That then is the problem, that life is bent in order so that you would really come to understand very well the necessity for Buddhist enlightenment thought. Life as it was shaped was a great teacher, and just like Gautama the young prince you get exposed to the suffering of life, and of course you can try and run from it, or think you can master all circumstances, but some of us get early on that you can't really do that. No odder it should to happen to you than it should happen to the young prince, coming across illness, old age, the corpse. Thus is life asking us to realize something important. And it is a blessing when the basic need for enlightenment stirs within, a latent budding. Then you realize that the shape of life isn't about the sadnesses or the hard facts of life, but about the learning in such things.
So was it an interesting situation to be a bartender, who, on the one hand, is supposed to be the entertainer sometimes, dishing out a cup of soothing distraction as if offering relief from life's realities, and on the other hand, probably better, sounder, the role of being there, a kindly person, a listener, someone to share the long day at the office. I'd never bought into the idea that bars are about happy escape, knowing vices lead to misery and shame. Things which I inevitably suffered from, back when I too was tempted to escapism.
I know: a bar can be a great stage for loud juvenile simian behavior, rife with old superstitions, old demon gods. But I suppose, or I hope, that the same scene can be made gentler--a test for humanity--where people can talk about deeper things, personal things. The flaw is the alcohol, but with wine, with the approval of Jesus, maybe good things are possible, to be decided on an individual basis. Wine does relax, but it causes a thirst for more, which amounts to hiding from truth.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Thursday, April 10, 2014
The problem lies in not knowing how to think. That's why you write. A way to organize.
I wake up, I get out of bed, I get to the kitchen to take care of the body. "Live in the present," I tell myself, "forget the past." I am drawn to look at the headlines of the morning paper, on the laptop of course. But this is strange. These are not my thoughts, they are distractions. The main part of me wants to address Matthiessen's writing in The Snow Leopard, about how Buddha was not interested in politics or organization, the highest duty being to awaken the consciousness of mankind. (He writes very well about such issues, with clarity and simplicity.)
But still, I think of the annual college reunion, and wonder, whether to go or not. A meeting of bright minds. Poets to meet. I would inconvenience my coworkers. How to get there? Am I entitled? Of course I'd love to go. But I don't want to bother anyone, crashing the party, so to speak. Do I have any business going there, bringing my ghostly presence to it, my original hometown…
What are my thoughts today? Do the dishes. Set the laundry up. Why write such shit… It is sunny out. And warmer. So? "Come by the Four Seasons tomorrow night," a friend's attractive voice from last night rings in my head. But what business would I have with that crowd anyway, all bent on luxuriating themselves, their illusions of self. ("She has a boyfriend anyway," my mind, not in control of itself, says to itself, trying to dispel notions and protect a peace it somehow knows and strives for.) For as much as I might like the staff, the customers set the tone, "look at me…" Still, it became a subliminal message, such that I almost became obsessed with it and its "you need to go out and meet people and you are missing out" tug.
My day off and I am writing such shit. Why? Because I am writing about nothing. Showing the misdirections of a life so led, the ringmaster of a bar and its wine supply.
And Jesus says, do not seek the high places, worldly power and riches and temptations. Live a simple life. But how to balance that with popularity, with the necessary popularity to make that message known and vitally alive, present to other beings? What did he mean by all that? Go on television, or not?
And how could I myself avoid the sometimes feeling of being, sort of, a bum? To think such a thing, exactly, what not to do. Live in the present. Embrace the now, whatever that might mean, though one can never really know what that means, except keep the apartment tidy, things like that, maybe go for a walk down by the stream. Simplify.
If we take the logic of a mystic, of Jesus or Buddha, it would seem like we need do very little as far as selfish things, but merely need just 'to be,' as far as worldly endeavors go. Pointless to go out and meet an irrepressible force with matching might, bring a mighty police force to all the thieves of the world, for what does that accomplish but cause a need for more of both? More guns equals more safety? I think not. (Look at all the strong armed Police "mistakes" of late, the kind you can't take back.) Change the way people see things, and then they'll see how to live, how to not pollute and burn fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow. There is always a root to the problem, and the root is how we see things, and we seem to have gotten a lot wrong, perhaps mainly through our ambitious efforts. But, how does that square in the real world? Can a passive person seated lotus fashion in the middle of it all change things? Have writers themselves become themselves more of the problem, muddying the waters further?
Unfinished thoughts, such as we all have.
But it is true, if we aren't Buddhist minded, we set ourselves up, through our illusions--'oh my god, going to the Four Seasons is going to be great and I'll meet fantastic people, hot chicks who turn out to be deep kind people who immediately recognize a likened soul'--for disappointment, am I wrong? The egotistical model of success…
We are asked by faith to believe that we will be provided what we need, to the extent we need. Behold the lilies of the field, neither do thy reap, nor do they sow. Time and space are an illusion anyway, so go with the flow, not against. If we stopped all the conventional thoughts and calmed ourselves, so that by doing apparently very little a natural side of ourselves would arise, beyond conventional words and conversation, beyond the usual topics, if we stopped to simply just 'be,' and listen, and see the beauty in the world and in other people and life and its textures, what appreciations might arise within, rather than the opposite of all that, which we constantly put each other through, the blindness, the judgments… But we don't even stop to understand our own species, so how could we possibly stop and understand the whale, the endangered species of big cat and elephant and bird, or the rest of the earth itself...
I am the only person who has stopped to look down into the creek from the bridge to watch the alewives run. People too are running, in packs, wearing neon tee shirts and running shoes, a group sport now.
