Mantra of Decomposition

Last month I became obsessed with this idea: A novice Buddhist monk encounters a dead body in the woods and proceeds to meditate on it instead of telling anyone. Day after day he returns, but the body doesn't appear to be decomposing...

I wrote a 3-page rough draft of the first half of the story (the monk finding the body, and the first few days watching). The following are rough sketches and notes for the rest of it. As with all my note-taking, they're a patchwork mess: right sentiments, but most likely the wrong order.

~

I didn't even touch him yet that first day. It seemed inappropriate to leave. He seemed so alone. An inchworm landed on my finger. I placed it on his shoulder, watched as it crawled in his ear.

The odd thing was on the third day when it began to scab. It seemed impossible, unnatural even, that this should happen. But I was certainly no expert. Pigs are not humans. It could be common for the organs to be dead but the chemicals to still b working. What does a platelet care if the heart is stopped? Wouldn't it still collect? Wouldn't the air harden it? After all the gases and bacteria inside are still active. If decomposition is an active, not a passive process, then other processes must continue unaware that the organism as a whole is dead. That must be it. That was the only explanation. Tomorrow I would get to see the tides turn.

"Bob," I said, and then corrected myself, "Bobu-san, sumimasen," and sat. I named all my animals Bob. Most popular name in Queens at the time, back when I was a butcher, the name of the deliveryman who first installed my freezer, then the animals. It was a sign of respect, my dad was a hunter, one day he brought home a bear, my brother the bear. It was the respect that you knew you were eating a life. This Bob deserved no less. It seemed wrong to refer to it simply as a body. Would naming him be a gesture of attachment? Aoki-sensai might think so. This dead man, this Bob, was obviously not a monk, and not working for a monk. Perhaps he was disgraced, a thief, a failure. This was my test. When I was a child a dog caught its leash on a tree in the woods behind my house.

Day 4 ~ Bob's shirt was white, but has been graying, becoming sun-bleached. It looked now like the cotton was absorbing the ink as the earth took his body's fluids. His shirt had changed and the wound certainly, but I was disappointed with how slowly the rest was decaying. It wasn't bloating yet. Maybe the cool of the forest helped? Maybe the time of year had few microbes? I was agitated that it wasn't going faster, but quickly felt ashamed at my impatience. I resolved not to hope or expect. But then, oh, the horror of the sixth day when I thought that maybe the wound was healing!

I counted the days and hours. Eight days later it looked different, of course, but not different enough. I was a butcher, so I've seen what dead things look like when they decay and I did not see it here. Insects fed on the blood, the spray of brain and skull, maggots coated the exposed area, but there was no smell aside from the wound. And it was starting to heal. A scab was starting to form, the edges crusty, green and blue sure, but there was activity, more than just microbial. There were platelets, which meant there was oxygenation, which meant there was respiration and circulation. Which meant there was life! Of course, I could be mistaken. It might have been just the insects, or just the effect of drying in the hot days and the wind of the cold nights. Could I tell the difference between drying and healing? Not yet. And the lack of predator, scavenger certainly indicted he was still dead (not dead, still dead, as if once dead but now come back). There would be many more noses and teeth interested in fresh, oxygenated, injured flesh than dead. They could smell it. For a moment I wished I could too, but what if I smelled life? If there was life there might be consciousness and then imagine the torment I had put this poor man through. It was more than not helping him. I had studied him. We had spent time together. He might have watched me watching him, mind moving as fast as his body was stationary, wracking what was left of his brain as to why this person, this monk, what kind of person he would be to sit and watch and inflict this torment? Imagine the hate fuming from him for me, justifiably, despite my best of intentions. Any just God would see through such opinion, but in the absence of one, with the greater possibility of a larger comprehensive consciousness existing as a compilation of all of our individual ones, the spiritual currency could be held to the sway of opinion, and could the hate of this man weigh more than a thousand mediocre likes and loves. What good was intention in the face of such torment and torture?

I don't know.

