Welcome to Sue Quietly.
I'm so glad you are here tonight.
Find a comfortable position.
And Let your body settle into the surface beneath you.
Relax your shoulders.
Release any tension in your jaw.
In.
Soften the muscles around your eyes,
Brows and face.
Take a slow breath in through your nose.
And breathe out through your mouth.
With each steady breath.
The sounds of your day.
Begins to fade.
Into the background.
Now let yourself drift into tonight's story.
Tonight,
We step softly.
Into the eastern wards of Chang'an.
Nihalene.
1300 years ago at the height of the Tang Dynasty.
It is late autumn.
And the hour is before first light.
The curfew drum that sealed the wall gates at dusk.
Has been silent for hours.
In a small room of a household compound in the eastern quarter a young woman.
Lies on her sleeping mat.
Away.
She is 24 years old.
A literary assistant to the Pei household.
One of the great aristocratic families of Chang'an she has been awake for some time already.
Her mind turning through documents she finished yesterday evening.
She does not lie awake from worry about big things.
They are small things.
A character she copied yesterday evening.
Did she form the third stroke correctly?
A letter prepared for the senior secretary.
Was it properly folded before it was sealed?
The steward noticed a misplaced scroll last week.
She thinks of it still.
The work at the pay household is honourable.
Walk she wanted.
She has been there a month now.
The work has developed a quality she did not expect.
It does not end when she leaves the household gate.
It follows her through the ward lanes and onto her sleeping bed.
Where it waits for her in the dark.
She lies still and watch the ceiling.
Outside,
A night watchman wouldn't clapper.
The hollow 2-bit tap that marks the night watch hours across the sleeping world.
Sounds once in the lane.
Then.
Fade into quiet.
She has a two-day freeze from the household.
Lying there before dawn she thinks of a mountain buddhist nunnery.
In the Jonan Hills.
South of Chang'an.
Said a man,
Pine and cedar forest.
On a hillside path.
She and her mother would go there once or twice each year.
Sometimes in spring when the mountain streams run full.
Sometimes in autumn.
When the pines carried the dry scent of resin.
In the cool air.
Whenever life in Chang'an grew too noisy,
They would spend a day among the pines.
Before returning home.
When the world gates open in the eastern quarter FS light.
As they do every morning.
Releasing merchants and farmers and travelers with their bundles and carts.
Into the roads.
She is among them.
The morning air outside the city is clean and cool.
The road's halt,
Winds through fields still pilled with dew.
That Joan and Rich dark ahead.
Above the ridgeline,
Clouds drifted across the sky as they always had.
The same slow passage she remembers from childhood.
By midday,
The city is far behind her and the pine forest begins.
The nunnery appears in the hollow of the hills.
When the sun is at its highest.
Gray tiled roof lines between the pine trunks.
A single Ylem.
Already.
Burning beneath the gate eve in the midday light.
Barely needed but lit.
The smell of the mountain.
Sun warmed pine resin.
Sharp and familiar.
Is the same smell she has known since she was young.
The elderly nun is in the courtyard.
When the young woman comes through the gate.
She is in a plain gray robe.
The nun has known the young lady since she was five years old.
She looks at her for a moment without speaking.
You look tired,
She says.
I have not been sleeping well.
The young woman replies.
But that old nun said nothing more.
She takes the bundle and places it beneath the eve before bringing tea.
And compress TK.
Brewed in a small clay pot and pour into thin silicone cups.
They sit together at a stone table.
In the courtyard and drink it quietly.
From across the valley,
Soft through the pine forest.
The temple bell sounds once.
They go for a short stroll together after the tea.
The mountain path winds through pine and cedar.
The afternoon sun coming through the canopy in long warm panels.
The pine scented air is cooler than Chang'an.
The risen smell.
Deepen,
Bind the high and the shade.
Small bronze wind bells hang at the nunnery gate eve.
Ring once behind them.
As they leave the courtyard.
The Athenote.
To solving.
Into the afternoon.
The nun walks slowly.
Pausing sometimes.
At a spider web between two cedars.
A small stone.
Where spring had once run.
Before walking on.
The part curved beside a small string.
The water moved clear and quiet over mossy rocks.
While chrysanthemums grow at the pot edge.
Pale yellow.
Their heads turn towards the afternoon light.
The nun sits on a white stone above the stream.
And sets.
The stream does not stop.
Won't we stop looking at it?
She sits beside the young woman.
The water continues over its stone.
The forest is quiet around them.
The young lady remembers sitting on a stone very much like this one as a child.
Her mother beside her.
Watching the water move.
The letters and the scrolls remain where you leave them.
The nun adds simply.
The scrolls remain on their shelves.
The tux remains in the room where the brushes are kept.
They continue without your thoughts upon them.
She said nothing more on the subject.
