Goodnight Mold

By Casey Alexander

Ben was partway through his morning pigeon salute. It was an inhospitable morning; he stood on the balcony with an umbrella, waiting for one to appear. Thus far, his call had gone unanswered. Of course, they were under no obligation to answer, or acknowledge his presence at all. It was enough to know they were out there: aimless and uncomplaining, the birds served as a role model for him. Once twenty minutes had elapsed with no sightings, Ben saluted them in absentia. Breathing deeply, he went through the series of movements, setting down the umbrella in order to flap his arms. He concluded the exercise by marching in a small circle, signaling that he too would always find his way home.

Back inside, he struck his pocket gong (obtained at great expense from a wisdom supply company) with a tiny brass hammer to signal the start of the day. Having centered himself, he felt no compulsion to do anything. His task in this life was to be; undeniably, he was. There was no need to complicate things. He’d inherited eight million dollars; this had helped him to let go of petty concerns and understand the joys of living with nothing. Playing at deprivation had brought a new calm to his mind.

He calmly acknowledged that he needed to eat something. Ben made his way to the kitchen, where a bowl of vegetables sat on the counter. Part decoration, part inspiration, every inch an object of envy: the vibrancy of the radish, the serenity of the peas. The live and let live passivity of the onions, for instance. Someday he would join their number, once he overcame the scourge of conscious thought.

He took two pieces of bread from the remains of a loaf. As he dropped the second one into the toaster, an aberration caught his eye: a bluish stain along the edge of the crust.

Alarm. Confusion. The need for a rapid decision. Ben could choose to discard this slice, or remove the afflicted crust, but this struck him as the wrong move. What right did he have to reject it? The mold had an equal claim to existence—the freedom to develop and change, to pursue its own aspirations. From a certain perspective, he too could be seen as a blight on an otherwise pristine landscape: he had his imperfections as well and yet had not been discarded. Of the two of them, the mold was the worthier party, having criticized nothing to date. Who did he think he was?

No, the toasting must proceed and be followed by the banquet as planned. He set the toaster on low.

Non-intervention was the right call. Eating the mold might upset his stomach, or possibly enrage it, but resisting this was misguided. It might be the detox no juice blend had ever accomplished. With the impurities out of his system, he’d be a candidate for revelation: crumpled up on the floor of the bathroom, he might key into the meaning of life. More importantly, by consuming the mold, Ben would do it no harm. On the contrary, transfer to his system would mean a new country for it to thrive in, new avenues for success.

Clearly, his objections to it were groundless. The proper posture was gratitude. By virtue of being a person, place or thing which had appeared in his life, it was entitled to this distinction. He would be grateful for the mold on his toast, as he was grateful for the crack in his bedroom ceiling, the callouses on his heels.

Lost in these musings, he forgot that the toaster was broken; without his intervention, it would continue the cycle, top brown to the point of incineration. The scent of burning bread filled the room.

Ben reached for the cord but caught himself. The words of his meditation instructor echoed in his ears: “Attempts to impose one’s will on the universe are the origin of all sorrow.” He’d already spent several minutes in the mire of evaluation; he would not disrupt the natural order of things.

A modest flame shot up through the toast slot. Ben accepted it, watched it, welcomed it without judgment. As it happened, he found the fire arresting: the dance of the golden blob, the rapid expanse of its reach.

Impressed, he exhaled, propelling the flame toward the curtains. In an instant, the cotton ignited, illuminating the room and startling the young man. How bold and decisive it was! This was a fire with imperial dreams!

An idle thought: he could do something.

The dish sprayer presented itself, but Ben decided to leave it alone. No good could come from him butting into this situation, from acting on baseless notions of better or worse. What right did he have to interfere in the proceedings?

Unchallenged, the fire spread like a bad idea—to the cabinets, to the counters, to the wooden elephant he’d hung on the wall.

Ben was fascinated by the march of the flames; what’s more, they warmed his cheeks and lent a cozy glow to the room. He was a few bars into a campfire song when a spectacular cough overcame him. He tried to recenter himself, to focus on his breathing, but the smoke was too much: on the brink of unconsciousness, he dashed down the stairs and out into the yard.

He sprinted as far as the sidewalk, stopping by a patch of snow that had lingered into the spring. As the coughing subsided, he was hit by a sense of defeat. What was he doing outside? It was pleasant to breathe unencumbered, but he was annoyed at having extracted himself. A more advanced man would have perished, would have accepted his fate.

What unreformed part of his mind considered death a step down? Surely he was beyond this. He struggled to stem a profusion of critical thoughts, to vacate his mind altogether. (The idea, his meditation teacher said, was to silence all critical voices.)

Fortunately, he had the show to console him: a study of nature in a violent mood. The flames had torn through the walls; smoke poured from a dozen outlets, black mass against a grey sky. Ben was grateful for each falling beam, for every shard of glass that burst from the windows. For the fact that the rain had stopped, allowing the fire to churn undisturbed. The spectacle held him in thrall for some time.

