by Mark Tiro
“—I’m fine, thank you for asking,” she gruffly interrupted. “Sorry about the smell. It was… an accident. Anyway, listen, I just read our psych—our doctor’s—report. I think it’s going to help you.”
“Do you? How do you think it will help me?” he asked softly.
Maya started to explain the legal theories, the interplay between psychological states and elements and defenses. About halfway through, she felt like she was sitting outside herself, watching with disinterest as she droned on. At some point, Maya became aware that she hadn’t answered his question in the slightest. This realization was enough to make her—finally—stop talking.
David looked Maya in the eyes. The anguish she had seen written on his face when they first met was gone now. She thought she could just make out the “giant, overwhelming nothingness” Roger had described.
“Well, David, I think we can have the doctor testify. To show you had no malice. To establish that you weren’t trying to kill yourself, and also that you weren’t even driving recklessly at all. That it really was just an accident.”
He just looked at her, and repeated his question, slowly. Quietly. “And how do you think this will help me?”
“Well I think we can beat the murder charges. Maybe get you an involuntary manslaughter, maybe even a misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter if everything breaks just the right way. You might even get probation—”
“And that will help me?”
“Well, you’ll get to go home, to not spend the rest of your life in…” she made an arcing motion 180 degrees around, “…in here.”
Maya felt herself getting angry at him. He’s smart enough. Why does he keep asking the same childish question? she wondered silently.
“Maya?”
“What David? What!”
“It’s okay. None of this…” he said, making the same arcing motion as she had just made, “…none of this is real.”
If he does this in trial, we’re screwed, Maya thought.
“I know you started with this business before. But you don’t really believe that, right? I mean, please David.”
“When I was little, maybe 9 or 10,” he started, “my parents took me to one of those fairs. You know the kind with fried everything, and carnival rides. Have you ever been to one?”
“Sure, the church down the street from where I grew up used to have one every fall. A fundraiser, I think. We would beg our parents to take us. Probably half bankrupted them. Is that what you mean?”
“Probably the same thing, more or less. Anyway, there’s that game where they give you a choice if you win, a goldfish, a stuffed animal or these, well—trinkets. One year I won. I think the rule is that every kid wins if your parents spend enough money, right? Anyway, no goldfish—my mom vetoed that idea. So instead, the carnival man pulled a rose off the wall for me.”
“A rose? That’s fabulous David.”
“It wasn’t a real rose though,” he went on. “It was a little round piece of glass with a rose on it that moved and changed with the light. It was this 3D rose on this piece of glass, and I guess you were supposed to wear it as a necklace. I think in the end I gave it to my little sister.”
“You mean a hologram David?”
“Well, before he gave it to me, the carnival man pulled it out and asked me if I knew what it was. I said, ‘of course sir—everyone knows that’s a rose.’”
She waited, hoping he’d actually get to the point.
“You’re right Maya. It was a hologram. Of a rose. And the man said to me, ‘This rose is special.’ Well, you know how children love anything that’s special. Anyway, he went and explained to me why.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. Why was your rose special?”
“Do you know what would happen Maya if you took that rose—that hologram of a rose—and shattered the glass into pieces? What do you think would be left?”
“Broken dreams?” she answered.
“Broken dreams—yes!” David laughed. “When you break the hologram, every peace of broken glass—every shard—still contains the entire rose. Which is to say, all the information that makes up the rose. Even after it’s been shattered—separated—into a whole bunch of pieces, each fragment of the hologram will still have the complete rose encoded within it.”
“But there must be some change, right?” she asked.
“It just goes out of phase. It gets more fuzzy and less clear, the more fragments you have. But from each one, you still have the entire image. Whether it’s shattered into a million little fragments, or put together—either way, the one rose is still there.”
“David, look, even if that’s true—and I’ll look it up later, I had to leave my phone in my car—what’s that got to do with anything?”
“Everything you see here,” he gestured, making the arcing motion again, but in abbreviated form now. “All this, the world, me, you—all of it, everything—is just an apparently-shattered piece of the hologram.”
“Huh?” she asked. “You mean me and you and everything—we’re all just fragments of…” Her voice trailed off. She had started to ask him the question, but didn’t know how to finish it.
“Yes,” he answered. “Seemingly separated thoughts. Projections of one mind. We all believe we’re separate, unique, distinct… The reality, though, is quite different. You, me, the sheriffs, the prosecutor—all of us… We all share both the same right-minded and the same wrong-minded thought systems. At our core, we are the same. Brothers really… projections of one mind. We only believe we are separated, but that mistaken belief has not changed reality one bit. The reality is that we are all unchanged, unified, perfect… Perfect love, despite appearances to the contrary. And no matter how terrible this dream of separation, in reality it is just that—a dream.”
“And when we wake up,” she started slowly, “we will just be laying there, in bed so to speak? Same as before this dream?”
“Just as we always are, just as we always have been and always will be. Reality—perfect love—it’s all formless, changeless, eternal. And yet, it dances and extends and overflows and bursts with joy and peace, at your will.”
