To the Sound of Tamboura
Elena Kirkegaard
This essay, which was written for English 101, grew out of a
response to Louise Erdrich’s essay “Beneath My House.” Like
Erdrich, I had an objective to write about my experience of
panic. My essay is quite fictional and not based on one
particular experience. I had a period of time (a couple of years)
when I had experiences of bliss and fear alternating each other
and arising unexpectedly during my practice. Then it all
stabilized - I became generally less anxious and fearful and, at
the same time, more connected with the natural states of
happiness and quietude. I don’t want to mislead anybody into
thinking that meditation practice is associated with fear and
panic!
Part 1. Inspiration.
When I was a teenager my grandmother gave me a book
with an intriguing title: Pranayama, The Science of Yogic
Breathing, by Yogi Ramacharaka. This was in 1987, near the
beginning of “Perestroika” in Russia. The “Iron Curtain”
separating Soviet Union from the Western World was lifted,
and all kinds of books that were considered “enemy
propaganda” before now flooded bookstores and newsstands of
St-Petersburg. The book was so odd that it immediately caught
my attention. It was first published in 1916 in the old Cyrillic
alphabet that went out of use in the 1930’s. I had never seen a