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I found myself sitting on the same bench, in the same park, in the same city, in the same state of mind as I had been for the past few weeks. I always camped out across the small, man-made lake from the playground. It made me feel like a grubby old man, sitting there reading with periodic glances away from the page to the large groups of children so close yet a million miles away in space. This was especially true when I would notice grubby old men near me, apparently having the same plans to a different end.

 

I first started coming to the park about two months earlier, when the sweet scent of spring first broke the New England winter. It had been called the mildest in decades, although it certainly felt harsh to me. I threw a bag of chips, a pack of menthols, and some book on Zen in one of those track bags easily associated with the class of student athletes I so disliked, planning to go find some serene spot to practice the bastardized, messy from of Buddhism I had become fond of. Thinking myself some sort of serious student, I strolled on the sidewalks fractured by years of unchecked root growth. I was looking for a place that would stick to my soul.

 

I passed by apartments where Spanish babies and sus madres and college students insisting on slumming it for a semester sat out on the porch drinking horchata and Pabst. My feet wandered, fighting me, but I steadily made progress towards the park. My asthma was acting up that day, so I plunked myself down on a bench as soon as I touched the green seemingly icing everything there. I looked out, and cursed myself for never coming before. The sunlight warmed my face and I smiled at this change of scenery. My sights drifted away, fading into black. My senses melted away, leaving only that feeling of immersion.

 

My leg fell from where it had been crossed. The distinct feeling of weightlessness always manages to jar you awake. A crane perched on the single rock brave enough to disrupt the stolid surface of the lake greeted me with a crooked leg. But it didn’t move. I kept watching it, and it refused to move. I focused on it, and it still would not move. I yelled at it, I pleaded with it, and I begged it to move, but it just wouldn’t. It just wouldn’t goddamn move.

 

I looked at it again, perhaps more angrily. This damnable bird knew something, and he wouldn’t tell me why he wouldn’t move. He wouldn’t tell me his name, and he wouldn’t tell me his age. He stood between me and total knowledge. He stood between me and enlightenment. I was enraged. I was lost.

 

Mu hit, and I calmed down. I looked at the crane again and saw that what had thwarted me was just a statue. It was just some sickly imitation of nature, cast in bronze long ago by some aspiring city politician maybe and left to return to the verdant state of nature rather unfitting of a crane. The statue struck me as strange. Was it to take the place of nature? Was it to replace it? Maybe it was supposed to represent something. Maybe I was supposed to tear up a little about the replacement of nature. Maybe I was supposed to curse artificiality for taking the place of nature. I don’t know though. Someone told me once that speculation was the devil’s ping pong. I think he was trying to be funny, but such words have the capacity for wisdom.

 

I must have been quite the sight, sitting there, swearing under my breath, apparently mad as hell and angry at something. I guess that’s what encouraged one of the grubby men to speak up and ask “Are you okay?”

I was perplexed by the question. Was I okay? Was it a problem that I was angry at a bronzed crane? Or was this all part of some greater purpose? Enlightenment, it seemed to me, is analogous to an insane asylum. If you see the essence of the universe, if you extend forth your hand and touch Buddha-nature, if you leap out of Plato’s cave, does your tongue still taste the fruit? Does your nose still smell the flower? I don’t think so. Charlie Manson is probably a bodhisattva.

 

“Hey,” I blurted out. It still didn’t answer his question. “I’m terrific.”