Meditation

I wonder if the secret of life can't be learned in a coffeehouse.

It's the worst possible place to voluntarily spend one's time to read or to leap oneself into cyberspace, but everyone does it. Sound softly crushes from all angles of existence. Concentration, remember, works best in silent spaces. Meekly, gently, clothed in silence, is the middle-aged man, brown-haired and cursed with oversized glasses, absolutely detached from the midday madness that clutters around him, lancing a book with his right hand, title as conspicuous as oxygen. And he turns a page, adapts his gaze, and the stream streams on.

The talkers are the ones who are anathema. Coffee is a fuel for bitchiness, and it's all flustered politics, tenacious gossip, empty giggles and intellectualized everything. They come to mark their territory, consume an aura, and move on, while the silent ones have their feet planted, upholding a universe of decency, honesty, authenticity. Continually slapped by those who emanate noise, like saints they obliviously linger their dance with meaning.

They have learned the heart of happiness. That contentment doesn't lie with something outside, but a morphing of oneself to the demands of the outer world. If you can learn to tolerate noise, you can learn to tolerate death, and life is planted in valleys slowly worn with the waters of decay.

I wonder if the secret to life can't be learned in a coffeehouse.

They Are Intellectuals

False intellectuals. Lined up, one two three, on a bedraggled couch, sliding down the collegiate slope, vomiting overaudible words into the fluorescent lighted air. The world behind them radiates with everything of coffeehouse perfection: whispering voices, commonsense music, the aura of thought in its last remaining hiding place. Listen, and listen softly.

They are frustrated. Yes. The incessant attempts to reach for a hand before the hand shows itself. Thus: speak louder. Plans after college, psychiatry, physical therapy, medical school, full scholarships, false apathy, crucifixional analysis, articulated, whiny words. Really: see me, prove to me that I'm alive.

Our elitist clothes hide our animal souls.

Judgement

I've been jittery around people lately, like a socially activated coffee high. The judgment hides in a semi-reflective pause, an involuntary look-over, even from those I trust my life with. Their looks imply confusion as to why I'm even alive. They're waiting for me to do something, to show them a reason for why I'm attached to the universe, and I'm too caught up in waiting for them to discard their waiting. Things tighten, and I'm looking for an escape route. Better luck next time.

That's all that our culture is, right? A coiled-up pause for the time to strike -- to judge, to burn, to destroy; loot the pure souls, wherever they might be found, and homogenize everything to a bland, socialistic mass of the uninteresting.

That's why school is downright Hell, right? Judgment incarnates in the ostracizing grins of the puberty stricken, the mini materialists, the jocks, preps, pricks, imbeciles. Well then.

The question is not to remain logical. The question is to slip through and, above all -- yes, above all, the question is to elude judgment..., of avoiding being forever judged without ever having a sentence pronounced. -- Camus, The Fall

The essential skill of a social animal lies in this "slip" -- in the art of slipping. To live you must slip -- slip and strike first! Amazing how snake-like the requirements for human beings are. To be in the inner ring, legs must be abandoned. Slide on your belly and label your humiliation victory.

Probably every non-genetic psychological disorder erupts from the eternal fear of society's transparent eyes. Transparent, inexorably, for society is an abstraction. Where is the limit? Where does it end? Who is included? Nobody; an individual has flesh. To fear society means to fear nothing, and the self that fears nothing will soon enough become what it fears.

And simple psychology still comes a-knockin'. Why the psyche slash from the judgement of another, even an anonymous self, even a criminal? Because we want approval. Why that? Because, well, we have nothing better to do. You get to Heaven, mind you, after you die. Now you have to pay tithes and wonder why.

And classy nihilism throws a shadow even at noon. Onward, Monsieur Camus!

Believe me, religions are on the wrong track the moment they moralize and fulminate commandments. God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. You were speaking of the Last Judgment. Allow me to laugh respectfully. I shall wait for it resolutely, for I have known what is worse, the judgment of men. For them, no extenuating circumstances; even the good intention is ascribed to crime.... I'll tell you a big secret, mon cher. Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.