The Revelations of El Chato
El Chato says, "Down there I believe in magic. Up here I believe in the law of big numbers. See, there's always a possibility, a function, if you string enough instances together. Because no matter how many numbers there are, it's never infinity." He is referencing magic ceremonies in Mexico, fourteen hour peyote sessions, conversations with coyotes, and being in "the presence." But that's not where we begin.
Where this begins is with a toilet that smells of its own accord. No matter the cleansing, no matter the lack of use, it smells like a downtown parking garage stairwell in the afternoon sun. Richard Martinez, the plumber, is here to alleviate the stench. But it turns out that Richard has no sense of smell, resulting from a bad pnemonia attack. "I haven't smelled a fart in ten years," he says. He explores the sealings of the toilets, examines the back of the toilet, and asks to look underneath the house. "Sometimes the pipes underneath will leak and seep through cracks in the floorboard. It's especially bad with any wind."
The pipes beneath have no leaks. We walk back into the house and Richard notices a painting on the wall, a frivolous attempt of mine. "Are you an artist?" he asks, his eyes newly alight. He takes a postcard from his pocket and hands it to me. On the postcard is an intricate tiny painting with images of Einstein, Hindu gods, cats with Taoist symbols on their foreheads, all intertwined amongst a mahogany starlit sky. Scrawled at the bottom right of the card are the words "El Chato."
"What's that mean?" I ask, "El Chato?"
"Means bulldog. I've been called that since I was very young; it's a family name. When I was four, I had an orange in my hands and an older man, not sure if he was family or not, grabbed it out of my hands as a joke. I lunged at him and sunk my teeth right into his calf and wouldn't let go. My uncle was right there and he yelled 'El Chato!' and from then on, that was my name. Amongst friends."
Once this heritage has been revealed, El Chato opens up with declarations about the meaning of his art. As we stand near a fetid toilet, he discusses the connectivity of atoms, the illusion of time, the shamanistic tradition of cultures in the Southern hemisphere, and about the purity of ceremonies involving the plants of divinity. I suggest that we relocate into the living room, where I show him some literature I've read about these subjects. I offer some trite announcement regarding the possibility that children should know more about such international insight. El Chato reflects, "I used to work with children, teaching art. And it's about the age of nine, eight or nine, that children's art becomes inherently more functional, more conceptual. It starts to use words. It becomes less free."
Huxley explained this phenomenon in The Doors of Perception. His idea was that we have the ability, generally through the enabling of ego-inhibiting substances, to be conscious of the total nature of existence. However, this awareness is too much for us to handle, it's vastness terrifying in possibility and power. Therefore, we pare down our consciousness into containable avenues of thought in order to function throughout the ordinary day. El Chato says he crossed metaphysical paths with Huxley, receiving mushrooms from the same witch Aldous had met years before. This witch was renowned for her medicinal powers to cure disease, ennui, envy, hopelessness. El Chato says, "She told me my pain came from my pathlessness. She said I must reunite with my roots and abandon the wandering life." And nine months after his meeting with the witch doctor, El Chato's grandmother fell prey to terminal disease. He returned home and took the helm of de-facto patriarch for his grandmother, mother, aunt, wife, and daughter. In his words, "Redemption was there for me in being needed."
On a yearly basis El Chato voyages into the heart of Mexico for pilgrimages of the soul. He eats naturally growing plants and then sits alongside them and waits for visions. This is where the magic lives, he says. On one occasion his grandmother, long since passed, appeared to him in the form of a tree, her presence sparkling. "She had the face of her youth, and her eyes were contented. She said nothing, but it felt connected to my heart like a string. A coyote appeared next to the tree - real or imaginary I don't know - and it spoke to me, not with words but with some universal kind of energy. It said 'She is at peace.' Then two snakes appeared in the dust near the base of the tree, and everything was gone, my grandmother, the coyote, everything. My vision was complete."
After he finished this story, El Chato resealed the base of the toilet with caulk and gave me the postcard. Then he left. Later on we replaced the toilet, but the magic remained.
Manufactured Zen
Tender ash of incense, soothing sounds of the quasi-tribal, miniature sand gardens and waterfall desk fountains, colors of caramel-vanilla, ripe pomegranate, and leaves of grass lining walls bordered by bamboo; such are the accoutrements of the modern Zen facility, and they welcome lines upon lines of world-busied bodies for unplugging, yogic decompressing, and curative sitting. But what good is Zen if it’s achieved in a vacuum?
