The MWL spent a lot of time in parks. He had a broad and catholic idea of what a park was. In this respect, he was like a person who loves holy places so much, that he is indifferent to their denomination or appearance, and would count a pile of rock, a half converted tavern or a moving vehicle among the sacred spots of the world, if they reeked of the divine.
One of his favorite parks consisted of little more than an eruption of a few trees and benches in a long, narrow plain of tarmac and pavement. It qualified as a park under the definition that a park was a place where benches and trees grew people. It qualified, but barely.
When he was growing up, people used to say that if you waited long enough on the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway, you would meet anyone you wanted to meet. It seemed to him that the same was true of this park. People showed up there who had no business showing up there. It was as if it were an unmarked stop on some strange underground railroad. But who was conveyed where, by whom, was a mystery.
The MWL was not in the least surprised when, arriving at the park one vibrant and sunny day, he found there, on a bench, in front of a cement table, a spiritual giant, a Seer, Mystic, a Master, whose name was Strayte. He was dressed in a leisure suit, and was preparing to lunch on a duck.
The MWL hesitated only a fraction of a minute before he walked over to the master.
"I heard you speak once," he said. I wonder could you...." He wanted to ask something, but suddenly his courage fled, and he mumbled instead, "it's unusual...."
"What," asked the master, "to see a man getting ready to eat lunch."
"No, not the eating exactly, except that it's Peking Duck, isn't it?" the MWL asked, pointing to the complete animal laid out on the table. "You have to order them a day in advance, don't you?"
"You do," replied the master, jovially, "but I have a disciple who works in a Chinese restaurant." His look turned suspicious. "You don't want any," he asked, "that's not what you had in mind, was it?"
"No," replied the MWL.
"Good," said the master, "because I'm not good at sharing."
"It's just that I heard you preach once," the MWL repeated, working his way up the incline to the request he wanted to make.
"I remember, I remember," said the master, "in front of Bloomingdales. It was raining. I remember you."
"But how could you?" the MWL blurted out, astounded by the master's assertion. "I was just one of the crowd and I wasn't even near the front. I was on my way to my aunts, and I wasn't even paying much attention," he added guiltily.
"Nonetheless," said the master,"I remember you. You were wearing an apricot colored work shirt," he said. "I hope you got rid of it," adding parenthetically, "it was an atrocity."
The MWL was convinced that distinguishing him in that flowing anonymous throng of passersby was impossible. He was stunned by the accuracy of the master's recollection even though he himself liked the shirt. "But, but...," he stuttered.
"I remember, I remember. Why make a federal case of it." The MWL retreated from his disbelief and the master shifted his attention to the duck which he had grasped by the thighs, preparing to start his lunch, wing first. "And I remember the story I was telling when you passed. It was that story about a man who meets a Zen master.... "
The MWL interrupted him, giving the spiritual giant a chance to sink his teeth firmly around one of the large wings of the duck. "Excuse me," the MWL said, "that's what I wanted to ask you about. Even though I have forgotten crucial points, the story you told that day has haunted me. But it was not a story about a man who meets a Zen master. I remember distinctly that it was a story of a man who hunted...."
The spiritual master managed to get out a firm, "No" between chomps. "It was the story of a man who meets a Japanese Zen master."
"I hate to be argumentative," said the MWL, "but I remember distinctly that it was the story of a man who hunts...." The master let loose grunting sounds which resolved themselves into a very distinct sentence. "Listen, if I can remember you and your apricot shirt in a passing crowd," he said, "give me credit for remembering what story I told."
"That story then," he explained," is not that story now. On a rainy day that story I told is about a man who hunts, but on a sunny day that story is a story of a man who meets a Zen master. Is it raining now?" The MWL looked up quickly as if it might have started to pour without his noticing, but the sun was shining, and he had to admit it wasn't raining. The master treated the issue as closed.
"Besides," he said, I've learned a thing or two since then." He finished stripping the wing clean, and started down the side of the duck, as if his teeth were following a map drawn on the duck's back. He continued talking as he chewed, leaving it up to the MWL to separate meaningful sounds from alimentary noises.
"Since then I've learned some spiritual economics," the master seemed to say. "Every truth worth knowing can be said in no more than 15 words." He had finished side of the breast adjacent to the wing and was starting on the leg which had already half disappeared into his mouth. "And every truth that can be said in no more than 15 words, can be said in 6 or less."
Out popped the leg bone from his mouth clean as a silver spoon. He disgorged the gristle on a napkin that had conveniently been discarded by someone earlier.
"It's also true," he said, just before he passed the curve of the neck of the duck on his way to the other leg, "that any truth that can be said in six words is so obvious that it doesn't need to be said at all."
The MWL wasn't sure of the integrity of this last sentence because it coincided with the plunge of the other drumstick into the masters maw.
It was a while before the master, whose appetite was unflagging, disgorged the now spotless leg bones and made his way, biting and tearing, towards the last wing and no-moreness.
"You know, of course," he said, using his tongue to scoop the remaining pieces of breast into his mouth, "you know that those truths that are so obvious that they needn't be said at all, require no fewer than three volumes if you write them down. So much for libraries," he added. "It doesn't make a difference any way," he mumbled, whipping the last wing into the darkness waiting between his jaw; he talked around it. "No difference, because the heart of every spoken truth is a feeling that can not be put into words." And the duck was finished, although some chewing and swallowing needed to be done.
The master set the clean carcass down on the cement table in front of him, standing it up and balancing it so that it faced south, toward the World Trade Center, which could just be seen in the opaque southern sky.
"Thank you," he said to the carcass, "thank you." A little breeze awoke from somewhere and started the carcass rocking, and the master gave it a turn and started it spinning.
"Do you see?" he asked the MWL,"Do you see?" The MWL confessed he didn't see anything other than the unexpectedly animated carcass of a duck and, when he looked up, the uncertain outlines of the World Trade Center. The next thing that the master said seemed to come from the still spinning frame of the picked clean fowl. "Truth is just the most convenient metaphor available at any moment," it seemed to whisper.
With these words, the master turned and headed in the opposite direction from the buildings whose tops were beginning to be obscured by glowing clouds. "I enjoyed our conversation," he said over his shoulder in a good humored way, but the MWL's attention was caught by the carcass which at that moment spun off the table and landed by his feet. It rested there, looking up at him, as if it were some sort of a test that he was not quite ready yet to pass. And although he wasn't quite sure what to do next, he guessed that as the price of the lesson, he was expected to clean up. With a good feeling about himself and the world, he tossed the carcass into the wire trash bin on the corner and hoisted his ladder onto his back and set off home.