Instructions for Disappearing

INSTRUCTIONS FOR DISAPPEARING

1. Pick a place where nobody will find you. Zoom in on a nice looking patch of forest. Throw a dart at a map.

Then again, you might be traced by the hole you leave in the paper. Better to just start walking.

2. Are you packed? Do you have everything you'll need to go and never come back?

In fact, though, will that be enough?

Better to take a Buddhist approach.

Better to disappear into that place completely, without attachment to

anything

Better to move through the trees more quietly.

Then again, they'll still hear you, won't they? The birds, the deer,

the trees.

Better to go without any steps at all, without any panting breath. Better to go without your thoughts.

Better, in fact, to disappear into no place at all.

You can get there from anywhere. From right where you are (if you are at all by now— it seems you may have begun to fade already into that no-place… are you still reading?)

3. The eyes are hardest to let go of.

The hair is easiest of course, it fades the most naturally, if it hasn’t started fading already, if there’s even anything there at all.

You can close your eyes, but only till your eyelids fade (also one of the first to go, paper thin to nothing) and then you’re stuck floating there in your sight.

Then you’re thinking, why disappear at all, when it all looks so beautiful?

Perhaps you should’ve started smaller, perhaps you shouldn’t have started by disappearing so completely, perhaps you should have just started walking.

You’ll need to pack a bag for that, pick a nice spot somewhere in the sun, somewhere you can listen to the birds, the deer, the trees.

4. Don't forget to

Are you still reading?

Are you still there?