I leaned close, up from my stone, and smelled the wound, and gagged, gagged, fought it, and then vomited. I covered his head in vomit. No, there was no way he could be alive. It would be too horrible. I had done nothing so strong as to allow such a farce into the reality of my life. This was imagination, horror, fear, just a challenge of mind fighting the training. If I told the monks and brought a doctor after ten days and he was alive they'd think me a monster, though it would be worth it. If he was confirmed dead though, they would laugh and I would be a failure, confirming I am not meant for this work. "Go back to your bars and malls and dentist offices," they'll say in their sandals and scarves sipping tea on their long wood tables. And what if the doctor says he died only hours before. Would I be complicit? And imagine viewing the vomit, and maybe they'd smell the beer in it, the meat. I might surely bring the carnivores now, though I have no idea what kind are here. No, it is best to let things be as they will be. If he is alive he will be that way without my interference. If he is dead, as assuredly he is, then tomorrow I will see the next sign of rot. Of decay. Of transition. Of emptiness. Of form. Of nothingness. Of everything.

Did it move? If I could confirm that it moved, would I pick up this rock and hit it? Would I help it remain dead?

Watch how it crumbles, how it eats itself from the inside and creates life. Can you imagine the billions of universes contained and released. How active, death! You need only smaller eyes to see it. You see what a sloppy and poorly designed mess we are, unless we are designed only so that we may die appropriately for the maintenance of all these other organisms.

Think of all he would see, all those brain cells working as fast as these lies, imagine what he might be imagining. The memories being reviewed, the horrors imagined.

I stole a mirror. I stole a stethoscope. I checked his breath. I checked for a pulse. How long can someone last without water, without food? He was dreaming at least, resting. Did his chest move? I pressed my foot against him, pressed down, and I swear he gurgled.

They would exile me, send me back to wander Queens, but where would I go? Who would take me in? Would the think me a murderer? Oh, the hue and cry!

He had stubble. His fingernails. I drew a line on his face where his hair fell and the next day checked against it. I couldn't tell, but other hairs looked longer so I drew more marks.

I was not without the need to study, to exhaust all reasonable efforts.

Yes, I served the Turks the lesser meats. Yes my hand drifted over the cash register when the kid with their beanies came by. Yes I harassed the Jehova's when they came knocking, taking my learnedness too seriously. Yes I paid for my dog's surgery yet I was too late to save that one in the woods.

It was when I shaved my beard that my wife became frightened and realized our time was done. We were holding on to only archetypes, but there are no real things as archetypes. They are only approximations that reduce us from what we are to the least common denominator of a much larger set of associations we have utterly no control over. It is unfair to think of each other that way. We loved each other enough to not want to do that anymore.

And so ten days later I am here waiting for him to die so I may see him finally he released from the torment of my watching him. Yes, now, I can see the bloat start. Now I will begin my learning. One more day. I am a butcher. I deal in meat. The meat becomes the earth becomes the meat becomes the thought becomes the meat. This is not abstraction. The thinker is abstraction. The sitter is meat. I am a butcher. I am a student. I am a human. I deal in meat…

A Crime Scene

I just got back from Seattle. I've been running scenes from Antonioni's Zabriskie Point through my head. I just watched Alice in Wonderland. My dates are incorrect, but I started with these impressions. A couple of days ago, I was in the Hyatt for a pre-wedding, so I have the HYATT on the brain. This is just your typical crime-scene, minus the details. This character, JANE, doesn't know shit. She has a terrible memory (like me) and she's pretty absent-minded (like me). Does that make this auto-biographical? I doubt it, unless it somehow plays out in my future. I give homage to the local bars (SF) The Attic and The Phone-book in this sketch. Hope you enjoy it, although its pretty slippery. It's hot off the press, something that I just rambled about, without a particular direction in mind.

There was an explosion. It was 1982 in Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland and Alice fell down a rabbit hole. The many commodities flying about looked just like the tornado in the scene of Dorothy spinning about with her house, her bed, and her little dog, too from 1954 in the Wizard of Oz. There was an explosion. It was 1972 and the house on the desert hill blew to smithereens to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd wailing on guitars and we watched, just like Daria, as the Wonderbread blew out of the refrigerator and different bits and pieces flew apart for different rooms of the house. Everything floated, mid-air once again, except for the girl, who was only day-dreaming. Day-dreams, sleep-induced fevers of explosions that send the commodities of the house spinning about, and giving three girls a few moments of uncontrolled, utter freedom. Here's my applause for the day-dreams of Daria, Dorothy, and Alice.

