Almost as soon as I arrive in Memphis, Leila and I go to the Lamplighter, a favorite tavern from years past. The lamplighter is small and cozy, accommodating maybe twenty people at most. Nothing in there seems to have changed in decades. It’s a time capsule. Miss Shirley, the bartended who seems to have been there forever too, doesn’t look happy. She’s got cancer. She’s bald now. The whole time, she just stares off into space thinking god knows what. She knows it’s finished. No more tomorrows or next years, just that stinking pile of shit -the wasted past. One can only assume it’s tormenting her. All our lives, Miss Shirley’s included, are centered in some conceptual sense of tomorrow. But for those who know they are dying, tomorrow is revealed for what it is: a cheap fuckaround. Tomorrow-ness steals from us an entire lifetime of now-ness. Miss Shirley must be on the cusp of some sort of epiphany, but it’s too late to make anything of it. She must be thinking to her self, “That’s it? That was my life? What the fuck?” Of course Miss Shirley would not think or say the word fuck. There’s no cussing in the Lamplighter, and she’ll throw your ass out for using language like that. She goes on staring at nothing somewhere back toward the toilets.
I’m sitting at the Bar beside Leila and a couple of her friends. I can’t hear what they’re talking about, so I quit bothering to listen. I look at the weird shit behind the bar. There’s a little pyramid of cans of Vienna Sausages. Jesus, what the fuck is that doing there? My grandmother used to eat those God damned things. She liked canned meat smeared on saltines too. Vienna Sausages are a shitty low-grade meat paste that’s pressed into the shape of little sausages and sold in tin cans. They’re barely fit for legal human consumption. Lips and assholes, man. I get the feeling they aren’t for sale, just decoration. Lips and assholes.
You can order hot food here, but I heard someone got sick from it, so I don’t. I used to eat here all the time when I was in college. The menu is posted behind the counter and appears to have been drawn with a set of magic markers. It’s rife with misspellings and incomprehensible artistic flourishes. Hamburgers cost three dollars. Chili costs four-fifty. Leila gets the idea to make some cool T-shirts for the lamplighter. I suggest that the design on the shirt be nothing but a photograph of this fucking menu. It’s hilarious.
I look around the room. The dying alcoholics that used to frequent this place are absent, replaced by smart-looking young people. Dive-bar tourists. The fucks. As though I can talk! I’m probably one of the guilty assholes that popularized this place with the art school set. The Lamplighter has become a museum, a museum of kitsch. It was never like that before. Memphis used to be completely unconscious of it’s own weird stylishness. I guess thing’s have changed. I’ve been gone a long time.
It’s dark in the Lamplighter. I’m listening to the jukebox when despair comes over me, bad fucking despair. I can’t understand where it’s coming from. I feel fatigue as though I’m dying. The conversation keeps moving, but I have fallen out of it. I get this terrible fear that what I’m feeling is true. As always in these moments, I have a hard time convincing myself it’s temporary. I cant help but feel like it’s always going to be this way, that life is over.
I start to wonder if I’m sensing Miss Shirley’s doomed thought waves. It’s so crushing I actually go and hide in the men’s room -but the fucking door has no latch on it! What if I were peeing for god’s sake? I get up and go outside, just to break the spell. It’s nice and cold. I breathe deeply, but it does no good. I am doomed, and although this makes no sense it’s nonetheless an absolute reality. It’s the kind of thing that make praying to god seem reasonable.
I go back in and order more booze, doing my best to conceal what I’m going through.
Leila’s on the phone, so her friends make one more well-meaning yet totally ill-fated attempt to socialize with me. They haven’t got the slightest idea that the person they are dealing with is not even alive, not even human. I’ve been stolen away by the eruption of some sort of mood disorder -a psychic convulsion of hopelessness, tiredness. I’m tired like the grave.
One of them says, “You’re from Colorado, huh? Cool.”
I say, “Yeah, it’s pretty cool.”
“I like those towns like… Durango.”
“Yeah, those towns are cool.”
“So uh…”
“Yeah.”
