Part 6 - Life, With Chip On Shoulder

(Originally written June 2, 2009)

Part 6 - Life, With Chip On Shoulder


Falstaff:
I will not lend thee a penny.

Pistol:
Why then the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.

The Merry Wives Of Windsor Act II, Scene 2, 2–5

-----

Tashiki had not seen Qindao since Morning Meditations. The light was starting to fade and since they had not planned on staying the night at the school, he went in search of his friend.

He found Qindao at the Rock Garden: rake in hand, clothes a mess, dripping with sweat, and an angry determined look on his face. Tashiki stopped for a moment for his customary simple blessing then stepped into the Garden. Qindao didn't notice. He dug the rake into the rocks and traced another line into the pattern, stopped, dug another line, and kept repeating the process. Tashiki guessed he had been doing this all day.

Tashiki moved to sit on one of the observation rocks. Qindao's pattern, he noticed, was more complex than those drawn by the younger students. Qindao was a master of combining straight and curved lines into a pattern that seemed to border on chaos until one looked at the whole and took it all in. Even for Qindao, Tashiki noticed, this one had more anger in it, and less hope. The chaos was encroaching on the balanced structure of the pattern.

Qindao looked up and saw Tashiki. “How long have you been there?”

“A while. The Master might say I've been here all day.”

Qindao grunted a scornful acknowledgement. “He might also say you are not there now. What difference does it make?”

“None. But that is not the point. Despite what may, or may not, be, I am here now and I am observing your work. You have put great effort into this pattern.”

“I was unhappy with the pattern left by the younger students this morning. I picked up the rake and decided to do something about it.”

“I see.”

The two looked at each other a moment longer. Qindao then looked down at the part of the Garden in which he was standing and seemed to come to some sort of decision. Still holding the rake, he dragged his feet over a large section of his design and wiped out all the lines he had drawn into it. Tashiki was able to see Qindao's hands more closely now and saw blood seeping from blisters, and then saw that Qindao's shoes had become torn in several places, and also stained with blood.

Qindao applied the rake to the rocks and began to draw again in the section he had just cleared. Deep straight lines intersected with each other and aimed themselves at the few curves that he had drawn close by. Tashiki could hear the heavy breathing of his friend, the sweat and blood dripping, and even though Qindao tried to muffle his sounds, the vocalizations of his pain with every step and movement of the rake.

Tashiki let Qindao finish redrawing the section he had cleared, but then felt he had to take action. “Qindao, please stop. You are hurting yourself.”

“I know.”

“Then why continue?”

“I must.”

Tashiki felt a wry smile come to his lips. There's no arguing with that logic.

“Come sit with me, please, and at least take a moment to look at what you've made.”

“I can see it from here.”

“No you can't, you butthead. Get yer Obsessive-Compulsive ass up here and sit!”

This time it was Qindao who had to let himself smile a moment. There was definitely no arguing with Tashiki on that one.

Tashiki handed Qindao the towel he always carries. “You're a mess. You are going to need new shoes, and your hands are going to bleed for days. If you don't clean yourself up soon, you're going to get infections in those blisters.”

“I know.” Qindao wiped away some of the sweat, and gripped the towel tightly to ease the pain and soak up the blood. He wouldn't look at the Garden.

“I see a lot of anger in what you've made.”

“I know.”

“Why?”

“It is what I felt. I disliked what the students had made, so I started on my own.”

“But why angry today?”

“Frustration plus ineffective action equals anger, isn't that what you've always told me?”

“That still doesn't answer the question,” Tashiki responded softly.

Qindao took a deep breath and tried to remember back to the morning, where this all started. “I walked past the garden. The other students had raked the Garden into a pattern of circles and large swooping swirls. It felt wrong to me. It didn't feel like the pattern reflected enough of the conflict inherent in what the lines are supposed to represent. I saw a pattern drawn by naïve, sunshine-and-light, liars.”

“Liars? You would speak so harshly of our fellow students?”

