Hank

 

In case you've forgotten who I am, I'm the old geezer who's the therapist for a mostly invisible top guy at Google. I'm not seen much, and when I am seen I don't let anybody get a very good look at me - that's how I am, preferring very much to be the advisor of the king.

 

Most of the characters in this story have been around in John's head for many years, but not me. I'm surprised he even gave me a button here to speak my piece, because as soon as he set me free in his book, I just went instantly off in directions he'd never imagined. That's the power of the fiction process that I most value - it can open up realms of drama and discovery that the author has never consciously imagined at all.

 

I come into this story seldom, and late. And I hear there's still serious debate about whether I'm going to be around in the next installment. Maybe Google the real company is going to sue or bribe or otherwise cajole John into not aiming attention at the very top of the real Google. Or who knows - maybe I'm not going to offer to be available for the next installment. 

 

This I know. It was like falling off a log to find myself in this story. I'm almost seventy now, and I've stayed entirely out of the limelight all this time. But I did enjoy this level of participation. I've somehow just naturally found myself working as the therapist for a dozen or so people with more power than they could handle. It was curious to let my work become drama, and to see how what I do segs into a larger story of life. Especially of Google life.

 

I don't run Google. I hope this story doesn't give that impression. I couldn't imagine spending my life locked in the busy-ness of business. Business per se hasn't ever been an interest but the people in power, they have all along fascinated me, ever since reading about Henry II. Then I hit college and took acid and saw the universe if only for a moment - and then somehow I stumbled upon my own master who did nothing but point my attention to my own breathing - well, he also had me read Lao Tzu a thousand times and then he showed me how to start attracting more and more powerful clients.

 

Yes, it's curious how my mentor is in fact still acting through me, just as I'm acting through John.  Sometimes I find myself right on the verge of opening my mind up tyo where I can see who's really behind me, helping me do what I do.

 

And what do I do? All I do is meditate and advise. I listen a lot, and also retreat and spend a lot of time re-tuning my particular intuitive function ... and then I just get out of the way and let that intuitive function earn its salt.

 

What I found early in life was that I like working on a team. I equally like helping people do their own best. Beyond that I like gardening a lot legally and otherwise and also dig the rush of spontaneous zen cooking. And yeah, I'm still partying with the old lady on the weekend. Maybe I'll retire and not be available for the next installment of John's story. That depends partly on whether people get real mad at me for what I say and imply, and am perhaps deep down responsible for, in this story - or the next.

 

That old zen goat of a philosopher Alan Watts was a friend and mentor of mine; what I remember most is how he worshipped what he called The Great Guffaw. For him, seeing into the paradox and laughing upon seeing the paradox, that was nirvana. He was a man whbo genuinely laughed a lot, even as he was dying too early of liver problems at 57 ...

 

He taught me good, he did. And I have been working recently to somehow teach Google about The GreatGuffaw, so that the company will have enough of a sense of humor not to take themselves seriously - because if they do, well - gotta go now, more perhaps later.