Mala

PROSE
10-26-02022

I'm Sitting at this coffee spot, about to hit send on this text to a very complex ex . . .

but then getting all mentally ganged on by thoughts of my current GF’s love for me. I’m always getting ganged on right when I’m about to do a thing that would hurt her, forgetting love til I see its edges burning. Like, GF won’t ever know about this text, but I feel the ache she’d feel if she did know. Her imagined ache, my real ache, 2 - on - 1. Gotta get gang ached just to remember love, so fucking sad.

This text to that complex ex says,

“What’s up Beauty, how you been doing?”

And I’m not sending it because I’ve got infidelity goals, cause I don’t. I’m just feeling sorta scared & nostalgic right now; huffing on some memories of good days with someone who shared them. I started worrying that touching that ex might be the only way to touch the ‘good’ in those good days. But, also, thinking of that alternate future ex would have brought me too. The future we dreamed up back then . . . that was supposed to be happening right about now . . .

but now is now . . .

and it’s not anything like that other now we were dreaming of back then. That now died on the side of time somewhere. So many dead nows lay in me, unburied. They’re haunting my head right now, making me text people I shouldn’t be texting; hurt people I shouldn't be hurting.

I wish I felt love, now love, without having to watch it burn. I wish I could catch a posy trigger, like, just sitting under a tree & thinking outta no where,

“dam, she’s out there right now, holding VAST love for me, and I’m, right now, holding VAST love for her,”

and just get overwhelmed by that VAST-VAST for a minute; feeling it on me like the sunshine, after getting all loner-boy-cold brooding in the shade too long. Not super cold, but cold enough to be uncomfortable, but getting off on the discomfort . . . on tough-guy mode. Thinking ‘sunshine’ is sentimental bullshit. But, also, knowing I’m scared. Scared to feel warm. Keeping the butter in the freezer to keep it brick hard, so that sunshine sentiments don’t melt my precious edge.

Freezer butter? So fucking dumb.

And now I’m thinking . . . .

“That’s fucking ridiculous, bro, get your shivering ass over to that sun that’s, like, right there yo! Go stand in some love, the fuck’s so hard about that?”

And now I’m feeling like I must be broken to get off on shivering all the time.

But can’t always hang with now loves. That shit has no self control. It starts kissing the neighbors, going VAST-VAST-MODE, fucking up my cold tough narratives, making me love the world & life that lets loves flow through it.

Cause I know, like, letting those flows flow is the best trick I got going. Finding bits of love, new & forgotten, in all this hard & soft living. Letting these temporal beauties & connections, be them 5 seconds or 5 years, flow over me. Stringing them together like beads on a rosary. A mala I can use to pray on when I can’t find that next bead.

But I’m about to hit send on this text . . .

but get distracted by this old Hubby dude standing by the pastry case. He’s is looking ready to disappear; watching his Wife try to order two coffees with ½ & ½, only this coffee spot is ‘plant-based’ so the barista has to explain why there is no ½ & ½ and why oatmilk tastes the most like ½ & ½.

Wife is having trouble understanding how oats taste like cream.

She says too hubby,

“they only have oatmilk.”

She must not hear too good, cause he claps back hella loud,

“oat’s fine.”

Wifey tells the barista,

“oatmilk’s fine.”

But then the barista says they can’t have coffee cause the drip machine is fritzed out, but they can have americanos. Wifey says,

“they only have americanos.”

Hubby claps back,

“americano’s fine.”

Behind this tedium is a line of young & slicks who got a firm grip on ‘plant-based’ alternatives. They’re all toes tapping & eyes rolling, acting like pouring watery oatmeal into watery espresso makes perfect sense. Thinking,

“these fucking Boomers.”

Hubby can see this passive-agro pageant from his view next to the pastry case. He’s seeing how repugnant he & Wifey are too them, young eyes saying

“this ain’t your cafe old man, this ain’t your world old man, this is our world now. Oakmilk World.”

Averting his gaze, he lets his eyes space on the pastry case. He says, half to himself,

“should we get a little treat?”

Wifey says,

“what?”

Waiting eyes toss tiny tantrums. Hubby sees the HERCULEAN effort it’ll take to choose a little treat. He’s gotta coordinate with his Wife, who can’t hear too good. Gotta collide that with the novel variable that these are ‘plant-based’ alternatives to his conception of ‘little treat’ and might not ever taste like the treat he thinks he’s choosing. All this with a line of Y2K babies burn fuck-off glances into the back of he & Wifey’s head.

He says,

“nothing . . . nevermind.”

