Hyper-chondriac (14 page)

Ethan walked in and confidently slapped his notes down on the podium.

“All of our various destinies are all already scripted—just like a movie.”

The pens started scribbling.

One of the housewives raised her hand.

“So we have no control over our destinies?”

“Well, yes and no. You see, we can choose the movie that we'd like to be in, but the movies themselves are already done.”

“Can't we recast?” pleaded Heather.

“No. All of the movies are completed and predetermined.”

I heard the cologned bald guy mutter “That sucks!” to himself.

“But although all of the movies are already done, there is one bit of good news.” Ethan tried to cheer us up. “There are many, many movie theaters. The universe is like a giant multiplex and we have the power to choose whichever movie we'd like!”

A collective sigh of relief emanated from everyone's mouth.

“So we CAN rewrite the movie, then?” Heather declared hopefully.

“No,” repeated Ethan. “We can walk into a different theater, but we have no control over the story.”

“So if we switch movies, then doesn't that change the casting and the story line of the new movie that we're entering?” one of the perplexed housewives asked.

Ethan looked puzzled. I guess he hadn't been in Hollywood that long.

“Not exactly,” he said, repeating his stock response to ward off confusion. “Most people never change movies. But those who
do,
have the power to alter their destinies!” Ethan's voice nervously proceeded to rise three octaves. “You see, if a coworker is bugging you, you simply switch movies and your nemesis stays in the old movie.”

“But what if he follows you into the new movie?” I wanted to ask, but didn't.

“Most people never change movies,” continued Ethan. “Remember that all possible destinies exist in these movies, which are all found in a parallel universe.”

Suddenly, I hunched over as if I were about to throw up.

“Are you all right?” Ethan asked.

“Yes. Just a torn cornea from Boston. I'll be okay.”

Ethan moved on as I furiously rubbed my eyelid to stimulate moisture. If Heather ever tore her cornea, she'd be in great shape.

 

Ethan went on to tell us that energy manifests itself as twenty-two forces, which just so happen to be the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Coincidence? Hmmm…Because of their shape, sound frequencies and vibrations, these twenty-two Hebrew letters act as antennae that connect us to these energy forces. The example given to us was this: if you hit a musical triangle with a stick, then place another triangle near the first one, the second triangle will begin to vibrate as well, thanks to the “transference of energy.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I actually saw Heather write down the words “Buy pair of triangles.”

“Through the power of the Hebrew letters, we can alter our DNA!” announced Ethan, as if he were suddenly a scientist.

Alter our DNA?

The class nodded in synchronized awe.

Okay, now I was getting a little fed up with this fictitious bullshit. How could you just blatantly lie and tell a roomful of adults that staring at some letters can change the internal building blocks of your body? Since I'm not well versed in science, I asked my pharmacist to triple-check and he laughed, before adding, “It's impossible to change your DNA. You're stuck with it.”

I was seething over the DNA propaganda for the next week. It was irresponsible, ignorant and blatantly false. Even more disheartening was that no one in the classroom, including me, challenged the “fact.”

 

At the beginning of our next class we were given a laminated sheet of paper with the seventy-two names of God in the form of six dozen different sequences of Hebrew letters that were supposed to connect us to powerful, positive energy sources in the universe. I hadn't read Hebrew since I was thirteen and had no idea what any of this collection of letters meant. Plus, they usually made me feel faint.

“It doesn't matter,” Ethan assured us. “All you need to do is scan them.”

The letters were arranged in an eight-by-nine grid. I still had no idea what he was talking about.

“Right to left, one day, then try up and down another time.”

Heather's hand went up, extra dramatically.

“So all we have to do is make eye contact with each one of them? Is that what you're saying?”

“Exactly. You'll be rewarded. Good energy and good things will happen in your lives if you do.”

As I rolled my eyes, Heather noticed the look of scorn on my face and turned to me and whispered, “Sometimes you just need to take a leap of faith.”

 

For the next two weeks, every night before I went to bed and every morning when I woke up, I spent a few minutes scanning the letters and words that I could neither read nor pronounce. There was certainly no harm in this scanning and it actually soothed me. I was scanning the shit out of those letters. Thankfully, Nancy was understanding. She was happy it quieted me down. Had she mocked me in any way, I had the “Staring at the Clock at 4:44 and Making a Wish Nonsense” ready to throw back in her face.

I started to think that maybe Heather was right. Maybe part of the healing process requires some suspension of logical thought. Maybe a leap of faith is the only way to get over a hurdle. For the first time in my life, I decided not to worry about logic. Logic was more likely to make one crazy than calm. Believing in this stuff wasn't so hard, after all. It was suspending my disbelief that was the tough part.

