by Maia Walczak
It was a cloudless day, so we decided on a take-out coffee and a walk. Never had I been accompanied on any of my visits here. In fact, it had been ages since I’d been accompanied by anyone in public at all. This was big. I was both scared and exhilarated. I felt like a rebel, but a terrified one. I found myself looking over my shoulder every few minutes. What if they were watching me? No Silvia, get that thought out of your head, there’s nothing bad happening here. This is all innocent. Jack will do the talking, you don’t have to say anything. You’re in control. You set the rules.
‘So,’ he said as we walked beneath the shade of Balboa Park’s huge fig tree, ‘you’re colour-blind.’
I choked on my coffee.
‘Sorry,’ he said, noticing his lack of subtlety.
For a moment I didn’t say anything; I didn’t nod, I didn’t shake my head. I just looked straight ahead and tried to swallow my coffee in a dignified way. This walk had been a really bad idea. And now I needed to think how I would steer the focus back on to him.
‘Sorry,’ he said again, ‘I was just thinking about where we left off the other day—’
‘But wait, we were going to talk about you first.’
‘We were?’
‘Yes. Before I so rudely fainted that day I think you were going to tell me what was on your mind.’
‘I was?’
How would I control this conversation? We were in the middle of a walk, and there was no way out except running away. And running away was not an option. And, deep down, I actually wanted to stay.
‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure you had something on your mind that day.’
‘I did. But I really wouldn’t want to bore you with it.’
There was silence again. I looked at him. My guess was that he was about to tell me about some kind of devastating break-up, and I would have to feign pity. But that would be perfect; we could focus entirely on him and his despair.
‘I get the feeling we both have somewhat strange minds at the moment,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘Well,’ he shrugged, ‘life – it’s a funny thing. That’s all.’
What did he mean by that? And how had he assumed that I had a strange mind? Was I that obvious?
‘I don’t know why I’m even tempted to start telling you all this,’ he continued. ‘In a sense there’s really nothing to talk about. I guess this is just that typical thing of feeling comfortable in a stranger’s presence.’
Oh, so that was a typical thing?
‘Not that you’re a total stranger anymore, but you know what I mean… someone I don’t really know all that well. Yes, but, anyway, I don’t really know how to formulate my thoughts into words. It’s all a long story, in a sense. God, this is like a shrink session or something,’ he laughed.
‘Just tell me. Tell me everything,’ I said without thinking, because I was far too scared of where more silence might take us.
‘Okay. I will.’
He laughed, probably at the absurdity of it all – wondering to himself why on earth he was about to open up to a stranger. I laughed too, but because my body was crippled with nerves. And the eyes that looked on him as he began to speak were eyes of longing. I longed to be an equal participant in our strange encounter. I too longed to tell him everything.
‘What I’m about to tell you is incomprehensible, so don’t worry if you don’t understand. I don’t either.’ He paused and looked to the side. ‘See?’ he said, ‘It already sounds weird. I’m really bad at talking about it, words seem to ruin it somehow, but bear with me, I’ll try to say it as succinctly as I possibly can. But I can assure you it won’t be succinct.’
I was no longer sure that he was about to pour his heart out over a recent break-up. Maybe this was actually about something else. Either that, or the break-up had affected him pretty bad. But let’s just say I suddenly felt intrigued. And calmer, now that the attention was all on him.
‘I’m originally from the east coast. Long Island. That’s where I grew up. I moved to San Diego to study, ten years ago. I had to take a two-year break first, and work like a dog in New York, to afford to move here and study. I met one of my closest friends, Adam, at college. We were on the same course. We were involved in a lot of different movements in our college years and up until our mid twenties. We met some people, did some stuff… I don’t need to go into the details, but it was all pretty radical. The government didn’t like people like us,’ he shrugged.
The government? I wanted to stop him, but I didn’t.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘that was all a while ago and it didn’t last that long. It seemed to peak at the end of one summer… five years ago. Along with some other stuff. Again, I don’t need to go into the details of what was going on in my life round that time but it suffices to say I was worrying a lot about a few different things. So,’ he paused, ‘and this is the part I find hard to talk about, not because it’s too personal or anything like that, but because truly words fail me…’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘go on.’
‘Well, I was back in New York that fall, visiting my parents and my sister. I was walking along an empty beach in Montauk one day, by myself. I think I’d just been in for a swim, and wanted to take a long walk to dry off.’ He glanced at my reaction and quickly added, ‘I love wild swimming, and I’ve been pretty obsessed with cold water swimming since I was a kid.’
I smiled and nodded but remained silent so as not to distract him further.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘that day my mind was on a lot of different things, I’d had a fight with my dad that morning, and I was probably thinking about all sorts of stuff while walking along that beach. But then, suddenly, everything changed.’
‘What changed?’
‘Everything. It was as though everything dropped away and I looked up and all I saw was the miracle. I suddenly realised that life, that everything was an utter mind-blowing miracle.’
I found myself laughing, then realised he was being totally serious.
