Chapter 1: Strangers

It’s a Thursday afternoon when the woman walks into Mara’s class. She looks ordinary, medium build, medium height, dark brown hair tied up in a pony tail. Her cotton leggings and oversized shirt are unfashionable. Probably not a regular practitioner, Mara thinks to herself. This is the drop-in class, and new students come and go. Most of them don’t stay for the long term. Today there are eleven students, a smallish class size. All but one of them are female. Fairly typical for yoga. Mara sighs. She wishes she didn’t have to teach today. She’s exhausted from her other job at the grocery store. Mara also wishes she didn’t have to have two jobs. One job really should be enough. But yoga teaching just doesn’t pay very well. Even when you’re really good at it.

Mara’s studio is neither old nor new, neither large nor small. It’s right in the middle somewhere, with plain white walls and a high ceiling adorned by wooden beams. Sunlight is streaming in through a set of skylights, creating patches of light and dark on the worn wooden floorboards. Outside the windows Oaklands hectic pulse drives people around, in cars and on foot. They call the area the San Francisco Bay area but Oakland, San Francisco’s uglier sister is where the normal people actually live. Outside the windows the weather is mild, always mild, always pleasant. Even in October it feels like the middle of summer.

Inside the windows Mara starts taking in her students, slowly and gently. One by one her awareness starts to include each person. Their body language. Their mood. Their energy fields. It’s difficult to track everyone this way, but it is the way it works. At least it’s the way it works in Mara’s class. Gently Mara grounds some of the more anxious threads in the room, sending her presence where it’s needed. Slowly, so slowly, the field becomes more coherent. People start to sit down, slow their breathing. Some of them close their eyes. Others, among them the woman, are watching Mara with interest. There’s something piercing about her. Like she’s sharper than she looks. Mara smoothes the field for another long minute.

“Hi folks” Mara greets the room. “Welcome to my class. Shall we get started?”Throughout the room the students nod. It is important to get their buy-in early on. “Please sit comfortably”, Mara directs them. “Let’s close our eyes, and take a few deep breaths together. In through the nose, and out through the mouth. Let the breath move all the way down into your belly.” Her hands move in time with her own breath. Up and down, keeping pace. She watches her students as they settle with their breath. Mara likes to watch her students when they have their eyes closed. It’s helpful to get some undisturbed time to pay attention. Her attention moves from student to student, studying their energy. The woman has a glittery energy surrounding her. Little sparkles that break the light. Or almost break the light. Or would break the light if the light wanted to be broken into colors. It’s unusual. Mara has only seen it once before. 

Mara walks the class through some simple poses. A child’s pose. A downward dog. Walking out the dog. The field is quiet and the class is going smoothly. Smoothly enough that Mara has spare attention to muse about the sparkling energy. Little sparkles have started to float throughout the field in the room. As the woman relaxes her sparkling energy is getting even more pronounced. Mara instructs the class to do a spinal twist, then a lunge. The sparkling energy is mesmerizing. It’s slowly spreading out throughout the group field as if by osmosis. As if the sparkles are little scouts, trying to figure out what’s going on in the room. Mara wonders who the woman is. If she’s moving her energy on purpose. She seems relaxed, like she doesn’t have a worry in the world. When Mara catches her eye she smiles. 

The woman seems to enjoy Mara’s attention and is adding more sparkles to her surroundings every time Mara makes eye contact. Mara feels torn. She doesn’t usually chat up students but the woman might not come back. It seems a shame to just let her walk out the door. But the class is drawing to an end. “Lie on your backs, with your arms and legs out, like a corpse”, she instructs. “Let yourselves process any changes that have happened in your body. If your attention wanders, just bring it back to your breath.” Mara sneaks another peek at the woman, who is relaxing with the rest of them. Her sparkles are closer to her body now that she is lying down. More subdued. As the minutes run out Mara wishes she knew more about what just happened. “Open your eyes ”, she tells the students who slowly come out of their meditative trance. “That concludes our class for today.” The students start getting up and milling about. The time has come to do something, or let the woman walk away. Mara puts on her best social smile and walks across the room, to where the woman is figuring out how to roll up her yoga mat. 

“Hi”, Mara says. “Hi” the woman says back with a smile. “I really liked your class.” “Thanks”, says Mara. Up close the woman’s sparkles seem even more like Julian’s. It’s a little unnerving. “I haven’t seen you here before” Mara chats. It’s much harder to study someone’s energy while also making small talk. The woman nods. “It’s my first time”, she says unselfconsciously. “I’m Leia, by the way.” “Leia”, Mara echoes. “Would you like to get coffee sometime, Leia?” Leia nods and smiles, leaving Mara feeling relieved. “Yeah”, she says. “Here’s my number.”

