My friend Dina, from Texas, insisted that I move in with her friend Barry and Rodger, his 90- year-old dad, on 181st St. My then current situation was stressed by the fact that my roommate had just placed a personals ad in some rag and she was dragging all sorts of unknown beings into our domain, while I was fearing for the safety of my television, or flatware.
So, I take the bait, hire some Israeli's to move me (lots of added charges announced before they would unload my chattel), and get settled in a grand old apartment building on Manhattan's upper West Side. Dina lived upstairs, sharing another big apartment with several graduates of Findhorn. (But they weren't growing anything.)
Months passed. Barry, a musician, and Dina, an opportunist, were an "item." Also they were followers of an ersatz guru who had started out as a voice coach or something like that. Together they spent a lot of time away from the apartment following the guru, especially on week ends. It didn't take me very long to realize I was Papa Rodger's caretaker. Nothing formally stated. Just heavily inferred. You know, the Guru must be fed and anyone with any human feeling would not want to leave Rodger alone, would they?
There was an abortive attempt to convert me to Guru Thang, but Dina and Barry did not know I am a graduate of West Texas where lives a plague of proselytes stationed in every cranny ready to snatch one up into even more shame and remorse. No thanks. I did relent to one Guru evening thrown in Upstate New York by some successful movie music maestro. The spread was enormous and Dina chased me around the rooms trying desperately to get me to "put on some lipstick." Then Guru Thang called all the women into a big room and closed the door for some kind of session. We went around the room telling our names and declaiming what we "do." My answer to that question is usually, "nothing." But, woop! Mr. Thang rests his countenance upon me and says, that is NOT your name, your name is Jestina! (Which I immediately deemed rather tacky.)
The next day, after a fearful icy and snow-blinded slide home in Barry's automobile, the pair were on the phone with Mr. Thang's right-hand-man. (Probably, really.) There was some agitation. I had received- A NAME! Did I not now want to supply some gratitude by making a contribution? It felt like when some relative gives you a hand-me-down gingham shirt and your mother pointedly (with usually an elbow) reminds you to be a grateful wretch.
So I bow out of the guru business, and am left with Rodger, all the while watching poor Barry taxi Mr. Thang prospects hither and thither, using time at his age better spent sleeping, at least sometime. He was a rather slender, I should say, wiry man. It's hard to gauge the health of this physical type for me. But someone living among us entertained an horrific bout of audible nausea one Sunday evening. The tile of the substantial bathroom rang in sympathy. I was more worried about contagion.
Several weeks pass, and I receive a phone note at work. "Call Dina." So I called.
"Sandra, we've lost Barry."
I thought, "Lost?"
"He died this morning."
I immediately reinterpreted what I had heard. Certainly she meant Rodger. I offered my shocked sympathy and needless to say did not hurry home that evening.
It was well past dark when I placed my key in the heavy door. Just as I opened the door wide enough to see in, Dina's face met me. She was still dressed in bedclothes from the night before.
"Barry's still in his room. Do you want to see him?"
Honestly, I have avoided death like a plague. I rarely attend funerals, unless it is one for a grandmother, or once, my own child. But I am a polite Southerner and when invited I usually say "Yes" rather than offend someone. Dina said little else and I found myself moving through very thick silence towards Barry's room, which I had never before entered.
He was there. Lying simply on the bed clad in a t-shirt and pajama bottoms. His hands were thrown up in a gesture of surprise. His eyes were open. I, tentatively believing in life after death, did not want to gawk. Unseemly. Watching myself experience this, I found I was wondering what sort of etiquette was applicable in a situation like this. I actually did not know Barry very well, and looking at him in his doubtlessly most vulnerable moment seemed woefully inappropriate. Actually, thinking back upon it, it was.
Barry was not "removed" from the abode until after midnight. Someone allowed that there is but one coroner's wagon for all of Manhattan. I can't believe that, but times of death can render one gullible. Like one's own soul is drawn toward its own end, magnetized by the event of the withdrawal of another and conscious energy is diminished leaving you open to vagrant suggestion. The condition simulating that of flight. Flight from rather than transcendent ascent.
