Of Vice and Zen

Mindfulness is basically mindlessness, I think, failing to rid my brain of the thoughts that this meditation is supposed to eradicate. I’ve taken a walk down to this big oak tree to meditate upon it, as the book suggested I do.      

     I’ve lived on this street for over twenty years and I’ve never paid more than a second’s notice to this tree. I have neighbours either side of me who I’ve paid equally as little attention to. I’ve painted other people in the street as sort of caricatures in my head. Like the guy who looks like Chad Kroeger from Nickelback whose name will forever just be Nickelback to me. And if we are being honest, he’s literally just a bloke with long hair. I see him as a kind of alternate reality Chad Kroeger, one who never quite made it as a musician and instead forged a career as a jobless sponger. I have named his wife Clone Woman, simply because I am convinced that their three sons are just the same person who swaps out a different wig before heading out into public view. I’ve literally never seen the shaven headed son, the mullet son or the scraggly haired son with either of the other. Always alone. Each in the top one percent of Donkey Kong players in the world, or so my imagination tells me.

     It is the very fact that I have this constant stream of consciousness of inane crap going on in my head that led me to the book ‘Of Vice & Zen’. It’s an audiobook. Sound rings alternately between the left and right ear, creating a slightly disorientating effect. The positive effects of this book are said to be achieved via your subconscious.

     I spend the next five minutes fixated on this oak tree, appreciating its existence as something living and in turn something that holds the essence of life on earth. I marvel at the grooves of its bark and notice little amber droplets of sap oozing out from it. Many questions arise from my inspection of this tree. All the while Mick Trucknall, the author and narrator of the book whispers instructions in my ear as to how to breathe and what to focus on next. But even though I can feel the benefits of taking in this moment, I can’t help but project into the future with concerns about dinner plans later, or whether I’ll be masturbating over a celebrity tonight, or as I like to do for a treat every now and again, masturbate over a real girl, who’s also just as unlikely to shag me.

     I can see exactly why they call meditation a practice because I can see it is going to take a concerted effort to implement this into my daily life and get good at it. Right now, I’m up for the challenge.

Later, I could hear the Hollyoaks theme music from inside the house so it must have been around half six. As I packed all our camping gear into the car I looked up and noticed a wave of ravens washing across the sky before being swallowed up by a dark cloud in the distance. I sensed a faint floral smell in the air, which was then pervaded by the pungent diesel smell from the car that I’d pretended didn’t exist for the past year. There were some things that immediately surprised me about my observations. 1. I had intuitively known that those birds were ravens despite my only ornithological knowledge being that Dame Judi Dench owned a parrot 2. That I had noticed the birds in the first place and 3. That I’d internalised what I’d seen in quite poetic language, which I usually would only manage to conjure up after much mental toil when writing a birthday card to my wife. Surely Trucknall hadn’t affected me after one listen? Another observation then struck me. That both brief moments of beauty that I had internalised had been ever so fleeting and ruined by something dark or dreary. Like Nickelback’s smash hit ‘How You Remind Me’ being superseded by their endless streams of drivel.

     A similar thing happened a moment later. As I took a second to bask in my wife Rachel’s delicate features, a guy from down the street who I took to be called Greasy Spoon, but I later learned was called Eddie, positioned himself between the two of us. A length of his greasy shoulder length hair clung to his pock marked face despite his animated nature, ‘A lovely evening for it?’  The only logical response to that would have been, ‘What does that even mean?’ But of course I obeyed the unspoken rules of small talk and offered, ‘You can say that again?’ He seemed the type to find it humorous to actually say it again but thankfully he didn’t. Instead he offered multiple not so subtle hints about us all ‘Hanging out some time’ when we were back from our camping trip. He looked down at Rachel in her wheelchair and patronisingly added, ‘If you’re feeling up to it of course’. He insisted that Mary at number 42 puts on a great jazz night every third Tuesday. Was Mary the old woman I had nicknamed Stalin because she had a faint moustache and threatening eyebrows or was Mary the one who looked like a ghost and always carried an umbrella who I called Scary Poppins? What was a ‘Jazz night’? And what does ‘Every third Tuesday’ even mean? Like every three weeks on a Tuesday or every third Tuesday of a month? I silently chastised Greasy Spoon for his pizza face, for ruining my moment with my wife but mostly for filling my head with even more useless trash. I resolved to revisit the oak tree later that night and listen to chapter two of Hucknall’s hypnotic book.

     Over the next few days I started to notice these patterns. Beautiful things or moments being ruined or interrupted by far less beautiful things, or unwelcome distractions. The more time I spent reading the book the more I caught myself noticing such occurrences. But I became more adept at not allowing them to rile me up. Trucknall cites a quote from Seneca: ‘We suffer more in imagination than we do in reality’. I found myself dismissing such things that attempt to surmise the human condition with a few mere words, especially as someone who’s gone through hell and back nursing his wife back to what can only be described as anaemic levels of quality of life.

     On day three of our camping trip Rachel’s wheelchair got stuck in the mud. I’d insisted that this exact thing would happen and that heavy rain was forecasted for the weekend. I’d been staunch in my defence that camping was just not a good idea but if her injuries had rendered her physically weak they had instilled in her even more of an unwavering defiance and single mindedness that she had possessed before her accident. I just couldn’t say no to her. I never had been able to. Those beautiful chestnut eyes. A slight narrowing and an unflinching stare into mine and I was hers. That hadn’t stopped me worrying and playing out every possible negative outcome about the trip for the nights leading up to it, keeping me awake at night. When I saw that Rachel was stuck in the mud I instinctually took a step forward to help her. But within seconds a crowd of people had surrounded her and were offering their services. A middle aged electrician called Ken, who we had met by the communal fire pit just last evening had been the instigator of the rescue attempt. Ken looked to me like Elton John, and with him being an electrician I naturally referred to him as Socket Man.

    And so I stayed where I was in the forest, peering out to make sure everything was alright. I had suffered this moment many times in my imagination already. What good would it have done me to suffer it in reality too. Double suffering? No thanks, Seneca. But then I of course suffered the guilt that comes with abandoning the love of your life in her most painful moments. And that guilt took weeks to subside, especially when compounded with the masturbating over able bodied women issue.

     It’s now the third Tuesday in February. I regularly listen and return to ‘Of Vice & Zen’. But right now we are watching Mary (The Scary Poppins one) play the theme tune to Baywatch on her saxophone while we all dine on crisps and a vegan treat called ‘Cheeze’. Clone Woman is there with her three sons, who it turns out are all in the top 0.5% of worldwide Donkey Kong players. They’re all interesting and unique in their own way and I enjoy coming here. Of course it was Rachel who had insisted we come. Unknowingly she now had the added layer of my guilt to her already persuasive nature, and so saying no to her was now basically impossible.

     When we got home later that night I suddenly felt sick. I attributed this to a combination of Greasy Spoon slobbering on a trombone and the overconsumption of cheeze. As I projectile vomited into the toilet bowl I was mindful of the suffering I was experiencing at that moment. The burning in my throat. The pounding in my head. Such a horrific experience.

     But then Rachel, who had heard my anguished moans of ‘Mwaaahhh’ and ‘What the hell is in Cheeze?’ slowly wheeled herself into the bathroom and in her most loving and soothing voice said ‘It will be okay darling.’

     I looked into her eyes.

     And in that moment, I saw and felt nothing but beauty.