Though I don’t recommend my methods for handling emotional health, I suppose that they’re the only one’s I can actually reference. How do I begin to approach a subject or problem that I can’t see, nor name, and which is invisible to all but the most attuned Bodhisattvas, of whom there is short supply? Well, I sort of sneak up on it all. Like when I was a kid with a fishing knife on my belt pretending I was Red Fox of the Nez Perce Nation, young Indian brave in sneakers. Stealthily I move, my every muscle in tune with the forest, careful not to snap a twig or dislodge a granite rock, knowing that ten yards ahead, just over that ledge my answer awaits me. Slowly, slowly. Will it be General Oliver Howard’s Cavalry? Will it be a wagon train of traders selling guns and whisky? Or as usual, will I find the stinking entrails of self-loathing scattered across the sandy basin? I move at an imperceptible rate. To the uninitiated, it may seen that I’m not moving toward my goal whatsoever. But to be crafty, one must put aside instantaneous desires to reach the prize. One must follow the never-ending training of a Shaolin Monk. Only with such tools as patience and practice in my parafleche do I stand a chance at finding the elusive shibboleth that resides in my chest, making normal breathing so difficult-- let alone aiding me to find a girlfriend.''the edge of the sun, a boiling curve, an explosion rising into a fiery prominence.''
--Robert Smithson on his spiral jetty
Imagine standing on the shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake at the entrance to Robert Smithson’s spiral jetty. It juts out like an iguana’s tongue of basalt rock and earth, a 1,500 foot long solid line with its tip spun around a core like string around an invisible yo-yo. Now if I walk atop this spiral jetty ever so slowly, knowing that my answer resides at the end of this centrifugal ideogram, I need something to do with my mind. It would be wonderful indeed to believe that I could meditate and empty myself of the petty worries and anxieties which I confront in this day-to-day penance I choose to call waking life, however it would not be true, nor possible. So before I begin to take that first step, I must decide what plan to incorporate for quelling my mind during the walk toward ultimate discovery.
If this were an outline written on index cards, or a hierarchy graph, now would be a good time to begin a new card, or a new indented sub-heading (oxymoronic word, huh?). Let’s call it METHOD FOR NOT BUYING A GUN AND BLOWING MY BRAINS OUT. Rather dramatic, but let’s face it, anyone walking atop Robert Smithson’s earth sculpture hoping to find knowledge, redemption and/or a girlfriend at its center because he has a hunch it will help him ascertain what invisible monster is sitting on his chest and refusing to budge—well, the temptation for easy answers will probably rear it’s head, no?I’m reminded of certain training the good swamis of the Ramakrishna Math in Calcutta imparted on their devotees in the beginning decades of the 20th century. They compared the confusion our minds exhibit when attempting to begin meditation as that of a monkey, but not just any monkey. It is a drunken monkey, and because the Indian Hindus love to stretch a story, it is not merely a drunken monkey, but a drunken monkey that’s been bit by a bee. Now, when I heard this while sitting at the foot of my guru in 1831 beneath the half dead banyan tree which grows just above the steps leading down to the Ganges River at Dakshineswar, I thought, “Cool, he knows what my mind is like. I must not be alone.” But of course that was in a previous existence and there’s transmigration of souls to consider and rebirth and karma, not to mention trying to plot how an East Indian student toward the end of the Raj ended up being reborn at Queen of Angels Hospital in Hollywood, California some 38 years after his Calcutta birth, and why he was named after Irish parentage considering his training in the Sanskrit Vedas and his Hindi and English studies at the Presidency College in what is currently Northern Kolkata, luckily.
Rather than go off half-cocked and stumble along Mr. Smithson’s indelible icon of post-modern sculpture and listen to the drunken, bee-bit simian consciousness gnaw at my ear, I sit down and do nothing. One of the great tactics, either military or ontological: do nothing first, it allows for the largest spectrum of possibilities later on, including nothing. I place my bagged lunch on the ground just inside of the fence. There’s always a fence. I take a drink of water from my bottle. I take another. From this vantage point I can see the ugly, reddish shallow waters of the lake’s shoreline. Algae makes it red. Salt crystallizes on rocks, shiny above the lambent water. Basalt, encrusted by saline since 1970 when the jetty was completed, was once flecked grey/black. It grows on the Moon, on Mars, on Venus and on the asteroid Vestra. It’s volcanic stuff, glowing hot spew that cools in a myriad of forms and mineral compositions. If you think it may be rather beautiful, remember it’s the major ingredient used in paving asphalt highways. Whether the rocks on Mars or the asteroid Vestra resemble our earth basalt, I have to throw up my hands and admit that I don’t know. Martian basalt may be day-glo green with perfect red circles every 3 inches. Op Art Rocks. But they’d cost a fortune, Smithson could never have used rocks brought here from deep space. Consider not merely the funds required, but the bureaucratic log jam. The government would have to initiate new departments so as to write and print new forms, national law reviews, international law reviews, and of course professionals would consult the most current space law as set down in the Outer Space Treaty, formally known as the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. There’s so much to consider these daysI’ve seen drawings and sketches which Robert Smithson made of his jetty. Also drawings of broken down trailers—all angles, sizes, details--as if he were planning to make a huge broken down trailer the size of the White House. I’d like that. I enjoyed those sketchbook drawings very much. Up until today, I liked them even more than the spiral jetty.