And that’s basically the end of that. I go back outside and a fucking crack addict approaches me making pitiful weird sounds. A white person can’t understand a word these crazy Negroes say when they get on the crack. In response to this unknown query I say something like, “Get the fuck out of here leper! I’m armed! I have no sense of morals and I will get away with what I do!” The leper drags himself on sullenly. Shit, maybe he was just asking what time it is. I go on back inside.
The night ends early.
Later, alone with my friend, I know the worst has passed. I’m normal again and grateful for it. The fit of despair at the Lamplighter was bad enough that it actually frightened me. This place used to make me happy. I was another person then though. It was a different lifetime. Between then and now there is no continuity whatsoever except for the bones in my body and a handful of spoiling memories I don’t even understand or believe anymore.
10/30/09
Monday, November 9, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
The Sound of Speed
My friends have brought me to see something strange on the riverbank. There’s a houseboat left partially sunk in the water, half of the hull sticking up into the air at a weird diagonal angle, the titanic of white trash. On the riverbank there’s a driveway leading out to the disaster and someone has spray-painted a note to the residents on it. The messy fluorescent green letters say, “JIM, WE STOPPED BY BUT YOU WEREN’T HERE. SEE YOU LATER. –BILL BILL.” I’d like to meet this Bill Bill, ask him just what the fuck it was that happened here.
My friends and I follow a broken boardwalk through what looks like a tacky wedding chapel arch, and then board the hull of the boat. It’s hard to stand up on the steep weird angle of the deck, but we manage to hold onto the rails and the structure. All around the boat there’s rot and pollution and astounding filth. The water looks like toxic sludge with mutant algae on the surface. There are lots of beer cans and household items floating in the muck. I peer inside the boat and see the room that must have been the living room. The air is bad and there’s a refrigerator floating in the middle of the room. I wonder if there might still be some drinkable beer in there. John tells me there was a big painting of Elvis inside, but it’s seems to have been looted by abnormally hip rednecks. All the windows and mirrors are broken. Spiders and spider-webs everywhere. Not an inch of the boat is free of these fucking creatures. There must be hundreds of thousands of them crawling in every nook and cranny. This is the last spider buffet before winter I tell you. It’s going to get cold real soon, and there will be fewer and fewer bugs in the muggy river air for these nasty little fuckers to feast on.
John looks down into a shaft on deck and says, “I think I found the problem. There are bricks in here.”
“Fuck the bricks, man” I say, “What about these god damned spiders! They must have killed all those aboard and eaten a hole in the cabin walls. Maybe we ought to burn the wreck and fry the fucking lot of them. Extermination. I’m talking Dresden tactics. Just siphon some gas from your tank and I’ll toss my cigarette in. Fuck these fucking spiders. Fuck them all. Enemies of mankind.”
Brandi says, “I can’t believe you, of all people, are scared of spiders.”
“Are you yanking my dick or something? Spiders are the most deeply ingrained fear in the human psyche. It’s us against them. God made it that way. Spiders are the enemy!”
The light changes while the three of us perch the deck together. Even the Arkansas River looks good in the evening sun’s brilliance. It makes the scene on this tilted houseboat seem beautiful and surreal. Way up ahead of the bend I can see the Pinnacle Mountain, a pile of rocks I used to like climbing around on years ago.
We leave. Amusingly enough, I notice a sign pointing to the wrecked boat that says “OPEN HOUSE.” It’s an open house alright. We take Brandi’s picture in front of the sign with the boat in the background. The evening sun flares a weirdly serious light on the absurdity of the scene. The road back up from the river turns takes a sharp turn past some woods where I see several dozen little white crosses stuck in the ground. I say, “What are those crosses, some backwoods abortion protest?”
John, who must have missed it, says he thinks it’s probably a memorial to someone who died in a car wreck.
I say, “Well there must have been lots of wrecks right there. I bet they were all drunk drivers leaving that houseboat at four in the morning.”
John says he bets a wild party sank the boat. I concede that this is more likely true than my spider theory.
