A Million Little Pieces - James Frey [82]
We stand and we start to file out and before I leave I turn to get a glimpse of Lilly but I can’t see her and I don’t want to make my intentions obvious so I turn back and I keep walking. I wish I could see her. I want to see her. I don’t see her. I walk back to the Unit and I go to my Room and I lie down on my bed.
Miles walks in and he sits down on his bed and he reaches for his clarinet case and he starts unpacking it and he asks if I mind if he plays and I say no play whatever you want for as long as you want and I reach for a book one of the books my Brother gave me and I don’t bother looking to see what I’m reaching for because I don’t care I just want to read and I want to occupy my mind with something. The rage and need are back they have returned are alive as they almost always are living and lingering and eating me away. I need something to occupy my mind. I don’t care what it is. Occupy.
I pull the Chinese book, the Tao te Ching, by far the smallest of the three that I have, and the only one that I haven’t read before. It is a small, thin paperback. The title is written across the front in simple white type against a black background. I flip the book over and I look at the back and there are quotes on the back from three sources that I have never heard of before but that look like bullshit new-age Hippie Periodicals. There is a publication classification in an upper corner. It reads Religion.
I am immediately skeptical. Not only because of the source quotes and the Religion classification, but because I’ve always grouped books such as this in a category with crap like Astrology, Aromatherapy, Crystalology, Pyramid Power, Psychic Healing and Feng Shui, which at various times in my life have all been suggested as cures for my problems. That anyone would actually believe that these things could solve their problems, really solve them, instead of just making them forget about them for a while, is asinine to me. My Brother gave me this book though, so I’ll read it. Had anyone aside from my Brother given it to me, it would be sitting in the bottom of a garbage can.
As I open it, Miles starts playing his clarinet. He plays softly and slowly. The notes are on the low side and he draws them out to the point that I wonder how he’s breathing. The notes are on the long side and he makes them sound like they are easy to make, though I know they are not. Low and slow and soft and long and easy. I don’t know what it is, but I like it.
I skip the Introduction. If the book goes in the trash, I want it to go because of my thoughts on it, not because of some Asshole’s thoughts who wrote the Introduction.
The text begins. It consists of a series of short poems numbered one through eighty-one. The first one says that the Tao is that which has no name and is beyond any sort of name. It says that names are not necessary for that which is real and for that which is eternal. It says that if we are free from desire, we can realize mystery, that if we are caught in desire, we only realize manifestations. It says mystery and manifestations arise from the same source, which is darkness. It says darkness within darkness is the key to all understanding. It is not enough to make me throw it away, but I am also not convinced.
I keep going. I keep going as I listen to low and slow and soft and long and easy. I keep going as I settle in beneath the warmth of my bed and I keep going as I wait for the phone to ring. When the phone rings, I know I will get to hear the sound of Lilly’s voice. I want to hear the sound of Lilly’s voice.
Number two. If there is beauty, there is ugliness. If there is good, there is bad. Being and nonbeing and difficult and easy and high and low and long and short and before