This made a lot of sense to me, since I had already concluded that most of our actions were determined by our unconscious, not our conscious, minds. Now, by viewing the cards as a window into your unconscious, you were obliged to give them as much power as you gave the unconscious. If you thought your unconscious could see into the future—and certainly some people could see into the future—then the tarot cards could help your unconscious do that. If you thought the unconscious was primarily of psychological importance, then the tarot was a valuable tool for psychological insight.
Since the tarot worked by interacting with the unconscious, it also followed that it didn’t make any difference what layout you used, or whether you made your own layout. If you said, “The next card I draw will represent my feelings about the future,” then by definition the next card would, because the unconscious would interpret it that way.
So I accepted the tarot, and dutifully worked with the cards, but I never really liked them. Tarot cards always felt to me like somebody else’s dream.
* * *
Next Brugh introduced the I Ching, a Chinese method of divination in which you toss three coins six times, do a calculation, then look up the answer in a text.
The procedure seemed mathematical and needlessly complicated. And when you got to the text, it was often not helpful: “Someone does indeed increase him; even ten tortoises cannot oppose.” Or “The well must be repaired before drawing water.” It was hard to make sense of that!
Yet, despite these drawbacks, I was attracted to the I Ching. At first I thought I liked the I Ching because the mathematical aspects appealed to me more than other kinds of divination. Later I thought it was because I was verbally oriented and the I Ching’s interpretation was textual. Later I thought that I simply enjoyed reading the book, browsing through it. Eventually I decided that all these things were true.
Of course, the basic mechanism of the I Ching had to be the same as the mechanism of the tarot—to provide an ambiguous stimulus to the unconscious mind. The text answers of the I Ching are as ambiguous as the visual images of the tarot.
In fact, the traditional scientific complaint about the I Ching—that the line readings “could mean anything”—started to make sense to me. Of course the line readings could mean anything! That was exactly what was desired: a neutral Rorschach for the unconscious to interpret. If the line readings were unambiguous, then there would be no unconscious involvement. The interpretation would be entirely conscious. And then there really would be a credibility problem: how could a twenty-five-hundred-year-old Chinese book tell you the answer to your modern, Western question? The very idea is absurd.
Because, of course, the book can’t tell you the answer. The book doesn’t have that power. You do. You can answer your own question. You already know the answer, if you can just gain access to it. And in the end your unconscious mind does answer your own question, and that is why many people, including Carl Jung and the Chinese scholar John Blofeld, have been struck by the specific, personal quality of the answer that is provided.
The purpose of the I Ching, or the tarot, then, is to help you get access to yourself, by providing ambiguity for you to interpret. And this quality of ambiguity is shared with nearly all other forms of divination—cast artifacts, or entrails, or weather formations, or events, such as the flight of birds, that one could choose either to see as “omens” or to ignore.
The very thing that makes these divination techniques seem so unscientific is what makes it possible for them to work.
Toward the end of the second week, I began to think of leaving. I wasn’t the only one. Several of us talked about what we would do when we finally went home.
Personally, I longed for a Big Mac. As soon as this conference was over, I was driving down the road and buying a big, disgusting, unhealthy, unspiritual hamburger.
I couldn’t wait.
On the final day of the conference, I visited the cactus to say goodbye. The cactus was just sitting there. It wouldn’t speak to me. I said I appreciated what it had shown me and I had enjoyed spending time with it, which wasn’t exactly true because I had felt frustrated a lot of the time, but I thought it was more or less true. The cactus made no reply.
Then I realized that from its position in the garden the cactus could never see the sun set. The cactus had been years in that position and had been deprived of seeing sunsets. I burst into tears.
The cactus said, “It’s been good having you here with me.”
Then I really cried.
On the drive home, I couldn’t find a McDonald’s anywhere. Finally I passed a Marie Callender’s. I went inside and ordered a chili burger and french fries and a Coke and a piece of pie. But when the food came, it seemed rich and heavy. I didn’t finish it. It wasn’t what I wanted, after all.
Back home, I was shocked to see how beautiful my house was. I lived on the beach at Malibu, but I had long ago stopped looking at the view, and complained about the traffic instead. Now I was astonished that I lived in such a breathtakingly beautiful place.
At the office, I turned on my word processor, and the letters on the screen flashed on and off, like a neon sign. At first I thought the computer was broken. Then I realized I was seeing the screen refresh itself. That happens all the time, but normally we’re not aware of it, as we’re not aware that light bulbs blink on and off sixty times each second. I looked at the screen and thought, This is a remarkable perception, but I don’t know if I can work with a screen that blinks like this.
Later I learned this perception was a commonly reported consequence of meditation. In a few days it faded away.
For a while, after I returned home, I felt wonderfully alive. But then the emotional high of the two weeks faded. It all just drifted away, the way any vacation decays from consciousness. I felt discouraged. I hadn’t really made any real progress, any substantial gains. The energy work was real, the meditations were real, but what good was it if you couldn’t maintain the high and apply it to your daily life? What had it all amounted to in the end? Just another illusion. Summer camp for adults. A lot of New Age mumbo-jumbo.
