Intangibles 171

       Sliding open the door of my shack, I saw the insides of my shack through Coral's eyes. 

        "Look," I said, presenting the mess. "You said you love color.  Awfully colorful, huh?"

       "Awfully dark," Coral said, sticking her head into the shack that had no light, no electricity.
       "Ya," I said, grabbing the pitchfork, pitching it towards the back, "that's why I spliced a skylight into the roof."
       Coral looked up. "Awfully dirty."
       I looked up. "Fall," I said, shoving rakes and shovels to the sides. "Hard to keep a skylight clean with all that Fall falling."
       Coral didn't say anything.
       "Then again, a dark shack's got it's up-side, ha, ha." Damn, that deep voice. See, what happens when a guy overcompensates for nerves; he comes off sounding like a womanizer. "I mean, for healing," I said in a voice so high, I sounded like a woman. Searching out some middle pitch, I finished sounding not unlike myself: "Dark's good for healing, is what I meant."
       Coral, having thrown me her male professor frown, stepped away from the shack, walked in circles, Pan behind her back.
       I had all these precious piles on my fish chair--spare parts for my lawnmower, washers for my hoses, batteries for my headlamp, but I had a classroom to get up and running, so I hand-swept the piles onto the floor. Dusting my bad chair with my sleeve, I called out the door. "Here, Coral, you can sit on the good chair."
       Coral sat down, Pan on her lap. "Cedar," she sighed, "I love that smell."
       Stepping over my stack of cedar shakes, I grabbed my bucket, set it upside-down across from Coral's knees. "OK," I said, reaching for the sliding door, "it's going to get dark, so get ready."
       I closed the door, sat down on the five gallon bucket I used for cleaning gutters and pulling weeds. I really needed a minute to get a handle on my nerves. Which gave me the bright idea of adding a step of my own to Rachel's healing exercise.
       "OK, Coral, first we must calm ourselves. What you want to do is--"
       "I am calm," Coral cut in.
       "Hey," I said like a professor, "this is Rachel's lesson plan. I don't want to mess it up by skipping key steps."
       "Saw-ree." Coral said, sounding like my sister when she was ten.
       Nothing like your girl sounding like your sister to cure you of nerves. 
       "OK, then," I said, cured of nerves, "let's get started. A good way to calm yourself is to breathe. What you want to do, here, is breathe into the one lung, exhale, then breathe into the other." 
       Of course, one couldn't possibly pull off such a feat in breathing, but, given the concentration in trying, it never failed to calm me down.
       Breathing, I relished the silence. Of course, relish was relative given the roar of Silo Road traffic rushing in around us like ocean surf.
       "Anton, this can't take forever. I have to be at work by 11:30."
       Oh, great; now Professor was on the clock.
       "OK, then," I said, scooting my bucket back, "let's get started. First, we need to lean forward; our elbows on our knees."
       In the course of leaning forward something had whipped my cheek. My eyes--adjusting to the dim light--could see that it was a strand of Coral's hair that had whipped me. Oh, great, the girl's pony tail was coming undone. 
       Nervous again, I looked up at my dirty skylight that I might ask the gods for calm. Unable to see the gods for the Fall, I got back to the healing arts. 
       "OK, Coral; first we got to stick our little fingers out." Having found Coral's little fingers in the dark, I said, "There they are. Now, I'm going to keep doing this." I tapped her little fingers with my little fingers. "That way I can find them when it's time. But, for now, ignore the contact--first I must set you up."
       I thought things through. "OK, Coral, first we need to close our eyes and breathe together. You got to breathe with your stomach, without moving your chest."
       "Stomach?" Coral said. "I just got the chest-breathing down. Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
       "Coral, if you want to learn the art of healing I need you to get hold of intangibles like breathing, creativity, will. Now, if want to learn the science of healing, I'd advise you to enroll in med school, have them show you how to hold a scalpel."
       Well, that shut the novitiate up. And, getting back to our breathing, I set the pace with my breathing. "Stomach only now; no moving of chest."

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