“I'm not proud of how I felt about them, or what they had done. They drew what they felt, even if it was simplistic, uncomplicated, and incomplete. I started with honorable intentions. I was going to add some of my own work to the design. I was going to try to integrate my own thoughts into the canvas they had provided. When I saw my first efforts, I was unhappy with what I drew. It didn't fit. I tried again, correcting some of the lines I had drawn, redrawing some of the elements they had left for me to find. It still didn't work. I spent all morning trying to fit my own ideas into a pre-existing pattern, and I just could not make it work.”

They sat for a moment.

“Then what?”

“Just what you expect. I wiped out the whole thing and started my own. And it spun out of control. Each time I finished a new line, I hated it. I hated the way it disrupted what I thought was the balance of the lines around it and hated the way it detracted from the pattern instead of adding to it. I wiped out whole sections at a time. I raked over lines that I had just made. No matter what I did, it didn't feel right. I was frustrated by my inability to express myself, and each effort at doing so seemed to only make things worse. “

“Why didn't you stop?”

“I had to find it. I had to find what it was that was in my head and trying to get out. I couldn't leave this incomplete.”

“You know that at the most it would have lasted only until tomorrow when the other students would clear it and start over again, right? The Rock Garden is not meant to be a permanent representation of, well, anything.”

“I know.”

“Then why is it so important to you?”

Qindao sat quietly for a few moments. Tashiki sensed he had an answer, but was bringing up the courage to say it out loud.

“Because I'm jealous.” There is was. The quiet admission of what had been driving Qindao to the brink of exhaustion and permanent physical harm. “I'm jealous of the simple patterns the other students seem to see in life and in themselves. I'm jealous of the hope and happiness in their circular designs. I'm jealous of the ease with which they can smile through the adversity of raking this whole damn Garden. I'm jealous that I never feel like I can join and be one of them. They tolerate me, but I'm not one of them.”

“They respect you and your wisdom, you know.”

“I suppose. I like the younger students, but you know that I often find their company tedious.”

“Then why does this upset you so much?”

Qindao had to collect his thoughts. “Because I want what they have.”

“You can't. You have to make your own.”

“I tried, and you see here what I made. I worked on it all day, and what do you see?”

“Complexity, internal conflict, desire, fear, determination, and a man who nearly killed himself to make it. And the sad thing is that tomorrow it will be wiped away again.”

Tashiki let that sink in for a moment. He knew that the sadness was an integral part of the Rock Garden's purpose. No design, as he said, was meant to last more than a day, and usually lasted less than a few hours.

“Then I will nearly kill myself again tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“Maybe.”

“You're going to have to let your hands heal first.”

“I know.”

The sun went down and the Garden faded from twilight into darkness.

“Let's go home.”

-----
Thus endeth today's lesson. Let us meditate upon it.

Flagpole Sitta, by Harvey Danger, written by Sean Nelson, Jeff J. Lin, Aaron Huffman & Evan Sult

I had visions, I was in them,
I was looking into the mirror,
To see a little bit clearer,
The rottenness and evil in me.

Fingertips have memories,
Mine can't forget the curves of your body,
And when I feel a bit naughty,
I run it up the flagpole and see who salutes,
But no one ever does.

I'm not sick but I'm not well,
And I'm so hot, cause I'm in hell.

Been around the world and found,
That only stupid people are breeding,
The cretins cloning and feeding,
And I don't even own a TV.

Put me in the hospital for nerves,
And then they had to commit me,
You told them all I was crazy,
They cut off my legs now I'm an amputee,
God damn you.

I'm not sick but I'm not well,
And I'm so hot, cause I'm in hell,
I'm not sick but I'm not well,
And it's a sin, to live so well.

I wanna publish zines,
And rage against machines,
I wanna pierce my tongue,
It doesn't hurt, it feels fine,
The trivial sublime,
I'd like to turn off time,
And kill my mind,
You kill my mind, mind.

Paranoia, paranoia,
Everybody's coming to get me,
Just say you never met me,
I'm running underground with the moles, diging holes
Hear the voices in my head,
I swear to god it sounds like they're snoring,
But if you're bored then you're boring,
The agony and the irony, they're killing me.

I'm not sick but I'm not well,
And I'm so hot, cause I'm in hell,
I'm not sick but I'm not well,
And it's a sin, to live this well,
One, two, three, four.