 

“The Zohar is an amazing, amazing book. Or rather, set of books,” Ethan told us proudly at the beginning of our next session.

The Zohar was a set of twenty-three giant encyclopedia-size hardcover volumes that would monopolize a bookcase. They were entirely in Hebrew and you weren't expected to read them, just to scan the pages. He went on to tell us of the magical powers of a set of Zohars that were mailed to Iran in the 1980s against the Iranian government's wishes. The government then tried to ship the books back to America but SOMEHOW the Zohars wound up returning to the same Iranian warehouse—as if the “To” and “From” labels had been reversed. A few months later, the entire warehouse at the airport burned down—EXCEPT for the area where the Zohars were being stored. (Perhaps they're flame-retardant?) Then a few months after the fire, a major earthquake struck Iran and the fault line mysteriously split very close to where the Zohars were being stored and allegedly millions of Iranian lives were spared.

And the stories went on. A woman who had breast cancer scanned the Zohar and her tumor disappeared. A man whose son had disappeared a decade ago scanned the Zohar and the son turned up at his doorstep a week later. A thirty-two-year-old Kinko's cashier who was making minimum wage scanned the Zohar and was still making minimum wage. Sorry, but there's no reason to roll your eyes at someone who's trying to improve himself.

The Zohar, all twenty-three volumes, was conveniently available in the gift shop for a mere $415. Nearly two dozen books that I couldn't read and wouldn't understand—for LESS THAN $500!? Instead of getting angry about the expensive books with the outlandish claims, I let my Proactive mind downgrade my cynicism of Ethan's sales pitch to that lone internal quip, then slid my laminated sheet with the seventy-two names of God out from the middle of my notebook and scanned them.

I spent several minutes each night scanning the Hebrew letters and several hours each day listening to Ethan's classes on cassette as I drove around Los Angeles. I was starting to feel better and, most important, hadn't contracted any illness or had so much as a cold since I began my quest for calm. I decided to pursue the spiritual angle further.

I had always been impressed with Buddhists. I admired them for never knocking on your door to push their Buddhist propaganda on you. And you wouldn't see a Buddhist preaching the virtues of being Buddhist on street corners. And Buddhists didn't have missionaries who traveled to foreign countries to brainwash the general populace into renouncing their non-Buddhisty beliefs. Plus there were no fundamentalist Buddhists. Buddhists were unflappable, calm and relaxed.

So maybe that's why I didn't hang up when Tim, a guy I exchanged numbers with at Kabbalah 101, called me to brag about the Buddhist temple he'd attended. He told me to check its website for “some cool shit that was comin' up” and I did, periodically, but nothing really appealed to me. There was a Special Statue Filling Day in which one stuffs holy objects into various Buddhas for offerings to the spiritual guide, Puja. But that just seemed like busywork. I also wasn't interested in The Bodhisattva Vow—a five-week class that was “a practical guide to helping others.” This was all about me right now. Then one full-mooned night, surfing for salvation, I hit the mother lode: the Weekend Sitting Seminar. Sitting still = being still. Being still = not being high-strung and overly aggressive and subsequently getting ill. Count me in, Buddhists! I just hoped it wasn't too late to sign up.

“Where are you going?”

“Buddhist temple to sit still. Wanna come?” I asked Nancy.

“No, thanks. All I do all day is sit.”

Nancy had just started a new job writing on a sitcom in which she sat around a large conference table with thirteen other writers pitching jokes and story ideas all day. I didn't think she'd be interested in sitting in less comfortable chairs on her days off.

 

I made the fifteen-minute pilgrimage to a gritty neighborhood near Dodger Stadium. Parking was pretty easy, so I was already in a jubilant mood when I arrived at the temple, which blended in with the rest of the adjacent boxy concrete architecture, as if it were a public library or a bank. I admired the anonymity of the structure.

Naturally, I was a half hour early. Despite my overzealous punctuality, I was surprised to see two dozen other soon-to-be sitting-stillers already milling about, all cradling cups of tea, near a large rectangular table. The assortment of people ranged from flabby sixty-year-old men wearing flannel to skinny thirty-year-old men wearing flannel to forty-five-year-old women wearing baggy flannel-blend yoga pants who looked like they hadn't had sex since 1997. The three things everyone had in common were a ponytail, no makeup and the appearance of being stoned. Oh, and flannel.

