Meditating with Rhinos

By Helena Kriel

Helena Kriel finds herself in deep personal crisis, where she's forced to ask herself: Where do I belong? After the writers' strike in LA renders her useless and her marriage falls apart, she travels back in Johannesburg. Little does she know that she'll find clarity in the African bush as she volunteers to work with baby rhinos, orphaned by poaching. Using the ancient technique of meditation, Helena finds she can access these broken beings, to connect through nature and find new homes. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melinda Ferguson Books
• Release date: Oct 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781990973161

Helena Kriel

Award winning screenwriter, Helena Kriel is a world traveler, moving between Hollywood and South Africa. She also teaches and takes people on adventures through India. She is the founder of Baby Rhino Rescue, and counts herself happiest when she is in the middle of nowhere with just a rhino for company.    

Book preview

PART ONE

Los Angeles.

SNAKE WISDOM:

SHED THE PAST

CHAPTER 1

Emerald ground

It was an El Niño winter when I stepped onto this ground.

Rain came. And came. And came. The ground was open and untamed. And emerald. The emerald had grown knee high. It bent in the winter wind. I stood beside him surrounded by the ground. So green. And bending.

Emerald in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles, City of Angels, comes creeping in. It comes in patches. The patches become folds and the folds become hillsides. Hillsides. And more hillsides. Until it is emerald all over.

Let’s buy it, he said.

And so we did. Without even thinking.

We bought the emerald ground.

In LA emerald is a short season. The green land becomes yellow, becomes brown.

It is soft and pliant and then it becomes yellow and brown. And it hardens.

The emerald left behind cracked earth. It left behind a single thorny cactus. And a single pepper tree.

I have loved and hated this piece of ground.

I have watched the moon rise full and new over the rocky ridge on this piece of ground.

A tarantula walked across our wedding table on the deck of the house we built on this piece of ground.

I loved him too much.

I hated him too much.

On this piece of ground.

We built a house.

But he was never home.

On this piece of ground.

I asked him one morning to leave. It was a very modern thing. I sat down at his desk, a varnished, important desk, a desk that looked like it belonged to a serious CEO of a big, swanky bank.

I sat down. I opened the computer. I wrote him an email.

I am tired of loving and hating you.

It was categorical.

I made myself some nice, hot tea.

I went outside to sip it.

Ornamental grasses grew up everywhere, paying deep obeisance to the lone cactus and the lone tree.

He came home from endless travels. He was worried.

He said: I can imagine growing old beside you.

You are from the green tribe, I said. I am from the blue tribe. We are from oil and water tribes. We don’t mix.

When the packaging company came, his big, golden twelve-foot buddha was bound into white sheets and exited the house, feet first, like a corpse going towards a pyre.

His shoes. His shirts. All his things.

His assistant had a list. She ticked things off.

One. Two. Three.

I stood and looked over the ground while they boxed him up and shipped him out.

My dog didn’t care. She settled down to sleep.

The moon didn’t care. It rose.

The coyotes didn’t care. They yipped and yapped.

The house didn’t care. It settled into night.

I stood and looked over my dark ground.

How are you going to keep this place? he wanted to know.

I don’t know, I said, but I’m going to try.

Good luck with that, he said. It’s so ridiculous, it’s actually funny.

The house was half full, emptied of him. And all his things.

Step by step. I walked through the emptied-out house.

And got into bed. And lay looking out of the window, over the ground I had no idea how to keep.

All notions of I belong and "I belong with you!" vanished.

Like the wind.

CHAPTER 2

Rings

I stand watching him shave. He stares at himself in the mirror, his face contorting around the blade. The green hills outside the windows reflect in the glass around this face. It’s so beautiful. How can we have managed such a train smash in a place like this?

His glossy hair is short, all buzz cut, austere and hard, like a man in the military, someone who should be carrying an AK47 strapped across his back, ready to head into rocky combat zones, dusty and dangerous, not a tree in sight. Instead he will have his backpack. And his acolytes will follow him into the high Himalayas, to learn from him and his collection of sadhus, clad in orange robes, their nails grown into corkscrew spirals, hair and beards tangled and long.

He remains alluring. His dark, Indian eyes, his long eyelashes. Chemistry functions still, and I could press myself against him, put all this chaos behind us.

