Mitch Meets Bigfoot
Jeff
Okay, cool. If Mitch visits Shasta roughly semimonthly he's about due.
Michael
Couple of questions, first, is this a Mitch solo trip or will Mary-Lynn be coming, and second, is this a trip mainly to see Jiyu or did Mitch have other plans? Once I know that I'll know how to kick things off.
Jeff
Hm, okay. Mitch will ask Mary-Lynn along to Shasta. His plan is to drive up Friday, visit the Abbey Saturday, and either drive back Saturday night or Sunday morning, depending on how things proceed.
Is Mary-Lynn available? She's working that weekend on a 13+
>> SUCCESS by 2
Mitch can use Serendipity to go on a weekend Jiyu is around the Abbey with no major timesink commitments, rather than chance her on a roll (since she's unavailable on 10+, much riskier)
Maybe he bumps into Pete, maybe not. He'd like to go on a hike at least partway up the mountain but after last time he's not going to go towards the summit until he's got a plan for destroying the Comte and claiming his role as guardian of the sacred mountain.
Michael
When Mitch is admitted into the main building of Shasta Abbey by one of Jiyu's assistants, he's led into her office, not her bedroom as he was last time he visited back at the beginning of August. Jiyu is haler, more energetic, and definitely healthier than she was before Mitch's last visit. "Matthew!" she exclaims from behind her desk, standing up from her chair and coming to embrace Mitch. Her aura betrays none of the overall diabetic and cardiovascular crisis of her illness in August, but Mitch can also tell that much of the damage she's incurred up to this point in her life now seems to take the form of, well, permanent Disadvantages instead of an acute Health crisis. Mitch actually in some hard-to-describe-way senses those capital letters in his evaluation of Jiyu's health by his new, more acute Aura Reading and gets momentarily confused by the complexity of what those capitalized words mean. Mitch can also tell that she's laid off the secret nips of scotch and candies since her crisis; there's been a conscious effort to try to live without those indulgences. For now, though, Jiyu is full of vim; the vessel that holds her life force and health may be cracked and fragile, but the vessel itself is full of life energy, happiness, and optimism, upon seeing Mitch. Maybe a little less... tranquil than past visits, but very much grateful to be among the living.
Jeff
(I'm going to go ahead and roll Pete's availability, just in case)
Peter Mount Shasta could potentially appear on 9-
>> SUCCESS by 0
(Good to know)
"I told you, call me Mitch," he says with a chuckle. "You remember Mary-Lynn?"
"Of course." Jiyu smiles at Mary-Lynn but does not embrace her.
"Hi." Mary-Lynn remains slightly self-conscious around the Zen master Mitch thinks so highly of. "I didn't really get to see the Abbey last time we were here. It's beautiful…" She trails off, seeing the expression on Mitch's face. "Are you all right? You look like a bug just flew in your mouth."
Mitch blinks. "Yeah. I…yeah. Just reassessing everything I thought I knew about the universe, over here."
"Again?" Jiyu asks, an eyebrow raised.
Michael
Jiyu smiles at this exchange, pleased with a pupil who can experience a satori in just saying hello to a friend, and says, "Please, sit, both of you, we'll have some tea." Jiyu goes over to the kettle. "It's hard to remember the name thing, Mitch; first impressions are so lasting, and you definitely made one back in the spring. Have you seen Sheila and Lynn since then?"
Jeff
Mary-Lynn elbows Mitch playfully, recalling the (very slightly bowdlerized) story he'd told her about his trip to Shasta with the Beehives.
"No, heh, they were more friends-of-friends…have you been in touch with either of them, yourself?" Mitch asks Jiyu. Then, they're both distracted as Mary-Lynn inhales sharply.
"What is that smell? Is that cardamom? Incense, or…?"
Mitch sniffs the air. "I don't smell anything."
