Sitting On Buddhas Head.

The palest ink is better than the best memory. This quote was written upon a small paper tab that was attached to my tea bag. I had awoken in a fog unable to remember where I had eaten dinner the night before. I remembered my wife waking in the middle of the night in a slight panic but other than this my past was as illusive to me as notions of god. While lying in bed I tried to recall a few things from my past. I was able to remember the faces of a few women I had slept with many years ago. I remembered the first car that I received upon turning the driving age (but I was unable to recall the color) and I also was able to remember a small park in Berkeley that I enjoy sitting in. Other than these few superficial details of my life I was having difficulty recalling the events of the previous day. I arose from bed, made some tea and found that relevant quote dangling from the tip of my tea cup. I am always startled by the way forces collude to create coincidences.

After eating an egg I was somehow able to recall a very large steel Buddha that a local artist constructed in a park around the corner from my home. I dressed quickly, feeling a strong inclination to go visit the Buddha. I had no understandable motive- other than seeking out a wisdom that may shed some light upon my lethargic situation. I put on mittens, a heavy jacket, and a cotton cap and walked the block or two to where the steel Buddha sat still upon the grass. A few dog owners were out throwing disturbing objects to salivating fur balls to chase after. I admired the contentment from which these dog owners watched their dogs run. I could not remember how long it had been since I felt that kind of contentment.

I stood beside the Buddha and looked up at it’s over-sized features. It’s height was no more than twenty feet. The artist created the Buddha sitting in the lotus posture, with hands coming together in the center- I assume to portray a state of nirvana. The Buddha’s eyes were shut and there was an expression of quiet rectitude upon his face. I stood in front of him and observed a very slight inhalation and exhalation coming from the statues belly. This did not surprise me since I was well aware of the scientific finding that within all inert matter there is moving energy. While breathing in the damp morning air I felt a strange desire to climb to the top of the Buddha. Like all my desires which I am seldomly able to control, I began my ascent.

After stepping on the hands, pulling at the nipple, hanging onto the nose and dragging my way up onto the crown of the Buddha’s head I had reached the summit with a rapidly beating heart and a feeling of being short of breath. I sat so that my long legs fell over the Buddha’s face and I looked straight out into a pasture of green grass. The sun had fully risen to its place in the sky and my mind was slowly becoming more relaxed. I breathed deeply and tried to find a place in me that spiritual aspirants refer to as a center. I slowed the erratic quality of my thoughts by listening to the squirrels chew walnuts in the trees. I could feel an intense vibrating energy coming from the Buddha’s face. It was such a strong energy that my legs and butt were quickly warmed up. The dog owners noticed this strange apparition sitting on the Buddha’s head and glanced at me with suspicious eyes. All I could do was smile and enjoy the morning sun.

Gradually I remembered various images that I had taken in the day before. I remembered the salad, orange and chicken that I had eaten for dinner with a few glasses of red wine. I remembered the bike ride that I had taken all around Berkeley and Oakland the day before. Fragments of my life started to come back to me the more I relaxed and quited my mind. Slowly I was re-introduced to a self I had forgotten. I was inspired to stand up tall on the Buddhas head and reach out towards the heavens. I was filled with an exhilarating feeling that wanted to touch the sun, the stars, all things divine. As soon as I stood up, I noticed my left foot loosing connection with the Buddha’s head. Soon after that my right foot lost its connection and before I knew it any sense of mindfulness that I had achieved was gone. I was falling twenty feet towards the dewy grass and all I could think on my descent down was this is going to hurt.

I was awoken by a feeling of wet sandpaper sliding its way along my face. When I opened my eyes I noticed two dogs gathering above me. They were licking the remnants of enlightenment from my face as their owners asked me if I needed them to call an ambulance. One owner told me not to move because I may have broken my neck. I felt bruised and battered but not in enough pain to feel as if I had been badly damaged. I landed in soft grass upon my back. I took the liberty to ask one of the dog owners to help me up, and then I dusted my self off. I was sore and my back felt like shards of broken glass. I will be okay, I told them as they watched me with carefully eyes. I am just going to slowly walk home and makes some tea. I slowly limped back towards my home- which I was having some difficulty finding. After a few moments it occurred to me that I was lost. I decided to sit down on the side of the road. My back refused to sit straight so I lied down on the ground. Looking up at the morning sun I decided- I would wait for as long as it took for the past to return to me so that I could slowly find my way back home.

The Disembodied Voice.

“She lives in a dark closet. All the world knows of her is her voice,” Gregory said to me over the phone. I didn’t have much to say in response to this. I was curious. “All you need to do is bring her the box of food and leave it by her closet door.” Gregory was sick and he offered me twenty dollars to do his job for him. He worked delivering meals to people who are not capable of leaving their homes. It is a government run program that is dedicated to seeing that individuals with chronic psychological disorders do not starve to death. “So what do you think, will you do it?” Gregory asked me with the sound of sickness in his voice.

