Leave Society

by Tao Lin

  He’d been trying to decelerate since college—working low-level jobs in libraries and restaurants, reading poetry and plotless novels and ancient philosophy, training himself to be ambitious in Dao, in gratitude and stability and humility, instead of power and influence—and again after the regressive drug phase, becoming a reading-and-drawing hermit, but maybe he needed to go much slower. Get finally out of NYC and be alone in nature or a small town. Wean off caffeine, cannabis, and other drugs. Have no phone. Learn to meditate. He’d never been able to meditate for more than five days in a row. These thoughts sped through him, as they sometimes did, too quick and fragmented to not feel mostly confusing and worrisome.

  He could feel his notes and novel pushing him to do things, generate novelty. They were meant to help him, but they often just bewildered and distressed him. He didn’t know yet that it would be the notes-assisted editing of the novel in 2019 and 2020 that would finally unambiguously help. Everything prior was preparation, he’d realize in fall 2019, for the lesson-like experience of repeatedly reading and revising a prose model of his life from 2013 to 2018—studying and shaping the story; researching, writing, and weaving in the self-targeted spells of the larger-perspective passages; realizing Kay’s preference for slowness was complementary and inspirational and naturalistic.

  Life explored with leisurely meticulousness. It advanced over hundreds of millennia by evolving new forms through survivable destruction—impacts, eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, cosmic radiation—from its inorganic, ancestral substratum. Wherever it went, it settled. Reaching land, it stayed in water, interconnecting and layering itself, evolving flying fish and aquatic birds. It was prudent and farsighted. When it seemed to have stalled at the stratosphere with high-flying vultures, it had already, long ago, besides probably having sent spores and microbes through the galaxy, evolved warm-bloodedness, starting a 260-million-year, forked path to outer space and an unanticipated domain called the imagination.

  Life seemed to want to pass gently through the star-powered portals of planets into immateriality, while dominator culture, which belittled and suppressed the imagination, seemed to want to rush from star to star, destroying and leaving planets as fast as possible—inventing war and corporations and pesticides, exhuming rare metals into weapons and electronics, sending star-blocking satellites into orbit with mercury-raining rockets. On the first day of 2020, Wikipedia’s page for phytoncide was 519 words; Old Europe, 1,760 words; imagination, 3,365; turmeric, 3,574; vitamin K2, 4,187; Çatalhöyük, 4,250; forest, 6,849; Xanax, 7,529; Disney World, 8,424; statin, 11,115; nuclear weapon, 11,520; glyphosate, 16,837; CIA, 20,893; Apple Inc., 33,535.

  * * *

  —

  “Can’t stop thinking about her,” typed Li on Thursday afternoon. “I’m excited,” he typed Friday night. “I’m going to Kay’s in ten minutes. This will be our first meeting as more than friends. Feels strange because we’ve been friends so long. Part of me still views her as a friend. Then I remember we kissed.”

  In 3A, Li told Kay about his realization that he was ready for a relationship. He said it seemed sudden and rash but had been gradual, then sudden. She said she’d oscillated between viewing Li as a friend and viewing him as possibly more.

  In Bellevue South Park, Kay said she’d been blushing for half an hour. Li said he hadn’t noticed. He apologized for belligerently promoting fish liver oil, and she confirmed he’d been a bit pushy.

  Back in 3A, they kissed and removed their clothing and gave each other oral sex. Kay asked if they were going to “do it.” Li said he didn’t feel like it anymore. He said it wasn’t because of her.

  They sat on the floor and lit candles. Li said he liked that Kay didn’t wear makeup. She said she liked to keep it simple. They praised the gradualness of their relationship—a season of emails, years of sparse interaction, months of increasing intimacy.

  They listened to Beethoven’s seventeenth piano sonata, and Li said he didn’t like most male pianists because he felt like they were hitting the piano. Kay said Martha Argerich did that.

  Li said Argerich played fast, not loud, that he liked Argerich and Glenn Gould because they played fast but not loud. Kay said Gould also played slowly, and Li agreed.

