Emphasizing the utter mediocrity of my mood, traffic on the way home seemed bizarrely
slow, even though my gauges said this wasn't true. Also strange was that I didn't find it funny
when a middle-aged Caucasian male shouted at an erratic driving Oriental man that they should
all walk to math class. Not at the time, anyway.
Entering Ed’s apartment, a colossal fatigue overcame me and I collapsed on the couch
feeling as if I was under the weight of a trillion…I felt so heavy that I literally couldn't move, yet
I remained unconcerned. Eyes closed, I listened to an internal buzzing through which I swear I
could feel my heart beating. Wishing this sensation would stop didn't seem wise, so I focused on
the rhythm until the buzz faded into chirping birds; fifty minutes had passed. I got up feeling
invigorated, not unlike the last time I had dabbled with cocaine while covering a lazy firefight
that became a three day debacle.
I called Ed to see if he was available for a beer. He wasn't, so I went for an effortless jog
that took me a full kilometre beyond my usual range before I turned around still feeling like I
could sprint home. Knowing the penalty I would pay in the morning, I didn’t do this, and by
bedtime my youthful level of vigour had settled back into its battered thirty-five year old
container.
In spite of making steady progress, by the sixth day of Bonnie interjecting her practices of
clarity at every opportunity, she grimaced at my unusual number of errors at such a torrid pace
that I began to feel as though my personality was fragmenting along character fault lines. My
mind finally shut down over a simple menu choice at a Greek restaurant on 4th Street.
Grinning foolishly when Andrea asked me what I would like, all I was missing for an
involuntary incarceration in a soft-walled room was the drool as Bonnie explained, “He's
exhausted from eliminating reason. We’ll share the number three combo, a carafe of house red,
and ice water please.”
“Excellent,” Andrea said.
“Now that you know intellectual prowess is your worst enemy,” Bonnie said, facing me,
“you should approach our meetings as if you need them to survive. That’s what a student would
do at your stage because they would understand they’re straddling the old and the new as if they
were options.”
"Before I ask you why they’re not options, how do I know what about intellectual
prowess?”
“You’re a sputtering example of what hiding inappropriate thoughts, and trying to uphold
inconsistent views can do to people. Look at you—you’re exhausted. It's a terrific day!” she
raised her voice.
“Why is the slow death of my brain a cause for celebration?”
“You’ve got it backwards again, but until this day you couldn’t help it: you've finally
disrupted the automatic routing of events through your ego, but you haven't claimed enough
knowledge about yourself to make a permanent shift onto the clarity trail. For the moment, and I
mean in this moment, the Olympian levels of intellectual gymnastics you have always
incorporated to make sense of your world have run their course and left you pending.”
“Meaning?”
“Are you concerned about anything?”
