Spiritual Ass Connection

I walked into this political science professor’s small, institutional-looking office, with its plastery walls of giant white bricks, its big metal desk, and its perforated, synthetic ceiling. She had a few humble lamps along the back wall. Her unimposing bookshelf was populated by books on international politics, urban design, and spirituality.

She was an interesting-looking woman: confident, unassuming, smart, earthy, and a little New Age-y. She wasn’t small or large; she was regular-sized. She had a cheery face, but not in a dumb way. It was nice. She was feminine but not overtly sexual. Her sweater and jeans clashed (they were too close in color, but not close enough), but she wasn’t completely un-stylish. God, who cares? She had a mild Honduran accent and her voice had the same effect as classical guitar. She was good-looking, but I feel a little strange about attractive women who are old enough to be my mother. Maybe I shouldn’t. Am I ageist? How would I ever broach the prospect? I mean, in this case, I shouldn’t. I’d probably still sleep with her. I mean, I’m assuming. Not that I’d necessarily get the chance. It’s a good thing that I feel weird about hitting on women who look like they might get away with getting a Senior Discount. Well, let’s hope, anyway.

We talked about the cognitive benefits of meditation and awareness. We talked about people’s motivations and social justice: something about “Basic Income” and something about “disaggregation.” How am I supposed to focus now with these thoughts hanging in the air like nerdy paper lanterns, swinging at my head?

We paused and I tried to decide which direction to take the conversation, but the conversation ebbed for too long, and she took it as a cue to start the meditation. Damn.

She softly, confidently instructed me to shut my eyes. My eyes stung from having spoken to a romantic interest until 4am. Skype calls can be dangerous when someone’s instincts mirror your own. But why was I obsessing over a woman in a foreign country? I’d woken up earlier than I’d needed to because I’d misunderstood my schedule. Would I fall asleep during the meditation session?

My body settled. She led me through the systematic relaxation of my body, starting from my toes and ending with the crown of my head, hitting all parts in-between. She had a trustworthy voice and I felt relaxed and safe. It was a welcome respite from the mindless static and treacherous, spastic reflexivity I’d been engaging in.

My mind had been racing for weeks (forever?) from anxiety over responsibilities and expectations. I hadn’t meditated in a while because, a few months before, I’d slept with one of the young leaders of the meditation group I’d been going to. I’d told myself I wouldn’t do that, but I’d done it, anyway. I’d known better. It eventually meant I couldn’t go back. I tried to return a couple times, but I could see that it wasn’t going to work for her. That’s to be expected. I sometimes lack self-control, especially when it comes to women whose minds I adore, assuming that I’m single. And maybe I’m not even as self-controlled as that. I’d probably make a pretty bad monk, really.

This professor (her name’s Dr. Huerta) suggested that I connect to my heart, so I did. That’s a weird thing to say. Just trust me. Anyway, I focused my thought and energy on my heartbeat. In the weeks leading up to then, I’d occasionally noticed my heart beating very hard and fast. Now, in meditation, my heart wasn’t beating as fast as it sometimes had been, but it was still going at a brisk jog, to use a clunky metaphor. Watching a heart as it beats is such a gross but soothing thing. This isn’t like that. When I become aware of my heart beating too fast, it makes me anxious. Maybe that’s irony. People always complain when you use the word “irony.” So many people seem to think of themselves as the righteous guardians of the definition to the word. So I just don’t use the word anymore. Maybe it was ironic or maybe it wasn’t. Whatever. It’s unexpected and seems opposite of what I would assume. I think that’s irony, but some blowhard dickheads would surely shit their pants if I said it was.

My mind monitored my heart as it slowly calmed and reached a wavy, inconspicuous creep. Thoughts would surround and permeate my mind at a decreasing rate until a flood of distracting idiocies would seem to come all at once.

The fluorescent lighting seeped through my eyelids. Behind the bottoms of the backs of my eyelids appeared subtle phosphorescent hunter green orbs, and above them floated orbs the color of plums. My spiritual energy gathered at the top of my head, making my cranium feel pointy and tingly, as though I were becoming a giant love spear (I don’t mean that to sound like a euphemism, but don’t worry about that). I felt relaxed and content: both an instrument and an agent. I connected to everything through this energy that surrounded me, concentrated at the pointy part of my pointed head, and formed a column down through my body and out through my colon, connecting me to the whole universe, to the Infinite, to the Collective Consciousness, with my asshole as the point of engagement.

Thoughts of development economics, self-disappointment, sex, lost love, fantastical and stupid confrontations, and future tasks floated into and through my head. So stupid.