In the back seat of a car, sitting on top of a pile of loose pages ripped from books, I look out and see the molten gold of the sun setting behind blurred trees that race by. We’re headed toward Little Rock. In the front seat my friends have turned up the music, something French and very intense. It sounds good, one of those compositions that awakens emotion, but doesn’t let you know just what the emotion is about. I doubt I could understand these lyrics even if I did speak French. They blend into the heavy electric roar of the song, juts another instrument. This is the sound of a life in motion, goodbyes and memories soaring into the sky forever. The song tells me tomorrow will be another lifetime and we know it’s going to be charmed.
These are the last hours of my sojourn in the south. It’s good that all the sad weirdness of it ended on a happy note. I get the impression that I’m on the brink of something new and wonderful.
Little Rock
11/02/09
My friends and I follow a broken boardwalk through what looks like a tacky wedding chapel arch, and then board the hull of the boat. It’s hard to stand up on the steep weird angle of the deck, but we manage to hold onto the rails and the structure. All around the boat there’s rot and pollution and astounding filth. The water looks like toxic sludge with mutant algae on the surface. There are lots of beer cans and household items floating in the muck. I peer inside the boat and see the room that must have been the living room. The air is bad and there’s a refrigerator floating in the middle of the room. I wonder if there might still be some drinkable beer in there. John tells me there was a big painting of Elvis inside, but it’s seems to have been looted by abnormally hip rednecks. All the windows and mirrors are broken. Spiders and spider-webs everywhere. Not an inch of the boat is free of these fucking creatures. There must be hundreds of thousands of them crawling in every nook and cranny. This is the last spider buffet before winter I tell you. It’s going to get cold real soon, and there will be fewer and fewer bugs in the muggy river air for these nasty little fuckers to feast on.
John looks down into a shaft on deck and says, “I think I found the problem. There are bricks in here.”
“Fuck the bricks, man” I say, “What about these god damned spiders! They must have killed all those aboard and eaten a hole in the cabin walls. Maybe we ought to burn the wreck and fry the fucking lot of them. Extermination. I’m talking Dresden tactics. Just siphon some gas from your tank and I’ll toss my cigarette in. Fuck these fucking spiders. Fuck them all. Enemies of mankind.”
Brandi says, “I can’t believe you, of all people, are scared of spiders.”
“Are you yanking my dick or something? Spiders are the most deeply ingrained fear in the human psyche. It’s us against them. God made it that way. Spiders are the enemy!”
The light changes while the three of us perch the deck together. Even the Arkansas River looks good in the evening sun’s brilliance. It makes the scene on this tilted houseboat seem beautiful and surreal. Way up ahead of the bend I can see the Pinnacle Mountain, a pile of rocks I used to like climbing around on years ago.
We leave. Amusingly enough, I notice a sign pointing to the wrecked boat that says “OPEN HOUSE.” It’s an open house alright. We take Brandi’s picture in front of the sign with the boat in the background. The evening sun flares a weirdly serious light on the absurdity of the scene. The road back up from the river turns takes a sharp turn past some woods where I see several dozen little white crosses stuck in the ground. I say, “What are those crosses, some backwoods abortion protest?”
John, who must have missed it, says he thinks it’s probably a memorial to someone who died in a car wreck.
I say, “Well there must have been lots of wrecks right there. I bet they were all drunk drivers leaving that houseboat at four in the morning.”
John says he bets a wild party sank the boat. I concede that this is more likely true than my spider theory.
In the back seat of a car, sitting on top of a pile of loose pages ripped from books, I look out and see the molten gold of the sun setting behind blurred trees that race by. We’re headed toward Little Rock. In the front seat my friends have turned up the music, something French and very intense. It sounds good, one of those compositions that awakens emotion, but doesn’t let you know just what the emotion is about. I doubt I could understand these lyrics even if I did speak French. They blend into the heavy electric roar of the song, juts another instrument. This is the sound of a life in motion, goodbyes and memories soaring into the sky forever. The song tells me tomorrow will be another lifetime and we know it’s going to be charmed.
These are the last hours of my sojourn in the south. It’s good that all the sad weirdness of it ended on a happy note. I get the impression that I’m on the brink of something new and wonderful.