After the woman leaves Mara sits on the wooden floor for a few minutes drawing energy into her field. A few stray sparkles are left in the room. They seem happy to interact, just like the woman seemed happy to interact. ”Leia”, she reminds herself. Sometimes meetings like this are coincidences. But sometimes they mean something, something Mara needs to figure out. Something more. As she packs her bags to leave Mara wonders whether she will see the woman again.

Back at home Mara sits across from Julian, picking at her takeout dinner. Neither of them has taken their food out of its paper box. Something about that seems fitting. If you’re having takeout for dinner it might as well be served in a paper box. Mara watches Julian as he eats, expertly fishing little bites of vegetables out of the box with wooden chopsticks. Julian really is unreasonably attractive, Mara thinks. He is dark and tall and almost too lean in the way that vegans often are. His features are handsome to a T, up to the small hook in his nose that breaks the perfection in just the right way. His energy glitters, just like the woman’s at the class. Mara sighs, feeling, as usual, slightly insignificant in the vastness of Julian’s presence. 

The apartment they live in is sparse, a loft with whitewashed stone walls and minimal furniture. The window next to the dining table is open and the clean evening air slightly cools the space. “I met someone today who seemed interesting” Mara breaks the silence. “A woman. Her energy seemed a lot like yours, actually.” Julian looks at Mara and pulls her attention into his void of stillness. Mara can tell that he must have been meditating a lot today. His presence is deep and dark and still. Her stomach is full of slightly crazed butterflies, helplessly fluttering about. The butterflies are mostly white, with a few black ones strewn in for good measure. Like an old-fashioned inkblot drawing, used by old-fashioned psychologists to access their patients’ subconscious. Mara has been Julian’s partner and student for over two years and yet she still feels butterflies when he looks at her over the dinner table.

Julian looks at Mara and Mara continues talking. “Her name is Leia. The woman. I watched her all through class. I was wondering if you should meet her.” Julian looks at Mara and Mara knows he is unconvinced. “She really had this interesting energy” Mara continues. “But I don’t think she’s had training. We could train her. You could train her. I know you’ve wanted to take on another student.” Julian studies Mara, his dark eyes piercing, looking into her. It makes Mara feel raw, vulnerable, a feeling she both loves and hates at the same time. Except that she also loves to hate it. It’s complicated that way.

Julian keeps studying Mara and Mara has to fight the urge to keep babbling. Julian doesn’t do well with compulsive talking. Mara can tell he is taking in the information and needs space for his thoughts to form before he’ll answer her. Her eyes dart around the room, looking for a distraction and land on a moth in the corner. The moth bounces off a wall, dusts herself off, flutters on, then hits another wall. It must have come in through the open window. Mara wonders idly whether the moth gets dizzy when it hits the wall. Whether it is intending to hit the wall or is simply reacting to unpredictable circumstances. Whether everyone is just reacting to unpredictable circumstances. Julian is still watching her, his attention steadfast and unwavering, his eyes never losing track of her. He raditates moving silence. Part of Mara wants to lose itself in the beauty of Julian’s silence.

Julian nods at Mara, indicating that he’s ready to continue the conversation. “I think it’s not time yet” he says. “We’ll have to wait until the time is right.” Mara, who feels tired of waiting, feels the need to push back on that. “You didn’t even meet her” she says, her tone slightly frustrated. “Maybe you should meet her first, before making a decision.” Julian keeps looking at her, infuriatingly calm. “You’ve met her, love” he says. “What does your intuition say?” Julian is big on listening to intuition on matters of importance. Mara’s intuition doesn’t say anything. She feels frustrated, and impatient and annoyed now with how calm Julian is. She doesn’t say anything but her face tells Julian what he needs to know.

“You’ll meet her again” he tells her gently. “If she’s meant to be our student you’ll meet her again.” Mara nods. She feels disappointed. “Do you mind if I get coffee with her?” she asks. Julian looks at her surprised. “You don’t really have to ask me, you know.” “Yeah, I think I will” Mara decides. The moth in the corner has found its way into the lampshade, buzzing against the lightbulb over and over again. It too seems frustrated. “That way she’ll be around when the time is right for the two of you to meet” Mara says. Julian nods in agreement, looking at her with love and gentleness. “Okay”, he says. Mara sighs and keeps picking at her food. She had hoped for more, more engagement, more excitement. But she’s also learned to trust Julian’s intuitions of timing. If he says it’s not yet time it might in fact not yet be time. Slowly she eats a few bites of broccoli, knowing she’ll just have to wait and see what happens.