Life is a combination of minute and enormous amounts of suffering. With infrequent exception, most everyone deals with interminable agony in the same fashion – to survive, and in that survival, to embody a noble acceptance of truth and inevitability. As Bukowski wrote, it’s not the major tragedies of one’s life that send him to the nuthouse, it’s the broken shoelace, the horse that doesn’t finish the race, the automated phone solicitation. In every minute of every day there is a reconciliation for each living being between what they think ought to be and what actually is. And virtue is essentially a gauge of reaction – how well or poorly one adjusts to minor disappointment.
Reaction is regularly out of the realm of control for the reactor. Physiological imbalances, genetic makeup, bad fortune, and permanent impressions beset through childhood are beyond the scope of the active mind. Nobody chooses trauma. However, the great majority of choices are made after some interim of consideration, and as such they are chosen consciously. Why then are we so often frustrated? To what end are we responsible for our own state of mind?
It is said that individuals of uncommon stature and success are generally “in control of their emotions.” No matter the situation, they remain rational and defy probabilities. They are able to detach themselves from the paralysis of fear and act decisively. This atypical presence of mind amounts to the difference between victory and defeat, between elation and embarrassment, and in certain cases, between life and death. In the context of the average life, this opportunity presents itself repeatedly. The coffee jolts from the pot over the lip of the cup and onto the floor. Do you bellow profanities, snap a paper towel from its holder, and grumble as you clean? Or do you simply clean and move on? Decision, opportunity, decision, opportunity; the loop forever replicates. You are given steady occasion to create your state of being from within, and should therefore choose your own happiness.
Zen is a notion that attempts to rectify the problem of decision making. It purports that one succeeds when one acts unconsciously, which in itself is a contradiction for the conventionally trained mind, accustomed to assessing, concluding, and then proceeding. In theory, the unconscious is unattached to outcome, and therefore it acts intuitively and without fear or assumption. Because this ideal is so incomprehensible in a world overflowing with the demands of attention and outcome, the practice of Zen involves a great deal of sitting and waiting in a quiet room.
There is no easy way to elude the stimulations of society while entrenched within its grid, so fortresses of serenity are built in which the individual may retreat for ninety minutes of humming on cue, as peaceful administrators emanate gongs and advocate the healing powers of breathing. This establishment is meant not to reflect the universe in which it is located, but instead to create a makeshift utopia for all of its practitioners wherein every sight is gentle and every voice pacifies like cherub wings. One who frequents these buildings is touched with an enlightened sense of ease, generally on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Sundays.
Sometimes these are houses of exercise. These may be seen as hygiene at their most tame, and torture at their ascetic apex. For many patrons, the feeling of being drenched in one’s own sweat is as fulfilling as any illusory spiritual awakening. In this respect the art is justified, because its aim is so simple – to loosen the joints, elongate the ligaments, and resolve the delineations of the spine. All this seems to require is a series of rudimentary postures, performed in a steady, heat-inducing pattern. Absurdity lies in the recognition that such ordinary and obviously attainable postures are so challenging – what insulated and dormant lives we sit through!
And so the people flock inside such studios. All the while, the world outside beats, as brilliantly and insufferably as it always has, ugly and pristine, immense and microscopic, eating, shitting, and procreating itself into subsequent versions of itself. Not all of this, in fact very little of it, is done quietly. Or patiently. Consuming forces drive forward, devoid of reason or repose.
Artificial tranquility is our best defense, but it’s not really Zen. It supplies the silence that the world cannot, but it dodges total acknowledgment of the abyss. If the idea of Zen is what compels you, go stand on the median on the interstate with your eyes closed. Accept the unending noise, the imminent death surrounding you. Realize the unity weaving chaos together. Awaken infinite.
And then stop giving your money to gurus in spandex.
A Day In The Life Of America
America wakes up early. There is much to be accomplished today, as with every day, helming the great vessel of liberty. Dawn arrives and America is out the door, hair wet with petroleum products, cup brimming with truly international spirit – five mornings a week scurrying towards the unknown, the maybe – and what America knows is what it earns on paper with full medical and dental, the perceived fortune, the rate of feigning compensation, the low altitude surmising, data swimming, carbon copying, the papers and papers and papers to validate other papers and the collectors asking for all of it back, the fixed numbers computing into patient, foreseeable ends, as long as America doesn’t panic. America knows when all is said and done that it’s all about the paper.
