STILL LIFE WITH FRUIT

Meet Rhonda, who taught me how to eat the plum to eat the plum. Plus: finding calm and ease with Thich Nhat Hanh.

Thank you for reading Resilience. If you’re nourished by my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber and/or gifting a subscription to a friend. Enjoy 25% off a paid subscription through July! I appreciate your being here however it works for you. And now, for this week’s tiny tale. May it bring a moment of calm and ease during these wild times. xx Alexa

Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash

It was my senior year of college, and I was terrified of my thesis advisor—let’s call her Rhonda. She was in her late sixties and she didn’t really talk, she growled. Yet, I took all of her classes. I referred to her Shakespeare seminar as "Death by Red Pen" because when I got my papers back, her edits were fierce, like splatters of blood across the white page. Her literary criticism workshop was even worse. I clearly didn’t understand Julia Kristeva’s essay on abjection. Rhonda stared me down until I myself felt most abject, like a slimy pupa that would never, ever become a butterfly.

But I still chose her as my thesis advisor. Our meetings terrified me. I felt claustrophobic in her office. Her desk was cluttered, and her hair always looked like the wind had just howled through it. My thesis on the modernist poet and artist Mina Loy didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “I really don’t understand what you’re trying to do here,” she’d hiss.

I didn’t either.

One afternoon, I lugged my research binder and the latest pages into her office. I was sweating from the heat, which rattled from the old radiators like thunder. I had my period and I remember how the bones of my twenty-two-year-old hips felt like they’d crack under the weight of the cramps. I sat down, and Rhonda started to talk, the red slash of her lipstick mouth as cutting as the marks of her pen.

I started to cry. Hard. Then harder. I curled into as much of a fetal position as I could manage in the hard, wooden chair. I felt like the 'Pig Cupid' rooting through 'erotic garbage' in Mina Loy’s infamous poem, 'Love Songs.' At least, I think I did, as I obviously didn’t understand the poem at all! My heart started to skip beats, and my breathing was all out of control. I waited for Rhonda to kick me out of her office or tell me what a gross crybaby I was.

But to my surprise, she exhaled and took a small purple plum out of her alligator purse, followed by a small knife and cutting board from her desk drawer.

“Oh my god,” I remember thinking, “she’s going to murder me!”

Instead, she cut the plum into pieces.

“When you get like this,” she said, “stop everything. Take a deep breath. Have a piece of fruit.”

She handed me a slice. I examined the deep purple skin and the soft, fleshy inside, unsure of what to do. I copied Rhonda and put the piece of fruit in my mouth. It tasted sweeter than I remembered plums tasting. As we ate together, my breathing slowed down. I listened to the radiator. The air was full of Rhonda’s Chanel No. 5, my patchouli oil, and plums.

We didn’t figure out my thesis that day, but I was no longer afraid of Rhonda.

Years later, when I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s "Washing the Dishes to Wash the Dishes," I thought of eating the plum to eat the plum. Rhonda’s stormy, ruthless energy mixed with mine—a young woman and an older woman, both full of rage and a passion for words and the page. I showed up as I was that day, an abject pupa, and left a little softer, my butterfly wings perhaps not so out of reach.

Photo by Fleur on Unsplash

A meditation:

Take a deep breath. Have a piece of fruit.

Feel free to share a moment when someone helped you calm down. Maybe it was an unexpected messenger, the last person in the world you thought would ever show you care! Whatever the case, may we remember how good it felt to snap into the moment and be present, despite it all.

Much love to you,

Alexa xx

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Finding calm and ease.

This guided meditation with the late, great Thich Nhat Hanh really helped me this week. As he famously said, “Peace in oneself, peace in the world.” I share these bits not to push a particular practice or path but to offer some relief. Thay’s teachings are truly relevant today. Plus, his monastic community is called Plum Village! Enjoy, my friends. :)