(4)

The summer days continue to go drifting by.  Some are long and hot and sticky, others cooler but heavy and damp with humidity.  Regardless, the days go drifting by.  I'm drifting, too – aimlessly, recklessly.  Mostly I've stayed inside my apartment these past couple of weeks, moping about in a state of increasing anxiety and depression, waiting for my money to finally run out but doing little to make provision for the future.  Meanwhile, my dislike of the "civilized" world outside my window has grown so oppressive that it begins to frighten me:  when I do go out, all I see is filth and degradation.  It's an extreme point of view perhaps, but one whose truth seems evidenced everywhere I look.  Blacktop and cement, cars and trucks spewing out their poisonous gases, people pushing, shoving, swearing, ill-tempered one moment, bellowing with raucous, callow laughter the next – that's all I seem to see.  Surely this is only a reflection of my current state of mind; were I happier in my personal circumstances, my judgment would be more even-handed.  Wouldn't it?

And yet, in back of it all, I've the sense of a deeper meaning becoming manifest, a sense that objective reality and my subjective response to it are coming together in such a way as to force me, pressure me, squeeze me into some new mode of understanding.  If only this feeling of oppression would lift a little!  If only it weren't so hot.  If only I weren't so weighted down by money worries.  If only, if only . . .

I think back to the first job I ever had.  This was at an amusement park located just outside of town; I worked there during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school.  My job was to run one of the game booths that lined either side of the midway – "Shark Attack" I think my game was called.  At the back of a wide, shallow booth there hung a piece of canvas, upon which was painted (badly) an underwater scene of fishes and coral and sea horses and the like; in front of this canvas were hung two large wooden cut-outs of sharks, each of which had a number of holes of varying size drilled through it.  Customers were given, for the price of fifty cents, three wooden "harpoons" which they attempted to throw through the holes in the sharks.  It was not a popular game.  In fact, it fared so poorly that halfway through the summer the park manager decided to replace it with a new game – this one being called, if memory serves correctly, "Lunar Landing."  Now the canvas at the back of the booth was painted (badly) to resemble the bleak, rocky terrain of the moon; in front of this canvas two papier-mâché "craters" were set up in a heap of sand.  Customers were given, for the price of fifty cents, three plastic discs, or "flying saucers," which they attempted to land inside the craters.  It was not a popular game.  The park manager, a short, squat, bull-faced man, would walk by, glance around at the other booths (all crowded with customers), look over at the booth where I stood, alone, gazing back at him innocently, and shake his head in disgust.  He said to me once:  "I can't figure it out.  Is it the game, or you?"  I shrugged, indicating by my gesture that my mystification was the equal of his own.  It's true that I didn't do anything to attract people my way – but I didn't do anything to dissuade them either.  I figured, hey, it's a free world – if people want to play they'll play.  If they don't they won't.  They didn't.

Mostly I just sat on my little fold-out chair and read books.  Or I talked to the people running the booths on either side of me.  To my left there was an elderly, retired lady; she ran the "Balloon Dart" game.  Now that was popular.  Give people a handful of darts and throw in a nice satisfying "bang" at the end – that's all it takes, apparently.  The customers poured right in.  The woman who ran that booth couldn't talk much, being so busy; and when she could, mostly just wanted to gossip about the other people working in the park, a pastime that didn't really interest me much.  To the right of me was the "Ring Toss" game.  You know – throw a wooden ring over a bottle and win a prize.  That game only did a so-so business, and the woman who ran it was about my age or maybe a year or two older, so we got along fairly well.  In fact, she was the one who first introduced me to marijuana, the sale of which she had turned into a pretty profitable sideline.  Many's the customer who, laying down a ten or a twenty on the counter, got something more than a couple of rings to toss in return.

It was during that summer at the amusement park that I began having the occasional sexual adventure as well.  One day, I was sitting reading my book when a customer stopped by to play my game.  He played it again, and again, and again, talking to me in a friendly fashion all the while.  Eventually he stopped playing the game altogether and just stood there chatting.  After awhile he got around to confessing to me that he was gay, and that he preferred his sexual partners to be . . . well, in a word, young.  I certainly fit the bill.  I was sixteen at the time and looked every bit of it, being skinny and fresh faced, gawky and shy.  For those who like the type, I suppose I must have made a pretty appetizing dish.  I did not, however, consider myself at that time to be gay.  I was still at the stage of calling myself straight, but . . . well, in a word, curious.  The guy didn't really appeal to me physically – he was fair skinned, with curly blondish hair and a pudgy body – not, as it would later turn out, my type at all.  Still, I was curious.  Damned curious, in fact; it didn't take too much persuasion before I'd agreed to meet him later that night after I got off work.

We met up in the parking lot after the park had closed; I got into his car and we drove several miles down a deserted stretch of country road.  There we stopped and he began telling me how nice looking I was and how much I turned him on, yadda yadda yadda, him leaning in close and stroking my thigh all the while.  I awkwardly accepted his compliments and pretended not to notice what he was doing with my leg, my cock in the meantime getting hard as an iron rod.  Before long he had my pants down around my ankles and was sucking me greedily; I came once quickly in his mouth and then he worked me a second time, more slowly.  When we were through he drove me back to the parking lot.  I got into my car, and we went our separate ways.