Little Rock
11/02/09
Sunday, October 11, 2009
First Snow
“There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”
-Walt Whitman
The winter’s first snow has come down on my city this morning while everyone was sleeping. Well, almost everyone was sleeping. I on the other hand was awake because sometime around four in the morning my friend in Podunk, Arkansas called me on the phone, “totally hammered.” Ordinarily I’m the one making these ridiculous phone calls in the middle of the night, so the fact that I was merely the recipient this time is a good sign I suppose. He said, “Joseph, you are a brilliant writer… But the things you say are just total bullshit!” Fair enough. I got off the phone and walked into the living room and looked out the front window. It was snowing in the courtyard. It was a nice sight, but I was more impressed by the fact that the radiator had come on and the whole apartment was toasty warm. When I went to sleep it was freezing and in spite of my best efforts at turning the knob/valve thing randomly, it just stayed cold and inert. So when it did come on I wondered if this were a coincidence or if I had somehow been successful. Regardless, I went back to sleep.
Now it’s morning and a layer of white snow has transformed the whole city. Even the light streaming through my windows looks different, friendlier to my mind. In winter I really do become brilliant. The snow makes me sentimental about something I can never quite put my finger on, as though something once in a lifetime is about to happen. Inspiration. True love could strike to today. Life becomes ripe with possibilities. It seems like it would require an effort to prevent something amazing from happening.
I bundle up and go out for an espresso. Feeling romantic, I consider all the pretty women in my part of the city who want nothing to do with me. Ah, but there is one I really do like, and my thoughts return to her. Walking down Grant Street I pull my collar up and light a cigarette. I can always think well when I’m smoking. The notion of making this one woman mine gets me high and inspired. I think to myself that if she loved me, life would be complete in spite of everything. I imagine a perfect love that settles all the existential questions once and for all. But that, my friends, is where the “bullshit” is. When I don’t know someone it’s easy to imagine something nice behind their eyes, especially if they happen to be pretty eyes. But the reality of it is just this: No matter how astonishing the romance, after a time, the visionary aspect of it burns away leaving the sober realization that the woman I’m looking at across the table is merely another deceitful unenlightened fool –just like myself. What then? The rapture of perfect love was just a weird trip and now you’re stuck with this uninspiring lover who you wish you could get rid of long enough to stare at the breasts of some other woman across the room. Now that other woman looks like the road to heaven. Guess what though: she’s no better than the one you’ve already got. It just seems that way. It’s a nasty trick the mind plays on a man, eh? A real mean fuckaround.
Love affairs always come and go under the auspices of the perfect love I imagine to be possible, but really isn’t. In the end I’m always disappointed and alone and I keep on moving right into the next intrigue. I go through women like toilet paper. As time passes I become less optimistic, but never really learn my lesson from it. And maybe that is for the best. As soon as one lover is out the door, emotionally speaking, I’m already looking for the next fix. I get high on the fiction that if I just keep on trying, I’ll eventually meet someone worth devoting my life to. This perfect love affair always takes place in that magical undiscovered country called “someday.” I think everyone has a “someday” when things will be different or ideal or whatever. That’s when all this horseshit is supposed to be resolved. It’s the excuse for the fact that the real life here and now is a fucking disaster.
Let me share a crazy theory with you: I’ve come to believe that “someday” does not actually exist. There’s only now and the way things are now. Things have always been the way they are now, and they probably always will be. Nothing will ever improve. This theory has impressive existential implications. If someday-ness is a mirage, then that completely changes the meaning of now. We defer everything until “someday” so that today is at least tolerable. If we cease to defer it, then reality crashes down upon us right this minute. Just imagine that this is all there is: you, right here and now, reading this essay with all your imperfections and dissatisfaction and desire in the room with you. It’s heavy, I know.
