“We’ve already learned what moving fast and breaking things can do to society,”
NYT
So I stood under a catalpa tree, seeking for enlightenment. I watched men and women hurry by; I saw people crumpling paper. I smelled exhaustion and despair. I sat down to engage children at their own eye level. They ran with their eyes closed, bumping into utility poles. They unraveled the socks their grandmothers had knitted for them. I was an old man sitting irrationally under a catalpa tree, getting the seat of my trousers dirty in the mulch. Ignored. Avoided. Then enlightenment settled on me like a shower of panicles from the catalpa tree itself. I pulled a smile out of my coat pocket and stood up. I combed my hair. I walked into the texting tweeting tracking crowd without a qualm. My beautiful journey began.
I fished a yellow McDonalds hamburger wrapper out of a trash can. Scraping off the pink congealed sauce, I smoothed out the wrapper to make an origami swan. Taking my time, it was done in just under an hour. A man in a soft yellow sweater stopped to watch me for a while, then said “It’s just guerrilla marketing” and walked away. I placed the origami swan on top of a fire hydrant. A strong wind came up, but the swan did not move. A little boy reached for it, but his mother jerked him away by the hand. A starling swooped down to steal it in its yellow beak. My yellow stage was completed.
At a Starbucks I asked the barista if I could trade a piece of wisdom for a cup of herbal tea. She asked her manager, who came over to look me sincerely in the face and okayed the transaction. The ginger tea was comfortable on my tongue. I told the barista “Life will make you a fool, but love will give you a crown.” As she and her manager watched, I then tore my white paper napkin into a pattern of delicate snowflakes and left it on the counter -- where it was reverently taken up and hung next to their sign reading RESTROOMS ARE FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY. My begging stage was complete.
For the next stage I collected the many ragged and forlorn plastic bags that wandered within my reach that blustery day, stuffing one inside another until I had collected both a sizable number of bags and people. They watched me impassively as I methodically molded the tangle of plastic bags between my hands into a smaller and smaller mass -- until at last the bags disappeared completely.
“Where did they go?” a woman in the crowd asked me in perplexity.
“They did not go anywhere” I answered her. “We went away instead.”
“So true” she murmured. “Will you teach me your ways?”
“My ways” I told her “are flakes of old paint peeling off a whitewashed fence.”
She understood. Like me, her beautiful journey must be done alone. There is no name for this stage of my journey, but it was done.
Now a pack of demons, in the guise of street massagers, confronted me. Their fingers reached towards me, offering the bliss of sensual relaxation. I did not resist their blandishments. Instead I gave unto them muscle knots to help them realize all pain is an illusion, all emotion pure instinct, and all thought but the reflection of a void. They writhed in agony until they allowed my gentle words to pour into their abandoned souls like a flood of rosewater. Refreshed and restored, the demon band bowed down before me and would not leave until I blessed them.
“Be happy and productive” I blessed them. “Nourish weeds as well as flowers, until every living thing you touch takes on the flavor of a peach.” And with that, they went their separate ways rejoicing. I then combed my hair. The demon swarm stage was finished.
Now a great weariness enveloped me, and I realized it was time for the high sleep stage of my journey. I found a bed of carpet samples to sleep on for a thousand years. When I awoke the wheel of the world had revolved to the point where mothers only knew their daughters by hearsay, and fathers could only talk to their sons on tiny smartphones the size of a thumbnail. All people tracked one another, like wolves on the scent of a deer.
My beautiful journey was about to begin all over again . . .
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