“Is that enlightenment? Like Buddha, or Jesus?” she asked.
“Maharashi too. There are many, many more. Some you’ve heard of, most you haven’t. Don’t get hung up on that. In reality, none of us is any different than any one else here, except in time. And time doesn’t actually exist, so…” He held off finishing the thought. Maya sat quietly, absorbed in silence for quite some time, before she finally turned back towards David.
“I’ve always thought we’re all just the evolutionary byproduct of some primordial soup,” she said, breaking the silence at last.
“Evolutionary? Of course not. Nothing happens by chance. Or by random evolutionary mutations. That would be just as silly as there being a God who created the world. Both notions are equally ridiculous. And equally impossible,” he said.
“So then, there’s no hell, right? I can do whatever I want?” she said.
“Of course you can do whatever you want. There’s no hell. This—” he paused, motioning around.
Ironic, Maya thought—there’s that same damned arcing motion again….
“This is hell.”
“Jail? I knew it!” she exclaimed.
“No! That’s not what I’m talking about. Jail here is no different really than any other place in the world. It’s all equally unreal. Everything you see here. None of it’s real, but all of it covers up reality. That’s the tragedy of it. That’s hell. Jail is just another word for what we all inevitably do when we repress—when we push down and forget. Projection inevitably follows. And then we go hide in our own projection, attacking and believing we’re attacked. All the while—”
“Believing it’s real,” she finished his sentence. “When it’s really just a dream? So when I get mad at other people, which might, hypothetically happen from time to time,” she smiled, “is that what makes it real to me David?”
<
br /> “Congratulations. You hit on the secret keeping the whole illusion alive. Withdraw your belief in it, of course, and—”
“Poof! It’s gone!” she said.
“Poof, it’s gone.”
“That sounds okay,” she paused. “I guess.”
“It can be helpful, from time to time, to ask yourself, ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ Ask yourself that whenever you’re worried about anything. It’s what I do when I want to see things in a different light. Ask yourself that in most any situation and you’ll probably feel better straight away.”
“Feel better? By asking myself ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ I’ll tell you what’s the worst that could happen David. I could die.” She looked at him somewhat incredulously. “A terrible, gruesome, painful death—that’s the worst that could happen!”
“See Maya,” he smiled. “When you put it that way, it doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?”
“Aaarggh!” she thought. She sat silently, and even managed a brief smile. It occurred to her that she was coming to trust him. She pondered that a moment, and concluded that she had no clue why.
“This is hell,” he went on. “It doesn’t get any worse. It’s only up from here.”
“This world is hell?” she asked.
“Not the world. The world is actually nothing. No more than a blip. It doesn’t exist apart from the thought which caused it. This wrong-minded, ego thought system that’s the cause of the whole projection, the world and everyone and everything in it—that’s hell. The good news is that you just change your mind, the thought from which it’s projected, and the whole thing will just disappear into the nothingness from which it came.”
“Oh, well that sounds easy,” she said, making no effort to hide her sarcasm. “Just change my mind and I can change the world? Right. I change my mind all the time, and it doesn’t undo anything! Changing my mind couldn’t even undo my to-do list.”
“It’s not ‘change your mind in order to change the world’; it’s ‘change your mind and the world will disappear’,” he paused. “In any event, when we think about changing our mind here, we’re not really dealing with our real mind. That runs much deeper. It’s beneath even the thoughts causing the projection itself. In order to change your mind, to make the world disappear—to wake up from the dream of what really is the closest thing there is to hell—you have to be willing to look at your unconscious mind. This is the source of the projection.”
“How can I look at my unconscious mind? Doesn’t ‘unconscious’ mean, by definition, that you can’t see it?”
“You’re absolutely right. You can’t see what you’ve forgotten and repressed. It’s unconscious now. It would be lost to you, but for your projections. What you can do is look at what your unconscious mind projects out. These you can see. That is enough. Just be willing to look. Without judgment, just look.” He stopped for a minute as she considered his words, before he went on.
“It’s no different than the rose we were talking about. Or a drop of water in the ocean. Think of a drop of water that splashes up an instant from a wave in the middle of the ocean. Does that drop of water believe that it’s all alone? That it lives its life separate and apart from the entire ocean? That would be ridiculous, right?”
“So you’re saying my whole life is taking place in just the instant the drop of water splashes up from a wave, and it will be over as soon as it falls back into the ocean?”
“Of course not Maya. That’s not your lifespan. That’s the lifespan of the universe itself. The world, the universe, everything. Space and time itself. It’s all just this blip, this instant.”
“Wait, you’re going to tell me time isn’t real either?”
“Time isn’t real either. You’re pretty sharp. For a lawyer I mean. I think I’m getting every penny’s worth of your legal services.”
“I’m a Public Defender—you’re not paying a thing for this. And yes. You are getting—”
“Every penny’s worth. Just like I said!”
