The Bardo State

by Les

Lately I’ve realized that I’m in a bardo state, that state of being neither here nor there, of being in transition, the no-place of flux. In a sense, one is in a perpetual such state, but often there is a clear identity—work, thing, person—that has an anchoring effect, something reassuring, something that locates your ship in the ocean. These days I’ve set sail again, owing to a truth-telling conversation last week that allowed me to let go of something.

Nature abhors a vacuum, Murakami observes in 1Q84. My recent confrontation with the void has gifted me with a lot of energy. I have a number of projects lined up, and frankly I’m  excited (though sad sometimes, missing what is gone). I suppose one of the skills I’ve acquired as a 30-something is the ability to recognize a real crisis. There is a story that is done—or a chapter, anyway—and when I’m not grieving, I’m actually feeling… happy. I remember what a friend of mine had said, more than a decade ago: Kung may iiwanan ka, may pupuntahan ka rin.

Benedict Cumberbatch as the great detective in BBC's "Sherlock"

One of my bardo projects is to return to blogging. I used to write ropes and ropes of prose, thick coils of them snaking around the Internet like Rapunzel’s hair. But at some point, when I thought a change of style was in order, I cut most of it off, and published mostly poetry. But now I’m trying my hand at prose again. The return to this manner of blogging is also my way of practicing the sort of writing required by fiction, which obviously gives one a larger canvas—an entire universe, really—that demands to be populated by plot, character, dialogue, setting, etc. Having returned to the MFA program—after a break of more than two years!—I had enrolled this term in a special class in fiction writing. My teacher is the award-winning novelist Katrina Tuvera, author of The Jupiter Effect. So far, I’m in the midst of writing a short story—a Sherlock Holmes pastiche—about, well, a Sherlock Holmes aficionado who catches a serial killer of blue-eyed men. Creating a fictional world feels so heady. I haven’t quite mastered the form yet: it might take years, and many, many thousands of pages. But I feel good about this direction.

Maybe one of my bardo lessons this time around is, it’s time I tried my hand at being happy. I’m thinking maybe I had spent most of my 20s not allowing me to look away from despair, as though it were some kind of existential duty. Or maybe I was just too busy looking for a justification for inner storms. Perhaps because of this, my external world necessarily became stormy. Now it’s time to enjoy the blue sky and the invincible sun—after Camus’ “invincible summer”!