Unfinished
I met a spiritual man today. He shocked my senses; I had an impulse to call him mad, drunk, confused, ignorant, arrogant, misplaced, but all of these were unjustified. He did not fit into the fabric of the scene, the scene in my mind. In retrospect, nearly every word he confided contained a sip of jest, a drop of absurdity, a beautiful madness that recalls of ineffable Chuang Tzu, contemplative Lao Tzu, and of course my favorite tutor of late, Osho. He had no name. Of course, names are useless to such individuals, as are the horde of preconceptions, expectations, hidden notions one carries to his meetings. The sense of order in the world seemed about to collapse as I tried to fathom his speech.
“Why have you brought me this FANTA-man? He is a FANTA-man, no?” was the insult that greeted me. He waved me away. Ignored me. Spoke nonsense into my face. I tried to seem nonplussed. It worked after a while.
What the hell did “FANTA” mean anyway? I found out later that he had many acronyms which he used liberally in any situation. Only his follower, his ambassador Yellow Jacket (named so by Mike and Haw-Wen after they arrived, later) seemed able to decipher. YJ explained to me, grinning mirthfully, cracking sniggers and snacks. Was it an insult? How can you insult a man whom you have just met suchly? I was not convinced, and started the amusing practice of hanging about for more.
I found this to be a careless man. He had no cares. In the most major intersection of Thamel he sat, with a two meter area about him half roped off by iron chains. Sunlight. Incidentally. An empty bottle of rum and a 3/4 empty bottle of spring water at his side, the latter nearer to his recumbent body than the former; in a grubby tattered work pants and a gutter smeared “white” tank top, he was leaning against the lamppost, back towards me, and would spin around to add words to our conversation, if it could have been called such.
“What are your problems? Ask him directly, or I can help translate. Please tell him your problems,” YJ prompted helpfully.
“I have no problems,” I said, feeling quite honest and not self-condemnatory.
Unaffectedly, the man passed me a note scribbled in blue pen on a piece of chocolate candy wrapper, other side glistening faded golden, this side regular, crenulated folds slightly distorting the borderline-legible handwriting. Random words. I looked again. Just random gibberish. Was YJ passing me off to an idiot, a madman out of his mind, was this a joke, were his unmuffled smiles a sham?
“Do you have relation with this?” the man asked, pointing to the scrap.
“No.”
“Then I have no time for you. You are a FANTA-man,” he concluded snatching the paper from my hands, and turned around to face the road. “I have no time to talk to you. Go there, go there,” he said waving his hand in several directions, “I have no time for you.”
I waited around, watching the tourists, who looked ever so touristy before me, passed on this quiet brother-sister day. Presently he turned around and spoke again.
He started talking about “systems”. Some incomprehensible, but of the bit I understood, he said that systems were divided into “cultural” and “political”. He drew a very rough diagram.
“Under the cultural system, religion. Do you see? I am a Christian!” he said. I didn’t believe it, but waited for him to continue. Something about Tibet and Christianity. Then onto the political. He listed on another half-blank chocolate wrapper:
(1) Monarchy
(2) Republic
(3) Monarchial Republic
(4) Democratic Republic
“I’m for number three,” he said. I was still at a loss for words. Something about God. He said he was a god, in fact the 10th god in Nepal, since it already had nine other gods. Then, suddenly, “Who do you want to kill? Do you want to kill that girl? That girl?” he asked, pointing to a traveler conversing in a small group by the street. “Everyone, all, all, FANTA.”
“I don’t want to kill anyone.”
“Then you are a peaceful man?” he asked, not mocking, but with a hidden gleam in his eye.
“Yes.”
“You are a peaceful man? Well, just sit there then.” And he turned back around and started scribbling some nonsense on another piece of discarded, fifth-hand refuse paper.
YJ returned from some short, unimportant errand. Two pretty Israeli girls had perched on the stoop to my left, I payed a little attention to them talking; as one of them sat down her jeans remained strapped to her lower hips, revealing quite a bit more than simply the bare small of her back. YJ sat down between us and pointed at them animatedly. “They have so many problems. And they don’t know how to solve them! So many problems, problems, problems,” he emphasized loudly, cloyingly.
I thought it was rather rude to say such things with them conveniently within earshot, and asked, “What problems?” The girls looked annoyed and gave him a demanding look. The darker haired one had just bought a flute and was playing on it, but now she stopped, interrupted by the harsh declaration.
“You see, I am not American, I am not European, it [the problems] cannot be explained so directly,” YJ said zealously, then proceeded to give a carefully crafted metaphor for it. “I can give you my eyes,” he said, making a movement as if to pluck his eyeballs out of their sockets. “Doctor, I can give you my eyes like this, but I cannot make you see. I cannot give you my eye. You know, a third eye.”
“You have a third eye.” I asked rhetorically, skepticism seeping through.
“Yes! Yes!” YJ rebounded, pleased. The Israeli girls left.
I asked the man why he had left out “Communism” in his list of political systems.
“Communism is simply (2) and (4),” he said, pointing to his list. “Like China? I know Hu Jintao.” He made a dismissive gesture. “They are all systems for WWC.” He bent over his writing. “This is my system. 10 Rupees to talk to me.” He was writing down in a notebook he removed from a battered leather pouch containing, as far as I could tell, only remnants and scraps of other writing: 10 Rs Fee. He considered for a moment, then added, 10 minutes. Done writing, he continued, “10 Rupees 10 minutes, that is the price you must pay to talk to me. Will you pay?” Outstretched hand.
