Or So it Seems
Copyright 2008 by Paul Steven Stone
Smashwords Edition
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Because of the dynamic nature of the internet, any web address or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ISBN:
978-1-4658-6529-8
Jumbo
thanks to the following for:
Blind Elephant Illustration: Gary
Torrisi
Cover and Interior Design: Bill Dahlgren
Author and Mom
Photo: Morris Trichon (a/k/a Moish)
***
OR
SO
IT SEEMS
(Being
Mr. Peterson’s First-Ever
Do-It-Yourself Workshop)
A
novel by
Paul Steven Stone
Blind
Elephant Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
****
MY
MOM SAYS YOU
WON’T BUY THIS BOOK
“Who needs a book about a man who can’t keep his pants on, for heaven sakes!”
“But Ma…!” I answered, “Paul Peterson is fighting to keep his pants on when the book starts. And the book isn’t about that anyway.”
“Oh yeah, Mr. Smarty, what’s it about then?”
“It’s about being on a spiritual journey, for one thing. And about putting your life back together after divorce separates you from your kids, your paycheck and a good part of your sanity. It’s about trying to understand why life sometimes sends you cold fish when you ordered hot pizza. It’s about reincarnation, schools of self development, soul mates and a fully-realized holy man with an exasperating sense of humor and an incurable case of the giggles.”
“And while we’re talking about it,” Mom pursued, “why can’t that meshuggenah Peterson stay in one place long enough to have a good meal or a decent night’s sleep? He drives me nuts with all his jumping around from the past into the future and back again…”
“But that’s how the story is told, Ma, through a Do-It-Yourself Workshop. He’s not traveling in time, but traveling within himself—in the Sacred Present Moment, if you really want to know—only it seems like he’s traveling in time.”
“Hah!” she trumpeted. “And you think people are going to buy a book with all that silly crap in it?”
“I think a few of them will,” I countered. “If only for the free movie passes I’m giving away.”
(I lied. There are no movie passes. You’ll have to find another reason to buy this book.)
****
OR
SO
IT SEEMS
(Being
Mr. Peterson’s First-Ever
Do-It-Yourself Workshop)
****
Dedicated with abiding love and gratitude to Katie, Kristin, Jesse, Mom and Amy
And to the fond memory of Seth Mattson.
So much we are given,So much we have to lose.
****
Workshop Contents
Workshop
Introduction
In Which We Present Our Credentials…
First
Karmic Gravitational Slide
Down Among The Savages And Scouts
Second
Karmic Gravitational Slide
Dancing With The Universe
Second
Karmic Gravitational Slide (Continued)
The Return Of The Hometown
Hero
Third
Karmic Gravitational Slide
Bridging The Gap
Epilogue
Ten
Years After
Glossary Of Terms
****
Workshop
Introduction
In
Which We
Present Our Credentials
And Welcome
New Visitors
This is my life’s story in miniature, spread before your eyes like a schoolboy melodrama.
Paul Peterson is my name. Father of three, husband to none and advertising copywriter by trade. But more importantly at this precise moment, I am a witless victim who with surprising emotional distance observes himself being dragged across the long expanse of an upstairs apartment in a two-family home in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
You need to understand this drama is taking place in slow-motion—painfully slow, slow-motion—as if the universe has shifted into a lower set of gears without warning or asking for permission. So at the same time I am being pulled bodily across the room I find myself with surprising amounts of time to do whatever one is supposed to do in a crisis like this.
I can watch my life flash before my eyes, I suppose. Or curse my fate. Or create a list of all the whimsical things I meant to do with my life. Certainly I can choose from the usual items on the menu. But for now, as one who generally accepts the meager portions sent his way, I do nothing but look around.
Not much to see, is there? The room is poorly lit and barely kept up, the furniture old and mismatched like crude leftovers from an unloved college apartment. As dismal as the surroundings may appear, however, my protests remain quite spirited, as you can judge for yourself.
But I do not expect to fool you for long.
How transparent my protests will seem when you realize that all the while I am pleading for release I am also playing the role of mute accomplice. Sooner or later you will notice how unconvincingly I resist, how pitifully I bemoan my fate, but not so loudly that I wake the neighbors or with enough force as to actually free myself.
As you no doubt observe, the villain of the piece is not some big brute of a bully but a thin—make that scrawny!—bleached-dry blonde in her mid-40s named Allison who in a moment of hollow intimacy said I should call her ‘Allie’. As you can see for yourself, Allison’s former incandescent beauty, eerily highlighted in framed photographs throughout the drab apartment, has all but disappeared, leaving vague impressions on her pale features but little of its charm. Still between her jaded air of sexuality and surprisingly round breasts there remains something attractive about Allison in the driest sort of way. Like a magnet that has lost most but not all of its habitual pull.
As you may have also noticed, Allison possesses incredible strength of purpose. And appears to have little difficulty or unresolved emotion about dragging me toward that wide expanse of plushness which in less dramatic moments might pass for a couch but tonight clearly represents our marriage bed in Allison’s plans.
To me of course it remains a couch. A couch whose brown velvety material has grown shiny and threadbare. A couch covered in random gray streaks which on closer inspection reveal themselves as patchy accumulations of dog’s hair, the strands so thick and dry I imagine them to have fallen from the same breed of German Shepherd that Nazi soldiers once employed to intimidate my Jewish ancestors.
I know; I exaggerate.
I must remind myself that I am approaching a worn velveteen couch and not the gates of Auschwitz. And though I call myself a victim I cannot honestly resolve whether being this ambivalent about the situation I can rightly be considered the target of the attack or one of its instigators?
The fact that I am highly aroused—near total erection, in all honesty—only contributes to my confusion and lends more irony to my protests than urgency to my resistance.
