CREATIVE NONFICTION

By David Blistein

In the fall of 1965, my family moved into a small, gray-shin­gled house in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island, whose main dis­tin­guish­ing feature was a bright yellow front door. It was in a mixed neigh­bor­hood, which—in the 1960s, in that part of town—simply meant a mix of Jews and Protes­tants, of middle class and old money. No minori­ties. For us kids, those dis­tinc­tions were rel­e­vant only in that nice Jewish girls usually lost their vir­gin­i­ty in the arms of a goy, while Jewish boys usually lost theirs to slight­ly less judg­men­tal and shame-trig­ger­ing shiksas.

While only thir­teen, I was already well on my way to becom­ing a card-car­ry­ing member of a gen­er­a­tion that was begin­ning to ques­tion the meaning of life with a feroc­i­ty that would even­tu­al­ly bewil­der even the most liberal parents. 

Outside that house with the bright yellow front door was a world where what mat­tered most to me was finding a girl­friend, getting all A’s, and becom­ing a famous writer.

Inside was a room where I’d spend hours whip­ping a yo-yo around while my mind ran similar circles around itself. A room where—transistor radio jammed against my ear late at night—I’d one day hear Eugene McCarthy win the New Hamp­shire primary and Bobby Kennedy get shot after winning the one in Cal­i­for­nia. A room where, a year later, I would sit up all night during my first LSD trip, scrib­bling page after page after page of angst-ridden insights. 

The five steps leading up to that bright yellow front door were the liminal space—and occa­sion­al­ly war zone—between my mind’s twin addic­tions: an obses­sive drive for worldly success and exis­ten­tial brood­ings on the appar­ent mean­ing­less of life. 

Many of those battles took place on the postage-stamp side­walk and lawn in front of those steps. I shov­eled snow off that walk in winter, mowed the lawn in summer, and raked the leaves in the fall. In the first couple of years, before we outgrew it, my brother and I played some serious stoop ball with a tennis ball against those steps. In addi­tion to the chal­lenge of hitting the edge of a step so the ball would fly over the other’s head into the street for a double, triple, or home run on our ever-chang­ing “field,” we strug­gled might­i­ly to avoid throw­ing the ball in such a way that it would skip into the storm door, making just enough noise to annoy our father as he settled down for his 5 p.m. cocktail. 

Early on, I also occa­sion­al­ly engaged in the tra­di­tion­al child­hood ritual of drop­ping tennis balls on ants. As their jour­neys across the side­walk were so rudely inter­rupt­ed, I con­tem­plat­ed the mystery of how some­thing could be so very alive one moment and so very dead the next. I wasn’t Torque­ma­da. I didn’t pull their legs off or light them on fire with a match. Cruelty had little if any­thing to do with it. It was the moment between life and death that escaped all reason. In our aca­d­e­m­ic family, few things were allowed to escape all reason. The very idea of some­thing escap­ing all reason was exis­ten­tial­ly troubling.

Several years after we moved in, during my junior year in high school, I arrived after my two-mile (no kidding!) walk home and per­formed my usual home­com­ing ritual: I approached the five steps leading to that yellow door, planted my left foot firmly at the base, leaped up to the fourth step, let my momen­tum take me onto the fifth, swung the storm door open, and, holding it with my left shoul­der, juggled the key out of my pocket and shoved it into the front-door lock. 

Usually, I’d con­tin­ue in one fluid motion to turn the key, walk in, drop the stack of books under my arm—no, we didn’t have back­packs back then—go into the kitchen and look for some­thing to eat. Ideally, molasses cookies. My mom’s molasses cookies were to die for.

This well-chore­o­graphed per­for­mance would take less than a minute from the time I planted my foot until I reached my hand into the cookie jar. But I did it with the same obses­sive need for per­fec­tion that I approached every­thing back then. If it had been an Olympic event, I’d have settled for nothing short of the gold. 

This time, however, just as I was about to turn the key, I stopped. What was the big hurry? Where was I going? What was I rushing so hard to get away from? Or to get to? Where did this sense of urgency come from that pro­pelled me from this moment to the next to the next…that vis­cer­al pres­sure to get on with or over with what­ev­er life threw at me next? 

The key remained frozen in my hand; the weight of books shifted slight­ly under my arm; the storm door tried to swing close—as if all three were a little unset­tled by this break in our usual routine. A few moments later, I put my books down on the top step, slowly turned the key, opened the door, picked the books up again, walked in, put the books down on the stair­way that led upstairs, and went into the kitchen, musing on the strange­ness of the moment. 

It was the first of an increas­ing number of similar expe­ri­ences that poked holes in the fabric of my ordi­nary life until what­ev­er remained of my assump­tions about the future col­lid­ed head­long into sex, drugs, rock and roll, Vietnam, and the mys­ti­fy­ing­ly seduc­tive words of wisdom in books by Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Paul Reps, P.D. Ous­pen­sky, and an increas­ing number of other writers who were explor­ing worlds I sensed were out there, but couldn’t find any way to penetrate. 

I would still go to college—but now, at least pro­fess­ed­ly, mainly to avoid the draft. I would still try to explain the inex­plic­a­ble in words—only now so I could mer­ci­less­ly decon­struct tra­di­tion­al think­ing, intol­er­ance, or random war-mon­ger­ing. I would still dream of tran­scend­ing all those thoughts and trans­form­ing my life­long drive to achieve per­fec­tion by going to Japan and reach­ing satori. (By the second semes­ter of my fresh­man year of college, I already had my eyes on a famous monastery in Kyoto.) 

But at the root of it all was that brief, head-shaking moment. A moment out of time. Or, some might say, my first moment in time. Stand­ing on that top step. Face-to-face with ques­tions that couldn’t be answered. And the feeling that answer­ing them wasn’t the point.

Several decades and thou­sands of med­i­ta­tions later, I was talking with a friend about the usual suspects—writing, rela­tion­ships, money, enlight­en­ment, and the daily pursuit of happiness. 

At one point I looked at her in mock defi­ance and said: “Well, enlight­en­ment isn’t all that is, you know.” 

She laughed and said, “Well, David, enlight­en­ment by def­i­n­i­tion is an aware­ness of all that is, so there can’t be any­thing more than enlightenment.” 

“Well,” I said, “all that is isn’t all that is, you know.”

The words had arisen from some deep well where, I sud­den­ly real­ized, they had been per­co­lat­ing for a long, long time.

I smiled. I couldn’t stop smiling. The idea was an incred­i­ble relief. Decades of aspir­ing to live in the now drifted away. I couldn’t not live there. 

But beyond that? 

I was back on the top step with the key in my hand.

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 17.

Photo by Víctor Martín