Michael
Jiyu's eyes become heavy-lidded, regarding Mary-Lynn. "Nor do I. The green tea is here," she holds up a sealed canister to show it to Mary-Lynn, "but it is unadulterated... and I am not too fond of incense in my quarters." Taking an extra beat to look at Mary-Lynn, she says, "You were here when Matt— sorry, when Mitch attended me last month, weren't you? I was not in condition to remember much, but I remember you." Mary-Lynn looks blankly back at Jiyu; maybe her wiring is crossed from the sensory input and the memories of Mitch healing a dying woman, that she's sure she witnessed but has kind of been in denial about since. Mary-Lynn looks to Mitch, almost as if to say, "Was I here?" She's awfully confused. Jiyu, on the other hand, by her aura, is intrigued, piqued, interested to see what will happen next.
Jeff
"But where are my manners. Please, sit," Jiyu says, more out of concern for Mary-Lynn's seeming discomfort than anything. As all three sit down, Jiyu behind her desk and Mitch and Mary-Lynn in surprisingly conventional office chairs, she answers Mitch's question. "I haven't heard from either of them, Ma—Mitch. The…" She trails off as suddenly there is a strong smell in the office, which neither she nor Mitch can deny.
Mary-Lynn makes a face. This isn't what she was smelling before, this is something not unlike a skunk, musky and bitter and quickly overpowering. Rotting meat. It's the smell of rotting meat.
Mitch rises from his chair without saying anything and goes, first to one window and then the other, looking for the source of the smell and guessing it's come in from outside.
Michael
Jiyu and Mary-Lynn freeze, in the manner of deer in the headlights or prey in a cobra's eyes. They watch Mitch for what he's going to do next.
Jeff
"It's okay," Mitch says distractedly while he peers out the windows, looking for informative auras or traces of History-B. There's silence while he moves to the door and checks the hall outside.
>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS by 2
>> DETECT … SUCCESS by 12
>> ANALYSIS … SUCCESS by 3
Nothing. He turns back to Mary-Lynn and Jiyu, still seated and watching him, and shrugs.
"He's here," Mary-Lynn declares. "Or he was," she adds, walking it back a little. "He wasn't…he wasn't hostile. But I think he's gone now."
Mitch gets that bug-flew-into-his-mouth expression again, but shakes his head and blinks it away.
Mary-Lynn doesn't notice. "It's going to take some time for the smell to fade."
"Let us walk," suggests Jiyu, who is after all considerably more ambulatory than she'd been the last time she saw Mitch. "It's a lovely day."
Michael
The courtyard of the Abbey is fairly quiet on this September afternoon. Jiyu walks slowly, peering into the doorways and gardens as the three walk around. The scent has cleared away with the exterior air, but a hanging sense of foreboding remains. Mary-Lynn's hackles remain raised, and even Jiyu looks a little uncertain before engaging with Mitch again.
"So. My letter to you. Did you make any sense of the experience? Because, confidentially," Jiyu says, "that is not the kind of thing I can bring to my fellow monks here. A loud, frightening illusion meant to tempt me and make me stray from the Path it almost certainly was. But I sometimes wonder—maybe wonder too much—about the motivations of such demons. Whom would it profit if I were to have passed from this plane and into the wheel of samsara? Why would it matter? And why were you here at the right time to bring me back from that brink? Too much curiosity, too much illusion I'm indulging in here, I'm very sure. And yet I feel compelled to ask you this question."
Jeff
Mitch nods as an undeniable whiff of something herbal wafts through the air (basil and dill together?), carried quickly away in the light breeze. "That kind of ties into what I wanted to talk to you about. Stop me if you've heard this one.
"Let's pretend there's one guy, and to keep from getting bored, he lives a life and then when he dies he reincarnates into somebody else. And he keeps doing that, over and over again, an almost endless cycle, the life trap. Because when he reincarnates, he doesn't have to…it's not that he dies on Monday and reincarnates into a baby born on Tuesday. Maybe the baby was born a week before he died. Maybe the baby was born fifty years before he died and he's his own father. Or mother. Maybe he does this so much, he's everybody. Literally everybody, sooner or later.
