Four hours later, I swing open a glass door, hearing the bell on the knob chime, running through aisles of booths in the International House of Pancakes. Customers in booths perk their heads up at me, watching–shivers still run up my spine.
I swerve to corner, the very last booth by the window, panting,“I’m sooooooo sorry” outloud, having already sent my friend Alex a string of apologetic texts in the car, alerting him I’d be late. I toss my purse into plush seating, sliding across from him on my side of the table.
“It’s alright– I’ve come to expect it.” he smiles, looking rather peaceful. Alex, a 6’1, blue-eyed brunette and Director of Operations of our modest Teahouse (even if we’re 8 people, it’s still kind of a big deal), is amid transitioning between a divorce and career, rising from an electrician to a managerial role in the highest tower overlooking the suburbs–10 minutes from where we’ve agreed to meet to discuss yesterday’s tea ceremony practice; this particular location serves as our temporary office to discuss all matters teahouse related…and it’s cheap.
I smile, “Ready to get coffee?” my voice rises to a pitch–typical of when I’m excited, which happens to be all the time. This time the panic is more pronounced as I still haven’t been able to calm myself from the earlier episode.
Alex has already placed the order as Olga, our server, a blonde with a swinging ponytail, arrives, handing us two thermoses.
“So.. so… before we recap on yesterday’s ceremony, I want to ask you something weird. What do you think about altered states of consciousness? I mean, without the use of drugs.” I’m trying to compose myself here.
“Well, that’s a very, very broad topic. So give me some context.” He chuckles, tipping the thermos over his mug, wrapping both hands around his ceramic cup. This somehow feels therapeutic.
“Okay.. so let’s say, hypothetically, that I am going through my day and I begin hearing sounds. I’m conscious the song isn’t external, but I hear an inaudible sound in my mind, conscious that it’s not there in my external environment.” My knees shake, the right one is especially jittery.
Alex stares, I can’t decipher the expression in his eyes.
“So, literally you are just going about your day and you hear the sound?”
“Yes. Hypothetically.” I add, a stroke of genius dawning on me that it’s been worry widening in his baby blues.
“I mean, my initial thought is… uhh…” he leans over on his elbows from across the table.. “ schizophrenia..”
I let out a nervous giggle, “Right.”
He leans his back again on the booth. “On second thought, the mind has a way of expressing itself. You know, without us controlling it. That’s obviously what our subconscious is doing behind the scenes, it’s taking all of our past events, processing them into something we don’t have a whole lot of control over unless we spend time reflecting on it consciously we can kind of make sense of it. Meanwhile, the subconscious is almost like the backseat driver that you don’t quite know is there until you have a strange dream or a random conflict, or you hear a song that you haven’t heard in 20 years, or whatever and then suddenly all these synapses connect and you have a flood of brainpower–a memory, a thought. Sometimes it could be something that happened from your past, other times it could absolutely be a complete, made-up scenario with people and personalities and whatever. You know, obviously my first reaction or suggestion is schizophrenia but if it’s not truly that then it’s … of the mind; a salvation of past events being processed into something. It means something, but who knows what, I don’t know. Even though meaning is arbitrary.”
“Meaning is arbitrary…”
“Yeah, I’ve been watching this video and it makes me think a lot about meaning since you can interpret a set of circumstances to make it mean anything to you, like the fifth dimension containing any sort of possibility. It’s such a cool video because certain things in life–whether it be a movie, a song or book–, you can read something once or twice you can feel I’m over it now, I get it. Other things you can watch over and over. You have to understand that you won’t understand it but if you keep exposing yourself to it, you can unlock new doors and sometimes you have to go away from for a long time and then come back, and I think this video is a lot like that. “
“Can you show me?”
Alex abides, taking out his phone and searches for the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4Gotl9vRGs streams across the address bar.
A man begins to speak in a charmingly monotonous tone.
Alex continues, his phone.. “Construction of our entire universe, all from a single point. A single, one-dimensional dot and how as you go from a dot to a line to a square to a cube to that cube moving through time as you go through the dimensions. It gives you a full picture of how unbelievably complex the whole universe is and I get such immense satisfaction from watching it every single time. Even if I only reaffirm what I understand, it is still reaffirming something that is really fascinating, mind-boggling and cool. And if I pick up something new from it, the fourth dimension being time, and the fifth dimension being all possible situations in that time, all possible situations in all of time, that is one of the greatest break-throughs I made from my second or third time watching that video. I could only grasp the time thing and then suddenly, I was getting potential realities and beyond that it gets so complex and theoretical that I can’t even wrap my brain around it. It is the kind of thing that is a discipline almost.”
As I’m about to ask more, Olga has brought out the trays. Yum, unhealthy, calorie-infused, high-fructose corn syrup and whatever else toxicity contained in these stacks. The stacks on each plate seem to reflect the relationship between the dimensions, that according to the video, are also piled on top of each other.
We nibble, clinking cutlery, discussing the video.
After these thoughts are exchanged, I ask, “On another note, what did you think of yesterday’s ceremony?”
“Parts of it were nice. Other parts were not so…..Last night was an experience.. it didn’t feel like we accomplished much, but we accomplished something….” the knowledge we have now.. barometer for the room.. we sought out to bring a bunch of people together.. drop all their filters..
“the nuts.. don’t tell me..” I interrupt..
“I can’t believe Hasan ate them as you were reading the script”
“and the toilet flushed during the meditation sequence..”
“I know it was awful..”
“Will anyone understand what we’re even trying to do?”
The evening ends—as do the pancakes, the coffee, my mood; to his credit, Alex has done his best, serving as an unofficial shrink to improve my frame of mind. We complained about a friend nibbling nuts during what was supposed to be a serene meditation sequence, as we sat on plush mats on the floor of a telescope store—Stellogix; the only quiet place we could find on a Sunday evening to conduct our ceremony practices, the store lent to us by a former boss after business hours. Evening hours coincide with construction hours, which also explains the drilling and hammering during the meditation sequence on the flimsy walls shared with the store next door, or the flushing of a toilet by one of the workers amid that same meditation sequence before having gone back to drilling. Everything that could go wrong often does during these practices, but friends only show up because they have nothing else to do on a Sunday evening—rather than having a shared belief in the Teahouse mission. According to the Japanese tradition, environment is critical to the success of the ceremony’s execution; in other words, environment is everything. Alex and I think our mission would be easier to understand and better appreciated if presented under the right conditions, which makes the need for our own space more pressing.
Meanwhile, in my black SUV, it’s quiet except for the gliding of cars, one occasionally passing by with a blaring stereo, then zoom off, leaving me with the burst of static that ruptures through my radio and again the silence that falls, except for clinking of teapots and tea glasses in boxes in the back, left over from yesterday’s practice… (where is the radio.. I had thrown in..) freaking me out but can’t part from it. Static is the only sound my stereo plays because of the car’s broken antenna that constantly cranes and lowers on side of the hood.
My radio keeps cracking, fizzing. 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5..
It always shuts off after a second.
This time, though, it plays that same song.
It’s not that I imagine the cryptic tune–I hear it, though it’s not audible. The external chimes blend with an internal sound in my mind.
The song ends, corresponding with the static.
My phone has also been flashing at a string of red lights as if to notify me of having messages. I slam the brakes, welcoming the pause in driving, peeking to see that my main inbox is empty and that there’s nothing unusual in my spam.
Each time the light turns green, I speed off , debating that I just might need a shrink—the likes of Carl Jung–credentials and all.