One of my greatest pleasures over the holiday break I recently enjoyed, long and luxurious due to the placement of Christmas on a Thursday, (although I think when I was in elementary school I calculated the longest break occurs when Christmas falls on a Wednesday) was to read my effing face off.  There isn’t much in the world I enjoy more than ducking under a plushy comforter with a strong cup of coffee and reading an absorbing book, undisturbed, for three or four hours on a lazy, midwinter afternoon. 

In the course of some of these sessions I gleefully consumed, on recommendation, The Mezzanine, by Nicholson Baker, aka the most ardent fictional love song to mindfulness I’ve ever read.  Buddhism mentioned?  Not a once.


The Mezzanine, written in 1983, is the story of the ascending escalator ride, partaken by a young man returning to his corporate office from his lunch hour.  Nothing happens on the escalator, excepting standard escalator activity.  In the course of the ride, the protagonist makes no stunning realizations about his life or The Way We Live Now.  Yes, we learn the context of his lunch hour (he bought shoelaces at CVS) but nothing dramatic occurs in the retelling of said context, or in any of the additional minute anecdotes Baker provides.  So, Alfie, what’s it all about? 
From the Buddhist perspective, it’s about paying attention. 
With a perspicacity that would make the most skillful mindfulness practitioner envious, the novel’s protagonist plays a blithe Virgil leading us through infinite circles of pedestrianism.  Topics covered in the first chapter include, among others, placing a hand on the escalator rail, the unmoving light reflections on moving objects (footnote), the sound of a paper bag rattling, the evolution of, pros and cons of plastic drinking straws (footnote), the desire to have one hand free at all times, the automatic manual arrangement of objects to accommodate this, and how when we have realizations, it’s usually due to more incremental accumulation of thoughts than we accredit it to.  I’ve always agreed with the classic Woody Allen wisdom, “Seventy percent of success in life is showing up.”  Never neurotic, Baker demonstrates over and over the overspill of joyful insight when one fully “shows up” to their experience.  It’s a pleasure.
Here’s a confession: I’m not fond of the dishes example.  (By that I mean the classic, “try being mindful while you’re washing the dishes” suggestion used to describe mindfulness ad nauseum in sangha discourse).  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good, universal example, but it’s so overused I can’t even hear it anymore.  Instead of being mindful while I’m washing the dishes, at this point I mostly hear the various voices in my head from various different teachers telling me to be mindful as I’m washing the dishes.  I also probably don’t like it because I’m kinda karmically conditioned towards wanting to figure things out on my own, to inventively find moments of mindfulness outside of the standard dharmic tropes. 
That’s why I found The Mezzanine so frigging inspiring.  It was like a pay-attention-creatively call to arms.  The character of Howie is a mindfulness machine not because he’s constantly reminding himself to be present and take note of his experience.  He’s mindful because he’s tapped into the quiet joy of curiosity.  And not curiosity in the daunting, “I should be curious about what’s happening in the Cote D’Ivoire,” because from my own experience that’s less curiosity than self-judgment and throws an anchor over the hull of your good-vibe ship before you can even set sail.  Rather the book presents a character who is quiet and confident enough to notice his experience in delightfully patient and obsessive detail without an ounce of, “I should be thinking about other things” or “how can I make life different right now” and therefore presents a wondrous and enviable appreciation for our multitudinous daily grind.
I recommend.