When I Stumbled Upon Mindfulness: A Story

In 1993, I moved to New York City from South Carolina. After graduating from college the spring before, I was considering a move to Asheville, but then a friend of mine decided to live in New York after a summer internship there. She returned for a visit wearing a baby doll dress and 70s thrift store boots telling us about thai food, sushi, and how beautiful Haitians are. With her new edge and obscure used books in hand, I watched her float out of my apartment to go back to the city, and I realized then that I needed to live in New York.

So, I got two jobs, saved up $2000, rented a Chevy Caprice, loaded it up with as much stuff as I possibly could along with two other people. They dropped me off at my friend's apartment in February, and I had never been there in my life. I'm from South Carolina, and at that point I had been to Atlanta a couple of times, to Florida, and to just outside Long Beach, CA for about two weeks. I had in my mind living a 60s renaissance of jazz clubs, bohemian life, berets, and poetry. I was going to be a poet in New York. That would be my job.


Needless to say, that lasted about a year and a half. During that time, I did go to jazz clubs and to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe where I read my poetry during open mic. I fell in deep, unrequited love with an architect, and worked temp jobs all over the city. I met Merce Cunningham without knowing who he was, but I did know I was being introduced to someone very important. I was in culture shock. I was overwhelmed by everything in the city all the time. I fell in love with the city and still love it now. I went to MoMA on the free nights and looked at a lot of the world's greatest artworks. I was broke and got my heart broken. I was in a stampede, got rejected resumes one too many times, fell on my butt every day in the two winters that I was there; I got lost and knew it was time to leave. I tried hanging in there anyway, but it got even worse. I had to leave.

In December of 1994, I was back at my mother's place in Tamassee, SC out in the woods. I had FAILED, and I had fallen one too many times. Right before I left the city, one day I could not get up from the couch where I was sitting. For a few panicked minutes, I could not move my legs. Once I did get up, the pain was excruciating, and I could barely walk. It took everything I had to walk into my room, which was not very far away. In my room in my mother's house everything I had envisioned for myself was gone along with being able to walk out my apartment and walk the streets of one of the greatest cities on earth. I had to start over, and I had to heal my hips. In my mind, it was like I was flailing on an open, stormy sea with no raft, and I had to do something.


While I was in the city, someone at one of my jobs invited me to the Shambhala Center, but I didn't go because I thought it might be a cult. Still, I was exposed to eastern thought. I picked up books by Alan Watts from the guys who sold used books on blankets on the sidewalks. I came home with a Taoist primer on meditation, yoga, and healthy living and began practicing yoga from that and meditation soon after.


I left South Carolina for New York with the intention of never going back, especially to the boonies of the upstate. But there I was where even if I told someone that I met Merce Cunningham, they wouldn't know who he was or would really care. There I was where people looked askance at the idea of a poetry reading or would cheekily suggest that I become a teacher. There I was returned to my mother sick, depleted, and broken, and it was obvious to anyone who looked at me. I refused to let anyone give me suggestions on what to do about my state. I was determined to find my own way because what I saw in many adult lives thus far was very little fulfillment let alone happiness. I knew how vulnerable I was, and that I could possibly be even more vulnerable to someone or to people who shared some sliver of a spiritual view with me. I knew that at this time I could only trust myself for guidance through this, and I knew that there was a way through.

Side note: Just in case you forgot or didn't know, in late 1994 the internet might have been mentioned amongst people in the know, but it was something out there. All computers at home were desktops with the latest ones that took the hard floppy disks. A modem was an actual phone connected to the computer, and like the internet, it was something only smart, rich people had.


I knew I needed to do something to settle the storms in my mind and taking in information from people was not the way to do it. So, I decided for two weeks to go without reading, music, or television, and I even limited my interactions with my mother and any visitors who came to her house. The people around me at the time were standing back anyway, so that was not too difficult. Plus, where I was, there were not very many people. In this two weeks, I meditated for the first time, and it was a candle meditation.

What happened? I found a flash of relief, a moment of clarity, and I knew it was something that was there the whole time. I just needed to learn how to recognize it. Just recently I discovered words for what I found. I found the moment between thought and action, whether that be word or action. I found that there is a place where there is always freedom to choose, and even when I get caught up in the whirl of my mind or in the course of events that result from acting or speaking, I can get back to this space between mind and doing. This place is mindfulness. I stumbled upon mindfulness, and that was what brought me home to myself and still does to this day.