Anton lived in a dilapidated house at the end of the city, which he bought cheaply because the previous owner had convinced himself it was haunted. I never figured out how he’d managed to acquire it without any financial help from his parents (his mother worked a miserable job, and his father had been dead for ten years) and at some point I had to settle for the explanation that he was one of those people to whom such things just happen. Anton rented out the rooms of the house he didn’t use, and as a result the house was always full of people. There were so many of them, and they changed so often that I perceived them as part of the interior, although once I was one of them. Okay, let me structure my thought a bit:
In school, I didn’t belong to any group, but since I still had to be friends with someone, I hung out with the other kids who also didn’t belong to any group (especially the more nerdy ones). And one of them was Anton.
Anton really liked asking stupid questions and as a result, teachers and classmates gave him the nickname “Curious”. And since this nickname suited him very well, I still call him that to this day.
After school, Curious bought the said house. Then he decided he had made the deal of his life and went on to become a rentier and spend his free time (that is, all the time) smoking marijuana and drinking.
I used to go see him a lot at first, but after a few months, I decided to build a career at the company where I currently work and because the office was on the other side of Sofia, I systematically got tired of all the traveling and the noise in the house.
After a while, I moved back with my parents and gradually lost touch with Curious.
I couldn’t believe how quickly we’d stopped communicating. It seemed to me I hadn’t seen him for months. But interestingly, I headed straight to his house, without calling him to warn him, even though I didn’t know what he was up to: he could have gotten a girlfriend, gone traveling, found a job (not very likely), but something told me he was still constant in his inconstancy.
As always, the door of the house was open. I entered the huge hall, which occupied almost the entire first floor, and greeted the guys and girls sitting there while trying to make myself heard over the loud music pouring from the shiny “Infinity” speakers—a legacy from the previous owner. In the center of the room, a person was lying on the floor. He was unconscious and in his hand he clutched an empty KFC bag.
“What’s wrong with this guy?”
Instead of answering me, the person I’d addressed and a few of his friends started laughing at my question, and gradually almost all the people in the room joined the laughter (even those who had no idea what the joke was). Then, one of them started explaining to me that at the beginning of the evening, this person had bet with someone else that he could, without a problem…
Note: Don’t ask stupid questions, unless you want to hear the stupid answers.
I looked at the people once more and after not finding anyone I knew, headed toward the back of the room. Curious was there, sitting on a huge armchair. He was wearing a baseball cap that darkened his whole face, and hid from his gaze everything except a thick book on his lap, which he was reading so fervently that its pages were tearing at the corners. I stood next to him and said “Hello.” He turned toward me for a second, just to confirm my identity, and then buried his nose in the volume again, while simultaneously talking to me.
“How are you, Engineer? What’s up?”
“Nothing special.”
Note: This question seems to have become redundant.
I said this as a prelude to the story about the phenomenon, but he took it literally and immediately took the floor and started telling me an anecdote from the book he was reading about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: Apparently, when Wittgenstein was deciding if he wanted to dedicate his life to philosophy, he gave his mentor Bertrand Russell a manuscript for review, and told him “Read this and tell me if I am a complete idiot.”
“He was very harsh on himself,” I said.
“Yes, but listen to this. Russell asked him why he wanted that. And he said ‘Because if I am not a complete idiot, I will become a philosopher…’ “ Curious made a long pause, “ ‘…and if I am one, I will become an engineer!’ “
When he said this, we both started laughing. The joke was on me; I was “the Engineer”—this was my nickname which he gave me when I got accepted to study at the technical university. But it wasn’t a mean joke, as it may appear to you—nothing that Curious said or did was mean. Still, it made me nervous: The story was just a way for us to reconnect with each other, through our high-school personas, which, for good or worse, we hadn’t moved away from.
“Anything interesting with you?”—Anton must have noticed my serious expression as I was thinking of a way to make a fast segue to the phenomenon.
“Yes,” I said, after recovering. “Actually, one of the most interesting things that ever happened to me.”
“And aren’t you going to tell me what?”
“I’ll tell you, that’s why I came.”
With this remark, I managed to engage his attention. His gaze stopped roaming the room and focused on me, while I mentally went through the whole experience, trying to systematize the information. But they were drunk and the music was loud, so I realized that none of the things I planned to say would work and I just started screaming.