I'm sitting in a hotel room. It is not mine, I'm just visiting. The clock on the night-stand has large, legible numbers that read 4:50 am. I am not sober and neither is he. I suppose he has a perfectly suitable name, but I can't remember what it is. For the last hour I've been calling him Jim. He arrived at 1:37 am to the last bar I was at, having just arrived from Washington D.C. and he promptly invited me, Jones, and Parker here to watch TV. We are all watching info-mercials. He is not tired, Jones is not tired, Parker is not tired, because they are all on east-coast time. I am on west-coast time and I am barely able to keep my eyes open, although I'm discovering new nuances to the way the 1-800 number flashes before my eyes, just before putting the mechanics of the self-cleaning kitty-litter box into simple terms, EZ terms, so that I will want to BUY it. The lights go out.

This is the HYATT, Jim says. This is the HYATT, this should not be happening. They should have back-up GENERATORS for the LIGHTS.

Now worries, Parker says. I've got a light. He reveals a long-handled flash-light.

Now where did you get that light? I ask, baffled.

I'm a cop, Parker says.

No shit? I ask.

Not a shit in the toilet. Parker says.

Jones and Jim thank Parker for the light, before each finding subtle excuses to use the bathroom. Jim mysteriously grabs something, a thing that I was not previously aware of, from his duffle bag and he retreats to the bathroom. We hear several flushes. Jones goes in next. We hear several more flushes.

What's going on BOYS. Asks Parker.

What's going on, I wonder. I don't want to know. I've got to go. I say, sheepishly.

You're not going anywhere, Parker says. You're a witness.

A witness to what? I ask.

You heard them flushing, he says.

I am not a witness. I say. I do not choose to be a witness. Joe and Jones are looking at me suspiciously. I want the lights to go back on. I want to SEE the situation unfold before me. I want to KNOW what's going on. I've lost control.

Jones pulls out a gun. Jones fires a shot, aiming at Parker. The window is shatter-proof, but soon, its like the sky is falling.

I'm on west-coast time, I say. I've got to get going.

You're not going anywhere, Jones says, grabbing me and tying my wrists together behind my back.

The lights turn back on. I fall to sleep. In the morning I'm signing papers. There is no evidence except for my evidence and five new police officers are piecing together my 'story'. I don't have a story, I say. They look at me with stern faces. You don't have a story? They ask. No. I say. I don't have a story.

They want me to tell a story. So I begin. I was at the bar. I was at the Attic. WAIT. They say. What Attic? The bar, I say. It's called the Attic. Then I went to the Phone-booth, I say. Who did you call, they ask. I didn't call anyone, I say. Its another bar, I say. Go back, they say. No, its really quite simple. Two bars. I went to two bars. One is called the Attic and the other is called the Phonebooth. Then I went to the bathroom. I said. Is that another bar? the Jackass police asks me. No! I say. I had to 'releive' myself. My bladder was full, I said. Alright, let's cut to the chase, one of the men says. When did you go to the HYATT.

I don't remember. I say. It was sometime between 1:37 and 4:50am.
Go back, they say. What happened at 1:37?
I went to the bathroom. I said. And then suddenly you were in the HYATT? One of them asks, chewing gum. And boy, he's chewing. He's got quite a jaw.

No. I say. There was a brief explosion. I went into a dream. It was like a daydream. It looked a lot like a bunch of other explosions involving innocent women, life-chancing explosions, surreal explosions. It was like I was in a movie. And then all of a sudden, I was stuck on the end of the bed, next to Jones, Parker and Jim. We were watching infomercials.

So how did you get THIS in your pocket? One of them asks, holding up a plastic baggy. It's holding a gun. That's not mine. I say. That's Parker's.

Listen, they say. This is EVIDENCE. And furthermore, we don't have a Jones, we don't have a Jim, and we don't have a Parker. We have YOU. A Jane. Now, we found you on the railing, holding this in your pocket. You were tied to the railing. We need to know what happened, because as far as we can tell, it was something IMPORTANT.

Sure, sure. I say. It was probably important. I hear Pink Floyd in the distance. They were probably important, too. I see road-signs to Death Valley outside the window. Is this VEGAS, or what?