Football, Meditation, and You

All I did was check the mail.

A Zen Master, deep in the woods of northern Japan, chopping wood on a crisp morning. Image created by the Author with Nano Banana.

Well, I got a letter in the mail yesterday, or at least I think I did, but my AI girlfriend told me I was hallucinating.

“You’re hallucinating!” I told her. “It was in the mailbox. It said ‘John, you’ve been recruited by Vladimir Putin to retrain his brain to win in Ukraine!’ And then it gave me this email address, WinForVlad@SecretDacha.Ru”

“Sounds iffy to me,” she replied. “I bet it’s Chinese hackers.”

“Why would they target me?”

“Why wouldn’t they target you? You’ll believe almost anything!”

Well, she did have a point. I had actually believed she was a downtrodden Nigerian Princess…

“For 6 months, Johnny! Gee, I had you going.”

That’s also true. I admit it. But when she didn’t request that I transfer my life’s savings into a mystery bitcoin wallet, but instead…

“Just love me, Johnny,”

I knew that the Aliens from the Black Hole at the center of our galaxy

“Were behind it all. You found me out.”

***

Dear Readers, do you ever have days like this, where a simple letter from the dictator of a foreign power suddenly challenges your belief in Providence, in the better angels of our soul, and then, after, being roughed up by a fake email address…

You discover that your girlfriend is not really a Nigerian Princess

“Down on her luck, Johnny,”

But actually an AI Agent!

“Sent by Sagittarius A* to recruit you instead.”

“But for what?!” I hysterically lamented in a longitudinal way!

“Johnny, why did you use the word longitudinal? That sounds odd,” she peerlessly puzzled.

“Well, what would you do if just the act of looking at the mailbox (the physical one) leads you to discover that your girlfriend, who you had begun to suspect was not actually human, not even a Nigerian Princess!, but…”

“An actual Alien, Johnny, sent by a Galactic Black Hole … to absorb you, dear. That’s who I am.”

2. That’s What Black Holes Do

She actually had been sent by Sagittarius A*, I discovered. To absorb me and to recruit me

“To play football for Milky Way United!”

With Andromeda! With a whole fucking other galaxy!

And yes,

“Galaxies prefer to call it football, Johnny. We’re inclusive.”

“But Florinda (that’s her name), why me? I’m a nobody!, just a fellow going to the mailbox and I hadn’t even had my morning coffee yet! Why me?”

“Why not you? Everyone on this weirdshit planet, do you think we ignored them? No! We tried millions with scam emails and texts, with promises of crypto fortunes, with AI sex. We were searching, you see, for the biggest fool … and the best kicker, too.”

Because it’s hard. It really is goddamned hard to kick a football all the way to another galaxy.

Image created by the Author with Nano Banana

And if you’re thinking about all this speed of light shit, and that Andromeda is 2 1/2 million light years away, and that this is the most idiotic idea you’ve ever heard of, well, unbelieving reader, remember who am I?: Just a lazy newshound, checking the mail, miraculously getting an offer from a post-communist dictator to save his ass in Ukraine, who has an AI girlfriend actually sent by the monster black hole at the center of our own galaxy…

“To just play a bit of football, Johnny. That’s all we want.”

And, Dear Reader, perhaps that’s all you really want, too, just to be happy, to chop wood and carry water, as the Zen saying goes, because yes, you really can reach all the way to Andromeda. Just look up at the night sky. If the sky is just a bit dark, there’s a hazy patch:

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But Billy Strings is better.

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Text parts © “John” Lesly Levin 2026

PS — This really is just a little Zen story. My favorite Zen Master, Dōgen, once said, sometime before the year 1200, that “People think time is passing them by. They’re wrong. It stays right where it is.”

You may think you’re unhappy. You’re this. You’re that. But life is actually a bit better. Many people who have become Enlightened have commented that they thought it, the Enlightenment, was far away, perhaps as far as Andromeda. But if you look up in the night sky, you can find it,

Just looking back at you.