My chair was causing a sharp pain in my back: no lower lumbar support. Why would anyone want to meditate in this chair? I felt a little guilty for adjusting, inevitably making creaky noises. I tried to not feel guilty, but I felt guilty for feeling guilty, and that made me feel guilty. I let it go. Kind of.

Eventually, she stopped us. “Okay, that’s all.” She spoke at just the right volume. I opened my eyes and rubbed the front of my head with my palms, as I always do. Her eyes remained closed. Was I supposed to have opened my eyes?

The corners of her mouth were slightly upturned as the ends of her eyelids gave way. We talked more. We talked about our meditation experiences, past and present. We talked about how our spiritualities aligned with our worldviews. We talked about what we wanted out of the world and our roles in it. In the end, we walked out of the building together. She was sexy in a smart, spiritual way.

I love her.

Fuck winter.

My black no-show socks are still full of sand, sweat, and water.

I thought that I’d “find” myself at the beach, two hours from home, in the grey stone catacombs that are an Eastern American winter. Back home, all my clothes were hanging neatly on white plastic hangers, except for the ones that lay haphazardly among remnants of packaging from mom’s presents that had arrived a few days early. I’d left with no money, no food, and without enough gas in the car to get back. Maybe you’re thinking, “Well, that’s pretty stupid.” But really, this is all pretty normal for me.

Anyway, I’m still around, right?

I keep “looking” for myself, and I keep “finding” parts of myself in strange places: in the gutter alongside some dingy street, in a conversation with a foolish old man, in some dialogue in some ill-reviewed movie, or in a quiet thought in a crowded café; never in interactions with any of the women with whom I, for a few days, convince myself that I’m in love; sometimes, in something that my squatty, precocious daughter shows me.

            But I’m right here.

Why am I looking?

I just broke up with my not-quite-girlfriend again. We were already broken up. I keep breaking up with her, anyway. But maybe I’m not breaking up with a girlfriend so much as divorcing from myself. Is it that men truly urgently feel the need to propagate, or is it really that men do such a shitty job at understanding and forgiving themselves? Sometimes, I can forgive myself. Sometimes, I break up with my girlfriend instead.

I’ve gotta figure out where I’m staying tonight. It’s too damn cold to sleep in the car again. I did that in Lawrence, Kansas, one night, and it was so awful – with the cold, the uncomfortable lodging, and the physical insecurity – that I phoned up my aunt in Springfield, Missouri, and ended up staying with her for several months. Springfield sucks. It sucks bad.

I haven’t stolen things too many times, but I’ve snuck into a few places; not a lot, but a few. I feel like a superhero or a man-god when I do, but I don’t really do it much. I’m too scared, if you wanna know. My mother’s one of those insufferable rules people. She doesn’t approve of the way I live, but she doesn’t really know that because she doesn’t ask. If she asked, she wouldn’t send me Christmas gifts anymore. Or I’d just lie. She probably knows, really.

There’s a motel very near the beach, and it looks nice. I tell the cheery, half-baked, middle-aged lady at the desk some bullshit story about driving up to see my daughter and having gotten robbed, so she offers me a room. She tells me, in her slippery, mild Southern accent, that she’s not supposed to do this, but with the holidays having just passed and it being a new year and her being a Christian… well, it helps to be a good-looking white boy, sometimes. It also helps to be a good liar.

She puts me in room 404, and walking up the stairs is unbearably cold. The elevator’s one of those ancient, deadly elevators in which you know that nothing’s really gonna happen, but you’re scared to hell, anyway. Windchill’s in the negative, the guy on the radio said. My winter coat is not a winter coat. It’s just a moderately thick windbreaker that I got from Goodwill with someone else’s name on the left breast. People often say stupid things about it having the wrong name on it, or strangers try to call me by that wrong name, thinking that I work in some chain restaurant that gives moderately thick windbreakers to its superstar employees.

Fuck winter.

I try to turn the key in the top lock, but the door won’t open. I’m sorta squatting, with my elbows pressed in tight and my chin squashed into my chest; I guess I’m trying to make myself into a small target for this cold, salty air. I give up on the top lock and insert the key in the bottom one. The key turns, and I hop into the room – I mean really hop into – with my lanky arms pressing into, and then swinging back from, the door. I unsnap my jacket and deliberately start forcing off my cold, soggy shoes. There’s sand all over the front halves of them. They cost seventy-five bucks, and they’re just some slip-ons with this Incan-looking embroidered pattern on them. Kind-of a rip-off, kind-of a stupid thing to buy, but I’m vain and insecure. Maybe that’s redundant to say like that. God, I hope that sand comes out okay.