There was a time not very long ago when I loved a woman. When I met her I was so amazed by what happened between us that I thought someday-ness had finally dawned on me. I wrote apocalyptic love letters and swore I’d found the happiness that would justify my otherwise pathetic and failed life. I thought all my overblown idealism had finally been vindicated in real life. Now she’s gone (of course) and I realize the whole thing was a fantasy, an especially dangerous kind of fantasy because it gives one the impression that perfection is actually possible “someday.” These types of experiences are proof that someday-ness is not real, but just getting close to the mirage sometimes reinforces that mirage. You could take your interpretation of the facts in one of two directions: optimist or realist. Optimist says, “yes, this love affair was a disaster, but it was at least close, so someday I’ll find the right one. Realist says, “I came this close and true love was still ultimately elusive. The only reasonable conclusion is that it will always be this way.” And in deed, I have been dating for about ten years. It’s always the same god damned thing, a cycle of obsession that leads to nothing. Even in the rare case that I did get the lover I desired, she turned out to be a liar or a freak or a secret bitch or whatever.
The woman I loved is gone for sure. Now I’m back in the same old miserable now-ness that’s always been there, rule rather than exception, like a static background of shit behind the occasional adventure of romantic optimism. But at least the now-ness is real. This is what we’ve got to learn to accept.
So what I have established in this twenty-ninth year of my life is that there is probably no ultimate love that’s going to solve everything “someday.” Perfection simply isn’t coming. Now this is a major revelation. It alters the foundations of my thought process on the most basic possible level. One could think of it as a sort of liberation from illusions, from the painful cycle of trying and failing in search of real love. I’ve seen behind the curtain and now I know the game I have been desperately striving to win was un-winnable. In light of this realization, the only self-respecting thing to do is to stand up and say, “fuck this” and leave the table. And what then? The motive force of daily life has been destroyed. I flashed on the lights and killed the illusion of someday-ness. Illusions can only live in the murky gloom of dim twilights. When knowledge comes they wither. Can a man survive psychologically without his sense of someday-ness? It is possible that illusions are an organic necessity for life. The mind’s ability to undermine illusions with cold rationality is still a rather recent development in our evolutionary history, and might very well be a fluke, an interesting yet lethal mutation. One could very well argue that the hopeful illusion of someday-ness is the only thing that makes it possible to get out of bed in the morning, bathe, eat, work, and talk to people. Without it a person will rot. It would be effectively the same thing as depression. If one were to take this conceptual leap of faith out of someday-ness, then they would have to have a place to land, and the only option is to land in now-ness. So we’ve got to find out if now-ness can ever compete with someday-ness. The tragic flaw here is that now is inherently unsatisfying. We don’t have what we most desire. Our dreams are out of reach. Life feels painfully incomplete. But maybe that is just a mere side effect of our deep-rooted psychological dependence on someday-ness. It is at least possible that if we could give up on someday-ness whole heartedly, now-ness would immediately seem holy, just like the Zen people say it is, just like Walt Whitman says it is.
Of course this is a risky operation. Rewiring our basic consciousness of reality this way is nothing to take lightly. It could lead either to enlightenment or insanity and death. No one really knows because it’s an adventure in completely uncharted territory.
One of the basic premises of Zen is that we can escape the illusions, not in theory, as I just have, but in direct existential experience. That would mean a totally different state of consciousness. Now this seems so daring and dangerous to me that I’m sure I feel about Zen something similar to what my Southern Baptist mom feels about Satan worship. It’s a scary thing to plunge into, like an acid trip you can never expect to come down from. One thing that’s true of mystical insights is that for the most part the dye is cast and there’s no going back once you have stepped through that door. It’s a permanent transgression, a stepping over of some line drawn in the sand of the soul. Who’s to say a man can even survive without the illusions of time and the ego and that someday-ness that haunts life in the now? Who’s to say we want to see reality for what it is? Those who’ve seen it tell us it’s pleasant though, and there’s no reason to doubt it. Of course we don’t have much information on the topic from those who went insane from too much of god’s white light. One ought to step slowly and carefully when dismantling psychic functions that have been in place for eons.
Heading home now I walk down a street where all the trees have just shed their leaves and you can still see them under the snow. I think to myself, now-ness. Suddenly, as though a switch has been flipped, I am alone in the now. And interestingly enough, it really is beautiful.
