Everything Is Happening at Once
A Memoir
Excerpt:
At exactly seven o’clock on
Thursday evening, I knock.
The sign over door 220 with that slogan: “Abandon all hope,
ye who enter here.”
A large man, focused on the papers in front of him, sits
behind an ornate desk. With a fancy fountain pen, he scrawls a note. He doesn’t
look up. He’s pudgy and sort of ageless. Maybe late thirties. He wears an impeccable
suit. His cheeks are oddly plump, like a child’s, but his demeanor—craggy. The
room dimly lit by a single lamp. Persian carpets cover the floor. Bookshelves
line the walls, packed with books arranged by height. I hate books arranged by
height. Books should be arranged by subject. Books should determine their own
place on the shelf, based on—
“What do you want from me?” He fires the question right in
my eye.
“Want from you?” I’m not ready for that question. I’m
expecting some answers. Is this affiliated with Gurdjieff? Is “the Work” some
kind of international organization? How long is the course of study? Does it
cost money?
But I look at him and fire back, “I want to see things as
they are.”
My response surprises him. I like that.
“If I agree to take you on,” he says, as if that would be a
burden, “you will indeed see things as they are.” He snorts. “You will see it
all for yourself; you’ll see it all as a by-product of your own accelerated
evolution. If you can follow that.”
I nod and don’t say anything.
“You’re exceptional,” he states impersonally. “Most people
come in here and can’t stop telling me how much they already know. But you”—he
pauses—“you’re actually getting some of this already.” He says this with utter
certainty, even though we have just met. “But that’s neither here nor there,
really. And there’s no way to predict where you will go with this. If anywhere
at all. Part of the problem is you’re young. You haven’t completely fallen
asleep yet. You can’t wake up until you go to sleep.”
I feel naked.
He leans back and folds his hands over his doughy middle. “Sleep”
and “awakening” are straight out of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
“But if you want to pursue it, then I will let you stay as
long as you abide by the rules. We meet here twice a week. It’s not optional.
If you’re doing this, then be on time, or don’t bother to come back. Don’t get
involved with me personally in any way. If you do, you’re done here. I’ll know
it, and I’ll throw you out. And express no hostility to me or anyone else involved
with this.”
He says all this without the trace of a smile. In a
rumbling redneck drawl. With rock eyes. Green rock eyes.
“And one more thing,” he says. “You can quit anytime.”
He snorts again and stands up. He’s taller than I am, about
six feet. The three-piece suit he wears, I’m sure it was hand-tailored in England. Fits
him perfectly. The vest snugs to his big belly like a pillowcase. Then I catch
myself. I’m already getting involved with him personally. The fact is, I really
don’t care where his suit was made.
Before I can utter a formality, he’s opened the door,
slipped an envelope into my hand, and shown me out without another word.
Bright office building light floods the hallway. The
envelope in my hand says open this later.
≈ ≈ ≈
I walk outside
and say out loud, “It’s later.”
I open the envelope. Two sheets of paper inside. One is a
mimeographed sheet listing the meeting times and the rules. The other is
handwritten:
You may commence this
activity with a real Work group on two conditions:
1. Go to an old-timey
barbershop and get a military haircut.
2. Do not explain your
haircut to anybody under any circumstances whatsoever.
Or else do not bother to
show up here again.
The note is signed in a giant script: Dr. Cox.
“Damn it,” I say out loud. “Fuck him. To hell with his
fancy bullshit and the living dead who follow him.”
≈ ≈ ≈
I have
pounds of hair. It grows up instead of down, and the longer it gets, the taller
and curlier it is. I’m over five foot ten with this hive.
To my surprise, the barber doesn’t even blink when I tell
him, “A crew cut.” He probably thinks I’m joining the military to kill
Vietnamese farmers. He’s a scissors machine set on Fast. Brown steel wool piles up on the floor. Then he picks up the
electric trimmer, and when it buzzes my left temple, the word “Task” flashes in
my head. “Goddamn, this is a Task!” I say to myself. A Task designed by a teacher
for a student to execute, a Task the student would never dream up on his own, a
way to catalyze new experience and new perceptions—to crack the limits of self.
I want to hug the barber, grab his cheeks, and tell him, “Good God, man! This
is a Task!”
It doesn’t take long or cost much, but according to the
piles of curls on the floor, it should have done both.
Chilly outside the barbershop in March. Still wintertime in
Atlanta. The
chilly air clutches my neck, exposed without the blimp of curls. One hand, then
the other, up there feeling around. Walking down the street with hands on
scalp, fingers wandering like antennae, burnishing this stiff scrub brush where
my wire mop used to be.
The physical sensations are shocking and riveting.
But then come the questions.
“What happened?” Friends demand to know.
I shrug. “Nothing. Just got a haircut.”
It’s the refusal to explain that ratchets the crew cut to
another level. I abide by the terms religiously.
“You had a bad trip, didn’t you?”
“No, man, I didn’t have a bad trip.”
“Are you enlisting?”
“Hell, no, I’m not enlisting.”
“You got drafted?”
“And I didn’t get drafted.”
“What the hell? Are you going straight?”
“What the hell? Are you going straight?”
I try to laugh it off.
“Well, what happened to you?”
I abide by the conditions. I don’t explain. That makes all
the difference.
“What in the hell happened to you?”
A giant crowbar pries open a giant seam between me and all
my radical-hippie-anarchic-do-what-you-feel friends. I see gloom in their eyes,
which I have never seen before. All I did was cut my hair. It shouldn’t have mattered much at all. But it matters
a lot.
Some of my friends drift away and quit talking to me.
Maybe I drift away from them, too. They’re hardly the free
thinkers and free spirits I admire if they can’t let a haircut go unjustified.
I’m invited to fraternity parties.
All I did was cut my hair and refuse to explain it, and
everyone I know gets upset and everything changes. It’s a multilayered shock,
and it takes a while to ponder.
I feel like a python swallowing a deer: this is a big lump
of cosmic meat, a lot to digest. This is one bellyful of hairy venison.