The Returning Way
Table of contents
  1. The floor
  2. Attention and Love
  3. The Ten-Second Returni
  4. The Sittingii
  5. Metta and Tongleniii
  6. One Thing Eateniv
  7. The God Unfedv
  8. The Ruined Ordinaryvi
  9. The Bird Gatevii
  10. The Open Windowviii
  11. Boundaries and Thresholds
  12. The Hearth Boundaryix
  13. When Intensity Speaksx
  14. True Namingxi
  15. The Two Shoresxii
  16. The Rite of the Near Otherworldxiii
  17. The Width of the Roomxiv
  18. Relation and Repair
  19. Feed the Guest, Keep the Doorxv
  20. The Bowl of Namesxvi
  21. The Watchxvii
  22. The Mending Tablexviii
  23. Who Answers to Youxix
  24. Be Beside Mexx
  25. The Webxxi
  26. The Mirror at Four in the Morningxxii
  27. Coming Back Inxxiii
  28. Direction and Uselessness
  29. The Letter to the Guardianxxiv
  30. The Star Ledgerxxv
  31. The Map Without a Permitxxvi
  32. The Feast of Enoughxxvii
  33. The last pages
  34. Other ways throughxxviii
  35. When the practice must endxxix
  36. A blessingxxx
Practices

Coming Back In

The point is to come back from a long absence deliberately, instead of arriving and pretending you never left.

Use this after the ward, the prison, the months in bed, the season underground, the country you had to leave, the year you do not remember well. Use it when you are already home and the house does not fit. A year is also an absence: if you did not go anywhere and the year went without you, this still works.

Do it on the first day you can, or a year late. Late is normal.

iThe threshold. Go out and come back in through the door you left by, if it still exists. If it does not, use any door and say which one it stands for.

If you cannot go out, the threshold is any edge you can cross: the bedroom door, the edge of the bed, the line where the carpet meets the lino. Cross it outward, then cross it back. The crossing is the thing, not the distance.

Stop on the doorstep. Do not walk straight through. Say out loud where you have been, in plain words and without the version you have been giving people.

Then say the date, and go in.

iiThe name. Say your own name out loud in the room you used to be in most. If somebody else is home, say it to them instead. If nobody is, say it to the room.

iiiWhat kept going. Walk through and find the things that continued without you. The plant that lived or did not. The post. The repair somebody made. The food in the cupboard that is not how you would have bought it. Say each one out loud as you find it — not gratefully, just accurately. Somebody else's hands were here.

Find one job that kept getting done while you were gone, and do it now: the trash, the dishes, the bird feeder, the bill. Not to repay it. To rejoin it.

ivThe first meal. Eat something in the place you used to eat. Anything. If you cannot cook, a sandwich standing up is the meal. If somebody will eat with you, ask them — this is a good thing to ask for and a hard one, and the asking is part of it.

vWhat does not resume. Say out loud the things that are not going back to how they were. The job. The body. The person who is not here. The thing you could do before.

Returning is not resuming. The time you were gone is gone and nothing about coming back buys it. Say that too, if it is true.

viOne true thing. Tell one person one true thing about where you were. One. Not the whole account, not the version that manages their face. When you have said it, stop talking about it.

Then do the next ordinary thing, which is now just your life.