Meanwhile, I had practical matters to occupy me. A relationship of two years came to an end. My work was not satisfying. I needed to move my office. My secretary was begging to be fired; I fired her.
It wasn’t until much later that I looked back and saw that, within eight months of returning from the desert, I had changed my relationships, my residence, my work, my diet, my habits, my interests, my exercise, my goals—in fact, just about everything in my life that could be changed. These changes were so sweeping that I couldn’t see what was happening while I was in the midst of them.
And there was another change, too. I’ve become very fond of cacti, and I always have some around, wherever I live.
Jamaica
In 1982 I ended my two-year relationship with Terry, a securities lawyer who worked for the SEC in New York and Los Angeles. But after a few months of separation, we drifted back together in a vague and tentative way, and since Christmas was coming up, we decided to take a trip to Jamaica together, with some other friends.
We rented a beautiful house in Ocho Rios, on the north shore. The house was idyllic—set on a hilltop, surrounded by flowers and hummingbirds—but, despite the warm weather and the pleasant surroundings, Terry and I felt even further estranged as the days went on. Terry was angry at me for leaving her in the first place, and here in Jamaica she was even more angry, because she could see that our reunion was not working out and that eventually I would leave again.
This became an unspoken issue between us. We conducted our days, going on excursions, taking rafting trips and boat rides and so on, without reference to what would happen after the vacation was over and we returned home.
Part of the time we were visited by my friend Kurt and Terry’s friend Ellen, so the pressure was reduced for a while. But finally we were alone again, the vacation was drawing to a close, and the inevitable separation was
at hand.
Before we left Jamaica, I wanted to go to Spanish Town in the south, where I had learned there was a new museum of early Jamaican artifacts. For many years I had been working on a book about seventeenth-century Jamaica, and now I wanted to visit this museum. Terry said she would like to come, too.
On a clear, sunny day, we set off to drive over the Blue Mountains, heading south. Jamaica is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, and it looked especially lovely that morning. The mountain road was spectacular and twisting, and I had to pay attention to the driving, but I felt wonderful. Pretty soon Terry said she wanted to talk about “us,” and about our future together. I didn’t. I felt that would only provoke an argument. But when I demurred, Terry pressed—why didn’t I want to talk about it? what was the problem with talking about it?—and pretty soon we had the argument anyway, and were both angry.
The core issue was that Terry didn’t want to break up and I did.
I have never understood this particular romantic impasse—in which one person is dissatisfied while the other person claims not to be dissatisfied at all. I just don’t get it. I always thought that if one person is dissatisfied the other person must also be dissatisfied. It didn’t seem possible to me that the other person could honestly feel satisfied.
For example, hubby is stomping around the house, irritated all the time, and wifey is saying, “Isn’t everything great? I think everything’s just great.” But how can she say that? Why is it great? Who wants to live with a permanently irritated hubby? What is he irritated about in the first place? Why isn’t she reacting to this irritation? What’s really going on here?
Nothing good, as far as I can tell. Nothing healthy.
I finally decided that people handled the pain of breaking up by adopting stereotypic roles. There was the role of the Leaver, and the role of the Left; the role of the Complainer, and the role of the Sufferer; the role of the Accuser, and the role of the Accused, and so on. These roles weren’t adopted with any particular reference to what was really going on. They were just accepted and familiar social roles, like the roles you saw on soap operas. Sort of the psychological equivalent of the cheap plastic costumes they sell kids on Halloween. Ready-made roles, not individually tailored to the people, or created by them for themselves.
Now, Terry and I were having precisely this sort of stereotypic interaction, driving over the mountains toward Spanish Town that morning. I was cast in the role of the Dissatisfied Man, and she was playing the role of Placating Woman in the Face of the Dissatisfied Man.
There were long silences in the car while we drove. The landscape, which was previously lush, now seemed overgrown and thick; Terry, sitting beside me, was sullen and withdrawn.
* * *
After quaint Ocho Rios, Spanish Town was startling in its sprawl and squalor. A shantytown west of Kingston, it was poor, colorful, and charged with menace. There were no tourists here; indeed, there were no whites at all; the black faces that stared at us were dull and hostile.
I had been in Jamaica in 1973 and had experienced an uncomfortable hostility toward tourists. Now I had that same sensation once again. I stopped at a petrol station to have the tank filled. The attendant came over to the car. He had a sour expression.
“Nice watch,” he said, looking at my wristwatch.
“Thanks,” I said, immediately pulling my arm inside the car. My watch was an old plastic Casio; I didn’t know what the big deal was, or why he seemed to like it.
“Full up?”
“Please.”
The attendant reached through the window, stuck his hand in front of my face, and snapped his fingers.
“Keys.”
The gas-tank lock. I gave him the keys, and he went away.
“Jesus,” I said, controlling my temper.
“Very nice,” Terry said, nodding. “An ambassador for his country.”