America saw this coming and so it endures. Tech booms, instant commerce, ones and zeroes, umbrellas beyond good and evil, instinctual liquid communication, all begat by the ink and the paper. Here it is, a dollar. This is the proof of survival, the record of eventuality. Behold the faces of my heroes. This is the story. All of America is written in the lines of the dollar bill, and America wakes up early for remembrance and reclamation. It knows what it has to do, it goes to work, and it embraces the inevitable.
One might suspect America has forgotten its own story, today, living through its hypothetical self, reflecting through looking glasses of mass frequencies, having lost hold of its ferocity. But to evoke the America of dangerous mythology and survivor of plagues is to reclaim the Idea of America. The Idea is America as Rebel. The Idea is America as steadfast insurrectionary, rejecting the huddled shade of ruins in someone else’s kingdom. America in its infancy was baptized in waters of recklessness, refusing to submit to any one will save its own, wailing incessantly through dissonant clamor and gun powder. Its primary manuscript spat mutinous claims into the face of the dying king, declaring each and every one of its defenses along the way. America was and is and always shall be the insurgent son, even as mendacious father. It was for spite that America roared its rebel yell. This is both its infection and its excuse for forgetting.
America takes a short lunch because there is still a lot left to prove. The story didn’t end yesterday at the edges of the ocean, after America had spread into every crevasse and across each desert a bold new incentive for efficiency, after it had lay waste to incumbent cultures and bordering rivals, no, the story must persist with the same blind fortitude as is natural to its bloodline, so it means America can’t take a long lunch. America’s grandfather didn’t take long lunches in the middle of dodging bindlestiff thieves at transit camps or hammering stakes for a dollar a day, one pair of pants, one pair of shoes and two meals plus the weekly pouch of Bull Durham for rolling one’s own. The Idea is manifest in dirty fingernails, in time deposited and demanded for the story, in the sacrifice of days. And America knows the legacy of an era relies on the maintenance of worth, which in turn means that America must prove the almighty dollar again and again.
In any fraction of a second now America could strike it rich, fat filthy rich, and so after lunch there is talk of streamlining, focusing to targets and various formulas of sizing and sourcing, increasing and diminishing, all of which adds up to America growing stronger each day. The numbers are almost incalculably vast, the pie of far too infinite proportions for any one set of hands to grasp, and so America is forced to share and gamble, but only to help make it appear even. America rolls without fear and never shows its bluff while the game is being played, and it’s always being played in the afternoon. This is when America speaks. America deals gratification in fistfuls, stretching its dollar into fourth and fifth dimensions. It shaves off each corner of exchange, it puts names and operators into the air between hands, and the dollars multiply and multiply throughout vacuum regions of plastic indentations. Credit is America’s dangling carrot, its flashy promise of immediate delight drowning the coughs of rabbits deep in their holes, and the globe spins to chase this carrot because at the heart of mankind is a hole that needs filling and nobody fills it better than America. America knows how to give. So the entirety of afternoon’s zeal is dedicated to manufacturing and producing the right medicine, the right way, for the right holes to fill, and pouring without flinching until the flowing stops. America knocks off a few minutes early if things work out all right.
At home America demonstrates its abundance. It eats too much too quickly from places too faceless for reproach, and it throws away the scraps. It chooses from thousands of regularly scheduled programs. It lie dormant with stimuli, fatly tickled over the same seven melodies as the evening before, watching for its own face but never finding the perfect fit, unsure of its own skin. America could stand to sweat more often. Its tubes are filled with everything every day, things that held on too tightly, things that are repeated, and it tries madly to forget. It drinks to forget. It laughs to forget. It makes love to forget. And yet still, still, still there’s the hunger, the thirst, and the ever-emptying void, waiting for whatever is next. Maybe America is next, it thinks. Maybe just maybe there’s some space on that mountain face for my head, for me to be beholden. And so it watches itself and waits.
Approaching midnight, America tries in vain to reconcile cries of its millions upon millions of anguished faces, wearing eyes that have seen every place there is to stand or float, all asking why - why did you sell me down the river? Isn’t there any more to value? America tastes the bile soaked hulls of African ships, face down with shackled wrists, and it tastes the price of its money. It tastes the cruel staleness of the dying heart in paper. It smells leather searing through flesh, and it rolls from side to side, holding its stomach, trying to shake the truth away. There will be no reparations for some acts. Some sins will go unforgiven. The fool’s gold will only shine for so long, and on some distant tomorrow America will have its reckoning. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow will make up for it all. Yes, tomorrow, says America yes yes tomorrow yes.
