Gestalt

Sobriety, Day 66 It’s interesting, when most people in the western world think of ‘hunger’, they imagine being ready to eat.  Snackish.  Famished with a little bit of a grumble in their guts.

But what is real hunger?  Ache in your bones.  Starvation.  The Bodhisattva thinks that’s a better word, especially for how he feels.  Especially for the gnawing that seems to overtake his every fiber, his every ounce.  It’s the sort of sensation that proves the whole point of why you’d even do this in the first place, actually.

The purpose of a system is what it does.

If he didn't have a problem, he could just shake it off.

But he does, so it sits.

The Bodhisattva knew, knew it deep in his soul as soon as he woke up on Monday.  Since he’s gotten clean, some weeks only need a single meeting for him to absorb the energy of healthy mindset.  Keeps him from the alleyways and the bars, keeps him from picking fights with cops and shitkickers and bikers.  Some weeks, though, some weeks require a meeting a day to keep the demon at bay.  This has been that week.  Every blast of desert air, every violent drunk, every reactionary…something about the area.  With it’s heat and dryness it reminds him of home–but the neon and the sin make it seem like a circus version of Joshua Tree, a perversion of a place he’s spent so long away from.  It throws his spirit into wild oscillations, invites noise into his soul, and he’s only ever had one way of clearing all that off.

So that’s why we’re here, again.

That’s why we’re dodging those dirty looks, isn't it?

Because while everyone here needs to fight their impulse to medicate with drugs, Sage still walks around smelling like absolute mildew, because The Bodhisattva doesn't chief on anything but the finest.  So yeah, he gets a bit of a cold shoulder most times.  That’s why he’s so far away from the group.  Same as every city he’s been in, too: everyone congregates outside until meeting time, sucking down black coffee and cigarettes, clustered around the entrance of whatever building is hosting them–here, it’s a community center.  Sage stays away, though.  Sage looks like he blasts two raw cones with his coffee in the morning…because he blasts two raw cones with his coffee in the morning.  Others come in their probation’s finest, all shirts tucked into jeans and ball caps and thin jackets.  Some look like they’re fresh off a shift at an industrial job.

Sage Pontiff is here in bell bottom jeans, bedrock sandals, a silk blouse, and a fringe leather jacket, beard lengthening by the day, dreads swinging, looking like a Rastafarian David Crosby circa 1969.

They stay away.  He stays away.  All so he can stay away.

It’s easier at home.

He’s got his creature comforts, his books, his meditation pillows, but most of all he has him.  Remarkable how little you think of fighting when you can just lay in bed with your love.  Remarkable how good the fighting feels when it’s for something.  Sage has the man that gave all the violence the context, real and concrete, right in front of your face.  That kind of grounding presence was what he was missing, was why he lived the itinerant life of a traveling seer, doing enough drugs and enough fucking to fill the canyon itself, to blanket the earth.  But even then, all of those drugs and all of that flesh…and he still itched for the violence.  He’s been ruminating on what exactly is different, what makes a life of domesticity and monogamy the thing that keep those hounds at bay.  And he bristles at that, every time he struggles.  Feels weak.  Codependent.

Which makes him want to run away.

Which will only lead him to the thing he’s running from.

With a sigh, he begins to prepare himself.  He knows when he walks in, he’ll feel another sort of tug altogether.

All those souls in need of purpose.

He used to give that, he remembers.  It seems like another life and it’s been barely 2 years.  Crowds gathered in the elements, the smell of dust and the forest and humanity and weed smoke.  All those eyes–fresh, seeking, weary from a world that seemed to consume them more and more every day.  Yearning for the way out, for the way to really break through.  So many of them had never even been in a fight, never felt the rush.  Every time he would let blood with the faithful, he’d give them the first hit.  But after a while, he’d give them the first few.  The first several.  Until he was leaning into storms.  Until he was hurting people to motivate them to let loose.  Until he was beating them half to death in his frustration because he couldn't feel that enlightenment anymore.  He would bathe in blood and his faithful would bathe in blood and they would understand better the cosmic weave and their place within it.

In the beginning, at least.

But towards the end, he’d fight a dozen and sit under a tree after, twisted on a large amount of psychedelics, feeling his wounds drip in the cool air of night, and he’d feel nothing.