What am I doing here if not to have sex with this overexcited woman? What did I think would happen if I let her bring me to her apartment to “check on Sucky” as she repeatedly insisted with wine-coated breath? ‘Sucky’ being short for her cat Succotash and only incidentally a description of my current emotional state.
Still I was hoping to accomplish something coming here tonight. There was a mission. And sex could have helped in that mission, I freely admit that. But whatever intentions I might have held, despite the obvious arousal of my sexual apparatus, in spite of the rough climax I appear headed toward on that couch across the room—despite all that!—there is no way I could ever maintain sufficient sexual ardor while trapped in this woman’s cloying embrace. Not with her shopworn appearance so painfully poignant as she pulls on my arm and coaxes in slurred diction, “Relax, honey, relax.”
And no less poignant when she adds, “Y’know how cute you are!” in a burst of wide-eyed appreciation.
“Cute?” I shout, exasperated. “Are you crazy?”
As I mentioned earlier, this is all taking place in slow motion, Allison and I moving through a vast syrupy world where if we moved any slower we would be captured in time like flies in amber.
And since it feels as though I have all the time in the world I might as well take advantage of that abundance to revisit the sequence of events that brought me here tonight.
But just so we have it on record, my mission was never about having sex with Allison.
As for what my mission was…?
Does one ever know the reasons one commits stupid and indelible deeds? As much as I can attribute a cause to my madness I came here tonight, allowed myself to be caught in Allison’s web-like clutches, fell prey to this painfully loud throbbing in my forehead—all because I was trying to be a good father. Attempting in my own ill-conceived fashion to protect my nine-year-old son from colliding with one of life’s numerous and invariably sharp corners.
Before we go any further—since I seem to have so much time at my disposal—let me share something with you, an understanding I was given about the purpose of life. It was drummed into me over the span of fifteen years as a member of a ‘school of self development’. Others might have called it a cult, I suppose, because it certainly looked cultish from the outside. But it was a school not a cult, perhaps even a spiritual community. At the very least, it was a fellowship of like-minded people searching for some sort of meaning to their existence, all of us trying to live by higher principles while living and working and enjoying ‘normal’ lives in the regular world.
I guess we were searching for something to believe in besides money, power and pedophile priests. We came from different backgrounds, had traveled by many roads, but found ourselves, like debris in a catch basin, all drawn to a worldwide organization immodestly named The Seekers For Truth and led by a holy man in India known as The Bapucharya. ‘Bapu’ being the Hindi term for ‘Papa’.
And what to make of The Bapucharya!
Seen only in videotaped lectures, His Holiness The Bapucharya always struck me as surprisingly irreverent given the solemn weight of his guru status. Sometimes he acted more like a misplaced Jewish comedian than a fully conscious spiritual leader. A comedian, I should add, who never failed to giggle with almost childlike glee at his own jokes or at The Seekers’ silly metaphors.
“Remember to Drink Your RC Cola,” The Bapucharya often advised in his high-pitched Indian accent, his laughter bubbling free at the edges. ‘RC’ in typical Seekers parlance stands for ‘Rest in Consciousness’. So ‘Drink Your RC Cola’ was merely his way of reminding you to pay conscious attention to all that happens in your life. To live in the present moment rather than letting your mind get whisked away by thoughts or imaginings, which is far more difficult than it sounds given how one’s attention generally flits about like a drunken mosquito.
Look at what is happening right now, right this very moment, as this lustful, adrenaline-pumped lady drags me across her living room floor! Rather than resting in consciousness my mind is flapping around frantically like a fresh caught fish. Thoughts, emotions and fantasies rush through my mind so quickly I cannot keep track of them. I am excited, annoyed, curious, sexually stimulated, amused, uncertain—all at the same time! Meanwhile, mental images continuously flash in a strobe-like effect, many of them featuring those fascinating round orbs that belie Allison’s otherwise scrawny and underfed figure.
The idea of resting in consciousness at this singular moment—of trying to Drink My RC Cola—seems as ludicrous to me as trying to read a book while traveling down a landslide.
But what was I talking about…?
Oh yes, the purpose of life.
If you were to ask The Seekers For Truth about the purpose of life they would insist we are repeatedly put on this planet to learn a few important lessons. They would then explain that each of us is given a unique, one-of-a-kind coursebook to study during our time here on Earth, that coursebook being our Individual Life Experience or ILE as they like to call it.
With what purpose, you probably wonder? And under whose authority?
Good questions. I asked similar ones during my years in The Seekers’ Boston school. Mostly I was told our purpose on Earth was to experience and study the lessons we receive ‘on our ILE’ ( pronounced “isle” and talked about as though a lifetime were an island rather than a span of time). After years of studying the events, characters, recurring themes and major traumas that washed up on our ILEs we would be that much closer to understanding the whys and the wherefores of our particular soul’s journeys.
Heady stuff all this talk about life’s purpose of life and a soul’s journey, but what would you expect from a school whose express raison d’etre is the search for truth?
To get to my point, however…under the purpose of life as The Seekers teach it, my main mission this evening would be to observe with full consciousness all that happens and only secondarily to attempt to free myself from Allison’s hungry clutches. If I am meant to escape with my skin intact the escape will happen, seemingly without effort or difficulty as long as I remember to rest in consciousness. As long as I allow the mind to fall still (Hah!) and pay close attention to whatever happens here tonight—in other words, as long as I remember to Drink My RC Cola.
According to The Seekers For Truth this entire educational experience—studying the lessons of your ILE and endlessly consuming RC Cola—all comes down to a single goal: learning to stay awake while the movie is playing.
And whether I escape from Allison or not, The Seekers would soothingly advise me to sit back and enjoy the movie. Do not concern yourself if these concepts seem elusive. I was a Seeker for fifteen years and probably understood them only slightly better than my inebriated companion could comprehend them now.
