There is only one way to get this out, so I'm going to have to write it down.
When I first glanced over the brochure that slipped out from between the pages of the Northern Nevada regional magazine I was thumbing through the other day, I laughed out loud and whispered to myself...
”What the actual fuck?”
Followed by furiously crumbling it up and shooting for the trash basket in my office.
Of course—and because of not trying to truly shoot my shot in years—I missed, and the crumbled up brochure came to resting upon the ash colored tile floor.
For some reason missing the shot I took didn’t bode well with my finicky temperament, so I picked up my little mess, made my way into the kitchen, saw to it’s proper disposal, and proceeded to wash my hands.
After my little outburst, I settled my ass down and fancied myself up a few wedges of grapefruit for breakfast, toasted up a bagel, and finished it off with a pat of butter, a tomato slice or two, and a few silky slices of avocado like the healthy cherry on top, all to go along with the quart or so of Columbia's finest beans that I had already drank myself silly with this fine and dandy morning.
I ate in complete silence and allowed my thoughts a moment to cool down and process themselves. I tried like hell to think about all of the other things that were on my mind, and forget about that stupid little brochure thing altogether.
But it wasn’t happening. I couldn’t let it go even after throwing it away.
So I stood up, made my way back to the trash can, reached underneath a few grapefruit rinds to retrieve the now citric stained brochure just to make sure I had remembered it the exact way I thought I read it.
And indeed I had.
Teacher seeks a student, and/or vice versa.
Applicant must have a freethinking open mind, a smidgen of a creative personality, and an intense desire to give his or her best to make the world a better place. Only serious applicants need apply and all inquiries are only welcome in person.
A freethinking open mind, and an intense desire to make the world a better place!
Oh, that’s a sham of a scam, albeit amazing as hell, I said to myself, now somewhat engaged and intrigued by the opportunity.
An intense desire to make the world a better place—yes, yes indeed—that was nothing short of being magnificently naive.
By 12:34 PM I imagined hundreds upon hundreds of knuckleheads, nincompoops, and a universal multitude of all types of know-nothing-at-alls would—without a single solitary doubt in my rambunctious mind—already be standing in line at the address in which the brochure had given. Readily available on a whim to trade in all of their worldly possessions for the once in a lifetime opportunity of sitting at a roundtable with some spiritually romantic aficionado pregnant with the idea that this world will be just fine if everyone would just take a look around and love their neighbor with a handshake, a kiss on the forehead, and the utmost sincerity of an extended hug.
And if the reader may take a minute to chew on something while I might as well do the same…
Why is the writer so seemingly well-versed in misanthropy? So damn cynical in a sense, when indeed others think of himself as an inspiration?
It’s a fair and rather unabridged creatively ethical question I might add.
As a matter of fact, I’m entertaining the thoughtful question with myself as I speak, or writing down, in this certain case.
The only answer—I would guess—goes back to a promising era, a little over four years ago, when I came up with the hilarious notion that thing I wanted to do most in this world, and that was to indeed…try my poetic hand at helping to make it a better place somehow.
There, I finally put it out there for the world to see.
But I began to imagine somewhere along the way that in order to do that, I needed some sort of mentor, a spiritual guru, a publicist, and/or maybe a really pretty muse all kind of sort of blended into one. If only to help guide me along the spiral way in which one goes along the directional lines of doing something that may in fact…make the world a far better place.
Absurd is it not?
Juvenile. Idealistic. Naive. Austere. Hopelessly romantic.
Or just plain vanilla and adolescently idiotic.
All of the prior which, I sometimes think yes, absolutely without a doubt, and just as well, other times, probably no, not at all.
Though it is, or was, in not so many normal respects, just an impatiently manifested idea of mine way back when, and one in which needs some further explanation without any cynicism.
AN ILLUMINATING IDEA
It all has something to do with the "Summer of Love" in the late 60’s. 1967 to be exact, if I were to write with preciseness. Though mind you, I had yet to be born into this particular life, seeing as how I wasn't born until ten years later in 1977.
But besides all that jazz, not only was 1967 significantly different from every year before and after, it was in many off-the-wall ways more illuminating than every other year after divinity. It was more illuminating in the sense of its carefree expenditure of both passion and compassion, more illuminating by way of all the philosophical and romantic seekers of its era searching for something much more spiritually and lovingly substantial than just plain old material success.
From a far off perspective—fifty five years later actually—the counterculture that thrived in 1967 is to be considered by the writer as an extremely illuminating and powerful movement.
