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...the USDA about how you can get free meat
from the government. It was lying on a dryer in a laundromat. I thought,
hell yeah, who wouldn't like to have some free
meat?
Toward the back of the pamphlet there was a page with absolutely
nothing on it, save for the words "This page left intentionally blank." You
see this occasionally in government pamphlets and the like. I thought it
would be cool to have a page like that in my book.
But then it occurred to
me that the only way it can be truly blank is not to make mention of its
blankness, because as soon as it announces how blank it is, it's not really
blank at all.
When I started adding this footnote, I realized that with every word
this page was becoming even less blank. Then it occurred to me, there IS no
"less blank." It either is or it ain't. The concept of nothingness is
absolute. If a blank page contains so much as one word, there's no point in
claiming it's blank. The best you can say is, "This page intentionally
doesn't have a lot of words on it." Once you've said a word, you might as
well write a fuckin' novel.
Yesterday afternoon I sat down for my daily meditation attempt. Then's
when it hit me. My pathetic excuse for meditation is just like that page.
Whenever I graze anywhere near that state of achieving a state of
intentional blankness, I think, "Hey, I'm not thinking!" And then, of
course, I am. Then I go, "God-DAMN-it!"
Then I remember what that that guy
on the meditation tape said, and what George Harrison said in that article I
read: don't chide yourself for forgetting not to think, rather gently put
aside the thought you found yourself thinking and return to your meditation.
Then I reflect on how replaying these instructions is yet another thought.
Then it occurs to me that the act of reflecting on the fact that thinking
about how not to think is a form of thinking. Then I go, "Son-of-a-BITCH!"
In other words, whenever I try to meditate, I pretty much sit there
spewing profanities at myself the whole time. Not exactly what George
Harrison and that guy had in mind, I don't think.
After a few minutes, I figure if I'm not going to refrain from
thinking--in other words, if I'm going to think--I might as well think about
sex. So I've come to associate my meditation time with mental sexcapades. I
could write a whole chapter about the kinky scenarios I've cooked up. Lately
I've started getting an erection as soon as I light the incense.
The other day, though, I did accidentally meditate. I actually
experienced a few moments of nothingness. I was wide awake, perfectly aware,
but there was not a cloud in the sky. I hung with it for, oh, I dunno, a
minute or two, before a thought spontaneously occurred like the appearance of
an elementary particle out of the void.
Then, of course, my state of
non-thinking collapsed and a whole slew of thoughts came into being. But
that was ok--they were some of the coolest thoughts I'd ever had. And they
were not even about sex. They were about the universe. Where it came from.
Not the physical process of its creation, rather a more fundamental
question: How could it be that anything exists, rather than nothing (which
seems the more likely scenario)?
And here's the answer (inspired by that free meat pamphlet):
Nothingness is an unsustainable state. It's too volatile. It's by
definition a state of absolute perfection. The slightest blemish, the most
minute flaw, and it's not nothing anymore. So say you've got this state of
absolute, perfect nothingness, everywhere, forever. If there is ever, ever
any imperfection whatsoever, the tiniest dimple in this featureless field,
it's all over. Now you've got "something."
And once some infinitesimal blip
has figured out how to manifest itself into existence--be it a particle, a
wave, a quark or a superstring (or whatever the elementary building block of
the week is)--well, you might as well write a fuckin' novel.
So there you have it. The universe as a footnote on a page left
intentionally blank. A flaw in nothingness.
And it stands to reason. One state requires absolute perfection,
forever, and the other allows for fuck-ups. And we all know that the nature
of reality lends itself much more to things being fucked up than being
perfect.
Of course, that still leaves several unanswered questions. Like how it
actually happened and everything. I'll leave it up to the quantum physicists
to fill in the details.
So, having had a serendipitous flash into the nature of creation, I was
left with a placid feeling for the rest of my meditation. No longer was I
belittling myself for having a thought. It's inevitable that words are going
to blemish my blank page. I was OK with that. No more Goddamits. No more
son-of-a-bitches. I was free to have a thought.
And if I were going to be
thinking anyway, I figured I might as well think about the most elemental
force in the universe. So I dressed up this girl who used to work at Office
Depot in a pair of black fishnets, patent leather heels, silver earrings
and a matching dog collar I saw at Petsmart, and walked her around town like
that on a leash.
~ Hilliard Piggens Clickle Dark *
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