Episodes in a Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

Sitting on the shore of a semi-deserted beach, watching the sun rise over another day of concealed chaos, wondering if I can turn the wonder off long enough to enjoy a loud silence apart from myself. Listening to a voice I know I will never know is there, knowing it probably isn't; allowing the heaviness of the meaninglessness to seep in to scurry off the naivete, without allowing it to stop my breath. Trying to reach the impossible balance in a place that doesn't exist wherein "I" stop--language stops--thinking stops--consciousness stops--where it fades into a backdrop with no center--the Idyllic with no Idea.


Thinking. Language. Thoughts.

Representations. Concepts. Intentions.

Wandering back to the Smoke-Filled Coffee shop so as no to too get lonely, only to find myself resenting the bodies all around me. I unexpectedly ran into friends--good friends--the kind that involve memories, laughter, smiles, and nostalgia. We sat. We talked. MP, TL, and LN were in good form, and soon the conversation led to "things of meaning."

I told them, "Religion and philosophy are concerned with Presence and Time. We desire--long for--hope for a time when time will cease--when it will stop--hold still--and "I" will be present. We long for that time when the world disappears--when thinking--language--representation--concepts--all stop and me and myself are finally one in a way that no longer requires process, development, or further journeying. We want time to stop, but we want to be present when it does."

MP took a bite of the full breakfast he had ordered: "HMMMMMM. Oh yeah, ohhh. It's good."

We ignored him.

TL chimed in, "I think you're right. This is what the myth of love is about; this is what the mythology of sex describes. We want to find ourselves in one--find one that can make time irrelevant--hold our identity stable so that there is no flux--no danger of it being taken away--permanence. In sex, the world disappears for a moment, or a couple if you are lucky. The room spins until it finally no longer exists. Time wisps away until you don't know how long has passed. All that you know is your body and their's--you are present only to them, and thus, to yourself. Time and space cease, the world liquidated into the breathing, feeling, overhwelming pleasure--and the climax. You are dead. There is unspeakable--inexpressible--silent experiences that transcend time and space. In those moments, there is no thinking--no language--no "self." No, the self ceases and thus, for a few moments, you are free to become your true "self".

"The problem," LN said, "is that it is always fleeting. Eventually, the room comes back--you see your shirt on the lampshade, your partners knickers on the windowsill, and you stare at the ceiling as the world, as language, as time, and space filter back--forcing yourself to vanish once again. You stare at the ceiling, breathing heavy in someone else's arms, wondering why it can't last forever and why the stopping always has to stop."

"It's the same with death," I said. "Death brings the end of language and yourself. Death, sex, love, and union with God--they aren't all that different. They all long for an experience of self--a permanent, whole self--in a phenomenon that requires the self to die--to cease--in order to experience it. And you know what else: they are all solitary endeavors."

I told them how Buber and Levinas taught me that love requires two people to ignore the rest in order to enter into a worldless vision of their selves. I told them how Heidegger taught me that death is always only my own--and thus, I am always alone. Mystical visions--union with God--are solitary journeys that involves one single soul.

Why does self-presence require the death of the self--the time where language--consciousness--thinking are no longer? And, why does it always involve the disappearance of the world--why does it have to be so lonely?

I don't want to tell you a story. I don't want to engross you in a narrative with a beginning and thus with an end. I don't want a happy ending, nor do I want a tragedy. I don't want to leave you on your seat, or in tears, or angry beyond words. I don't want you to lose yourself in the time of my narrative--in the time of the narrative--only to have to re-emerge again when the pages run thin and the night gets dark. I don't want to change your life. I don't want to you to change mine. I don't want to invent characters with idiosyncracies, or a setting with character and vibrance.

No.

I don't even want an audience. I don't want an ear, or many ears, or fans, or readers, or you.

Episodes in a Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

SA left me thinking a bit. Thinking about "things that matter" as they say. Thinking about the circle--the ring--the one that centers around nothing (like all circles I guess).

I sat and sipped my espresso. I sat and looked at the bodies scurrying about under the guise of the ubiquitous sun beating down on the shiny beach. I wondered if it was still possible to "confess" like the Saint had done. Was it still possible to find the place that doesn't exist? Possible to see the cut inside of me where the circle with no space started?

It's funny, you know. Funny to think these thoughts in this electric world; funny to know that as I think them my audience is both infinite and nothing all at once. Who will read it? Who reads it? Probably no one--probably not enough people to count as someone. Yet, who reads it? Everyone: my-self, the thoughts, the interior that is neither inner nor outer, the Other I confess to, the one that hovers over me with an all-knowing gaze--I am torn open and available to all. I am brought within a matrix of an infinite sea of information--the identities and ipseities of the confessors melting into one transcendent source of unavoidable gaze. There You are--looking into me. Here, "I" am, unable to look away, and more, unable to stop writing--to stop confessing--to stop telling You of the utter lack I feel in every breath.