Music was much less artificially and superficially made, authority much less feared yet revered, violence a lot less tolerated, wealth not near as worshipped, power an awful lot less coveted, guilt less shouldered upon, depression a helluva lot less indulged in, fear not as cozied up with, and unconditional love was a lot less vetted and fettered too.
Yes, in 1967, tickets to any magical number of theatrical awakenings could be easily afforded via any illuminating and creative outlet, sacred or not, although as one famous author once cautioned, "the magic theater of illumination is not always for everyone to see."
Because unfortunately, illumination, like it or not, is a somewhat hifalutin condition. But in every era there have resided little hidden pockets of enlightened, artistic, and non-judgmental individuals living their creative lives just beyond the threshold of biased conformity (bless them each and every one of those goddamn hippies) while waiting patiently at the doorstep of humanity's next great golden age.
Maybe it's mere sentimentality, if not actually rebelliously stupid for one to romanticize 1967 as a sort of embryo for a new golden age, because unfortunately said embryo was malignantly aborted by the powers that be in its fetal stage.
Nevertheless, while it lasted, the Summer of Love that I speak of was a movement that managed break on through to the other side of the door to everything humanity ever thought it knew.
It was a time when a significant chunk of lovely little earthlings briefly came to grips with their moral potential and flirted rather closely with their fairytale destinies.
It was a collective spiritual awakening that flared brilliantly through the dark night of humanity's soul before the brute force of shallow impulses from our species abruptly drew the curtain closed on such an illuminating movement.
It was a giddy period of transcendence and mindfulness: transcendent of obsolete ideologies, mindful of the enormous wealth of an unsuspected inner reality.
And still to this day, sometimes I do—to a fault—believe that the coming golden age all still rings so very true and is forever glowing right around the corner of tomorrow.
This is according to the ringing in my ears moving in unison with a strong sensation of something you all call deja vu as the ink dries upon this itsy bitsy little screen.
It should be noted by the writer, that I shall never apologize for my outspoken and hopeful ways, not once, mind you.
Because I feel that some of us have been sent back here for the sole purpose to achieve something very similar. And I can't help but feel inclined to try and tug on that curtain once again to open it back up and look upon such an illuminating and spiritually awakening movement of love.
Anyways though, enough of my rambling on and on, let’s get back to the damn brochure I was taking about when I first sat down to spit these words out, well before I went on ahead of myself and spilled my guts all over the damn place.
BACK TO THE POINT
And so it was—of course—that my cynical nosy ass was left with no choice but to go down there and see what this teacher-seeks-student soirée was all about.
Just a minute or two would do, just a quick glance over, a few hubristic words out of an arrogant voice I’d never heard speak a word. And I would without a doubt know that whomever it was, was full of opportunistic shit, I could then make my way back home, putting everything behind me.
So I hopped in the car and drove down there.
When I arrived at the address though, sadly there was not a single soul standing in line. There was no welcoming parade of extravagant pageantry.
I was also more than surprised to find that it was just your rather run of the mill row of heather grey, misplaced office buildings, chockfull of all sorts of struggling small businesses.
There was a third rate accident chasing lawyer on his last good leg, the one that hadn’t been run over yet. There was a thriving children’s dentist office hiding upstairs in an unforeseen cavity of the building. There was even a few different travel agencies out of office on an extended and lengthy vacation, and last but not least, there stood a long shut Buddhist style monastery/library looking thing, now in the business of selling custom handmade barstools.
The latter seemed witty enough as I chuckled myself.
I was looking for room number 1234, and I found it in the back corner of the building on the second floor. There was a small window looking inside the room and another window on the adjacent side looking out at just another row of misplaced bricks in the wall.
The name on the door had faded away with time, all that was legible was an “a” and the reddish tint of an “o”. Everything else I could hardly make out, so I didn't try too.
I barely went to knock on the door, before it swung open rather abrasively. It was as if someone knew I was coming and was expecting an entrance of grandeur illusions. I walked with caution into the rather large, yet eerily empty room.
A chilly draft of air came from out of nowhere, wrapping itself around my entire being before it slammed the door shut, sending an electric shiver up my spine.
I couldn’t help but feel the presence of something not of this world.
I noticed that the spacious room had once been compartmentalized by smaller cubicles, this I gathered from the marks where the old partitions had once divvied up the now empty space, which could be seen stained on the ash stained tile floor.
My first thought was residual; the place had been abandoned for a long time. The second was acrid; the place stunk like a long neglected zoo. Something about it wasn’t all that unpleasant though, it had an appetizing feel of a charred familiarity to it. It was a mental scent that would always trigger my creative sense.