At that time in my life, I was performing stand-up comedy at small open mic venues around the island. It's a riot of freedom experience, open mic. You are not being paid, and nobody in the place gives a rot enough to throw you out. So, I was at Downtown Beirut a couple of days after Barry's death, and a guy came in during the "show." He had parked a big hog motorcycle out front and walked right in to join the few comics sitting around the ragged room who comprised the usual audience. Luckily I was taping my set because this patron choked with laughter, pounding the table as I made my observational comments at Barry's expense. I was fueled by his response for months. (Comics don't really laugh at other comics.)
My girlfriend, Meredith, hooked me up with a performer who had told Mer that she wanted to write and produce a show, so I met with her. I gave her the tape of that night's Thalian "flow" and she took it with her to listen later due to time constraints. I never saw it again. When I asked her via phone to send it back, she all but cussed me out for thinking she had enough time in her life to keep up with the whereabouts of my tape, much less getting it back to me.
So, Barry's soul rose to Heaven. My tape fell into the maelstrom of a stranger's madness. But I still love New York (City). my Atlantis, my life and my soul.
You may know that Casey deemed New York as the new Atlantis, or was it the original one, whatever. He may be proven right as the sea level rises. Wall Street goes first. Will it be ready?
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Lou Perryman/ No Country for Old Men
Lou Perryman was in his home on April 1 of this year, and Seth Tatum somehow got in and violently killed him with an axe. With Albert Camus, I have to question the sanity of a god who lets such random events brutally cease the life of a richly realized man like Lou. Immediately the question was asked, "Did Lou know this person. And the unanimous answer was NO."
Do we have to make an accounting of complicity in our own deaths? And I shall quote Camus here:
"The Evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clearsightedness." From THE PLAGUE, p.131. Vintage Books: March 1991 edition.
At Lou's memorial, a representative of the local Men's Movement allowed that Lou was probably thinking, "Where is this kid's FATHER?" And I also imagined this. Perhaps he wished to reach out to Seth even as the blows were being struck. And if Lou were at a place of surrender to the Unknowable, his death does not seem meaningless.
I must question, "Where did Seth get the axe?" And I can imagine it leaning up against Lou's house, and Lou had described his rigged cat door which probably allowed access through the door by one who was on the move fueled by rage.
Early in March was the first time I met with Lou on a "date." We chose The Flight Path as a place to sit and talk. Something kept prompting me to describe the "good people" of West Texas as "dangerous." This is because they refuse to take account of the dark realities which move through life. Deliberate Ignorance chooses to be unaware of these forces. And it has been my experience, no matter how "good" folks are they are not bullet proof. And no matter how these unaware "good people" assure me that they can help, or be there for you, if they are not cognizant of the pitfalls ignorance causes, I see them as a danger to me.
As a metaphor, I advise you to pick up your axes and get them out of sight. If you live on the edge, or in the inner city, be aware when your door is not secure. It doesn't mean that you don't trust your fellow man. It means that your first love is the safety and integrity of your own body, your own person. (This is the base fact of communion with the divine, a clear, functioning sensorium residing in your corporeal self.)
Whatever hell Seth has lived through, whaever punishing ignorance his been his reality, this must be recognized and not glossed over. We cannot handcuff the results of rank ignorance. Its manifestations do not "go away." There are many effective avenues of psychologcal, social, and spiritual evolution moving in our world today. Who blociked his access to them? Is it "macho" to ask a young man who may have brain abberations, chemical imbalances, and emotional wounds just to "get over it!" No, that is tantamont to murder. And I think Seth was murdering himself when he targeted Lou. He was destroying the recalcitrant, punishing male which he projected on all authority, and he was trying to end his own sense of lack and helplessness. Who failed him?
I think Lou, who had a big heart, may have generally assumed that most peole were on their way to "ordination," ( as Henry Miller put it)...that folks want to pull up out of the small town and get wise and constitutionally strong, to make something of themselves. That's what the parents of our generation expected of us, too. Yes, parents.