Do you want me to take you to the airport? I ask instead.

No, he says.

How are you always so sure of your positions? I ask. I want to fight with him now. There’s still so much emotional madness.

I’m flying out of Long Beach. It’s far. His eyes find mine in the mirror.

We stare at each other. This is crazy, he says. Let’s just stop it. We can. I still love you.

He turns to me, opens his arms, and I walk into them, as though this is the beginning, not the end. My body and his. They have their language. Our bodies want to say: can you guys get out of here and just leave this to us? I fold into him, as though every curve on me was designed to fit into every plane on him. We stand, locked. We don’t want to unlock. I want to say: Don’t go.

Don’t go. The sentence that sums us up. The sentence I have uttered more frequently than any other.

We could still make it work, he says into my hair. He smells of rose-fragranced toner and toothpaste. I press into him harder: the man who has taken over my life for seven impossible years, the man I have thought more about than any other human, the man who has truly trashed me.

How? I ask, pulling back slightly. I could just say: Okay! Let’s try it one last time. Instead I say: I always take you to the airport when you’re going away for a long time, cementing the decision. There is no going back.

I’m going away forever. That’s a really long time. He crosses into the bedroom where his luggage is stacked. What do you want to do with the rings?

I hesitate. The rings. Be mine. Belong to me. Belong with me. You and me. Forever. That souped-up fairy tale, drummed up by religion and society, to make it clean and neat, to make love, sex, commitment controllable.

I’m going to throw mine into the sea, he says, patting down the contents of his case. On the way to the airport, it’ll be easy to just stop at the beach. I’m going to throw mine in.

That belongs in Hallmark Hall of Fame, I say.

Whatever, he says, pressing his toiletry bag down, into his clothes.

I’m not going to throw my ring into the sea. I’m going to throw the Starry Llama into the sea.

The Starry Llama: the crystal he gave me seven years ago, the crystal that began this whole misadventure. He doesn’t respond, just zips up his case. Zip-Zip, the sound I have come to loathe. It’s so definite: no messing with that zip. It’s like death.

My pit bull Bushy, our dog, the dog we rescued together, after she was nearly euthanised, stares at us from her cushion throne in the closet. She knows the humans aren’t happy. She sighs; it’s a mournful sigh. This is a home of unhappiness.

Sorry, my doggie, I say.

Fog rolls in from the ocean. Outside everything is white and wet and cold. Ordinarily he would stack logs for a fire, placing them carefully atop kindling, would light the twigs, Agni-das, a servant of the flames, and have it blazing in minutes.

He straightens. Good luck on finding someone else. Try find a man who could spoil you, who has the money to give you everything I can.

Money isn’t everything.

"Okay, find some writer type who sits around at home, waiting for the phone to ring and the world to discover him, an artist who is having a rich process. I know there are a number of men just waiting for you to be available."

He pats his pockets: passport, ticket, wallet, then walks across the wooden floor of the living room, the case clickety-clacking behind him like a good, subservient wife who follows him everywhere, no questions asked. He takes in the view down the canyon once more, seeming to scan it, like Ahab searching for his nemesis. I follow him too. Except that I am not subservient.

He walks outside to where the town car is waiting. He turns to me one last time, half smiles, half grimaces, an indistinguishable emotion, a blur of love and hate and confusion and sadness. No other woman will ever exist for me like you have, he says.

My stomach twists. I could still imagine growing old beside him.

Bye, Bushy, he says to the little pit bull standing by my side. Tell Mom to look after you, okay?

He gets into the car. You hurt me, he says.

You hurt me, I answer.

So here we have it, a driveway full of hurt people.

He winds the window up, as though to block me out and put an end to this. I watch as the image of him sitting in the car is slowly replaced by the image of me standing outside. It reflects back at me from the tinted glass. Me facing me.

I watch as the car crunches slowly to the top of the driveway, turning left into the road, vanishing towards the future, here then gone. I cannot move. The day is warm and full of the promise of heat and pleasure. The swallows fly to the mud nests, lumped together like irregular adobe igloos, in the corners of the house. I wish I were a swallow with a simple swallow life. They belong here and fly across oceans to return in spring. They will be in this garden next year and in ten years’ time. I wonder, where I will be? Mexican feather grass sways from the hills, like long, blonde hair that needs a wash. Tears slide from the corners of my eyes. Because it’s so fucked.

