(2)

Yet however much I may come into an awareness of that which connects me to other participants in this reality, I am always myself, individual, distinct, separate:  I am Alone.  Which means:  there is no one here to do it but me.  Lacking all cultural support for the journey I undertake, I become my own magician, trickster, shaman; I am at once both teacher and student.  "Breathe in, breathe out," I tell myself:  concentrate on the breath.  Every day, all day, breathe in, breathe out; concentrate on the breath.  Once in awhile, I actually even remember to do this, to notice, to pay attention, to get out of my own way long enough to focus.  The rest of the time I'm not really here, in a sense; I'm adrift, drifting, half-asleep.  Sometimes the attempt to remember the practice becomes a matter of forcing myself into a habit whose value and purpose I no longer seem able to recollect; then I feel great tension and anxiety.  I slip into forgetfulness, into resistance:  the abstracted self, the falsely transcendent self, the illusory self, struggles for dominance:  it forgets its own source, or worse, tries to repudiate it, believing that acknowledgment of the void will bring death in its wake.  To free itself from the specter of death then becomes the paramount objective, the one which it longs most to achieve.  Thus comes self-indulgence; thus comes loneliness; thus comes the self that is lost in the dream, that believes itself to be only Alone.

Why did I choose such an uncomfortable dream?  The better to wake me up, I suppose.  A few days off from work each week, just time enough for me to begin to know myself again, to explore (or so I believe) where an unfettered discipline might take me, and then – bam!  I'm back in the cage again:

"How you doin', Simon!  How you doin'!"  The voice that booms out at me is loud, but totally lacking in inflection.  The words are spoken by rote, a formulaic ritual of call and response that is enunciated with gusto but without any distinguishing feature of genuine interest.  A sort of parody, then, of the standard expressions of concern we all use out of habit.  "Fine, Ritchie," I say.  "Just fine," speaking in tones so sepulchral it's a wonder how even someone as slow as he cannot hear how thoroughly I have come to loathe him.  It's one of the blessings of mental retardation, I suppose.  But only one:

"Of course, you do know that Ritchie makes more money than you do . . . right?" my boss asks me one day, meaning, innocently enough, to mock me, to chide me a little, as a joke.  Ritchie does not "make" money, of course, unless one can be said to earn an income by simply existing.  For Ritchie is not considered to be employable:  he is supported wholly by the state.  By charity.  In addition to which, several customers at the store have gotten into the habit of supplementing his income with occassional "gifts":  one man in particular slips him a twenty dollar bill three or four times each week; this Ritchie promptly spends on candy bars, pop, cigarettes, and lottery tickets.  Well?  What of it?  What other pleasures does he have?  Knowing this, the man gives his money freely, motivated by a well-meaning pity towards one less fortunate than he.  Is the money deserved?  The nature of the transaction is private, and therefore none of my business.  Still, I am given no choice but to be held witness to this constant parlaying of pity for cash, of the salving of ego by a public display of generosity.  Every day, stuck behind my counter, I observe Ritchie pacing back and forth in front of the store, waiting for his friend to come, as sycophantic as any dog.  He does not intend to abuse the privilege of his position; indeed, he is not capable of the kind of insight which would allow him to view his position as "privileged," his actions as an abuse of privilege.  But I am.  I also recognize my judgment of him, and my judgment of those who give him money or other gifts, to be unconscionable.  And really, it's only the state of my own enforced observation that I mind.  Just who was it set up this experiment anyway, I'd like to know?

Another of my regular customers is a man who has a chemical imbalance of the brain; he takes medicine for it but is still considered "unfit" for work.  The state pays him enough to cover all his expenses, both food and rent.  I would give much to be in his position.  Yet time after time, it's the same old story:  his money gets wasted on lottery tickets, and by the month's end he's in a frantic scramble to pay his bills.  He starts selling off his possessions, one by one; takes any odd job he can find – cleaning apartments, painting houses or garages, pet-sitting, baby-sitting – whatever; and whines about his predicament to anyone who will listen in the hopes of eliciting a loan:  he "can't help" his gambling, he says; it's a sickness; he's "an addict."  He too is like a dog, pandering, wheedling, yet ever faithful:  no matter how many times you tell him no or how brutally you shun him, he remains your friend.  It's impossible, in the end, to send him away, or to even dislike him.  Pity wins out; the demand that he take responsibility for his own actions is reneged.