I step into the motel room, and the walls are the color of a banana smoothie. I’d describe them in some more-creative way or something, but nothing else is that color. These walls’ color: I could take it or leave it. The decor is nice enough in general – maybe it’s not these walls’ color, maybe it’s that I can see the seams in the walls. It makes it look cheap, ya know?

But the place is nice. Is this a suite and not just a room? I don’t really know the difference. I mean, it’s more than just a room, which is nice. It has a whole little kitchen area, and you don’t even usually get those in pretty decent places. I guess this is a pretty decent place, if I really think about it. I probably wouldn’t actually know.

I’m poking around the place, looking to see if anyone happened to leave behind a million dollars or porn or something. Instead, I find that someone’s left an avocado in the fridge. The thing looks too ripe to eat, anyway. It’s all black and almost-squishy. I grab it, and I immediately worry that it might burst open. I hate when the avocado meat gets all that grey shit in it. I still eat it when it does that, but I worry that the grey shit might kill me. Maybe it’s still good; we’ll find out tomorrow.

I slide the vertical blinds from the middle of the big glass sliding doors, and the ocean is just a few yards away. The door slides open, and with the beauty of it all, I almost forget how cold it is outside. The sun has already set, but the sky still has that pink-and-grey cotton candy look to it. It’s really fucking beautiful. For a free motel, this view makes for a hell of a good value. Maybe I should move to a beach town and teach Socialistic economics to snobby, delusional, terrible white kids. Ha! I think I’d love that.

With each step around the nice-ish little motel suite or room or whatever-the-fuck it is, I feel my black little socks squishing beneath my toes. They feel like they’re making more noise than they really probably are, but it’s annoying, anyway, so I quickly yank them off, and I’m relieved to no longer be wearing them. But the floor tiles are cold, too. Of course.

I’m barely hanging on to the nasty little socks as I get them hung over the shower rod. The bathroom attaches to the bedroom, and each of those attaches to the corridor/foyer. The bedroom and bathroom are each decently-sized, but nothing to really brag about. In the bedroom, I half-expect the salmon-and-forest comforter to have a hole or two from cigarette burns, but for just a nice-ish motel, the place is really pretty pristine. Really good value, actually.

I shove my arctic feet down under the sheets and comforter, and pull it all tight around me, like I’m a messy, dirty Caucasian taquito. And I let out a pretty good sigh. It’s a relief to be able to relax and feel safe for a night.

I grab the TV remote, so that I can try and relax for a little bit. It looks both cheap and futuristic; it’s like a baby gadget and/or sextoy. Maybe the people who tend to buy one are typically the same people who buy the other. I press the red button in the top right corner of the remote, and Juan Williams is talking shit about Muslims. No joke. I’ll have to leave it on MSNBC when I leave.

Except that two minutes later, I figure out that they don’t have MSNBC on my TV. Of course. Every second channel or so is black-and-white pixel-chaos and awful, loud white noise, and trying to find something worth watching is just a pain in the ass, so I turn the thing off and I realize that I’m sleepy. It’s like 5pm, so I have no idea why I’m sleepy, but I take an involuntary half-hour nap, anyway.

I wake up feeling like I was re-born from Mother Mary’s perfect ladyness. I for real let out a big, cheesy stretch-and-yawn, like I’m some forgettable character in an under-funded Indie film, and I just lay there for a sec. I’m hungry. I should try to eat. Maybe I can read something, if I’m not too distracted or whatever.

My socks and shoes aren’t dry, exactly, but they’re drier than they were before, and I have no choice, anyway. I put them on, thinking that I’ll eventually manage to leave. Unlocking the door is just as painful and stupid as locking it was. Why don’t they fix these stupid locks so that frito-brained Midwesterners can figure them out and avoid robbery? But who around here would rob someone?

Just a few hours ago, I saw a three-story beach house with glass walls and a spiral staircase running up the middle of it. No one here robs anyone.

I finally get sufficiently motivated to eat something, and I head out the door. After landing at the bottom of those freezing fucking stairs, I decide to walk through the lobby just to avoid a few moments of cold on the way to my car. That cheery desk lady asks how I’m doing, and I think, Surviving, if I’m seeing it right, but I just say, “Fine.” I ask where I might get some free food in this little Southern beach town, and she makes a stupid, sad puppy face and gives me ten bucks, so I smile and thank her, but I’m worried that my smile looks fake; are my eyes smiling?

My dad always used to tell us to smile with our eyes, but his smile always looked stupid, like he just got hired at Abercrombie and Fitch or something. It won’t matter, anyway. At worst, this lady will just chalk it up to me being stressed out. I’m just a hard-working man off to see his precious tiny daughter, after all. I guess that you’re not supposed to use your kids for shit like this, but the whole thing was really bullshit, anyway, so I don’t think that it should count.

