TooBee/DooBee

To Do -- Or Not To Do

In my effort to kick the tobacco habit, I went with Zyban. This is an anti-depressant which was discovered to have an unexpected side-effect in some of its users: They lost their taste for smoking. No one knows the how or why of this mechanism, but given that the burning-stick devil is definitely known to be harmful, it was decided in this case to give the unknown devil the benefit of doubt.

Certain other potential side-effects have been documented and the risks acknowledged -- including a one-in-one-thousand chance of seizure. But apparently no one before me had ever reported feeling as though his brain was encased in an eggshell. In the sense that sleep is a little death, this sensation was a little psychotic.

And while sleep-pattern disruption is recognized as a common problem, I was totally unprepared for what happened as I tried to fall back into sleep at four in the morning: I remembered. It was as though some invisible party had randomly videotaped moments of my life, then played them back in arbitrary order.

I was amazed at the vividness, the detail my mind had faithfully stored away. I was amazed as well to eventually realize there was nothing at all gratuitous in these clips. The little movies pointed to nodes in the tapestry of my life -- points at which a new thread was introduced, the first knot in a new figure or pattern, a harmonic.

Most amazing of all was that in no instance did I have an inkling of their portent at the time, and how well-camouflaged these events had remained against the backdrop of things-in-time-past -- including the one which set the foundation for my internal dialogue to this day.

The Okanagan in summer of 1969. A rented fruit-pickers' cabin in an abandoned apple orchard alongside the highway in Winfield. Evening light illumes a small room, largely empty.

I am lying on a foldaway cot. Although the sound of cars passing penetrates directly through the open window over my head, I am not aggravated. I am feverish. Behind closed lids I see the hiss and doppler-shift as comets shooting past against a stage set: Void.

A knock on the door shatters the reverie: My wife is off in the hills riding a horse; I am not expecting anyone. I get up and walk to the door. Opening it, I see there the two men I most highly respect at this pass in my life. To have one come to visit is an honor; to have both is unprecedented.

They have ostensibly come by to deliver two kittens, one black with white markings, the other white with black. I know nothing about this. They are obviously partners in conspiracy with my wife, who long ago learned that forgiveness is easier to negotiate than permission.

As though I were not there except to open a door, they busy themselves in our kitchen, returning with a pot of tea and two cups. One sitting on my cot at the foot, the other in the corner on the floor, they pick up a conversation that has evidently long gone on between them.

The one is an ascetic. Circumstances have shaped his life such that he now lives and breathes Kundalini Yoga. In outlook he is Buddhist, devoted to the practice of self-enlightenment. He believes the world is perfect thing imperfectly perceived. Only through seeking perfection in himself, he contends, can he see perfection reflected in the world.

The other man is the oldest son of a local industrialist. He is a political activist: noisemaker, troublemaker. If he were less bright and gentle, he might have been a Weatherman. He too believes the world is a perfect place imperfectly perceived, but thinks that change can be brought about directly by modifying the consciousness of the world without him as well as the world within.

As they parry and thrust into the darkening, I drift in and out of my fever. I don't hear their words so much as the sense of them. Ultimately the words collapse into phonemes; in a language before words, they argue an issue older than history: Saint versus Hero.

If I hadn't been obsessed at the time with "freedom," (as though there is any escape from the past) I would have caught the subtext of their discussion: No matter their differences, they both felt in some fashion responsible to the universe.

Convinced, however, that they were speaking of avatars and archetypes, I galloped off into the empyrean, there to do battle alongside pantheons of superbeings. Wrestling with monsters of my own devise, I managed for years to pretend I was engaged in an ethical struggle, when in reality I was engaged in nothing.

There were hard lessons, but eventually I learned that meaningful action can only exist in addressing that which confronts us and making decisions in the real world. Ideals are guideposts; they are not the road.

... There was a point. For all that the past is far from perfectly happy, if I had it all over to do again, I would do it no differently -- except that I wouldn't smoke, so I wouldn't have to go through this evening of nicotine fixation twice.

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