"And this is all happening all at once, so there's this structure he imposes to keep his little game straight, the game of being all these different people. Time, moving forward in a linear fashion. But it's all the guy's game. I don't want to call the guy God because I grew up Catholic and I hear God, I hear the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Who has some pretty distinct characteristics. Anyway."
Mitch pauses for a second, in case one or the other of Mary-Lynn and Jiyu want to jump in. But Mary-Lynn just looks at him expectantly, and Jiyu nods slightly, as if to say yes yes we're all familiar where are you going with this?
"But just being alive isn't enough to keep the guy entertained. Maybe it is sometimes, but sometimes he gets bored so he makes up songs, stories, he plays chess with himself, he falls in love with himself, he raises himself up from an infant, he goes to war with himself, he murders himself for a handful of treasure. Life is a rich tapestry. And like I said, one of the things the guy does is make up stories.
"So he makes up a story and because he's…again, not calling him God…his story is as real as he is. It's got people in it, who are him but not him, because they're playing out the roles he assigned them. They don't know they're playing roles. They're him, doing a thing, to amuse himself. Making stuff up for the sake of making it up. He collaborates with himself about how the story goes. Sometimes he gets in a disagreement, ultimately playing both sides of the argument same as when he leads himself in armies against himself and his other self's own armies of his other selves. I say other but we're all the same. We're all connected.
"You remember the second time we met, Rōshi. I had just realized that the world was a story the guy was telling with himself, and it freaked me out. You talked me down, pointed out that this was not exactly new information. The guy…I don't like saying the guy, you know, let's call him, shit, I don't know. Matt. Because he's just me. And you. You're Matt, and you're Matt," he says, indicating Mary-Lynn and Jiyu in turn. "And as you read this—hear this, they're the words Matt is typing, shit, saying, I don't know why I—they're the words Matt is saying to himself. Matt speaks, Ma'at listens, Ma'at makes the mare go.
"So everything is the way it is because it's a good story, or if it's not a good story, it's like the background necessary to make the good story seem real. But Matt, and his friends Matt and Matt and Matt, I don't know how many, it's not a meaningful question really, like asking when the ocean is, or where is it Tuesday…Matt pays special attention to a little club of people. Things happen to us because Matt thinks it's a good story. Sometimes the story is a tragedy, sometimes it's a comedy, sometimes Matt isn't sure what he's going for and the tone switches abruptly partway through. Maybe sometimes Matt doesn't like how something went so he goes back and does it again."
Mitch has been monologuing for several minutes now. He stops, partly because he's made his point, partly because the stench of rotting meat suddenly accosts his nostrils, partly because Mary-Lynn suddenly grips his bicep tightly with both hands, partly because of the expression on Jiyu's face, and mostly because of the thing all three of them are suddenly, undeniably, forced to admit they're seeing.
Bigfoot, standing in the garden path.
Michael
Mary-Lynn Fight Check-14.
>> SUCCESS by 1
Jiyu Fright Check-14.
>> SUCCESS by 5
Jiyu and Mary-Lynn stand in awe of the beast but not fear. The individual tendrils of hair on its pelt curl in the gentle early autumn breeze, almost seeming like they move on their own, like cilia. The look on the sasquatch's blurry face, if one could ascribe human emotions to mysteriously-appearing cryptids, is one of inquisitiveness, curiosity. Once it sees Mitch, its eyes betray an uncanny, near-human sense of compassion, and pity. Mitch checks the Bigfoot's aura and sees and confirms all those emotions; also his new automatic Aura Sight seems to want to demand he delve deeper into the being's aura. Analysis roll?
Jeff
>> SUCCESS by 3
Michael
Deep under the quantum pelt-tendrils leading here and there, under that fabulous coat of one color, Mitch can sense the fellow Illuminated soul of one Peter Mt. Shasta, né Kraus. He is quite old. This isn't his physical body, of course, but in his aura Mitch can still see lines, strata, experiences and emotions that indicate a far richer, wiser mix of feelings and experiences than the young man he first met back in February.