I needed what ever money I could get. None of my paintings sold at the last gallery show and I recently quit a job working at a mortuary. I was not in a position to turn down tax free cash. I drove over to Gregory’s apartment, picked up the key and made sure that he gave me the directions correctly. “Here is twenty bucks,” Gregory said. “now make sure when you go to her home that you understand that she is a disembodied voice. She will try to talk to you for hours if you are not careful. Just leave the food in front of her closet door and say have a nice evening. That is all. She is very enigmatic and will suck you in if you are not very careful,” Gregory said to me from the confines of his sick bed.

I drove to the facility where the food is made and packaged. I picked up a box of food and then drove my car to the outskirts of the city where the lady lived. Her house was in a rural part of town where chickens roamed around on the streets beside wild and ravenous dogs. I found the address and walked up to the front door which was painted yellow and hanging off its hinges. Once in the house I shouted “is any one home….I am delivering your food,” and was instantly met with a female voice that said “Back here, in the bedroom.” I searched around a few corners and then found the closet door which had a photograph on it of a womans face. It was in a bedroom that lacked any furniture other than an old mattress and a green carpet. I noticed that all the windows were broken, and the house smelled like cedar and mud.

“I am just going to put the food in front of the door for you,” I said as kindly as I could. “You are not Gregory, who are you?” the female voice asked. “Gregory is sick so I am delivering your food.” “That is not what I asked you, I asked who are you?” the voice said with a tone of rigidity. “My name is Randall,” I responded not knowing what else to say. “I did not ask you your name, I asked who are you?” What did she mean who am I? How was I to answer this question. “Let me help you, because I can tell that you are confused” the voice said. “I am a middle aged woman who lives in the dark. I do not come out of this closet because I am afraid of everything in this world. My purpose in life is to keep my voice as long as I can. I am a Painter who paints portraits in my head. They are pictures that no one will ever see, which is fine because I do my art for myself. This is who I am. Now who are you?”

I felt a subtle wave of anxiety overcome me. I remembered what Gregory had told me about not engaging with the voice. I wanted to be quick and precise with my reply so that I could get out from there. “I am an Artist,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. “An Artist, how nice. We both have something in common,” the voice said in a high pitched tone of pleasure. “Do you enjoy being an Artist?” the voice asked me. I looked around at the vacant room. I saw a rat run across the green carpet. “It is a struggle, but yes I do enjoy it,” I replied. Then the voice quickly responded to me by saying, “the world is so filled with hypocrisy and compromise. As an artist you pave your own way in the world. You create your own reality in all that you do. It is a blessing and a curse…but it is more of a blessing than a curse.” The she laughed.

“Do you realize that we live in a world that is always seeking to steal our voice?” the voice asked me. Before I could respond she continued speaking. “If your voice is not contributing to the creation of profit for a corporation or the government than it is a voice which must be silenced. The irony is that your inner voice must be silenced so that you can create profit. The soul and the pursuit of money never go together. It is one or the other. You see. This is why I remain in a dark closet. This is why I choose to be a disembodied voice. Even though I get lonely and cry a lot, I still have my voice. I get to keep my own voice. I do not have to give it away so that I can make money or hold down a job. You see Freud said…..” she continued on and on. I was interested in what she was saying so I decided to listen.

And listen. And listen. She asked me many questions like:

“What do I believe?”

“What is my purpose in life?”

“What do I live for?”

“Do I feel successful?”

The questions continued on and on and by the time she told me that she was getting tired and needed to eat, I was lying on the vacant mattress and it was close to three in the morning. I stood up and realized that I had become completely unaware of the passing of time. The voice had sucked me in. As I drove my car back to my home, I felt like a minor revolution was going on in my mind. The disembodied voice had caused me to think about things I had never thought about before. I felt like I was awoken from a long sleep. I lied awake all that night unable to think about anything other than the questions that she had asked me. They sat like a brick upon my chest. Some thing in me had changed.

Today when I returned to Gregory’s house to drop off the keys, I asked him if I could have the job of bringing the disembodied voice her food. He smirked at me with a fierce look and said, “Don’t even think about it.”

Working With The Dead, Part 1

The first dead body I picked up was a fat man lying on the floor in his underwear in a motel room, in which he seemed to be living. A few days ago I received a phone call from a friend of a friend. “Hey, this is Fransisco, I hear you need a job.” “I do,” I said. “Well I own a mortuary and I need someone to pick up stiffs.” I had never seen a dead body before and thought, why not…it would be an interesting experience. I started later that day. Fransisco gave me the keys to a blue mini van without rear windows and a solid handshake welcoming me aboard.

