14. The Context and the Breeding Ground

“It is increasingly apparent to psychotherapists that the normal state of consciousness in our culture is both the context and the breeding ground of mental disease.” —Alan Watts

In the morning, when the sun hit Jen rudely in the face, she did not recognize the strange, cold room around her. What was this shaky twin bed? It felt odd and flimsy under her body, and she could tell that no more than a foot of mattress and springs separated her from the empty space below. The wall across from her face was painted a strange, old-fashioned color, something halfway between lavender and light blue. She turned her head upward toward the source of the blinding morning light, squinting, and saw that it was entering the room through a small, dusty skylight overhead.

Turning her face away from the light, she began to panic, because not only did she not know what room this was, but she couldn’t quite recall who she was, what her job was, or who were her friends, or what she had been doing yesterday or for the last week, or month, or ever.

She sat up, causing the bed to bounce and buckle in the middle. She scanned the room desperately for a clock so that she would at least know what time it was, hoping that this information might remind her if she were supposed to be doing something right now. Should I be at work, she thought? Where do I work? She turned her head left and right, but didn’t see a clock anywhere.

Her eyes fell on a series of small photographs hanging on the wall across from the bed. A couple standing at the edge of a cliff, a beautiful sunset coloring the sky behind them. The same couple knee-deep in a river, wearing floppy hats. The couple sitting at a dinner table covered in beautiful silver serving urns of different sizes. Jen was sure that she recognized the couple, even though she didn’t seem to know their names. They looked so happy in their exotic settings, always with their arms around each other, beaming at the camera like they only had things to be happy about. She felt jealous of these people that she knew and did not know, so happy and adventurous and sure of themselves. And here she was, alone in a strange room, all alone, with no idea what she was supposed to be doing or who she was supposed to be.

Her gaze shifted from the photographs to the tall bookshelf next to them, looming over the bed. She leaned forward, until she could almost read the titles of the books just across from her face. One book had been laid carelessly across the tops of the others. “Diagnose Your Aura,” Jen read aloud. She knew the title, and she remembered last night, taking the test, putting the book back sloppily in disgust before falling into a restless sleep.

Now her memory came flooding back, jarred by the memory of the book, and of yesterday. She was in Michigan. In the house of Paula’s mother, the woman in the photographs. In a week, Becky and Paula would leave, and she would be all alone here, alone for an entire summer, maybe longer. This would be her bedroom, and she wouldn’t be going back to her other room, her other house, or anything else familiar and comforting. And worst of all, she thought glumly, looking back at the bookshelf, she had no aura.

She tried to remember why she had wanted to come here. What had made her think that she could take care of herself better in a place where she had no friends, knew nobody at all, where there was no yoga studio or library or anything she needed? She suddenly felt the strong desire to lie back down and huddle under the covers, to pull them up far over her head to keep out the light and the cold of morning.

These frightened thoughts of the future were not helping her get up and start her day, she decided; she needed to come up with some positive outlook. She tried to remember why she had wanted to come here so that she could view her situation with the same romantic perspective that had shaped her fantasies of Michigan back when she was in Los Angeles.

She sat up straighter, determined to be brave and face the morning. She crossed her legs in front of her and sat in a meditating position, preparing to think positive thoughts.

This would be a clean slate. She could start over here, and she could make her life the opposite of what it had been in LA. However spoiled she had been before, by fame, by luxury, by fashion and parties and all manner of other frivolous things, now she could redeem herself. She could be simple, and unknown, and plain.

She began to feel more hopeful, and even though she knew that it was a kind of desperate hope, not rugged but frail and contingent, the kind of hope that might break if you put your full weight on it at once, she had no choice but to hang on to it, carefully.

She began to make plans in her head, plans that were a life raft. She would find the library. A town with a university had to have a library, and if they didn’t, she would go to the library on campus. And there might even be yoga somewhere. Maybe a class at the college. She would find it, find her places here. In three months, she’d be so settled and happy that she wouldn’t ever want to go home. She would learn all kinds of new things, have a new, better perspective.

These were plans to keep her head just above water, just far enough to breathe. She imagined herself floating on the surface of a deep, swampy lake, face down, staring at the dark abyss below.

The lake! Jen suddenly remembered that she hadn’t seen it yet. Now would be the best time to first see it, before Becky and Paula woke up. She would be alone, fittingly, to represent her new life of solitude.

Jen rose from the bed, shivering, and bent over the open suitcase lying on the floor, rummaging through the neat piles of t-shirts and pants that Becky had folded for her until she found something warm to wear, her big red sweatshirt. She pulled it on over her pajamas and picked up her plastic flip-flops from the floor. Quietly, she opened the door to her room, listening for any signs of her housemates. But the house was quiet. She could hear breathing from the next room, the room in which Paula’s mother and her husband usually slept, where Becky and Paula were now sharing the bed.