‘It was extraordinary,’ he said. ‘It’s like my understanding of the word life suddenly got turned on its head. Suddenly it occurred to me that absolutely nothing mattered. All was well. So well. See, I know that sounds stupid. Probably sounds like a load of hippy shit to you.’
I shook my head and urged him to continue.
‘But the thing is I had never ever before in my life thought about any spiritual stuff. I mean—’
‘So wait, you’re saying this was a spiritual experience?’
‘Well I hate that word, but I don’t really know what else to call it. What I mean is like I didn’t even know the meaning of words like enlightenment or awakening or anything like that. I’d just never in my life been interested in that stuff, you know? Only later, when I read some books that kind of helped me understand the experience, did I learn those words.’ He sighed. ‘I guess I’m just trying to say that I didn’t have some kind of spiritual hippy background before this happened. So it was all the more random, and maybe because of that all the more powerful.’
‘And you weren’t on anything?’
He knew straight away what I meant. He laughed. Well, it was only fair of me to ask – I had to rule out the options.
‘No,’ he said.
‘So was it like a satori? Like an awakening?’
He raised his eyebrows, ‘Yes, I think that might be the right word, how do you know about that stuff?’ He sounded surprised.
‘It’s hard not to when you live in California.’
By that I really only meant that I’d once stumbled across an article about meditation and t’ai chi in a free women’s health magazine, and I definitely remembered the words enlightenment, satori and awakening being mentioned. I secretly applauded my smug little self for impressing him with my vocabulary. But, the thing was, I actually then remembered that it had been an interesting article; perhaps it had reminded me of what it was like to be a very young child.
‘Though I can’t say
I’ve ever had such a big defining awakening moment myself,’ I added. ‘I mean, probably except when I was really little or something. You know, because kids tend to—’
‘Live in that state non-stop?’
‘Yeah. Completely.’ I smiled at his ability to end my sentence.
He was clearly quite happy – and perhaps even a little impressed – that I understood some of what he was saying, so I decided to go further.
‘And, I mean, I don’t know if this is entirely related, but sometimes when I’m drawing or painting I get into a state of flow. It’s an incredible feeling, everything just drops away and there’s just me and the paper, and everything else that I usually think is so real, y’know, like my life, my story and all that, just ceases to exist. I forget it all. It stops being real and important because the only thing that’s real is what’s happening. And it feels very… blissful, I guess,’ I shrugged, ‘and relaxed, so relaxed.’
He was nodding.
‘But yeah, sorry, continue,’ I said.
‘Well, I guess mainly that’s all that happened – just this sudden epiphany. But there were also other realisations that came with it. I suddenly wondered why the hell I had ever worried about anything before, why and how I could have ever allowed myself to suffer over anything. It seemed absurd to me that I could ever go through any mental trauma when this, this miracle, was so obviously staring me in the face and life was the most incredible thing ever, and there was nothing to worry about.’
He suddenly stopped and looked at me.
‘I do realise that maybe all this could somehow sound airy-fairy or something,’ he said, ‘but I’ll say it anyway, because I may as well give you as best a description of what happened as I can… I looked at the sky, the clouds, the rays of light, the sand, grass, trees, birds, the sea – that strange mass of a thing called water – and I had a clear, deep feeling that I was not separate from any of it. Though I don’t really know how to explain or describe that now, at the time it was so utterly clear. It was beyond understanding. There was a knowledge there that was totally beyond the logical mind. It was unquestionable. I guess deep down, on an atomic level, everything is the same, and maybe I just directly experienced the oneness of it all. I actually felt it. I looked around me and I felt such a deep sense of gratitude for simply being alive, for experiencing this miracle called life. And here’s where the real hippy shit comes out,’ he laughed, ‘I felt something that I can only think to call love, an unconditional and limitless love.’ He paused. ‘You know, you hear all this stuff about how you have to suffer for love… but fear is the opposite of love. In my experience love is joy and freedom.’
Jack raised one eyebrow and looked at me as though he was once again about to self-deprecate for sounding kind of new-agey. But I was nodding so enthusiastically, that instead he continued.
‘And sometimes you think you’re in love but actually you’re just in love with an idea, an idea of someone, an idea of how they are or how you want them to be. But it’s just an idea. It’s not who they are…’
Yes. That made sense. Perhaps my mother had been in love with an idea she held of my father, Diego, an idea she’d been desperately clinging onto since she first met him. I wanted Jack to elaborate on his theory of love, but he continued in his own way.
‘And also, I felt freedom, utter boundless freedom. I remember thinking that even if I was in a prison cell the freedom would be the same. So it wasn’t freedom in the usual sense, not the sort of freedom that’s determined by external conditions and circumstances, but an inner freedom, without conditions. Unconditional. And I felt joy. Total unadulterated child-like joy and wonder. I’d never felt anything like that in my life.’ He had a big smile on his face. He looked as though he was reminiscing the feeling as he talked of it. ‘And that’s it, you see, I guess that’s the point, because for a moment my so-called life stopped, and there was just life. Not my life, ‘Jack’s life’, but just life. You said before that sometimes when you draw suddenly the only thing that seems real is what’s happening. That’s it. In that moment I saw that only life was happening, and I saw it to be a miracle.’
