Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Write About the Most Interesting Person You’ve Ever Met

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

He was why I’d come. And now, he is here in a wheelchair before me.

I squat down to be eye level, taking his soft, outreached hand between my palms. His joyful eyes and his broad smile beam from behind his white beard, seeming to welcome, not only me, but everything. His entire countenance emits ‘yes’ to each particle in existence.

I mention having seen the movie about his life, “Fierce Grace,” and when I reference a deeply moving scene, I find myself starting to cry unexpectedly. Ram Dass tears right along with me, the water rolling from his eyes, a short sob catching in his chest. Yet, these movements seem inconsequential to him, as typical and natural as a breath or a heart beat.

courtesy of Zeitgeist Films
courtesy of Zeitgeist Films

After our short, yet deep, exchange, I feel a profound tranquility that I can only attribute to having been in the presence of a highly awakened human being. Steeping in that peacefulness, I find a place in the auditorium where Ram Dass will offer his talk.

Having suffered a stroke years before (an incident he refers to as having “been stroked”), Ram Dass’s speech is slow and deliberate. His face often moves, as though about to utter a word, but then stalls, as he breathes, pausing longer, just waiting. Never afraid, a roomful of hundreds of people hushed to hear his next utterance, and he waits. Sometimes there are minutes between words.

It’s as though his heart’s been cracked open, revealing to him some secret beauty. As if he now sees something so precious, it is nearly beyond words.

I want to know what he knows. See what he sees. I want to tell him about the dream I had of the two of us riding tandem on a bicycle, while he showed me all the signposts along the way.

So I find him after the talk, sitting in the passenger seat of a minivan. As I appear at his open car door, he looks at me without surprise or judgment. He knows what I have come for, even if I do not. Before I can speak, he’s pulling me close with his one moving arm, enveloping me in a full hug.

I feel the depth of his heart. Become acutely aware of my own. Am surprised when I hit a wall. Only able to let the Love in, so far.

courtesy of www.found-my-light.com
courtesy of http://www.found-my-light.com
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Write About a Time You Broke the Rules

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

I can only guess what the EMT must be thinking as he tries to wheel the gurney through our flimsy screen room, the one we attached to our school bus, up on blocks, where we live. One scan of the scene and he sees the abandoned kiddy pool by the bed, the water puddles on the floor, the melted candles, barely flickering on the sills.

This looks like a complete fiasco. I am exposed in shame. Embarrassed, but cannot waste energy on explaining. I imagine how I must appear. Big, vulnerable, pregnant, and not doing it right. He has come to my rescue, in this home birth gone wrong.

The man in uniform is swift, yet calm, loading me on to the gurney. I want to say so much, but this labor has reduced me to a surrender deeper than any let-go I have ever fallen to. I am silent, my damp body bulging out from beneath the twisted sarong, with which I’ve tried to wrap myself.

My midwife had pulled her pants off hours ago, as she helped me through contractions, kneeling by the warm pool where I labored. When the sirens approached, she stepped into her jeans, gathered her things, and readied to face a hospital, bright lights, and questions. A rescue from an ambulance was not what she had wanted. I had failed her, just as I was failing my baby.

Humbled on the gurney, I wheel past the remains of a wrinkled, puddled room, the morning sun rising to reveal the night’s pained attempts, and my utter inability.

I’d read the pregnancy books, taken the expensive supplements. Gone to the pre-natal yoga and birthing classes. I’d envisioned the most loving welcome into the world for my son. Candlelight and a warm-water delivery, with a seasoned mid-wife, in the comfort of my own (albeit alternative) home. Organic cotton diapers were ready, and three months of maternity leave lined up. This debacle had started with a plan. Really.

At the time, in Hawaii, birthing at home was technically illegal. As for technicalities, living in a school bus probably was, too. I’d broken the rules, but this wasn’t a mere, fineable infraction. It was a potentially lethal mishap, shaming me with every contraction the ambulance driver asked me to ignore.

“Wait until we get to the hospital.”

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FOOTNOTE:  I will say that my healthy son was born (no C-section), not long after my arrival to the hospital. Though I had hoped for soft candles, and only my partner and midwife, circumstances went differently. Jeb came into the world with plenty of fanfare. Bells and whistles, bright lights, and at least ten people looking on. He’s a thriving 12 year old now…

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Write About a Subculture You Belong To

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

I was the girl living in her Subaru, driving interstate with nomads named “Sunshine” and “Pony.” Eager to camp with friendly freaks, eat communal stew out of a coffee mug at the drum circle.

But fifteen years later, at the three-day music festival on a remote Maui coastline, I’m on the fringe of the fringe-dwellers, agitated in a sea of perma-grins.

Young women skip barefoot over grass, as if gliding on fairy dust, half-dressed and shining. They seem levitated in rapture, humming to themselves and picking flowers for their hair. I’m at my tent, slathering hand sanitizer past my forearms, trying to air out my molding sleeping bag.

Everything’s skewed, even my picturesque view of breaching Humpbacks. They’re blocked by the figures in front of me, a couple contorted in some sort of dual yoga pose, her legs wrapped around his neck, looking as if she’s on the verge of either transcendence or orgasm.

In the converted gymnasium, pods curl around communal pillows in cuddle puddles of family love. Home-brewed Kombucha tea is for sale next to racks of hip outfits, branded perfectly for next year’s Burning Man. A woman tries on a pair of yoga-pants-turned-naughty, sporting a transparent backside, while her friend in fairy wings nods in approval.

Conversations float on the smoke of burning sage and nag champa incense.

“…so the sound harmonics generated from the crystal bowls infuse into the water, changing its molecular structure, clearing negative energy…it’s like the water gets healed…and when you drink it…well, you’ll see. It’s amazing…”

I’m a misfit among misfits, but I’m stuck here (quite literally- they’ve blocked in my rental car with a dented Vanagon, essentially, kissing my bumper). Though I’ve worked to overcome my resistance, I’ve determined that these blissful love bunnies are simply not my people. Yet, they continually insist that they are. The weekend’s mantra is hauntingly chanted, “We are one,” and even though I can wrap my head around the ideal, does that really include the dreadlocked kitchen volunteer who stands scratching his scalp with one hand, while scrambling our breakfast tofu with the other?

2016-04-02_we are one