Everyday life is often seen as something banal, but also found in everyday life, along with the banal, are the most astonishing, terrifying, and bizarre, and nothing that seems far from everyday life takes place apart from everyday life. And what’s banal is not everyday life itself but certain things found in everyday life. In everyday life there are moments that captivate you, because the moment you step into life’s most ambiguous, enigmatic territory called everyday life you feel a pleasant, unexpected surprise. And such surprises are everywhere, waiting for you at home, in an alley around your house, around the corner on a street, a forest path, or even in an unfamiliar place you travel.
Someone could, while taking a walk near his home, see a sign that says “National Boiler Association” on the first floor of a building in a residential area he doesn’t normally visit and be touched by it in a strange way, although he would have ordinarily passed it by without second thought. He could also think that the place, which according to the sign, was headquarters to dealers who were probably responsible for household boilers nationwide, looked too small to be the office of National Boiler Association, but the place, home to an association of people whose job it was to make hot water flow from boilers in homes nationwide and let you take hot showers, and sleep in a warm room even in winter, could seem even more mysterious than a secret political or religious society, or he could look at the sign and think that the National Boiler Association could be a social gathering of people who did something that had nothing to do with boilers, or a ghost organization that was involved in something suspicious.
Or he could come across somewhere in the city he lived in an office called Teddy Bear Association, but seeing that it was locked, to his disappointment—the place could look shut down already, with only the sign remaining—he could stand before the office for a long time, and suddenly recall the touching documentary film by Andrzej Wajda, the Polish director, on teddy bears, and think that although he really hated being touched by touching things in general, he liked how the film touched him. And he could think that if he hadn’t seen the film about teddy bears that had been with people or people who had been with teddy bears, which, if he remembered correctly, although he couldn’t be sure because it had been long since he saw it, showed the process in which an artist in Canada established a teddy bear museum and collected teddy bears from around the world, and showed faded photographs with teddy bears standing side by side with people nearly everywhere in the world, in a living room, on a beach, on a battlefield, in a spaceship, sharing their joys and sorrows, and showed Hitler in the last scene, looking quite impressive, surrounded by teddy bears, he could have passed by the office called Teddy Bear Association with indifference.
He could also go on a walk around the house he lived in, and see a white mongrel with a tattooed unibrow standing in front of a shop and smile, thinking that the dog, which looked stupid to begin with, looked even stupider because of the tattoo, although there was no telling why its owner had given it the tattoo, and laugh for a change, looking at the dog, which looked like the most dejected dog in the world, thinking that the dog, of course, hadn’t given itself the tattoo, so the owner must have given it the tattoo, perhaps while getting a tattoo himself so that he could always be sure that the dog was his, although there was no knowing what he was thinking. And having a sudden flash of thought at that moment, that, for instance, Baudelaire went around wearing lipstick, he could name the dog Baudelaire, and think that a tattooed eyebrow would have better suited Baudelaire the poet than Baudelaire the dog, and that if Baudelaire the poet had a tattooed eyebrow, he would have written a poem about it as well.
And he could take a walk on a hill somewhere, and find a swivel chair that someone had thrown away in the bushes for some reason, intact but for one missing wheel, and go there from time to time and sit on it, turning himself lightly, and think about the many things that had happened to him in his life, or think about his life in which nearly nothing, you could say, had happened, and pass many pleasant afternoon hours, and remember that once, while he was on an island in the Philippines and sitting in a metal chair on the beach—the chair looked as if it were in use by someone, not abandoned—he saw a fisherman setting out in the evening on his boat with a net, and saw the cross etched on his bare back, thanks to which he was able to wash away the memory of a bad dream he’d had the night before, in which his dead father appeared carrying in one hand his other hand, amputated from the wrist, like a fish, and saying that he had fished it out of some pond—as if he had caught a carp or something—made the strange demand that he decide which of the single hand he was holding in his hand he would have, at which moment he felt an urge to write something solely about a chair, and lie on the grass and feel the world unfolding beneath him, an enormous underground world in which his father, too, lay, and imagine being slowly sucked into the world.