To Harvest Ruins, part two

part one

Grandpa reappeared from his den of Fox News, military plaques, ribbons, gold medals, Breitbart.com, and stale pride and simple provinciality. His gait was intentional as he bellowed, “I know you kids don’t go to church much anymore. You weren’t blessed with the kind of faith your grandma and I have. And it hurts us to know.

“You might be surprised. You know who else in the family has faith like we do?”

I was silent for a moment, but he just stared at me. He actually wants me to respond to this?

“Who?”

“Your Uncle Tom. He’s thinking of joining the Knights of Columbus.”

Columbus was a piece of shit racist exploiter, by the way, and Uncle Tom is a capitalist who could’ve been a great man but got sucked into living in the suburbs and driving his kids around in his luxury SUV and all the kind of shit you’d associate with those things.

“When I was your age, I was getting close to retiring from the Army. If you look here,” he pointed at some perfectly framed and matted documents on the wall, “I eventually got letters of commendation from every branch of the military.” He paused to revel for a moment. “I was good at my job. I didn’t always like it, but it had value to me. I liked the security that came from doing a good job and making enough money, but I guess not everyone’s interested in that.

“When I took my second career, I decided I was going to take care of my family as best I could. I was the first one in the building and the last person to leave. I appreciated the security and freedom that making money gave me. I know some people get degrees in Anthropology and Women’s Studies and all that bullshit, but why? Isn’t that so stupid?”

He looked at me awkwardly. Again. Shit. He wants an answer again. Why is he asking me these loaded questions and expecting answers?

“I don’t know.”

His voice rose incrementally: “Well, what would anyone do with a degree like that? They should make money first, get a career, take care of themselves, and then worry about that other stuff. I’ve got to say it bothers me that people think they can waste all this time and money — my money, OUR MONEY — on something as worthless as that. I can’t stand that they take MY FUCKING MONEY and spend it in these stupid ways. What gives them the right to do something like that?”

It was the first time I’d ever heard him say “fuck.” I don’t give a fuck who says “fuck,” really, and I’m sure he’s said it a million times before, but he wouldn’t have said it in front of me if he weren’t really fucking pissed.

In fact, he was attacking me, but I didn’t care about that. Here was this decaying old man with too much time on his hands, trapped in a bunker of security and vitriol, built by him and a few profiteers. It was a self-centered, simplified paranoia and rage, helped along by some of the most insidious agents in society.

Since he’d retired, he was like someone blindly, skilllessly trying to swim up from the bottom of an ocean he was thrown into. He hadn’t wanted to make a career out of the military, but he’d been good at the work he’d done and it’d made him feel safe. He hadn’t wanted to manage commissaries for the couple decades that followed his illustrious military career, but it was work that he could do well with low risk and he got accolades for that, too. Now, he had to justify his life to himself and it wasn’t hard because the way to do it was right at his fingertips; there were people who’d built careers by assuaging people just like him. His network of conservative pundits had built him a new home, customized just for him in the same way that someone having a house built for them might slightly alter the blueprint of the builder’s base model.

What I wanted to do wasn’t to argue with him or to try to win something, but to show him a softer, more fruitful, calmer way. I wanted to help this hapless old bell-ringer to be better to himself, to his wife, and to others. For everyone’s sakes, but maybe mostly for his and for Grandma’s.

“You know, I think we need different kinds of people in the world in order to make the world function. We need people to run charities and NGOs and we need people to work as counselors and all kinds of other things. We need professors. Maybe we need some of everything. In other parts of the world, the idea that people are just here to make money and buy stuff isn’t as popular as it here. Maybe convenience isn’t everything.”

“You know…” he let out a short sigh. He wasn’t resigned, but he also wasn’t defensive. “I’m not saying money’s everything. Money’s a tool, but life is a lot easier when you take care of yourself and your family.”

I had been sitting at the table, waiting to eat Grandma’s delicious food, as this odd old man had been shouting from the other side of the table. Finally, Grandma broke the tension by setting a plate in front of me. She smiled. Her face was a field of round ridges, all wrapping around her face to form one great big grin.

She asked me about how I’d been and what I was up to. I didn’t want to talk about those things because they’d just worry, so I kept my answers short. But Grandpa wasn’t having it. He’d heard I’d been driving across the country on the way to see them.

“You’re not that young anymore, Hugo. Life’s not just a big adventure that you get to play around with until you’re 80. You’ve got to settle down some time. All that driving ages a man.”

“Yeah, I agree. Maybe it’s good, sometimes, to just sit still and appreciate what’s around you.”