“Watch it!” she said. They both laughed, breaking the tension. She decided that now was as good a time as any to take a break. Getting up from her chair, Maya left her file in place. “I’ll be back in a few minutes David. I want to go out and make some calls. Oh, and use the bathroom too. Not necessarily in that order.” They both smiled. “My cellphone’s out in my car. The sheriffs won’t let us have any cellphones in here anymore. Not since the FBI smuggled one in with an informant and got video of sheriffs beating inmates up, and then charging them with ‘resisting’.”
“So the sheriffs decided that the solution was to ban cellphones in the jail? Not, maybe, to stop beating up inmates and then lying about it?”
“Must be the pink rhinoceros in the room,” she said dryly. They both laughed at the absurdity. At that, Maya turned around and walked out towards the visitor’s lobby.
23
When Maya got out to her car, and picked up her phone, she saw that she’d missed two calls from Michelle. Figuring it might just be quicker than texting, Maya clicked on her missed calls, tapped on Michelle’s name and broke her own rule. She called her back.
“So out of character for you Maya!” Michelle laughed.
“Ha! Funny. What’s up? I’m at jail, so no cellphone… You called?”
“No. Or maybe. Did I call you really? Sorry about that. I probably just booty-dialed you by accident.”
“Butt-dialed, you mean?” Maya asked, smiling into the phone.
“Girl, it’s Friday and we’re going out after work, aren’t we? Anyway, what’s wrong with a little booty workout. Girl’s gotta stay in shape, no?”
They both laughed. “I don’t think ‘booty’ dialing really constitutes exercise,” Maya said. “Although, maybe if you do it together with beer curls…”
“I think Grace is going to come with us tonight too. Does that work for you Maya?”
“Of course it does! That’s perfect. I’ll be down here at the jail a little longer, and then I’m heading back to the office. Murder client. The one with the little girl and the car accident. Michelle, can I just tell you?”
“Sure. What?”
“I have never had a client like this. I mean, I just spent all this time talking about reality and also…” she hesitated. “Well, I’m not sure exactly. I had him shrunk but, well—I just don’t know.” Maya tried to describe her morning visit with David, but she found herself at a loss for words.
“So why don’t you just declare a doubt on him then? You won’t even have to go back in there to see him again. Go into court and tell the judge he’s not competent to stand trial. Ship him off to the Mental Health Court and let them deal with him.”
“No!” Maya exclaimed.
“What? Why not?” Michelle interrupted. “By the time he gets out of the psych hospital, they’ll force him to take meds and he’ll be good to go. Hell, you’ll probably be transferred by then anyway, and he’ll be someone else’s problem. You’ll never have to even see him again.”
“You don’t understand, Michelle. It’s not like that. He’s not a ‘problem.’ I…” she lingered, searching for the right words. “I mean, he’s not crazy. It’s just… listen, I’m going back in now, to finish up talking with him. I’ll see you back in the office.” With that, Maya hung up, put her phone back in her car, and headed back towards the jail door.
24
“I was thinking David,” Maya started, once she had sat down again in the visiting room, “I don’t really think everything is okay. I see bad things happen all the time. Someone cracks someone else over the head with a pipe, and leaves them with permanent brain damage. Then my clients get arrested. Sometimes they did it, sometimes they had nothing to do with it. But they get locked up either way. Children grow up without parents. A lot of horrendous things happen everyday. You know, there was this kid I grew up with… I got into college, but his family couldn’t pay for college, so he joined to the army to pay for it, and well…”
Her voice trailed off, suddenly sad. “He never came back. Not alive.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And you David? What about your daughter? How can you sit here, talking about life and roses—unless you really are insane? You know she’s not coming back. I saw the pictures of you and her on Facebook. I know how much you loved her. So how can you sit here, telling me that everything is okay? It’s not okay, and you shouldn’t be okay. She’s dead, for God’s sake, you killed her with your stupid fucking ‘driving meditation.’ You killed her David. Now stop it.”
“Maya?”
“What?” she barked at him, as close to out of control as she ever got. She had brushed off what Michelle had said. Maya had been angry at her on the phone, but had tried her best to stay polite. Maya wondered now, Why am I so angry at him? Why can I not just, for once, be polite?
Maya considered this a while. She didn’t look at David, though. Not right away. When she did, she saw only calm, pure defenselessness.
That’s the moment something in her broke down.
Crying. Maya broke down crying. Images flooded her mind. My bastard-ass brother. Tom, you tried to fucking rape me! And you couldn’t even finish the job! You impotent fucking bastard. Goddamn it, you son of a bitch, I was a little girl. You took that from me. You made me hard. You did this! You made me who I am. But I am strong because of you too. I am strong, and you will never touch me again.
“That year, when I was a girl, before Tom tried to…” her voice trailed off. “Anyway, dad used to read to me. I got all A’s one year on my report card—all A’s and one B. And you know what my mom told me? Do you know what she told me David?”
“‘All I see is a B’,” David ventured. “Is that what she told you?”
“Yes—that’s exactly what she—” Maya stopped abruptly. “Wait. How did you know? How did you know she said that?”
Maya looked at him, tears streaked down her cheeks but with her eyes wide open.