if you meet the buddha on the road, well, you know …

So I was walking today back toward home just before twilight, after venturing onto an old farm path beside a fallow field a ways outside of town, seeking whatever, as you do. And that’s when I saw him, bald as some monstrous baby, jiggling and grinning in his way, the dust motes licking at his chubby heels like they were candy.

“You,” I pronounced.

“Yes,” he agreed, his vast smile quickly dissolving into his extra chins.

And then we both just stood there, staring at each other awkwardly, the moment hanging between us like rapidly rotting fruit. Because where do you go from yes?

“Oh, very well,” he finally said. His voice sounded like the dubbed parts of old Chop Suey fight films.

“Pardon?”

“Do what you must!” he declared sharply. His eyes, surprisingly round, narrowed into slits in the ensuing uncomfortable silence. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, man!” he spat. “You know the drill.”

“Ah, yes, right.” I was obviously floundering, and the great teacher made no effort to disguise his disdain. “Listen,” I hedged, “all I have on me is my house key.”

“Jesus Christ,” he fumed. “You ‘seekers’ – and I use that word lightly – are all the same.”

He plopped his great bulk right down in the sandy Southern soil, resigned to his fate. “Try to make it quick,” he said. “It’s a real hassle on the back-end, getting back when this is over, and I’ve got a 9 o’clock tomorrow with the sanitation department. There are water snakes appearing regularly in my toilet bowl, and they are testing my patience for everything.”

And yes, when I think back on all this now, that last part was indeed something of a peculiar thing for him to have said. But then, there are so many mysteries in this world; who can always decide at any given moment which ones are best to fixate upon?

But as for then, I set upon him, as you must. And imagine my surprise, when it was at long last all over, at finding the empty Olanzapine bottle tucked in the tattered remains of his soaked breechcloth, the name of Tommy Whitehurst, the town’s pencil-thin former fire chief, who was dragged by his men last October from the McAllister Warehouse disaster in flaming blankets he was wearing much like a muumuu. They say not a scrap of his hair had ever grown back, and, well, yes.

They also say that since that unfortunate event, he’d developed a severe glandular disorder. And I see that now, in this glaring present. It’s pretty clear.

Why is it, whenever I go looking for a little enlightenment, the next thing you know, I’m dragging a lifeless body into the underbrush, and feverishly working to dispose of any evidence of my own existence? There should be no shame in this!

And should you perhaps be inclined toward judging me, let me remind you of what another beloved teacher had to say on that heady subject: Judge not, y’know? Lest it be ye, ye, ye upon that dusty road, trying in vain to just stand still in the quivering moment, as the world goes rushing forward, and past.

Anyway, enough! My hands are bloody ribbons, punctured through and through from the dirty work of living. I mean, you try digging yourself a reasonable hole sometime with only an old, dull key to guide you in the rapidly falling dark.

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