Strict Limit -- One Question a Month

There's a guy I know who used to run me almost ragged asking questions. Infernal questions! Enough questions to make me horribly uncomfortable; he was so curious, it's ridiculous. But bit by bit I worked to reduce his idiotic quirk. Now we're down to a few questions whenever we're together. But I'm hoping to go whole hog and limit his questions to only one a month! Think it can be done?

Once I spell it out for him, he'll know the rules, and, by God, if he wants to be my friend he'll have to try his damnedest to follow them. I'm literally sick of him anyway, so what have I got to lose? Plus, if I'm somehow able to drive him batty, maybe he'll shrivel up to nothing and blow away. Of course I kid, we're friends, he knows that. But we'll never get anywhere unless he makes progress and accepts this limit. I can always be "sick" when he calls and wants to come over.

OK, here's how I see it going. Looking ahead, let's say we're at March. We get together, I explain the rule. And he asks, "Why only one a month?" I say, "That's your question, and here's my answer, Because that's the rule." No more questions till next month.

April rolls around and he goes, "Could I have more than one question?" That's it, he asked his question, and here's my answer, "No, the rule says one a month."

Now it's been a couple months, and he's getting so used to not asking me things, May is suddenly here and he's like, "I can't think of anything. Could you help me come up with a question?" That's his question, he's stuck for another month.

Now it's June, "What's the point of this?" he asks. That's his question!

In July, he's totally stunted and won't ask a question to beat the band. "Are you going to ask your question?" I say. But he only looks up at me with big dull eyes, so beaten down, so stuck inhabiting perplexity, and to such a degree, he doesn't know what to ask. I look at him with a certain amount of sorrow welling up in me. He's sitting on the couch, his arms positioned like he's in a straitjacket. And he's rocking back and forth.

I bring him treats, snacks, instant oatmeal, fruit roll-ups, etc., doing my best to nurture him along with tea, donuts, etc. I'm coaxing, pleading, wheedling, setting it out that he was once a guy of such inquisitiveness, and now is so bound up, having totally psyched himself into a silent stupor. He's a pathetic, wispy reminder of his former vital talkative self. O the greatness of his former curiosity, now fallen, now utterly fallen!

I think, "Good God, what have I done?" To see him bowed and broken like this. This could be something I could make money on, sell tricks like this to the CIA. Although we've been taught never to look for useful information in torture. But was it torture? I reject the inference.

Now, though, it's torture for me! I beg and plead yet more. He looks at me with those big bloodshot eyes (how good it is to see them open again, even a slight crack). Then, finally, at end of opening them, his lips twitch and also start to open.... I think I can hear the faint beginnings of sound bubbling through the spittle.

I tell him like a mother hen, "Go ahead, my friend, it's another month, please ask me your question."

It's tough going but at long last I hear his feeble response, "Who, me?" Ahh! That's your question! We're done for another month! I'm doing the happy dance, a dance around the room, looking ahead to another whole month of silence, just as it should've always been.

Mt. Olympus and the Pits of El Cid

"If anything was ever said wrong in this lifetime, that was surely it. And now, with my boldness, with my mistake, I have been hurled from the heights of Mount Olympus, all the way to the gloomy depths of El Cid." -- From my morning meditation, thinking of a recent (massive) failure in speech.

Here's a teaching I've kept in reserve, hoping that one day my readers would show them worthy of receiving it. My hopes have long been disappointed, as I suspected would happen, but I have a terrific sense that the time has come anyway. It currently applies to me.

I want to teach a little bit about the difference between Mount Olympus (good) and El Cid (bad), as these opposite concepts/locales relate to the things we say, our speech. Olympus being good, of course that's what we strive for. El Cid being evil, that's what we so often settle for, a big mistake.

But, you say, historically El Cid is supposed to be a beautiful place, a place of goodness. Not the way I see it, Cid being related to sin or, more immediately, Tom Sawyer's brother Syd, a true snake in Eden.

Was it something I cid? Said or did? Certainly. I've cid plenty, and you can't take back what you cid. The tongue is a world of fire, of evil. Rooting itself as it does in the rottenest part of your soul. What makes a soul -- the highest expression of the person -- crash and burn faster and meaner than that? As long as I'm secure in one place, not stirring, uttering not a peep, I'm OK. But where there's movement there's trouble. And with movement comes expression, verbal blather, verbal garbage, the whole dump truck of written or spoken vileness.

The only antidote -- or solution -- is to remain in one place, be physically still, and keep your fool mouth shut. Am I right? That's what they say in meditation: You want to sit still and focus on one thing, that hopefully becomes no thing, so that you're again in the non-dual realm of Mount Olympus, i.e., the highest place, heaven.

For many of us this is hard to maintain. It's certainly been tough for me. Whereas I might sit there silently -- I'm thinking of myself in a group now -- at the last minute I open my mouth and all is lost. The Olympus investment I made is suddenly sunk by the junk bonds of El Cid. It's happened so many times it's not funny.