But even if I failed to understand my specific life’s lessons during my years of study with The Seekers For Truth I did learn that no one can live out those lessons for me. In that, my ILE—my Individual Life Experience—is the world’s most complete and isolated course of study. And everything that happens on my ILE is a lesson meant specifically for me.
So on this ILE of mine, were I to bring full consciousness to bear, Allison would not be viewed as a faded flower blown my way on the winds of chance, but rather as a meaningful exercise sent expressly for my instruction. One of the periodic lessons in this lifelong course of study I could easily name ‘Paul Peterson 101’.
There is no worry about failing any exams in this educational process because The Seekers teach there is no passing or failing, only learning or not learning. Whatever the outcome of any situation all I am required to do is pay close attention to what happens—while it is happening! To live consciously in the moment. If it takes me 5000 lifetimes rather than 500 to learn whatever it is I am supposed to learn…well who is keeping count anyway?
Besides it probably took me 5000 lifetimes just to reach this evening’s wretched turn of events.
But enough prattling. I waste precious moments in which I could be examining the sequence of events that brought me here tonight. Great insights are waiting to be gained, I know they are. All I have to do is search them out in a review process The Seekers term a ‘Do-It-Yourself Workshop’. The Seekers claim you can achieve enlightenment or nirvana or whatever-you-want-to-call-it under the impetus of a Do-It-Yourself Workshop.
Of course you will far more likely achieve nothing. Bupkas as my Hungarian-born mother would probably say.
As if to underscore that rebellious thought my clinging companion issues a deep, devilish laugh that borders on the hysterical. To look at her you might think she is paying close attention to what is happening on her ILE. Truth is Allison’s consciousness has slipped far beyond anyone’s control and is now under the power of what The Seekers would term a Frozen Idea.
“Or so it seems,” I mentally add, repeating one of His Holiness’ favorite catch phrases.
But let us leave Allison for the moment, her consciousness frozen on the targeted velveteen couch, and move on with our course of study.
To review a sequence of events in your life through the prism of a Do-It-Yourself Workshop, The Seekers tell you to find a place of observation within yourself—‘within mind’ they actually say—that is so high and removed it seems as if you are looking down from the peak of a mountain. This is one of the most difficult practices in the entire Seekers training book and one that I never successfully completed in all my years at the Boston school. Supposedly when you move that deep within yourself, when you are that far removed from all thoughts and movements of the mind, you observe the movie of your life as though perched on a mountaintop. At the same time—and this is the difficult part to grasp—you supposedly remain fully connected to whatever is happening in the present moment. From that high vantage point, according to The Seekers, you can look down and see all relevant events from your Do-It-Yourself Workshop circling the base of the mountain like beads on a necklace, each waiting in turn for your conscious attention. Simultaneously you continue to live out your mundane daily existence, working your job, feeding the cat, visiting the dry cleaners or whatever.
To connect with any single incident in this chain of linked events you merely aim the power of consciousness in its direction. When you are able to do that, according to The Seekers, you are seated at the Center Point of the Universe, which in typical Seekers fashion is called the CPU.
And the CPU, unless I am suffering under some temporary delusion, seems to be where my consciousness is resting this very moment. You should understand that reaching the Center Point of the Universe is no minor accomplishment. As far as I know, and I have never heard otherwise, it generally signifies that one has reached the highest levels of consciousness. This is rarified territory, the state of angels and gurus and not one generally attained by wrestling with lust-laden maidens.
But nevertheless it is true…I am at the center!
As incredible as it seems—and I am still not certain this is really happening—a lens has shifted on some internal organ of awareness, dramatically altering my perception…all my perceptions! Allison is still dragging me in slow motion across the length of her living room toward the velveteen couch yet somehow she seems more like a character in a movie than a participant in an unsettled situation. I continue to hear sounds and receive impressions but they are muted and distant as if robbed of both impact and importance. After countless years of habitual failure I have apparently without great effort or directed purpose managed to attain the Center Point of the Universe—the CPU!
No that is not right. Some subtle instinct tells me I am not seated exactly at the center point but very close. Just the slightest bit off. And though everything is strangely different, seemingly shifted to some altered sense of reality, nothing in my outer world appears to have changed at all.
Do you see what I mean?
On the outside, for anyone who cares to look, I appear to be upstairs in a two-family home in Plymouth, Massachusetts being dragged in slow-motion by a rapacious woman across her living room floor. But on the inside—from where I look out—I am actually resting in a mild state of bliss, seated in a stillness that is poised almost at the Center Point of the Universe.
At one and the same time I am watching a movie unfold while acting out its principal role. Both a spectator and a participant, removed yet connected, distant but involved.
Do not ask me how this can be. I only know it is happening and it feels right. Actually it feels more than right. It seems as if this is the way I was meant to see the world and all those years of being caught up in the movie were merely unconscious attempts to find my way back to this removed point of observation.
I do not claim to understand it. There is no logic to this split perspective except the logic of its reality. It exists because I experience it, simple as that.
And look…! Can you see them? Those are all the events that led to my being here tonight. They whirl around the base of the mountain, strung together like pearls, as if each were not a memory from my life but a moment in time captured like a scene from a movie. Each fragment of my life trapped in a transparent bubble that emits a strange radiance.
And if that does not seem weird enough, watch what happens when I aim the power of consciousness down from the mountaintop toward the nearest of those faintly glowing, pearl-like moments-in-time…
****
The
First Karmic
Gravitational Slide:
Down
Among
The Savages
And Scouts
In
Which We
Begin Examining
A Sequence Of Events
And Learn
How
To Conduct Ourselves
At A Pinewood Derby
****
Lesson 1
How
To Recognize
A Disaster
While It Is Still In
The Development
Stage
This is where it all begins.
And it feels strange to be here; physically strange I mean.
The Seekers For Truth would tell you I am having an acute reaction of my Physical Center brought on by over stimulation of my Emotional Center, both centers being so close in proximity they naturally affect one another.