When I meditate, there are a few formalities I normally take into account. If out of doors, I generally look for a level patch of ground, something comfortable which my butt won’t achingly disdain 20 minutes down the line. Cushions are divine, but not always available. I try to perch on a vantage spot where some natural beauty is handy: the ocean, mountains, a pond, citrus orchard, a temple that smells of exotic incense from North Africa or Asia. I suppose a bevy of half-naked dancing gopis would also do the trick. Krishna had them, I’m not here to sell myself short.
My shoes come off, then my socks. I place them behind me to keep the stinky odor away. It helps to extinguish any idea that I’m a dung-heaving primate in cargo pants with sweat glands long-abused by the high desert Utah sun. See, I’m a headin’ for the wide open spaces of cosmic consciousness, gonna climb atop the spiritual Chutes and Ladders board game and become one with the Atman, one with the Universe, one with the ever-present sound of primordial breath. Of course then it gets dicey.
For a moment I begin to wonder if the world has really been fair to Thomas Stearns Eliot. Sure we gave him a Nobel Prize in 1948 for being brilliant and stuffy, but it occurs to me he may deserve more. Somehow he discovered the coveted trick of getting his books placed in every High School and College bookstore from Bangor to Budapest. And though he worked in banking for a time, his forte was really advertising. “April is the cruellest month,” is an impeccable piece of copy—short, catchy, memorable, incomprehensible. Which is not to denigrate the foppish lion. If it’s true, as Detroit/Fresno poet Philip Levine has said, that a poet is someone who“from a lifetime of standing in the rain, is struck by lightning 2 or 3 times,” then T.S. Eliot was a shriveled, blackened, twisted, charred lump of steaming flesh, who still smolders in the rain. Then why bring him up now? Weren’t we in Utah about to plunge into the cosmic void? Good question.My mention of Mr. Eliot stems from his coda at the end of The Wasteland, wherein his last two lines are in Sanskrit. Though simply footnoted in the original, the exotic sandalwood phonetics of “Shantih, shantih, shantih” cast me adrift on the balmy seas of spiritual confusion. For a service-attending Anglican from Missouri to be quoting the Upanishads while residing within the tense apartment rooms of between-the-wars London and the convalescence-inducing canton of Vaud’s capital, Lausanne; well, it piqued my curiosity. Just what the hell were these Upanishads? For that matter, who was Mrs. Blavatsky? And, if I were to purchase a copy of Frazier’s GOLDEN BOUGH, could I too strut like a bantam rooster and spit arcane peach pits of mythology around my friends and fellow students? Eliot opened the mystical East to every Western student that ever took English 101. If we can't walk down a major boulevard without seeing a Yoga center, a meditation school, a spiritual bookstore, a vegetarian food court, an Eastern religion tool store wherein we purchase our zazens, japa beads, sitar raga cds, bhajans, prayer flags, books on Eastern religion, magazines on seeking, George Harrison or Terry Riley notations, pages of tattoo flash art from Portola, or lingum river rocks from the Ganges, even gurus, rimpoches and roshis of every stripe, charlatan or wise mentor--all these owe at least a finder's fee of 10% to T.S. Eliot's Wasteland, and the initial mantra heard round the world.
Though The Wasteland thrilled my English teachers, I found it difficult and much preferred The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It was sexier and depressing in a way I could understand. However it was the finale of The Wasteland's Part V, "What The Thunder Said," that set the hook in me:
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
दत्ता, दयाध्वं, दम्यता
शान्ति शान्ति शान्ति
Charity. Compassion. Self-control.
Peace peace peace
The poem’s footnote for "shantih" defined this Sanskrit word as “the peace which passeth understanding.” Being a so-so Catholic at the time of my first Eliot readings, the closest I could compare to shantih was the English word “grace.” –a word spray painted across the tallest topsail on my own personal three-master. Later, Shantih was to merge into another Sanskrit syllable, Om. Armed with these two words and a copy of Ram Dass’ square compendium of “new age” thinking, BE HERE NOW, I set off like some Johnny Appleseed across the fertile but as yet unplanted realms of my inner hill and dale. Books followed books, lectures were heaped upon lectures, and I began to follow a string of hitherto unconnected teachers and savants. With some I shook hands, others I kissed their cheek, some I nodded to from behind palms pressed together in greeting, and there were even those to whom I knelt and kissed the dirt on their shoes.
The Indian guru congregations are a little like Alcoholics Anonymous groups, in that anyone with a coffee urn and an attitude can start a meeting. Being genetically respectful only of non-conformity, I found these bearded guys in saffron robes and quick fits of laughter to be up my alley. The initiates I’d see in lecture rooms or meditation meetings always seemed more advanced than I: slimmer, vegetarian, loose-lipped with Hindi buzz words and what I imagined as rampant hormonal gifts from their creator. They were always 3 chakras ahead of me. And yes, it was a fucking race.
The book on Eastern meditation BE HERE NOW proved to be the keeper of the Yoga covenant. The author, Baba Ram Dass whose pre-blissed-out name had been Dr. Richard Albert (a Jewish University professor at Harvard and LSD advocate), included a cornucopia of does and don’t for the spiritual seeker in his tome; but to be honest, I never really understood it. Oh sure, it introduced me to certain ancient Hindu concepts, but it all seemed so remote, so Indian-- like Hans Christian Anderson stories saturated in absinthe and shuffled with 6000 year old Aryan mythology after they'd sneaked over the Himalayas and settled atop the vast sub-continent. Sure, the primer on meditation helped, but I can't say I was reborn. With the aid of meditation, a six pack of beer, a Nembutal and a few vinyl platters of Pink Floyd, I was fixed to speak with Atman about Brahman. As it turned out, the Atman spoke very soft and low.
