Wu Noir: An Intentionally Literal Misunderstanding of a Kōan [Part 1]

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A monk asked Zhaozhou, a Chinese Chán (Zen) master, "Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?" Zhaozhou shouted, "Wu! (NOT!)"

The monk said, "Above to all the Buddhas, below to the crawling bugs, all have Buddha-nature. Why is it that the dog has not?"

The master said, "Because he has the nature of karmic delusions."

          -The "Wu" ("Mu" in Japanese)" Kōan

Smoke like seltzer bubbled incourteously from thin lips, a dread of time sideways elapsed silence askance, silence that bespoke the terror of a crime that yet again broke down the borderlines of the obscene. Napalm for headline writers. As they got over the initial horror and their coffee kicked down the bedraggled doors of their eyelids drooping with midnight malaise, that mute solemnity slowly mixed with the bellyaching from the bosses at their sullen henchmen bearing badges malingering with crests like Romans once inscribed on their shields, miniature cupric tokens of old authority, tarnished, but still shining uncertainly in the unmellowed light of a lamp, shade set askew, scattered blood torn like a slapdash zipper ripped through it. I light another cigarette, scattering ash on the virgin crime scene, not that she was a doll to begin with. The furniture is out of date, and, having been curdled by innumerable summer heat waves, bursting at the seams, brittle with age, if you tapped it just the right way it would genially explode into a cloud of fine dust like a nova's sloughed off outer shells, glad for an excuse to disintegrate. I exhale contorted parabolas of smoke that solve equations in their intersections unthought of by mathematicians until the end of time, but just sidle by, parting their genius with my lighter, gunmetal gray, Spartan simplicity, returned to its place beside a pocket watch passed down, what? Four generations, five? I dunno, it ticks, though not all that well, and if it gets passed down once more it'll be to some lowdown pickpocket on the "L", wouldn't have it any other way.

She was stretched out all seductive under the drapes, pin-needled hedgehog style underneath, thirty blades at least standing in like tent poles under the big top, price of admission... uncertain, but it won't do to just sneak a peak through the curtains, firstly it's impractical given the crowd of brain dead lackeys crowded around drooling, undergoing the slow lobotomy of public service, and secondly it would be ungentlemanly. I for one respect the privacy of a lady, either alive or exsanguinated. Overkill certainly, but a crime of passion? Hmm... unkempt amygdalas screeching out for revenge and a man who would obey their whining cries to placate their unthinking primal tantrum. Not the work of a drunk though he surely had a couple beers or fingers of whiskey after his nine-to-five like the rest of us. Precise, like acupuncture almost, spaced even, though I doubt the son-of-a-bitch bothered to align her chakras at all, common courtesy really, the bastard...

Which reminds me of the chief, so I look around shadily side to side for his hulking figure, tall and unbefeathered, not a chance of a headdress on this one. Born under a highball of scotch cut with hand sanitizer skimmed from the delivery room, cheap, effective, just like his old man, and about as subtle as Fat Man saying cheers to Nagasaki, not one to wait around for a tea ceremony if you catch my drift, just BAM, "Goddammit Marsh, who let you onto my crime scene?" A tough grip on my shoulder that shouts expletives too sincere, too intimate for words.

"Crime scene? Really? I was just sniffing around when I saw your puppies crowded around whimpering, thought I'd see what it was that kicked 'em in their belly instead of rubbing 'em all gentle like you do."

"Get your incompetent, no good hide out of here and onto the street where you belong, making the junkies and bums look more appealing."

Just then, apropos of nothing, the theme to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air cascades through the room, my ring tone. I pretend like I don't hear it and just stare down straight into his dumbfounded expression of confusion, all business, not a trace of irony crossing my dead eyes.

"Sorry boss, have to take this one, the misses must be missing me, and I doubt she'll keep buying these 'Just went out for some fresh air' lines, not with the smog like it is these days."

After a grim sneer I'm forcibly shunted out a slammed door, must be something more to this one than just your garden variety stab wounds ad nauseum ad infinitum, something personal. The hallway has nothing to say, and the light on the apartment across just flickers for a moment and then with an electric twinge decides to go out for good, like my interest. I step towards the staircase and answer the phone.

"Marsh here, talk."

"Ruff, rooghuf uff, grrrrrrghurrr."

"Winst?" I yell, "What's up boy? I told you not to call me when I'm out."

"Grrr ruff, ruff ruff ruff! Grrrrr!"

"That bad? Don't you worry, I'm on my way, didn't know it was an emergency."

