The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 89

A monk sat on a pillar in Indonesia.

What are you doing up there? I asked.

I am a man on a pillar, he replied. I sit on the pillar to be closer to God.

How do you eat?

Every day I drop my basket down, and it is filled with food by devoted followers, and then I eat it.

How do you shit?

Should you be asking that?

I’m just curious.

I drop my pants and I shit over the side.

How do you sleep?

I balance carefully, and tie myself on. These days I find I need less and less sleep, though.

Why are you up there?

I said: to get closer to God.

What for?

To find a path to spiritual truths.

Why?

So I may go to heaven.

But down here there are people suffering and dying. Forests burn and the seas rise, why aren’t you helping?

I am. I am showing them the way. You should come and live on top of a pillar sometime soon, you know. Material matters only tie you to this life, and this life is suffering. How much better life would be if we all sat on top of pillars.

How much better life would be if we all helped each other build pillars together?

Exactly! Now you get it!

What about books? I asked, for I was going through a learning stage. Books are material objects. If I own books, am I suffering?

If you desire them, yes, they limit you!

But they contain the knowledge of the world. Who knows: one day someone may write a book about you.

I hope they don’t! They would be much better off sitting on top of a pillar.

I thought about this statement, then said, Drop your basket down to me, and I’ll give you some food.

No meat, he said, as he lowered the blue plastic bag. No fizzy drinks either.

I received the lowered bag, then reached up and cut the rope that held it, took the bag and began to walk away.

Hey! he shouted after me. What are you doing?

I’m not really sure, I called back. But I think it might be something good.

Pilgrimage: to journey to a sacred place.

Pilgrim: a traveller or wanderer, a stranger in a foreign place.

Crusaders: pilgrims with swords who attempted to conquer the Middle East.

Hajj: the journey to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam. Shahadah, Salat, Zakat, Sawm, Hajj.

Pleasant, perhaps, to say that I am a pilgrim, but looking at it, counting the swirl of white as the devout move round the sacred stone in Mecca, watching the fans scream at the movie premiere, listening to the old men sitting on their benches by the sea who report that everything changes, and that’s okay…

fuck me who isn’t a fucking pilgrim anyway?

I run, and my run takes me to the Hotel Madellena, and I think I see Byron out of the corner of my eye, climbing out of a river taxi, but when I look back, she is gone.