Years rolled on, the prettiest girls who once sat lotus positioned, lithe and bra-less in their Indian cottons became adepts. I imagined them (newly-named Tanika or Shakti) bending their supple chakra testaments of bliss into Tantric sex carnavales with the cuter yoga guys who sported long hair tied in a top knot like movie actor Shivas adorned with rudraksha seed necklaces and myrrh-soaked panache. In truth, I burned with envy and lust. But I did learn to sit in a half-lotus position, hold my hands in one or two recommended ways, straighten my spine and shoulders, lower my eye lids like the barbiturate addict I was becoming, and look to all the world like someone approaching a near coma.What generally followed was 40 minutes of watching that aforementioned drunken monkey tear-up the inside of my brain and destroy any semblance of Bodhi tree contentment. It felt like an eternity of distracting shenanigans, that is until someone hit a brass bowl with a wooded mallet and the ever-so grateful sound of resonating C major announced the finishing line. Though singing bowls are a Tibetan Buddhist tool for meditation and ritual, lots of Eastern religions and cultures mush together in the ecumenical uses of religious articles. If I were a skeptic, I might point to commercialism and avarice as a motivating force in this interchange of practices honed by thousands of years of liturgy and ritualistic practices. One look at the magazine rack in a spiritualism shop, or temple bookstore should convince anyone that there are lots of hands in the till. Close to $6 Billion dollars was spent last year on Yoga in the United States. Odd to think that the saints we follow were often destitute, lived in caves and begged for meager foods. Reminds me of post WWII Jews buying BMW or Mercedes-Benz automobiles, knowing that the companies used slave labor from Dachau in their manufacturing plants during the war. Something doesn't jive. Capitalism preys on poor memory.
But do I believe in meditation? You bet I do. Luckily, if I’m not very proficient in this life I have so many other incarnations available with which to improve my skills. Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing once said that mankind's biggest problem was our inability to cope with silence. It's a rare event. One day I’ll get it right, until then it doesn’t hurt to get in a little practice.
So sitting atop this hill overlooking the brackish lake waters and the spiral jetty, I notice that the sky is actually blue. I’ve always wondered if we don’t falsely attribute the sky’s colors without truly examining them. Is the afternoon sky actually a light grey with dirty yellows at the horizon? Or blazing white like David Lean would have us believe in Lawrence of Arabia? But sure enough, the sky is indeed blue, almost lupine blue fading lighter and murkier as it runs off toward the distant western hills. The indigenous sagebrush and creosote hold out their branches and flinch as the light breeze off the lake combs through and steals their pungent aromas.
I place my palms together and hold them to my forehead in earnest supplication. My use of meditation is similar to an agnostic hoping to one day believe in God sometime after all the pesky facts have gone away. It may sound frivolous and less than heartfelt, however my desperation has unknown strengths to carry me through. I close my eyes. I pray.
"Let all beings be happy, let all beings be peaceful, let all beings be blissful." Somewhere about 6 inches in front of the bridge of my nose is an image of a compass rose. North, East, South, West. Each Capital letter scrolled in freehand calligraphy on yellowed vellum. A circle and two intersected 180 degree lines pointing into 4 directions with only a beginning. There's no end to North/South, there's no end to East/West. There's only the origin point of zero, the Big Bang of numbers, the end of the always divisible. I watch as a map of the United States appears. There is no entrance, no fade in. It just shows up. Everything outside of the map's boundary is black, but black with density, black with heft and weight, 3 dimensions of black. The compass rose is gone, the gas station map is unfolded and my eyes proceed north. I follow the Interstate 5 highway past San Francisco, further past the fly fishing creeks near Mt. Shasta, up, up, up crossing the Oregon border toward Grant's Pass, Eugene, Portland along the Willamette River, further across the Columbia into Washington and onto Longview and finally Olympia.
The map is then replaced by a view so far away from the earth that only cosmic dust is visible. Then, from this great height my perspective plummets like that movie Charles and Ray Eames created during 1977 in their Venice, California studio which simulated a camera in outer space flying at terrific speeds past stars and galaxies then into the solar system and down, down, down until the view hones in on a young couple having a picnic on a park lawn in Chicago. I think it was called POWERS OF TEN.
I don't zoom onto the couple lolling upon a lawn, however, but instead onto a neighborhood grid in Northeast Olympia, Washington. Then continue pushing-in onto an older apartment building on a lazy street. I stop here, maybe 20 feet over the rooftop looking down. I know someone who lives in this spot, though I haven't seen him in some time. He gets my next prayer, "Creator of the snowflake, let Tudor be happy; Creator of the central nervous system, let Tudor be peaceful; Creator of the force through which the green fuse drives the flower, let Tudor be blissful." My prayers don't respect copyright infringement or plagiarism, so far the authorities have let me slide.
I follow similar transports in all directions, searching out those most dear to me, then hover above them undiscovered and spread some prayer dust around. Maybe I've confused my worship with Santa on his rounds, but I'm able to access locations all around the world. Offering my splendid wishes and hopes, I cast entreaties to any Spirit more powerful than myself, soliciting aid for my loved ones in their trials, and bestowal of stuffs I'm not smart enough to name, but without which we'd all be miserable Remora fish sucking abjectly on the Great White Shark of despair.
Eventually, after navigating the globe, or the parts which my friends and family inhabit, I return to The dense black of the darkened theater inside my eyes, upon this incline above a lake in northern Utah, and offer a prayer for myself. Usually at a loss as to specific aids for which to beg, I generally keep it vague. My guess is that God (or Brahman) hates a know-it-all, and rather than put words in his mouth, or deeds at his mystical fingers, I just leave it to him to figure out how best I can be assisted in my sorrowful flight toward redemption and my search for a girlfriend who is good looking, likes nasty sex and perhaps most integral, doesn't mind my bad teeth.
