In Which I Learn Something Anyway.

Friends, I have discovered the secret to inner peace. Better yet, after you’re done harmonizing your psyche with the tranquil overtones of the universe, you can go right next door and buy yourself a pretzel. Communing with the transcendent is hard work, after all.

I decided to take a walk today and wound up at a mall next to the lakefront. Seeking a relief from the heat and needing to use the restroom, I decided to wander around the shops for a while and engage in a bit of my favorite free hobby: People-watching.

I think most writers are inherent people-watchers. In a lot of ways, we’re like professional peeping toms; we get paid to study your lives and then tell everyone else what we know. My favorite people to watch are always in large group settings, like malls, because, oddly enough, most people relax among swarms of hundreds, as if no one could notice them among the throng. They’re wrong.

After getting myself a smoothie, I settled on a bench next to a Gap to see what entertainment the mall had to offer me. Almost immediately, I noticed a slight woman with long black hair and skin the color of mocha ice cream standing next to a drinking fountain. She was pretty enough to warrant anyone’s stares, but there was something about her that grated me the wrong way. I didn’t even know her, but she annoyed the sweet jeezus out of me, and yet I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. After realizing that she was not a shopper but a peddler of some sort, I decided to check out the situation.

“Hello,” she said in an accent that sounded cartoonishly Indian, as though she’d learned from watching Apu on The Simpsons. I nodded at her and smiled. She smiled back. “Would you like to participate in a free class starting in about five minutes?”

“What are you teaching,” I asked.

“Meditation?” she said, the word rising at the end as if to form a question. As soon as I noticed this, all of her statements became questions, and I knew why she’d annoyed me from afar. “I am teaching others how to find peace? If you will follow me, we can join the others?”

I nearly declined, but the opportunity to experience something that might–just might–provide me with writing fodder won out. I followed her into the back of a store peddling new age and narcotics. Among boxes of crystal unicorn statues, vials of patchouli oil, Tibetan singing bowls made by old stoners in San Francisco and who knows what else sat four other people who’d also apparently had nothing better to do. We all greeted each other silently while our host pushed a stack of boxes to the side.

All of the other participants were female (why are we such suckers?). Two looked like sisters of the sweet old Jewish ladies who live in my brother’s apartment building. Another was obviously younger than I am, maybe seventeen, tops, and she looked at me in a way that suggested we both try to make a run for it. The last woman was the only one who looked like she belonged in a store that had a window display featuring rhinestone-encrusted dowsing pendulums and tie-dyed glass bongs. Her long brown hair hung down to her back, though she sported some gray at the temples. She wore hemp sandals and a long cotton dress decorated with fake-y Native American patterns. As I sat next to her, I detected the faint yet unmistakable stink of patchouli. I mentally doused her with my strawberry-banana smoothie and then took her to Macy’s to buy some real perfume.

“Okay?” our host said, “Thank you all for coming? My name is Brenda? I will be helping you all learn? how to summon? peaceful feelings? from the universe and those around you.”

I blinked slowly, unsure of what surprised me more, the fact that her name was Brenda (I had been expecting something I couldn’t pronounce properly) or that the last part of her sentence had actually been declarative.

“Okay?” she repeated. I smiled; we were back on track. “If you will all please sit comfortably? we can begin?”

We all shuffled around and I cursed under my breath as the Patchouli Princess planted her butt next to mine. On the other side of me, The Teenager seemed to be attempting to get as far away from the rest of us as possible without getting too close to a large statue of Buddha smiling at us from the corner.

“Okay?” Brenda repeated. She produced a CD player and pressed play. What was probably supposed to be soothing music piped out from the speakers, but I only heard the wheezy breathing of the lady next to me. I wondered if she had eschewed allergy medications along with real perfume.

