The Eden Express_ A Memoir of Insanity - Mark Vonnegut [70]
It never lasts very long. It’s lasting less and less. I keep going away. It keeps getting harder and harder to come back. I stop being Mark Vonnegut. Simon stops being Simon and so on. I stop being able to remember things, think about things, or understand what people say. It stops being Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I get swept away. I keep making it back, but it’s getting tougher and tougher.
In a funny way it’s almost fun, having everything be so fucked up and managing to adjust. I guess you might say I’m proud. Proud of me, proud of my friends for managing to deal with this thing so well. For most people this would be the end of the world. They’d panic, their friends would panic. Things would get trampled in the stampede. But we’ve kept our heads, made the necessary allowances, and can just ride this thing out.
I’m pretty much just putting in time waiting for this cloud to blow over. Waiting for something to come along to make some sense out of all this. Killing time, waiting for some sort of cavalry to come over the hill. There’s really not an awful lot I can do but wait. As long as there’s no panic, we can hold out damn near forever.
AND THEN ALONG CAME WARREN. Actually we went to see him. Warren was a holy man of sorts who was supposed to drive the evil demons out of me or maybe just talk me down or at least come up with some explanation for what was wrong with me. The Stevens Street folk and Simon were getting desperate.
We first heard about Warren from Luke. Luke was wandering around the Kootenays feeling very untogether. One day he came across this old man who, as Luke put it, was living the most together, organic, spiritual life he had ever seen. It was Warren. Vibes happened and something like a guru-disciple relationship went on for a few weeks. Luke credited Warren with having helped him a great deal. All this had taken place a year or so ago.
Then we heard from Sankara, André, and Sy that they had run into a really far-out old man, long white hair, flowing white beard. He did Ching reading, numerology, and other things and had spiritual powers of some sort. They were getting more and more into him.
Sure enough, it was Warren. I had had lots of opportunities to go see Warren but always managed to pass them up. Maybe if I had met him earlier it would have helped lessen the shock of our first encounter.
Now there was lots of talk about Warren and all his spiritual gifts, wisdom, and powers, and that he probably knew all about whatever had gone wrong with me. I dreaded going to see him or having him come to see me. I’d never gotten on very well with guru types and was perfectly happy with the adjustments that had been made for my disabilities. Killing time till the cloud blew over. But maybe the cloud wasn’t going to blow over until I faced Warren. Maybe Warren was in charge of the cloud.
I don’t know how many of us went. I don’t remember how we got there. I don’t even remember whether I knew we were going to see Warren.
The door was opened by this white-haired, white-bearded man, skinny as a rail, with sunken raving eyes and a huge hook nose, in a white-robe, holy-man outfit.
“Welcome to my temple.”
Lots of white, incense, burning candles, little altars here and there, a mishmash of religious symbols and objects. We were supposed to sit on cushions on the floor. He had a chair.
I can’t believe that I and these other people here are really sitting on cushions in front of this guy doing a white-robe bit in such a rinkydink put-up job of a temple.
Gurus as a group are generally a kindly lot. But there was nothing gentle or kindly about Warren in his appearance or manner. His face and the face that had engulfed me some weeks earlier had a lot in common.
I don’t remember much of what was said. I blocked it out at the time: Whatever else happens here, don’t let the joker trick you into saying the Lord’s prayer backward.