Desperate Karma |
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Carl exited the drug store, stepping into the street, into the oppressive sunlight. The ATM wouldn't give him any money and he had questions, oh so many questions.
What if what you did, right now, could that insure your happiness in the future, the near future? What if your actions of this very moment effected what would happen to you two minutes, two hours, two days or two weeks from now? What if helping a little old lady with her groceries could insure that you would get laid tonight, or that your boyfriend would shut off the television and really want to hear what happened with your day. What if the magnitude of whatever you did was directly proportional to the karma you received in return. Would that mean that an action as selfless as pulling a homeless person off the street, finding them a job and setting them up with financial security, could make you financially set for life?
But then, if a good deed was done just to obtain karma, it wouldn't be so selfless, would it? Would that diminish the karma? Wouldn't acts of good, just to receive good be a bit like bargaining with God? What is the karmic payoff to bargaining with a deity? Thinking of karma as being on a scale with one end being bad karma and the other end being good karma and the middle being neutral karma, where would negotiating with a deity fall; on the good karma or bad karma side of neutrality? Carl looked around, up the street, down the street. He was desperate. The woman he'd been dating had dumped him for some guy with a debilitating disease. Someone in India was doing his job. His cat had died a slow, costly death. Why? What had he done? Around him, people went about their business. A couple moved arm in arm, stealing smooches in a shameless public display of affection. The guy on the bike went about his business, rapping as he peddled down the street. A bevy of women chattering like magpies moved through Carl, nearly knocking him aside, without notice. He wanted to stop them and ask them, "What have you done in the last two minutes, two days, two weeks? How do you live your lives? How is it that yours seems so filled with good things that make you happy, while mine is -- ?" Carl scoured his memory, reviewing his life, trying to remember what it was he had done to deserve his ill fate. At the corner, a man sang and laughed at the sky. Good karma was an illusion. The man singing wore tattered clothes, unkempt hair and the ruddy dirty skin of the unclean. His singing was laced with hysteria. His laugh crossed over the boundary of being maniacal. What, Carl wanted to ask the man, had he done that karma had stolen his home and his mind. Carl stared at the man, placing him in the past, wearing a suit, holding a briefcase, bidding a lovely wife and adorable children good-bye to spend the day in a clean office. Carl pulled a dollar out of his wallet, put it back and pulled out a five-dollar bill. He would hand it to the man and ask, "Here take this and tell me, what did you do?" The homeless man looked at Carl's outstretched hand and the five-dollar bill, crossed himself, made the sign of the horns at Carl and began to wail. "No! No! Satan Get thee behind me! Money is the devil incarnate! Take it away. Take from me the currency of evil!" The man’s wailing drove Carl bacj. Everyone on the street turned to him, doe-eyed, wondering what he had done to the poor homeless schizophrenic. Evidently, he had bought himself more bad karma. At least he had a gauge. He knew the worth of five dollars of bad karma.
The schizophrenic advanced on him, grabbing the five from Carl, wadding it up and sticking it his mouth. The homeless man chewed on the bill until it was masticated enough to be swallowed, which he did. It wasn't exactly the idea Carl had had for helping the man find a meal. It wasn't exactly the kind of Karma he had hoped to buy. The man advanced on him, spasming like a cat about to eject a hairball. Carl backed up, until the man finally vomited. The gooey bill wrapped in the smegma of the man's digestive fluids fell at his feet. The bill was mashed but, could have been unwrapped and washed and spent. Carl turned away. Where was the karma in saving a five-dollar bill? Carl moved down the street, around the corner, searching. He needed something, now! He needed instant, no, desperate karma, good karma. He needed an old woman who needed him to help her across the street. He walked four blocks, turned a corner and walked two more blocks. There! There she was! At the corner, in a flowered dress that was once quite fashionable, yet had lost its shape. The blossoms on the flower were loosing their hue. She stood at edge of the curb, shaking from fear, watching the incessant stream of traffic that paid her as much mind as a scrap of waste in the gutter. Her shoulders were pulled down by the weight of two canvas bags she carried, each filled with groceries. Carl went to her, lacing his fingers through the handle of one of her bags, his own hand cupping hers. The touch warmed him. The feel of his hand against hers spoke of the surely good karma he was buying with this gesture. Surely, she could feel the warmth of his hand pass through to the cold of hers. "What?" She jerked away. "What are you doing? Get away from me!" There was no fear in her voice, none in her eyes. The shaking he had noticed before had been the palsy of old age, not fear. Her face bobbed, but her eyes were steady and sure. This was a woman who'd lived enough life to never fear anything again. What, Carl wondered, had she done to insure such security? "I -- I was going to help you across the street." "Ach!" The woman looked as though she would spit on Carl. "I don't need your help! I may be old, but I am not invalid. I don't want your help! I didn't ask for your help!" Carl backed away. When he reached the opposite corner on the block he looked up. It was a powder blue sky day with fluffy cotton clouds. He hadn't noticed that before. It didn't feel like a blue sky, fluffy cloud day. He searched up beyond the puffy white bursts knowing that deep within that light blue was the dark indigo that held the deity of karma. He spread his arms and spoke into that indigo abyss. "Why? What does it take? What is the design? How do I make this all right, make it all work? How do I find the right karma?" "Can you help me?" The voice did not fall on Carl from heaven; nor did it sound pleading or desperate. It came from his right and it sounded chipper. He looked. A woman was hanging out the window of a late model car. She clung to one of those plastic fold-out maps that always seems to find its way into the hands of tourists. Carl nodded. "We're looking for Common Street." She held out the map. Carl didn't point to it. "It's easy to find. You’re close. If it came through, it would be right there. Go back to the corner. Make a right. Go three blocks and make a right again." "Thank you." The woman was good karma chipper and then was gone before Carl could ask her how she did it. What she and her husband did to insure the happiness of their lives? He watched the car until it disappeared around the corner. He turned away, moving along the street. A very pretty woman in flouncing summer dress passed him going the other way. She smiled. Her eyes engaged his, her eyelids flared with lashes as long as prairie grass. Her eyes had met his flirtatiously, the first time in a long time. Instant karma had befallen him. He realized he'd been given an answer to the question he had tossed into the deep of the sky. He needed to find someone who asked for help. He continued along his way, this time with his ears, not his eyes tuned to the search. Carl sensed the cry for help before he heard it. It was pushed at him on a psycho-radiating aura of rage. There was certainly a magnitude to the anger that drifted from across the street. It swelled over the sound of the traffic. Quelling that anger could only be paid back with karma of equal magnitude. On the other side of the street a young boy cried and a young woman screamed. She yanked on the young boy's arm, nearly lifting the toddler off the ground. The boy screamed in the way that only a child under the age of five could. The woman was young, too young to be a mother, but she was. She was a product of her own past karma. Carl stepped off the curb, his focus on the anger and cry for help from across the street. His concentration focused on the level of karma an act of rescue might bring him, the possible magnitude of preventing parental abuse. He moved into the street, stepping out from between two parked cars, no thought was given to the possible karma of a city bus speeding to meet a late schedule. Consideration for whatever he had done two minutes, two hours, two days or two weeks ago never entered his mind. Perhaps it should have. |
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