“The first thing I want you to do in the morning is come into the refrigerator and mop up all the goo,” Fransisco said. He took me into the refrigerator where the dead bodies were stored until they were buried or cremated. I saw stacks of bodies under white sheets with feet sticking out. Most of the feet were black. “Overnight they ooze and the stuff is stinky, so we got to get it up first thing in the morning.” “What do they ooze?” I asked. “They are roting, so their fat slowly falls off. It is usually the ones who ate a lot of meat and drank a lot of liquor that ooze the most,” Fransisco replied. He then showed me where the boxes were kept to put the “stiffs” in after I picked them up. He showed me how to label the boxes and where to place them in the fridge. “You okay with all this?” Fransisco asked me.

When I walked into the mortuary on my first day, there was a handsome man in his mid thirties lying nude on a stretcher. He had long hair and a woven hemp bracelet around his ankle. He looked as if he was in perfect physical condition, a hippie in the prime of his youth. The only disturbing thing was that he was dead. “What did he die of?” I asked Fransisco. “AIDS,” Fransisco replied while lighting some incense which was always burning in the mortuary. I had never imagined that someone could die of AIDS yet look so healthy. While I was staring at the body I was introduced to a lady with long black hair and a face that reminded me of Aphrodite. She wore a short mini skirt, and when she bent over to collect ash from the cremation machine- I noticed she was wearing a garter belt. Fransisco told me that she was finishing Mortician’s college, working as his assistant and that he was fucking her on a regular basis. It was more information than I needed, but Fransisco was an ego maniac and a sex addict who liked to brag about his conquests.

Bruce, who was training me that day, did not know how we could get the fat man onto the gurney. I had no clue either. This was the first dead person I had ever laid hands upon and I was hesitant. “Just grab the ankles,” Bruce said as a police officer who was on the scene helped us to lift the fat man up. The lady across the hall was crying and kept repeating that “he was such a nice man.” I could not help but notice that his motel room was filled with picture of Bob Dylan and Samuel Beckett. Once Bruce and myself finally got the fat man into the mini van we drove to Summit Hospital to pick up a second body. On the way to the hospital Bruce talked about his love for cocaine and prostitutes. He was a certified Mortician who was in his mid forties and lived with his mother due to financial problems. “There is a street near here where on a break, if the van is empty, you can pick up a prostitute and have a quicky,” Bruce said with a look that showed he meant what he was saying.

On the way to the hospital we got a call from Fransisco that we had to first go pick up a body on the corner of Claremont and College Ave that had been run over by a cement roller. “A cement roller?” I said. “Just your luck man, on your first day you get to see blood,” Bruce said with a giggle. I was apprehensive. Deep down I did not know if this was going to be the job for me. Seeing death so up close instilled a fear in my bones that I knew I would never be able to set free.

The scene at the accident was not as gruesome as we expected. The woman who was run over by a cement roller was not flattened out as one would imagine. She was badly bruised and battered but otherwise- everything on her body was in its right place. We were told that she was a local Architect who was walking to get into her car when the cement roller came around a corner too quickly and ran her over as she was getting into the drivers seat. We stuck the body which was nicely dressed in a modern black suit- into a white body bag, lifted her up onto the gurney and then placed her in the mini van besides the fat man. I also took her black leather suitcase which I found beside the trunk of her car.

With two dead bodies in the back of the van, Bruce decided that we should stop and have lunch. I was not feeling hungry but I had a beer while he ate a burrito. We talked about the job and he let me know that it got easier as the days went by. He also told me that Fransisco was the craziest man I would ever come across. When we arrived back at the mortuary Fransisco was waiting for us besides the back door through which we took the dead bodies. While smoking a joint, Fransisco showed me how to stick the bodies in cardboard boxes and then load them into the refrigerator. I wrote both their names on the side of the boxes and then we stacked the Architect and the fat man together in the fridge. Fransisco then handed me a mop and said “Here kid…it’s starting to stink in here.” It was only 12:30 p.m.

The Haunted House.

Today I saw a ghost for the first time. It scared the shit out of me. It appeared more like a shadow than a person, and went away as quickly as it appeared. I have always been apprehensive about ghosts, but after today I am convinced that there is more going on than meets the eye. I was so startled out of my mindless stupefaction, that I jumped out of my chair and ran out of the house. I urinated on my leg and kept yelling out “what the fuck was that!!” I was home alone so there was no way that I was going to return before the police arrived (I managed to calm myself enough to call on my neighbors phone). Once they arrived, I told them that I saw a life sized shadow slowly make its way across the wall. The officer asked me if I thought it was a person and I said no, it was a ghost. “How do you know?” the officer asked. “Because I felt the air go ice cold, and felt the presence of something abnormal.. something really frightening.” Both officers went into the house with their guns out, and when they returned fifteen minutes later one of the officers said to me with a shivering voice, “there is definitely no person in there, but son..that is one hunted house.” They too, left as quickly as they came, and I decided to spend the rest of my afternoon at a cafe.