I pop open the exit door with a swift kick and accidentally slam it into a lady selling wilted roses, them's the breaks. I pick them back up and in a continuation of the same motion dive backwards into the underground as air wafts senescent eddies upward from the incoming train, the one I've got to catch. My muttered apologies ring out to her echoing from the serpentine intestines of the city, "If you don't want to get hit, don't stand under guillotines, lady." If she had a retort ready, it was lost to my ears. I prefer to think she was speechless. I sit down between a twitchy prostitute and a slumbering bum and make 'em both look handsomer, gotta hand it to the chief, he was half-right after all.

I arrive at my apartment in a daze having woken up automatically at the sound of my station's name on the staticy intercom, still uncertain as to what could have come up, there's only so much a canine can communicate over the phone. Not like those old pictures where Lassie coughs up a single downtrodden yelp and her old man is like, "What girl? Timmy's stuck in the well?" Timmy'd be stuck in Hell before anyone deciphered the mewling barks of that poor bitch, but no matter, I ain't bitter, it's just that life's not like pictures, dig?

Outside the door I sense that something's not quite right, a molecule or two out of place, maybe more, but my dog's in some sort of peril and so surely everything shouldn't feel perfect, probably just a sign of my general unease at being called back home so suddenly, and to be honest I'm not accustomed to seeing the place in daylight and morning's just breaking overhead. So I open the door and my premonitions are confirmed in an instantaneous way, furniture upside down, shadows moving like they're tied to scumbags. I instinctually withdraw, but from the side the butt of a handgun intersects with my skull and relieves me from the obligations of consciousness. The instant before darkness zips my vision shut there's but one solid impression. A foot-and-a-half up looking down, Winston, tongue lolling, tail wagging... son-of-a-bitch...

So bright, light searing into white death in reverse. Void without form, reality limping on one leg too long. Recollection kicks in most dim like a lost to-do list and number one is an exploding airship of confusion which fades to nebulous panic without words but cast in the language of autonomic reptilian fear, triple underlined, star star star, fight or flight, panic. All without words, all without words. Seems profound. Form descends from its hiding place, first only outlines then they fill with colored light, differentiated, the real puts its other foot down solid. Suddenly the return:   My body before me, shimmering self awareness condenses around nerves into familiar flesh. Immense, larger than galaxies, constellations of matter under some unknown central control, immaculately benevolent but misunderstood, Orion stirs thus. The return of sense perception and shortly after that the return of... the return of... I'm wet, in a puddle of uncertain origins, probably myself, staring at my own heaving chest and impossibly long legs. The magnitude of the experience is just starting to bloom through my mind when I remember what started it off, and that lolling tongue laughing at me from above, as my vision clears further, I see him sitting in the chair at ease, looking on calmly.

"Man's best friend?" I say, spitting bloody saliva at his vainglorious face.

He licks it off his snout precisely, proudly, and delivers nothing in return but a steady gaze, as before. Winston, always the model of self-control, even now when the jig is up, all's revealed, he's still coiled up coolly working out his what? Revenge? On what, Milkbones? Nevertheless he bides his time ever-so-slowly, which when you think of it is quite a feat when your life is measured up against dog-years, dog-time shimmies down the drain awful quick. He glances up to either side of me and two thugs pull me up to my knees, "Thanks, fellas, now this massage parlor wouldn't happen to be full service now would it? Love me long time and all that jazz?"

The one on the left raises his thick arm to come down on me hard, but Winston cuts in with a sharp bark and he stays his hand. Brings his arms up crossed, pouting the way hoods do looking off straight ahead at nothing.  

"Real class act you've got here Winst, you mind telling me what's up? Surely you owe me that."

He sits a moment more and then jumps quickly off the seat running behind off scene, he comes back with a tattered sheet of paper in his teeth, drops it at my knees. I pick it up, it's all numbers and figures, accountant gibberish, but I can get the gist of it, since the header spells out Chicago Police Department in no uncertain terms.

"Cooking the books, eh? Skimming off the top and splitting it with the ne're-do-wells down at the station, well there's no shortage of them down there, so I'm guessing you make quite a sum. And I suspect that shapely little prickly pear downtown got a hold of the particulars from some dumb Police john a little too exactly for your liking, pillow-talking it out of him, I suppose, and I expect he's dead now too, that right?"

He barks quick in assent and looks up to the man on my right questioningly and the guy says to me, "Killed in the line of duty, a hero's funeral. Twenty-one gun salute."

"And now you're going to do the honors for me, but I'm only getting one, right?"

He looks at Winston who jerks his head down slightly. The man looks back at me and says, "In this economy all departments are having to cut back, you're going to have to take one for the team." The man, this nameless man, unholsters his silenced weapon, rests it on my temple and puts his thumb where a dog's paw can't pull.

Winst looks me straight in the eyes unflinching as if to say, game, set and match, sucka', and I mirror them back placidly and unperturbed as the bullet parts my mind. No regrets, no fear, no thoughts arise, everything just as is. Goodbye, maya. Hello kensho!

(To be continued???)

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