And if there were some sunflowers on the hill that someone had planted, he could fall asleep for a little while under the sunflowers, having gone to see them on purpose in order to sleep under them when they were in blossom, and wake up and for a moment in a dazed state, and, not knowing where he was, recall how once he felt that my existence was unreal, so unreal that he felt as if his brain were in a drawer somewhere in his house, and the rest of his body in the wardrobe, or as if his entire body were hanging on the upper branches of a tall tree nearby, or he could see a yellow sunflower with a short stem right above his head and be overwhelmed with a certain kind of pure joy.
And days would continue, days on which he could see that the gloom that brought him pleasure at times, but not this time, was expanding its range within himself, and feel nearly overwhelmed because of the gloom, and feel so gloomy that he couldn’t face myself, and couldn’t look at his own face that looked so sullen that it embarrassed him, and thus could stand against the gloom as if making a stand against an oppressive and brutal system but to no avail, and so, instead of standing against the gloom, he could try harder to be gloomy, or think that he could meet someone and spend some time in a natural way in order to dispel the gloom, but then think that he couldn’t stand to have my feelings of uneasiness beneath his façade of naturalness pass on in their entirety to the other person, and that he’d have a hard time putting up with the unpleasantness he inevitably felt when he was with people, and think that perhaps he had no friends at all but could be satisfied with the fact, and, one day, he could get up the courage to go out and go to a street crowed with people, and be startled by someone suddenly shouting in a loud voice behind him and flee from the spot, and with a Christian fundamentalist standing with a large cross saying naïve and nasty and foolish things that screech in his ears but don’t touch his heart, vividly demonstrating how terrifying blind faith is, saying that you’ll fall into hellfire if you don’t receive Jesus, that you should repent before it’s too late, he could feel awkward and uncomfortable even though the Christian wasn’t yelling at him, and feel sufficiently rebuked even though he had no reason at all to be rebuked, and feel somewhat grateful to him, even, but because there was nothing he could do about it, he could punish him by glaring at him, and come home feeling repentant, at any rate, and deeply regret his first day out in a while and stay cooped up at home.
And he could see a strange scene on television in which goats on a farm somewhere in the U.S. pass out at the slightest provocation, for instance, the sound of clapping or the sight of an open umbrella, and think that he could perhaps see why they did so but couldn’t in the end, and think of the animals he’d seen doing incredible things, thus recalling the time he went to a volcanic island, where he saw a roe deer lying face down near a little crater surrounded by a thick forest, which had collected water and turned into a swamp, and a crow sitting on its rump pecking and plucking its hair, and smile, thinking that the act looked quite erotic. And the crow was plucking the roe deer’s hair to use it in building its nest—the roe deer’s hair probably came in handy in building the crow’s nest—and the roe deer staye
d still for a moment, not wanting to budge at that moment, it seemed, even while having its hair plucked, but in the end it got to its feet, as if to say that although it was all right for the crow to take a few strands of its hair without giving anything in return, it couldn’t let all its hair be plucked by the crow, and looking more dejected than offended, went off someplace else, after which he could recall how happy he’d felt to have had the good fortune to witness the little drama in the forest next to the crater, which perhaps took place between the roe deer and the crow on a daily basis.
And on occasion, he could think of animals that do astonishing things humans can’t understand, of which he knew quite a few, such as a cow that chewed and swallowed chickens whole, a water buffalo whose hobby it was to blow gusts of air into plastic bags, a badger that was found lying unconscious in the middle of a road, dead drunk after eating cherries that were ripe to the point of fermentation, and a parrot with a wounded heart that stayed with its head stuck between watermelons in a fruit shop, and think that perhaps by doing such things, they were, with joy and fury and despair, expressing in a difficult way the difficulty, and the joy and fury and despair, of living their daily lives as animals.
