You know what? The fuckin gurus ought to give elephants a goddam break. The gurus ought to check their own attachments. Tell me what my hoary, gerontic mother was attached to, to get herself raped in the Conoco head. Oh, right: she was attached to taking a shit then the rape-o attached some homeless lesioned pud to her fossilized mouth/cunt/anus. Jesus, who would want to fuck that? She looks like Mark Felt! And don’t tell me it was karma — there is no karma. Karma’s just some Catholic trip, Eastern-style. What’s karma got to do got to do with it what’s karma but a secondhand
devotion.
CHESS got the stones to visit “the Grove.” New carpets and lighting fixtures in the atrium. Lithographs he hadn’t seen during prior visits. Everpresent whiff of turds and urine and Lysol — you could throw money and pile on the designer touches but certain things you just couldn’t polish. As they say.
He was going to drop in on both of them: kill 2 birds, stoned.
Maurie was the same: some kinda tetraplegic, with only incidental blink of crusted eyes belying cognizance. Chess thought it a miracle his friend could breathe on his own, which he did, smooth and unlabored, without apparatus. That’s what felt eerie, dreamlike. It didn’t seem like he should be in such a state — waxy taut shinyskin, Schiavosmile, dandruffscalp, longish-nailed fingers beginning atrophied inward curl. Funny thing being that as Maurie “settled in,” so did Chess in his fashion; the tissue of guilt, warm diaphanous tube between he and bedridden friend, organic living bloodsausage umbilicus, began to dissolve. Maybe it was all part of a natural process, Time shifting and Space softening tired old concepts of accountability that maybe weren’t so solid (the gurus would say) to begin with. Shit happens never rang so true. In the words of the elegant old tribesman in that tsunami documentary: We remembered what our ancestors said, that land and sea always fight over boundaries. Things keep changing. Nothing is safe and intact. The earth rests on a gigantic tree that can be shaken by spirits blah blah but the dude had a point. Right? Nothing is real and nothing to get hungabout. Strawberry fields forever.
Chess began to let things go. An audiotape Laxmi got him had some “tulku” (reincarnated being) saying that it was best to forgive, and if you couldn’t forgive then it was best to forget, forgetting was the next best thing. “Too much thinking about past or future created suffering.” Now, that was right on. He leaned over Maurie to beg forgiveness then ask him to forget. Forgive and forget, live and let love. Chess said he was going away for awhile. He told Maurie his mom died and he was moving to Hawaii or maybe Vancouver but would be back to visit in a few months, reflexively covering his bet against the astronomical odds that Maurie should wake up and start running his mouth. (If Levin was listening, and was in the know, he would definitely be confused that the Perp was announcing his plans to return to the scene of the crime.) He thought about the recent case of a fireman who was in a coma for like 20 years then suddenly talked a bluestreak for 16 hours before dropping dead a few months later. Anything could happen.
Soon they’d be leaving for Mumbai. He wasn’t sure what to call it—Moom-bye sounded weird. Peking/Beijing, whatever. Certainly was a strange turn of events. If you’d laid it out a year ago, the Jew and the Location Scout would have had a laugh (about everything but the coma part). Life was too fuckin strange and The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet only confirmed it; you’d never begin to be able to comprehend. That’s what Maurie was teaching him. That was our downfall — we thought we could understand. His own personal guru was staring right at him, or kind of, from the hospital bed, probably taking a crap at the very moment Chess was saying goodbye.
How beautiful and fucked up was that?
He changed his mind about seeing Mom.
He didn’t want to have that image in his head when he got on the plane.
CHESS was mostly looking forward to Varanasi — Benares? — the holy city where Indians went to die. That’s where Siddhartha hung; the Bodhi Tree was just a few hundred miles away. There were these places called the Deer Park and the Forest of Bliss that he wanted to check out. Laxmi said that after Shakyamuni Buddha became enlightened, he met up with some ol compadres, just like Jesus did with his dissipes. The Deer Park is where the Buddha did his satsang and told everyone to chill, and not be so extreme. Laxmi said the Brits built an opium factory nearby, back in the 1800s. It was supposedly still in operation. Fuck it. He’d do without.
He would wear a Muslim skullcap and coat his body in powdered vermilion like the guy from Entourage. He hoped there would be temple bombings. None of it concerned him. He’d recite verses from Kabir and the Koran, and bow down in the Kashi Viswanath, the Gyanvapi. He would offer Vicodin (750 mg) to the armed guards. Something inside began to shift and he envisioned himself outside the perverse damaged country of his birth, country of warmongers no longer his own, country of the armies of the night that raped dementia’d old ladies in oilhiked steelcage lavatories. Just being there — Mother India — would be to matriculate with cubenses. So vast! Sure there’d be troubles, he wasn’t so naive to think otherwise, he’d probably get hep or typhus but trouble in Paradise was different than trouble in Hell. India would be the matrix of his new birth, his rebirth and death. Being there would be like going with Her, ruler of plants and imperial troops, his betrothed. He would ride on Her wedding train and soon they
LXXXVII.Joan
visited every day at Golden Grove Assisted Living (a bit of a misnomer because it was sprawling and there was a wing, a separate building actually, for those who needed far more than that—Night of the Assisted Living Dead. Some were in vegetative states, but the 2 communities did not intersect), the place where Marj had been transferred after a 3 day stint at St John’s.
GG had a warm swimming pool and Wellness Community Village where clients practiced yoga and handicrafts. Doctors and nurses 24/7. Bright commissary (“Rick’s Café”) with waiters and tablecloth coverings and often a pianist. You could be served in your room if you weren’t feeling up to it but that was discouraged. The staff felt it important you socialize. Socialization was the amulet to ward off depression.
Joan didn’t want her mother to be there. She’d gone house-hunting in Santa Monica (a Craftsman on Marguerite) and high in the Malibu Hills — and even thought of buying a lot off Sawtelle that ARK could build upon from her own design — old-money folks did that, Ann Janss had lived over there for years — because everything was so costly and she didn’t want to shoot her wad. (There were a thousand places for $12,000,000.) Anyway, she couldn’t make her move until the baby was born and the money came; they would have to find a rental. She just didn’t want her in Golden Grove; Mom deserved so much more. She would not leave her there in this time of life, in this time of Joan’s life.
Occasionally Marj asked to see her son but she asked to see Ham and Ray and Lucas and Bonita and Jeffrey Chandler as well.