Jen crept across the loft towards the stairs, holding her shoes under her arm, trying not to make noise as her bare feet hit the wood floor. She walked carefully down the staircase, holding onto the banister and stepping gingerly. Downstairs, she stopped in the kitchen. It was so chilly; it must be very early in the morning. Did she really want to go outside right now?

Through the kitchen window, she could see the sheen of something large and flat glinting in the sunlight. That would be the lake, and she did very much want to see it. She was shivering, though, even in the sweatshirt, and not quite ready to open the door to the yard.

What she needed, she decided, was some tea. She could go outside and sit and watch the lake in the early morning light, and drink her tea until she warmed up.

Rummaging through the cabinets, she found a mug and two flavors of tea: a giant box of plain black Lipton tea and a smaller box of fancy organic blended herbal tea with licorice and spearmint. She was about to choose the herbal tea out of habit; she had stopped drinking caffeine as part of her fast. But the bitterness of black tea sounded appealing, and she decided that some caffeine might be okay, this once, to help her through this first day. She heated her mug full of water in the microwave and dropped the teabag in. While she waited, she dropped her shoes to the floor and slid her feet inside. Then, wrapping the hot mug handle in a dishtowel, she opened the door to the back yard and stepped outside.

The morning smelled fresh and wet, and a bit swampy. The grass was damp as it brushed the sides of Jen’s feet. The yard had a picnic bench, and a small barbecue, and a few plastic chairs scattered around. And straight ahead, a ways down, several plastic chairs had been placed in a little sandy bank, and then there was the lake. Jen walked down towards it, the bottoms of her pajama pants getting heavy and wet. She walked through the grass until she reached the chairs. Then she stopped, and stood next to them, and stared at the lake, and drank her dark, bitter, steaming tea from the mug, wrapped in the kitchen towel. The tea tasted good, even without lemon, she thought. She drank tea every day, herbal tea at least, but she hadn’t tasted anything except lemon in months.

The lake was big and green, and lined all around with thick woods like those that surrounded the house. In the distance, far across the lake, balconies and roofs were visible jutting out of the woods, attached to houses that were mostly obscured by the trees. She could not see how far the water extended sideways; she would need to swim out and look someday. There were bushy reeds growing in the swampy water near her, but past those, the water was flat and clear, and glimmering in the morning sun.

Jen stood watching the water until all of her tea was gone, and even for a few minutes more, clutching the empty mug for the warmth it was still giving to her hands. It was very, very beautiful here, she decided.

As she walked back across the yard, she became curious about those houses on the other side of the lake. Who lived there, she wondered? And how far away were they? The distance seemed enormous, and yet those people were very likely some of her closest neighbors. She stopped and turned to look, squinting at the balcony of a funny grass-green house that was almost invisible amongst the trees. And as she looked, she saw something, small and dark, sitting, facing forward. She couldn’t quite make out its features. But she felt certain that it was a person, sitting on the balcony, staring back at her from across the lake.

When Becky and Paula woke up a couple of hours later, the first thing they wanted to do was go into town for some food and supplies, and to show Jen around the town a little.

Paula drove her mother’s SUV, which Jen would be borrowing, down the bumpy road back to North Middleton. “Let’s start at the food co-op for groceries,” Paula said, turning her head towards Jen, who was in the back seat again. The car jolted as the tire hit a pit in the road, and Paula turned her eyes back forward.

Becky groaned loudly at the impact and wrapped her hands around her stomach. “Good,” Becky said, “I’ll go anywhere with food.” She was wearing dark sunglasses and a baggy, shapeless sweatshirt. Her face looked pale and drawn. For the three weeks since their reconciliation, Becky had been looking sickly and tired almost every morning. Jen wondered if she was the one making Becky ill, by causing her so much stress over the Skipper situation, the broken rib, and the move. That must be it, Jen thought to herself, and she felt horrible.

Staring into the dense woods outside the car window, Jen contemplated the structure of her life, marveling that she should be in a position to cause another person so much aggravation simply by messing things up for herself. Becky has to live off of me like a parasite, Jen thought, feeling sickened. I need to set her free, she resolved. She wasn’t sure how to do it, but she would have a better idea when she returned to Los Angeles. After months of separation, it might happen naturally somehow, without Jen having to make any deliberate change at all.

“They’ve got plenty of food at the co-op, if you don’t mind that it’s all healthy,” Paula said, sounding as though healthy were a bad thing.

The co-op was on a side street near the university. As Jen watched out her window, she couldn’t imagine that a business could be located here. She saw an old apartment building, and then another, and then a series of run-down houses that she imagined were occupied by student renters. Every porch had an old sofa on it. Some yards had plastic lawn chairs, and a few were littered with beer bottles.

