Have you ever wondered if there was more to life, other than being really really ridiculously good looking? – Derek Zoolander 2001
He asked this pivotal question, then disappeared. Rumours were rife about some Contiki pilgrimage dimension that Derek fell into. From knowing him intimately for more than decade, I knew he went to search for an answer.
And then last week happened. The forest-dwelling folk of my island nation recognised the clean-cut, boyish face who enthusiastically dug the beat of his strut. In between these two ends, he sported an odd get-up that might have blended in with the natural environment had it not been so shiny. Derek re-surfaced, wiser and more really really ridiculously good looking.
A satsang was the first order of business, for the schmorgasbord of male models who had quickly assembled from around the world. Derek spoke sagely.
“I share the same heartbeat with all of humanity. Not all of them actually; just the ones with really chiseled abs and stunning features like my own. I have been on a long journey, a long, long journey. Do I have to qualify how long my journey was? OK".
(Derek took a deep breath for courage)
"I ran out of hair gel".
The room gasped in horror.
"One day, when I was hiking the summit of K-2, a mountain monk stood in front of a fork in the road. He asked me, “Which path do you want to choose?” And I told him that I ran out of hair gel. He looked into my soul and with spiritual god commando power in his eyes he replied, “Oh god. Not another one.”
Derek returns to civilization from the really wild wilderness.“That was like God speaking to me. So I took the path that had the sign To the Bottom. And I never looked back.”
“From that awakening, I ascended. I have so many new looks, because I have felt. I tasted what life tastes like when it is really really tough. Like during those ten minutes when there was no cell phone coverage.”
Derek closed the Satsang, late for his after-enlightenment party. When I walked him to his waiting pimped-out rickshaw, he revealed a secret about enlightenment that wasn’t sexy enough to offer the usual company he kept. It was about the essence of his new, powerful and hypnotic looks.
"The key to enlightenment," he said, "is not how luminous one can look. The answer is even more implausible than looking good without make-up. It is, would you believe, mental straumph *."
A Zen master from All Things Zen store in Tokyo sold Derek a technique that promised to enhance his poor staumph. He told me what it is:
- Sit with svelte, muscularly defined legs folded and your genetically blessed spine straight. Close your eyes and focus them at the place where you wax between the eyebrows.
- Concentrate on the sensation at the very edge of your nostrils - not where they hide the rhinoplasty scar, but where air enters and exits. Feel the air touching the edge of your nose as it passes in and out.
Derek's look completely transformed since he attained enlightenmentThis is an exercise that is designed to fail, so you don't need to remember all your childhood disappointments and cry like I did. Your concentration will shift because beautiful thoughts about yourself will interrupt your concentration. Your challenge is to recognize these distracting, dazzling observations as soon as possible and return to your exercise. Do this practice for 10 minutes, and increase the duration as you find success. In time, you will fail less and straumph will grow huge and muscley and intense. You can flex them whenever you please, and not be forced to stop, and stare, speechless, whenever you pass a building full of reflective windows. - After some weeks, refine your challenge. Instead of concentrating at the edge of the nostrils, focus on the space between the nose and upper lip, where you might want to get laser. It's the same place where the outbreath mixes with the air that has been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and gets to enter my beautiful nostrils. One needs a lot of straumph to focus here.
"Were there any failures in the dozen years that you were absent?" I asked.
"Meditating on my own image," he replied sadly, casting his eyes down to his Louis Vuittons. "I mean, nothing is more difficult than trying to still the mind when there is so much to be in awe about."
I have seen the face of God. I have known hell. With my very own royal azure but sometimes turquoise eyes, I attest that the purpose to life is deeper than the depth of my flawless skin which is not very deep. You have to go further, I'm pretty sure. – Derek Zoolander 2013
* Straumph, is strength with a German accent.