I gaze out across the land, this beautiful piece of heaven. The guinea hens are chasing one another around a concrete Buddha in the garden. I let the sun warm the top of my head while it heats the lizard’s blood and the statue’s stone arms. The grasses yield to the breeze. Perhaps if I watch long enough, I will remember how to surrender and be at ease. It still lurks, somewhere down deep. The pepper trees catch the light. What radiance. Maybe radiance still lurks also. Down deep.

Zen wisdom would say: Keep it simple. Life must be simple. But life isn’t simple now. Jewish wisdom says: The wealthy man is happy with his lot. He relishes what is! But how do you relish this? Buddhism says: Life is suffering. Okay. That I get. I walk back inside.

It’s so quiet in here.

I move through the house, those endless, open spaces. This house is haunted. I am its walking spectre, its sorry ghost. My dog follows behind. She’s forlorn. A ghost dog. I go into the bedroom, and into the immense closet. I stand looking at his side: adventure clothes, endless cargo pants and hardy shirts hang neatly. My eye roves. His other clothes: the Prada, the Gucci, the expensive designer fabrics, the jackets and shoes. I run my hands along them.

Could it have turned out differently? I turn to my side of the closet: my swish Hollywood clothes hang all neat and forlorn, designer too. He liked to treat us to expensive clothes. Well, no more of that. It’s going to be The Gap going forward.

Bathroom next.

He has left his toothbrush behind. It pokes up out of an Indian brass holder, bristles gone sideways with too much brushing. I contemplate it. My mother kept my father’s toothbrush in a green glass by his basin for years after he died. She could not throw it out. I pick up the toothbrush. And I dump it. I get out of my clothes and into the shower. I want to be washed clean. But the water falls on my head, a storm: like ice and fire.

CHAPTER 3

Ringless

I have eaten too much, looking for comfort. I toast good bread to have with an avocado and unfiltered olive oil. The avocado is a flawless lime-green body in a perfect, dark-green shell, a piece of the world’s beauty, but I eat not relishing any of it; it could be cardboard. I have not dressed and now it is night. I have not made my bed. I slip back between the rumpled sheets. At least there is some peace in sleep. I lie in bed. I wish it could be night forever.

I hear noise in the house. My dog barks. My heart hammers. Who? What? My dog goes charging out and into the living room, and then all barking stops. And I hear voices.

Alan, Neville and Mel come into the room.

Get out of bed, you lazy woman, Alan says. He holds up bags of takeout. Your friends have come to rescue you from your pathetic sadness.

I hold up my hand. Ringless.

Welcome back to the real world, Neville says.

Whatever that is, I mumble.

It’s the good, fun world, without the misery. Come on! Alan says.

I get out of bed and follow my friends to the kitchen. They move around like they own the place.

Alan sets the food down. I wanna trash him, but I won’t.

He wasn’t a bad guy, Mel says.

He was just gone, Neville says. He was absent.

Alan dishes out. Even when he was present he was absent.

Come on, eat, Neville says. You’re not going to get all thin on us. All alone and palely loitering.

I’m not pale. I help myself to the sad-looking curry. This curry is pale. I’m nearly broke, but not pale!

The day is dying outside.

We’re sleeping over, Alan says. Just so you know you’re not alone.

We eat.

And why are you such a sucker for charisma, anyway? Alan asks with a mouth full. "Charisma is toxic. Next time you find anyone charismatic, walk out of the room! Run! Run out of the room."

I sit at the table. I cannot move. I obsess about him. He goes into the activity of the outside world: six weeks in high mountains, with his acolytes, leading them, like the great Pied Piper he is. Two hundred acolytes – who will follow him across pristine National Geographic landscapes, Nanda Devi, that Himalayan peak – with bottomless packs that carry their lives.

Why are you suffering like this? Alan wants to know. Meditating, sitting in meditation caves in India, so why can’t you calm your mind down?

You’ve meditated in caves? Neville asks. In India?

She’s meditated all over LA, Alan says. And she’s still fucked.