Out of boredom, up to date on the excellent television that is Cosmos, after midnight I ride my bike down to 11th Street, hoping to check out a wine bar, turning out it is quite closed. A chance to look over 14th Street, all the new places, finally a glass of wine at Barcelona, as I looked over The New York Review of Books at a dirty table by myself by the front window, my only contact being with a kind bartender, then back on the bike, my 'uber,' back up 14th to find a market I've heard about, then back to R Street's bike lane and westward home, finding The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on the television. And the next day I get up thinking, "I'm not a writer, what the heck am I doing anyway… I can't even read my own book." The thoughts left behind after the going out, looking for life outside your own simple things. "I am no one. Who are you?" A basic conclusion. Emily Dickinson wrote it, of course, and it is one of the best, most accurate statements ever made by an honest writer. (Sorrentino's The Great Beauty seems to flirt with it, a scene at an old temple in Rome, a little girl in the basement as her mother looks for her. "Who are you," she asks the central figure, a writer, and his response is proper.)
I am no one. Not even a writer, really, just a being, caught in human form, in time, in space, attempting to keep himself fed and clothed. In light of the great cosmic event, I'm afraid, all the things we crack up, the identities we assign, the judgments, the distinctions we seem obliged to carry, it's all just marketing. Sadly enough, the world is in need of Zen.
What is it, that doesn't need marketing, nor hype, that doesn't even need words, such that we all could agree on as good things, like the night starry sky, the nature of an undeveloped beach or a path that's just enough to let us enjoy the rocks and the great trees of a mountain landscape, something basic, before all the issues that complicate our lives, as those issues, the complication-free ones, are telling us something about how to live as ecologically sound beings.
To that way of thinking, there's not much stimulating in reading the headlines, as if it were all entertainment gossip, the actions of strange people in strange corporate organizations of undue power, egotistical almost out of necessity… With the exception of the human interest story, which reminds us that we are, yes, human.
How thoroughly have we become homo incorporatus, the creature whose primary identity is taken up in the illusions of a larger, of a nationality and its 'national interests,' of life styled by the big corporation, of the need to appear normal to its constructs. The cynical Supreme Court decision affirming the corporation as an individual comes as a sign of the times, one corporation empowering another, little guy forget it. How can that possibly jive with the meaningful statement of "the proposition that all men are created equal," of "government of the people, by the people, and for the people," of the Gettysburg Address. (Apparently, having a plethora of brilliant legal minds leads more toward the greatest misreading possible of self-evident truths rather than their protection.)
It seems more likely to me that the divine is best expressed by the individual, as by a lone unprotected artist, a Da Vinci, a Cervantes, someone, like a Sherwood Anderson, who understands the frailty of a person, finding in frailty the strength of something spiritual, rather than a seating of corporate judges.
Friday night, I think I'll stay in, boring as that sounds. But it is awfully easy--I should know--to waste time, and tonight seems cut out for that most important kind of work, to reduce the size and influence of one's own ego, doing what one can to eliminate illusions, and freed, able to think clearly.
It seems a stretch at first, but reading Peter Matthiessen helps, and now, after the suffering of life, time to get closer to truth. The voice of last night, 'go out, you don't know what you are missing,' now is simply ego, an irrational need to protect the self against… what? "being alone for the rest of my life?" I roast a chicken after some good reading, and for the first time in ages I feel clean, not in any need of any wine, that ego part of my job, that I must constantly be enjoying wine and the good life of dining and cool night life, which isn't what it's about, for that too is about ego defending itself, what do I do in Washington, DC, professionally, yes of course…
Still, after a roast chicken spiced with turmeric, Maldon salt, paprika, oregano, first a squeeze of lemon and then olive oil, with a iron pan gravy with onion, carrot and bay leaf, and rice from the rice cooker, after a nap, I have a glass of wine, and one sip demands more. It isn't easy, to live in a city and keep the wish, as it is truly in all of us, and the great conclusion for a thinking person, to seek enlightenment, to understand that one's whole life has been a murmuring, the suggestion of that need to seek that enlightenment, as Sakyamuni Buddha worked very hard for, then finally, confidently, sat under a ficus religiosa, and really did it. I could wish I had not punted this night, and poured a sip from the open bottle of very decent Clos de Mont-Olivet, Font de Blanche, Cotes du Rhone in the fridge for myself and then relaxed too much, lazing in the confines of home's space on a night off.
This is Washington, DC, and one feels odd thinking suddenly that it's about enlightenment and its poetry more than it is about that culture we seemingly must adhere to, that of a McNamara or a Rumsfeld, 'we must do something.' The old illusion, the greatest waste of intellectual power, a dark ages in its brightness.
I wake up, I get out of bed, I get to the kitchen to take care of the body. "Live in the present," I tell myself, "forget the past." I am drawn to look at the headlines of the morning paper, on the laptop of course. But this is strange. These are not my thoughts, they are distractions. The main part of me wants to address Matthiessen's writing in The Snow Leopard, about how Buddha was not interested in politics or organization, the highest duty being to awaken the consciousness of mankind. (He writes very well about such issues, with clarity and simplicity.)
But still, I think of the annual college reunion, and wonder, whether to go or not. A meeting of bright minds. Poets to meet. I would inconvenience my coworkers. How to get there? Am I entitled? Of course I'd love to go. But I don't want to bother anyone, crashing the party, so to speak. Do I have any business going there, bringing my ghostly presence to it, my original hometown…
What are my thoughts today? Do the dishes. Set the laundry up. Why write such shit… It is sunny out. And warmer. So? "Come by the Four Seasons tomorrow night," a friend's attractive voice from last night rings in my head. But what business would I have with that crowd anyway, all bent on luxuriating themselves, their illusions of self. ("She has a boyfriend anyway," my mind, not in control of itself, says to itself, trying to dispel notions and protect a peace it somehow knows and strives for.) For as much as I might like the staff, the customers set the tone, "look at me…" Still, it became a subliminal message, such that I almost became obsessed with it and its "you need to go out and meet people and you are missing out" tug.
My day off and I am writing such shit. Why? Because I am writing about nothing. Showing the misdirections of a life so led, the ringmaster of a bar and its wine supply.
And Jesus says, do not seek the high places, worldly power and riches and temptations. Live a simple life. But how to balance that with popularity, with the necessary popularity to make that message known and vitally alive, present to other beings? What did he mean by all that? Go on television, or not?
