by Cary Tennis
Cary Tennis, writer, musician, mentor, dear friend who is sorely missed having fled SF and moved to Italy, and just a gosh-dang hilarious human. Honored to have a piece of his work in this edition. He’s a renowned San Francisco scribe,much adored for his beautifully (and often brutally) honest advice column at Salon.com.
Remember when we were living in that split-level house on Rainbow Drive in Hollywood, Florida, and Patrick got that book Be Here Now by Ram Dass? And you sat on the couch reading it and then I read it and Raymond read it and David read it and then Thomas read it and then we tried to meditate but kept getting interrupted in our attempts to reach Nirvana?
There was this membrane, we decided, between us and Nirvana, and we had to pierce that membrane. So we had this acid that etched tiny holes in the membrane, allowing us to glimpse the Now, which was awesome and complex, like a lake full of fish.
But then getting back was a problem. Like you might get the bends if you came back up too fast. Or like you go through the membrane and everything has expanded in this weightless realm and then you come back and you don’t fit anymore.
It depletes electrolytes too. So you eat a Royal Castle burger but it doesn’t bring you back. And you go walk on the beach but it doesn’t bring you back. And you have sex with your girlfriend but it doesn’t bring you back. And your friends start to worry whether you’re coming back at all because you did too much. You spent too much time out there weightless in the all-consuming Fire of Now.
Also there’s a faint singed quality to you, like an aroma of burnt hair. “Is something burning?” your mom asks, and your friends laugh: “No, it’s just him. He got singed. By the Fire of Now.”
But then after a few days you just come back like nothing ever happened. Except you’re different.
Dive into more of Cary’s explorations of mind and check out his illuminating online writing workshops:
www.carytennis.com