I looked around a little more, and was happy to find that the place wasn’t entirely empty though, as tucked away in a corner against the wall of a recessed room sat a mediocre aesthetic IKEA style eyesore of a bookshelf unorganized with a whole bunch of self-written spiritual inspirations, stacks of old poetic journals, and multiple heaping mounds of mismanaged and impatient words typed out on blank sheets of paper.
One of the books even seemed to have the faded words, "The Wilderness Within" imprinted on its spine. There was also a little rolling desk with a miniature bluish typewriter perched upon it.
I briefly thumbed my way through some of the unorganized words strewn about the place when the lights inside the office started to flicker gently. The handwriting was very similar to my own, which was odd I thought.
I wouldn’t be lying if I said I expected something a bit more ambient and gently aesthetic on the eyes though, maybe something like a little golden honeycomb shaped waterfall dripping with an eternal trickle, perhaps that would do the trick to spruce the place up a bit, maybe practice the art of feng shui and emulate more of an inspirational feel and flow.
And indeed, where were all the eager pupils I had anticipated would be lined up like droves of confused sheep headed to the philosophical slaughterhouse of an existential awakening on a windy autumn day?
Had they shown up and were summoned to some sort of spiritually unsound concentration camp and put down for a much needed nap?
Alas though, a thick layer of dust carpeted every last square inch of the room to falsify such fancies of my racing mind that anyone, or anything for that matter, had visited this place in quite some time.
I was washed over with that odd feeling again. I felt like I was being watched. It took me another look around to come to figure out what it was. On one of the walls adjacent from just outside the angle of my direct vision was a small curtain that had been drawn closed with a little hint of light shining from behind it.
As I made my towards it, I couldn't help but wonder with my all of my being what was hiding behind it.
The closer I got, the dimmer the overhead fluorescent lights became.
By the time I made my way to the curtain, the room was almost completely dark. And even though I was scared as hell, my curiousity and imagination were firing on every last cylinder, counteracting against the amount of fear coarsing through my veins.
So I pulled back the curtain, and a spotlight magically appeared. Though alas, there was nothing more than a vanity mirror hiding behind it.
It wasn’t a big mirror at all. It was approximately eleven inches wide by eleven inches in length to be exact.
Was it a two-way mirror?
Was there a hidden room adjacent to the one in which I stood?
Were people watching me, judging me from the other side of it?
And if so, how many?
All of these questions burned like a raging wildfire through my wandering mind in a slithering and simultaneous fashion.
I gave up trying to figure out what hid beyond it. Yet as I slowly, steadily looked deeper into the out of place mirror, the lights started flickering like crazy behind me..
As I now stood face to face with the only other person in the room, myself, the flickering stopped, the light now softer, much more gentle on my eye.
I lingered on for an eternal minute with my own eyes into the eyes looking directly back at me from a reflection before I let my focus adjust to what was hidden beyond the mirror.
Looking deeper into the mirror with a wandering eye, the room seemed a whole lot brighter than I remembered it being. It had become borderline blinding.
My eyes tried adjusting themselves to the darkness of my own shadow as I continued to stare into the mirror with focused intent.
I started to see everything in between the haze of me, even further than the past and beyond the future, all as clear as clairvoyant could be, and that’s when I realized I was looking into an eye I never would've thought to be mine.
Startled and confused, I fell down backwards and onto my ass, spooked out of my own damned mind by what I had just felt and seen. I crawled clumsily with shame across the room until I could get my confused feet back on solid ground and directly under me. I hightailed my scared self out the door, down every third step of the spiral stairwell, and got the hell up out of there.
I jumped in my car, turned the key, slammed the door shut, put it in reverse, and peeled out of the parking lot scared shitless and sweating profusely for some odd reason.
After I managed to take a few of the deepest silent breaths I've ever taken though, slowly my fear began to ebb from the doubt, and as the sun was setting before me with clarity, a smile I hadn't seen in a long damn time looked back at me from the rearview mirror. Yes, my consciousness of the situation was becoming more and more clear with each passing moment.
My thoughts flirted with a more positive flow as I rolled down the windows of my soul and started to drive off into a November sunset. But when I went to turn up the radio because it was playing a song I knew, I noticed there was a brochure tucked just below the wiper on my windshield.
So I pulled over, hopped out of the car, looked all around me, and walked in a few circles to have a look see at what it had to say, but all it was, was an illuminating question of a poem like this that went like so...
Did you learn your lesson yet?
Til the next time.
Ryan Love
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