And how could I myself avoid the sometimes feeling of being, sort of, a bum? To think such a thing, exactly, what not to do. Live in the present. Embrace the now, whatever that might mean, though one can never really know what that means, except keep the apartment tidy, things like that, maybe go for a walk down by the stream. Simplify.
If we take the logic of a mystic, of Jesus or Buddha, it would seem like we need do very little as far as selfish things, but merely need just 'to be,' as far as worldly endeavors go. Pointless to go out and meet an irrepressible force with matching might, bring a mighty police force to all the thieves of the world, for what does that accomplish but cause a need for more of both? More guns equals more safety? I think not. (Look at all the strong armed Police "mistakes" of late, the kind you can't take back.) Change the way people see things, and then they'll see how to live, how to not pollute and burn fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow. There is always a root to the problem, and the root is how we see things, and we seem to have gotten a lot wrong, perhaps mainly through our ambitious efforts. But, how does that square in the real world? Can a passive person seated lotus fashion in the middle of it all change things? Have writers themselves become themselves more of the problem, muddying the waters further?
Unfinished thoughts, such as we all have.
But it is true, if we aren't Buddhist minded, we set ourselves up, through our illusions--'oh my god, going to the Four Seasons is going to be great and I'll meet fantastic people, hot chicks who turn out to be deep kind people who immediately recognize a likened soul'--for disappointment, am I wrong? The egotistical model of success…
We are asked by faith to believe that we will be provided what we need, to the extent we need. Behold the lilies of the field, neither do thy reap, nor do they sow. Time and space are an illusion anyway, so go with the flow, not against. If we stopped all the conventional thoughts and calmed ourselves, so that by doing apparently very little a natural side of ourselves would arise, beyond conventional words and conversation, beyond the usual topics, if we stopped to simply just 'be,' and listen, and see the beauty in the world and in other people and life and its textures, what appreciations might arise within, rather than the opposite of all that, which we constantly put each other through, the blindness, the judgments… But we don't even stop to understand our own species, so how could we possibly stop and understand the whale, the endangered species of big cat and elephant and bird, or the rest of the earth itself...
I am the only person who has stopped to look down into the creek from the bridge to watch the alewives run. People too are running, in packs, wearing neon tee shirts and running shoes, a group sport now.
Out of boredom, up to date on the excellent television that is Cosmos, after midnight I ride my bike down to 11th Street, hoping to check out a wine bar, turning out it is quite closed. A chance to look over 14th Street, all the new places, finally a glass of wine at Barcelona, as I looked over The New York Review of Books at a dirty table by myself by the front window, my only contact being with a kind bartender, then back on the bike, my 'uber,' back up 14th to find a market I've heard about, then back to R Street's bike lane and westward home, finding The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on the television. And the next day I get up thinking, "I'm not a writer, what the heck am I doing anyway… I can't even read my own book." The thoughts left behind after the going out, looking for life outside your own simple things. "I am no one. Who are you?" A basic conclusion. Emily Dickinson wrote it, of course, and it is one of the best, most accurate statements ever made by an honest writer. (Sorrentino's The Great Beauty seems to flirt with it, a scene at an old temple in Rome, a little girl in the basement as her mother looks for her. "Who are you," she asks the central figure, a writer, and his response is proper.)
I am no one. Not even a writer, really, just a being, caught in human form, in time, in space, attempting to keep himself fed and clothed. In light of the great cosmic event, I'm afraid, all the things we crack up, the identities we assign, the judgments, the distinctions we seem obliged to carry, it's all just marketing. Sadly enough, the world is in need of Zen.
What is it, that doesn't need marketing, nor hype, that doesn't even need words, such that we all could agree on as good things, like the night starry sky, the nature of an undeveloped beach or a path that's just enough to let us enjoy the rocks and the great trees of a mountain landscape, something basic, before all the issues that complicate our lives, as those issues, the complication-free ones, are telling us something about how to live as ecologically sound beings.
To that way of thinking, there's not much stimulating in reading the headlines, as if it were all entertainment gossip, the actions of strange people in strange corporate organizations of undue power, egotistical almost out of necessity… With the exception of the human interest story, which reminds us that we are, yes, human.
How thoroughly have we become homo incorporatus, the creature whose primary identity is taken up in the illusions of a larger, of a nationality and its 'national interests,' of life styled by the big corporation, of the need to appear normal to its constructs. The cynical Supreme Court decision affirming the corporation as an individual comes as a sign of the times, one corporation empowering another, little guy forget it. How can that possibly jive with the meaningful statement of "the proposition that all men are created equal," of "government of the people, by the people, and for the people," of the Gettysburg Address. (Apparently, having a plethora of brilliant legal minds leads more toward the greatest misreading possible of self-evident truths rather than their protection.)
It seems more likely to me that the divine is best expressed by the individual, as by a lone unprotected artist, a Da Vinci, a Cervantes, someone, like a Sherwood Anderson, who understands the frailty of a person, finding in frailty the strength of something spiritual, rather than a seating of corporate judges.
Friday night, I think I'll stay in, boring as that sounds. But it is awfully easy--I should know--to waste time, and tonight seems cut out for that most important kind of work, to reduce the size and influence of one's own ego, doing what one can to eliminate illusions, and freed, able to think clearly.
