Oliver Benjamin
CHAPTER 23
Before you study Zen, a bowl is a bowl and tea is tea. While you are
studying Zen, a bowl is no longer a bowl and tea is no longer tea.
After you’ve studied Zen, a bowl is again a bowl and tea is tea.
TRADITIONAL ZEN SAYING
After the first glass [of absinthe] you see things as you wish they were.
After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally you see things
as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.
OSCAR WILDE
1. Mortal Coil
Roy stared vacantly at the television set in the prison mess hall. He
brought the cup of coffee to his lips and drank. Robusta. Instant.
Tepid. Still, it was one of the only pleasures available to him and he
did his best to savor the faint echoes of goodness in the unmitigated
disaster that swirled before him.
The buzzer rang, signaling the end of lunch and scaring Roy into
spilling the rest of his coffee down the front of his blue prison
uniform. He had five minutes to get back to his cell. A river of men in
blue denim flowed out of the hall, separating into streams which
sought out the lowest levels of their lives.
On a cot in his lowest level, Roy scratched a solemn picture into
the painted wall with a thumbnail. It was a woman’s face, and though
he tried to make it as beautiful as possible, he was no artist. It looked
like some kind of reptile with a wig on.
He was startled by the clang of a nightstick against the bars.
“Visitors, Makonnen,” the guard barked. Roy got up and followed
him down into the brightly-lit visitor’s room where Izzy, Bennie and
Colin sat behind a glass partition. Their faces registered shock upon
seeing him; perhaps he looked as bad as he felt.
“Roy,” they said together into the phone.
“Speaking,” he said.
“We’re going to get you out of here,” Izzy said.
“They don’t take IOUs,” he said.
“We’ll raise the money,” Bennie said.
“Can’t raise the dead,” Roy said.
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