Or he could recall how, when he came outside after having lunch in a restaurant on a tropical island he visited, a cheeky and pathetic looking male monkey, which was tied to a tree in a corner of the shabby garden, suddenly lifted its colorful skirt and shyly, but at the same time brazenly, exposed its erect red penis as if to flaunt it. Thus he could detect something nasty, cheap, sly, and mean, almost to the point of evil, in the monkey, and although he wasn’t sure if such traits were something inherent in the monkey or gained through experience while living with people, and didn’t know why it did what it did, though perhaps for sexual reasons, he could think that it didn’t seem like sexual harassment that could take place between humans and animals, or think that the monkey was perhaps openly showing its pleasure, which it couldn’t bear not to show, or again, openly showing its displeasure, and if so, the act could have been an expression of good or ill feeling toward female monkeys, but of contempt or hostility toward humans. Or he could wonder if the monkey had been trained by its master to startle, offend, or please a stranger by doing so, or to do so whether the person was a stranger or not—in that case, it was up to the person to be startled, offended, or pleased, and not something for the monkey to be concerned about—or if the monkey wanted to show off its penis to someone, thinking it had nothing but its penis to show off, and so it couldn’t help but show off its penis, if nothing else, and he could think about the reason why the monkey had, as if it were something it did all the time, or at least without showing any signs of surprise, and without showing any signs of wanting to surprise the person, so nonchalantly taken out its penis, the size of which couldn’t be determined as immoderately small or large, or moderately large or small, or just right in proportion to its small body.
And he could return from the trip, and think that the monkey left a deeper impression on him than anything else he’d experienced on the trip, and spend some time thinking about it. So the monkey I encountered looked at me with a quite desperate look on its face, as if what it had just shown me was nothing compared to what it could show me, as if it were going to show me something more amazing, as if to see if I was ready for it, and so I couldn’t help but ask, What are you so desperate for? and watched what it did with my hands on my waist, because the monkey seemed too outrageous, and I thought of the word conduct, and thought for a moment about the conduct of the monkey that had made me think of the word, and yet felt great admiration for what it had done, giving no heed to humans, or looking down on humans, and felt delighted, and although I didn’t know what it was about to do, I thought about what there was I could do to help, to give some small aid in what it was about to do, but the monkey did nothing more, just blinked as if to say that although it didn’t know how I felt about what it did, it knew very well how it felt, and I didn’t feel the slightest honor at the monkey’s inclusion of me in its sexual conduct, and could not respond favorably to its effort to win my heart, for the effort was too explicit, without any subtlety, so I didn’t show much of a reaction and the monkey looked as if it regretted having lifted its skirt and exposing its genitals, which was understandable because it hadn’t gotten anything out of me, and its effort had produced no results, but the moment I was about to leave the spot, thinking there was nothing more the monkey would do that was worth watching, it took its penis in its paw and shook it, not pretending to masturbate but actually masturbating, and I watched as if in surprise or as if there were nothing surprising about it, not having known for sure if animals other than humans masturbated, and although I didn’t know if perhaps the monkey’s master, thinking he could do anything for his beloved monkey, thought about what he could do and came up with the idea of teaching the monkey how to masturbate, and taught it how to masturbate, or if monkeys masturbated on their own, and although I felt that the little monkey touching its little genitals seemed somewhat brazen yet boring, I realized once again that humans and animals and everything in the world coexisted in a strange way, and didn’t hide my joy at the realization, but the monkey, for some reason, made a face and didn’t hide its uneasiness, and when I tried to pull its skirt back down, it became extremely angry and ran wildly around the tree, and ended up being bound up tight by its leash, and I wanted to give the monkey a bit of a hard time, something it deserved, but I wasn’t sure what to do, and at that moment the monkey’s master appeared, looking angry even though he didn’t know what had taken place, and he could sneak off, thinking that he usually chose to lose courage in the face of someone angry, and think that one time long ago, he had the thought that there was something inherently funny about sexual things.
Vaseline Buddha Page 6