It seems a stretch at first, but reading Peter Matthiessen helps, and now, after the suffering of life, time to get closer to truth. The voice of last night, 'go out, you don't know what you are missing,' now is simply ego, an irrational need to protect the self against… what? "being alone for the rest of my life?" I roast a chicken after some good reading, and for the first time in ages I feel clean, not in any need of any wine, that ego part of my job, that I must constantly be enjoying wine and the good life of dining and cool night life, which isn't what it's about, for that too is about ego defending itself, what do I do in Washington, DC, professionally, yes of course…
Still, after a roast chicken spiced with turmeric, Maldon salt, paprika, oregano, first a squeeze of lemon and then olive oil, with a iron pan gravy with onion, carrot and bay leaf, and rice from the rice cooker, after a nap, I have a glass of wine, and one sip demands more. It isn't easy, to live in a city and keep the wish, as it is truly in all of us, and the great conclusion for a thinking person, to seek enlightenment, to understand that one's whole life has been a murmuring, the suggestion of that need to seek that enlightenment, as Sakyamuni Buddha worked very hard for, then finally, confidently, sat under a ficus religiosa, and really did it. I could wish I had not punted this night, and poured a sip from the open bottle of very decent Clos de Mont-Olivet, Font de Blanche, Cotes du Rhone in the fridge for myself and then relaxed too much, lazing in the confines of home's space on a night off.
This is Washington, DC, and one feels odd thinking suddenly that it's about enlightenment and its poetry more than it is about that culture we seemingly must adhere to, that of a McNamara or a Rumsfeld, 'we must do something.' The old illusion, the greatest waste of intellectual power, a dark ages in its brightness.
"… But it is the Gretsch Country Gentleman of 1962 that is a guitar to have. That is the one with timbre. A big thud. 'Last night I saw you in the restaurant…' And George Harrison does that beautiful simple octave thing, 'Please me, oh yeah, like I please you.' I hear they are tricky guitars to play, with the floating bridge, very bright sound, good for twang, but limited, so they say. But they went for the big sound of Nashville, The Beatles, and I find myself drawn to them.
"Then there is the Telecaster. Leo Fender's secrets. The bridge pick-up, that metal plate underneath, unlike the Stratocaster, that gives a weird resonator sort of thing. There is evil in a Tele, you have to tame it. And with the tone control, the neck pickup you can get a smooth jazz sound out of it. The Strat doesn't have that.
Tossed off Hemingway imitation
"Then there is the Telecaster. Leo Fender's secrets. The bridge pick-up, that metal plate underneath, unlike the Stratocaster, that gives a weird resonator sort of thing. There is evil in a Tele, you have to tame it. And with the tone control, the neck pickup you can get a smooth jazz sound out of it. The Strat doesn't have that.
Tossed off Hemingway imitation
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
What is a writer working on, anyway? Is it science? Theory? Is it Proust…
A poor student makes, in a way, a good scientist. The worst student of all, of all science, the writer, the writer of that sphere we primitively call "fiction"… and yet still able to navigate to that understanding we all need: to live in the present moment.
And this is revolutionary, remarkable, and yet probably very very very very old. And it is also probably very difficult in a complicated modern world.
And that is why a moment of fiction is beautiful, because it is a--and nothing else but--living in the moment. As strange as that sounds…. (as we might think of literature as a quaint long revisitation that is basically inaccurate to the present moment and how we should rise to treat it.)
This speaks of the moments that rise, naturally noticed, out of literature: when we finally get to the bridge near Austerlitz in War And Peace; the moments of Levin reaping grain with peasants; the utterly remarkable entrance into momentary consciousness as Anna nears the station. This is when things get vital, when even the adolescent male present in the reader becomes as involved, as if over a pictured pirate tale or a children's book, Richard Scarry.
One book's moment. When one person tells another, 'crazy to bring flowers to a beautiful girl.' One of those moments, when the participants, basically only two of them, merge in a moment, become present, alive, current.
Carver pays homage to Chekhov the scientist, on some deep instinct. To catch that moment when Chekhov is dying, his wife, the actress Olga Knipper--they'd met at 40, more or less-by his side, the call to the doctor there. Chekhov, tubercular, finally wheezing with nothing left, turn him on his side, and his (the great writer's) own recorded comment, spoken in German, "Ich sterbe…" The moment. Full of stuff. That elusive moment behind all his stories, stories of so many moments. A science, and one that Carver understood, in some way. A strange kind of science, that in its own way has to do with the Cosmos, in that living and dying are too part of the Cosmos along with Big Bang, Light, Gravity, relativity, Newton's principals…
Perhaps the writing mind appreciates that lesson, of living, happily as one can, in the present, to create and act a good present moment, not creepy, kind, not too passive, involved, alive, aware, not caught in the past's slights, nor the future's heavy anticipations of what adult life might actually entail as far as sweat and blood. Just to keep a good attitude, a spiritual self-comfort. The lesson of art unto itself… the wise person knowing, having a bad attitude going into something, thus not listening, thus withdrawing into complexes, does no good at all.
It is, of course, a complex dance, to live in that, the now, the present. But still, a nervous person can be calm, and find relief, as if by the tonic of an herbal medicine free and available in the woods or a backyard, remarkably effective, giving even unto the timid the voice of a lion.
Yes, for the nervous human creature to realize the healthy beauty of a given moment, it can only come as a relief, an unburdening from over thinking… The quality of the shit one takes after tea before the shower, the praise-worthy submarine-minus-conning-tower accredited to flax seed, no gluten, a probiotic tablet; the discovery of how to more properly do the act of shaving; the sexy beauty of nature, the witnessed event, the tree budding, the little fish running, the hawk on thermal circuit mimicking the spins of the heavens, the flight of a rabbit. Even the discovery of how to write itself, as if one lived in a gently surrounding Moveable Feast...
The beauty of Dylan Thomas' Child's Christmas, the cave painting, the physicality of a Hemingway short… all easily clichéd, but leading us out to experience the movement, the dance of life…
And maybe somewhere, as a writer becomes a scientist of his own fashion, being the son of one, a teacher, as God in Heaven as a teacher, and realizes that indeed, behind everything, there is… yes, love.
