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Published: November 20th 2007
ONE RAND, TWO RAND, FIVE RAND,
ENLIGHTENMENT!
Sometimes I don’t know where I am.
Believe me when I say that this is a good thing.
I think it’s a step towards enlightenment, but not the kind of enlightenment associated with Buddha or Shiva or Saint Francis of Assisi or even Bruce Springsteen. I haven’t felt the bliss purportedly associated with the attainment of universal consciousness, nor have I experienced any energy shooting from the top of my head. The enlightenment I am speaking of is the kind of enlightenment associated with being able to easily differentiate among the one, two, and five Rand coins, and not to have to stand there with a pile of silver in my hand like a blind man with a broken cane and a three legged guide dog guide while waiting for an honest (hopefully) shopkeeper to sort through the ten kilo handful of change for the amount I owe after buying the copper bracelets (that’s another story) which I can’t even see because I am blind.
I have been gone from the familiar (home) for more than two months, and I am quickly approaching the maximum length of time I have
ever been away from the USA. I think this is why, maybe, that sometimes the littlest things shift me quite entirely and, for an instant, I can’t tell where I am. Or more correctly I could be anywhere. And that’s pretty cool. This too is like travelers enlightenment.
This extended sleepover has also had the ability to self-illuminate my inner thoughts and makes them appear like teeth under an ultraviolet light. No amount of psychotherapy has ever been able to do that. For some reason, here in this foreign place, these thoughts step forward enthusiastically like aliens receiving their green cards.
Please read on before you call the American Consulate in Cape Town.
Where was I? (No pun intended)
Oh yeah, sometimes I don’t know where I am.
It can happen when I am reading a book or watching a movie. If the action is taking place in Bali or Cairo or London (it doesn’t matter), the words in the book or the images in the movie so easily transport me that, I AM THERE. When I close the book, or when the lights come up, for an instant or two, I can’t remember where I am.
Am
I in Bali?
“Hey Kristen, where are we living again?”
In London?
“Darling, would you like to join me for a pint?”
In Cairo?
“Hey Cookie, should we go out for shawarma?”
It only lasts for a millisecond. It’s not like I am hearing voices or anything (well there was that one time…). It is actually kind of pleasant, like a mild hallucinogenic feeling without the post traumatic flashback psychosis associated with lysergic acid, although what would I know about that?
I don’t think this is something that can happen when you are in the familiar surroundings of your own country, when all is so solid and grounded. It’s a concept that’s a touch Don Juan-ish, don’t you think? It requires that your mind be marinated by the sight of cars driving on the left side of the road, by the sounds of foreign language, by summer in December, by the constant intoxicating incense of blossoming flowers, by the mild anxiety of being in a foreign country.
But that’s just me.
Where was I again?
Oh yeah, teeth under the ultraviolet light.
Since we haven’t made a ton of friends here yet, there are only two people I mainly talk
to, Kristen and me. When I am home (USA), my conversations with Dennis just fit into the general collection of conversations that I might have during the course of a day. Here, however, I tend to dominate like a filibustering Congressman. My conversations are not camouflaged by the other audio tracks that run incessantly in my Wellfleet/Boston life, like the news radio, talk radio, loud jazz, screaming soul music, conversation with patients about diabetes. Here in South Africa I hear myself clearly, and I listen with rapt attention, and boy do I sound stupid. Well, it’s actually more hilarious than stupid, because I have to give myself a certain amount of credit for the ability to fictionalize so creatively and instantaneously. I can take a simple thought, a commonplace worry, run it through the paranoid particle accelerator, smash it against another thought and watch them explode against one another releasing a spray of the most ridiculous scenarios. This too could be considered some sort of enlightenment, but it would have to be harnessed; something akin to harnessing the energy of the tiny atom when it is cleaved. Right now it’s all in the experimental stage, like the Heisenberg Project.
Like
a few weeks ago when I had some lower abdominal, pelvic discomfort accompanied by a general feeling of shitiness (a diagnosis not yet in the Merck Manual). Before I went to see a doctor I had already received chemotherapy for prostate cancer, had a colostomy, been evacuated by helicopter, and had our house repossessed.
One day on our way home we took a wrong turn and wound up on a road driving right through the middle of the Townships in Cape Town, specifically, Khayelitsha. Now it didn’t help that I had been reading some things about Townships, like the story by Paul Theroux, which went something like this, and I am paraphrasing for the sake of space.
PT: “Is this the train to Khayelitsha?”
Train Guy: “Why?”
PT: “I want to go there.”
Train guy: “No you don’t.”
PT: “Why?”
Train Guy: “Because they’ll kill you.”
PT: “OK.”
Theroux didn’t go.
I can’t tell you exactly what was going through my mind, the internal screenplay, during the half-hour that it took to pass through those streets, because it’s too morbid and graphic. While a van was passing us (now hold tight because I think this is going to be a
run on sentence) and a man was looking at me from his passenger seat with his mouth motoring and his eyes glaring saying things such as, “Oh it’s so nice for you to come visit us here in Khayeliysha,” or “You must be the dumbest honkie I have ever seen in my whole life,” Kristen had her window rolled down and was taking pictures of the shacks we were passing and the plastic sheeting that was flapping in the breeze as if we were in some game reserve trolling for the big five.
“Ahem, I think that may not be a good idea darling.” I said, my hands squeezing the steering wheel, knuckles as white as pearls.
My internal dialoguer, script writer, cinematographer, was so busy during those thirty minutes that the material compiled could have been sufficient for three full length feature films.
This was not like enlightenment. Not at all. But it was amazing to be so graphically aware of my inner chatter. Kristen helped with that.
“God you look like you’re going to faint.”
“Do you see where we are?”
“Nobody’s giving us a second look.”
She didn’t notice the guy in the van casting the spell
on me, or all the cars around us that looked like they just came from a Demolition Derby event.
But soon we passed out of Khayelitsha, as we seem to pass through all adverse events in our life, and my heart rate returned to normal. I was able, due to the fact that I am now the lone whacko voice that I listen to, to replay the internal fugue and be astounded at its pure nuts-ness, the way it took my fears, founded or unfounded, and ran with them to create ridiculous levels of plot.
If I were at home I may have just turned on sports talk radio, or NPR or cranked up some James Brown, and simply ignored that brilliant Oscar winning screenplay.
Here, after it’s over, I review the tape.
But I also listen to the silence more carefully, because, as I said, I often don’t know where I am, and I can’t count on the guy inside for directions.
Oh yeah, the copper bracelets I bought. This uplifting story has something to do with metal toxicity and the early death I suffered due to the accumulated heavy metals stored in all my internal organs from the aluminum in my deodorant and the amalgam in my fillings, and of course the copper bracelets.
But I’m all over that now.
Please feel free to click on “Private Message” or "Add A Comment" and add to my conversational options. Just tell me simple things like, “I saw a deer today,” or “The waves are big.” That would be nice. .
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Sharon
non-member comment
where you are is where you are
Dennis. This is one of your best. Loved and related to the marinated mind. Don't stop. Don't ever stop! Sharon