I cannot judge if that is true or not but I can tell you it feels as if a number of my bodily sensations have switched on simultaneously, all of them beyond my control.
Perhaps you recognize the symptoms.
My stomach is upset, my shirt damp with sweat, my vision occasionally blurs, and my hands tremble when held up for observation. Also, far above the tumult of noise surrounding me is a persistent rattling-type sound as if an object were being shaken in a container. The rattle echoes in my head, clamoring for attention.
All of this relates, no doubt, to concerns I have about my companion who is nowhere in sight as I look around.
I am not so much worried about where he is right now as I am about where the movement of this morning’s events may take him. If you look around this riotous, over-crowded church basement you will eventually run across him I am sure. He has brown hair and wears a blue cub scout shirt topped by a neatly rolled, banana-yellow bandana. Only nine years old he is of average height for his age and thin. As a young child he possessed wispy golden curls but now in their place lies a thick field of brown matting with a cowlick rising from the top like a perpetual waterspout.
The boy looks much like I did at his age even down to a part in his hair which runs barely longer than the thought that created it.
I am talking about my son of course, my nine year old cub scout Mickey whose given name is Michael and who is somewhere in this large basement hall contributing I am certain to the deafening volume of noise and chaos that surrounds me.
Yes I believe chaos is the right word.
How large would you say this crowd is? I estimate more than two hundred cub scouts fill the room, their screams and animal-like cries rebounding off the linoleum floor and green painted walls of St. Christina’s basement hall without noticeable rhythm or pause.
Mickey and his fellow scouts maintain this constant roar as background to the long awaited Pinewood Derby taking place in the center of this large windowless room.
If you are a parent you have been in countless halls like this. They are easy to remember, these anonymous rooms dedicated to civic ritual, because they are so similarly forgettable you only need remember one to remember them all. These are the rooms where parents organize book fairs and bake sales, where Brownies cross over “The Bridge” to become Girl Scouts, where little leagues hold their spring sign-ups and, yes, where cub scouts gather in early February dragging their fathers out of post-NFL depression for the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby.
If you look in the approximate center of this swirling mass of blue shirts you will notice an imposing structure that looks like the downhill segment of a miniaturized roller coaster. This is the official Pinewood Derby racetrack. About four feet at its highest, it descends on a steep plane for twenty feet or more then bottoms out gradually for another ten feet. Three parallel wooden tracks run down its length, each with an elevated guide rail in the center. It is upon these tracks, their tires straddling the guide rail, that the Pinewood Derby racecars compete for all of five furious seconds.
I marvel at how something that happens so quickly can be exciting and satisfying for nine and ten year old boys but then I realize we are dealing with new age children whose attention spans blink on and off in nano-seconds.
Have you ever been to a Pinewood Derby?
This is my first Pinewood Derby and already it has become a landmark lesson on my ILE.
At times it can be almost hypnotic to watch the individual races or heats as they are called. Once the three racecars are placed in position by their cub scout owners the thunderous buzz of noise and energy subsides as if a muting switch has been thrown. Then the individual gates, little more than metal pins that retract into the guide rails, are simultaneously withdrawn by Mr. Matthews the Scoutmaster who stands behind the structure myopically observing each race through thick wire-frame glasses.
“An-n-n-nd they’re off!” he announces through a scratchy hand-held megaphone, mimicking I am sure some hambone racetrack announcer he once heard in his younger days.
Instantly the noise level shoots back up.
Then under the rising storm of screams and cheers the three racecars abandon themselves to the pull of gravity and streak down their individual rails for all of four or five seconds. The winner in most heats is usually decided in the split second after the restraining pins retract, but a few contests remain seesaw battles to the end.
If you are not feeling the desire to personally visit a Pinewood Derby do not be alarmed. Observing it from a distance it is not an experience whose pleasures are easily discerned. Without being here in person surrounded by the harsh uproar of two hundred boys in play, entranced by the surprisingly stylish look of the home-made racecars, beguiled by the titillating presence of a table filled with Pinewood Derby trophies, each with its gold-leafed racecar pitched upwards in a strutting pose, you are left with little more to consider than a child’s painfully protracted game of mindless amusement.
There it is again! That strange rattling noise…I believe I can hear it in my head.
Can you hear it?
And look, my hand still trembles…
The thing to do of course is to ignore these minor annoyances, giving them no more power than they already possess. In The Seekers For Truth we were taught that the power of consciousness channels tremendous energy into anything you focus upon. The choice we have in life is to “…bestow consciousness with attention; to control it for our own purposes,” Mr. Samuelson, the British-born Head of the Boston School, once lectured, “or to squander it with the same measure of thought a drunkard gives to—excuse the unpleasant reference—urinating in an alleyway.”
To control consciousness or to give up control.
That is the choice we have every waking moment of our lives, The Seekers would have you believe. Choose one you become master of the mind, choose the other you become its monkey.
“Or so it seems,” The Bapucharya would likely interject, giggling as if he were the only one to understand some painfully obvious joke.
But forget all that for a moment and take a closer look at this object in my unsteady hand.
Allow me to raise it up for your inspection.
This—in case you cannot identify what you see—is one of those rare Pinewood Derby racecars destined for glory. So far this morning this humble creation has powered itself to victory in five different heats, two of which were decided in runoffs.
Look closely at this leading contender for one of those fifteen dollar gilded trophies and you will understand why my Emotional and Physical Centers are in such a state of fulminating distress.
Now tell me—if I had not already identified the function of this unsightly creation, what would you think it was?
It would not be easy, would it?
At first glance you would probably be shocked to observe this elongated, six-inch block of wood has foolishly been painted fuchsia. I say ‘foolishly’ for the simple reason this shade of fuchsia is so bright and garish it is patently inappropriate for an object this small. I also say ‘foolishly’ because there is the distinct possibility some observers might look at this hastily painted wood block and imagine its color to be pink instead of fuchsia and nothing would be more foolish or self-destructive than to bring a pink model racecar to a Cub Scout Pinewood Derby.