She’s not that fucked, Mel says.

She’s pretty fucked, Alan says.

Neville makes a fire, and they get ready to lounge. I leave them in the orange semi-dark and go to the bedroom. Meditation, silence, whatever, I am sharp, not smooth, broken, and in spectacular tatters, rags from the remnants of some expensive silk outfit that once was. Out there on the hills beyond the large windows there are lights. Other families are going about their business, rooms illuminated. Dinner. Homework. In other houses men and women are getting their children ready for bed. And then they will rise and get their children ready for school. The neighbours have a ritual. The husband, a very pleasant-looking chap, with a blue-eyed dazzle, takes the young daughter to school. The mother, a comfortable woman, who never wears heels or make-up, always follows her affable husband out to the driveway, holding their six-month-old baby boy. In another lifetime I would have been that woman. What a comfortable life. No questions. No unreasonable dreams. In another universe I am that happy, comfortable, woman, standing by as my dependable husband takes my child to school.

I reach across to the bedside table and pick up my Tao Te Ching: this ancient Chinese masterpiece written by Lao Tse and translated by Stephen Mitchell. It’s bent out of shape with all the reading. I turn to my most dog-eared chapter and the verse that haunts me.

Be content with what you have;

rejoice in the way things are.

When you realise there is nothing lacking,

the whole world belongs to you.

There is nothing lacking. There is nothing lacking. I repeat it. There is nothing lacking.

Except there is …

Meditate! Okay.

I sit, cross-legged and concentrate on the mantra I was given years ago by a monk I travelled with in India. I think relentlessly for half an hour. Dinosaurs crash around in here. I sit. I meditate. The dinosaurs keep on crashing. I know one is not supposed to judge or measure one’s meditation. I know I’m not supposed to yoke to any thoughts, but let them come, let them go. But I am yoking. Don’t react. But I’m reacting. Just witness. Well, that I’m not managing either. So much for that.

I pick the Starry Llama off the bedside table: the hexagonal crystal shines, all the twinkles of star dust inside, like the cosmos caught in crystal. Tomorrow I will throw the Starry Llama into the sea. And end this seven-year cycle. Goodbye, Starry Llama. I love the Starry Llama and I hold it tight. It takes me back. Takes me way-way-way back.

CHAPTER 4

Slow soaking

It is raining. The morning rain slow soaks into the afternoon.

I am at a Zen monastery, here to do my research on a film I am writing. In the story, teenagers turn into animals. I have no idea what this means, but I am about to find out. Who wouldn’t want to turn into a wolf or a leopard? Inhabit an animal self! I am amongst seventy-five advanced students. The master, an Indian gent, is someone highly regarded in Tantric ways. Apparently turning into your animal self is but one of them. His workshop is closed: for advanced students only. I am not a student and not advanced. I send him a long letter, information on the project, the producers and all the potential here, and promise to sit silently at the back of his class, simply observing.

I expect a wise old prune type, a bit like Ghandi.

He is not old. Or wrinkled. He is tall. He wears a black chadar, tossed round his shoulders, draping across his back. He has three lines of ash on his forehead. He’s elemental, with sleek hair they should use in shampoo commercials. Very white teeth.

Histrionic description. Unacceptable. Start over. With discipline ...

In a word?

Primal.

He stuns me. I want to flee. I do flee. He’s too much. He walks into a room and the fire reaches higher, the coyotes in the distance are suddenly operatic and a log explodes into sparks. Magnetic, in constant motion, fun.

Histrionic. Description.

But larger than life. For sure.

He presides over fire pujas at night, in the cold. He sways as his students chant mantras and bang drums. He pours ghee into the fire, amber snakes that feed the flames; his students smash coconuts on rocks, throwing in the milk, rice, twigs, flowers, petitioning the Gods for help: remove obstacles, bring prosperity, increase happiness, develop wealth. The sacrificial fire welcomes all prayers. The fire lights the planes of his face orange. The students stare at him, as though he exists in some elemental place inside their longing. The fire splutters and cracks as the logs catch. The skies are dark and clear and cold, with the moon pitched and ready to slip through the sky like a cup.

