Trapped in Costco

June 3, 2026

To sum up the last six months of my life: I recovered from my double-wrist injury enough that I could go back to work, where I spent the winter outside in -30 weather “building” what is perhaps the most absurd monstrosity of a mansion ever built in this city. This might sound like an “experience;” in reality, it was mostly boring, in the most mundane sense of the word “boring” — by which I mean that there was nothing to do. So, we spent most of the time huddled in our heated little shack while my supervisor complained. In January, an old guy showed up and entertained us by yelling at clouds for eight hours a day, but that too soon grew tiresome. In mid-March we finally got some interesting work to do, at which point my wrists exploded again and I found myself back in exactly the same position I was in last spring.

I joked about this last year but I think we can now definitively say: It Has Been Decreed that I was not meant to be a carpenter. We all know what it is I was meant to be; the question now is determining how I’m going to make some money. This is a laughing matter, as far as I’m concerned, and is also a matter for long in the future, because at the moment these wrists aren’t cut out for much of anything.

The other day, while I was at Costco, I asked myself a peculiar question:

“If I was trapped in this Costco for the rest of my days, would I still be able to enjoy my life?”

The next day I discovered that a similar question had been formulated much more effectively by a Zen Buddhist master:

“Suppose you were at the bottom of a two-hundred foot well that had completely smooth sides. What would you do?”

At the bottom of a two-hundred foot well that has completely smooth sides, there is no room for action, because there is no hope of escaping the well. There is no stimuli for thought, because it’s pitch dark and nothing is happening. Further, since there is no one to see us, hear us, or sense our presence in any way, we have no way of expressing our personality — thus, it’s as if our personality doesn’t exist. In fact, as far as the world is concerned, we don’t exist at all. This is the nature of being at the bottom of a two-hundred foot well that has completely smooth sides.

When I think about this, I realize that, to answer my first question, I would probably not still be able to enjoy my life — at least, not in any of the ways I currently enjoy my life. My first question was about Costco, but that’s only because I happened to be in a Costco at the time. I was standing next to the grocery cart while my wife looked at sweaters. I wasn’t having a terrible time at the Costco, and it’s not like I had been waiting for a very long time — just, for some reason, while staring up at the warehouse ceiling and watching a bunch of people doing the exact same three things — pushing carts, picking up items, putting items in carts — I realized that Costco is not a place where the more wonderful aspects of humanity are being expressed. It’s just a grey, boring, mundane sort of place. When I’m at Costco, I don’t necessarily feel like my life is going on. It’s hard to think in a Costco. There’s a lot going on, but none of it is worth looking at. There’s no real sense of purpose; we all just happen to be there, that’s all.

In my life, I try not to do anything, if I can help it. That’s just the way I am. Mostly, I stay in my house and read books. I like reading books, and I like the way pieces of these books float around in my memory after I’ve read them. I would rather read than do most other things. I never tire of reading books and I’ve never wondered about the other things I could’ve done with all the time I’ve spent reading books.

This life is largely spent inside of my house doing things by myself. That doesn’t bother me at all. In this sense, I may as well be at the bottom of a two-hundred foot well that has completely smooth sides, as far as the greater world is concerned. The only thing that prevents that from being the case is a sense that in order for my life to have purpose, it has to be recorded somehow. I need to leave some sort of written account of my existence, or else it’s all for naught. Perhaps this idea comes from the fact that I primarily receive information by reading about it in books — therefore, if something is not written down, it doesn’t truly feel real.

I recently read a book titled The Journal of a Disappointed Man. It is built out of excerpts from the real journal of a man who calls himself W.N.P Barbellion. Barbellion began keeping his journal at age 13, and regularly contributed to it throughout his life. A man of great ambition in the realms of natural science and art, Barbellion was unable to achieve most of his dreams due to a degenerative disease that led to his death just before the age of thirty. Because of this fact, he began to place more and more significance on his journal, the only piece of him he was sure to leave behind. He obsessed over its safety, storing the manuscript in a metal safe and even transporting it across England during the First World War to avoid bombing raids. Its publication near the end of his days is described in later addenda as the most satisfying moment of his life; finally, he could rest easy knowing that, truly, he had lived.

In his book, Barbellion is constantly in awe of just how full a human life is — how utterly impossible it would be to capture all the internal twists and turns that entail even a single hour of thought. It is a bouncing, ungraspable sort of thing, this world of our mind. One moment it’s here, and the next moment, it’s there. That’s even leaving aside all the external stimuli that we are constantly receiving, most of which enters one ear and exits the other, or enters through our eyes only to fall out through our nose. The task of recording a human life is nonsensical! — says a man who has many times tried to do it.

So, what is it exactly that I wish to record? My essence? That part of me that would still exist, even at the bottom of a two-hundred foot well that has perfectly smooth sides? That original face that existed before my parents were born?

Truthfully, the only things I can record are the unique products of synthesis that emerge from the various things that have been poured into my head. The particular things don’t matter so much, perhaps — when I’m writing about The Muppets song “Movin’ Right Along,” what I’m really writing about involves a blend of everything that I’ve ever done and seen and heard in my entire life. The easiest way to express this, on occasion, is to talk about The Muppets.

Through a combination of natural aptitude and serious training, I have developed the ability to communicate my thoughts in writing. And sometimes I wonder if it has led to a form of sickness where I see myself more as a corpus of text than as a human being. I live my life, and that’s all well and good, but living life pales in importance next to writing about life. And so the fear that comes from spending my life in a Costco or at the bottom of a two-hundred foot well that has completely smooth sides is this fear of living without any capacity to make my life meaningful.

When the injury first came back, I couldn’t type for several weeks. Many people recommended I try voice typing, but when I tried, I realized a distinct problem: it turns out that I think with my fingers. If my fingers aren’t involved, the whole process falls apart. Which means that if God were to come down tomorrow and Decree that I can never use a keyboard again, I would, for all intents and purposes, be dead. Which is to say that I lived those few weeks in a state of great misery and wretchedness, realizing that I can fill my head with as many ideas as I like, but if they end up just stuck in there, my mind becomes merely a stagnant pool with no outlet to the sea.

I don’t think there’s any point spending my life in the way I do if I’m not going to share what I learn with the people of this world. They might not listen — that’s their decision! I’m not asking anyone to listen. But I have spent my life in a particular way and come across things that other people might not come across. It is perhaps, in a certain sense, my duty to share it.

“The priest Hsiang-yen said, ‘It is as though you were up in a tree, hanging from a branch with your teeth. Your hands and feet can’t touch any branch. Someone appears beneath the tree and asks, ‘What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?’ If you do not answer, you evade your responsibility. If you do answer, you lose your life. What do you do?’”

You’re hanging on to life by the skin of your teeth. A chance comes to spread knowledge about the true nature of our world. To do so would mean losing that life; but then again, what is that life you’re clinging to anyways? It’s a life of hanging on to a branch by your teeth in perpetuity. I suppose this is how I feel.