Mindfulness is being completely aware of the present moment, and your activity and emotion in that moment.
I learned this in a book called Buddhism for Dummies, which I forget how I acquired. I sold it at a yard sale we had two years ago. ‘Sold’ is not the right word. I was asking a quarter for it, but some guy tried to talk me down to a dime, so I gave him a buck to take the damn thing away. It’s amazing when you think about it, how eventually everything will turn into garbage. All the factories of the world, which are mostly in China these days, make one thing and one thing only: future garbage. Everything you own will one day be thrown away.
Driving to my first Storage Unit Inspection Appointment, I was experiencing the exact opposite of mindfulness. Everything that was happening was already over. The very present itself was a memory, a live-action memory. In fact, it felt like I wasn’t experiencing anything at all. I was just remembering it as it happened.
My first appointment was with Self Storage, clear out on the edge of town where they keep all the industrial shit. I already knew I wasn’t going to take it. I didn’t want to live clear out on the edge of town where they keep all the industrial shit. Plus, I was familiar with Self Storage, having driven by it several times before. The units were garage-sized, complete with roll-up garage doors. I didn’t want to live in a place where one whole wall was a door. I was still a chooser, damn it, not a beggar.
As I pulled in, I saw the blue truck I was supposed to look for about fifty yards away, but I didn’t drive over. Instead, I sat there a few feet in from the main road. I waved and watched as he waved back. He got out of the blue truck and stood there waiting. He was assuming I was the person I was, the person in need of a storage unit. I put the car in reverse, turned around, and drove away. I looked in my rear view mirror, trying to see him, but the angle was wrong. This disappointed me. I wanted to see him scratching his head.
My next Storage Unit Inspection Appointment was not for another hour, so I pulled over in a Burger King parking lot and stared out the window because there was nowhere to wait. If I had a place to go, I would have gone there and I would have waited. It was a strange feeling, having nowhere at all to go. I saw my car as a transportation device, not as a place, not as somewhere to be.
"Yeah, I’m just sittin’ around the car, wishing I was fucking dead."
I could smell the flame-broiled beef and it was good. I hadn’t eaten since around 2 AM Wednesday morning and it was now nearly noon on Thursday. The Burger King was swamped. I watched people coming and going, coming and going, watched as one car after another connected to the ass end of the drive-thru train. There were hundreds of people and they all looked the same to me. Each person is unique, they tell us, but if so, who are all those people in traffic jams? Each person has a unique genetic code, a life full of entirely unique experiences, so why are they all here doing the same thing? After lunch, they will go off and do pretty much what everyone else is going off and doing. They are feeding at the trough, like cattle, and moving in a herd. They live for a brief time, and as they live, they willingly follow one another to the slaughter without even the slightest stampede.