Before I could get my own cup of tea, I was greeted with a large bear hug that caught me completely off guard. First of all, I'm not a big fan of the male hugging thing. Even a high five is too much guy-on-guy affection for my taste. Second, if you absolutely
do
need to touch me, don't hurt me in the process unless I've done something wrong, in which case be blatant and just punch me in the stomach or break a beer bottle over my head. The hug monster was Tim from Kabbalah. And Tim is one large man. All you really need to know is he's six feet seven and used to be a bodyguard for Van Halen. Despite being five feet ten, whenever I hung around Tim I felt like he could've carried me around in a Baby Björn.

“Look at this! Ya made it!” Tim announced as he slapped me on the back a little too hard.

We walked over to the registration table and I learned that the seminar was $50 for one day and $80 for the entire weekend. Tim was signing up for both days and I thought that was my best value as well. Besides, I wasn't there for the
Saturday
Sitting Still Seminar. I wanted the optimum results and one full day of remaining motionless on my ass surely wouldn't suffice. I handed my check to the woman on the other side of the table, and she pointed us inside.

The place was packed with about two hundred sitting-stillers crowded around an empty oversize wooden chair that stood in the center of a red velvety pulpit that also housed a large six-foot statue of Buddha. Apparently there were more people than I had imagined with nothing better to do than a weekend of nothingness. At least
I
had an excuse. My Zoloft would soon be useless. What were their rationales? And why couldn't they simply stay at home and sit still if they were this ardent?

There were three choices of places to sit. On a pillow on the ground near the front. No, thank you. Sitting on the ground in any form would make me extra cranky. That's why picnics were always out of the question unless someone could guarantee that there would be a table involved. I'm also one of the few people on the planet who are not fond of hammocks. I'm always afraid the slightest of moves will flip me off that drooping piece of canvas as if the hammock knew judo.

My remaining choices were chairs with a pillow on them in the middle of the temple or in the back on a cold metal folding chair. My glutes voted for the former, as did Tim until he spotted some moderately attractive women in the back. Anyway, when you're six feet seven you really shouldn't be up front unless you're in a particularly spiteful mood, in which case you might as well go for it and wear a top hat, too.

So Tim and I split up, which was fine because I'm happily married and not trying to get laid and you can't talk during this thing anyway. Before he ventured off to hit on some blonde in the back, he gave me another unnecessary bear hug, nearly breaking my floating rib.

I sat down on a cushiony chair between a grossly overweight thirtysomething guy with a salt-and-pepper beard and a twenty-something woman who looked a little like Debra Winger. I considered my options briefly and started chatting with Debra.

“So, why are
you
doing this?” I asked.

“Because I just got back from three weeks of silence in Laos and I need to get back into my meditation.”

“Wait. You were silent for three entire weeks?”

“Yeah. It was awesome.”

My mother had once gone three weeks without speaking to anyone in the family, but that was because she was pissed at us. My mom is the best grudge-holder on the planet. She'll undoubtedly hold another one against me for this paragraph.

I was amazed that a human being would voluntarily not utter a word for nearly a month
and
commute 12,000 miles to do so.

“What was so awesome about it?” I asked.

“It totally reconnected me to who I am.”

“Yeah, but what did you do for the three weeks?”

“Meditate.”

“But, I mean, how did you eat? You must have had to say something to somebody. A ‘thank you,' a ‘please.'” I was getting on her nerves even before I employed logic.

“Do you ever meditate?” Debra asked.

“I've tried but I can't anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because I've ruined it for myself.”

“You can't
ruin
meditation.” I felt as if I was certainly accomplishing that for the people seated near us who were trying to get a head start on the proceedings.

“Well, I did. When I was living in England I was in a punk band
⁵
and I tried to meditate to a tape with this Austrian guy speaking but then the bass player sampled his voice as the lone vocals for a song and now meditating makes me even more hyper.”

“You need to just listen to gongs,” she advised, and shut her eyes and put her fingers in that circular position as if she were making the A-OK sign. But she wasn't. Because she hated me. I should have chatted up fat beardy instead.

Seconds later, at ten o'clock on the dot, the female monk—who could have starred in the Sinéad O'Connor biopic—emerged from a doorway at the side of the pulpit and welcomed us to the event. She didn't speak for very long, which was fine with me because her voice was so soft it sounded like the world's shyest child's—possibly explaining the popularity of the cushions on the floor up front. However, I
was
able to hear that our lunch break would be at twelve-thirty, which I was hoping we didn't have to sit still for. There would probably be healthy food, too—rice cakes, lentils and chamomile tea. I suddenly realized I was glad I was doing this. Monk-y girl then sat down in the giant wooden chair and closed her eyes. Our two days of nothingness were under way. Hooray.