  He said he’d recorded when he told her about the Hutchison Effect forty days earlier, on August 12, in Stuyvesant Square Park. He played the recording, felt self-conscious, stopped it, played a recording of his parents, and stopped it.

  * * *

  —

  The next night, Kay invited Li over to smoke one cigarette. She had a headache and a sore throat. Li brought peppermint oil and cannabis balm—a gift from Kathleen—which he rubbed on Kay’s temples.

  On her fire escape, overlooking 29th Street, they smoked cigarettes rolled from organic tobacco. Li had told her that non-organic tobacco contained glyphosate, radioactive atoms, arsenic, and other toxins.

  Inside, Li asked if he should leave. Kay said he could stay for ten more minutes. They decided to see Martha Argerich at Carnegie Hall in four weeks, and Kay bought tickets online.

  “It’s been ten minutes,” said Li. Instead of parting, they read a children’s book in which a horse asks a veil of light why he is a horse, and the light says, “Because we needed another horse,” then smoked hash and walked two blocks to a movie theater, where they tried virtual reality goggles.

  Back in Kay’s room, kissing naked on her bed, Li stopped and said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He stressed it wasn’t because of her—he’d only had sex on alcohol and/or pills since 2010 and had been celibate for forty-nine months.

  Kay said after the previous night she’d thought they’d never speak again, which she’d focused on accepting. Li said he’d had fun the previous night. He said the last person he’d kissed was actually his ex-girlfriend, four months before the prostitute, whom he’d realized he hadn’t kissed.

  In a 10:20 p.m. movie, they smiled at each other incredulously during the previews. Walking home, they were energetic and chatty. Li said he normally slept on the floor but would try Kay’s bed. He lay awake for around two hours, then returned to 4K. It was 3:24 a.m. They’d spent nine hours together.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, Li typed, “Feel closer to Kay today than any day so far.” At night, Kay texted saying she was home from visiting her mom, whom she visited on Sundays. She asked if Li wanted to get his glasses, which were in her room, or if she should bring them.

  Li asked if she wanted to hang out.

  “I do. Maybe just for a little bit?”

  Li went to her room at 7:15 p.m. They decided to part at 8:30, set an alarm for 8:30, and had sex twice. Kay said while biking home from the Upper West Side, where her mom lived, she’d thought that she wouldn’t see Li until Friday. She’d also thought she wouldn’t plan anything, and that Li had been obsessed with the Hutchison Effect but then had seemed to lose interest. What if that happened with her?

  Li said he’d learned of Hutchison the previous month, but had known Kay for four years, and that he was still interested in Hutchison but had gotten more interested in glyphosate recently because it directly affected his body. He’d learned from MIT researcher Stephanie Seneff that glyphosate was embedded in his collagen, receptors, and other proteins—in his eyes, hands, face, brain, and heart—because life mistook the herbicide for glycine when building proteins.

  His ongoing, deepening realization that he was very damaged compared to his ancestors from centuries, millennia, and especially tens of millennia ago was a reliable source of encouragement: even with all the damage, there were times of startling clarity and poignant mystery, moments to weeks of serenity, harmony, and happiness.

  Kay said it would be okay if Li lost interest in her. They listened to Glenn Gould’s extremely fast, 1955 recording of Bach’s thirty-variation Goldberg Variations. Kay’s mom, who owned
a piano, had gotten Kay the sheet music, which Kay felt was surprisingly difficult due to its rhythm. The 8:30 alarm went off.

  The next night, they decided to meet from 7:30 to 9 p.m., a variation of the previous night. In 3A, Kay asked Li to teach her a stretch. They did “dry swimming.”

  They went to Li’s fire escape, where they looked at a green-lit Empire State Building and considered what had transpired since it was red, six days earlier.

  Kay asked Li where in America seemed to him like a good place to live. Li said Hawaii. Kay agreed and said her friend Diane’s brother lived in Kauai, where he earned money by running a rental.