You begin to see my difficulty.
But continue to rest your eyes upon this object in my hand and observe what happens.
Gradually its shape starts to grow familiar, am I right? You begin to detect car-like qualities in the way its various aspects come together and occupy space. Yes its shape definitely bears rough resemblance to some primordial vision of a car.
In the middle section of the racecar, which sits lower than the front and rear segments, a protuberance sticks up like the topmost nub of a child’s finger. This protrusion, painted the same fuchsia as the rest of the car but topped with a white dot, could easily be viewed as the head of a driver, or at least the top third of his head. And the boxlike segments to the front and rear appear to be the engine and trunk of a model racecar. And there, black, shiny and upright on both sides, are four plastic tires, the only elements that actually resemble their real life counterparts.
We are gazing upon the final product of a weekend’s futile efforts. A weekend where too few hours were stolen from too many activities to allow anything more than this gaudy imposter of a model racecar to emerge from the block of wood my little boy had been given.
I hasten to add that if the black plastic tires seem true to life it has little to do with our modeling skills and everything to do with the fact that tires and axles come fully manufactured and included in the kit, as if a minimum amount of realism was needed to keep cub scouts and their fathers on solid ground.
And if keeping our feet on solid ground was an object of the exercise this handiwork proves how far short of the goal Mickey and I have fallen.
Take for instance our laughable attempt at applying racecar graphics. Look on both sides of our model’s bright fuchsia exterior. There where another father and son team might have sensibly applied adhesive racecar decals you will notice instead crude, hand-painted white symbols, one on each side. At first glance these symbols appear undecipherable, like primitive caveman drawings. Their legibility is not helped by the fact that the whiteness of the paint is barely maintained against the bleed-through of the fuchsia, which creates of course the false impression that the blurry white symbol has transformed itself into a pink graphic, which it has not.
Now if you squint your eyes and look squarely at either side of the racecar you start to see the number 2 surrounded by a poorly drawn circle. That number of course seemed like an obvious choice at the time.
“We will make it number two,” I innocently suggested a short week ago, both of us at my kitchen table hovering like inattentive gods over our model racecar.
“Two?” Mickey queried.
“Just like there are two of us working on it,” I explained. What do you think?”
“That’s cool,” Mickey decided with a thoughtless shrug.
Looking at it now there is nothing ‘cool’ to be seen. We should have omitted the ‘2’ entirely and left the surrounding circle as testament to the number of people on our team who actually knew what they were doing.
Had I been working on Mickey’s Pinewood Derby racer under the guidance of The Seekers For Truth, my lack of experience would not have been a problem, merely another opportunity to put consciousness to work.
“Let the mind rest on the working surface, Mr. Peterson,” one of The Seekers would have gently instructed. “Now, allow consciousness to focus on the precise point at which the work is taking place. Knowledge of what is needed—and what you need to do—will automatically arise.”
I know it sounds ridiculous.
But it works.
My years with The Seekers gave me dozens of instances that proved how well the exercise works. Many times I witnessed much-needed knowledge arising from the working surface of one project or another. By ‘working surface’ The Seekers mean wherever the work is being done. A desktop, nail head, mixing bowl, pencil point or window pane are few of the more obvious working surfaces.
What is most amazing, however, is not that the practice works but that I unerringly forget to use it when I need it most. As if the memory of all those years of Seeker instruction had been accidentally erased. The countless times I could have benefited from this and other Seeker exercises I either forgot what I had been taught or only remembered after it was too late to put it to use.
Now it appears something has shifted; that a door has opened and I have been allowed to step back inside the world of The Seekers For Truth, closer to the CPU—the Center Point of the Universe—than I have ever come before.
Having been cut off from Seeker knowledge all these years I am not quite used to having it back. Most likely it would feel the same to get behind the wheel of a car after years of not driving.
In one of his videotaped tutorials His Holiness The Bapucharya explained why my fellow students and I had been chosen to join The School and receive its frequently forgettable teachings.
“You were all selected as Seekers because your essences are almost fully cooked,” he announced with bubbly delight. “Being almost fully cooked gives you responsibilities as well as entitlements, and so you will not be allowed to merrily climb out of my frying pan whenever you lose your appetite for the truth.” Giggling like a grade-schooler he concluded, “No, my children, you can no longer leave our pleasant little school…” and here is the relevant threat, “unless you are prepared to accept the consequences.”
His Holiness was laughing at his cooking metaphors, smiling at us from the rectangular framework of the TV screen, but his ‘consequences’ seemed no less a threat for all his comic good cheer.
Perhaps this forgetting of Seeker practices, especially when they are most needed, is one of the consequences The Bapucharya was speaking about. Clearly consciousness was not resting anywhere in the vicinity of Cambridge last Saturday when Mickey and I did most of the damage to our racing car which I have now come to think of with mock affection as Old Number Two.
Surprisingly Mickey does not notice my discomfort. Nor has he seen or heard anything to make him realize how unsightly a model racecar we have brought with us to the Pinewood Derby.
That is the real surprise of the morning. Not our winning five consecutive elimination heats nor remaining undefeated while legions of meticulously designed racecars have fallen by the wayside, but our making it through all this complex, unfolding activity without being spotted or called out for the poorly dressed clowns and imposters that we are.
For me it is a wonder that resembles a penny balloon floating up into the heavens. You watch it climb, awed by the grandeur of its flight, all the while knowing it will burst once it reaches an altitude where the pressure is too great.
I cannot do anything at the moment but watch the balloon as it continues to rise.
