Shya Scanlon - The Guild of Saint Cooper

Four metal beds made a square inside the curved walls. Three of these beds were still empty, and on the fourth lay a large man with his back to the room. I heard a soft, muffled sobbing. I took a bed by the door.

I dreamed of sitting with Dale Cooper in the living room of his house on Queen Anne. Old pendulum clocks lined the walls, and their simultaneous ticking strobed so loudly it severed each second from the last. Cooper held a large, shiny green leaf, which he raised to his mouth and bit. As he chewed, his mouth began to fill, puffing out his cheeks as though he were blowing a horn. Although the clocks were ticking in unison, each one told a different time. I could hear Blake laughing in another room, and as I stood to look for her, Cooper grabbed my arm and opened his mouth. His tongue was lousy with maggots, and he reached inside and began to claw them out until nothing was left but a thin, pink sliver of flesh that receded back into his throat. I leaned in, looking more closely, and he opened his mouth wider until my head nearly fit inside. Suddenly I was inside his mouth, a fleshy cavern that arced over my head. I looked out past his teeth at the room beyond, where Blake walked toward me and peered into the opening. She was no longer laughing. I tried to call out to her but could not. The mouth closed.

“Blake.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Blake, wake up.” Kent nudged my shoulder.

“Mmmm. I’m up.”

“You’re not up. Are you coming to hear Graves? His thing is in five minutes.”

I raised my head and squinted. Kent was in the door, framed in bright light, and I looked around the yurt to let my eyes adjust. The sobbing man had left, and the other two beds were now home to bags. I sat up, sweating and foggy-headed from the nap.

“Where’s Blake?” I said.

“Haven’t seen her since we got here.”

We walked in silence to the meetinghouse. The building held two hundred people, all of whom sat on folding metal chairs facing a stage, and because the sun was flooding one side of the room everyone held their hands up to shield their eyes as though in salute. Blake was nowhere in sight. Kent pulled me down to sit with him at the back of the un-sunny side. He shifted in his seat and fiddled with the seams of his t-shirt — something he did when he was nervous — and he kept craning his neck to get a better view. I realized I should probably talk to our mother about this. Surely it wouldn’t be okay that her younger son was getting caught up in a cult. I was about to ask him how he’d paid for the retreat when everyone stood up with a deafening round of applause, cheering and whistling: Bobby Graves had taken the stage.

The monolithic man wore all white: loose white pants and a billowy white shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, which boasted big tufts of white hair. The hair on his head was white, too, and had been pulled back into a limp ponytail. I pictured him in a green room, sitting in his underwear before a mirror, his white outfit laid out on the chair to one side, the suit he wore to the performance hanging on the door. There was a distinct theater about it, as though he’d studied a guru manual. Why white? Why the ponytail? Maybe conforming to stereotype put people at ease, opened them up to manipulation in a way they wouldn’t be if they had to “read” his appearance. A small microphone curled across his cheek like a sneer. After a moment he held up his hands in what seemed to be a cross between “That’s enough” and “Ta-da,” and though the clapping struggled against death, it finally settled down.

“Thank you,” he said in a voice made for radio. “Thank you.”

As he spoke, he began to drift slowly from one side of the stage to the other.

“I want to speak with you tonight about how you got here. Look at the people sitting next to you. Look to the right, look to the left. That’s right, that’s right — say hello, why not? Take in your immediate situation. We’re doing this for two reasons, the first being: you’re sitting beside people you have something in common with. Anyone want to guess what that is? It’s easy, come on, there we go, yes! Excuse me? Exactly: we’re all here.”

His massive body moved like an iceberg, and it provided a hypnotic accompaniment to his speaking, which, deep and forceful, was also slow, ponderous, rhythmic. His body was his voice incarnate.