It's funny, you know. This transcendent matrix of digital flows that we all confess to--the one available to all those seeking salvation--all those seeking rest--all those wandering in the desert of interiority. Come, all you who are heavy burdened--find your rest here.

I guess that is the only rest we have left. I guess we can hope to rest in thee as nodes in a changing network--one in which we are thrown about--incised--exposed-vulnerable--and ultimately, just like the venerable Saint, always left wondering when the tears, the blood, the desire, and the hope will cease turning inside the ring--the spaceless space--and come to a full stop. Will it be in death or in You? I guess we'll never know.

Episodes in a Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: SA

I saw Augustine one day. He was drinking a latte. After a minute filled with hesitation, disgust, admiration, and total bewilderment--I walked up to his window-side location and asked if I could join him. The Bishop was actually quite fashionable. He told me how global warming would be the end of us all. We discussed how Internet had changed our perceptions of reality, communication, and such. He told me why he thought Obama wasn't as revolutionary as we might have hoped.

After a bit of enjoyable conversation and surprisingly comfortable laughter, I asked him about his confession--the famous one. I wanted to know if he felt like it did any good--did it help? "Were you able to stop being such a question to yourself?" I asked. "Were you able to find the rest you were looking for?"

He was a bit caught off guard I think, and then a bit guarded. He thought. He mumbled. He looked. He breathed. Then, he told me, "I didn't find any thing in particular. I was confessing to a God who already knew everything about me--what good could that do? He didn't learn anything. Did I? Well, I didn't learn my "self" if that is what you are wondering. I didn't collect myself into the eternal rest I was looking for. But, I did find something else. I found the spaceless space. I found the place inside of me where I am not. It's a place hidden--I won't say it's deep, because it is spaceless, this space. I won't say it's hidden, because a spaceless space can't hide. I won't say it's secret, because it is a place where I don't exist--how can I keep a secret I don't know? But, I found it. I found the place inside of me that is no place, no space, no circle, no ring, and no time. At first I wanted to fill it; to fulfill it. But, over time, I realized a timeless, spaceless place can't be filled. Then, I wanted an answer. I asked God how he put it there? How he put himself there, in me, in a place where I am not. God didn't answer. I tried to remember why and how it got there, but my memory had no recollection of any of it. How do you find a place inside you that isn't a part of you? A place where you don't know? A place where knowing doesn't help?"

All of this was getting to be a bit much, so I told him I had to go to the bathroom. In the urinal I actually pissed a bit on my belt, but not too much. I was hoping for two things: a) The Saint would be gone when I got back, or b) he wouldn't see the piss on my jeans.

When I returned, he was still there. I didn't get a word in edgewise when he started again.

"With that confession I learned something, but I didn't learn it about me. I learned something I don't know and something for which there is no answering--even from God. I learned about the space, that is not part of me, that makes time go. It makes temporality--your life--every instant--absent. I met the motion, the circle, the place, the space, the temporal, Time. I met the one that makes every now disappear as soon as you try to say it. I met the space where the present slips away into the past and the future never arrives. I met the emptiness that makes the absence of your life continue to run."

"Wow," I said, thinking about dinner. "Was it worth it?"

"Worth, I don't know. I'm not sure worth matters in this non-place. But, I tell you what--it was nice to meet that place inside me where I am not. You know what I saw when I got there?" He said this leaning in, and very excited.

"What?"

"I saw the most beautiful emptiness. I saw a glimmering absence; a bewildering space otuside of space. A time that stands still outside of time. And, you know what? I saw the most vile, most irrepresentable, most indescribably disgusting ring of nothing--pure nausea--pure death--the instant of non-presence--the instant of existence vomiting its hope--the place of tingling hopelessness.

It's there, it is there that I found myself. Well, I found that there was no me to find.

And, I realized something: If you or anyone else tries to get near it--to fix it--to fill it--to see it--life, hope, time, trying, desire, joy, ecstasy, thought is annihilated. I found the non-self that makes the self of time and space continue.

Don't go near me--the non-me--there. Don't try to inch close to quench my desire. Don't promise me you'll find that non-space to make it face the light. Don't hold a knife to the non-me and try to remove it. Leave it. Exit. Don't think it. Don't approach it. Don't look for it.

Let's all be embarrassed about it together. Let's agree to let ourselves die--each one of us--each non-self--in that non-place, so we can go on pretending to live. Let's allow time to swallow us--abandon us--push us into oblivion--and in the meantime we'll hope beyond hope--beyond tears--beyond blood--beyond space and time--without words--without writing--that the non-self we have agreed to abandon will end up being the Good we all dream of, and not the Devil we feel lurking in places we don't have."

"Okay," I said. Thank you. I appreciate your honesty.

We had a few beers that night, and some more laughs. We didn't talk about whatever he was talking about. For that, I was grateful.