A Million Little Pieces - James Frey [198]
You’re a little late.
I was busy.
Michael speaks.
Probably best.
Why?
It was a very depressing dinner.
What happened?
Miles speaks.
Ted found out he has to leave here in three days and Matty’s Wife is missing.
Fuck.
Michael speaks.
It was very depressing.
Fuck.
They put their trays away. We walk through the Halls. They go to the Lecture and I go back to my Room. I sit down on my bed and I get my copy of the Tao and I climb under the covers and I start reading.
Seventy-nine. Failure is an opportunity. If you blame someone else you will never stop blaming. Fulfill your own obligations, correct your own mistakes. Do what you need to do and demand nothing of others.
Sixty-four. What is rooted will grow. What is recent can be fixed. What is brittle will break. Prevent trouble before it finds you, put things in order before they exist. The giant tree grows from a single seed. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. If you rush, you’ll fail. Hold on to things too tight and you’ll lose them. Take action by letting action come to you. Remain as calm at the start as at the finish. If you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. Desire to not desire, learn to unlearn. Care for nothing and you will care for everything.
The words as true now as the first time I read them. They don’t tell me what to do or how to live or what not to do or how not to live, they simply tell me to be what I am and who I am and let life exist and exist within life. The words are true.
Twenty-two. If you want to be whole, you must first be partial. If you want to be straight, you must first be crooked. If you want to be full, first become empty. If you want to be reborn, you must first die. If you want everything, give everything up. If you don’t display yourself, people will see your light. If you have nothing to prove, people will trust you. If you don’t try to be something, people will see themselves in you. If you don’t have a goal, you will always succeed.
Forty-one. When a superior man hears of the Tao, he begins to embody it. When an average man hears of the Tao, he believes in parts of it and he doubts in parts of it. When a fool hears of the Tao, he laughs at it. If he didn’t laugh, it wouldn’t be the Tao. It is said that the path into light is dark. That the path forward is backward. That true power seems weak, that true purity seems tarnished, that true resolve seems changeable, that true clarity obscure. The greatest art is unsophisticated, the greatest love indifferent, the greatest wisdom childish.
Miles walks into the Room. I close the book. He walks to his bed and he picks up his clarinet and he asks me if I mind if he plays it. I say please, I’d like it if you played. He picks it up licks his lips puts the reed to his mouth and he blows. I close my eyes. I hear long and slow. I hear short and fast. I hear a song that doesn’t come from notes on a page but from a beating human heart. I hear sorrow and shame and hope and redemption. I hear a past that doesn’t matter and the future that never comes. I hear harmony and simplicity and patience, I hear discipline and compassion. I hear it all now. In this moment in this Clinic in this Room in this bed with my eyes closed.
I hear it.
Right now.
Chapter 20
The clock on Miles’s nightstand reads three forty-seven.
I am wide awake.
It feels as if there’s a Phantom in the Room. A Phantom that wants to kill me. Slowly and painfully. Kill me.
I sit up. I look around the Room. It is dark, but I can see. Miles is asleep in his bed. The door is shut, the window is closed. Everything is as it was when I fell asleep. Though I know there is not, it still feels as if there’s something in the Room.
I get out of bed. I walk to the Bathroom. I splash cold water on my face. I do it again and again. It doesn’t make a difference. I still feel the Phantom.
I walk out of the Bathroom and I put on my clothes. I get Hank’s jacket, a pack of cigarettes, my lighter. I leave.
I walk through the Unit. It is quiet and still everyone is