  One of the trees by the fire escape had the Yoshida Effect, with a bifurcating trunk. Kay said she’d told her brother about the effect, and he’d said, “Isn’t that just a normal feature of trees?” Li said the Yoshida Effect was as important to him as the Hutchison Effect, or more. “I like variation #2 a lot,” Kay texted after they parted.

  The next night, in variation #3, they ate a cheese-avocado omelet, delayed parting thrice, and spent three hours together. Li learned Kay had all thirty-two of her teeth, and Kay said she felt both calm and excited around him. “It’s 11:18 and I keep thinking of Kay,” typed Li after they parted.

  In 3A two nights later, he found himself unpleasantly daydreaming about the end of their relationship, distracting himself into quiet glumness. Before parting, they talked about Kay feeling overwhelmed at work, and Li suggested she write a book. “Feel weirdly detached,” he typed in 4K. “Maybe we could spend less time together. Or see each other when we’re not tired.”

  The next day, he canceled dinner with out-of-town friends. “For some reason, I was critical and gloomy last night,” he typed. “I kept suspecting Kay of doing things to get me to like her more. Seems insane. I should be alone when like that.” He stared out the window, past autumning foliage, at the brick building. “There’s no need to feel bad about losing or changing interest. It could lead to better things.”

  But in variation #5 they spent ten hours together. On the A train, they bought a drawing of four flowers, three clouds, two trees, and one ground for one dollar from an androgynous child going car-to-car seemingly alone, selling art from a folder labeled “Positive Energy Project.” At a Renaissance fair, Li said he liked that Kay had a career, because he also had things to do; his previous girlfriends had had part-time jobs at most. Kay asked if he’d recorded her since August 12 in Stuyvesant Square Park. Li said he hadn’t and wouldn’t. Kay thanked him and said he could, if he wanted; it wasn’t illegal.

  In #6, they started a book club and agreed they were addicted to each other. After #7, Li excitedly emailed himself while hanging upside down, “I felt we were doomed five days ago, but now I feel the opposite.” In #8, Kay said she hadn’t been around her mom, who “wasn’t good at night,” for more than a day in maybe ten years. Li talked about getting massaged, seeing a chiropractor, and going to a physical rehabilitation center in Taiwan a year and a half earlier.

  In #9, a sleepover at Kay’s, they read some of the Nicholson Baker novel Vox, their first book club choice. In bed, Li learned Kay had a pet snail in kindergarten named Emily who ate lettuce and watermelon. Snails seemed Daoist to Li—mellow, unrushed, at home anywhere. To Kay, they seemed brave, decisive, strong-willed, and resilient. As a last resort, snails could self-reproduce; selfing produced fewer eggs and fewer surviving hatchlings than mating.

  In #10, they drank coffee together for the first time, generating a somewhat tense discussion regarding Amazon.com. Li wanted to discuss its unobvious positives. He’d found Cure Tooth Decay, Surviving Evil, and other illuminating books there that most media didn’t cover and weren’t in most bookstores. They decided to say “Amazon” to refer to the jungle five times per time they referenced the corporation. Kay said it would be good if they had as many variations as there were bird species in the Amazon.

  They biked around the Lower East Side, visiting a bookstore, two parks, and two gardens. In Union Square, they made plans to fast, organize a Joy Williams conference, and make raw-milk ice cream. Li had been ordering raw-milk goods, including yogurt and cheese, from a company Rainbow had told him about that delivered from farms in New Jersey. Most people were allergic to pasteurized milk, a relatively recent invention, but not raw or fermented milk, he’d read in The Untold Story of Milk.

  In 4K, they got Kay’s period blood on Li’s sofa during sex, and Li praised the natural substance, saying it was a welcome presence in his nature-deficient, virtual-reality-like room. Holding each other, they reviewed their day aloud, taking turns chronologically describing what happened.

  * * *

  —

  At Angelika Film Center, they watched a documentary on a British gastroenterologist who’d noticed in the midnineties that autistic children had inflamed guts. It was why they curled around furniture, applying pressure to their stomachs. Li remembered hugging pillows to his round belly as a child.

