Bruce Wagner - The Empty Chair

The author wishes to gratefully acknowledge the National Endowment for the Arts, NPR/Hearing Voices, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lannan Foundation, and of course, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, for their continued support.

Ive spent a good part of the last fifteen years traveling around the country listening to people tell stories. Each spoke voluntarily and without compensation; none were public figures. Sometimes I went looking for storytellers, other times they seemed to come looking for me. Regardless of our methods we managed to find each other. The stories that interested me most were those that described a pivotal event or time in the tellers life. My plan was to stitch together excerpts that moved me or made me laugh, until I had the proverbial American quilt.

My plan changed.

I decided to publish a book the one in your hands that holds just two narratives, unabridged. Both share a leitmotif of diet Buddhism (again, distinctly American) that serves as a backdrop for a variety of seekers slouching toward spiritual redemption. Though told years apart by a man and woman of divergent social classes, in many ways the tales are complementary. But theres something else, far more compelling: an extraordinary bridge from one to the other, a missing link whose apprehension came as a shock, a coup de foudre, an almost traumatic epiphany. From that moment of illumination, the idea of binding both together was non-negotiable.

Some of the material is a little dated. I had no inclination to excise or contemporize, so let once-topical references stand. While I tried to leave most repetitions, lacunae and narrative tics intact, editorial liberties were exercised under the flag of general readability. I am solely responsible for divvying up the transcripts, with the added benefit of being able to listen to the original tapes, into suitable paragraphs; for occasionally relegating parenthetical remarks to footnote status so as not to break the flow of narrative; for carving indents, spaces, and yes, parentheticals from the text (when doing so wouldnt break the flow), the better for it to breathe; and responsible too for inadvertent and sometimes advertent wholesale homogenizations. Im certain there are times when I went too far or didnt go far enough, and if a heavy hand left too many fingerprints I offer my sincere apologies. I ask the persnickety reader to let narrative trump style. The authors here are vessels, not virtuosos. But you cant please all of the people all of the time.

Though if it were possible to hold all of the peoples stories all of the time in ones head, heart and hands, there is no doubt that in the end each would be unvanquishably linked by a single, breathtaking detail, as are the two presented here what I really wanted to write was single, religious detail, but stopped myself. Theres been so much sound and fury around that word these days that I hesitate to join the fray. At my age, one doesnt have too many fighting words left. Still, I wonder. Have I let myself be bullied?

I suppose if one needs to ask, the answer may be obvious.

Well, then. Allow me to clear my throat and revise:

If it were possible to hold all of the peoples stories all of the time in ones head, heart and hands, there is no doubt that in the end each would be unvanquishably linked by a single, religious detail

I wish to thank all of those who shared their stories through the years with such abundance and openness of spirit. Not incidentally, I want to give thanks to the unknowable Mystery that made us.

I dont wish to offend anyone this early on, but I call that force God.

There I said it.

Why not go out on a limb?

There is a well-known story about the death of Marpas son. The great sage was inconsolable. After a week of mourning, his grief redoubled. One of his students cautiously approached.

Master, you have taught us that all of life is an illusion. If this is true, why do you suffer so?

Yes, its true, said Marpa. Most illusions are petty, without bravura the phantoms of daily life. He smiled through his tears. But this. This was a great illusion!

A 50-year-old man told this tale. I shared a 3 a.m. hot tub with him at Esalen, in Big Sur. He had just finished a five-day gestalt workshop and now I remember that he touched on the phrase empty chair work, in conversation. Id heard it before because Id done a little gestalt back in the day. Frankly, I was surprised the practice was still around.

A therapist of mine used to have an extra chair in her office that played an active role during our sessions. The idea was to project something onto it a childhood nemesis, an old lover, a father long dead, even things like your job, your car, your depression, your cigarette habit whatever was charged enough to engage. Youd begin a kind of dialogue, often bitter, that held the promise of catharsis. While suddenly notable, the gestaltian empty chair happens to be coincidental to the title of this work. But who knows? Im not too proud to say its possible that the phrase and its metaphor crawled into my brain for a nap and woke up just as I was wondering what to call my book.

The gentleman was staying across Highway 1 at a monastery I wasnt familiar with. Toward the end of the soak, I said Id been on the road awhile, listening to people talk about momentous events in their lives in view of compiling an oral tribal history of these emotionally United States. He immediately volunteered.

It was almost a week before I heard from him again. (It isnt uncommon for initial enthusiasms to dampen or dissolve.) He was calling from the hermitage on the hill. He invited me to visit his room, one of the spartan trailers the monks rent out to guests. I was already a few hundred miles away but something told me to turn back.

The sessions took place over a weekend. The storyteller demonstrated great stamina our only breaks were for meals and when he took leave to pray.

The following interview took place in 2010 and was redacted in the fall of 2013.

Im a gay man who happens to have had a handful of relationshipsserious ones with women. The last of these partnerships was unique in that it was the only union to produce a child and a marriage certificate, though not in that order. Ive never spoken of the events that caused us to separate (we never bothered to divorce) and for whatever reason, this moment in time seems to have presented itself as ripe for the telling. Bruce, Im not interested in knowing why you stepped into my life. I should say, my tub! You know the wherefores of the universe conspiring to provoke this confession. I only know what I know. And what I dont know, I have learned to leave alone.

Ive lived in the Bay Area for what, 30 years? My wife and I met on a six-week silent retreat at Spirit Rock, thats up in Marin. We were Buddhists then. She might still practice, though I strongly doubt it. Anythings possible.

Ive always wanted to teach, but it never panned out because of my allergies Im allergic to getting up in the morning and going to work! Never graduated university. Im self-taught, a bit of a pedant. A few people have called me that, more or less. Im a perfect example of an autodidact. Isnt that the most horrid word? If I