Splinter Selves
A travel writer, a Broadway star and a Buddhist nun dash across a train track.
They come to me sometimes.
First, the solo traveler. The one who continues to wander the roads and beaches and forests of this world with pen, notebook and solitude her steadiest companions. Sand between her toes, dirt under her nails, sun-browned arms, wind-tangled hair, and the exquisite ache of loneliness forever pulsing beneath her skin. She rattles along in sweltering buses, trains and vans, closing her eyes against motion sickness, her sweaty body pressed against others whose names she’ll never know. She never marries or has kids. She connects deeply with people in each place she visits—shares food and laughter and stories and friendship and occasionally love and then moves on.
- What’s with the pen and notebook? Wouldn’t she need a laptop? If she’s a writer, how does she file her stories?
- Look, this is how she comes to me. I see her as I left her. No doubt she has a laptop and cell phone these days. But this is her essence, so will you please hush?
Next is the one who chooses NYU or Carnegie Mellon for college, instead of Oberlin. She does the BFA thing, cultivates the holy trinity—acting, singing, dance—rising early, rehearsing late. She moves to NYC after graduation to pursue a stage career, If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere, playing in her head. And yes, she’s just a girl from Kansas, but she’s got gumption, dammit, and she’s ready to do what it takes. She puts herself out there every day: auditioning, chatting breezily with the folks behind the table, volunteering as a reader for casting agents, attending all the right events (and a few of the wrong ones), walking right up and introducing herself, handing out cards and headshots, saying yes to every gig, temping to pay the bills. And yes, there are days when she stuffs a pillow over her face so her roommates won’t hear her sobbing, mouth stretched wide in a silent howl because she lost the role she thought would be her break. Still, she gets up the next day and does it again and again until something pops. Then she gets a better agent, the work becomes regular, and though she’s no superstar, she’s a working actor. She’s got health insurance. She’s leading the life she chooses, and most of the time, that’s enough.
Then there’s the one who does all this in LA instead of New York.
- Come off it. You were never gonna go to LA. You’re a hippy chick! You didn’t shave your legs between the ages of 19 and 27. You hate the gym. And you still can’t walk in heels.
- Okay, first of all, if I hadn’t gone to Oberlin, I might never have stopped shaving my legs. And secondly, shut the fuck up! She exists somewhere. She knows what the game is, and she makes a choice to put on that mask and give it a shot. And if there’s a place where she gives up and heads back to the Bay Area, somewhere else she sticks it out. See her? There she is now, polishing her Oscars.
There’s the one who, when she leaves for West Africa, tells Richard to wait for her, instead of saying she wants to be free to do as she pleases and he should do the same. This one decides he’s the love of her life and returns to him when she comes back to the States a year later; they marry and have children. And though their relationship isn’t perfect—what relationship is?—their love is tender and strong and deep enough to carry them through the craggy peaks of her anger, the freezing lakes of his withdrawal, and the sloggy switchbacks of childcare and groceries and dishes and laundry and car and cashflow troubles and day-to-night-to-day-again life.
The one who inseminates with anonymous donor sperm and raises a child with her bestie Elena in the sweet collective house in Bernal Heights, their children growing up as siblings, a year apart in age.
The one who goes to journalism school, pushes past her fear of cold-calling and becomes a foreign correspondent, using her language skills in countries where Spanish, French, and German are spoken, picking up a few other languages along the way.
The one who teaches English in China after college, then goes on to get a PhD in East Asian studies and becomes an academic.
The one who gets run over by a train in Spain on her way to Morocco. She misses the stop for Figueres, where she planned to visit the Dalí Museum, and gets off at the next station in a tiny town beside a barley field. She walks across the tracks in her sandals, carrying her heavy backpack, and heads toward the road, thinking to hitchhike. She hears a train and, turning, sees it speeding toward the station in the direction she wants to go. She starts running back over the tracks towards the platform. But this train isn’t stopping. In fact, it’s approaching much faster than she thought. She trips and falls, and the train, unable to stop in time, splits her body into three pieces—blood and organs sticking to the tracks. The train grinds to a halt, delaying the passengers for several hours. Some are distraught. All are profoundly inconvenienced. Her parents, back in the US, never recover from the grief.