I saw this man several more times over the course of that summer; also there were a few other men, friends of the first guy I think, who stopped by to play my game, meanwhile talking me into having a late-night rendezvous with them.  Of course, I still did not consider myself at this time to be gay.  These men were just so hungry for what I had between my legs, and what they did to me there felt so good, that I saw no reason to put a stop to it.  What eventually began to bother me about the situation – and probably helped delay my admitting my homosexuality to myself for a couple of extra years – was the fact that while these men were getting something off of me (my innocence, my cock, my cum), I seemed to be getting less than my fair share in return.  I got pleasure, of course; but it seemed somehow an unequal exchange.  Perhaps what I was feeling was the same sort of thing little children are said to feel when being potty-trained – that some essential part of me was being lost, stolen, taken away.  The physical release I felt upon orgasm was pleasurable, but the men who gave me this pleasure took my cum, and gave little or nothing of physical or emotional value in return.  They did not even give me the sense that I was discovering who I really was, sexually speaking, for I still was not convinced that I was gay; all I knew was that these men wanted me to be someone who could be talked into getting his dick sucked.  Their desire thus had the effect of allowing me to assert my sense of burgeoning masculine power, while their satisfaction robbed me of its potency.  I was not pleased with this.

At the time, of course, I had little understanding of the nature of desire, its ceaseless hunger and its need for constant gratification – all of which could, so easily, lead to patterns of addictive behavior.  And yet, at its most fundamental level, addiction holds one of the keys to life.  For we must each of us, after all, eat, sleep, and breathe:  we are all, in other words, "addicted" to life and its ceaseless hungers.  Furthermore, this addiction extends to virtually all our behaviors, even those springing from a mental or emotional causality; for are we not all of us constantly engaged in a battle to persuade others to our way of thinking, our beliefs, our viewpoints?  We tell ourselves that all we want is to be understood, but to be understood by another means that we must get them to see as we see, to feel as we feel – to participate, in other words, in our own personal experience of reality.  We engage in this process because through it we come to feel, at least temporarily, egoistically enlarged, more potent and powerful.  It's as if, by persuading another to our point of view, we take some portion of that other person's energy and use it to feed, and thereby amplify, our own.  Of course, there are greater subtleties involved in converting another to who and what we would like them to be; the fit between our shared viewpoints is never exact, and the other person takes as well as gives.  They shape the energies exchanged in communication to fit their own perspective and suit their own needs – and feel to some degree themselves egoistically enlarged by the experience.  Still, this exchange of energy is not our primary motivation in communicating ourselves to another; that reason is defined by the desire to endorse, enlarge, engorge, ourselves.

All communication may be said to participate in a dialectical exchange between enlightenment and unenlightenment, but it's only the truly disinterested person who holds these states to be of equal value.  In fact, what we intend when we use the term "enlightened" is not something that can be truly defined or quantified, for the truly enlightened person is one for whom enlightenment – or unenlightenment – no longer has any meaning.  Quantifying these terms is an activity of the analytical self, the falsely transcendent self.  Of course, the "enlightened" self is really only the experiential self unveiled; the difference which makes the enlightened person (so-called) is that he or she has attained a state of realization with regard the experiential self – which state, pertaining as it does to the recognition of a process rather than being descriptive of a conclusion, can be said neither to be "enlightened" nor "unenlightened" (or, is both).  The unenlightened person, on the other hand, is caught up in the desire to gratify his or her egoistic needs through the conversion of others to his or her beliefs and viewpoints.  The Warrior too must learn to live in a state of realization with regard the experiential self, for this is the only means by which one can, while living in the world, maintain one's integrity and not be consumed by the feeding frenzy indulged in by those who wish to convert others to their beliefs and viewpoints for the sake of egoistic gratification.

At the center, or core, of the experiential self lies the place of "no-mindedness," the realm of the "unself-conscious" or "selfless" self.  To live in the awareness of the selfless-self is to live in a state of freedom.  This is not to say that the person who lives in this state does not continue to undergo all the trials and tribulations of life:  the physical self still sickens and dies; the emotional self still experiences its joys and sorrows; the analytic self still strives to understand via the processes of verbal analysis.  Yet to live continually in the awareness of the selfless-self must be, I think, to live as one who is "in the world but not of it," as the saying goes.  It must also be to live in what I have elsewhere referred to as a state of "heightened awareness," this being the waking equivalent of "hyper-dreaming."

