I'm getting pretty good at seeing Charlie's absence.
As you may recall, I am somewhat belatedly attempting to meet Charlie's challenge--to learn how to see him even when he's made himself hard to see, and to make myself hard enough to see that I can sneak up on him and surprise him.
A tall order. Charlie's version of invisibility depends on quietly occupying space where people don't look. I've learned to do it myself, to some extent, and I know the technique can be defeated simply by being more aware--looking in the places where others don't. The problem is that Charlie is already aware of pretty much everything that happens around him. He doesn't have any obliviousness to take advantage of--and he's got to be watching for me especially, since he knows I'll be trying to sneak up on him.
I've divided the project into several stages.
First, learning to see Charlie even when he's hiding--which I've been practicing for about two weeks, now. I'm practicing by looking around for him every few minutes, even when I'm in places where he has no reason to be. I'm just getting myself in the habit of noticing whether he's around. I'm also making a point of noticing other things, glancing around rooms to see if anyone else is in it, whether anything has changed since I last was in there, and so forth. It's easier, I find, to be observant in quick bursts than expecting myself to be Sherlock Holmes Jr all the time. I've made progress here, as I explained last time.
Now, I've also started trying to learn more about Charlie. Does he really have no areas of obliviousness? Suppose his pattern of attention is just different--he looks in different, maybe more, places than other people, but does it follow that he looks everywhere? So where does he look? I've begun watching him.
Finally, I've decided I'm unlikely to be able to sneak up to him in plain view, as he has, until recently, been able to do with me. Instead, I'm going to have be somewhere, probably actually hidden, before he arrives and then emerge. I will have to emerge gradually--he says he never watches people when he isn't in principle visible to them, so part of the game is a kind of fair play; he has to be able to see me, and yet fail to see me, at least briefly before I say BOO.
So, I'm watching, trying to learn not only where Charlie looks and does not look, but also where he goes and when. And I don't want him to know I'm doing any of this, so I have to have plausible excuses for everything I'm doing. I have to seem normal. I have to not only seem to be paying attention to something other than Charlie, I have to actually be doing so, because he'd notice the subterfuge otherwise.
I'm thinking about all those stories where the student tries to fool the master and just can't. There's a scene like that in Way of the Peaceful Warrior, and there's a Zen story from somewhere about a teacher who hits the student every day with a stick until one day the student decides he's had enough and hits his teacher--and the teacher blocks him expertly. Then the real lessons begin. Am I about to be humiliated?
I think not. Because what those stories have in common is that the student has made a fatal error--assuming the teacher is as unskilled and oblivious as the student, or even more so. I know perfectly well Charlie is still miles beyond me. I'm treating him as an adversary of far greater skill who can only be defeated (maybe) if I apply all my skill and care and then some.
I may fail, but I will not be humiliated. I have no hubris to puncture here.
And so here I sit in the cooling dark of the Formal Garden, waiting to see whether Charlie will go in by the secret door, watching the last vestiges of the orange sunset in the extreme west. It was a very pretty sunset. I can hear him coming now, but I will not turn around.
It smells like snow.
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