A lack of satisfaction.

But he misses those early days.  Still thinks of them fondly.  He would be brought tribute and bountiful gifts just for sharing his wisdom.  He reached the mountaintop.  He was helping them realize their potential.

He wonders something.  Shakes his hair.  Checks his phone, looking for someone.  Someone out here.  Someone he helped, somewhere in all his Instagram followers.

Bingo.

He pockets the phone.  Heads in.

Braces himself.

—

Idlewild Park.  Daytime. 

“You look out of place, y’know that?”

The voice is almost a mirror of Sage’s, albeit with the distinct twang of a life raised in the country.  Pontiff looks up from the park bench he was perched himself upon, a wide smile breaking out across his model good looks.  While The Bodhisattva has changed very little from last night, the man who approaches is a classic weirdo: every inch 7 feet of body, long of torso and of arms, with legs that seem out of place in how short they are.  Frankly, he should have hooped, but his bearing and his clothes–flannel, suspenders, boots that saw the end of the Bush administration–mark him as a classic farmland weirdo.  He’s wearing yellow aviator shooting glasses.  His mutton chops are large and long enough to be braided, which he has done, capping the ends with double ball hair ties of bright plastic green.

He also has one hell of a scar on his forehead, a gouge that feels almost skull deep amidst his weathered skin.  He’s somewhere between 25 and 40.  Sage stands, bringing him in for a hug, and it’s clear from the delay in the big man returning it that he wasn’t expecting.

“Charpentier.  Great to see you, man.  Sit, sit, you wanna smoke?”  The big man eases his bulk onto the bench, shaking his head.

“Nah, gotta do a big drive out to Topaz.”

“Creach’s place?”

“Man, you don’t keep up with the news of the day.  Creach got hitched, moved him and all them burnouts off the farm and out to British Columbia.  Sold all the property off to Bernadette.”

“Bernadette Theiss or Berdoo Bernadette?”

“Berdoo.”

“Thank the maker for that.”  As if giving that thanks, Sage looks up to the sky after saying this, pulling his ever-present available spliff from behind his ear and firing it up.  Charpentier eyes him with puzzlement, and The Bodhisattva notices this, exhaling and nodding.  “How’s it been?”

“Since we last saw one another?  Feels like ages, Pontiff.  Why reach out now?”  His voice is good natured and worn like his boots, but there’s at least a little edge of annoyance and confusion in it.

“I’ve been uh…okay, I stopped doing what it was I did.  I’m not out at the festivals anymore, not going to Bandana’s or Terrapin or any of it.  Don’t preach, don’t fight, don’t let blood.  Not how I did.  And I got real fuckin’...twisted up, couple months back.  It went from being like this noble, beautiful thing to just…self harm.  Bad self harm.  I fucked myself up good.  So I’m trying to keep myself right, right?  Try to avoid what would fuck me up a lot worse.  And part of that is going to meetings–I do NA mostly, but sometimes AA, depends on what’s available.  Because they don’t make a group for me, but a lot of the mindset stuff and mindfulness are really applicable.  But I’m in a room, right?  And I see all those eyes.  And it makes me think about what I used to do, and I guess…I guess part of me is trying to reclaim some of that feeling.  Some of that purpose.”  Sage exhales, not realizing how much he had spoken.  To this, Charpentier nods slowly, digesting.  Finally, he sighs, pulling a Zyn tin from his jeans pocket and popping one into his mouth.  For a moment, no one says anything, Sage content to puff, the big man content to chew.  Finally, he clears his throat.

“Y’know Sage, a lot told me not to fucking show up.  But seeing you like this, hearing that?  I’m glad I did.  Cause I can tell you to get fucked to your face.”

“...wow.  Really?”