Muzzle Discarded
At one point in time he was told, by someone who knew, that a writer who is young ought to write about youth. It’s the only thing anyone of that age has balance on and it’s the only intimacy, according to the person who knew. But the more he thought about what he knew, the less balance he felt on any subject, let alone his childhood. He hungered for ideas until he drowned in them. So many words that said everything. It dawned on him that he once had a dumb youth and he wanted it back. He wanted to push away the words, to relent into the safety of his fears, and to forget that he had ever heard anything in the first place.
Yet he wanted more than anything to testify, and his was a story of testament. His was the same blind story as anyone else’s, and he was as afraid to tell it as much as everyone was to hear it, because just like him they had thought the story was theirs alone. Needing testament and fearing it, eroding in the silence of passing days, this, he assumed, was the idea of the shared human experience. He read enough to know that words dictated the perpetuity of ideals, chiefly by being immune to the plagues and invasions of mortal blood. They did not fare well with fire, but their fiercest protectors were vigilant, and they were not limited to paper. It required a special brand of audacity to make permanent one’s own words, he reasoned, but only because he felt his own words were foolish. They did not merit permanence because he had seen nothing new.
All of those words had already been recorded, mostly, he felt, on the basis of imposition. Millions of people had already lived a million lives right where he lived now, just as desperate and inventive, and now they were barely ghosts because a myth of letters replaced their myth of voices and when they died their voices were extinguished, along with everything they forgot to say. And yet all around him he saw images of people in love with only one story, believing in only one book. They fought over exactly which one book that was, many without doing so much as choosing. Inevitably this made him wish to invoke a book against the nature of books. He would kill the words and they deserved to die.
He had made this adolescent proclamation, and shortly thereafter encountered that every assumption he had made about himself was wrong. He was no savior. He was an ordinary man, so pathetically ordinary that even his most transformative and lucid moments of transcendence were part of stories told before him, by other people, with their illusions in mind, funneled down through his ordinarily derivative ethos.
Now it was not just his own stories that were pointless, it was all stories, inasmuch as they were conceived by a person taking time to distort and plagiarize the unrepeatable, in his or her vernacular, sitting at a desk or chair or standing mightily over a dresser, removing both one’s self from the moment and the moment from the past in hope that both will be there in the future. Although he purported to be wary of the maxims of self-enlightened gurus, he often heard himself saying, “You can never be in the now and think you’re in the now at the same time,” and also, “He who speaks does not know, and he who knows does not speak.”
But he was speaking, spouting out underestimations when he got his turn, aching to profess his silent and eternal wisdom. He was no more or less loathsome than others his age, and he laughed enough to be liked, but the contradictions were multiplying. Inevitability has a way of sticking around, despite what you tell it.
By his own decree his last words were destined to be famous, and famous last words by definition were always aggressive finalities. No one ever responded with the trite saying, “Famous last words,” to someone that had a passive take on circumstances. He remembered hearing somewhere from someone, “There’s a fine line between assertion and idiocy,” but he often wondered exactly who was going to render his judgment – perhaps no one, and for a while he rationalized to say what he wanted to say and make testament his impulse. But that didn’t last. His ideals overreached his discipline, and so throughout his age of arrogance he said a lot of things he didn’t do.
One of his favorite quotes in the history of recorded speech was delivered by a madman named Salvador Dali, and it read – “The only difference between me and a madman is I am not a madman.” He liked this because he often felt himself at a great distance from his own madness, and far above the paralysis of its paranoia. Socializing was not his problem. It was revelation he feared and avoided, generally by laughing the voices away and pretending it was all right that everything important go unheard. Speaking in anecdotal circles, he grew nothing to be severed, and so with age he talked about less important things most of the time. The weather, the team, the job, the health. Safe things. And he hated himself for it.
Soon he lived a life he could barely bear witnessing. Just a perilously long list of tasks that he would never finish, rolling down into holes from which he would never again emerge. His life was worth about what he owed, and besides his creditors, he was the only one watching it happen.
And nobody read.
So why write?
It seemed better than just waiting around to die.