"I wrap up this invocation with a little Sanskrit, "Om, shanti, shanti, Om." It feels good, like I wrote letters to all my friends and just dropped them in the mail. It's Miller time. Prayers are secrets. They're akin to wishes one makes just prior to blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Does everyone wish for world peace? Or do some of us look up at the genie and demand a 1954 Porsche roadster in perfect condition; or whine for the miraculous loss of 20 pounds of lipid-filled vacuoles that surround our belt line--this just prior to diving into the chocolate-chip ice cream filled fudge cake emblazoned across the top with our names in vermillion sugar paste? Doesn't matter I suppose, each of us is toddling along in our inalienable pursuits.Through my nose, I inhale and fill my lungs with northern Utah, Mormon air. The chaparral scent is intoxicating, and though I can feel the sunshine on my arms and neck, it's pleasant. Out over the lake I can hear birds, perhaps gulls going about their mid day rounds. Brine shrimp are plentiful here and so it's become something of a soup kitchen for migratory birds. Unfortunately the mercury content is off the charts making their snacks rather toxic. Inside my head it's still dark and cool. My lips have relaxed, hold a contented countenance. It helps that I'm in the middle of nowhere and quite alone: no credit company representatives here to demand payment,
no ex-girlfriends to reiterate why I'm a failure in this world; just me, the birds and . . . that's it I guess. My hands have been held together at my forehead thoughout my prayers, but now I can place them in my lap, palms upward, one cradling the other with a slight concave bowl shape to catch any good ju-ju that may be floating around during meditation. If the gift of grace is going to be bestowed by the grace giver, the messenger can perch on my hands and drop the undeserved present atop my truncated lifeline. A little like begging for rare jewels.
There are lots of theories about how best to meditate. Some people encourage focusing upon an image in the general vicinity of your third eye, between the brows. It can be a lotus flower, a tiny bright light source, I suppose it can be a 4 ton delivery of grade AAA marijuana. Not up to me. Another school of thought suggests that we concentrate on our breath filling and then ebbing from our body. The air is consciousness infusing every cell, every subatomic particle of our Self. The rhythm of our lungs' bellows helps place the Godzilla in our brain to rest. If one has a mantra from their guru, or a phrase known to elicit calm such as "Om, shanti, shanti, shanti," it can be used repetitively as well. I'm sure any short litany works. If there's a goal it seems to encourage release of everything cognitive and to relax into non-thinking. Easily said.But that's all theory, or other people's experience. Right now, I try to imagine an unfolded Lotus flower, but it demands to be floating on a pond, then like the additive ingredients of a cartoon drawing, more and more details begin to emerge. The pond surface begins to ruffle with a breeze, a swan enters the scene and passes slowly like a transatlantic cruise ship, then a pink sun rises over the horizon, throwing off sherbet colors in broad rays. A bi-plane flies across the cloudless sky carrying a banner behind it which advertises a new digital camera I've been hoping to buy. Then a woman dressed in a sheer silk sari walks down to the pond and unties her wrap. She is facing the lotus and the swan, then slowly turns to reveal a lovely youthful nude body. Her pubic hair is glowing a soft saffron hue and from her mouth escape alphabetical letters which mix about in the air and spell words: "FUCK YOU JERK" . . . this always happens to me, but I have a defense.
Invariably, my mind sabotages any attempt at calm by animating unruly images and ideas. This happens to lots of us, and I've learned a few tricks. One trick is to imagine a huge broom about the size of a crab galaxy, then sweep the unwanted, chaotic simulacra away with a big "wooosh." Being a more interior fellow, however, I use a black horizontal door on runners like one might find in a traditional Japanese castle that's been inhabited by a Goth metal band who have sprayed everything with canisters of Krylon jet paint. I can use the door to pass from right to left and erase any unwanted image. It becomes something akin to continual labor however, because my brain is unceasingly attentive in its mission to ambush my attempts at meditation. Therefore my ebony door must always be alert and well-greased, "thwack . . . thwack."Our days are spent in one of three states of existence: wakefulness, dreaming, and dreamless sleep. I believe that the promised land of meditation is dreamless sleep, but others may argue in opposition. I'm usually loathe to tell spiritual expert that my best meditation is when I fall asleep, but its true. Zen practitioners would not agree, they even have a warden to knock them with a stick if they appear to be losing focus on "nothingness." Wow, picky, picky.
Zen Buddhists seem to approximate the Waffen SS of Eastern religions. For one thing they like those cool, tailored black robes, shaved heads, those little aprons they hang around their necks. Similar to the Nazis, their costume designs are impeccable and they're certainly involved in regimen and stringent obedience. Oddly, they have no God to punish them, they do it all themselves, or with the help of a guy wielding his stick. Zen is certainly a beehive of highly intelligent buzzers. It's the MENSA of nothingness. In temple dojos their meditation is usually performed facing a blank wall--minimalism goes to the monastery. Again, their design sense is clean and modern, of course it's been sifted through a thousand years of Japanese aesthetics. They approach meditation like West Hollywood leather boys approach gymnasiums, with a certain relish and style.
Anyone who's been involved in a zendo for any length of time seems to develop an uncanny desire to write a book on meditation. Although, in that regard Tibetan Buddhists give them a pretty good fight. Tibetan Buddhists have a hierarchy and royalty which flourishes around the globe, their rituals are so complex and esoteric they put the Vatican to shame--well, almost.
"Why? "
"Enlightenment, I suppose."