Jeff
"Hey, buddy. Good to see you. Is there something you need?"
Michael
You don't need to speak out loud, my friend. Bigfoot Pete speaks directly in Mitch's mind. Probably better if we don't. Mitch notices that Jiyu and Mary-Lynn seem frozen, as does a leaf in mid-air, the clouds in the sky, the sun in its path across the heavens. So you've figured out some stuff, huh?
Jeff
"Yeah. We don't have to talk about it, but we can if you want."
Mitch attempts to telepathically broadcast that I guess
Michael
Well, it's just that it took me a really long time to get there, where you are now. Maybe too long to do any good. It's terrible here, Mitch. Not just because I'm old and my body is going. The Planet Earth is going. You wouldn't believe the storms: fire, rain, flooding, avalanches... all that we're missing is the Big One, the quake, and I'm sure that'll come before too long. At least that one won't be our fault.
I was also wrong about the Comte, but you didn't hear that from me.
Jeff
There's still kids, right? If there are kids we have to trust they'll muddle through somehow. Maybe that's motivated reasoning, me not wanting to think about my son and daughter all dying in a blighted wasteland or working for pennies and tips in some sweatbox warehouse, but I gotta think people will make it through. They made it through the 1930s and the 1980s and all the decades we don't have good records of.
Wait, shit, I don't know that. I don't know any of that. What am I saying? And I don't even have kids. Shit. You're messing me up, man.
Anyway, yeah. I'm sorry to hear things are bad for you. Is there anything I can do to help? Anyone I should avoid, murder, cozy up to?
Michael
I'm not trying to mess you up, brother, the Illuminated-who-walks-like-a-man says tenderly in Mitch's head. I'm actually trying to bring you some solace at the right time in your narrative. I know you've been suffering. It may seem that discovering that existence is a game played by God, inside the mind of God, is unfair, or makes life meaningless, Peter Mt. Shasta says, walking over to Mitch and putting his big quantum paw on his shoulder, but in fact nothing could be further than the truth. Those signals you're receiving from higher up in the stack, of experiences and feelings and children you never had. They're not random noise: they're the message at the heart of things. You have a chance to do what so many timelines don't, or can't, or won't: make a better world for yourselves. Free of being ruled by the designs of cynical slavemasters, the greedy, the lazy, the evil. And even if you and I are just a bunch of numbers on a piece of paper on some desk somewhere, making a better world matters! These things end up having effects that even you and I as [Illuminated/Bigfoots] will never see. The idea of a better world is a seed. It's a seed that bears fruit, up and down the stack, long after you and I aren't real anymore, or are put away in a box to gather dust on a shelf. The Comte's people have offered you dials and levers to make those changes, the easy way, the cheap way, the way of ego and the mystic power trip. But with that, the therianthropes would just end up back in charge again. Sure, you'd all be happy, but it'd just be because they're tickling the bits they engineered into our brains. The technocrats want you to just become one of them, a semi-privileged commandant of a global concentration camp, or, worse yet, rule over the ruins after the world goes to hell. There is a third way. You all need to have the imagination to find it in your travels, and then make it come true. It's the hardest path, because such a way wouldn't depend on humanity's tendency towards the kingship trip, and because of the scale of the challenge: after all, how could just six people, even ones as clued-in as you guys, change the entire course of human history? Well, that's something I've given much thought to as my beloved mountain burns and falls all around me. It's no secret control panel at the center of the Earth, but there are the Twelve Illuminated. I don't know what you could make happen if you got all of us pulling in the same direction at once, but it could be literally world-changing. Or at least give the world enough of a nudge that you six could find the right place, time, and people—"avoid, murder, cozy up to," heh—to make things better... for good.