I must refer to "No Country for Old Men" now. It looks to me like, as someone of the same generation as Lou, that people of this present "Country" must now more than ever be as sly as foxes as well as gentle as doves. Fact is there are many people whose early development was violently compromised and they are adapting in a newly extreme socially pathological way. There's a new government report out on public schools serving "special" students that are resorting to handcuffs, restraints, and solitary isolation. Kids with PTSD, ADD, ADHD are not easy. And there is no easy solution, but we must be moving toward solutions because these needs left unmet become problems, and they do not just "go away." Check out this story: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/12/ed-and-labor-committee-members-introduce-bill-prevent-abuse-students-school#site-content
Back to the "innocent" West Texans. I think what bothers me about these folk is they "believe" that since they are good people, usually church-going and Bible-reading, they don't have to even bother with knowing about the problems such as Seth struggles with. Their idea of themselves, their "position" in life is apparently hermetically sealed against this knowledge. But, as the "No Country" movie amplifies, this is a dangerous position to hold. .."without the utmost clearsightedness."
Any policy, any religion, any good ole' club which condemms any person to the margin will eventually have to deal with the result of ignorance. St. Paul struggled with the self knowledge that to know the good doesn't necessarily result in doing the good. It falls upon us to consider the dark side -- knowing the bad doesn't always result in doing the bad either. But we are called to use our intelligence and imagination to assess what the tasks are before us in order to create a New Country for Young Men.
Buddhism encourages mankind to expand and contain. Lyndon Johnson said "Know your enemy, keep him close." And me? Well without asking people to become completely paranoid, I would suggest that we find the courage to know the evolving dangers, determine and find our safest and most nourishing actions and environment, and include as much knowledge as we can cram into our noggins. Be scrupulously honest with yourself about yourself. And then get started giving thanks that you are alive. Also, since more than just one of us was created to live on this planet, develop a social consciousness.
And, I can't forget the Pogo cartoon from the '60's. Pogo says, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
Do we have to make an accounting of complicity in our own deaths? And I shall quote Camus here:
"The Evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clearsightedness." From THE PLAGUE, p.131. Vintage Books: March 1991 edition.
At Lou's memorial, a representative of the local Men's Movement allowed that Lou was probably thinking, "Where is this kid's FATHER?" And I also imagined this. Perhaps he wished to reach out to Seth even as the blows were being struck. And if Lou were at a place of surrender to the Unknowable, his death does not seem meaningless.
I must question, "Where did Seth get the axe?" And I can imagine it leaning up against Lou's house, and Lou had described his rigged cat door which probably allowed access through the door by one who was on the move fueled by rage.
Early in March was the first time I met with Lou on a "date." We chose The Flight Path as a place to sit and talk. Something kept prompting me to describe the "good people" of West Texas as "dangerous." This is because they refuse to take account of the dark realities which move through life. Deliberate Ignorance chooses to be unaware of these forces. And it has been my experience, no matter how "good" folks are they are not bullet proof. And no matter how these unaware "good people" assure me that they can help, or be there for you, if they are not cognizant of the pitfalls ignorance causes, I see them as a danger to me.
As a metaphor, I advise you to pick up your axes and get them out of sight. If you live on the edge, or in the inner city, be aware when your door is not secure. It doesn't mean that you don't trust your fellow man. It means that your first love is the safety and integrity of your own body, your own person. (This is the base fact of communion with the divine, a clear, functioning sensorium residing in your corporeal self.)
Whatever hell Seth has lived through, whaever punishing ignorance his been his reality, this must be recognized and not glossed over. We cannot handcuff the results of rank ignorance. Its manifestations do not "go away." There are many effective avenues of psychologcal, social, and spiritual evolution moving in our world today. Who blociked his access to them? Is it "macho" to ask a young man who may have brain abberations, chemical imbalances, and emotional wounds just to "get over it!" No, that is tantamont to murder. And I think Seth was murdering himself when he targeted Lou. He was destroying the recalcitrant, punishing male which he projected on all authority, and he was trying to end his own sense of lack and helplessness. Who failed him?