I sit silently in the workshops, at the back. I behave, but when he quotes a poem by heart: – There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, Breathe into Me. Close the language door and Open the love-window. The moon won’t use the door, only the window – and says it’s by Rilke, I cannot help myself.

No. Actually, it’s by Rumi, I say. And he turns his eyes on me.

When he realises I am the screenwriter, the one who wrote the letter, he invites me to his cottage for the afternoon. He is available to answer whatever questions I might have. I arrive, running through the rain. The air smells of earth, of rich black loam; the moss is swollen and thick and drips from the trees, could be wrung out like a sponge. The sky has given in and pours down without stop. The students dart from building to building in their rustling rain jackets, so neon. The umbrellas are stacked at doors, leaving puddles; they catch the wind and tumble, flying down the pathways, scattering into the fields. The mud is thick; it coats shoes and leaves mud tracks down passages, like animals have made river crossings. The birds chirrup from inside their shelter in the dripping trees.

It is semi-dark and warm inside his cottage. The windows are frosted over. An afternoon fire burns in the grate.

Would you like some port? he asks as I enter, wet, and shake off like a dog. You got something against umbrellas? he wants to know.

They’re kind of dull, I answer.

He brings me a towel. Or would you prefer to drip dry?

I take the towel, ruffle it through my hair. I peel off my rain jacket and set it against a wall where it retains its shape, dripping into a puddle.

Want to sit? Or you can stand. My couch won’t take it personally.

I sit and he pours port into two small glasses.

So, you’ve come with questions?

I get ready with pad, and pen.

You can safely come a little closer, you know, he says. I’m not dangerous. I am not going to do anything untoward, like make you dematerialise. He takes me in, from a closer vantage point now.

"What prompted this incredible journey you’re on? You’ve travelled such rough terrain. You’ve found secrets that sustain those who come to hear from you. Are you on a search for yourself? What do you want? More than anything?" I ask.

What do I want? The same as everyone else on this planet, to be loved. I’m a teacher. And I’m a man also. He regards me. His eyes are kind of green and kind of grey. They are also hard to read, like mercury, refracting light.

That’s what you want? You’re sure of that?

What do you want? He regards me.

Let me ask the questions, if that’s okay. I hesitate. Male lion, waits. I know it’s impossible for male humans to get. But male lions wait. And female lions lead.

Right. Though I don’t know if the analogy holds, this isn’t a mating dance.

You’re right. Sorry.

No need to apologise. Go ahead. I am in your hands. You are the one with the pen and pad. There is a law at function here; you are the interviewer and I am your subject.

Yes. Right. Law and order. So, can we get back to what you want?

What I want? He pours more port. Is my wanting love too basic for you?

But why? Why this singular path? This life? How come? I hesitate. When you grew up, didn’t you want to become something reliable?

This isn’t a reliable life?

Do you think it is?

It’s the only reliable life.

I write it down. I don’t know what he’s talking about.

Is this the journalist or the lioness asking? Or perhaps the journalist is the lioness.

Didn’t we agree that the analogy doesn’t pertain?

I hold his eyes.

Whatever the case, lionesses don’t use pens.

I put the pen down.

Good. No pens. Maybe we can have a conversation. More port? He pours. You’re tricky.

Why?

You’re playing differently, that’s why.

I’m not playing.

The rain rains on, washing the windows. He looks at the green blur beyond the window for a long time, then turns back to me.

So, why don’t you like umbrellas? he asks.

Because I think protection is overrated.

That’s right. South African. So, you expose yourself to danger? You have no limits?

When you grow up in a dangerous place, you don’t stop at lights at night ’cause someone could hijack you, follow you home and rob you blind, kill you for your cell phone; when you live behind walls and most of the people you know have been held up, including your mother who has been robbed three times at gun point, you kind of toughen up.

I can smell the rain through the glass, the fruity cut of it. The forest beyond sways in a green smudge. The quiet in the room sucks everything towards itself. Only the fire crackling is audible. The fact of his presence makes everything striking. I feel the intensity of it. Of him. He lifts his eyes. We stare at one another, our eyes like snags, like tangles and thorns. We catch and hang from each other’s eyes. The room gets darker. We don’t move. He gets up, restocks the fire, crouching beside it, feeding it like it’s an animal, it burns higher.