Jeff
Okay. I'm not sure I completely get what you're proposing. There's you and me, Andy, all right, but then there's the Oldtimer and Ol' Vera, they're frail and old, that's why I call them those things. They couldn't travel up the to summit. So that's three or five Illuminati, not twelve. Are you suggesting we need to quest to find another seven or nine Illuminated? That seems like a big project to add on top of everything else going on in the game.
And I don't know that changing the world is off the table. There was a moment, on top of the Westin St. Francis, when it seemed like I might have made big changes to history. Norton's America might have been better, might have been worse. It wasn't a controlled experiment and the consensus at the time was to keep the status quo instead. All sorts of Deuses ex machina out there, weird machines buried in backyards and under highways, copper and glass relics squirreled away in antique shops.
Michael
Yes, it sure would be a big task to try and find them all. It might not even be worth doing! Despite all your fears about the nature of existence, you most definitely do have free will and don't have to follow my advice. This quality we all possess has all kinds of unexplored benefits. Some of them might be useful for effecting big changes... or maybe it will just be useful to talk to fellow Illuminated who, unlike those of us stuck in the flypaper of Mount Shasta, haven't been infected by the Ascended Master meme. As for changing the world, there are lots of ways to accomplish that. The sudden, sweeping changes of an Ontoclysm. Subtler, smaller, but still-instantaneous retrocreations like poor old Emperor Norton coming back to life. And then there's the slow slog of changing people's minds and beliefs the old-fashioned way. Seems like that would be the most difficult path, considering the boys who sign your paycheck have a whole mountain full of experts meant to keep the entire planet from dreaming their own dreams. Let alone the well-known fact that it's nearly impossible to persuade a thousand cats to believe anything at the same time. But that method might also end up bringing the most lasting change. But I mostly appeared to you today, Mitchell, because I wanted you see you full of good cheer. It pains me to see you mired in existential meaninglessness. When I first arrived on the mountain, I was an hungred, and ye gave me burritos. I was thirsty, and ye gave me margaritas. I was a stranger, and ye took me in. You have a woman who loves you, comrades who would die for you, and a story that is not only well within your control to help steer but possibly a unique, compelling, hypermemetic oasis in the multiverse. There is worth to your existence. There is importance to it. There is meaning to it. If you so choose.
Jeff
Mitch laughs.
Should I be concerned that you needed travel backwards in time forty-odd years to find a version of me that was, in your word, happy?
Michael
Well, 1973 is an important year. Why else do you think you're spending so much time in it? Peter's blurry Bigfoot face breaks out in a smile.
Jeff
I know, right? Coming up on three years and Spiro Agnew hasn't resigned yet.
Michael
Take care, Mitch. You and your friends. Sorry about the stink, by the way, it's just one of those unavoidable sensory phenomena that happens when weird Fortean stuff breaks out.
Jeff
Are we done so fast? Have you delivered the expository payload in its fullness then, leaving us to puzzle over its import?
Man said, mostly people like train rides, even if they complain. Especially if the train goes by interesting sights and they get to toot the horn and be in charge of shoveling coal for a bit.
Michael
We can chat a bit more. Honestly, I thought you came here to see Jiyu.
Jeff
Okay, fair enough, man. Good luck with everything.
Actually, no. Question.
How bad would it be if I fucked with what's going on in the Mission right now? Like, super bad, or would we all accept that?
Michael
I'm fine with it, Peter Mt. Bigfoot says.
Jeff
"Fuck around and find out, I guess," Mitch says aloud.
I don't know. I could do it. I could definitely do it, and maybe by not doing it I'm...
I could do for him the same thing I did for Jiyu. It would take a lot out of me, but that would be...that would be playing by the rules as established.
I could...there aren't words...make the world a place he was more likely to survive...still by using what they gave me. Bending the rules a little, maybe a lot, but still, not breaking them.
Or I could just break the thing that's stopping me from simply declaring he's fine.
It's fragile. It's a little thing. Breaking it might be good, long term.
But I've been inside these rules for as long as I can remember. I don't know what's out there. You can't tell me; no one can tell me.