I think Lou, who had a big heart, may have generally assumed that most peole were on their way to "ordination," ( as Henry Miller put it)...that folks want to pull up out of the small town and get wise and constitutionally strong, to make something of themselves. That's what the parents of our generation expected of us, too. Yes, parents.
I must refer to "No Country for Old Men" now. It looks to me like, as someone of the same generation as Lou, that people of this present "Country" must now more than ever be as sly as foxes as well as gentle as doves. Fact is there are many people whose early development was violently compromised and they are adapting in a newly extreme socially pathological way. There's a new government report out on public schools serving "special" students that are resorting to handcuffs, restraints, and solitary isolation. Kids with PTSD, ADD, ADHD are not easy. And there is no easy solution, but we must be moving toward solutions because these needs left unmet become problems, and they do not just "go away." Check out this story: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/12/ed-and-labor-committee-members-introduce-bill-prevent-abuse-students-school#site-content
Back to the "innocent" West Texans. I think what bothers me about these folk is they "believe" that since they are good people, usually church-going and Bible-reading, they don't have to even bother with knowing about the problems such as Seth struggles with. Their idea of themselves, their "position" in life is apparently hermetically sealed against this knowledge. But, as the "No Country" movie amplifies, this is a dangerous position to hold. .."without the utmost clearsightedness."
Any policy, any religion, any good ole' club which condemms any person to the margin will eventually have to deal with the result of ignorance. St. Paul struggled with the self knowledge that to know the good doesn't necessarily result in doing the good. It falls upon us to consider the dark side -- knowing the bad doesn't always result in doing the bad either. But we are called to use our intelligence and imagination to assess what the tasks are before us in order to create a New Country for Young Men.
Buddhism encourages mankind to expand and contain. Lyndon Johnson said "Know your enemy, keep him close." And me? Well without asking people to become completely paranoid, I would suggest that we find the courage to know the evolving dangers, determine and find our safest and most nourishing actions and environment, and include as much knowledge as we can cram into our noggins. Be scrupulously honest with yourself about yourself. And then get started giving thanks that you are alive. Also, since more than just one of us was created to live on this planet, develop a social consciousness.
And, I can't forget the Pogo cartoon from the '60's. Pogo says, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
Sunday, March 15, 2009
A Well-Pointed Individual
Overheard from a Teaching Surgeon at Yale that " The Greeks" ( from the classical period ) often were masters of more than one discipline - a mathematician would also study philosophy (love of knowing) and theology (knowing the gods). Questions and considerations of these early thinkers showed a healthy functioning brain.
If our current day emphasis could be upon honoring the questioning mind, the holistic model held up to us by Greek scholars might emerge. People's ability to reason without knowledge was honored in early democracy. Read Paul Woodruff's: First Democracy.
Honoring the joy of one's active mind probably delivers an impetus to tackle a wide variety of information. That's fodder for more creative thought and nourishment for the soul. Plus, participating in a broad community of folks who wish to share thoughts, questions, and conclusions with each other expands one's identity as a human being.
You'd be surprised at the number of ideas which fed the mind of the author of The Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown uncovered a body of research and conjecture which coalesced in his book resulting in the controversial movie. Some of the ideas examined by Brown arise from "innocent" questions which, when examined could bring down some elemental beliefs of one very influential world religion.
Da Vinci is known for his broad interest in his world. A quick review of his notebooks sparks one's own imagination, and frankly, one's pleasure in eavesdropping upon his reasoning at work. Catching the spark from another's spirit just might inspire another painting, or design for a thrilling mysterious secret.
Beauty was a force for the artists working in the Italian Renaissance. And Venus was the goddess embodying the varying qualities of beauty. Hidden in the accrued attributes of Venus is the number 5. As the planet Venus travels across the sky in her almost perfect circular orbit around the sun, from Earth, she leaves the impression of a five-pointed star. Her fruit, the apple, has a star hidden within it. Artist/architects of Da Vinci's age were also practitioners of practical arithmetic. A five pointed star is interesting as a math problem, and as an architectural achievement. Da Vinci seems to be looking for mathematical similarities, most obviously in his study in proportion of Vitruvian man.