They peace out. Oatmilk world sighs relief.

I don’t know if the Hubby was thinking any of this, but I’m feeling him thinking it, from this corner table view. Feeling Boomers getting blamed for all this ‘world-is-burning’ shit that they ain’t really on them. They just voted for one a’hole over another, when all they had to choose from was a’holes, same as we are; bought from one toxic biz over another when all they had to choose from was toxic options, same we do. If that's the blame bar, then we’re all gonna get it, same as them, in 2059, holding up the café line while we try to figure out which synthetic white goo best approximates that oatmilk we used to love.

I mean, it’s not like Hubby is rocking a ‘Blue Live Matter’ T in here. He's got on a Nike polo, while half the café line got on Nike sneaks. Both found it in their hearts to ignore the evil and sport some sweatshop drip. Didn’t even get a treat, chose to keep the line moving, keep Oatmilk World moving, letting us get our little treats.

Just out here trying to connect, trying to be allowed to connect. Trying to be apart of the cool team. Fucking different white goos in your coffee? How different are you? Y’all are in-fighting.

And now I’m thinking everything is in-fighting. All the fighting . . . in-fighting.

Too much right now. About to hit send on this text . . .



But nah, though. I gotta do something dif, break the pattern, quit the destruct-distracts.

I’mma find some sun & thumb that rosary. Sit with this now pain; hope it turns to now love. Next bead’s always coming.

I peace out . . .



I used to have a mala, like, a non-metaphorical one.

A co-worker came back from an India vacay with a dozen and was tossing them around shipping & receiving like it was Mardi Gras. She got them from some guru named Om Swami. She said gurus are like postal workers in India. If you chill on the same corner for an hour, you're bound to see one or two.

A couple years later I lost it. I was on a day trip to the Yuba River with my GF . . . I should use her name, her name is Summer. We used to do this a lot during the demic. We had this hella beautiful spot. The water rushed through these huge granite boulders into a super solid swim hole.

I’d just done one of those cinematic, strip-as-you-run moves, jumping in wearing nothing but that mala & a 𝗖𝗔𝗦𝗜𝗢. I’m swimming around, enjoying the cold, and I see this black half-moon shape at the river bottom. I dove down to grab at it & it’s half buried, but comes free after one solid tug. I swim over to where I can stand and scope it. It’s a fucking old-timey gold pan. Shit was probably over 100 years old . . . just waiting down there.

I held it up to show Summer. She's like . . .

“O my God! River treasure! I want it!”

She could have such cute little kid energy sometimes, getting all excited about old trash. I think stuff like this warms her belief that life is, like, this big cozy mystery, full of friendly secrets. I could feeling her divining optimistic signs from that pan; that power doesn’t come natch to me. I run life colder. But I really loved her right then.

The Yuba River is hella cold though, all Sierra Nevada snowmelt. Didn’t take long for me to get out & get after that euphoric UV dry off. Summer was already nude lounging on the flat top of a boulder like a nymph; I splayed out next to her & the pan.

I went to fidget with the mala, it was gone.

I’m thinking . . .

“Fair,”

. . . cause losing it was kind of a relief. Like, I’d finally settled up on an old debt. Cause here’s the thing, I’d lost that same mala in this same river once already.

Last year, pre-demic, I’d made a cameo on my sister's camp trip with her BF & pomeranian, Cinnamon. We all went swimming near by and I lost it.

What’s crazy though is the next day, after I peaced out back to Oakland, sis is back at the swim spot and notices Cinnamon grunting & fussing with something.

My sis was like,

“the fuck you doin Cinnamon?”

. . . and goes to pick her up. But then she sees that Cinnamon’s got her lil jaws around the neck of a California Kingsnake.

Now the snake was dead & wasn’t even venomous, but my sis doesn’t know this & is freaking. Shouting . . .

“NO, Cinnamon, NO NO! Drop it, NO, NO, NO!”

She steps on the snake’s tail, grabs Cinny & starts tugging her. Cinny’s gripping hard though, thinking this some rad type of tug-o-war with a rope made of meat. But her weak lil jaw’s don’t sync with her fuego heart. She loses grip & sis quick kicks the snake into the river.

And there’s my mala, right under the snake's body, both undulating in the current like a pair of dead destinies. . .



And here I will interrupt our hero named Pierce, & his slang drenched river of thought. I’m eager to offer my semi-omnipotent insights to this theme of destiny. Was that river, named Yuba, compelled by destiny to return, then reclaim the mala? I do not know . . . but it seems most sober & sane to assume that these exchanges were devoid of meaning; a conclusion I’m tempted to extend to the essences of every exchange within this orgy of matter & time. But, I admit, I can not know for certain.