And I know where it's rooted, those stinking college courses where part of your grade is dependent on participation. You sit there silently all semester, then realize you're going to flunk if you don't speak up by the last session. By now -- and this is straight out of our group dynamics experience -- the groove of the group is deeply chiseled, the pecking order of talkers being long established. The fact that you're suddenly blurting something out, and clearly to meet the participation requirement even if it's by the skin of your teeth, makes you a shame in their eyes. They are in Olympus, but you are hopelessly mired in El Cid. Same old story.

I hasten to clarify, however, that Mount Olympus, despite what I just said, is a thoroughly positive thing, the very opposite of El Cid. On Olympus the gods are assembled in one place, the correlate of being alone with your thoughts. In the wastleland known as El Cid, knowing that you've broken the silence, and the filth hole on your face has spewed forth its muck and mire, that which is most despicable in the depths, you're in the depths.

You can tell -- I hope you grasp this -- that to be an extrovert is to constantly fail, to sink as it were in the quicksand of El Cid. No one wants to be around you. Everyone wishes you'd shut up. But to be an introvert -- like cleanliness -- is next to godliness. Clearly the reason is that with silence you're on Olympus (or closer), although, as is well known, you can still spoil it and once again fall to El Cid.

With my mind, then, I honor Mount Olympus, but with my mouth El Cid. How may I be delivered from such a fate? Thanks to the gods of Mount Olympus, my natural homeland is not El Cid! My daily prayer -- join me in this prayer now -- is for Olympus to keep me far from El Cid, in my spirit and daily life. May it be true for all of us! Although I know it won't be.

The Key to My Mouth

I'm able to go profound lengths of time profoundly silent. Witness what I've done here at my blog. I've resisted the temptation all month, until now, when I feel I have something to brag about, to write. I have literally let the pearls of wisdom that I normally transfer from my mouth to my hands lie dormant. They've been locked up.

Now, though, only when I have something to brag about, my profound silence, do I break my silence and proclaim it. Quite the deal.

I guess I've always been that way. Starting way back, when I first heard of the concept of zipping your lip, then, more impressive to me, of locking it all together. I was like the fainting goat of speech, everything I was meant to be by nature, but with the added discipline of just keeping to myself.

Someone would interrupt me, let's say, then ply me for my opinion. But by then, whether stealthily or in the open light of everyone's field of vision, I would have taken an invisible key from my pocket and locked my mouth. Then, no matter how they begged and wheedled about it, I would sit silent, stone-face, breathing only through my nose.

That's a dynamite feeling, too. If you've never tried it, try it. Let a roomful of people sit there and see you with the discipline it takes to not unlock your mouth. I'm getting a head rush just thinking back over my life, and hoping, as strange as it sounds, that someone offends me very soon so I can do it again!

So often, though, I've been very civilized. I might be sitting there in a group, trying to offer my two cents' worth, and all the others are filibustering. Then I try to pipe up with something and some blowhard across the room will talk over me. So often I've just let it go.

But it all depends on how I'm feeling, and you definitely feel more civilized as an adult than a kid. But say I'm feeling cantankerous, like a kid, I'll reach for the key and very publicly lock my mouth, and that's it! Now, all of a sudden, everyone wants to hear me! Funny how that works! So, again, depending on how I feel, I might unlock it quickly, or I might just sit there and not.

It'd be cool ... How about this? I'm offended right away, then I lock my mouth and throw away the key. It's over there somewhere, invisible. They're begging me, "Please tell us what it was!" and I just point to my locked lips. Then I sit there the entire hour or two, whatever it is, letting the lock do its thing! It'd really flummox them! Later, they see me on the street and I'm talking, because I always carry a spare key.

Anyway, you have two lessons today. Locking your mouth is something to do. And, don't interrupt me, or get on my nerves in any other way, or I'll lock my mouth and you'll never know what you missed.

You Got Anything To Say?

Please tell me, is anyone out there having good conversations anymore? I'm wondering if it's just me, but I'm not generally even overhearing good conversations anymore, let alone being a participant in them.

Maybe this is something that just requires a certain setting that's outside my lifestyle as I'm living it these days, such as a bar and several pitchers of beer. Since I don't do that, I wouldn't know if that's still happening. Still, like I said above, I'm out and around, and I'm not overhearing anyone else really into it either.

My mouth used to work. Used to. I remember it flapping all the time, with big crazy laughs and flights of imagination. I was thinking of this a while ago, some of the big ambitions we came up with in conversations, like making video documentaries. But none of it ever happened. I still think of it when I'm watching a video documentary: "We could've made this!" Big stuff, big plans. Now what is there? Everyone's snipping funny pictures of dogs and sharing them on Facebook. Conversation these days is, "Pray for me, I've got a disease."

There's work conversations, of course, as short and sweet as possible, just to get it over with. And conversations with your doctor, who's always in a great hurry and can't be held back. Beyond that, waitresses seating you, the guy at the grocery store, nothing. I got into a tiny conversation with the guy at the grocery store. It turned out that he and I were born the same year.

As for anything, though, if I'm not reading a book, nothing's getting through. Authors have a lot to say. The actual in-the-flesh encounters aren't yielding much. Leading me to think, indeed, there is really nothing left to talk about. Which doesn't sound entirely convincing.

It must really have something to do with aging. We already know, whatever our ambitions are, they're crazy, as well as our opinions. So to preserve what reputation for sanity we have, we've just shut up.