Mickey on the other hand seems delighted. Rather than measure himself against other scouts in terms of racecar aesthetics he is proud to be the owner of a competitor-blasting, killer racecar…
There he is! I see him now…
Over there on the other side of the room running back and forth with Billy Montcreif, Louie Serino and two other boys. They are playing some sort of tag that requires minimum adherence to any set of rules.
Involuntarily I feel a smile arising on my face; feel my facial muscles shifting into positions I would have thought were lost to memory. If I smile upon sighting my little boy, however, it does not mean I have been released from the bondage of my concerns, only furloughed for a few fleeting moments.
What a joy it is to see him at play. A rare sight too since he usually expresses his emotions more discreetly and mostly by himself. It is no less a window into his present state of mind to watch him running after an elusive Louie Serino than it would be to hear him relate his deepest feelings to Dr. Rivers, my gloomy, gray-bearded psychologist.
Five times Mickey has carried our clunky, tropical-colored creation up to the starting block and five times he has survived elimination runs where all the other cub scouts competing against him have not. And each time he scampered up to the racing area, retrieved Old Number Two and proudly carried it back to his seated father who, if the truth were known, sits quietly waiting for our luck to catch up with us. Waiting for my son and two hundred other blue-shirted scouts to discover what a shamefully ugly piece of work we have brought with us to this year’s Pinewood Derby.
That we have not yet been discovered—that is the real miracle of the morning!
****
Lesson 2
Removing
Mr. Ping
And Mr. Pong
With A Little Help From
Mrs.
Costadazzi
You know of course we are living on borrowed time.
Sooner or later we will be discovered and denounced. Sooner or later these buzzing, elbow-high children of the damned will descend upon us in a pitiless swarm.
I know this as well as I know who is to blame for our coming here with a model racecar that looks like an arts and crafts project from The School for the Blind.
The Seekers view this headlong rush toward an inevitable destiny as a Karmic Gravitational Slide. If I am correct and Mickey and I are in the grip of a Karmic Gravitational Slide that would mean there are higher forces at play than can be readily understood with our ordinary faculties and limited, human-being point of view. Which also means it would be foolish and unfair to blame anyone for any of this.
How can I blame an individual for what is clearly an inevitable outcome of the dance of the universe?
How can I indeed!
Contrary to obvious reality, however, I know exactly whose fault it is that Mickey and I have come here this morning with a racecar that looks like it was crafted under the influence of some perception-distorting substance. And there is only one suspect in this particular crime. You may scoff if you wish but at some level this is definitely all Marilyn’s fault.
Marilyn’s fault…Marilyn’s fault…
For the last hour that phrase has been repeating inside my mind like a runaway mantra.
But how can I blame my ex-wife, you ask? How can anything in our complex universe be so simply reduced to a single cause? Can I blame Marilyn for the choice of colors, the childish carpentry, the amateurish look of our racing graphics? Can I reasonably suggest Marilyn, who never so much as lifted a tool or made a suggestion, played any role, much less a decisive one, in the creation of this pathetic parrot-colored racecar?
Can I indeed!
Divorce is a surreal adventure where nothing makes sense and logic holds little counterweight to emotion. Most of what I went through—the breakup of my marriage, the unraveling of my family, my whole life being turned upside down—seemed like a badly scripted movie whose subplots were invariably beyond the realm of anyone’s logic or my control.
Why not blame Marilyn since she will never be judged for one-tenth the harm she has done to me?
There it goes again.
That rattling sound. It seems to be echoing in the hollow regions of my skull if that makes any sense.
Can you hear it?
Earlier I suggested we ignore it, deny it the consciousness it needs to enliven itself. But my years with The Seekers now lead me toward a different response. To no longer reject the sound but to acknowledge it and hear what it has to say. For all I know it could relate to something important, something the universe is trying to tell me. Something I will never uncover unless I move beyond the limited range of my physical perceptions.
The Seekers insist the workings of the universe are entirely logical, quickly adding that its logic lies beyond the grasp of most scientific minds.
I myself have little regard for logic. Most of what I deal with in life seems more irrational than logical. My divorce, my struggles as a single father, the questionable value of a career devoted to creating advertising (also known as ‘cultural crap’ to anyone with half a brain). And then of course my penchant for getting trapped in unfortunate situations…
How many people you know would let themselves get trapped in a Pinewood Derby waiting for the sky to fall? Or become prisoners of lust in a second-floor apartment in Plymouth, Massachusetts?
But am I really trapped, you ask?
The Seekers would have you remember that no matter how much I appear to be ensnared in a series of unfolding events I am also watching those same events from a quiet—call it serene—perch within myself. High atop an inner mountain, you recall, looking out from close proximity to the CPU.
The Center Point of the Universe!
Where is the logic in that?
No I do not need logic. It is not necessary for this persistent rattling noise to have an obvious cause as if it were belched up from the rusty coils of St. Christina’s heating system. Nor does it need to be an easily explained delusion, perhaps arising from the troubled coils of my own internal systems which are seriously stressed from the mounting uproar and lack of air in this overheated coffin of a basement hall.
The truth is I do not need to understand the sound, I only need to stop resisting it, thereby breaking down the polarity that exists between a persistent noise and a resistant listener.
According to The Seekers For Truth, dismantling this mechanism of resistance—and it is a mechanism since it operates under principles far removed from conscious direction—is called Removing Mr. Ping and Mr. Pong.
These conflicting points of view—Mr. Ping and Mr. Pong—create an energy field in which the subject is pushed in opposite directions by opposing forces and inevitably gets stuck in between. When you remove Mr. Ping and Mr. Pong you remove the polarity from a situation and free whatever has been trapped within its energy field.
“This indeed was the awesome power behind Mr. Gandhi and his movement of non-violence,” The Bapucharya once told us on video. “Mr. Gandhi’s Satyagraha was not the opposition of one force to another, but the withdrawal of direct opposition to a force that was already in place and oh-so-very powerful. Mr. Gandhi’s capacity to deflate a swaggering imperialist empire lay in his removal of opposing force, did it not? And the replacement of that resistance with love, honor and, most important, civility!