  Around 2008, journalists and other people, noticing Li and his characters’ stiff timidity, had begun to call him autistic. Autism, he’d learned, was a set of loneliness-making debilities—eye contact and social problems; restricted, repetitive thoughts and behaviors; tendencies to withdraw, minimize facial movements, process and use language literally, and speak in a monotone or not speak.

  At first, he’d suspected autism was invented by corporations to sell drugs; autists were given antidepressants, amphetamines, and antipsychotics. Over years of self-observation and research—reading writing by Natasha Campbell-McBride, a former neurosurgeon with an autistic son; Stephanie Seneff, whose autism research had led her to coauthor six papers on glyphosate toxicity; and others—he’d realized autism described real symptoms that were new to the species.

  By 2017, he viewed autism as the result, mostly, of chronic brain inflammation from contamination and damage by thousands of old, new, and as-yet-unidentified toxins (in 2020, Wikipedia, aggregating mainstream medicine, implicated pesticides, lead, air pollution, alcohol, cocaine, and valproic acid, an anticonvulsant) crossing leaky gut and blood-brain barriers, meaning it fluctuated in severity—day to day, month to month, year to year—and was varyingly healable.

  After the documentary, they walked quietly. Somewhat as a non sequitur, a bleak-feeling Li said he felt like he had to unlearn college. Kay said college had taught her critical thinking. Li said people needed more layers of critical thinking than what college taught. Kay seemed open to his perspective and said she’d also learned in college of the reality of cultural hegemony, but Li felt shy and stopped talking.

  Nothing he’d learned in college—where a journalism professor had reverently brought in a Gawker writer to speak to the class; where the earliest culture he’d heard of was ancient Greece, 2,500 years ago, in a required class on the Odyssey and the Iliad, thick books on glorified war; where society had been viewed as benevolent and great instead of insidious, malignant, poisonous, and lie-riddled—would be in his two books, except for what he’d found independently, researching natural health in computer labs, though he had had helpful, encouraging creative writing professors.

  They sat in Washington Square Park. Li began to feel better while telling Kay that he’d added tobacco, which he’d begun smoking with cannabis in an 80-20 cannabis-tobacco mix, and snails to his book—in a sentence on how snails and other animals had kept living in an eternal-seeming, cyclical trance when humans entered history, and a sentence on how aboriginal people had enjoyed pesticide-and-additive-free tobacco (smoking it, snuffing it, and drinking it as a tea or in ayahuasca) for millennia.

  In the morning, they decided to visit Hawaii together soon, then ate eggs and parted. Walking home from the library five hours later, ruminating on the previous night, Li felt himself turning against their relationship—he was trying to leave New York, while Kay, who liked slowness but seemed deep into fast society, working sixty-pl
us hours a week for a demanding boss, seemed to be settling in, with a new job and apartment and her mom in the city—but the uncontrollable-seeming thoughts dispersed when he got home, read a text from Kay, and got stoned.

  In 3A the next day, they made and ate lemongrass-arugula omelets. Li said he used to be bloated and have pain and discomfort most of the time. He’d assumed he was weaker than other people. Kay said she’d always blamed herself for being slow. Li said he didn’t think she was slow, but that she just had a lot to do, and she went to work.

  In the park, editing a printed draft of his novel’s “Florida” chapter, in which he family-vacationed for five days in Orlando, Li thought about the mystery. It seemed to be almost everything—every life-form, dream, thought, and emotion. It was everywhere except where it was obscured by culture or technology—sitcoms, advertisements, skyscrapers, smartphones. “The mystery is Kay and I in bed naked imagining us as complex squirrels looking at each other’s faces,” wrote Li on his paper.

  He considered the secret. It increasingly seemed to be “Nothing at all is what it appears to be,” as Kathleen had said in a 2015 talk. “And I have learned that in my many years not only from taking psychedelics but of working with native peoples who seem to understand that much better than our materially oriented cultures do—that ‘everything is an illusion and everything may change from what it appears to be now to something else at any moment’ is kind of a rule to live by.”