Friday, December 12, 2014

The Master’s Scribe (Buddhism, Furious Fiction, Pugs, Zen)


Camilla, the fat pug, waddles across the blue-gray snow fields of Mount Fuji like a three-legged pig.  Jack, the Hokkaido fox, should be chasing her.  But how can he?  One leap and he’ll be well beyond the ugly little tanker.

The narrator won’t like Camilla being called an “ugly little tanker.”  I can hear him say, “Nothing ugly.  Only perception ugly. ” He doesn’t like much of what I type on his behalf.  He says I use too many words.  That’s because he’s a Zen Buddhist monk from Kamakura who sits on a straw mat all day playing Call of Duty Advanced Warfare.  He says enlightenment is found in the moment of action.  “No words; use thumbs only, fingers.” 
I’d quit if he didn’t pay well.  He says although words kill the moment, a monk without books to his name is no monk at all these days. 
“California read enlightenment too much!  Zen not self-help.  No problem.  No help.  Just be.”
“Okay,” I say, “but what about the fable?  Why not have the pug chase the fox?  She’s slow; he’s fast.  We have struggle, plot.”
He says Americans are too logical, that you can’t write a fable with logic.  You shouldn’t write a fable at all.  It should just be.
“How can it be, if we don’t write it?” I ask in exasperation.
He smiles, “Your journey, not mine.”

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