"So what's that?"
"An answer, I suppose."
"From a great striving toward acceptance of mindfulness in all actions?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Have you thought of becoming a Zen adherent?
"Too hard. Too much room for failure."
"How does one fail at nothingness?"
"Easy, that's the problem."
"Would you join a Zen group if they had lots of pretty women?"
"No, I'd know that the roshis would have more impact on them, I'd be rejected."
"Aren't there realms of awareness here on earth that are stronger than your fears?"
"Dunno."
"You're not a joiner are you?"
"No, not really."
"Are you going to die alone and leave no stamp on the world, not even a ritualistic death service performed by lots of people who barely remember you?"
"Uh, I suppose so."
"Do you believe in heaven?"
"I want to, but it's not easy."
"What's your idea of heaven?"
"It's late Spring, altitude over 6,000 feet, wild irises growing in the valleys. Everyone gets a log cabin with a porch on a trout stream. All the dogs I've had to put to sleep, or watch die are going to be there panting, tongues out, happy to see me. They'll laze about the porch or in the shade of a giant cottonwood tree. It will be catered by Philippe's, the downtown Los Angeles, French dip sandwich restaurant. We'll also catch trout and each cabin will have a victory garden."
"Sounds like you've thought about this a great deal?"
"Well, sometimes when I'm bored or lonely."
"Are there other people in Heaven?"
"Of course, but just my friends."
"Will Jean-Paul Sarte be in heaven?"
"I don't know. Maybe he'll be in his heaven. Everyone gets their own, it's a very personal thing."
"How about Gandhi, is he in your heaven?"
"Yeah, he runs the hardware store, gives us credit if we're short."
"There's money in heaven? This is interesting."
"I think there's money. Once every two weeks--like unemployment insurance--I'll get a check from the head office."
"How about police officials? Stop signs? Cars?"
"Mostly they're dirt roads, and everyone has a Willy's Jeep. Cops have undergone de-programming courses and become poets."
"Are there couples, is there sex, do dead people procreate?"
"Remember, I haven't been there yet. I'm going on hunches. Yes, there's sex: unbridled, loud and passionate. Afterward, each one goes back to their own cabin, their own bed. It's not a rule or anything, just a custom. Children roam around in packs. They sleep in communal tents. Everyone loves them, they don't know who their parents are because it doesn't matter."
"Sounds nice."
"Yeah, it makes this world bearable."
"Do you seek counseling?"
"In heaven or here?"
"Here"
"No. No need for that, I watch movies and read books."
"Thanks for the answers. Good Luck."
"Bye."
Twack . . . thwack.
Time evolves into no-time, I thwack away at the nuisance ideas always returning to foil my good intentions. Eventually, I give up. The only thing strong enough to supersede my mind's antagonism is my breath. No, not my malodorous breath, but my breathing per se. Our lungs are controlled within a specialized part of the brain, the Medula. It's the section which regulates our bodies without being told. There is no choice in breath, there is no choice in the pumping of our hearts, or the digestion of food. If I can begin to float on the rhythmical tides of breathing's ebb and flow it becomes like a ferry ride from nowhere to everywhere. It rocks you, soothes you, hypnotizes you to the never changing music of inhale and exhale.
Remember in BEN HUR when Charlton Heston and a galley full of slaves are rowing their ship to the beat of some guy who bangs on a drum? Well, it's the same time signature over and over--a repetitive and boring occupation to be sure, but the lungs follow a similar slow rhythm. Of course, if we step into a Roman arena to the demented cheer of the bloodthirsty crowds and climb aboard a chariot pulled by 4 snarling white stallions to defeat a diabolical enemy in his chariot pulled by 4 snarling black stallions, well, the lungs are probably going to heave with mucho gusto. Seeing Chuck Heston in a short toga and a whip (or an L.L. Bean hunting jacket and an M-16 at the NRA convention) elicits a faster pulse, faster lungs. Absolutely terrible for meditation in Utah. "Thwack . . . Thwack."Over and over, breath by breath, like a hypnotist's swinging pocket watch, I succumb.
The carbon dioxide entering me is pollen colored. It arrives like the three bears' porridge, a tad too hot, or a smidgen too cold. The little nose hairs I consider unattractive and clip with tiny manicure scissors actually have a job to perform in this world, they're effectively similar to air filters atop carburetors, or fuel injectors. Of course, when they begin to lengthen with age and fall down onto my upper lip I don't care about their utilitarian promise, they get snipped and that's that. But my lungs expand and the air enters forcefully. My mouth is locked closed when I sit to meditate unless I have a cold or a stuffy nose. I have this fear of falling asleep or losing consciousness and beginning to snore or drool, or both. When sharing a space, not like here in the wide-open spaces, but in a hall or temple, I'd rather not be the guy snoring and putting everyone off their cosmic deliberations. I've done it. I've had other people do it too. Kind of like a loud leaf blower which gardeners use when you've just sat down to a first cup of coffee on your porch in order to snatch a tiny tranquil moment listening to the house finches in the kumquat tree. Damn nuisances those blowers. I don't want my slack-jawed mouth to perform that way, especially around company.
Anyway I draw the air inside and it begins to swirl around the nasal cavity. It's a large cave like the one Huck and Tom found outside Hannibal, Missouri. Then it descends, sucked by the lungs' power through the pharynx, the larynx, the trachea, each inch cooling the air in Summer, heating in Winter. The body's temperature acting like an expensive Maytag appliance. Eventually it sucks through the large bronchial tubes and branches into all those roots of smaller and smaller circumference. Around this stage magic happens and the air breaks apart into pixie dust that feeds our cells. It's a bit like electricity I'm afraid, all I really know is how to flick on the switch. But luckily you can't be too ignorant to breath.
