirational, Mike,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You sounded like a bigger girl on the phone.”

  I left with a sourpuss expression and the secret desire to steal a ficus.

  Next, I applied to a recently opened New Age bookstore in a nearby town. The owner informed me that he specialized in the books and “inspirational products” of Louise Hay, a wealthy snake-oil purveyor who claims to have cured herself of vaginal cancer through positive thinking. She has made bullshit-loads of cash telling others that they’ve brought their own diseases upon themselves. Even in my twenty-one-year-old fruity daze, I couldn’t see myself convincing cancer sufferers to buy a book telling them that if they’d only thought more about unicorns and rainbows, their ovarian tumors wouldn’t have metastasized. Nor could I see myself explaining to the parents of dead children that their kids would’ve made it out of St. Jude’s if they’d worked harder at generating happy thoughts while puking after chemo.

  Years later, when I thumbed through that nuclear disaster of a book called The Secret, I recognized a lot of Louise Hay’s influence. My favorite part was when Rhonda Byrne effectively laid the blame for all disasters, tragedies, and crimes at the feet of the victims, basically claiming they’d brought it on themselves via “the law of attraction” and too much negative thinking. I hope they have pens in Hell so that all those stupid, frowny-face Jews, Rwandans, Cambodians, Congolese, Sudanese, and Native Americans can belatedly take a note.

  Anyway, I wouldn’t have lasted long in that bookshop. When the owner called me for a second interview, I politely declined. Then I went back to the classifieds section of the local newspaper and resumed my hunt.

  Hippies love to say, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” They stole it from the Japanese Zen Buddhists, or the Chinese Taoists, or some other set of brownish-yellow people upon whom they projected all their Orientalist fantasies in the 60s and 70s. It pops up in many of their books and pamphlets and on their T-shirts and bumper stickers. These days, they like to put it on their blogs. I took it to heart and asked the heavens for a teacher. And then he appeared, right there on my computer screen.

  It happened in the third week of my job search. I wondered if maybe a yoga studio would hire me as a receptionist, and I could get in touch with my body through free
classes and weekly kirtan sessions. Kirtan is a Sanskrit word that means “unwashed persons with liberal arts degrees chanting atonally at loud volume.” I searched online for yoga studios, then retreat centers, then ashrams, and that’s how I found Edgar.

  Edgar ran the Blessed Sanctuary, a fifty-acre spread in the low, softly rolling mountains of eastern Pennsylvania, near New Hope. Its elaborate website advertised a “center for learning and growth founded in the classical tradition, with modern influences drawn from all great world cultures.” I wasn’t sure what constituted a classical tradition of learning and growth, but I was positive I wanted to be a part of it. The homepage displayed a gorgeous photograph of the sun setting behind a beautiful stone hut. The caption on the photograph read, “The Blessed Sanctuary has been blessed with contributions from many benefactors and thus was able to construct its own sweat lodge in 1989. The building of a sweat lodge is considered meritorious and karmically beneficial.” I still wasn’t quite sure what karma was, exactly, but I figured it was probably better for a sweat lodge to be karmically beneficial than karmically, you know, shitty.

  According to the site, the Blessed Sanctuary was founded by a spiritual teacher of some appropriately exotic extraction. Precisely why he chose Pennsylvania as the site of his American mission was unclear. Perhaps he thought the local Amish community’s horses and buggies would raise the spiritual vibration. Maybe he was just really into their amazing hot pretzels. He soon attracted the attention of local evangelical Protestants, some of whom wanted to convert him to Christ. Thankfully, his proximity to both Philadelphia and New York put him within toking distance of a variety of disaffected American youths and their robust trust funds. Some of these disheveled-by-design artsy types began coming to his fledgling center in order to learn the mystical ways of the Far East, the Southwest, and other mysterious places. Among these wide-eyed, well-heeled seekers were Arthur and Edgar. Eagerly, I read that the two “fell in love during a monthlong silent meditation.”

  “How romantic,” I whispered, sighing dreamily. According to the website, Arthur and Edgar had been at the center ever since, doing a brisk business in workshops and daylong conferences on all sorts of fascinating subjects, like yoga, ayurveda, and therapeutic Scandinavian dance. In addition to the sweat lodge, they’d built a white “contemplation house” that resembled a small church. Arthur himself traveled frequently to lead spiritual retreats “around the globe.” He was also available for “partnership ceremonies” and corporate events.

  It was just about the most exciting thing I’d ever heard of, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t known about this place when I was growing up. Had something happened at the PA-NJ border to stop the flow of information? Why hadn’t I been notified during my early adolescent Wiccan phase that there were actual practicing spiritual gurus with their own sweat lodge only sixty minutes away from where my middle school baton-twirling team rehearsed?

  The website offered information on internships and volunteer opportunities, but there were no job ads. Undeterred, I decided to send a prayer to the universe and an e-mail to Edgar. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? I dug out my two old Wiccan candles, abandoned when I decided student council was more interesting than drawing down the power of the moon. They had melted into stubs, but the wicks remained perky. I lit the blue one on the left side of the family computer and the pink one on the right side. I took a deep breath, and began typing.

  Dear Edgar:

  Hello. It is an honor to meet you via correspondence. I seek employment with an organization that combines practical work with the spiritual journey. I am taking a break from my college education because it was interfering with my search for divine enlightenment. My last job was as an assistant at a high-end hair salon in Boston’s most fashionable district, where I interacted with many individuals of great import and also sold nail polish. I can type upwards of 60 wpm. I would love to work with you to further your goal of lifting up the community. I hope to hear from you soon.