Michael
(So. What's the proposed Serendipity use case here, what would you like to accomplish with it?)
Jeff
13 Corruption to increase Mitch's clairvoyance to an effective level that allows him to see from Shasta to the Mission. 2 Corruption to give his Cure power a Range (this use of Ranged is called out within the description on p.107). 1 Corruption to boost his Cure skill to an effective 9, with the option of spending more to affect the roll in the way we have done in the past.
Michael
(Thank you for doing the math.)
Jeff
16 Corruption to ante
Michael — 01/14/2023 7:01 PM
That all looks right to me.
Jeff
I don't see a clear path towards using Serendipity though I know it could be done, it'd just be messy
>> FAILURE by 4
An even 20 Corruption, then.
I don't suppose Pete feels like siphoning some of that off for me. Man, I don't mean to be churlish, if I wasn't here with the stopped time and everything this wouldn't be...I hesitate to use the word possible but
Michael
Take my hand, brother.
Jeff
We're supposed to empty our pockets, pool our money, and divide it evenly between us.
Michael
The Corruption allows Mitch to scry on Zeb and apply enough Cure to bring Zeb back from the edge of the heart attack.
The camera tracks away as Mitch and Pete give each other the Secret Hobo Handshake. When we return to Mitch and the giant 8-foot-tall forest beast, Bigfoot is grounding half of Mitch's Corruption in the cursed, Corrupted year 2023.
Jeff
Dang. I was talking to Jiyu, like you said. I should...here, I can do it. Talk to you later, brother. (edited)
The rotting-meat smell that Mitch hadn't even noticed suddenly hits hard, making his eyes water. He coughs, and then it's gone, replaced by...is that celery? As he blinks away some tears, he can see that the clouds and leaves are moving again. Bigfoot is nowhere to be seen, but from the way Mary-Lynn and Jiyu are both gaping at a gap in the hedge between the monastery grounds and the undeveloped woods outside, it's easy to guess what they saw.
"He just looked at us," breathes Mary-Lynn. "That was...I've never seen anything like that, and I've seen some stuff."
MutantsMichael — Yesterday at 1:33 PM
After the intense energies of the (very brief to Jiyu's and Mary-Lynn's eyes) visit from Bigfoot, Mary-Lynn and Mitch receive visitors' quarters at Shasta Abbey and an invitation to dine with Master Jiyu the next morning. On a weekend retreat, Jiyu would usually dine communally with those staying at the Abbey, but after her health scare, she's still on a fairly light schedule, delegating more of the managerial tasks to her junior monks, giving her the time and availability to give Mitch and Mary-Lynn more attention. Jiyu, eyes heavy-lidded and countenance pale, a cup of warm green tea in her hand, seems to hone in on an invisible signal being sent by Mitch over the modest, mostly thus-far silent "brunch." "When we were all... jostled from our cozy sense of reality yesterday, you were in the midst of a... rumination on the illusions of reality. Of a universe run by, or made up entirely of, a Matt. Or Matts." She smiles. "And we had discussed this once before, I remember. I get the feeling that you keep feeling confounded, or lied to, or promised something by these realizations." "Let me ask you, to begin with... if there is an intelligence—an intelligence with will and purpose of its own—who undergirds the material and spiritual universe, and it ends up it's not the Lord of the House... how does this really change who you already are? Who you have been for your time on this earth, in this body? Is it merely a question of feeling... un-free? I feel like if I were to tell you that such thoughts are illusion, that's likely not going to cut it for you right now. But I do say to you, this un-freedom is just as much an illusion as freedom. After all, if you're correct, we're all on the same wheel of endless rebirth as Matt, and ultimately all are Matt. But there are accidents and properties that make you Mitch and me Jiyu, yes?"
Jeff
Mitch rolls the idea that he might be upset over being lied to around in his head. It honestly hadn't occurred to him.