“No,” I said. The idea of paying for simply speaking to him – I had not requested a consultation; our meeting this morning seemed bizarrely coincidental, and my desire to speak with him was the result of pure interest and curiosity. I had not intended to get anything from him, to use him or his services.
He turned his back to me for half a minute.
Turned around again and gave me the same piece of paper he had given me before.
Then, another piece of paper, pink, looked like it used to be an enveloped but had been unfolded. Along the side ran the words, Treaty 2004. I tried to read aloud the contents of the scribble; it seemed meaningless to me. As I stumbled on his writing, he mouthed the words that I should have spoken. What did it mean? I reread it, three times. What did it mean?
“Take this to your President,” the man said. “This Hu Jintao. He must read this. You are my ambassador to him. Right away!” He snatched the pink paper from my hands, and signed his name on the bottom. God incarnate green pink. Gave it to me. Ripped it out of my hands again. Wrote a vague address at the top, Thamel. Could he possibly be traced back here by anyone? Returned it to me. Out of my hands again it flew as another thought struck him. He wrote another note in the right column, so that the entire face was covered in blue ink crashing in all directions and nonsensical content. “Take this to him,” the man said, and smiled.
YJ jumped in with, “Keep that! That is his gift to you! Look, I have one too, I always keep it on me.” He dug around in his wallet for his scrap of paper. It was neatly folded, and he extracted it with the reverence due to a magical charm. Unfolding it and wringing it like paper money, he confessed, “I don’t know what it means, but it is a message, it is very important! You should keep it forever; it will remind you of this moment. Whenever you see it, you will think of him, and your mind will be set free. No more World Wide Control.”
As he said these words I found myself agreeing. Something quite strange had been happening ever since I sat down on the sheet of smudged newspaper on the curb and starting trying to fathom this unique character. I had the feeling that I was being incorporated into a parable, one of the characters who approaches Buddha or Jesus or Lao Tzu in Chuang Tzu’s writings with some kind of issue which is sublimely addressed by the master, as a lesson to the reader. Holding the pink paper in a dirty envelope the man had stuffed it into and sealed with another generous signature, I believed that so long as I retained the paper, I could summon his image – this place and time and feeling – at will. The envelope quaked with power.
I picked up the rum bottle and examined it. YJ preempted my questioning look (I had not started yet and really was not about to, but he must have felt it was inevitable). “This is not for drinking. It is just for people to look at, a show.” He changed his mind. “Well, of course sometimes you drink a little, and it is good, no? Just a little?”
I nodded in assent. I didn’t believe for one moment that the man was a drunkard, however much the scene was set to suggest the notion.
“This is super learning,” chimed YJ. “You will not get this anywhere else, even though you may search the whole world,” he said, indicating all of the people walking through Thamel before our eyes. “This is really super learning. You see all these people? Nothing tells them to come, yet they are gathered!” Indeed, a few curious onlookers now lurked behind the iron chains, trying to mask their interest by looking around distractedly every now and then.
I saw Mike and Haw-Wen pass by, and called out to them. They came over. It happened that Mike and YJ had already been acquainted from some previous setting.
“How are you doing?” Mike asked the man with usual joviality.
“Fine, fine,” the man said graciously. “Fine weather, isn’t it?” He started elaborating this point.
I was shocked. He had suddenly transformed into an normal being, devoid of the mad inscrutability I had witnessed before. He continued carrying on a benign, friendly conversation with Mike. What was going on? Had I been talking to a different person?
…
Insult. Bottle. Demeanor. Carelessness. Absurdity. Uselessness. The Treaty.
I am reminded of the story I have just read in Osho’s book Intimacy about the man who spits on Buddha. Instead of doing the spitting, though, this time I was spat upon. The lesson of this insult was that I could feel untouched by this verbal hit. Who was he calling a “FANTA-man”? It was me, but it was not me.
The empty bottle of rum. A red herring? Maybe he did drink out of it, but I doubt he drank heavily. Many passerby passed him off with summary judgment as a destitute inebriate. By appearance. A reaction, not a response. He similarly passed them off as real FANTA.
When I looked into his eyes, I did not see misty delusion, hate, condemnation. On the contrary, they seemed clear and reflective, sometimes filled with a peculiar merriment. He was not crazy by any means, demonstrated by his unbelievable transformation into the ordinary in conversation with Mike.
His actions were so unpredictable, wild by any other person’s standard. By whose stardards? But what kind of man was he according to his own standards, his own truths? I would say a free man.
And what was with the mumbo-jumbo that he spewed, the cryptic messages he scrawled, random adjective aggregates, calls to actions veiled in unexplained neologisms, his own laughable name?
He is as useless to the world as Chuang Tzu’s favorite gnarled tree. A useless bum, who spouts insane or inane scriptures, who is “non-productive” in every acceptable use of the phrase. In short, a true Taoist master.
The Treaty. A message to the President of China, saying: Taoism is of your beloved soil, yet you betray it by your success. Stop trying to man the reins of WWC. Remember yourself, forget your goals, stoop low again to meet this beggar. You are welcome to become a beggar with me, and thereby welcome to become a god.