The Empty Chair

FIRST. GURU

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. I’d heard it before because I’d 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. You’d 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? I’m not too proud to say it’s 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 wasn’t familiar with. Toward the end of the soak, I said I’d 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 isn’t 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.