Calamity School
“Everyone should celebrate life,” says Guru Jon. “I have a letter here from a person who is dying. I won’t name their name, but they are in the terminal stages of stomach cancer. Their message to you? Be kind. That’s how you celebrate life.”
It turns out the letter is forged. Guru Jon made it up. This affects his credibility in the eyes of the public—but does it invalidate the message?
Guru Jon asks, “Does it invalidate my message? I embellished the truth to make a point. But the point is still the most important thing in the universe. It’s what matters most. Be kind.”
What a simple message. Guru Jon has risen to international fame on simple messages. The messages are easy to grasp and sound right to most people. Be kind. That sounds right. His followers believe he is wise. But if one were slightly unscrupulous, or slightly self-deluded, or slightly power-drunk, or some combination of the three, one could go far uttering easy-to-grasp, right-sounding messages.
“If everyone were kind,” Guru Jon says, “life would be perfect. Look at our world. We have everything we need, right here, right now. If we could just get along, it would be heaven on earth.”
Guru Jon has developed a line of toys that help center an infant’s chi. There are teething bracelets made of stones from the Ganges. The bracelets are analyzed by a third-party inspector and found to contain alarming levels of everything. The bracelets are recalled. Another scandal for Guru Jon’s wellness empire.
In an effort to launder his image, Guru Jon arranges a very public gesture of benevolence. But he has a huge problem: “We are feeding the needy and destitute vegan population downtown today—they are gathered as we speak on the art gallery steps. But our order from the Holistic Butcher got mixed up. Instead of the 700 pounds of tempeh we ordered, we received 700 live rabbits. There is no time to re-order. These vegans are starving. Look at them. They’re starving. We have no choice but to slaughter the rabbits and pass them off as tempeh. I don’t want to do this any more than you do, people, but we’ve got vegans to feed.”
The slaughter begins. The throats of the rabbits are methodically slit by volunteers who have come to scrub potatoes and chop carrots. Several volunteers collapse in moral distress.
“The show must go on, people!”
Guru Jon claps his hands, rolls up his sleeves, and leads by example.
“He forced us to slit the throats,” explains a volunteer. “There was so much...kicking...the rabbits...they kicked...when we—”
The volunteer collapses in front of the press cameras. Other traumatized volunteers hold her head up and fan her face and pour water on her hair.
“And then he forced us to feed the rabbits to vegans,” says another volunteer. She is visibly holding back tears. “We had no choice.”
Guru Jon throws his arms in the air. He turns from the giant television screen in the boardroom, where the video has paused. He gives his consultants a desperate look.
The consultants sit at a long table, five men and one woman, all in dark business attire.
“This is an unmitigated disaster,” says the woman.
The men all nod their heads.
“What do we do?” says Guru Jon.
“Own it,” says a male consultant. “Own it and apologize.”
“Don’t apologize,” says the woman. “Apologizing projects weakness. We need to project leadership. Just tell the truth. The tempeh never came. You had hungry vegans to feed. No apologies.”
“It’s not like the vegans were poisoned,” says Guru Jon. “They were happy with the meal. I have tweets. They praised our cooking. Look, I’ll read some tweets. Guru Jon’s generous act today has fed my soul as well as my body. That’s a real tweet. Here’s another one. Normally after I eat I feel hollow and sad, but not today. I feel full! I feel energized! Thank you, Guru Jon! See? They felt energized. Because of the rabbit protein. Their bodies weren’t accustomed to protein. Maybe we can turn this whole thing into, like, a thing. The Rabbit Protein Diet. For recovering vegans. I like that. That’s good! Don’t Eat Like A Rabbit—Eat A Rabbit!”
“Jon,” says the woman. “Focus.”
“But I really think I’m onto something.”
Guru Jon’s Rabbit Protein Diet takes off. The rabbits are raised in a spiritually sound environment. They live in a giant pen under gentle UV lights, in fields of wheatgrass that they are free to roam around in and eat. The pen is fully encased by alternating layers of wood, steel, hay, marble, and charcoal. The rabbits breathe filtered air and drink ionized water. When they are finally killed, they are killed using state-of-the-art humane techniques. Each rabbit is painlessly sedated while multiple trained veterinarians massage its entire body and tell it they love it. The sedated rabbit is then placed in a capsule, which is blessed by religious leaders of various faiths. The capsule contains an unstable radioactive atom balanced on a switch. When the atom decays, the switch is thrown. When the switch is thrown, the capsule fills with poison gas. The poison gas kills the rabbit; by this method, no human hand can be said to have killed the rabbit. Everyone is ultimately innocent.