He stopped. He looked so enthusiastic that I couldn’t help but grin back at him. There was something contagious about his full-faced smile. For a moment I forgot all about my own story and I actually felt a glimmer of happiness.
‘This probably all sounds like a jumble of words that don’t make any sense,’ he said.
I shook my head.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘it’s funny because… well, it’s hard to talk about. I mean, it’s hard to put into words. I end up using words like spiritual, divine, mystical and all those types of words, to try describe it, but I don’t want to use those words.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of what they connote. Those words can easily conjure up images of stuff that this has nothing to do with. Like, I mean, what happened was concrete. It wasn’t anything like floating around in a different world, seeing angels and saints, feeling dreamy or anything like that. It was the opposite. It was so obvious and clear. It was like I finally wasn’t dreaming. It was like suddenly waking up from a dream. It wasn’t oblivion or a momentary switching off. It was total awareness and presence and suddenly switching on. Completely. For once in my life I was actually fully present in it. I couldn’t believe I’d been asleep for so long. So the words, they just seem… I don’t know, they make it seem religious or abstract. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong to think like that, but I guess I just don’t feel totally comfortable using them.’
‘So you feel that words kind of limit you?’
‘Yes, I’ve often thought that.’
‘But you write, don’t you?’
He laughed. ‘Maybe that’s my way of trying to fight it, experimenting with words. Maybe the more I experiment the better I’ll be able to express all this. I don’t know.’
‘I wouldn’t worry too much about words. You can’t please everyone.’
‘That’s true. I’m probably just overthinking it all.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, I guess I’ve just been listing some of the stuff I remember realising and feeling at the time. There’s too much to say, and yet the more I say, the more I feel like I’m getting further away from describing the essence of what happened.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, ‘just say it.’
‘Okay, I will.’ He took a deep breath and continued. ‘One of the other significant things that I came to realise is something I probably find hardest to talk about, firstly because I always get judged for saying it. If and when I do tell anyone this, no one can even begin to comprehend it. And secondly because, whilst it was so clear and obvious to me at the time, now that I’m back in the world of my mind and my life, even I find it hard to come to terms with…’
‘Well… go on. What was it?’
‘Basically, I realised that all the world’s suffering, all the destruction, it was all just… a dream.’
What the fuck is he talking about? ‘Sorry, what?’
‘Yes, I know. See what I mean? Incomprehensible. It’s not like a belief system of mine, or something I came to believe after thinking about stuff, or some kind of conclusion I came to after reading about stuff, actually it’s quite the reverse, because everything I’ve ever been about, and still pretty much am about, everything I’ve ever believed in, everything I stand for is the complete opposite of that, you know? So it’s not something I believe, it’s just something that I briefly but somehow deeply realised while I was walking down that beach. Everything’s a dream. We’re living in a dream. Whether I get it or not right now, it was obvious and clear at the time. Whatever it means. And that’s the hardest part to explain, because I can’t even articulate it properly to myself.’
He paused.
‘That’s a very dangerous thing to go broadcasting around,’ I said.
‘Well of course. And it’s not the sort of thing you would go broadcasting around to everyone. Because that’s the thing –
in the world as we know it, in life as we know it, it makes no sense at all. In fact, it’s almost an untruth. You see, when I say it’s all just a dream, I don’t mean it in the way of let’s go torture and kill someone because who cares, it doesn’t matter anyway, their suffering is an illusion and clearly not real, so it doesn’t matter. That’s not what I mean. Within the dream suffering is real. Very real. And I suppose that’s why I’m still so driven to try stop it.’ He stopped for a second again. ‘I can’t explain it. I just can’t. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to put it into words. Forget I said it. I already regret saying it.’
I wish he could have explained it. What was this dream he was talking about?
‘But anyway,’ he continued, ‘you can see how that could have later made it hard to go back to the world of my life. Especially as a human rights and environmental lawyer.’
I nodded. And then I registered. A human rights and environmental lawyer? What the hell? It was as though life was playing games with me and shoving an answer to all my problems right in front of me. But no, it couldn’t be that simple. No fucking way. I wasn’t going to tell him anything. A secret is a secret. I blew that thought out of my mind and carried on listening to him as intensely as I could. It was a good distraction.
‘You know what?’ he said. ‘War, torture, environmental destruction, murder, rape, hate crimes, greed, self hate, all of it, all the million problems of society – they’re all just symptoms of this madness.’
‘What madness?’
‘Well…’ he laughed, ‘it’s madness, isn’t it? All these things we do. No other species on the planet is as destructive and dangerous as we are.’
God, he was starting to sound like my mother.
‘I’m not saying it’s good or bad,’ he said, ‘it’s just plain insanity. Trapped in our deluded minds and identities, we’re blinded. We can’t see the fundamental magic of existence, and so we try to find some kind of magic we can claim as our own within it. We struggle for it, we suffer for it, we fight for it, we kill for it. We go through life looking for a treasure within it, without realising that life itself is the treasure. And at the same time we say we hate the wars, the destruction, all of that, and we go crazy trying to change the world by addressing each and every symptom…’