“Has anyone here meditated before?” Brenda asked. Patchouli Wench was the only person to raise her hand. Brenda smiled at her and nodded. “Then you know that there is no better place to find peace than a crowded shopping mall? When you leave here? you will barely notice all the people around? and yet you will feel connected to them? That is our goal today?”

I tried to keep my face blank lest I betray the voice in my head that was cackling to itself and saying rude things to Guru Brenda.

“Okay?” Brenda repeated. My brain threatened her with bodily harm if she didn’t stop saying, “Okay?”

She started us on some breathing exercises. Almost immediately one of the little old ladies had to step outside for a cigarette. One down, four to go.

As we inhaled and exhaled slowly, Brenda started humming tunelessly. As she explained that she was attempting to “melodically meld” with our minds, The Teenager erupted in a coughing fit that I was sure stemmed from trying not to laugh her ass off. She excused herself for a drink and escaped to the Sam Goody next door. We never saw her again. Two down, three to go.

I took the opportunity to scoot a little farther away from She Who Bathes in Patchouli and Piss while Brenda started instructing us to “cease all thought, go beyond your mind.” We sat silently for several minutes while I thought how often one would have to go beyond her own mind before she thought holding meditation classes in the back of a new age head shop was a great idea. I snuck a peek at the rest of the class and was surprised to see the other little old lady flip open her cell phone. After pressing a series of buttons, she managed to make the phone chime.

“Oh,” she said, “Sorry, I’ve got to take this.” Three down, two to go. I silently cursed the old broad and wished I’d kept my cell phone on me.

Brenda seemed to be growing impatient with her group’s dwindling numbers. She seemed to decide on a new tactic that would involve her two remaining pupils directly. She spoke first to Our Lady of the Dirty Bath Water. “Close your eyes,” Brenda said, “Where are you. Where is your peace? What does it look like?”

“Aquamarine,” she replied in a soothing, serene sort of way that made me want to slap her in the back of the head. “It’s undulant, like water or satin, and smells like…”

I waited for her to say patchouli, but she disappointed me for what I was sure would not be the last time.

“…the ocean.”

“Envelop yourself in it,” Brenda cooed, “Reach out for it with your mind and let it take you to the place where your peace resides, beyond the universe…” She trailed off into another round of tuneless humming. They both had their eyes shut tightly, so it was safe to gape at them freely.

“Tell me about your peace now?” Brenda said, nodding her head in what she supposed was my direction, though I was about two feet to the left of it now. “What is it like? What do you see, smell, feel?”

“I feel…” I said, flatly. I paused for a moment. “Tingly.”

Brenda’s eyebrows furrowed though her eyes stayed shut.

“I think my foot’s asleep,” I continued.

“You have to go past that?” Brenda urged. “If you move past your mind? you will cease to feel the body’s aches and pains?”

I shifted, sucking in sharply as my left foot moved heavily, awkwardly. I closed my eyes and bargained with inner peace. Come to me now until the blood comes back into my foot and I can go home to shower the residual essential oil stench off of me and I’ll give this meditation lady a good tip, okay? I wasn’t surprised when I felt the pins and needles dig into my flesh seconds later.

“I need to sit on a real chair,” I said, attempting to pull myself up using a stack of boxes marked, “Virtue, D., Angel Guidance Board, 10 ct.”

Brenda huffed and opened her eyes. “Fine,” she said. “Leave.”

I hopped to the door on one foot. “Don’t worry about me,” I said, turning back to Brenda, “There’s always pot.”

“Amen, sister,” said Patchouli Woman, her eyes shut tightly.

I laughed out loud and hopped away from the scowling Brenda. After allowing my foot time to regain normality, I put on my headphones and started towards home. I reflected on what Brenda had said about feeling more connected to everyone around me. She was right, only I didn’t feel connected to them because I had learned some sort of divine truth about the universe, I felt connected to them because I had, like so many before me, inadvertently sought answers I’d failed to get.

Curiosity, failure and shopping malls. If they can’t put you in touch with your own humanity, you’re simply not human.