As I shut my lids and drifted off into alleged stillness, I could only think of one thing: how fucking boring this was already. I was among a bunch of freaks—men with no muscle tone, women who were cute but looked angst-ridden and asexual old people in dashikis. I should've stayed out until five in the morning drinking. Then at least I could've appeared to be spiritually superior by sleeping through the day. But no, I had to get nine hours of sleep because I wanted to be fully rested. This had suckiness written all over it. And I had one of the cushiony chairs. Plus, it's not like you can look at the person next to you and cheat, either.

When you're trying to meditate and any thoughts drift into your head—regardless of what they are—you're just supposed to ignore them. In general, I'm not a very good ignorer. Instead I just repeatedly compile lists of things I want to do that day, that week, that life. List after list after list. I was hoping to just shake my head and erase them all like an Etch-a-Sketch, but whenever I did, new lists would form. I sneaked a look at my watch, hoping that lunchtime was approaching. Technically it was approaching, but unfortunately extremely slowly as it was only 10:06. Talk about a long weekend. How do those Buckingham Palace guards do it? To me there's no worse job on the planet. I couldn't do that job in sweatpants lying down.

I could have been at the Dodgers game with my buddy Jeff. Box seats! Roy Oswalt pitching! I immediately dragged my mind back to positive thoughts and reiterated how important this seminar was. Once I broke through a wall or two, the rewards would be great, probably. Patience. Patience. Relax. Breathe. Patience. Listen to your breath. Okay…that's enough for now. Peek at your watch…go ahead…peek! It's gotta be close to noon by now. Go ahead and open your eyes…Shit! 10:09! How did the Dalai Lama stay still? Maybe he was just really lazy.

I thought about how I'd always equated sitting still with some sort of punishment. Like if you did something bad in grade school, the teacher would make you go and sit in the corner. Or if you committed a crime, you were expected to sit motionless in the back of the police car. When exactly did sitting still evolve into a positive thing? It stank to high heaven. If Amnesty International found out that the U.S. government was simply making the Guantánamo suspects do what I was doing right this moment, it would constitute torture. I decided right then I would never speak to Tim again.

My mind raced through all the things I'd rather be doing at that moment. Picking up trash on the side of the highway in the dead of winter in Nova Scotia seemed like a fine option. So did ironing some dress shirts. I'd even rather have been making subs at a deli. “Sorry, we're out of Cheddar. Would you like some goat cheese on your honey-baked ham, sir?” (I know, most delis don't have goat cheese, but mine would be a
special
deli.) Suddenly, nothing in the world seemed tedious. Except what I was currently doing.

I didn't know how I would survive another seven hours and fifty-one minutes of this today, let alone another full day tomorrow. In fact, fuck tomorrow. Tomorrow was out. Maybe by giving myself a reward of somethingness the following day I could make it through this day of nothingness.

I wondered what Debra was thinking about right now. This must have been child's play for her. I absolutely abhor cell phones and only use one in an emergency but I wished some thoughtless drone's Nokia would go off. And if it did, I was hoping that the ring tone would be a really annoying song like “Bad Day” or Beethoven's Fifth. I'd even have settled for a LeAnn Rimes tune. More nothingness.

Eighty bucks for this bullshit. Now I wished they had accepted charge cards so I could have disputed the charges, or at least bitched on the phone to the American Express customer service rep. What a waste of time and money. For eighty bucks I could have probably bought one of those robot vacuum cleaners. I'm not even sure what they cost, but I know that the price has come down considerably, kind of like when calculators were around $300 in the mid-'70s. Personally, it would take a lot less energy for me to do my own vacuuming than worrying that the little dish-shaped robot was bouncing into my coffee table and chipping its rosewood legs. Are people that lethargic that they can't even push their own vacuums anymore? I'm sure it's only a matter of time before there's a robotic shaver that darts horizontally across your face while you're sleeping. You'd just have to remember to tape up your eyebrows, of course.

I sneakily opened my eyes. Everyone in the room looked really at peace in a culty sort of way. Tim and Debra both had giant smiles plastered on their faces to accompany their nirvana. I was in hell. 10:17. Okay…Enough of this crap. I had to get out of there. And this time I meant it. Enjoy your vortex of nothingness, Debra Winger doppelgänger and flabby facial haired dudes! Adios, Tim! I'll be listening to the traffic report in about six minutes.