Well, he just didn't seem to look much like a scientist, bumbling along at his slow pace, looking off into the trees, studying a squirrel… What work was he doing? It didn't seem like much of a science at all… But for the fact that he was always looking at things, or scribbling, absently, in a notebook. He had not ingratiated himself with any school of science, it would seem, but for his love of old DeMott, who was strange and iconoclastic and made a big deal out of bringing a Shakespeare scene or a poem to life. He seemed to believe in impossible things, things that had little to do with… well, adult business stuff, as if he lived in a bubble, had a completely different sense of time and its operations… And he was at his best when there was a transition coming immediately, as if that was the only time he could really speak his mind, in his own crude but delicate way,a real primitive. And so it was probably good, somehow, no?… that he wasn't a successful writer, that sort of thing, but just went on, at it, at his own thing… in his own time…
Being male--it must be horrible, horrible as what women physically have to go through, an invert of all the threats a woman has, yet alike, the battle of finding our own way to health and healthy things for us, individually, seemingly, almost, unique. The sexes will never quite understand each other, but by the present...
A poor student makes, in a way, a good scientist. The worst student of all, of all science, the writer, the writer of that sphere we primitively call "fiction"… and yet still able to navigate to that understanding we all need: to live in the present moment.
And this is revolutionary, remarkable, and yet probably very very very very old. And it is also probably very difficult in a complicated modern world.
And that is why a moment of fiction is beautiful, because it is a--and nothing else but--living in the moment. As strange as that sounds…. (as we might think of literature as a quaint long revisitation that is basically inaccurate to the present moment and how we should rise to treat it.)
This speaks of the moments that rise, naturally noticed, out of literature: when we finally get to the bridge near Austerlitz in War And Peace; the moments of Levin reaping grain with peasants; the utterly remarkable entrance into momentary consciousness as Anna nears the station. This is when things get vital, when even the adolescent male present in the reader becomes as involved, as if over a pictured pirate tale or a children's book, Richard Scarry.
One book's moment. When one person tells another, 'crazy to bring flowers to a beautiful girl.' One of those moments, when the participants, basically only two of them, merge in a moment, become present, alive, current.
Carver pays homage to Chekhov the scientist, on some deep instinct. To catch that moment when Chekhov is dying, his wife, the actress Olga Knipper--they'd met at 40, more or less-by his side, the call to the doctor there. Chekhov, tubercular, finally wheezing with nothing left, turn him on his side, and his (the great writer's) own recorded comment, spoken in German, "Ich sterbe…" The moment. Full of stuff. That elusive moment behind all his stories, stories of so many moments. A science, and one that Carver understood, in some way. A strange kind of science, that in its own way has to do with the Cosmos, in that living and dying are too part of the Cosmos along with Big Bang, Light, Gravity, relativity, Newton's principals…
Perhaps the writing mind appreciates that lesson, of living, happily as one can, in the present, to create and act a good present moment, not creepy, kind, not too passive, involved, alive, aware, not caught in the past's slights, nor the future's heavy anticipations of what adult life might actually entail as far as sweat and blood. Just to keep a good attitude, a spiritual self-comfort. The lesson of art unto itself… the wise person knowing, having a bad attitude going into something, thus not listening, thus withdrawing into complexes, does no good at all.
It is, of course, a complex dance, to live in that, the now, the present. But still, a nervous person can be calm, and find relief, as if by the tonic of an herbal medicine free and available in the woods or a backyard, remarkably effective, giving even unto the timid the voice of a lion.
Yes, for the nervous human creature to realize the healthy beauty of a given moment, it can only come as a relief, an unburdening from over thinking… The quality of the shit one takes after tea before the shower, the praise-worthy submarine-minus-conning-tower accredited to flax seed, no gluten, a probiotic tablet; the discovery of how to more properly do the act of shaving; the sexy beauty of nature, the witnessed event, the tree budding, the little fish running, the hawk on thermal circuit mimicking the spins of the heavens, the flight of a rabbit. Even the discovery of how to write itself, as if one lived in a gently surrounding Moveable Feast...
The beauty of Dylan Thomas' Child's Christmas, the cave painting, the physicality of a Hemingway short… all easily clichéd, but leading us out to experience the movement, the dance of life…
And maybe somewhere, as a writer becomes a scientist of his own fashion, being the son of one, a teacher, as God in Heaven as a teacher, and realizes that indeed, behind everything, there is… yes, love.
Well, he just didn't seem to look much like a scientist, bumbling along at his slow pace, looking off into the trees, studying a squirrel… What work was he doing? It didn't seem like much of a science at all… But for the fact that he was always looking at things, or scribbling, absently, in a notebook. He had not ingratiated himself with any school of science, it would seem, but for his love of old DeMott, who was strange and iconoclastic and made a big deal out of bringing a Shakespeare scene or a poem to life. He seemed to believe in impossible things, things that had little to do with… well, adult business stuff, as if he lived in a bubble, had a completely different sense of time and its operations… And he was at his best when there was a transition coming immediately, as if that was the only time he could really speak his mind, in his own crude but delicate way,a real primitive. And so it was probably good, somehow, no?… that he wasn't a successful writer, that sort of thing, but just went on, at it, at his own thing… in his own time…
Being male--it must be horrible, horrible as what women physically have to go through, an invert of all the threats a woman has, yet alike, the battle of finding our own way to health and healthy things for us, individually, seemingly, almost, unique. The sexes will never quite understand each other, but by the present...
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Get to work at 4. A set-up, stocking the bar, that doesn't stop--wine bottles, soda, mineral water… not even a chance to call mom. People arrive at 5:30, leave finally at 12:00. The last party ordered their food two minutes after the official kitchen closing. I groaned when the boss had mentioned they were on their way. "You don't want the business?" almost storming away. "I'll send them to La Pique," he says, taking the restaurant's handset phone out. "No, they're nice… Let them come," I say, and he nods. The same people had kept me 'til 1:30 after a busy combined wine tasting night benefit party. Believe me, I was very good to them. Later, he comes back around the bar from the office in the back. "But it's good to be busy," he smiles, positive again. "I know," I nod. "There've been some scary nights." I had momentarily envisioned the same sort of late night privileged people party thing happening, and regretted now my negative reaction. Fortunately the late night thing did not happen, except for the ordering of food at the last possible minute and making a tired kitchen staff very unhappy. I had called the party of four at the bar "V I P," and when the busboy comes back from downstairs with the food they've ordered, he tells me, "Chef says the kitchen is very closed."