He’d left his phone on the counter, but really there was no one to call; he had no family or friends, having overcome destructive attachments. He had managed to grab the gong on his way down the stairs, but the little hammer was nowhere to be found. Ben would be brave in the face of this loss, distressing as it was: perhaps he could gently kick it when the time came.

Sirens. The authorities raced toward him, summoned by a woman on the next block who’d seen the frenzy of smoke.

The jolly fire engine, the workers dashing about. It was rather like watching a musical. Ben was the sole audience member (most of his neighbors were out at work at this time). With the house practically levelled, they’d shifted their aim to containment, to preserving the rest of the block.

Ben briefly wondered how the couple downstairs might react to this turn of events. He owned the two-family house, so alterations were at his discretion; furthermore, as landlord, he could change the terms of their lease without warning.

If anything, it would hasten their progress, help them adopt the proper perspective. Like wrongful incarceration, like being hit by a car, the fire was a neutral event; only the odious process of thought could turn it into a problem. This much Ben understood: interpretation was a vice to avoid. One must receive the raw materials—the data his senses provided—but not make anything from them; all ugliness was created in the manufacturing stage.

Soon the truth would be evident to them: how gratuitous their belongings, how primitive their insistence on living indoors! In spiritual terms, it was a clearing away of debris for which they could only be grateful.

A policeman surveyed the scene. At the edge of the lawn stood a young man in flannel pants, holding what appeared to be a small clock. Ben didn’t notice the man coming toward him; he was captivated by colors and lights, like a child at a fireworks show.

Together they watched the last of the flames succumb, vanish beneath torrents of water. With some effort, the officer drew out Ben’s name and his relationship to the ruins.

“So how did the fire start?”

“What fire?” Ben asked. He’d moved on from the incident and was tracking the flight of a bee.

The policeman gestured toward the remains.

“Oh, that,” he replied, feeling grateful for the man’s sideburns. “It’s over.”

“Can you tell me how the fire started?”

“It started small,” he said. “But then it really got rolling!”

Unmoved by the tribute, the policeman tried again. Had he seen or done anything that might have caused the fire to start?

Ben shrugged. He didn’t understand the implication that he was somehow involved. He had simply accepted the fire, though not as radically as he might have. In this and all things, he’d waived his right to participation: he was perception alone.

He drew the man’s attention to a tangle of metal nearby. “Doesn’t that look just like a map of Montana?”

The policeman had to admit that it did; even so, he was taken aback. Was he unwilling to explain what had happened, or unable to understand? He watched as Ben stretched his calves, did a few lunges, knelt beside a pile of ashes (it looked as though he hoped to engage it in conversation).

The shock of the loss could bring about this kind of reaction. “He did manage to get himself out of the house,” he thought. “That’s encouraging.”

Physically he seemed well enough though he was breathing rather loudly. Maybe he just needed time to think, to make sense of the day’s events and figure out what to do next. One question bothered him, though: Why hadn’t he called for help?

He wrote “Person of interest: arsonist/simpleton” in a notebook.

He would return in the morning, accompanied by an expert: the fire marshal would see through the act if it was one. (Ben planned to stay on the premises, he said, to see what the lawn had to teach him.)

“We’ll be back tomorrow to follow up,” he said vaguely, not wanting to startle the man.

“Great!” Ben said. “Thanks for stopping by.”

The morning would bring new questions, raised eyebrows, the possibility of detention, but this was another man’s problem: like a flood in a foreign town, it was too remote to concern him. Anyway it was harmful to loiter in fictional spaces such as the future and past (both of which were teeming with monsters). He planted himself in the grass and meditated for several hours.

It occurred to him that he’d eaten nothing all day. There was an opportunity here: hunger was one more guest to greet with indifference. As was true with all things, he could probably breathe it away. The whereabouts of the mold were unknown. Although their paths had diverged, he knew it was flourishing somewhere and warmly wished it the best.

As darkness came upon him, he lay at the edge of the sidewalk, the pocket gong near his head. Despite his efforts to stay in the moment, Ben was still disappointed. He thought back to his vegetables. The transition from raw to roasted had been a graceful one; no challenge, no protest was heard. Would that he had the mindset of a zucchini, its commendable lack of opinions. His instructor did say that progress would be incremental, that disabling his mind would take time. Like an aged breadcrust, he was imperfect, but should not be condemned.

All in all, it had been an amusing day. Ben brought it to a close according to his personal custom, reading from his gratitude journal (virtually in this case, seeing as the book was no more):

“Goodnight ashes, goodnight mold. Goodnight ruined building, a wonder to behold. Goodnight plaid, goodnight snow; goodnight man with a long way to go.”