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On Presence
not the body. I was somebody who liked, and still likes, theory and
intellectual thought. But that these were strengths as well as limita-
tions only slowly occurred to me.
So, every morning I found myself sitting on the ground, playing the
drum and producing strange sounds. This, I continued to feel, was a
truly absurd position. People moved in and out of the room, looking
for Shura Shishkin’s granddaughter, looking for their children, wonder-
ing if there was some bread and tea (these were the days when short-
ages were all-pervasive in Russia). Nobody seemed particularly per-
turbed at the sight of me sitting on Shura Shishkin’s bed and singing,
but I also received a few knowing smiles, as if people knew, and they
probably did, what grandmother was up to. So, I was sitting there and
trying to sing. And, damn it, it rarely worked. Sometimes I thought I
managed, but Shura Shishkin remained dissatisfied. She suggested I
sing from within (from the heart?) because it was there where proper
singing was produced. In my mind, this translated into “deeper.” It
did not work, and I went almost out of my mind.
Resistance was rising. Resistance against Shura Shishkin’s lessons,
fieldwork in general, and people in Tymlat. I was so much in my mind
that I could not even appreciate Shura Shishkin’s teachings as teach-
ings. Teaching, to me, meant involving arguments, sentences, and
words, not practice, listening to one’s self, and silence. In retrospect,
these kinds of teaching seem almost zen. (I have a colleague who spent
a great deal of his life working with a Native group in the Canadian
North and who, too, says that the closest equivalent that comes to his
mind when he thinks about them or their teachings is zen. But, just
like me, my colleague has never talked publicly about it.) There was
a serenity, quietness, and peace connected with the teachings that I
find hard to describe.
Now, in hindsight, I think that all Shura Shishkin was asking of me
was to be present. And to do that, I had to let go. Let go of the anx-
iety and desperation. Of my discomfiture. Of my shame. Of the sto-
ries I was telling myself about myself. This was what it meant to be
in the present.
There were many moments when I hated fieldwork. Where I thought
I wasn’t cut out for it. When a sense of fear and desperation was so