The Walkfather.
Through bamboo peel and still in the afternoon calm.
And then.
.
.
At the higher path.
Where the view opens through the pines.
To show the valley below.
And Somewhere in the haze,
Chang'an From here,
The city looks very small not because it is less important.
Bad because The mountain is large.
The pine scented air moves through the forest above them.
Carrying the clean smell of stone and needles.
Clouds cross the ridge slowly.
Wide and passing.
One after another.
And Do not look back.
Bind the time,
The return to the memory.
The tightness that has sat on her chest for several weeks has eased.
Not all of it.
But enough that she notice the difference.
They sit in the courtyard as the light fades.
The lamp under the gate eave is lit.
Chrysanthemums at the garden edge hold their pale yellow in the dusk.
The bamboo against the east wall is still.
Beyond the nunnery wall.
The mountain settles into its evening blue.
The work is not the burden.
The Nonsense.
After a long silence.
The nun looks at the young woman.
Carrying it home.
Is the burden.
The nun refills her cup.
The walk stay in the room.
Weigh the brushes off.
It does not walk out the door unless you carry it.
They watch the clouds still crossing the ridge.
In the last of the daylight.
Each one complete.
Each one passing.
None of them speaks for a while.
The lamp flame stirs once in a small breath of mountain air.
Then,
Studies.
Soon afterward.
They share a simple meal in the dining hall.
Rise.
Vegetables.
And hot soup.
Warmed over the kitchen fire.
Little is sad.
The mountain settles fully into darkness.
Beyond the windows.
After the evening meal.
The young woman thanks the owner and Wishes Hari peaceful night.
Carrying the day's choir with her.
The young lady.
Makes her way.
To the guest room.
In the North Corridor.
The guest room is small and plain.
Is sleeping mad.
A law writing table.
A single Y lamp.
On a wooden stand.
Warm and still above her when she lies down.
From outside.
The wind bell at the gate.
Tanning slowly in the night air.
Its notes,
Space,
And soul.
Bamboo leaf,
Staring.
The mountain stream faint and continuous.
Carried up by Nicole.
At intervals.
The temple bell reaching across that pine-covered valley.
Soft and steady.
She lies still and listens.
It all arrived.
The letter she folded before leaving.
The senior secretary phase.
This cruel.
She let them pass.
The way a cloud crosses a ridge.
Prison for a moment.
Then gone.
Another thought.
She noticed it.
And let it go.
The bell sounds once more.
Distant and low.
The bamboo move in the night wind.
She falls asleep before the bell fades.
It is the first night in several weeks that She sleeps deeply and There's no wake until the morning bell sounds.
Across the valley.
And the window has turned pale.
She wakes to the mountain's morning air.
Cool and clean.
Carrying the resin of pine and faint trace of incense.
From the main hall.
The room is pure and still.
It is all in.
She lies for a moment.
Noticing how she feels.
Rest.
Simply rest dead.
In the way that seems extraordinary.
Only one it has been missing.
From the corridor comes the sound of the old nun's slow familiar pace.
And the distant bill.
Carrying across the valley one more time before the morning prayers begin.
She rises.
Watch her face at the stone basin and stands at the low window.
Watching the mist in the valley below the ridges dissolving into it.
Chang'an is somewhere in the heat.
The letters.
The scrolls.
And the copying table.
Are all waiting for her.
It can wait.
She doesn't have to carry with her.
Before she returns back to Chang'an.
She sits with the old nun in the courtyard one last time.
The mountain has not answered every question.
She will still worry sometimes.
Still lying awake with the letter running through her mind.
The tags will still be the same tags.
But she has remembered something.
When she walks out of the pay household gate each evening.
The evening belongs to her.
Not to their documents.
Nor to their correspondence.
Nor to the quiet fear of a small mistake.
The brushes stay in their case.
The ink stone stays on its shell.
What she does with the hours between dark and sleep is hard to choose.
Perhaps,
And widely by candlelight.
Or reading poetry until the lamp burns low.
Perhaps simply sitting under the eve and watching the full moon cross the courtyard or simply listening to the rain.
And so the young lady thanks the old man at the gate.
Touch our hands and tense to the path winding back through the pines.
The bell rings once more behind her.
Low and steady.
She carries its sound down the hillside.
Until the path curve and the trees close.
There is only the morning ahead.
And the walk home.
And the evening that is hers.
The world we visited tonight grows quiet now.
And you can simply rest here.
Comfortable and at ease.
Your mind can relax.
Your body can soften.
If you are already drifting into sleep.
Allow yourself.
To sing a little deeper.
And if you are still awake.
Just listen.
To the quiet.
There is nothing more to do.
Nowhere else to be.
I'll be here whenever you need another peaceful moment like this.
Bot.
For now.
Sleep well.
Good night.
