The Book of Formation by Ross Simonini

Author:Ross Simonini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2017-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

5 The title of Mayah Isle’s 2003 book from Hyperion.

VII.

April 2006

LOS ANGELES, CA

Before I met the Isles, the path of self-transformation always seemed like a lot of unnecessary huffing and puffing to me. As I saw it, life was a puzzle and I just had to keep going until all the pieces had been rightly put.

For example, in my twenties my plan with food was to dial in my “perfect health” diet. I’d establish some kind of rule set—eliminate nightshades, eat thirty grams of protein thirty minutes after waking, eat fruit on an empty stomach—and then, once all that was locked in, I wouldn’t have to consider nutrition for the rest of my life. The anxiety of what to eat for dinner would forever dissipate. Bliss.

And I could do this for everything—wife, work, hair, hygiene, fashion—until I arrived at the flawless life: no more changes. That way, I could focus on the important issues of our time.

But, alas, those were the thoughts of a fool—a “tug,” as Masha liked to say. I’d die living like that. Because that’s what dead people are: unchanging. The body isn’t a permanent thing. It’s an eddy in a stream, a temporary accretion of minerals, liquid, and debris.

So I should have expected that the first of my convictions to crumble would be diet. I had, for twenty years, been a vegetarian, identifying with this position on the most fundamental levels—health, morals, ethics. Then, while reading a book on plant intelligence, my confidence withered in a few days. The things plants could do! They’re smarter than us. How had I not seen the arrogance of monoculture? We wipe away a vast spectrum of species and replace them with an army of engineered plant clones? This was totalitarianism. How could I ever think plants were more easily sacrificed than animals? And with that, the first pillar of my ideology collapsed.

I had come to PM with a solid history of self-control, but the movement disabused me of that ridiculous impulse. I was no longer a brain riding the horse of my body, drunk on authority. I was the horse. I used to feel pride when people referred to me as a person of principles, as if I were sticking to my ideas in the face of an irrational world, but after PM, I wanted nothing to do with the term. I just wanted to be p.

All this personality crumbling began around the end of Mayah’s final season on the show, which I had begun watching, as they say, religiously. At the time, no one knew she was on her way out, of course, but we knew something was coming. She loved to drop hints.

On one of the final episodes, she curved her face into a puckish grin, clasped her hands together, and hinted at a “top secret project” she’d been developing behind the scenes.

“I’m so excited to tell you guys what I’ve been working on,” she said.

[massive applause]

“But…I can’t! Not yet. No matter how much I want to,” she said.

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