  Respectfully yours,

  Sara

  I hit “send” and took a moment to envision the ideal outcome of the situation. Edgar was somewhere deep in meditation, maybe in the sweat lodge thing. The whole place probably smelled like sage and lavender and green tea. Suddenly, in the midst of Edgar’s meditation, he was struck by the conviction that he needed a good worker, pure of heart and intention, to whom he would pay $20 an hour to make tea for fascinating teachers and students from around the world.

  To my shock and delight, Edgar e-mailed me back the very next day.

  Dear Sara:

  Thank you so much for your letter! You may be the answer to our prayers. We’re very busy this year with a host of projects at the Blessed Sanctuary. In particular, we’ve got a big annual conference coming up that will bring 200 visitors and three renowned speakers to the site. I could really use a personal assistant to help me with recycling, correspondence, and the upkeep of our large organic garden, where we grow most of our own food.

  Would you be interested in driving up later this week in order to meet with me?

  Blessed be,

  Edgar

  Would I be interested? In driving up to a place where spiritual teachers grew their own food? Um, duh. These people sounded like magical elves from another dimension. Edgar and Arthur were clearly way more evolved than anybody else I’d ever met. I knew this meeting was going to change my life forever.

  I hadn’t spent an hour in a car in months, and hadn’t driven myself that far in—jeez, I couldn’t remember how long it had been. But thanks to counseling, Prozac, and all those books, my enthusiasm far outweighed my anxiety. I prepared an inspirational mix tape for the journey—a lovely combination of Enya and Gregorian chanting, interspersed with soothing interludes of my own voice saying things like “You have enough. You do enough. You are enough” and “Everything in your life has led you to this one place. You are on the right journey.”

  I drove the hour in a state of great excitement. I was driving a longish distance, just like a normal person! I was going to a job interview, just like a real adult! I felt so good that I even shut the tape off at one point in order to listen to some plain old-fashioned rock and roll on the radio.

  The driveway to the Blessed Sanctuary was a long, winding gravel one. It twisted and turned through woods for about a half-mile until it broke into a clearing. I could see the contemplation house plain as day about a hundred yards from my car. It gleamed bright and beautiful in the sunlight, a mystical beacon of hope. Up on the wooded hill behind the contemplation house was a gorgeous little stone edifice, which I recognized as the sweat lodge, shiny with a freshly stained cedar roof.

  I followed the driveway up to the contemplation house and saw hidden behind it another building—a drab, gray 1960s ranch-style house with a sign out front that read RESIDENCE. I was a little disappointed, as I’d hoped Edgar and Arthur dwelt in something resembling Yoda’s hut, or perhaps a Rudolf Steiner–inspired hobbit-house with a round door in the side of a hill. This place just looked so normal and unexciting. At least it had a little garden out front, still frozen in the winter chill. All magical, fairy-tale places should have a garden, like the Garden of Eden or the one the witch owned beside Rapunzel’s parents’ house.

  Edgar came out of the house to greet me before I’d even turned my car off. He wore loose black pants and a heavy wool sweater. He had gray-flecked brown hair and a neat mustache. He was short like me, and he looked around forty even though I knew he must have been in his late fifties. His lively brown eyes were as active and curious as those of a handsome ferret. His pale skin glowed and betrayed no trace of acid peels or face-lifts. But when he smiled and waved, a patchwork of fine lines and tiny wrinkles showed up around his eyes and across his nose. That was natural and kind of nice, actually. I figured all those years of clean, peaceful living had made him look the way he did. He was really rather striking.

  “Welcome to the Blessed Sanctuary!” he exclaimed when I got out
of the car, and immediately enveloped me in an enthusiastic, powdery-scented hug. “Let me have a look at you.” I smiled shyly as he stepped back a foot and surveyed me from head to toe.

  “What a beauty you are,” he said. “And a good, kind spirit. I can see it. A spirit full of the love of service. You’ve had some hard times, but you are recovering nicely. A heart full of love.”

  I felt a delicious chill run down my spine. I hadn’t even told him anything about why I’d really dropped out of college. He was obviously super-intuitive and probably some kind of bodhisattva. I wasn’t positive what a bodhisattva was, exactly, but I’d come across the term several times during my scramble to bone up on spiritual stuff before the interview. I had a vague idea that it meant “good spirit” or “saint” or “someone who is sort of like a holy person, maybe.”

  “Thank you,” I said humbly, bowing my head. “I am so deeply pleased to be here. It is an honor.”

  “It is,” he agreed. “Now come on inside and meet Arthur and our intern, Jason. I can’t tell you how nice it’ll be to have a woman around after being cooped up with these alpha males for months.” He let out a dry laugh that ended in a cough. “I’m sorry. Still fighting off a cold Jason brought with him. Maybe I can send you down to town for some echinacea later in the day. We’ve got one decent grocery store that stocks what I need.”

  “Of course! I’d love to help.” He used herbs for healing, just like the Stevie Nicks witch had done! I finally understood what people meant when they said that life comes full circle. This was so cool.

  We went into the house, which had all the trappings of a normal abode—floors, walls, windows—but was obviously a gathering place for humans from this world and spirits from the great beyond. First, it smelled like delicious tea and soothing incense. Second, I’d never seen so many religious icons in my life. Every available inch of the interior was adorned with special spiritual knickknacks. Edgar helpfully explained as we went along.