Wrong number #1

Well.

At least the caller would be dis­trac­ted from the exist­en­tial crisis by anger.

Not sure what else to say.

exist­en­tial crises can some­times be tricked into other lay­ers. Like smoth­er­ing the crises with a towel, to rid them of oxy­gen. like fire. and blankets.

but if a tele­phone call were placed to the Buddhist Chant Peace and Reas­sur­ance Helpline, would they answer with “hello, Buddhist Chant Peace and Reas­sur­ance Helpline, how can i help?” or would it simply be a lot of med­it­at­ive chant noise?

well at least it wasn’t a sex-talk phone line. they would have charged you a king’s ransom and you’d still have your exist­en­tial crisis.

Every time the spe­cial chil­dren down the street talk to me, I get the sense of existence.

“…yes, yes, he’s call­ing ran­dom num­bers and bab­bling on about exist­en­tial­ism again. Thank you and please hurry.”

weeeee-erd, this actu­ally happened to me last year, we had a few callers on a newly installed hardly used land­line call­ing up ask­ing for a prayer. I tried my hard­est to begin with, after all I didn’t know how badly they needed com­fort or how just little could help, but after a while I installed an ansaphone…

was I wrong?

Bohémi­enne — There really ought to be exist­en­tial hot­lines to stop the anger boil­ing over.

Miles Away — I do hope the line would be crys­tal clear. There’s noth­ing worse than hiss and crackle dur­ing one’s meditation.

Ker­mit — What they need is an exist­en­tial sex-talk line, thus killing two birds with one stone.

Miss July — The spe­cial chil­dren don’t talk to me. They tend to run away. Prob­ably wisely.

Ani — Who are you call­ing? Is it the Emeer­gency Buddhist Service?

Peach — You weren’t wrong. I even­tu­ally stopped call­ing and went to see my local priest instead. Sorry about the confusion.

O — Good.