- This one visits you?
- Sometimes. In dreams, I relive the moment when I stepped onto the platform and the train sped by not two seconds later later, its hot breath plastering my sundress to my body. One false step and this would’ve been me.
The one who becomes a wilderness guide, leading young people into woods, up mountains and down rivers.
The one who becomes a grassroots organizer, eventually running for local office.
The one who takes vows at Plum Village, Thich Nhat Hanh’s community in France, and becomes a Buddhist nun. Most days she still thinks she’s a terrible meditator, even many years later. But once in a while there’s a moment or an hour or even a day when her mind is still and clear as a mountain lake, and she is at peace.
- Hmmm...I feel like these all have something in common, though I can’t quite name what it is.
- Of course they do. They’re my splinter lives. What they have in common is me. Yours will be different, because they grow out of you—your personality, desires, genetic makeup, the circumstances you come into. Think of it this way: When you’re born, you’re like a train running along a track. As an infant, all you can do is roll in the direction you’re facing. As you get older, the track begins to fork. You arrive, over and over, at places where you get to make choices. So you begin to splinter. One of you goes this way, another that way. A third may go off the rails. These splinter selves take on lives of their own, and the splinters have splinters, so the longer you live, the more of you there are.
- Then doesn’t each splintering make you smaller?
- Only if you let it.
This one sits on the couch in her family room in Michigan, in a cozy house beneath a pearlescent sky with snow piled up outside, three dogs snoring at her feet, a fire in the fireplace and colorful lights strung up against the winter gloom. Her computer sits on her lap, while her fingers dance across the keys. She has two sons. She’s separated from her husband but feels fortunate that they still love each other dearly and remain close friends. She thinks, sometimes, of a Native American proverb that Becca Anderson, a girl she grew up with, shared at their ninth grade graduation from South Junior High School in Lawrence, Kansas: Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail. She tries to live this way, carving her own path, step by step, and when she takes the time to notice this, her heart beats against her ribs and she remembers she loves her life.
- And when the others come to her?
- She welcomes them. She’s glad they’re out there, doing their thing.
- Is she you?
- Not quite. But I’m working on it.
***
I remember when I first heard that it took the Buddha 100,000 lifetimes to achieve enlightenment. It was such a relief. Well then, I thought, I’ve got time. For all I know, this could be my very first life.
I remember Molly and me grooving to the Indigo Girls’ song Galileo on the way home from the California Shakespeare Festival, where we worked as actors. All summer long, we played that song over and over in my car as we careened through the Caldecott Tunnel and over the Bay Bridge, singing How long till my soul gets it right? at the top of our lungs, laughing most of the time, but crying sometimes, too. I loved Molly more than she loved me, but no matter. Somewhere she loves me back.
Let’s return for a moment to the Buddhist community of Plum Village. I remember a meditation session there, in which I understood in my body for the first time the idea of no separation. I didn’t just understand, but actually became the notion that although we move through the world in separate bodies, with separate story lines, underneath that relative reality is an absolute reality in which we are all connected, offshoots of a single life force. In that moment, any trace of jealousy, of wanting to do what someone else was doing or have what someone else had, evaporated. All biases and dislikes evaporated too, and I thought, I have been that. I have done that.
In that moment, I knew something so large it cannot be contained in words. I knew it, and then it was gone.
Somewhere, somehow, I know it still
All photos in this post were taken during my present life, in the following places: 1. Dogon Country, Mali, West Africa (yes, that’s me). 2. Performing in “Scotland Road” at The Old Globe Theatre, San Diego. 3. Southern Taiwan, as part of a storytelling bike tour sponsored by the Yunlin Story House. 4. Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism, near Bordeaux, France. 5. On the back of a truck in the Matagalpa region of Nicaragua. `
Writing is my best friend. I tell people my fingers are the smartest part of me, because when they’re moving across the keyboard or the page, they tell me what I think, what I feel and what I didn’t know I knew. My Off-Leash Writing Workshops and Memoir, Fiction, and Personal Essay Workshops are designed to help you discover yourself on the page. Stay tuned for new sessions starting in March. I also work with people privately. Email tanya@offleashwriting.com for more info.