Lifestyle: Mantra Essays

#3 – Claim it to be yours already

Smelling the notebook in front of him, digits, names faces flew past the place where the unconscious and conscious mind meet. There was deliberate, meditative thought guiding this new way of life.

“I’m writing about my time here,” he tells her as she plops down on the porch couch, recently demoted from being a house couch (“never did like that couch”). Before continuing he wavers in speech; to declare more would be to break the silence of his mind more than necessary.

Shirtless and squinting in the southern sun, basking, no, to bask would be too much, too strong, to accompany his thoughts. “Am I happy now.” An ideation somewhere between wonder and declarative, forcing new thoughts, grounded in the trial’s prescription, vitamins, and if those he took earlier will kick in soon.

The departure looms. Neither say this aloud during dinner on the porch in the same white chair, on the same white table, of parmesan chicken pasta – a feast. Chicken two nights in a row.

She goes inside, writes him a check for his services and his time spent in the Centre, a modest fee. It permits the return trip to happen. Thankfully as a patient he didn’t tear the padded walls apart too much – the last place he left the posters, torturing him with the voices from the vents and eyes were turned around to reveal blank canvasses, 36” x24”, used to leave idioms of madness scrawled in black permanent marker for posterity.

“Why did you really come here?” she inquired, though no sun set on their time together nor on the day. The question had been hanging in the air since they placed him there, Craig Slist, LLC, the firm working in conjunction with the Canadian Research Society (CRS) to which she was contracted as part of the Canadian government’s ongoing investigation. She had agreed to harbour the young American for a trial period of three months. Her only obligations were to install cameras to monitor substance abuse violations and do weekly briefings with the patient’s supervisor from community service.

“I desired to live for myself again, as I saw fit, be protected by the Chief, live with a new insatiable happiness,” Zed said, deliberately yet not making any eye contact with her as she had just returned to sit on the porch couch.

“Did you find it?”
“It found me.”
“Gratitude?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still have it? That’s all they want to know.”
“I always did. I knew it. I knew what I wanted – it wasn’t hitting me in the face – it was a day to day direction from an overall goal set four years ago. I wanted January 11th. That was all it took. Everything has been mine again since that moment.”