“What a devilish idea,” His Holiness exclaimed, giggling as usual, “We will not play in your game but look how much fun we are having, playing so nicely in our game!”
The Bapucharya was right of course.
Take this unidentified rattling noise. No matter how persistently it fights for my attention I persist in denying it its right to any consideration. The more it pushes, the more I push back. Which means of course the seesaw stalemate could go on indefinitely unless the underlying dynamic of the situation is somehow altered.
Unless someone Removes Mr. Ping and Mr. Pong!
Easy to say, not so easy to do.
Anyone who has tried to stop smoking knows how difficult it can be to Remove Mr. Ping and Mr. Pong. Resisting one’s desire for a cigarette more often reinforces the habit than puts out the fire.
The Seekers For Truth developed a number of techniques for disarming resistance. Of the two that spring to mind Embracement seems the most appropriate in these circumstances. Embracement relies on the resister—myself in this case—embracing the very experience I have been resisting.
But let me show you…
The first thing one does is come to rest.
Drink your RC Cola!
Watch how I sit in a comfortable position and let my body find its natural balance, at the same time letting all thoughts and ideas gradually fall away. There is no need to push my thoughts away; I merely allow them to leave by freeing them from my attention.
Next I close my eyes, shutting out this landscape of agitated cub scouts and under-caffeinated fathers, and picture in my mind an object that is large and overwhelming. My fellow Seekers used to imagine redwood trees, buses, skyscrapers—something suitably gigantic. With me it was always an image of my fifth grade teacher Mrs. Costadazzi.
As I begin to internally recite my mantra—a secret mystical sound given to each Seeker student—letting my mind rest on the individual sounds as they repeat in sync with each breath, my inner eye scans a sea of darkness and waits.
And here she comes now…
If you could see inside my mind you would observe Mrs. Costadazzi, all 300 pounds of her, slowly materializing and as huge and good natured as she was when I was 11 years old and sitting in her class.
Involuntarily my chest fills with a sigh as she bathes me in her warm, maternal smile. Exactly as I remember her she peers at me over her squared bifocals with pleasured interest. I can even smell the scent of her perfume with that orchid-like, almost medicinal air I always associate with the smell of chalk.
If you could see into my imaginings you would observe her massive form looming over me as it did so often in the fifth grade. You would also notice she is not dressed in one of her usual floral dresses but instead, through the power of my imagination, is draped in a fabric made entirely from the very sound I have been trying to ignore.
Yes Mrs. Costadazzi is totally cloaked, almost hidden, within layers of that insistent rattling noise. The material is dingy white like used dishwater and covered in splotches of black that vibrate in sync with the clattering of that mysterious sound.
At this point where logic might suggest I let go of my resistance by releasing Mrs. Costadazzi’s image from my mind I actually reach out to embrace it and be embraced by it. Letting the dull, rattling sound and Mrs. Costadazzi herself come as close and as deep within me as my own breath.
For a moment I am back at PS 45 in The Bronx being crushed upon that oceanic bosom, clutched lovingly against the brittle buttons and the little silver watch fob hanging upside down on the vast plateau of her mountainous bust.
And so as I cling tightly with great fondness, almost suffocating within this massive enfoldment, I no longer reject that strange rattling sound.
I embrace it.
In this moment of silent, crushing acceptance, I break through the mystery and come to understand the true nature of the sound itself.
And now I have to laugh!
Without thinking I open my eyes and look around for someone with whom I can share my sudden and amusing insight only to realize I may be sitting amongst hundreds of cub scouts and their parents but I am nevertheless pursuing this Do-It-Yourself Workshop on my own.
I resist saying alone because there is a typical Seeker wordplay that translates ‘alone’ as ‘all-one’ and that is not what I mean to say.
Of course Bill McAndrews is sitting in the chair next to mine but Bill would not be a person with whom to share anything of value, much less a sudden insight.
“A rattling sound, Peterson?” he would exclaim in his booming voice. “What the hell are you talking about? Who cares about some silly sound when there’s so much in life you can see and reach out for!”
No I will keep my insights to myself. At least while I attempt to track the now-explained sound back to its original place and time. If there is something to be learned, that is where I will learn it.
To go there I need only find that inner mountaintop again which, as you no doubt recall, lies excruciatingly close to the CPU. Then resting in consciousness I will focus on the next stop in our Do-It-Yourself Workshop, the next closest of those luminescent beads running around the base of the mountain.
So here I go again, slipping effortlessly into heightened consciousness as if it were a comfortable slipper.
Trust me I was never that gifted a Seeker student that I could so easily come to rest in consciousness. Never in all my Seeker days was I able to come this close to the CPU much less find myself looking down from its inner heights.
If it seems strange to you imagine how it seems to me!
Now I can seemingly fall into a conscious state at will and jump from one event in life to another without restraint or significant effort. Clearly something is different. Something has changed.
I have changed.
No I have evolved!
Or so it seems.
In any case my Embracement is leading me to the next memory bubble running around the mountain. Now it is simply a matter of directing consciousness toward that singular moment from my generally unexciting and mundane existence…
Which is why after a few seconds of deep-seated rest I find myself standing in the kitchen of a familiar home in St. Bart’s Bay, a charming little coastal community about 45 minutes south of Boston.
I say familiar, but only to me, not to you.
You see I have traveled back through time to the Saturday a week before the Pinewood Derby. I have come here as I do every second Saturday to pick up my children and bring them to my apartment in Cambridge for the weekend.
And here is my son Mickey standing in the kitchen that used to be mine but now wholly and solely belongs to his mother. See him nervously shaking that white cardboard box, causing some unseen object to rattle around with no great significance?
