Saturday AM

A good night's sleep. No Ambien.

Unintended Acceleration

I'm suffering from unintended acceleration. I woke this morning greatly relived to have had a good night's sleep. It has become something of a rarity these past few weeks, and I have consequently been suffering from a good deal of fatigue.

Here's how it goes: I get to sleep just fine. Occasionally, worrying about the lack of sleep the night before, I will take half an Ambien to help me drop off. But then, even with the Ambien, Nature will insist on calling in the middle of the night--at 2:30, say, or 3:00. I stagger off sleepily to the bathroom but by the time I get back to bed my brain is wide awake and going furiously to work. It wants to write the blog entry for the next morning, or plan to the next speaking gig, or take care of some other business in advance.

(This past week, that business has entailed the search for a new part-time assistant: the trusty Daniel is leaving us after several years for more profitable full-time employment with a company that markets "ethical merchandise." Here's his blog, Ethix Merch. It's in fact an interesting--and I have to say somewhat sad--reflection on the state of the current job market. Once he decided that it was time for him to move on, we placed an ad on Craig's list and were immediately flooded with applications for this low-paying, 10 hour per week job. Most of them came from highly qualified applicants, all deserving of attention to their resumes and a good number deserving of interviews. This task has kept me busy.)

Back to this sleeping problem, then. Once my brain is in gear, it is proving difficult, if not impossible, to shut it down. I drive a Prius. It's like those errant vehicles that get stuck in acceleration mode. The damn thing (the brain) gets stuck in forward and keeps going faster and faster, no matter how hard I apply the brakes. A friend asked me yesterday if the skills I have learned in years of meditation are of help, and I realized, no, what meditation teaches is not how to go to sleep, but how to stay more awake. I'm just a bit more alert to what the brain is doing. I try to use the breath to slow it down, but my success has proven limited. In fact, the same problem has been showing up at those times when I actually sit down to meditate. The brain thinks this is a wonderful opportunity to go to work. This morning, I considered myself lucky to get just a few breaths at the end, after half an hour of busy thinking.

I did come to the realization, though, in this morning's sit, that this is all about planning. It's the delusion that, with sufficient forethought, I can control the outcome of future events. What I need is to relax into the understanding that no matter how much I plan, things will turn out different. The old joke is that a plan is what you make when you want to see God laugh. I don't believe in God, but the point is good.

So what to do? Understanding the cause of the problem is one thing; getting past it is something else again. Maybe it's a first step. I'll remind myself before I go to sleep tonight. (Another plan!) I've thought about counting sheep--which is a little like watching the breath, when you think about it. In the meantime, I'm just grateful when a good night comes along. Any suggestions, anyone?

"CAIRNS ALONG THE ROAD"

I now have the information I lacked before--how to lay your hands on a copy of the book I write about below. It's simple: write a check for $10 plus $2 shipping and handling to Bill Mawhinney and mail it off to him at 25 McKenzie Lane, Port Ludlow, WA 98365. Simple!

Poems...

Here comes my friend, Bill Mawhinney, with a new book of poems. Bill is not famous. Oh, yes, these days you can Google him and find a couple of his poems online. You can even watch him read. But famous? No. Which does not mean the man is not capable of stringing together some beautiful lines that will reach directly from his heart to yours.

Here he is, addressing one Leonard Gregg, arsonist, whose action destroyed the beloved Show Low, Arizona landscape where he lived:

Leonard, Tuesday morning you tossed a match

behind Cibecue's rodeo ring to stash

some firefighting cash in your pocket.

That's what they say.

Does he want "to hang you like a pinata and thump you with a ball bat"? Yes, he does. But "I'm too sad to punish you, Leonard./Exhausted I sink to my knees,/sobbing on this blackened ground." But Bill's compassion wants his nemesis only to

Serve until sap rises in your heart,

until growth rings root you into these mountains

and sink you into the canyons all around,

until you rise into beauty in this place.