“Rabbits are high in amino acids and antioxidants. They are probiotic.”
These claims are mostly dubious. Consumer advocates question the nutritional value of rabbits. As a test, a man lives on only rabbits for six months. He develops liver cancer and dies. It is a public relations disaster. Rabbit fanciers stage a sit-in outside the gates of Guru Jon’s Malibu home.
“I can’t win,” he says to his lovely mistress Guinevere.
“Jon,” says Guinevere. She gestures toward the beach through the giant bedroom window. “Look around you. You’ve won.”
But Guru Jon can never win. It is not within the scope of the progress of men’s souls to win. No, they all must lose. Some will inevitably lose more than others. Because some will have more to lose.
“Keep the house,” Guru Jon says to his estranged wife.
“Keep the second house,” Guru Jon says to his estranged mistress.
“Keep the townhouse,” Guru Jon says to his estranged daughter.
“Keep the chalet,” Guru Jon says to his estranged son.
“Keep the rabbit’s-foot business,” Guru Jon says to his other estranged son.
“Keep the change,” Guru Jon says to the clerk at the liquor store. He carries his paper bag to the nearest alley, where he screws the top off the vodka bottle and takes a hearty swig.
“How did this happen?” Guru Jon says to the deserted alleyway. “How did I fall so far?”
He slumps against the alley wall. He drinks, and as he drinks, he blames. There is so much blame to go around. Not enough drink, though. He empties the last drops on his tongue and holds the bottle up in the dim alley light to confirm that it is truly empty. It is truly empty. An old friend of Guru Jon’s, Swami George, once told him that life on this physical plane is a school for immortal souls. But schools have classrooms and teachers and lessons, whereas life is just a bunch of random painful crap. Sometimes you get rewarded, sure, but the rewards are only fleeting. So what could anyone possibly learn? Guru Jon eyes the empty bottle. Through the glass, he spies movement. He lowers the bottle and watches a shadowy figure approach. It is a short squat man in a trench coat and fedora. As the man comes nearer, Guru Jon sees that he has no eyebrows. And a nose like a pencil eraser. And a mouth like a slice made in soft white cheese. And eyes like the dark side of nothing. He peeks out from behind a popped-up collar.
The little man sneers, “I was never here, see?”
He holds a glass of milk out to Jon.
“You were never here,” Jon repeats, as if in a trance.
He takes the glass and drinks the milk.
Guru Jon awakens in a hotel room in Toronto. He looks around the nondescript room. How does he know he’s in Toronto? He just knows. He looks out the window and sees the CN Tower. Sure enough. Toronto.
He wanders out to the lobby, past the front desk, where the desk clerks stare at him icily. The cleaning staff stare at him icily. The other guests milling around stare at him icily. He shivers and crosses the lobby. His breath comes out in dripping clouds. He makes it to the revolving door and pushes through with numb, rubbery fingers. On the street, the heat hits him like a concrete sauna. Guru Jon pulls off his jacket. He pulls off his sweater. He pulls off his shirt. He pulls off his pants. A mendicant appears just down the sidewalk, pushing a cart full of robes. Guru Jon stops him.
“Can I buy a robe?”
The mendicant smiles sagely and hands Jon a bright yellow robe.
“No pay,” says the mendicant, before wheeling off.
Guru Jon wraps himself in the bright yellow robe.
“So it’s come to this,” he says to the passing business culture.
He steps into a nearby art gallery.
“I need a place to stay and food and water. Can I beg in here?”
The person at the reception desk looks up through round spectacles.
“Groovy,” says the person.
Guru Jon finds a piece of cardboard in the back storage room. He brings the cardboard into the main gallery space and sits on it. He writes on a little card and sticks the card on the wall. The card says,
BEGGING MAN
2020. Live human body, cotton robe, cardboard. Dimensions variable.
He sits on the floor with his palms out. Art people come into the gallery and scrutinize him. They either nod in knowing approval or shake their heads in aesthetic disgust.
Guru Jon lives out the rest of his days in the gallery, where he survives off the bagel scraps and restaurant mints that gallery-goers leave in his upturned palms. When he dies, his remains are shellacked and launched toward Pluto, as he had wished it.
“He lived his life,” someone says at the launch, “as a celebration.”
It’s what Guru Jon had wanted someone to say at the launch. The person who says it reads from a card. The person is a technician. The technician puts the card in their pocket, and then pushes a button to launch Guru Jon. The technician eats alone that night, at home, in front of their computer, looking at NASA’s latest full-color pictures of deep, deep space.
Trevor Shikaze (@trevorshikaze) is a writer living in Vancouver.