“Yeah, really.  Dude, I was a sad teenager who wanted to belong.  You convinced me that I could have my mind opened up.  ‘Stronger and purer than any drugs’, you remember that shit?  And I was down, dude.  I was way down.  You beat the shit out of me–threw me into a tree, remember that?  Remember this?”  To punctuate, Charpentier leans forward, pointing to the gouge in his forehead.  “Knot and bark.  I was bathed in blood, I couldn't see shit, I thought I was blind!  And when I finally got clear and could walk a few hours later, you were fuckin' nowhere, dude.  I had busted ribs and a fracture in my right arm.  I trusted you to shepherd me, and you were too busy riding off into the sunset and leaving me with the fallout.  And I’m not the only one.  But I forgave you, because the tenets of meditation allow me to shrug off the bullshit that other people do to me.  But help you to reminisce, to help you get your smile back?  Fuck that.”  Statement made, the giant stands, patting his barrel torso.  Sage, for his part, seems totally nonplussed.  But he stands up, begins to go for a hug–then catches himself and stands back.

“Thank you, Charpes.  Thanks for being honest.”

“Glad you’re getting help.  But don’t hit me up anymore, yeah?”

He strides off, leaving The Bodhisattva to stand in his own crater.  Shell shock would be the best term, as he blinks a few times, staring at a particular point on the ground.  He takes a morose hit of his spliff, letting the smoke billow from his nostrils and dissipate into the air.

He looks lost.

Then he nods.

—

You’re an unlucky sort, and I want to be clear, it’s not your fault.  Not a single part of it, really.  Life has me in a mood.  I’m realizing that I may not be who I was, but I also only know how to be who I was.  You ever faced that down, man?  I look in the mirror and I recognize Sage Pontiff.  I talk to Pax, he knows me.  In-jokes with loved ones.  But I’m getting the suspicion that my history as I view it is distorted.  I’ve never had the hazy recollections that other people do with heavy, sustained drug use.  Things are clear to me, high-relief, like woodblock prints.  You look at me, you see the easy joke.  But what I’m figuring here is what if my version of hazy isn’t, like… “Whoa dude!  I can’t remember!  Far out!” And more a haziness of moral compass, right?  I think back and I’m a good guy.  I’m the hero.  I’m the warrior poet, the enlightened king–I’m Karthikeya, right?  I am he who wields the mace, what I do is a good thing.  According to who, to what laws?  My own?  But that leaves everyone I touch out of the loop of decision, man.  I’ve been using people, and…well… I’m gonna have to keep using people.  Because Steve Harrison is going to be me.  You understand me, you grasp me?  Steve Harrison will cease to be Steve Harrison.  And dude, let me be clear, I need to reiterate: this isn't;’t about you.  For once in my life, let me say that and have it ring true.  Nothing is about you.  It’s all about me.  You will cease to be.  I’m already forgetting what your face does, what features you have.  Because when that bell rings, you won’t be you.  You’ll be Sage Pontiff.  And Sage Pontiff deserves what I’ll do to him.   Because I’ve been a bad person.  Not imperfect, not inconsiderate–I’ve used people.  I’ve used their fear and their need to belong and their trust and their very flesh.  What started as a pure expression of spiritual unity, the sacred power of combat, and turned it into something that I’m..I’m fearful of.  I’m going to meetings about.  Something that I’ll very much do to myself, if given the chance.  Something that ruins lives.  So yeah, I deserve what I’ll do.  I deserve every strike, every hit, every choke, every spike, every bit of chain or chair or guardrail I bash my face into.  And no, this won’t save me.  It won’t absolve me.  I won’t feel good about it.  But it’s one hell of a good start.  See you soon, Sage Pontiff.  Namaste.

—

Ring ring.  Ring ring.  Ring Ring.  Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.  “Cliff Pike, ya bastard!” –Is not available.  At the tone, please record your message.  Boop.

“Hey, ya Big Lug.”

Sage has found himself somewhere dark.  Somewhere far enough for the neon to be in the distance.  The fire in front of the biodiesel camper crackles and illuminates him–though he often favors kimonos and caftans at night, he hasn't changed from his outfit when meeting Charpentier.

A meeting which is fresh in his mind.

“Cliff, I’m sick.  There’s sickness in me.  And the more I work on myself, the worse I feel about who I am–or at least, who I was. It’s like my exterior is immaculate, but my core is rotted out.  And I can’t imagine or think in my head why anyone would want to even be my friend.  Much less build a life with me.”

He stares at the city in the distance.

His eyes are wet.

“I’m not telling you what to do.  You’re a grown man, you don;t need me making your decisions for you.  But if I had any advice?  I’d tell you to run.  Like hell.”

His next intake of breath is ragged.

“And I’d tell you I love you.”