"I know one could take this concept too far," he says, thinking out loud. "You could say, oh, it's okay if I...rob an old widow, say. Maybe I used to be the old widow or maybe someday I'll be that old widow, or maybe both at once. So no crime is committed. From a far enough perspective, everything evens out. Over a long enough term, all the bad things end eventually. No fascist state has survived for more than a generation before collapsing, especially if you're careful how you define fascist and generation and collapse. There's actually zero difference between good and bad things. (edited)
"But things do matter in the short term. In the long run, we're all dead. A story about people who don't really care whether they succeed or not is a story without stakes. A story without stakes is probably a bad story. Not always. Sometimes you want thirty thousand words describing your favorite fictional characters having a quiet weekend together. But usually. (edited)
"Sōtō supports the doctrine of saṃsāra, doesn't it? The eternal rebirth? The student asks the master, if all that's right, why do we strive to live and keep living so hard? Somewhere in the early history of Christianity they had to come up with an answer for why, if this world is so terrible and the next so perfect, suicide is wrong. I think they only answer people would accept was because God says so which isn't...why does a daffodil have to fight the whole universe to exist? Why is that striving, that need to keep going and endure... why don't you want to die, Rōshi? Why did you let me help you?
"Sorry," he says after a slight pause. "I get worked up. Yes, there are accidents and properties that make Mitch-Matt and Jiyu-Matt two different people, though we are both emanations from the same godhead. And no, it does not change anything in the here and now, the knowledge that the world's secret governors choose how events unfold. Really, it's not something that makes a difference in how we should approach problems, how we should deal with one another. You get caught up in the idea that some people have more...attention, say, than others, and that that makes them special. But the point of the world is that it doesn't. Or at least, that the world pretends it doesn't."
MutantsMichael — Yesterday at 4:37 PM
"I am dying, Mitch. And I am being born. If you ask me why in this moment I am sitting across a table from you instead of being ashes on the Shasta wind, it is because between my fear and my love, in my moment of physical extremis, in confronting an ending—my ending—I found a middle path. And that middle path led me back here." Jiyu shrugs. "And in saying 'it's not something that makes a difference in how we should deal with one another,' you have totally explained and surrounded what mettā is." "If you empty yourself of Mitch-self, empty yourself of the concern of which beings are invested with more or less of their-selves, this emptiness will sustain you, dispel worry and turbulence, foster a deeper awareness of the common nature within." "'The great or the mighty medium, short or small. The seen and the unseen, those living near and far away, those born and to-be-born. May all beings be at ease.'" "Other beings' muchness should not be your concern. This concern is an attachment. But the concern for all beings' happiness and ease and rightness... that is when empty-you reverberates most profoundly with the universe."
Jeff
Mitch makes a noise that isn't quite a chuckle, not so much like Jiyu has made a joke, more like Jiyu's words reminded him of some amusing thing tangentially related.
"I guess, yeah."
"I'm glad you're feeling better, regardless."
Michael
"The clarity I'm experiencing now... it makes me realize what a mess I was in before things took their turn for the worse."
Jeff
Mitch leans forward. "Expand on that."
Michael
"My health, Mitch. And furthermore my respect and concern for my own health. I guess that's why mettā is on my mind. I wasn't fostering it in myself before all this happened. It seems stupid to call it a wake-up call because I am supposed to be quite awake already." Jiyu's brow furrows. "But clearly I wasn't."
Jeff
"Heh. Yeah. Yeah, I remember. I had to push you a little to see a doctor."
Michael
"I was hard-hearted when you first expressed concern. And now I've lived, and I've learned. Not being able to live up to the responsibilities I have at the Abbey... it placed my duty and right action squarely in my path; for once, I couldn't look away." "I sit here fully present in recognition of my gratitude for you. To my healer, and pupil... and teacher. Thank you."
Jeff
Mitch notices Mary-Lynn has frozen up, and for an instant he fears that things have gotten meta and liminal again. But no, it's just that she doesn't have a lot to contribute when it comes to high-level discussions of cosmic philosophy.