10/10/09
Nor any more youth than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”
-Walt Whitman
The winter’s first snow has come down on my city this morning while everyone was sleeping. Well, almost everyone was sleeping. I on the other hand was awake because sometime around four in the morning my friend in Podunk, Arkansas called me on the phone, “totally hammered.” Ordinarily I’m the one making these ridiculous phone calls in the middle of the night, so the fact that I was merely the recipient this time is a good sign I suppose. He said, “Joseph, you are a brilliant writer… But the things you say are just total bullshit!” Fair enough. I got off the phone and walked into the living room and looked out the front window. It was snowing in the courtyard. It was a nice sight, but I was more impressed by the fact that the radiator had come on and the whole apartment was toasty warm. When I went to sleep it was freezing and in spite of my best efforts at turning the knob/valve thing randomly, it just stayed cold and inert. So when it did come on I wondered if this were a coincidence or if I had somehow been successful. Regardless, I went back to sleep.
Now it’s morning and a layer of white snow has transformed the whole city. Even the light streaming through my windows looks different, friendlier to my mind. In winter I really do become brilliant. The snow makes me sentimental about something I can never quite put my finger on, as though something once in a lifetime is about to happen. Inspiration. True love could strike to today. Life becomes ripe with possibilities. It seems like it would require an effort to prevent something amazing from happening.
I bundle up and go out for an espresso. Feeling romantic, I consider all the pretty women in my part of the city who want nothing to do with me. Ah, but there is one I really do like, and my thoughts return to her. Walking down Grant Street I pull my collar up and light a cigarette. I can always think well when I’m smoking. The notion of making this one woman mine gets me high and inspired. I think to myself that if she loved me, life would be complete in spite of everything. I imagine a perfect love that settles all the existential questions once and for all. But that, my friends, is where the “bullshit” is. When I don’t know someone it’s easy to imagine something nice behind their eyes, especially if they happen to be pretty eyes. But the reality of it is just this: No matter how astonishing the romance, after a time, the visionary aspect of it burns away leaving the sober realization that the woman I’m looking at across the table is merely another deceitful unenlightened fool –just like myself. What then? The rapture of perfect love was just a weird trip and now you’re stuck with this uninspiring lover who you wish you could get rid of long enough to stare at the breasts of some other woman across the room. Now that other woman looks like the road to heaven. Guess what though: she’s no better than the one you’ve already got. It just seems that way. It’s a nasty trick the mind plays on a man, eh? A real mean fuckaround.
Love affairs always come and go under the auspices of the perfect love I imagine to be possible, but really isn’t. In the end I’m always disappointed and alone and I keep on moving right into the next intrigue. I go through women like toilet paper. As time passes I become less optimistic, but never really learn my lesson from it. And maybe that is for the best. As soon as one lover is out the door, emotionally speaking, I’m already looking for the next fix. I get high on the fiction that if I just keep on trying, I’ll eventually meet someone worth devoting my life to. This perfect love affair always takes place in that magical undiscovered country called “someday.” I think everyone has a “someday” when things will be different or ideal or whatever. That’s when all this horseshit is supposed to be resolved. It’s the excuse for the fact that the real life here and now is a fucking disaster.
Let me share a crazy theory with you: I’ve come to believe that “someday” does not actually exist. There’s only now and the way things are now. Things have always been the way they are now, and they probably always will be. Nothing will ever improve. This theory has impressive existential implications. If someday-ness is a mirage, then that completely changes the meaning of now. We defer everything until “someday” so that today is at least tolerable. If we cease to defer it, then reality crashes down upon us right this minute. Just imagine that this is all there is: you, right here and now, reading this essay with all your imperfections and dissatisfaction and desire in the room with you. It’s heavy, I know.