My omnipotence applies only to the P≋░A≋░T≋░H≋░≋S . . . & the minds of there travelers. I’ve no knowledge of what, if anything, creates or compels them.

I know that this void of meaning would often, through the long ennui of his 20s, rest heavy upon Peirce. He would find himself undulating in a current of despair & bliss, losing touch with any meaning outside the smallest iota of time within which his ‘now’ occurred. At other times, that same meaninglessness would flood him with a euphoric sense of relief. It meant that ‘now’ was unchained. He could do anything . . . be anything.

These threads would warp & weft in him as an inspiring catharsis & arresting panic. Rivers held lessons, then emptiness, then lessons in their emptiness, round & round. A left & right motion necessary to keep his hula-hoop above infinite indifference & potential of a dark, pregnant Earth.

I know that the mala had come to a rest in the riverbed a bit downstream, buried slowly by pebbles & silt. It would decay into smaller & smaller particles, an entropy expedited by the corrosive power of water. Its path was to become the river itself.

I do not know if this path was its destiny.

I know the gold pan’s path did not begin 100 years ago. It was lost to the Yuba river by a less romantic prospector then imagined by Pierce. It was purchased in the early 1990s from the 𝘼𝙍𝙄𝙕𝙊𝙉𝘼 𝙃𝙄𝙆𝙀𝙍'𝙎 𝙎𝙃𝘼𝘾𝙆 by the father of a child named Aunders. Aunders, after seeing a young Ethan Hawk strike fortune in the film adaptation of Jack London’s, Whitefang, became momentarily enthralled with gold. The thought of every river glittering with potential treasure filled him with a thirst for riches & adventure. He acquired the gold pan without much hounding of his, usually frugal, father. To him, that $5.95 was an investment in a blooming spirit of American bootstrapping that, he felt, prophesized Aunders’s future financial success. A destiny that was uncertain to me at the time.

But Aunders’s impulse proved indicative of a less lauded, but more common bloom of the American spirt, the one sparkling in the heart of every speeding motorist blasting desert towards Las Vegas. The spirit quick thrills & easy money.

So, after his third effort on a family camping trip yielded zilch, Aunders had little regard for his pan. When Mom called for him to dry off & take his preferred back drivers-side seat in the family Ford, his mind was consumed with hyperpalatable visions of the dinner that awaited him at the 𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲 𝗣𝗶𝘇𝘇𝗮 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗼𝗿. His pan, balanced on the edge of a riverside boulder, slipped easily from awareness.

For a lark, let's imagine that the breeze that pushed that pan skittering from its perch was willed by destiny. Let’s imagine that the breeze’s father was killed by that gold pan in a fight-gone-bad. As it sank, that breeze felt the elation of a destiny fulfilled. But, too soon, where the fire of vengeance had burned, there was a cold void . . . wailing out a meaning.

When Pierce found the rusty remains of that pan, 30 years had passed, and I can now say for certain that Aunders was not destined for financial success. Aunders was dead. His impulse for quick thrills coaxed him into Army service. In 2002, seated in his preferred back drivers-side seat of a light armored Humvee, he was blown apart by roadside bomb. The bomb was part of a province wide retaliation for an Afghan wedding struck, a week prior, by a missile after a AC130 Attack Plane mistook the gathering for a Taliban jubilee.



If Aunders’s death is to be woven into any optimistic potential destiny, it might have been the 200 Cougar Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) armored vehicles rush ordered as a result of that particular deadly bombing. The MRAPs would go on to save thousands of US Army lives. Allowing them to take thousands of Afghan lives. Lives that were attempting to take their lives, or, at least looked like they might be considering it on the blurry displays of AC130 Attack Plane screen.

We have encountered another one of those undulations that would often grip Pierce with a despairing sense of awe. The intricate warp & weft of life & death. A binary so unfathomably intertwined into the fabric of Pierce’s own existence that, at times, each drawn breath felt to him as if it was sucked from the gasping lungs of some unseen desperate soul.

Willed by this notion, Peirce became a self-described minimalist & would spend several years as a vegan.

As a minimalist, Pierce was all too happy to gift Aunders’s pan to Summer. 5 years later, she still has it. It sits under her end table & holds, at any given time, four to seven cat toys. When her gaze chances on it (and she is in a reflective mood), she doesn’t think of Peirce, or of destinies, or of riches & adventure. She pictures the Yuba River that is, at this very moment, flowing. Flowing, to her comforting faith, just to flow.