May I tell you a story? I'm already in your house, already sitting on your bed and drinking your tea so might as well, right?
1There once lived a woman I visited, who wasn't unlike myself actually. She spent much of her life in transit, not grounding in any one town, city or neighborhood for very long. All along her journey, staying here and there, she dreamt of one day having a home, a humble but beautiful place of her own making. Having spent so much of her life as a guest herself in many different situations, whenever she dreamt of a home, it always came with a space for others to be as well.
And so it was: a Guest House, simple, round, but comfortable. A place for journeyers finding their way to feel welcome, to come and rest and be. She took care to pick out the softest sheets and carved a sturdy bedframe out of wood. Every day from spring to fall she picked fresh flowers to put in the vase on the night stand and almost always left a tray of milk, honey and warm bread.
She couldn’t have known what she didn’t know.
Her first guest, a grief-stricken man with matted hair and a chunk missing out of his nose stayed a couple of nights. Then on the third night, he ran off with the vase, tray and a blanket under his arm.
A woman came shortly after that, having just escaped a long partnership. By day she was pleasant and kind, but in her night terrors she turned violent, and tore the soft sheets on the bed to pieces.
A young person came to stay, lost and anxious. When he left, the woman found the posts of the wooden bed chewed through.
Another guest, who recently lost their job, set fire to the window curtains one night.
Another guest, turned away from her family of origin, dug a hole right through the floor…
…which made way for her next guest to flood the foundation with his own turmoil.
“Enough”, said the woman.
(“Enough” is generally my cue.)
When I arrived to the Guest House, the welcome sign was torn down, the hedges leading to the door overgrown, and the woman herself looked a mess. A mess, but my goddess she could not have looked more beautiful to me.
I came upon her hacking away at weeds that were making their way through the floorboards of the house she had once took such care to build. I frightened her a little when I knocked on the door frame.
“Can I help you?”, she asked.
“That's funny, I was about to ask you the same thing. I heard on my travels of this place - a welcoming space to stay run by a beautiful woman next door.”
“I'm sorry, but the guest house is closed. I really am sorry but I can't help you”, she said to me.
“Ok, sure”, I replied, “but ummm, well, can I help you?”
I walked over to the tall weed she was hacking at and wound it through my fingers. In a few moment’s time, it quickly browned, withered, then disintegrated through the cracks from which it came, leaving in the wake of its short life a puff of dust and a sweet, sweet smell.
Less than amused, she turned to me and said:
“Get out.”
“Well for a host, you have a lot to learn about hospitality,” I joked.
“Look, I know who you are and I - I - well frankly I don’t want you here, ok? So please would you just leave?”
She walked over to another weed.
“I'll leave,” I said, “if you just let me help you, ok?”
I could tell her knife arm was tired, so I put my hand on that shoulder.
“Let me do it.
Put down the knife.
Let me do it.”
She watched the same withering process from over my shoulder, said nothing.
“Please, sit,” I told her. She did sit hesitantly on the bed.
When I finished and the room was empty it somehow looked worse than before.
She began to cry.
“I just…I was trying…I don't understand what I… I had dreamt of this for so long I thought… I took such care…”
I took her gesturing hands from the air and held them gently in my own.
“Let me do it,” I said.
“I just -”
“Let me do it.”
“I can’t,” she said, “I can’t do it.”
“Of course you can’t. You can’t revive this place. And you can’t destroy it with your humans hands.
So let me do it.
I know you think with your human sight that by closing the doors to the Guest House you can end this. But you can’t. Actually, you are just preventing the End. You’re closing the door on the very destruction you are calling in - turning your back on the death that - trust me - has taken her own arduous journey to find you, here at this moment.
Let me do it.”
And in that moment, I knew why this hurt so much.
“Let me do it.”
She looked at me, then curled up to lie on her side on the torn up bed. I took a moment, then came in close to her, wrapped my arm around her waist. And there, in the house she built from her dreams, in the span of a few moments, we grew old together, just like that wrapped around one another.
She turned around to face me and said,
“You know I've heard people say things like they don't wanna go to their grave with a song in their heart. I think something else is true too; I don't wanna go to Death having never met her before.”
And then she smiled a weary kind of smile, deepening the wrinkles around her fierce auburn eyes, and brushed my face with her fingertips.
I smiled back at her;
“Don't worry, I'll be back many times in this life.”
We gave each other a squeeze.
After a few moments like that she said,
“I feel so light.”
Just then dust began to fall from her and the entire humble Guest House filled so sweet with our smell.
And I knew - when she woke up in the morning, alone in a bed of dust and ash, the wrinkles gone from her face and the deep brown restored in her hair - I knew it wouldn't be easy but it would be light and sweet, and all the things Life is. And next time we’d meet, well, it wouldn't be the first time.
So, tell me, have we met before?
This postcard is partially inspired by and a response to: “The Guest House” by Rumi
The Guest House