Seppuku

I leave Mitch the Cat and Noemi for I see the restlessness in the tread of the Cat and the passion in the eye of the Gypsy. I walk home, head held high with aloof contentedness, neither fearing the weight of the world nor appreciating the cacophony of stimulus about me. I think about my future, wistfully and with quiet dread. There is so much to do, it feels overwhelming and I shrug it aside with the help of the THC floating through the veins of my skull (or doing whatever it is THC does that makes me so carefree (or perhaps careless)).

The apartment is dark, as is don Carlos's room. His door is always ajar, his room an organized mess, a labyrinth of objects and information only he can tread with any confidence. I brew tea and sit in lotus on the mat in the middle of the living room, where I meditate for an hour every night. I close my eyes and follow the slow waves of my breath until I don't listen to the noise of the busy street outside or the jabbering monologue of my mind. I am at peace in my ocean of no things, no thoughts, no being. Oddly, I remember everything that happens as I am in a distant meditation land better than I do that which happens after, which I actually take part in. I wonder if it is because I go over it so many thousands of times after don Carlos recounts it to me three days later in the soiled white room of the big grey hospital. Or perhaps I am truly aware of it all as I sit motionless, but so far removed from my senses I don't pay any attention. Anyway, this is what happens:

don Carlos walks silently from his room, where he is sitting in the dark bearing the great weight of his world I care little for, and sits across from me. I open my eyes, I see him but do not react. For a long time he searches my eyes as I stare back dispassionately. If you have never looked into someone's eyes for an extended period of time (a couple minutes, at least) without words or movement, it is a disturbing and thrilling experience. You find the universe in them, or the Buddha, or God, or yourSelf, or whatever it is that you're secretly looking for everywhere but in simple love. I hope he found a bit of that, for I myself did not engage; I had stared into Mitch's and Noemi's eyes so many times that I think I know the feeling and so pretend I am not in the mood. The idea I have formed of my past experiences limits me from engaging in an act entirely new in realisation if not "original".

After a time I forget he's even there, though I am staring into the twin reflections of his soul. I am far away. He slowly retrieves a small orange bottle from his pocket and shakes a number of little green pebbles marked 100 onto the floor between us. I am far away. I am breathing one minute breaths: twenty seconds in, twenty seconds held, twenty seconds out. I know only the count in my head, the movement of my lungs, not even my own breath, or the great suffering seeping from my best friend.
He follows my breath: at every exhale he takes a pebble and swallows it until the scattering on the floor grows small. Like a samurai, he retains his dignity as long as he possibly can, in the this ridiculous ritualisation of "not to be", until the convulsion start. When his hand slaps my upturned calf I am finally brought back from purgatory, a faint smile on my lips.

Then it's a blur of frantic activity, my mind explodes into anarchy which leaves no room for memory retention. The first thing I see is his wrist and that ghastly tattoo he acquired: the ink tracing his veins like the dried blood of a suicide attempt. His eyes are still staring into mine, and all at once I am possessed by their fear and agony and anger and for a long, long time afterwards whenever I close my eyes I see them pleading at me, condemning me so that I cannot sleep and I must meditate with my eye open, until I learn how to truly mediate, which maybe was what don Carlos was trying to teach me all along.