Then, interrupting the uniform row of houses, something different appeared: a strange, sparkling gem, a building so overflowing with ornate detail that Jen couldn’t take it all in visually as the car passed by. She was about to ask Paula what it was, but Paula spoke first.

“There it is,” said Paula, pulling into a small parking lot next to the building.

As they walked up, Jen got a better look at the building, which, with its low, flat design, seemed to be a converted garage. It was covered in a mosaic depiction of the solar system, with planets and meteors and spaceships of all colors, all whirling around a giant yellow sun, sparkling with bits of glass and broken mirror reflecting the light of the real sun high overhead. The yard was covered in sculptures of all sorts—animals, human figures, bird-feeders, rendered in clay, metal, and stone— intertwined with overgrown rose bushes and raspberry vines.

The sign above the door was a large piece of amateur art-welding. Twisted metal letters spelled out the name, “The People’s Food Co-op,” adorned with tin flowers and bordered with ragged strips of rebar.

Jen had assumed that things in Michigan would be more tame and old-fashioned than in Los Angeles, but she had never seen anything at all like this, ever, in her entire life.

“Ugly,” said Paula, sniffing at a carved wooden statue of a bear as they walked by it.

On the way in, they passed quite a few people: young mothers with babies in strollers, college students toting backpacks, stocky middle-aged men with long ponytails and sandals. None of them seemed to notice Jen. She was wearing the baseball cap and nonprescription eyeglasses that she often wore to go outside in Los Angeles, but there everyone stared at her anyway. Here, she had the strange and novel feeling that she could be anybody, any anonymous person, just like Becky and Paula. No one’s gaze stopped on her, no one turned abruptly to give her a second look as she walked by. It felt a little sad not to be recognized, but also exciting.

Paula wanted to get the grocery shopping over with, but Becky insisted that they visit the café first. “I need some food, and coffee,” she groaned. She had already eaten toast this morning, Jen thought; that was barely an hour ago. Jen wondered why Becky was so hungry, considering that she was getting less exercise than usual. She usually taught multiple yoga classes every day in addition to practicing on her own, but she had taken a couple of days off before the trip to help Jen pack and get her things in order.

Off to the side of the cash register was a cute corner by the window with tables and chairs and a little espresso cart. Paula and Jen ordered drinks and picked out pastries from the case next to the counter, while Becky stood in line at the register to pay. Then Paula led Jen to a small table beside the window.

“This is the best one,” Paula said, setting her coffee on the table and pulling out a chair for Jen to sit on.

They sat eating their pastries, a bran muffin with raisins for Jen and a cheese-filled Danish for Paula, and watched Becky waiting in line to pay for the food they were already eating. Becky was behind two people: a leathery-skinned middle-aged woman with long, stringy gray hair, reminiscent of Paula’s own dreads, and a skinny, smooth-faced young man with the long, overgrown beard of an elderly hillbilly.

“Look at these people,” Paula said with disgust. “I hate this store.”

Jen found this comment odd, considering that Paula’s careless fashion sensibilities fit in perfectly here. Paula’s disdain for North Middleton had been evident since the moment of their arrival, but her venom seemed the most concentrated here, amongst those who would seem to be her own people.

“This is a great place to be celibate,” Paula added, in a more cheerful tone, as though pointing out the bright side of a bad situation.

As Jen watched the line of unkempt, scrawny people waiting to buy their organic greens and gluten-free bread, she couldn’t help but agree with Paula. Will these be the people I meet here, she wondered? She couldn’t imagine befriending these inscrutable bohemians, with their practical clothing and blank, over-sunned faces.

Becky was at the front of the line, now. Jen watched her step up to the counter, across from the cashier, who was facing Jen. She saw his arm muscles flex under his t-shirt as he punched numbers into the register. Becky said something to him, presumably about the pastries and coffee that she was purchasing for her friends, because he turned his head to look directly at Jen and Paula. His gaze met Jen’s, and she noticed his eyes—bright blue, a striking contrast to his dark, shaggy hair.

He stared at Jen for a moment, smiling slightly. She smiled back, a similarly small, shy smile.

“Oh, finally one of them recognizes you,” said Paula. “People here are so clueless. They don’t see anything they don’t expect to see.”

Yes, he recognized me, thought Jen, with surprise, as though this didn’t happen to her every day. That’s why he smiled. She turned her head away from the cashier and nodded in agreement at Paula.

But secretly, she didn’t think that this was the reason he smiled at all. Secretly, with a certainty that could only be an indication that this was fate, she knew right away that this man would be her new friend.

Chapter 15:
http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2008/11/15-then-man-dreaming.html