As the star is useful as a symbol for practical practice, it can also inspire suppositions. What is the function of the human head? (Thinking/reason.) The right hand? (Conscious attention.) The left hand? (Intuitive informing.) The right foot? (Physical action.) The left foot? (Creative wisdom.) Or, what are the five functions of the human being ? Mind, Emotion, Body, Spirit, Intuition is a list I like. Carl Jung (p. 156) reminds us that our motion on earth is not toward perfection but wholeness and equilibrium self-regulated by the psyche. The Greeks associated organization and seeking order with Psyche. Her efforts to appease Venus were finally rewarded by immortality by the Olympians.
Back to the Yale surgeon: Clinical Professor of Surgery, Sherwin Nuland. How our being is organized is a continuing mystery. Nuland has devoted a good deal of his career in understanding a central organizer, the human brain, especially as it operates in concert with the whole body. He advocates deep respect for the health of the brain, for it is the most complicated organ that we know.
If our current day emphasis could be upon honoring the questioning mind, the holistic model held up to us by Greek scholars might emerge. People's ability to reason without knowledge was honored in early democracy. Read Paul Woodruff's: First Democracy.
Honoring the joy of one's active mind probably delivers an impetus to tackle a wide variety of information. That's fodder for more creative thought and nourishment for the soul. Plus, participating in a broad community of folks who wish to share thoughts, questions, and conclusions with each other expands one's identity as a human being.
You'd be surprised at the number of ideas which fed the mind of the author of The Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown uncovered a body of research and conjecture which coalesced in his book resulting in the controversial movie. Some of the ideas examined by Brown arise from "innocent" questions which, when examined could bring down some elemental beliefs of one very influential world religion.
Da Vinci is known for his broad interest in his world. A quick review of his notebooks sparks one's own imagination, and frankly, one's pleasure in eavesdropping upon his reasoning at work. Catching the spark from another's spirit just might inspire another painting, or design for a thrilling mysterious secret.
Beauty was a force for the artists working in the Italian Renaissance. And Venus was the goddess embodying the varying qualities of beauty. Hidden in the accrued attributes of Venus is the number 5. As the planet Venus travels across the sky in her almost perfect circular orbit around the sun, from Earth, she leaves the impression of a five-pointed star. Her fruit, the apple, has a star hidden within it. Artist/architects of Da Vinci's age were also practitioners of practical arithmetic. A five pointed star is interesting as a math problem, and as an architectural achievement. Da Vinci seems to be looking for mathematical similarities, most obviously in his study in proportion of Vitruvian man.
As the star is useful as a symbol for practical practice, it can also inspire suppositions. What is the function of the human head? (Thinking/reason.) The right hand? (Conscious attention.) The left hand? (Intuitive informing.) The right foot? (Physical action.) The left foot? (Creative wisdom.) Or, what are the five functions of the human being ? Mind, Emotion, Body, Spirit, Intuition is a list I like. Carl Jung (p. 156) reminds us that our motion on earth is not toward perfection but wholeness and equilibrium self-regulated by the psyche. The Greeks associated organization and seeking order with Psyche. Her efforts to appease Venus were finally rewarded by immortality by the Olympians.
Back to the Yale surgeon: Clinical Professor of Surgery, Sherwin Nuland. How our being is organized is a continuing mystery. Nuland has devoted a good deal of his career in understanding a central organizer, the human brain, especially as it operates in concert with the whole body. He advocates deep respect for the health of the brain, for it is the most complicated organ that we know.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn
An idea. You are at the end of your rope. Maybe not today, but perhaps someday. Keep this under your hat. Read Henry Miller. Preferably an old edition you find lying around somewhere. Probably somebody hid one in a closet, because Miller was banned for a long time. That's how my first Miller book came into my hands. In 1973 I bought a house owned by a university professor. While I was cleaning, readying to move in, I found Tropic of Cancer tucked behind a hot water heater in its own small dark closet. At the time I was divorcing for my own sanity, yet I was feeling rather out on a limb. I was basically risking everything. And Miller was saying, "Go ahead. Everything ain't anything anyway." There is where life began. Maybe that is where it can begin for you, too!
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