“So, get this. I went out of the office. I saw a ray of light, which looked as if it was coming from space. I got out of my car and started running toward it and… and it submerged me. Stop, hear the whole thing! First I started hearing everyone, as if I was God, OK? I was literally flying. Then, in the next moment, I was kind of stuck in my own brain, and I was thinking, ‘What’s the point of thinking logically when I cannot get anywhere with it? Can I just be free?’ Next thing I was lying on the grass!”
He didn’t say anything even after I finished the story. At first, I thought he was reconsidering his answer (another thing he never did) and by the time I realized, five minutes passed while the music played, the people around us were having fun, and the two of us sat like reproductions of Rodin’s “The Thinker” and exchanged “meaningful” glances.
“And then?” he asked me at the end.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what happened afterwards?”
“Well, then a guy called me mean names for parking behind his garage.”
“Aha, and then?”
“And then I went to have dinner with my parents, and I tried to tell them the story, but had a huge quarrel with my father instead, and decided I was moving out ASAP!”
“Shit, and then?”
“And then I came here and am having this conversation!”
“Rad.”
“So, what do you think?”
“Yes, this type of stuff happens to me sometimes as well.”
He took another sip of vodka and moved closer to me:
“What do you see in my hand?”
“A glass of vodka.”
“How did you know it’s vodka?”
“Because that’s what you drink.”
“You’re right,” he said. “But I asked what you see, right?”
“Okay, I see a glass with transparent liquid,” I said. “If I didn’t know you, I’d think it was water. Especially considering the amount…”
“Absolutely right…” he interrupted me. “To assimilate what we see, we liken it to what is most familiar to us, and those are probably the two things we humans know best—water and…”
He got up from his chair and headed toward the library. The books there weren’t arranged in any order, but despite that, he immediately found the one he wanted to show me.
Note: Never think you know someone.
“It was some book on Buddhism.”
By that time, I was open to accepting new things, but ever since I was little, I had felt distrust toward religion, bordering on disgust, and the spiritual scriptures seemed to me to have been composed by someone who had taken large amounts of drugs beforehand. But what annoyed me most was the fact that there were people who consider all that to be true. How could Anton be one of those people?
“Buddhism?” I said. “Is that your explanation? I thought you’d pull out some scientific literature, or at least pseudoscientific. Everything is probably better than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing, just to believe….”
“Little Engineer, listen. You’re a very good friend of mine. That’s why I want to tell you that sometimes you’re very stupid. No, I’m expressing myself wrong. You’re not stupid, but you miss things that are very important…”
“For example?”
But Curious didn’t answer me, because at that moment someone spilled a bottle of red wine on his book.
“You idiot, this book costs over a hundred leva,” Anton shouted. “Not to mention the wine…”
“I don’t know how it happened…”
“Well, in the state you’re in, someone could probably pass right behind you without you realizing it! Go to the bathroom, get the rag…”
“Okay. But where is it?”
“So, there’s a cabinet that is to your right when you enter. Next to it…”
I stopped listening to this conversation, trying to come to terms with the fact that on this day, things kept getting interrupted exactly at the moment that was most interesting to me.
“Okay,” I said to Curious, after the wine crisis was resolved. “So you believe in god, is that it?”
Note: Atheists are allowed to write ‘god’ with a lowercase letter.
“I don’t know if I believe in god, what’s the connection?”
“The book is about god!”
“Nooo…”
Curious took it to the other part of the room, which was a bit better lit, started leafing through it and a little later, he handed it to me and pointed out a passage that was underlined:
“I together with all living beings, achieved enlightenment.”
“I need to think about that,” I said, taking the bottle of vodka, unscrewing the cap, and taking a big gulp. “But if we are created by a higher form of life, then who created that form?”
“Some even higher one?”
“And who created that?”
“Considering you’re a mathematician, you probably feel quite uncomfortable with the concept of infinity,” Curious burst out laughing.
With this remark, he broke the ice and our conversation took off. We started discussing the role of religion through the ages. Gradually, the memory of the Phenomenon began to fade from my head, and even started to seem more pleasant than confusing. I searched for the window, to catch a glimpse of the sky. Perhaps the light was there, waiting for me to look at it… But it wasn’t. And I suddenly remembered that I had to work the next day. I wanted to finally kick off my career, so I could make money, so I could get away from my parents (long chain of thought for my past 2 a.m. brain).
“Okay, let’s end today’s meeting,” I said. “I’m going to steal a few hours of sleep before work.”
While driving, I suddenly remembered what Anton meant when he said that everything was a product of my imagination: “To assimilate what we see,” he had said, “we liken it to what is most familiar to us. And those are probably the two things we humans know best—water and light.”