Games the Buddha Wouldn’t Play
by Patrick Meeds
Here are three objects. A compass, a battery, a seed.
One of these things represents your destiny. Now choose.
No? What do you mean no? Um, okay no one’s every said no before but—
I guess—You want to do what? Create electronic dance music and deejay at music festivals?
Well, I suppose that could work, I mean music does bring people together, universal harmony and all that. Dancing can induce a mystical experience.
In fact I remember this one time I was at a Phish concert in 94 and my friend Ant Dog took these mushrooms, boomers we used to call them, and he kept hallucinating that the notes from Trey’s guitar were floating out over the audience like soap bubbles and when they would pop, the notes would flutter down and land on him.
By the time the show was over he was down on his hands and knees from the weight of all those notes.
He kept saying the music was “so heavy man”
Sex and drugs? Well yes, I suppose being an electronic dance music deejay at festivals would provide the opportunity for lots of sex and drugs. But this is about your destiny. Don’t you want to fulfill your destiny? True, there would probably still be plenty of time for that after you were an electronic dance music deejay for a while. You are still young—
Listen, I don’t know about all of this. I’m just supposed to give you the three choices and then tell them what you picked. I’ll have to go back to the office and find out what to do next. Can I check back with you on Tuesday? Oh, Tuesday’s no good. How’s Thursday? Good? Okay, see you on Thursday.
Patrick Meeds lives in Syracuse, NY and studies writing at the Syracuse YMCA’s Downtown Writer’s Center. He has been previously published in Stone Canoe literary journal, the New Ohio Review, Tupelo Quarterly, the Atticus Review, Door is a Jar, Guernica, The Pinch, and Nine Mile Review among others. His first book, The Invisible Man’s Tailor, is available from Nine Mile Press.