Yet another customer begs for money on the street.  Her favorite targets are clergymen and churchgoers; these she hits up every Sunday.  "I have no food," she tells them.  "I can't afford to pay my gas bill, my electric bill," she tells them.  But all she really wants is money for cigarettes.  Are cigarettes less important than food?  To everyone else they are, evidently.  When her ruse is exposed she is universally reviled.  "But what would they say," she asks me one day, "if I told them that what I wanted the money for is a pack of smokes?"  I don't really know, but "It's the lie they mind," I tell her.  "Why don't you just ask them for money and let it go at that?  Take your chances.  Everyone else does."  "But I have to smoke," she insists.  "I have to."  "No," I say.  "The only thing you have to do is pay taxes and die."

I despise these people.  Yet I despise myself even more:  I am sick to death of the self-pity my comparison to them invokes.  What would be left of me, I wonder, if all my self-pity were vanquished?  Anything?  This is how deeply I have fallen.  "Breathe in, breathe out," I tell myself . . .

"You can't seek perfection," a customer tells me one day.  He is a middle-aged man with greying hair and a tired-looking but kindly, friendly face.  He hands me this bit of wisdom for no reason in particular.  He's come to the store to buy lottery tickets; he comes into the store and buys lottery tickets every day of the week.  I could live – live comfortably, live well – on what this man throws away on lottery tickets.  "If you try to practice perfection," he tells me, "you may end up only practicing a mistake."  But why is he telling me this?  I didn't ask for his advice.  Apparently he knows a Seeker when he sees one – or a chump:  "Therefore," he continues triumphantly, "the only way to practice perfection is through perfect practice!"  Well, well.  That's very cute.  I try to sneer, but it comes out more like a smile.  Why can't he just leave me alone?

Perhaps he's simply lonely.

Perhaps they're all simply lonely.

"Breathe in, breathe out. . . ."  Like everyone else, I spend much of my time each day just trying to fill in the empty spaces; I feel a constant internal pressure to be involved in reaching some goal – any goal really, so long as I'm doing something that will get me someplace else, mentally or physically.  It's yet another of the neurotic tendencies that plague those of us born at this particular moment of historical time:  lacking a spiritual context that would provide us with a sense of ongoing interconnectedness and interdependence, we feel at a constant loose end; it's fear of social reprisal more than anything else that keeps the majority of us in line; beyond that, it's simply a matter of whether or not we can invent some serviceable context on our own.  The fortunate ones are those who do not question, but just go with the flow, accepting whatever context society makes available.  Start a business, start a family, get a hobby, work for charity, get involved in politics, get involved in church, work on your body, work on your mind . . .  Or:  get sick, get a disease, get cancer, get AIDS, get a mental illness; whatever it takes to give yourself shape, form, and substance, do that.  Or:  pick an attitude, pick an opinion, and then be sure to let everyone else in on it:  it's a free country, after all; we're all free to form our own context, and of course we all want everyone else to see how valid our context is, because . . . well, it's because we're all lonely, isn't it?  And so we shape ourselves according to the terms provided by the dominant culture; and turn ourselves into walking advertisements of whatever style our loneliness takes in the hopes of getting others to buy into it, thereby negating the loneliness that our adherence to the dominant culture engenders.

I find myself in a curious place, psychologically speaking.  It's made up partly by a confrontation with the sociological vacuum in which I feel myself to exist, and partly by a confrontation with that vacuum which I have come to define as being at the center of my personal formulation of spiritual fulfillment.  I am moving towards the mid-point between "turning my back on the world" and turning towards something wholly new – or at least, something that will be wholly new to me.  I feel that I am beginning to self-transform.  But first I must become a stranger, even to myself . . .

"Breathe in, breathe out," I tell myself.  All day, every day:  breathe in, breathe out.  Concentrate.  Concentrate.  And then – just let go.  Let yourself go, let the vacuum take over, let the vacuum speak . . .