When Claudius Maximus was 17 he was arrested crossing the border with some Mexicans running heroin.
he got beat up by the highway patrol and thrown in a cell for five days.
the only cop he ever saw that five days - a huge man, filling the tiny doorway to a small solitary cell with a toilet that didn't work - told him that if the d.a. pressed charges they cold hold him for 90 days before his trial even, but if the d.a let him go they'd find a way to get him home.
After five days the huge cop filled the doorway and said, "guess what?"
"we got you for three months."
and the cop laughed and laughed, and Claudius got vertigo, and wept, and the cop spun and laughed, and said, "i'm kidding man, you're goin home."
And so, in an outdoor garden of a local herb shop in a small city nestled amongst the foothills of the great mountains of the West, Claudius Maximus sat and shared a pipe and reminisced with Bastante Solipsis Marquez.
"it was a terrible and savage moment, I was so broken, and then so uplifted, it was both bad and good and transcended opposites, and I saw how each and every moment was terrible and beautiful and that human life was deliberately intended to bridge the gap between heaven and hell."
"The Tao rests within the heart of yin and yang," commented Bastante.
"Reality is totally empty," agreed Claudius.
"I am reminded of Zen," said Bastante. "There is a story I heard once. a great general went to see a Zen master. He came within the presence of the Zen master and told him he had a problem.
"I had a little baby duck and a big glass jar. When the duck was very little, I oiled it and slipped it through the neck of a glass jar. I fed it daily with a long straw, and now it is far too big to escape and is trapped. How do I get the duck of the glass jar?"
the Zen master replied, "General! its out!"
the general was satisfied, and so was Claudius Maximus, and so was Bastante Solipsis Marquez.
They settled back, content with the emptiness of nonconceptual awareness.
"So how goes the war," inquired Claudius.
Bastante nodded. "It's killing me. But I've got an idea."
They hatched a plan.
