Chaos is Being

Queenie, who was in charge of chaos, could never tell if she was doing her job well or not. Was the world more chaotic than it’s ever been? Or just as chaotic? Did the computer add order or just allow us to store more than enough already useless information? Then again, there also was a problem with Queenie herself. She wasn’t at all clear if her job was to aid the world being more—or is it less—chaotic; to create order or to create, just create and see where all her creations might fit in with the rest of the order or chaos. She did her job well, nevertheless. She worked hard at it and she meditated on it as devoutly as the yogi meditates her third eye. The third eye, what a doorway to another level of chaos, she laughed to herself.

She loved life even if it didn’t make any sense, and hard as one might contemplate one’s existence, sense (no sense) and great meaning were not sleeping in the same bed. What is the meaning of anything of life? The meaning of life . . . now that’s a question—and so is, “Why is there a dead leaf on my sneaker?” As one can see, Queenie didn’t qualify her questions with any degrees of depth. Everything was a mystery. “You can’t make sense out of anything,” Queenie would say, “so enjoy it, don’t get stuck, and then hey—don’t forget to enjoy your death as well.”

When Queenie was figuring out if her job was to create more or less chaos (I don’t think she really cares either way, do you? After all, this woman is apparently mad, or just too damn happy) Queenie loved to tell stories, or if she was lucky her friends came over and spun some really good gossip her way. She liked all kinds of stories—stories that were really good slices of life with really believable characters—people that were alive in heart, kind of stuff. Stories were really cool because they always implied that there is something to be learned by all this chaos of experience. In a story we always got the point, unlike life where no one can accept that death is the point. Ouch! Queenie always felt that death was very important as it gave a punch line to life. Without it, life would run on and on. You would never get to the big belly laugh and frankly, a very long joke overstays its welcome and you stop listening after a while. Life is short, they say, and why it’s that way is so we can remember when to laugh: when the joke is cracked.

Either people loved Queenie, were entirely taken with her, or they couldn’t stand her. Queenie, herself, did not understand why there was such a polarity of reaction to her. It didn’t really matter to her as she felt the two contrasts made up an interesting life. One of Queenie’s secrets was that she had no capability to hate anyone. This endeared some people to her and infuriated others. Queenie had many secrets. “Everything is completely obvious, completely as it is,” she would say, yet she was unknowable by both those that loved and those that hated her.

Today Queenie was very happy that she had even gotten born. Being an animal, being a human animal, being a female human animal has been one of the best gossips she had ever the pleasure to play as and in. Just when she got bored with it, another layer of adaption proved to provide her with a string of hilarious one-liners. Being this fleshy machine—who would have thought of it? What a marvel of sensations and recipes. It’s always cooking, baking, and so eatable. With Queenie everything hung out or was visible but no one could believe she was that simple. “Everything is being completely itself.” Queenie was only that, too. That simple. That innocent. Queenie was without a hook to hang herself on. She didn’t believe in anything but delight—but she didn’t believe in delight, rather she lived as delight. No matter how irritating or depressing experience could be, Queenie approached life and all its experience as a sacred meditation of joy. The mystics and sages found bliss in the meditation on the formless, but Queenie found bliss in the formed. “Find it! It’s obvious, isn’t it? Everything is being completely itself! That’s the secret of life!” Queenie’s wisdom was not useful for the masses, or so they thought. Thinkin only gets to worryin, and if you thought about Queenie at all, you’d start worryin that who she is “being completely herself” might be something like how you already are. A close friend of Queenie’s had some insight into her when he said, “The reason Queenie doesn’t have any capability to hate anyone is because she loves herself so completely that everyone, and I mean everyone is included in that—so completely.” This friend of Queenie (his name being Jacob Moon) is a longtime friend of “the Queenie”(as he would say). Jacob was past worryin and had declared that future worryin added nothing either. He loved Queenie with all his guts, cells, and glory. With Queenie he never feared being himself completely, he rather enjoyed it.

Before Jacob had met Queenie he had been trying to “get” enlightened for years. He had visited and sat humbly at the feet of many saints, gurus, and sages. He knew at least five sacred, secret mantras. He had formally pledged himself to a western guru that taught through his own understanding but had adopted much of the Hindu rituals. He had been confronted on his neuroses for years and had been talked out of his unenlightenment as well. He understood all the ancient lingo about “the way” and the more modern version of “the way” which amounted to the “wayless way.” He had been a prime devotee, next in line to inherit the guru’s knowledge, but left before that honor was to be bestowed on him. Jacob wasn’t an organization man and, left to his hands, the organization probably would have skateboarded to a rapid decline. It was about this time— in the bud and short bloom of California spring, when he couldn’t get it up to care about enlightenment anymore (whether he was or not)—that he met Queenie. He was at an outdoor concert; the band wasn’t very good, but it was free. A woman, partly grey and partly shaved, was snapping his form while he was dancing. It made him feel a little self-conscious but he thought, what the heck, and played up to the camera, exaggerating his movements even more. Queenie like that and continued to snap his picture. After the music stopped, Jacob grabbed Queenie by the arm before she could get away and said, “How about a copy of the pictures you took of me?” Queenie laughed and said, “It’s only the moment—sorry, no film in the camera.” Jacob couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth or not and tried another approach. “Want to get some Chinese food? There’s a good place across the street.” Queenie looked at him, really looked at him and Jacob felt seen in a way that both attracted and frightened him. “Okay, you buying, right?”