Finally I get home, I scout the TV listings, pour a glass of cheap Spanish wine, get out the yoga mat, light a few candles, finally turn off the TV after the conclusion of The Last Samurai and actually do some yoga. Triangle, half moon, shoulder stand, plow, head stand, attempt at lotus, finally meditating, as the first of blue light rises beyond the Buddha seated low above the couch and the two back windows.
I rise around 11:30, to drink some water, take an allergy tablet, eat a reheated hamburger, have a cup of Moroccan Mint tea, go back to bed, feeling hollow, legs weak, no energy at all. And finally, now around 3:00 I'm up.
I gather my scattered self, pulling it from diffusion into the core, the caduceus, the line of chakras, in no small part by writing, or at least attempting to have thoughts that feel like ones that should be written down, as much as any yogic envisioning. My thoughts have turned in the last day to observe what an emasculating job it must be, waiting on people. Nothing in particular, I couldn't ask for a better more respectful place to work, but just the whole thing. What a waste. A person who should be a man not standing up for himself, getting by on this certain kind of unresolving job, attempting to write about nothing at all. Twisting in the wind. I've kept the wrong attitude. Why did I stumble? These days it seems that in an attempt to be a gentleman I've lost the masculinity of a way forward.
Is this perhaps the problem of one who would like to participate in the ancient religion, the mystical removal of a self separate from the universe, who needs now just to be, not to listen to anyone's problems, but realize he's in his own sort of mess, allowing the outside to define him, put upon him the sticker of a certain identity, the duties of a restaurant, taking him and his work for granted. Have I suddenly begun to reject the work, finally realizing that it is wrong and that I have to do something about it, even if that should be create something new as if on my own? Shouldn't I finally just stop and ponder and finally find the enlightenment I have every reason to believe, along with gut instinct, is out there, that to get there I must stop and sit in one place…
Earlier in life, I was dumb. I didn't realize that in order to have a literary life it helped to have grown up on 5th Avenue, privileged, with connections. I failed to create a career for myself in lines of work of big value, rather just a faulted novel based too much on life, what could be dumber or more embarrassing… Except that it looked for some kind of understanding, not unrelated to Buddhism, or Zen or Christianity, or Theosophy… That spirit of questioning makes it fair, I think, if I'm not mistaken, coming out of some hazy tradition, perhaps found in American writers of the salt of the earth type, perhaps in literary study of a certain kind, or in the intellectual questions of college age that one thinks should last a whole life, though they succumb to far more practical things.
Unaccomplished, I am real, an ordinary person, suffering the same things a lot of Americans, a lot of people around the world are having now.
I go for a walk, along the stream, down to the creek finally, which is flowing and slightly murky, of a greenish hue under April light. I see a flicker in the water as I walk the dirt trail by beech trees. From the small bridge I see, the alewives are running.
Finally I get home, I scout the TV listings, pour a glass of cheap Spanish wine, get out the yoga mat, light a few candles, finally turn off the TV after the conclusion of The Last Samurai and actually do some yoga. Triangle, half moon, shoulder stand, plow, head stand, attempt at lotus, finally meditating, as the first of blue light rises beyond the Buddha seated low above the couch and the two back windows.
I rise around 11:30, to drink some water, take an allergy tablet, eat a reheated hamburger, have a cup of Moroccan Mint tea, go back to bed, feeling hollow, legs weak, no energy at all. And finally, now around 3:00 I'm up.
I gather my scattered self, pulling it from diffusion into the core, the caduceus, the line of chakras, in no small part by writing, or at least attempting to have thoughts that feel like ones that should be written down, as much as any yogic envisioning. My thoughts have turned in the last day to observe what an emasculating job it must be, waiting on people. Nothing in particular, I couldn't ask for a better more respectful place to work, but just the whole thing. What a waste. A person who should be a man not standing up for himself, getting by on this certain kind of unresolving job, attempting to write about nothing at all. Twisting in the wind. I've kept the wrong attitude. Why did I stumble? These days it seems that in an attempt to be a gentleman I've lost the masculinity of a way forward.
Is this perhaps the problem of one who would like to participate in the ancient religion, the mystical removal of a self separate from the universe, who needs now just to be, not to listen to anyone's problems, but realize he's in his own sort of mess, allowing the outside to define him, put upon him the sticker of a certain identity, the duties of a restaurant, taking him and his work for granted. Have I suddenly begun to reject the work, finally realizing that it is wrong and that I have to do something about it, even if that should be create something new as if on my own? Shouldn't I finally just stop and ponder and finally find the enlightenment I have every reason to believe, along with gut instinct, is out there, that to get there I must stop and sit in one place…
Earlier in life, I was dumb. I didn't realize that in order to have a literary life it helped to have grown up on 5th Avenue, privileged, with connections. I failed to create a career for myself in lines of work of big value, rather just a faulted novel based too much on life, what could be dumber or more embarrassing… Except that it looked for some kind of understanding, not unrelated to Buddhism, or Zen or Christianity, or Theosophy… That spirit of questioning makes it fair, I think, if I'm not mistaken, coming out of some hazy tradition, perhaps found in American writers of the salt of the earth type, perhaps in literary study of a certain kind, or in the intellectual questions of college age that one thinks should last a whole life, though they succumb to far more practical things.
Unaccomplished, I am real, an ordinary person, suffering the same things a lot of Americans, a lot of people around the world are having now.
I go for a walk, along the stream, down to the creek finally, which is flowing and slightly murky, of a greenish hue under April light. I see a flicker in the water as I walk the dirt trail by beech trees. From the small bridge I see, the alewives are running.