See what I mean? Here's a man who is unafraid to look into his heart and tell the truth about what he finds there, and has the language to do it with precision and tenderness. He speaks to us of the process of aging and the prospect of death. He speaks of love lost, and love found. Who could better synthesize the meaning of "Persist," a book that took me decades to write than Bill does, in these simple words?

Poetry has been a tough sell.

I'm tired, the pencil dulls in my hand.

I've sluffed off lofty aspirations

To cram shelves with my publications.

I'm too old to chase fame

Yet too deeply dug into words to quit.

Or this, "Doors"...

He who opens a door

And he who closes it

Are not the same man.

The weight of shadows slides

Down a long corridor,

Shouldering against

Doors I've opened

Doors I thought I'd closed,

And those somehow left ajar.

How do I return home

When all the doors lean away?

Beautifully written, so rich with meaning, and economical with words. What Bill does so well is document the journey of his heart. Hence his title, "Cairns Along the Road." His poems, precisely, are cairns, stones stacked with love one atop the other, markers on those points of passage where meaning seems to flood in on us in moments of epiphany. They remind us to stop along our own roads, look around, observe what's happening around us and how it responds to what's happening within.

Here's the sad thing: I can't even tell you how to buy this book. The Heron Hill Press, it seems, has no website. Perhaps, reading these words, Bill will feel moved to write and let me know how you can lay your hands on one, in which case, I'll pass the information on.

Avatar: A Film Review

Well, we finally succumbed to the hype and went to see Avatar. A friend had told us she had heard it was "anti-American." No worries on that score. I see it as profoundly American in its depiction of the perennial battle within the American soul between the individual and the collective vision, between self-interest and idealism, between the avid pursuit of material gain and ecstatic transcendentalism. If there are, on the one side, the abject creatures of American capitalism, the other side is led to eventual triumph by a quintessentially American Marine.

The film is American, also, in its inextricable muddle of myths, most of them deeply Romantic--from that of the Noble Savage to the Enchanted Forest, from the Arthurian knight to the Savior of Mankind. The hero's transformation from agent of the capitalist exploiters to hero of the oppressed embraces the saving of a Damsel in Distress and a spectacular initiation rite that involves hand-to-hand combat with his personal dragon (read, perhaps, inner demon, or "shadow"), harnessing its power, and riding it to freedom. All this takes place in a gorgeous Garden of Eden governed by the spirit of an all-powerful, animist deity envisioned as an energy (or "Force"!) which unites all beings, whether flora or fauna.

My quarrel with the film has nothing to do with its "politics," then, but rather with its essentially juvenile and hackneyed vision of the eternal struggle between Good and Evil, and its reinvention of the old myth of apocalyptic violence as its necessary outcome. It's Armageddon revisited, for the zillionth time. Eventually, perhaps, our human species will tire of its fascination with the spectacle of the clash of titans, whether down here on earth or in outer space. For now, we watch it re-enacted in a new and necessarily yet grander fashion, and with the same dreadful fascination.

That said, there remains much about "Avatar" to recommend it. The landscapes it envisions--vast mountains, floating in space, lush forests--are truly awesome. The flora and fauna of this alien environment are created with wonderful imaginative attention to the detail of color and design, movement and scale. From the tiniest, most delicate insect to the massive, lumbering creatures of land and graceful dragons of the air, the beings that inhabit this planet entertain us with their charm or their terror; the forest is peopled, too, with vegetation that delights both the eye and the imagination. It's a richly envisioned world, reminiscent enough of our own to convince, yet different enough to be wonderfully strange and exotic.

Ah, yes, and those special effects... kind of breath-taking, in 3-D. You take your ride down the sheer face of a bottomless cliff on the back of your speeding dragon. You stand on a vertiginous mountain top and survey the endless depths and distances below. You are shaken by the roar of space fighter engines, the thunder of missiles. Great forests explode... You can't help but be taken in by it all. It's not exactly a "willing suspension disbelief," but rather an assault on the senses which your senses are simply powerless to resist. They are invaded, conquered, and occupied.

Okay, it's all an adventure. Subtlety is not this film's strong point. Did I mention the "love interest"? No? Well, there's romance to be had here, too. Might as well simply give in and enjoy for what it is.