Tim Parks - The Server

Cute cantaloupes!

At least I remember what I wrote now. It must have been in the previous exercise book. In four days he’s finished one and scribbled half another.

Who would ever think of returning as a newt?

Zoë said everyone over forty had haemorrhoids. She was thirty-three.

interestingly animal, with that funny, screwed-up little mouth and long teeth. Small hands, dirty nails. Not unlike T in a way. An odd sort of nibbliness .

Too bad this diary paper isn’t absorbent. I could tear the pages out, clean up between the legs and flush.

My mouth is not screwed up. It’s pursed.

‘Pretty pursed lips, my sweet little rodent.’

I’ll use some bog paper for the moment. There’s always plenty of bog paper at the Dasgupta.

Judging by where she sits she must be a server. So still and straight-backed, hour after hour. I wish I could .

How much did she read? Do they check our rooms? Surely not a woman in the men’s, though .

Anyway, that’s definitely what they’re trying to teach here. Stop identifying with your pain. Detach, de-dramatize. When they asked the woman who was crying to leave the meditation room, the first vipassana session, I was worried for her, sobbing away, some kind of breakdown, and Harper just tells her to leave if she can’t stop crying. In his super-dead bureaucratic voice. How can he be so uncaring? I’m thinking. Then I saw the sense of it .

You love your pain too much .

Stop crying. Stop dramatizing. Concentrate on the breath going in and out of the lungs. A matter of the utmost importance for you .

Newts don’t cry .

Damn, I’ve finally seen that’s what he meant by the second arrow being optional. How slow can you be?

All our marriage I’ve been afraid. That’s the truth. Did you know how terrifying you are, Linda? Your coldness, your rigidity, your rages. Have you any idea? Or is it just me? You’ve been married to a spineless weakling, a newt, when what you needed was a man .

I live like a widower haunted by his wife’s angry ghost .

Very funny. There was a spider on the floor today between my cushion and the guy to my left. Didn’t know what to do since we’ve taken the vow not to kill any living creature. Couldn’t communicate with this guy, who seems a much more experienced meditator than me since he never seems to move. The spider didn’t know which mat he’d prefer to climb on and neither of us could shut our eyes and just let him go where he wanted. Why not? What could happen? It went on and on, the spider moseying back and forth, back and forth. Must have wasted half an hour watching a creature that is completely harmless, waiting no doubt to be reincarnated as human so he can take his first step on the Dhamma path. Eventually the guy behind us saw the thing, got it to climb on his hand and took it out. Hard to think the spider was suffering any more than us, or in any way inferior to us. It must be quite fun spinning your way down from the roof and disturbing the meditators .

Spiders don’t bother me at all. I could meditate with spiders crawling all over me. But I remember a wild scene with Zoë in a motel bathroom.

Question: can we keep the conditioned arising theory and dump the reincarnation?

You have no self. Last night’s video. What you experience as self is an amalgamation of five basic chemical elements (forgotten what they are). Constant fluctuation of said elements, or aggregates, conditions the circumstances in which, at any one moment, consciousness arises. Hence instability. Hence difficulty making decisions. Hence difficulty knowing who you are .

Makes sense .

In my case, then, what are/were the conditions that led to how things are in my head now? The conditions of this arising that is me .

How did it all begin?

When I met her across the table at Dad’s office party?

Bright red mouth, flowery smell .

She was immediately, but immediately, the mother I wished I’d had. The one who would find time to notice me, to love me .

I was immediately, but immediately, the child she was leaving it very late to have. The child she needed so she could feel she’d lived .

Nothing clear in our heads, of course, but definitely a sense of destiny .

She saw the danger. One drunken fuck and she fled .

I couldn’t let her get away. A guy with five older brothers isn’t going to hear a woman say she needs an older man .

I tracked her down, laid siege to her phone, stood under her window .

‘ What you need is a child .’

‘ You’re too young .’

‘ And you can’t wait .’

She’d had an unhappy time with a married man. She drank too much. She was interesting. I could help her. I fell in love with the story of helping her. She had the money to help me. And the expertise .

Fatal meeting of needs. Conditioned arising .

Newts, real newts, don’t have to deal with any of this. Newts don’t have mothers who ignore them, or who they think ignored them. Newts don’t live in stories, projecting and planning and regretting and reconstructing. They don’t tell and retell. They don’t shoot second arrows. Newts slide in and out of slime catching insects on their tongues. Wordless, worryless. L and I had to concoct the most elaborate stories to justify the folly of a twenty-three-year-old male marrying a thirty-nine-year old female. I was a brilliant young man, much older than my age, in need of money and stability to launch an adventurous publishing house that would mark a turning point in English literature. I really believed that. She had recognized my genius, she had cash, she would withdraw from the law courts, bring up her baby, support my project, Wordsmith .

Mum wept. She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t suspend disbelief .

First time Mum noticed me was when I escaped her. And fucked up big-time .

So. Susie born into a story of special love, special achieving, special denial. A tall story. If Susie and I weren’t amazingly special we couldn’t justify L’s having blown her career, L’s having blown her family money for Wordsmith, L’s having withdrawn from the world. She had invested in us and we were locked in her investment. We had to yield. A high return .

L obsessed by achievement: mine and Susie’s, not her own. We mustn’t let her down. Otherwise she starts drinking again. We have to succeed to stop her drinking herself to death .

Everyone else disparaged. Everyone else despised. We her only contact with the outside. Accomplices against the world. Conspiracy of three. She the queen bee, we the drone and the worker. She at home, we roving. She the mind, we the body .

When I was criticized she defended me. She was counsel for the defence. I needed her .

When I was successful she was envious, critical. Counsel for the prosecution. I needed to be rid of her .

When she understood I was looking at young women, she loathed and despised me. Judge and jury .

She had nourished a viper .

Her bowel problems. Her constipation. Her rages .

Communication went out along with sex. No fuck, no talk .

How can Dasgupta imagine that the mental trap we are in can be nullified just by stepping back from attachment and identification? It’s not a question of a second arrow but of third fourth tenth twentieth hundredth thousandth arrows all shot ages ago, all dead on target .

San Sebastian .

I am locked in a story and can’t wish it away. It won’t dissolve because I say, ‘Story story not my story .’