Friday, April 4, 2014
I tried to watch Boardwalk Empire to see Jeffrey Wright in character, but the violence… I had to turn it off, even as I could see how I could get involved in it. So, alone, late at night, I turned to YouTube to find what I could about The Pogues and Shane MacGowan. There was something about how the song Fairytale of New York came to be… I got out a guitar, had some wine, and chilled out. See, doctor, I'm been working these four night shifts and basically get the shit beaten out of me on each of them, and I have a few more Saturday nights to deal with before I go back to Sunday, not that I really want Sunday any more… I'll do Saturday just on pride, even if it will kill my day off. A cross to bear, what can you do…
But I did have a moment of self understanding, or awareness, whatever you want to call it. I'm naturally an empathetic person. I get how people are feeling. Maybe that's why I can't watch that violence, even if it is imaginary, staged. It's not real but it can feel real, and so why horrify yourself… Things are scary enough.
Being an empathetic person, well, that leaves you wanting to be a writer, or maybe you're just not good at other things, like when you have to impose discipline or meet some tedious regulation. And maybe that's why I feel so wiped out after the work week, too much of other people's agendas, no real support for your own self... Frenchie doesn't care…
That's the whole culture, I guess. I don't find people particularly kind in the city, not that I blame them. They're under pressure just as I am. What am I saying… I don't know. But I just find it strange: you're an empathetic person, and you try to reach out to people, but, it's like they take you as a creep, an oddball. "What? You can't get with the competition? What's wrong with you?" And that's why I walk around this town like I would imagine Abraham Lincoln walked around, feeling this gloom, feeling the cold anonymity. I don't want to even go out anymore… You're not going to find much kindness. You'll just find people in selfish trances, glorified by their careers and their successes, when it's hard. And even if you were to try to bring up empathy, people would for the greatest part turn away or just shut down, or even worse, like outright reject you.
For me, there is no other issue. I mean, everyone talks about issues, issues, political, geopolitical, business, commerce, crime and justice and so forth, but to me that's all a side point. You know in your heart what the right thing to do is. You know your own capacity to offer the generic kindness to other reasonable people…
But my life is fucked up because I'm not self-protective enough, or not a good breadwinner, or just lousy at being an in-charge take-care-of-stuff male, try as I might. Okay, fault me for that; I can understand. Fault me for being so lazy as to want nothing else other than to be a writer who's writing as he sees fit to write, not even on anything in particular, but admit at least, 'well, but he's a nice guy,' for what it's worth, though it's completely true that nice guys finish last, might not get much done in the world in the way of, I don't know, defeating Al Queda terrorists or regulating banks like that savings and loan run by the guy who just died, Keating, big anti-porn Christian guy, and yet he knowingly bilked how many people out of their retirement savings so he could have lavish boats and vacations and real estate, which is the disgusting side of people that we should take measures against… A nice guy wouldn't do that, wouldn't blow up people, wouldn't swindle them…
I guess with everyone as self-centered as they must be they don't notice humanity anymore, like they don't want to see anyone who's not that well dressed who can't afford to be so well dressed, like they don't want any part of that loserdom, lest it be infectious. Yeah, we all know it's a slippery slope. We all know, in theory, to avoid being depressed, to keep working hard and all that, but not all of us are so lucky, and it seems like the fault of 'those people' is primarily that they aren't aggressive pricks who like to hear themselves hold forth all the time.
I guess you can shrug it all off, and say, well, to be empathetic is to go with God's love, the Love Supreme, believing however foolishly that if you love as God loves you'll find the right path in life, know how to conduct yourself, take care of things, set the right boundaries to protect yourself so that you don't fall into unhealthy things… And that's I guess why I write, just to keep myself on that path, so I understand myself and who I am and all that natural empathy stuff even though it seems useless to other minds.
I think this is one of the most important thing as an author, that because you are empathetic, you have the right to be writer, as a tool in bigger hands to show that we are all human, that we all suffer pain, and that the largest most important thing to do is simply to be kind. Qualifying that by admitting that I am a meat eater, I'm sorry, it's just the way it is.
But I did have a moment of self understanding, or awareness, whatever you want to call it. I'm naturally an empathetic person. I get how people are feeling. Maybe that's why I can't watch that violence, even if it is imaginary, staged. It's not real but it can feel real, and so why horrify yourself… Things are scary enough.
Being an empathetic person, well, that leaves you wanting to be a writer, or maybe you're just not good at other things, like when you have to impose discipline or meet some tedious regulation. And maybe that's why I feel so wiped out after the work week, too much of other people's agendas, no real support for your own self... Frenchie doesn't care…
That's the whole culture, I guess. I don't find people particularly kind in the city, not that I blame them. They're under pressure just as I am. What am I saying… I don't know. But I just find it strange: you're an empathetic person, and you try to reach out to people, but, it's like they take you as a creep, an oddball. "What? You can't get with the competition? What's wrong with you?" And that's why I walk around this town like I would imagine Abraham Lincoln walked around, feeling this gloom, feeling the cold anonymity. I don't want to even go out anymore… You're not going to find much kindness. You'll just find people in selfish trances, glorified by their careers and their successes, when it's hard. And even if you were to try to bring up empathy, people would for the greatest part turn away or just shut down, or even worse, like outright reject you.
For me, there is no other issue. I mean, everyone talks about issues, issues, political, geopolitical, business, commerce, crime and justice and so forth, but to me that's all a side point. You know in your heart what the right thing to do is. You know your own capacity to offer the generic kindness to other reasonable people…
But my life is fucked up because I'm not self-protective enough, or not a good breadwinner, or just lousy at being an in-charge take-care-of-stuff male, try as I might. Okay, fault me for that; I can understand. Fault me for being so lazy as to want nothing else other than to be a writer who's writing as he sees fit to write, not even on anything in particular, but admit at least, 'well, but he's a nice guy,' for what it's worth, though it's completely true that nice guys finish last, might not get much done in the world in the way of, I don't know, defeating Al Queda terrorists or regulating banks like that savings and loan run by the guy who just died, Keating, big anti-porn Christian guy, and yet he knowingly bilked how many people out of their retirement savings so he could have lavish boats and vacations and real estate, which is the disgusting side of people that we should take measures against… A nice guy wouldn't do that, wouldn't blow up people, wouldn't swindle them…
I guess with everyone as self-centered as they must be they don't notice humanity anymore, like they don't want to see anyone who's not that well dressed who can't afford to be so well dressed, like they don't want any part of that loserdom, lest it be infectious. Yeah, we all know it's a slippery slope. We all know, in theory, to avoid being depressed, to keep working hard and all that, but not all of us are so lucky, and it seems like the fault of 'those people' is primarily that they aren't aggressive pricks who like to hear themselves hold forth all the time.
