This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time

I'm enlightened now. You know, only Buddha-style behavior. Spider chrysanthemums. The Diamond Sutra and the Blue Cliff Record. Hari Rama, you know, Krishna, Krishna. You know, Enlightened.

"Sticking feathers up your butt," Tyler says, "does not make you a chicken."

As the fat renders, the tallow will float to the surface of the boiling water.

Oh, I say, so I'm sticking feathers up my butt.

As if Tyler here with cigarette burns marching up his arms is such an evolved soul. Mister and Missus Human Butt Wipe. I calm my face down and turn into one of those Hindu cow people going to slaughter on the airline emergency procedure card.

Turn down the heat under the pan.

I stir the boiling water.

More and more tallow will rise until the water is skinned over with a rainbow mother-of-pearl layer. Use a big spoon to skim the layer off, and set this layer aside.

So, I say, how is Marla?

Tyler says, "At least Marla's trying to hit bottom."

I stir the boiling water.

Keep skimming until no more tallow rises. This is tallow we're skimming off the water. Good clean tallow.

Tyler says I'm nowhere near hitting the bottom, yet. And if I don't fall all the way, I can't be saved. Jesus did it with his crucifixion thing. I shouldn't just abandon money and property and knowledge. This isn't just a weekend retreat. I should run from self-improvement, and I should be running toward disaster. I can't just play it safe anymore.

This isn't a seminar.

"If you lose your nerve before you hit the bottom," Tyler says, "you'll never really succeed."

Only after disaster can we be resurrected.

"It's only after you've lost everything," Tyler says, "that you're free to do anything."

What I'm feeling is premature enlightenment.

I ask, am I anywhere near hitting bottom?

"Where you're at, now," Tyler says, "you can't even imagine what the bottom will be like."

A tiger can smile
A snake will say it loves you
Lies make us evil

The hole punched through my cheek doesn't ever heal. I'm going to work, and my punched-out eye sockets are two swollen-up black bagels around the little piss holes I have left to see through. Until today, it really pissed me off that I'd become this totally centered Zen Master and nobody had noticed. Still, I'm doing the little FAX thing. I write little HAIKU things and FAX them around to everyone. When I pass people in the hall at work, I get totally ZEN right in everyone's hostile little FACE.

Worker bees can leave
Even drones can fly away
The queen is their slave

You give up all your worldly possessions and your car and go live in a rented house in the toxic waste part of town where late at night, you can hear Marla and Tyler in his room, calling each other human butt wipe.

Take it, human butt wipe.

Do it, butt wipe.

Choke it down. Keep it down, baby.

Just by contrast, this makes me the calm little center of the world.

Me, with my punched-out eyes and dried blood in big black crusty stains on my pants, I'm saying HELLO to everybody at work. HELLO! Look at me. HELLO! I am so ZEN. This is BLOOD. This is NOTHING. Hello. Everything is nothing, and it's so cool to be ENLIGHTENED. Like me.

Sigh.

Look. Outside the window. A bird.

My boss asked if the blood was my blood.

The bird flies downwind. I'm writing a little haiku in my head.

Without just one nest
A bird can call the world home
Life is your career

I'm counting on my fingers: five, seven, five.

The blood, is it mine?

Yeah, I say.

Some of it.

This is a wrong answer.

Like this is a big deal. I have two pair of black trousers. Six white shirts. Six pair of underwear. The bare minimum. I go to fight club. These things happen.

"Go home," my boss says. "Get changed."

Pārmaiņas pēc nedaudz literatūras...

/lasa/

fight club?

aha =D

good job ;)

Ja kādam interesē html versija, give me a yell =D

tagd tikai izlasīju :D labs labs dogīts ;D

Ir par ko padomāt vispār ;)