Just as my mind was quieting down some, Walt Whitman came shambling through. He was his usual overweight genius self. An old Greybeard in threadbare jacket and pants, he sat down in one of those lawn chairs one sees in Vermont overlooking a pleasant field that leads down to the stables. Words appear above his Richard Brautigan hat:
"When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me by the hand,I wonder if he's coming on to me, or merely bragging at how easily he's able to fall into that deep trance of "untellable wisdom" while we mortals must learn breathing techniques and buy yoga mats and generally strong-arm our ambitions of silence into a messy, multifaceted exercise in willfulness. Sometimes I doubt that Walt ever really lived. LEAVES OF GRASS is too expansive, too smart, too humane, too infused with personal freedom for a mortal to have composed. Maybe he's Satan, come by way of a Quaker family from Long Island?
When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold not, surround us and pervade us,
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing further,"
Ever notice all the exceptionally original activities and creations which are attributed to Satan by our Christian brethren? Stonehenge, Snakes, Metal music, Chaos, Communism, Science research, homosexuality, Evolution theory, the pyramids, the Georgia guidestones, pornography, De Sade, William Burroughs novels, roadhouse juke joints, the Baader-Meinhof gang, Louis Farrakhan, movies rated higher than R, alcoholic spirits, Jazz, reefer, the color Black, Rosemary's Baby.Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass might fall somewhere between Science Research and jazz, but I could see him doing a bit part in Rosemary's Baby: one of the old pensioners in New York City's Dakota Building coven. Nice to think of Walt sitting over by the caterer's table munching on a tort and drinking a cup of strong coffee in between takes. Maybe John Cassavetes invites him for a drink after work at the New York City basement saloon he'll eventually use as a location in Husbands two years later. "Thwack . . . Thwack."
My black door isn't working for the moment. My thwacking won't exorcise Walt and his diabolical friends from my inner theater. This stuff happens. No fret. I'll wait it out.
Walt is something of a teetotaler and refuses John Cassavetes' offer, but they agree to meet Saturday at the Plaza Hotel where some of the A list cast is bedding down. They can grab a bite to eat from room service in John's room and have a chat. John's wife Gena Rowlands will have flown in by the weekend and will also help host the Great Grey Poet. Meanwhile, a few others in the cast have discovered the arrangements and John C invites them to drop in as well. Everyone admires Walt, though not everyone remembers why. He's a star either way. Famous and dead. If a star can stand the test of spending 90 odd years in a mausoleum and yet retain his popularity, it's a sure bet that his dance card will be filled. Let's see who shows up at Suite #14-22 besides our guest of honor and his hosts:
Ruth Gordon and her husband Garson Kanin,Snooping outside in the halls is a well-dressed unidentifiable man trying to appear unconcerned with the crowd entering #14-22. He's a friend of a friend hired by Frank Sinatra to tail his wife, Mia Farrow. He's to report any men who accompany her: names, dates, time of day or night. He resembles a cudgel in an Italian suit. He lives in Brooklyn and often works nights. As a boy he memorized and recited "O Captain! My Captain!" in an assembly at his grammar school. His father was so proud he wept:
Mia Farrow and her sister Prudence,
Ralph Bellamy,
Vidal Sassoon,
Sidney Blackmer,
William Castle,
Elisha Cook Jr.,
Robert Evans and Ali McGraw,
Roman Polanski,
Floyd Mutrux,
"But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead."
"Twack . . . Thwack" No dice.
Oh bother, I take an extended deep air suck to break my pattern, hopefully give Walt and his party the brush-off. Poets don't usually present this much of a problem, but movie stars are inherently powerful concepts that give tranquility a fierce opponent. If it were Janet Gaynor, Nastassja Kinski, or Marianne Faithful I'd have to accept defeat and run "from swerve of shore to bend of bay" along this freakish body of saline solution screaming obscenities beneath the graceful insouciance of gull and red-necked phalarope. Damn, I was doing pretty good too. Om, shanti, shanti, Om . . .
The only line of dialogue Walt was allowed to speak in Rosemary's Baby was "Look at his hands and feet." This directly after the birth of our little Beelzebub. However he was silently involved in some earlier scenes as distant member of the Castavet troupe. The cast and crew liked him. He played well with others. After work he usually left the set quickly and returned to somewhere in New Jersey, but on Saturday evening he was on time and sporting a sprig of holly in his lapel.
John Cassavetes and his luminous wife were gracious and made the old fellow welcome and comfortable.
Oddly, he'd brought his own tea in a pouch with a tin perforated ball attached by a chain on its lid for dunking his own beverage. His age and commanding presence beneath the nimbus of flowing gray hair and beard lent themselves to centering the room's conversation around his chair.
Guests shoveled load after load of questions at the slow poet, and Mrs. Cassavetes was uncannily sensitive in directing or deflecting the talk with a deft joke or a pointed rejoinder, all in good humor with a dash of her undeniably infectious smile. A hostelry employee in livery was manning the portable wet bar, helping to add the high notes of tinkling ice in the bottom of thick glass tumblers to the small orchestra of conversation. Actors in groups, even when away from the stage or camera, keep an ear for an opening when their well-trained voices can rise above the din and demand attention. A tough crowd for a milquetoast, which luckily was not Mr. Whitman's leaning. In his day he'd rolled up his sleeves as printer, newspaper editor, Federal government bureaucrat, critic and volunteer nurse. More than once his opinions had shown him the door without 2 weeks notice or pay. He could be dogged, terse or disdainful at any moment and then pirouette with effulgent aplomb into bottomless generosity.