I guess you can shrug it all off, and say, well, to be empathetic is to go with God's love, the Love Supreme, believing however foolishly that if you love as God loves you'll find the right path in life, know how to conduct yourself, take care of things, set the right boundaries to protect yourself so that you don't fall into unhealthy things… And that's I guess why I write, just to keep myself on that path, so I understand myself and who I am and all that natural empathy stuff even though it seems useless to other minds.
I think this is one of the most important thing as an author, that because you are empathetic, you have the right to be writer, as a tool in bigger hands to show that we are all human, that we all suffer pain, and that the largest most important thing to do is simply to be kind. Qualifying that by admitting that I am a meat eater, I'm sorry, it's just the way it is.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
On my way home tonight, walking, after a very long, very harried and busy shift, walking down past Dumbarton Oaks, down along R Street, past the park, where I stopped for a moment, then past Katharine Graham's house, slow enough to notice a dying back up in the high limbs of the maple along the iron fence, I remember how hard it always was for me to leave my father's house. Powerful emotions tell you something, and I tried to accept whatever it was that put that distance between us , that thing which seems like adult life, places to start careers.
I stop to complement and hug a linden tree on Q Street. How beautiful you are, and I love your bark, and I see how you have grown, so wisely, so intelligently. Never underestimate a tree, the wise beings that they are, how fully they represent life in this world. I stop and sit in a small park and I see how all the trees balance, reach out, a play, a conversation, an agreement going on between them, ballet between earth and sky. And in the background, the old trees that play with all, the larch, the evergreen, that reaches everywhere, each limb a discussion, each limb gathering in the energy of sunlight. The original tree, the original vigor and lesson of tree life. (Too bad the blaring light in the right of my field of vision above a parking area.)
Kids had left out chalk on a sidewalk. I stopped and drew a snoozing cat, an octopus, a bear, a doggie on the brick sidewalk. That's about all I'm good for in this town.
What an unfulfilled life, it seems when I wake, as if I couldn't follow through even with the things I wanted. What is it? And yet, there is nature, there to appreciate on a slow walk home, leaving the restaurant at 2:30 in the morning, stopping to look at trees, just as the cold had finally ended.
As I curled up into a nap, still exhausted and hurting in all ways from my efforts, it occurred to me, the obvious problem of humanity, as if staring one in the face. The great vulnerability. How close to the ribby surface is the heart, how easy to reach. How easy to hurt us, to kill us, or to make it so we'd wish to take our own lives, as if our own functions might almost tear at us from within. "All the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,"in Shakespeare's terms… No wonder an animal like us likes the reassurance of being stroked along the ear and muzzle, the back of the head. No wonder, the great need to protect oneself, to have time alone, to clear. (Written of well here: http://marispai.huginnpress.com/2012/03/14/e-is-for-empathy/ PERMALINK) It's the great empathy within that drives us, and it can get misused. It can allow us to be misdirected. (And this is why nature is so important.)
This was why I liked tending bar, out of a natural empathy for people, but it also let in the abuse, making me lose focus on my own self. Too kind, not selfish enough, not having enough of a protective shell, such that it would almost hurt to be out amongst people after the week was over. (And maybe now you need a stronger shield, always reachable, always in the marketing bullseye…)
I stop to complement and hug a linden tree on Q Street. How beautiful you are, and I love your bark, and I see how you have grown, so wisely, so intelligently. Never underestimate a tree, the wise beings that they are, how fully they represent life in this world. I stop and sit in a small park and I see how all the trees balance, reach out, a play, a conversation, an agreement going on between them, ballet between earth and sky. And in the background, the old trees that play with all, the larch, the evergreen, that reaches everywhere, each limb a discussion, each limb gathering in the energy of sunlight. The original tree, the original vigor and lesson of tree life. (Too bad the blaring light in the right of my field of vision above a parking area.)
Kids had left out chalk on a sidewalk. I stopped and drew a snoozing cat, an octopus, a bear, a doggie on the brick sidewalk. That's about all I'm good for in this town.
What an unfulfilled life, it seems when I wake, as if I couldn't follow through even with the things I wanted. What is it? And yet, there is nature, there to appreciate on a slow walk home, leaving the restaurant at 2:30 in the morning, stopping to look at trees, just as the cold had finally ended.
As I curled up into a nap, still exhausted and hurting in all ways from my efforts, it occurred to me, the obvious problem of humanity, as if staring one in the face. The great vulnerability. How close to the ribby surface is the heart, how easy to reach. How easy to hurt us, to kill us, or to make it so we'd wish to take our own lives, as if our own functions might almost tear at us from within. "All the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,"in Shakespeare's terms… No wonder an animal like us likes the reassurance of being stroked along the ear and muzzle, the back of the head. No wonder, the great need to protect oneself, to have time alone, to clear. (Written of well here: http://marispai.huginnpress.com/2012/03/14/e-is-for-empathy/ PERMALINK) It's the great empathy within that drives us, and it can get misused. It can allow us to be misdirected. (And this is why nature is so important.)
This was why I liked tending bar, out of a natural empathy for people, but it also let in the abuse, making me lose focus on my own self. Too kind, not selfish enough, not having enough of a protective shell, such that it would almost hurt to be out amongst people after the week was over. (And maybe now you need a stronger shield, always reachable, always in the marketing bullseye…)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