Yes exactly!
You recognized it right away, did you not?
Our mysterious rattling sound!
The irony is I already know the contents of that small rectangular box.
And I would not be lying if I told you it contains the raw elements of a time bomb.
****
Lesson 3
How
To Make
Stupid Decisions
About
Important Matters
As you can see for yourself, it is an ordinary kitchen, nothing special except for the fact it was once partly mine but now fully belongs to my ex-wife.
Speaking of possession, see how tightly Mickey holds the white cardboard box with both hands as if it represents something of great value and irreplaceable significance?
As I have already pointed out, that box is the source of the clatter resonating in my mind so mysteriously at the Pinewood Derby. I cannot claim to understand why a sound created in this kitchen would be echoing a week later at St. Christina’s but it tells me to pay careful attention to what happens here this morning.
Though no longer a member of The Seekers For Truth I still harbor hopes of discovering whatever secrets lie buried across the landscape of my ILE. In that regard I doubt that any longtime student of The Seekers school ever fully leaves its influence or its lessons behind.
One thing I have left behind, at least for now, is my self-assurance. Standing around in my former home makes me feel awkward, like a tradesman waiting for payment on an overdue invoice. I silently urge my habitually slowpoke daughters Suzie and Cathy to hurry up as they gather whatever clothing, books and playthings they need to survive another weekend at their father’s apartment in Cambridge.
“Do you have your stuff?” I ask Mickey, the question more a formality than a concern since his customarily lumpy backpack is resting on the floor near his feet.
“Got it!” he answers, lightly shaking the box in his hands for proof. Whatever is inside rattles with the weight and certainty of a single large item but I give it little attention.
To be honest Mickey could be setting fire to the house and I would probably not notice. My mind is lost in a swirl of confused thoughts and highly charged emotions. If there is a focus to my thinking it concerns where in the house my ex-wife might be and whether she is likely to make an appearance before we leave. Her presence is something I simultaneously dread and desire, like a reformed alcoholic who both fears and longs for his next drink.
Once I loved the woman and felt affection at the simplest thought of her. Today more than four years after moving out of this house those feelings still cast lingering shadows.
Perhaps because Marilyn sought the divorce against my wishes, perhaps because I never fully accepted its reality, or perhaps for no other motive than habit…for whatever reason some deep-seated attraction to my ex-wife still remains, refusing to release me from its grip, only from its charm.
“What is that?” I finally ask Mickey, more to distract myself from my thoughts than to learn about the box. “A school project?”
“My Pinewood Derby kit,” he replies as if I have forgotten something told to me in a previous discussion.
The memory comes back fuzzily.
“We were going to work on that weeks ago…” I casually note. “Some cub scout project or something?”
“Yep,” he answers, trying not to show his feelings about the matter.
“…and things kept getting in the way,” I vaguely recall.
“Yep.”
“Well, I have not forgotten my promise, Mick, but we have a real busy weekend planned…”
“Da-a-ad,” he interrupts anxiously, “the Pinewood Derby is next weekend! I entered ‘cause you said we’d go; that you’d help me make a model racecar. And now there’s no time left to do it.”
The rising anxiety in his voice surprises me and makes me turn to face him for a closer look. Something in what he said or the way he said it sharply reminds me of disappointments I felt as a child over my own father’s failings.
In less than a second I let go of my discomfort to deal with his.
“Who said we have no time left?” I ask with mock indignation. I tap the cardboard box with a finger. “Is this it? The racing thing…the kit?”
“Yep!”
“Well, what are we supposed to do with it?”
“Fix it up so it looks like a racecar,” he answers as if struggling to conceal how dim-witted a question I had just asked.
“Well, that sounds easy enough,” I reply, unaware of how inaccurate a statement that will prove to be. Releasing a soft exclamation of mounting interest I take the box from his hands and shake it near my ear.
“Sounds like a full kit,” I comment with the knowing air of a professional. Lifting off the white cardboard lid I discover a squared block of blond piney wood whose dimensions are mill-sawed to accommodate the shape of a model racing car. I take out the block for closer inspection, surprised by the smoothness of its fine sanded surface. Turning it over I find two slits running the width of the underside, probably meant to anchor the tire axles which came bundled along with four black tires in a clear plastic bag. The bag and the block of wood make up the entire kit.
I put the wooden block back in the box.
“Where are…?” I start to ask.
I raise my head to look at my little boy.
“What…?” he asks, reflecting back my obvious concern.
“There are no instructions…” I remark with a troubled lift of my eyebrows.
“I guess we don’t need instructions,” he suggests.
His obvious lack of assurance is hardly encouraging.
“Did anyone else get them?” I ask. “Will I be the only father who worked on this without instructions?”
“Dad,” Mickey says, holding back his exasperation, “none of the kits came with instructions. You’re supposed to know what a racecar looks like. You don’t have to do anything that needs instructions.”
“You sure?” I ask, still uncomfortable. “Absolutely sure?”
“Mrs. Mitchell went over the contents with us when we got the kit. Nobody had instructions.” He looks at me with an air of paper-thin tolerance. “Don’t you remember we talked about this? And you promised?”
Yes I remember; some of it at least. Enough to know I am running out of options. Other memories come back as well.
In most of them I see myself when I was Mickey’s age, waiting for my father. Waiting for him to come home nights before I went to sleep, waiting for him to wake up on Sundays so we could go for our family outing. Mostly I was waiting for Dad to notice me, to give me attention; perhaps to accidentally discover there was a whole world I inhabited apart from his.
When I think of all the times I swore to be a better father than my father and here my son is waiting for me to remember my own lightly made and easily forgotten promises…!
Dr. Rivers, my grumpy gray-bearded therapist, says adults usually take on the very attributes they despised in their parents. According to him it is our way of compensating for behavior we could not control when we were young.