There was a time not very long ago when I loved a woman. When I met her I was so amazed by what happened between us that I thought someday-ness had finally dawned on me. I wrote apocalyptic love letters and swore I’d found the happiness that would justify my otherwise pathetic and failed life. I thought all my overblown idealism had finally been vindicated in real life. Now she’s gone (of course) and I realize the whole thing was a fantasy, an especially dangerous kind of fantasy because it gives one the impression that perfection is actually possible “someday.” These types of experiences are proof that someday-ness is not real, but just getting close to the mirage sometimes reinforces that mirage. You could take your interpretation of the facts in one of two directions: optimist or realist. Optimist says, “yes, this love affair was a disaster, but it was at least close, so someday I’ll find the right one. Realist says, “I came this close and true love was still ultimately elusive. The only reasonable conclusion is that it will always be this way.” And in deed, I have been dating for about ten years. It’s always the same god damned thing, a cycle of obsession that leads to nothing. Even in the rare case that I did get the lover I desired, she turned out to be a liar or a freak or a secret bitch or whatever.
The woman I loved is gone for sure. Now I’m back in the same old miserable now-ness that’s always been there, rule rather than exception, like a static background of shit behind the occasional adventure of romantic optimism. But at least the now-ness is real. This is what we’ve got to learn to accept.
So what I have established in this twenty-ninth year of my life is that there is probably no ultimate love that’s going to solve everything “someday.” Perfection simply isn’t coming. Now this is a major revelation. It alters the foundations of my thought process on the most basic possible level. One could think of it as a sort of liberation from illusions, from the painful cycle of trying and failing in search of real love. I’ve seen behind the curtain and now I know the game I have been desperately striving to win was un-winnable. In light of this realization, the only self-respecting thing to do is to stand up and say, “fuck this” and leave the table. And what then? The motive force of daily life has been destroyed. I flashed on the lights and killed the illusion of someday-ness. Illusions can only live in the murky gloom of dim twilights. When knowledge comes they wither. Can a man survive psychologically without his sense of someday-ness? It is possible that illusions are an organic necessity for life. The mind’s ability to undermine illusions with cold rationality is still a rather recent development in our evolutionary history, and might very well be a fluke, an interesting yet lethal mutation. One could very well argue that the hopeful illusion of someday-ness is the only thing that makes it possible to get out of bed in the morning, bathe, eat, work, and talk to people. Without it a person will rot. It would be effectively the same thing as depression. If one were to take this conceptual leap of faith out of someday-ness, then they would have to have a place to land, and the only option is to land in now-ness. So we’ve got to find out if now-ness can ever compete with someday-ness. The tragic flaw here is that now is inherently unsatisfying. We don’t have what we most desire. Our dreams are out of reach. Life feels painfully incomplete. But maybe that is just a mere side effect of our deep-rooted psychological dependence on someday-ness. It is at least possible that if we could give up on someday-ness whole heartedly, now-ness would immediately seem holy, just like the Zen people say it is, just like Walt Whitman says it is.
Of course this is a risky operation. Rewiring our basic consciousness of reality this way is nothing to take lightly. It could lead either to enlightenment or insanity and death. No one really knows because it’s an adventure in completely uncharted territory.
One of the basic premises of Zen is that we can escape the illusions, not in theory, as I just have, but in direct existential experience. That would mean a totally different state of consciousness. Now this seems so daring and dangerous to me that I’m sure I feel about Zen something similar to what my Southern Baptist mom feels about Satan worship. It’s a scary thing to plunge into, like an acid trip you can never expect to come down from. One thing that’s true of mystical insights is that for the most part the dye is cast and there’s no going back once you have stepped through that door. It’s a permanent transgression, a stepping over of some line drawn in the sand of the soul. Who’s to say a man can even survive without the illusions of time and the ego and that someday-ness that haunts life in the now? Who’s to say we want to see reality for what it is? Those who’ve seen it tell us it’s pleasant though, and there’s no reason to doubt it. Of course we don’t have much information on the topic from those who went insane from too much of god’s white light. One ought to step slowly and carefully when dismantling psychic functions that have been in place for eons.
Heading home now I walk down a street where all the trees have just shed their leaves and you can still see them under the snow. I think to myself, now-ness. Suddenly, as though a switch has been flipped, I am alone in the now. And interestingly enough, it really is beautiful.
10/10/09
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