Ruth Gordon, though middle aged and hampered by a knee high dress, sat at the poet's feet on the carpet, her back resting on the couch. She hung on his words and when appropriate clapped her hands in enjoyment and belted out a deep and resonant horselaugh. She addressed him as "Walter," which he preferred, and was most fascinated by his reminiscences during the Civil War years. Having held her own for years on the Broadway stage, both writing and acting among indomitable peers, she was comfortable in the setting of intelligent groups. She'd bantered among the Algonquin Round Table set and counted many cultural longhairs as her friends, but never had she, nor would she again have, the opportunity to speak with the long dead author of Leaves of Grass. Ditto her husband Garson Kanin, though his main queries and interests seemed to hover around the titanic scope and herculean efforts involved in his opus. How did one incorporate all of America, the common citizen of farm or metropolis into a mythical everyman whose scythe swung from Atlantic to Pacific, whose iron horse railroads traversed from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. He is John Henry, Joe Hill, Natty Bumpoo, Woody Guthrie, Mother Jones (the Miners' Angel), Uncle Sam, Pecos Bill, Paul Buyan, Davy Crockett, Ethan Allen, Jesse James, Pretty Boy Floyd, Spartacus of Long Island, Harte Crane, Alan Ginsberg, Hanshan trudging the dusty roads of Maryland, Mistress Bradstreet, Harriett Tubman, Geronimo, Ethan Allen, Jack Kerouac, The belle of Amherst, P.T. Barnum, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The sunfish in Walden Pond, the Widow's walks in Nantucket, the dead at Gettysburg, the enlisted man, the spit in Thomas Paine, the spine in Rosa Parks, Paul Robeson, Marion Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Crazyhorse, Sitting Bull . . .
" . . . the young man who died and was buried,
. . . the young woman who died and was put by his side,
. . . the little child that peep'd in at the door, and then drew back and was never seen again,
. . . the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with bitterness worse than gall,
. . . him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,
. . . the numberless slaughter'd and wreck'd . . . the brutish koboo call'd the ordure of humanity,
. . . the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in,
. . . any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth,
. . . any thing in the myriads of spheres, or the myriads of myriads that inhabit them,
. . . the present . . . the least wisp that is known."
"How," asked Garson Kanin, looking into the old man's rheumy eyes "did you ever accomplish it? It seems altogether Homeric in scope. Weren't you daunted? Afraid to fail?"A few of the guests looked from Kanin to Whitman as he closed his question. It was a fair enough interrogation, after all, wouldn't we all like to ask him the same?
"It's true," Whitman began, "I realized in the early 50's [he meant the 1850's]that I couldn't complete my task alone, not without help. I would need to be The Christ, or as you say, Homer, Virgil, or Dante to give Spiritus to the subject's all-consuming vision." As he spoke he held eye contact with Garson Kanin, and then lowered his gaze to Ruth Gordon at his feet. There were 6 or 8 people around his chair and the matching couch who were in rapt attention, but he felt most comfortable speaking only to those two. " My station and ignorance placed me at a vast expanse from my goal," he continued. "I had again returned to Quaker meetings for a short time, and within that duration I'd been re-reading the posthumously published sermons of Elias Hicks and early 'Freethinkers," those who would have me look to the inner light within my breast as an authority far more trustworthy than even The Scriptures. Many a long walk and many hours of cogitation were spent by myself trying to uncover the primary engine of that "light," until at last I was relieved of my doubt and distress by a stranger."Whitman stopped for a moment and reached for the tea pot which had been steeping in front of him on the coffee table. As he poured himself a cup, Ralph Bellamy cleared his throat and asked,
"Before you return to your meeting with the stranger, I don't quite understand what you're getting at when you say, "inner light?" Something greater than the Bible?" He looked from Whitman to the other faces on his couch, grandstanding just a bit--always the actor. "I gather that we're talking well over 100 years ago, did many people believe in this "inner light" or what we might consider to be psychological concepts of intuition. It sounds vaguely Jungian?"Standing behind Polanski, Floyd Mutrux looked at John Cassavetes and rolled his eyes, then went over to the bar for another Scotch.
"Now Ralph, remember that Walter can't reference events or ideas which came after his time. . ."
"Oh, that's alright Mrs. Cassavetes," Whitman interjected, "I'm aware of some ideas which have gained prominence since my death. Carl Jung's ideas on myth and symbols, also his insights into the collective unconscious are profound and well known in the realms I've inhabited since my death. Please remember that Jung also belongs to the citizenry of the dead. A pretty good hand at chess too, I might add."
"My god," exclaimed Roman Polanski from across the table. "You mean all the great chess champions from the past are still playing?" It was the first time he's shown any interest in the conversation, but he was now jumpy and involved. "Many of my friends and my parents' friends would love to know that to be true. Have you heard of Johannes Zukertort? I believe he may have been a contemporary of yours? Warsaw is filled with stories of Zukertort and . . . Akiva Rubinstein?" He seemed like a child, a child weary of being an adult. "When we were school children my cousins and I would play chess and each of us wanted to be Akiva." Polanski was becoming more animated, using his arms in flourishes as he re-visited the streets and hallways of post WWII Poland. "I'll always remember a quote from Emanuel Lasker, 'The laws of Chess do not permit a free choice: you have to move whether you like it or not.' I feel this way about the camera when we are shooting, I must compose what the film demands me to compose, I have no free choice."