Dreams are a manifestation of thought and emotion given pictorial form.  There is a certain point at which, while falling asleep, the verbal activity of the mind clicks off and the pictorial presentation of the mental and emotional selves clicks on.  Dreams may thus be said to be a manifestation of the mental and emotional complexities which develop in response to the ego's interactions with its surrounding environment.  I have stated before that in order to enter into a state of hyper-dreaming one must become aware of being in the dreaming state while still dreaming.  But I see now that this in itself is not enough.  There are, for instance, those times when, while in the midst of a nightmare, I've said to myself, "This is just a dream, and I need to wake up now."  And I would repeat this thought – "I need to wake up now, I need to wake up now" – until I finally did.  Clearly, that part of my mind which characterizes my waking self (i.e. my analytical mind) knew that I was dreaming, yet this was not enough to cause me to enter into a state of hyper-dreaming.  What is needed, it seems, is to attain a more complete awareness of the selfless-self.  Solving the emotional and mental complexities dreams reveal to us may help bring this awareness about – but I think there may exist another, more direct route that can be taken:  that of learning how to realize the awareness of the selfless-self regardless of the existence of any emotional and mental complexes.

As I concentrate more upon understanding and realizing a state of awareness with regard the selfless-self in my waking life, I understand that it's because of its existence, and because of my growing awareness of its existence, that my waking reality sometimes takes on the characteristics of a dream.  I understand that, as my nighttime dreams are a matter of my subjectivity being manifested, or "encased," by an ostensibly objective reality, so my waking reality must be a matter of objectivity being manifested or encased by a subjective reality.  These two realities – the subjective and the objective – are equally responsive one to the other; they "flow" one into the other and create realms of existence that are equally real and equally illusory.  And the suffering caused by our experiences within these realms is revealed to be illusory according to the extent to which we are able to live within the awareness of the selfless-self.

But all of this pertains only to the how of our living; as to the why – why this particular life, why this particular set of circumstances, why this particular reality – that I do not know.  Having stated my belief in karma, I can affirm my opinion that these particularities are a manifestation of that karma.  Having stated my belief in reincarnation, I can affirm my opinion that other particularities may manifest at other times as other realities.  And yet, as to the "big" why, the "ultimate" why – that is, why any of this is happening in the first place, and what purpose it serves – this is a question to which I still have no answer.

"Why," of course, is a question born of the intellect, a manifestation of the mental self, partaking of verbal analysis and the belief in a falsely transcendent self.  Rather than attempt to answer the question of "why" through the use of analysis, it would seem more advisable to simply concentrate on attaining a state of awareness with regard to the selfless-self, and to regard not answers but experience as the surest means for gaining understanding.  And it seems to me that the surest means of attaining a state of awareness with regard to the selfless-self is by means of the will.  While I have but a rudimentary understanding as to how the ego develops, it seems to me that the manifestation of will must be held as one of its finest and most sophisticated tools.  For the will can be used by the ego not only for pursuit of self-gratification, but also to override this pursuit, thus subsuming the ego within the selfless-self.  Will might be described as the propellant one uses to steer the raft of the ego over the waters of experientialism until such time when the raft itself may be discarded.  Will is that which can be used to guide one along the narrow path, the path which leads between the cliffs and valleys of our appetites and addictions, even our addiction to life itself.  Will is that which we may use to lead us into a state of awareness with regard to the selfless-self.

The enactment of my will cannot, of course, do much to alter my present circumstances.  I must somehow force myself up and out of this chair, away from this window, away from my notebook, and reenter the world.  It seems intolerable.  I must will myself to do this . . . against my will.  I cannot deny holding onto the secret hope that by becoming increasingly aware of my selfless-self, I will somehow trigger an alteration in my personal circumstances and thus avoid being thrust back headlong into the suffering world:  I cannot find within me the necessary humility to overthrow this useless hope.  For what is hope?  That which is left behind after all the ills of humankind have been released from Pandora's box.  I do not know, in fact, that I can continue to face humankind and its ills anymore; the hope that I can is all I have left.

I think of Emily Dickinson, who elected to remain one apart from the world, dressed always in white, bride and martyr to her poetry.  I think of Sylvia Plath, who, Medusa-like, wreaked havoc upon all those around her, turning them into monuments of stone erected upon the grave of poetry.  I think of language and the power of words.  Once upon a time I believed that these words that I write could act as a sort of net to capture and hold the energies of others who, through the power of my words, would be persuaded to my viewpoint, my beliefs.  I no longer think so.  These words that I write do indeed collect and hold the energy of experience – are themselves a formulation of experience and, as such, become part of the manifest reality in which I play out my role.  But what that role in future will be is anyone's guess.

It seems I must plunge in deeper now.  I must go down and down, and see what I can see.  There is no place for me to run to, no place to hide.  It's the same world outside my window no matter where I might go.  Wherever there are people there will be blindness, blindness to any other possibility in life other than that of following the status quo.  I must go down and down, past the place where I myself believe that by understanding my life intellectually, I will change my reality.  I must go down and down, down to the place of forgetfulness, down to the place that lies beyond hope.  I must bury myself in the dream, in the illusion; bury myself until illusion and reality become one, both equally false, both equally true.  I must go down and down, until I too become blind; and hope against hope that I will be able to hang on, hang on, until I find the selfless-self that knows it's all alright, and has been all along.  I must go down and down, down and down and down . . .

THE STUPIDITY OF FISH