While the attendant filled the tank, several loitering black men came over and stood around the car, peering in at me, and at Terry. Their expressions were sullen and angry. They didn’t speak; they just walked around the car and looked.
“What are they looking at?” Terry said, growing agitated.
“Who knows?”
One of the men kicked a tire in front of the car. The others looked to see what we would do. We didn’t do anything.
After a moment, Terry said, “You don’t think anything would happen here?”
“No, I don’t think so.” And I didn’t think so. These men no doubt enjoyed frightening us, but I doubted very much that anything would happen.
Still, the tension was unmistakably there, and I was glad when the attendant returned, I paid him for the gas, and we drove off.
“This better be good, the reason you wanted to come here,” Terry says as I pull out.
“I told you, it’s research.”
“Well, it’s certainly that.”
Now, Terry can, if she wants to, slip into her traveling investigator’s mode and accept all sorts of difficulties with good-natured humor. But right now she is annoyed at me, and so she’s just sitting back, not helping me at all, letting me squirm.
Within Spanish Town there are few street signs, and the map I have gotten from the tourist office is sketchy, listing only the main thoroughfares. Sometimes as I drive I see a green sign, “Museum” with an arrow pointing, but as I follow streets they loop back on themselves; there are no further signs; eventually I see another sign pointing toward the museum in the opposite direction to the way I am now going. Everywhere the streets were crowded with people, traffic, belching buses, crying kids.
According to the map, the museum I am trying to get to is near a cluster of formal government buildings: the courthouse, the archives, the post office.
Eventually I drive past a high white colonial building. I feel I am getting close.
There is a large crowd of black men in front of this building. One street is blocked off; a policewoman directs traffic. I pull over to ask her help.
“Move along! Move along!”
“But—”
“Move along, I say!”
I pull my car over to the side of the road, get out, and walk back to her.
“Excuse me, I’m lost.…”
“Yes, that’s clear.” In a singsong voice, very irritating.
I grind my teeth. “Can you help me? I’m looking for the museum.”
“No museum here.”
“Yes, there is a museum. The Historical Society Museum.”
“Not finished yet.”
“But where is it?”
“I don’t know. Not here. That’s obvious.”
All this time she is directing traffic, not looking at me. I am ready to kill her now. I have been driving in difficult traffic for almost an hour, trying to find my way around this city, and I finally come upon a policewoman and she won’t tell me anything. I know she is lying. The guidebook says the Historical Society Museum was finished the year before. I will have to find my own way.
At least, I think, I can get her to help me orient myself now.
“What’s the building right here?” I say, pointing to the large white colonial building.
“What does it look like? It’s the courthouse, of course.”
“Courthouse?” I am suspicious. “Then why is it blocked off?”
“These men are here for their court appearances; they are waiting for their appearances, but there is no room inside to house them. Now, get back in your car and move along.”
I go back to the car. Terry is waiting for me. I get in the car and slam the door.
“Goddamn it!” I say.
“Never mind,” Terry says. “Lester can help us.”
I turn.
There is a black man in the back seat of the car.
“Hello,” he says. He looks about twenty-five years old, tall, muscular, and strong. He extends his hand for me to shake.
“This is Lester,” Terry says.
I twist around
in the car to shake Lester’s hand. I am very uncomfortable to have this stranger in my car.
“Lester’s a guide,” Terry says. “At least, he says he is.”
“That’s right, I can guide you,” Lester says. “Anywhere you want to go.”
Lester doesn’t look like a guide to me. A large knife scar runs down the side of his neck from his ear, disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt. His clothes are dirty. He smells of liquor.
“Where did you meet Lester, Terry?”
“He walked by the car while you were talking to the policewoman, and I asked him where the museum was, and he said he would guide us.”
I think: If he walked by the car, then he is part of this crowd of men outside the courthouse. He is waiting for a court appearance. This man is just what he looks like: a criminal.
“It’s nice of Lester to help,” I say, “but I think we can do this by ourselves.”
“Really?” she says. “So far you’ve just driven in circles for an hour. Or did the policewoman tell you what you wanted to know?”
“No,” I admitted.
“I think we need a guide if we’re ever going to get out of this godforsaken town,” Terry says. “Or, were you planning on spending the night?”
“I will guide you, I will,” Lester says. He is saying other things, too, in a clipped Caribbean argot that is incomprehensible to me. Lester seems cheerful and friendly, but I don’t like him. I don’t like the knife scar on his neck, I don’t like his manner, and I don’t like the fact that he is ensconced in the back seat before I have had a chance to discuss it with Terry.
But he’s there, all right. Waiting.
“Okay, Lester,” I say. “Great. We want to go to the museum.”
“Yes. I will guide.”
“Where’s the museum?”
“Museum?” He looks completely blank. “Museum?” He shakes his head.
“Terry. I don’t think Lester’s a full-time guide, Terry.”
“Well, he said he was.”
I am thinking, Jesus Christ, will you look at this guy you let into our car? Now what are we going to do about—