“Now, I know that sounds pretty obvious, doesn’t it? And, well, it is. It’s obvious. But that’s what makes it even more tragic that people just don’t let themselves be aware of it. That’s right. We ignore it. We take it for granted. We forget it. We deny it. But there it is, and let me tell you, it’s powerful. A powerful thing. To a great extent, what we’re going to be learning how to achieve over the next couple of days can be summed up in this way: we’re going to be learning how to realize where we are. Sounds easy, right? Ha ha ha! Easy as pie! But more goes into it than you think, because, well, where are we? We’re here , yes, here in this room. But we’re also part of a story. That’s right. What’s the story? Well, the story of your life. And where does your life take place, besides space? Anyone want to — yes! Who said that? Thank you! Yes, in time. We’re here in time. So we’re here in time, and we’re here in space, and that’s one of the things we have in common with one another, everyone together right now in this room.

“So what’s the other? What’s the other? The other is that not one of you chose to come here today. Now, I’m going to say that again and give it a moment to sink in, because it’s going to need to sink in, because you’re not going to want to believe it, and you might not believe it even after it sinks in, but we’ll be working on that. So let me say again that aside from being here in space and being here in time, the other thing you have in common with one another is that not one of you chose to come here today .”

Here he stopped, like he said he would, and looked around the room, grinning like he’d just told the best joke imaginable. I looked at Kent, and he was smiling right along with Graves, and he turned to me for a moment and winked, as if he, or as if they all, were just now letting me in on this amazing joke the man on stage had told.

“Looking out at you all, I can see who’s been here before, because the folks who’ve been here before are smiling with me, and those who haven’t, well, you’ll need a little time, and that’s okay. But so let’s look at that a little closer, yes? Because what can that possibly mean? What can it mean to have come here without having chosen to come here? You’re saying, ‘Well, nobody forced me.’ And I hope that’s true — was anyone here forced? Ha ha ha! No? Good, good. No, and that’s an important distinction, you know, that just because you haven’t chosen something, doesn’t mean it’s against your will. Right? Not against your will. But where does that leave you? Let’s see. Let’s see where that leaves us. It’s like a mystery. It’s exciting, isn’t it? I’m excited! Are you excited to solve the mystery? I hope so. Okay, let’s think back to how you got here, okay? This will be different for each of you, so please do this privately. In your own head! Think back, in your head, and look at the circumstances that led to you coming here. To you, quote, ‘deciding to be here.’ Unquote. I think you’ll see how, for each of you, that decision was really made for you in some way, in a lot of ways, and it’s really going to be your project for the weekend to learn how that happened, why it happened. Now it’s not all bad, right? You’re here, and you’re in a good place! I don’t mean to say that these things that guided you here were bad or unhealthy or in some way out to get you. They wouldn’t have led you here, right? If they were out to get you. But what if the circumstances had been different? Think of all the people whose circumstances don’t lead them here, but somewhere unhappy or unhealthy. Addiction? Violence? Loneliness? Despair? So it’s important to try and figure out, see, how to take back some control over these things. And that’s what we’re here for, really, that’s why it’s a good thing we have the chance to share some space and, what else? Right, some time, too. How are we going to do that? Well, that’s for tomorrow’s workshops, but it’s going to involve the generation of myth. And as a peek into the future I’ll say that it’s going to be about using analepses — an-a-lep-ses — to recreate your own mythos. Are you with me? No? You’ll get there, I promise. And through that process, through the use of that technology, we’ll be defining your stakes, and defining your mission, but you know what? You know what, tonight it’s not about any of that. Not yet! Tonight you’re in for a treat, because look around you! Tonight it’s about eating some good food, meeting some new friends, and taking in this magical setting. This setting outside, the forest, the trees, these are going to be active participants in your process, and I want each and every one of you to spend some time with them this evening. Don’t forget where you are, don’t forget when you are, and you’ll never forget who you are, and with that I’ll say welcome, and thank you, and we’re so glad you ended up here. Welcome to the next phase of your life. The beginning, really. The beginning of a life you can really, truly call your own . Welcome, welcome, welcome!”