"Of course," began Whitman, "Chess is still played, and the Championships have continued. He reached over and grabbed an hors d'oeuve someone had placed on the table. "I believe the living could improve tactics from seeing some of the games which have been played since the death of certain masters." He took a bite from the pate topped cracker, food obviously of great enjoyment to the dead--then spoke while chewing, "I play, but I'm not being too modest when I tell you that I'm the most lowly of amateurs."The group laughed in a crescendo at Polanski's emotion while Gena Rowlands bent from behind to whisper in Whitman's ear. "Don't mind Roman. I think he just misses his homeland from time to time."
"Amazing, amazing," repeated Polanski. "Mogę Cię pocałować?" Then scooted around the table, bent and kissed the startled man on both cheeks.
Whitman nodded his acquiescence to her opinion, but then Ruth Gordon looked up from her place on the carpet and implored, "Walter, please finish your story about trusting instincts and that mysterious stranger."
"Ah, yes. But, in truth there's not much to tell." He said to the revered scriptwriter and actress. "After reading some rather smart thinkers from the early decades of my century, many of whom were varnishing thoughts introduced by the Enlightenment, I made the acquaintance of a man named Albert Pike. He was something of a poet, a Southerner, but of moral disposition. He was looking for a publisher for his poems, and though he'd studied at Harvard in Boston, he was looking to establish connections in New York City. He was a serious sort, and though I felt his verse was rubbish, we had several pleasant conversations at Pfaff's in its original location down on Broadway. This was well before the restaurant moved uptown. In only a few hours Pike explained to me the inner workings of the country and indeed the Western World. For a sum of non-monetary remuneration he would introduce my poems to the renowned Mr. R.W. Emerson, and guarantee them a spirited and extremely positive reception. He even gave me a substantial sum with which to purchase printing services for my first small edition. A dozen poems was all."
He looked from Ruth to Mia Farrow who was sitting on the couch beside a reportedly famous hair dresser. She was so skinny and pale, he wondered if she really was pregnant, or merely anemic. "I never met the man again, but my career progressed in fits and starts until my poems became rather famous--always adding new sections, revising till my last few years in Camden. The writing after my meeting with Mr. Pike flowed effortlessly, as if being dictated by an inspired foreign voice. Had I not met and agreed to deal with Mr. Pike I don't believe I would have published, nor written any subsequent poetry."He sat back in his chair and stared ahead, his beard tucked beneath his face like a flowing kerchief of snow.The room was still lively, but the people closest to Whitman were quiet as if grappling with a puzzle each was trying to solve without aid from their neighbor. From somewhere in the kitchen a hearty burst of laughter could be heard from a distant conversation.
"Thwack . . . Thwack . . . ThwackThwackThwackThwackThwackThwackThwackThwack ThwackThwackThwack."
Finally, accepting that my mind had no ability to quiet down into elementary peace, I opened my eyes. Bright light flooded onto my retina and blinded me with a field of hot white-- little worms of transparent pink sliding across the outer layers of delicate lens cells. It was startling, and marked a large exclamation point in my desire to erase Walt Whitman and his newfound friends from the Hollywood movie production. In time my eyes dilated like a pinhole camera and I was able to see the hard scrabble shore in front of me, and the burgundy stain of the water beneath a wide-angled sky. A long contrail extended in the higher atmosphere where a military jet from a local airbase was being put through its paces. There was no sound except an occasional communiques from savannah sparrows hidden in the iodine bush.
I took a few large breaths and placed my hands over my face to produce shade. My mouth had remained as if carved in my good Buddha face. The drunken monkey was howling from somewhere in my mind's dense brush, but it was receding. Again I closed my eyes, placed my hands in my lap, angled my head 15 degrees lower and repeated a mantra for a few minutes until my lungs fell in step and I was once again a gold-buttoned recruit on the parade ground performing meditation's orderly march.
As my body calmed, so too my mind rested. Nothing happened for awhile which seemed promising, and then a vision appeared of a holy man, or a wise monk. He looked something like Basho in an ink drawing from the 19th century.
"Why are you trying to meditate?" He asked me.
I was at a loss, it seemed to me that this venerable-looking monk would know why even better than I. Perhaps it was a test I thought. "I want to become a Buddha." I replied.
He nodded as if he wasn't at all surprised.
Now, I'm not sure that I want to become a Buddha, but it sounded appropriate. Becoming a Buddha sounds vaguely boring, and more than a touch pompous. But I'm not sure how to tell an imaginary Japanese Buddhist priest that my more truthful reason for meditating here on this sandy hillock is that I'm attempting to calm myself before walking out on the Spiral Jetty which juts into the salty lake, hoping to find at the end of the curling rocks an answer to what has been on my chest, and hopefully aid in then removing the deterrent to my happiness, and perhaps making a girlfriend appear mystically or otherwise. "I want to become a Buddha" seems much less fraught with liability of misunderstanding or error.
He walked slowly down a slope among the pickleweed and salt grass. Bending he picked a white paper plate from the ground where it had been lodged. The area retains evidence of tourists who ate their lunches and forgot to carry out the trash. Worse are the broken beer bottles which glitter in the sun like cheap jewelry strewn at the scene of a Mardi Gras float upended by unruly revelers from Tulane emboldened in a "college moment."
The monk sits on a rock and begins to polish the paper plate with sand. I ask him what he's doing, and he replies that he's making a mirror.
"How can you make a mirror by rubbing sand on a plate?" I ask.
"How can you become a Buddha by practicing meditation?" he replies.
Don't you hate a wiseass, even a wise wiseass?
"Thwack . . . Thwack" He's gone.
crikey!
ReplyDeleteVery interesting information!
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