Trust

Here's a question that bears thought. Outside the relatively small circle of those close to you, how many people do you trust?

The question came up this past week at the gym with my friend, Scott--a sports fan and a fellow Tour de France enthusiast. He and I have often talked, over the years, about the prevalence of drugs in sports, and he told me the other day that the tennis player Andre Agassi had admitted, in a recent memoir, to the routine use of methamphetamines to get the aggressive juices flowing. In the past, my conversations with Scott have generally centered on the use of performance enhancers. The continuing scandals in the world of professional cycling were among the first to draw attention to the problem. Since then there has been a seemingly endless stream of accusations, denials, admissions, confessions, penalties and expulsions, and even some criminal trials affecting virtually every realm of sport.

Things have reached a point now, in sports, where it's hard to believe that any win is earned without cheating. It would be convenient to believe that there were just a few "bad apples", as our former president might say. But we are now in a place where we know that the barrel is spoiled. The kind of trust we need to believe in an equal contest between two athletes or two teams of athletes has evaporated, and once that is gone, the whole foundation collapses. If it's no longer about skill, talent, stamina and sportsmanship, it reverts, inexorably, to that familiar, remorseless competition for money and power.

Unhappily, the playing field persists as a metaphor for life. The erosion of trust extends to every aspect of our lives, from the food we buy and consume to the activities of the corporate and financial world to the realm of national and international affairs. The bank was once the solid symbol of trustworthiness. Who trusts the banking system these days, after the scandals of the past twelve months? The mattress seems like an increasingly sane alternative. Wall Street? The good faith of companies whose stocks are bought and sold? The very thought is risible. We once thought we could rely on our government to insure that the markets did not run amok. An article in today's New York Times tracks the lamentable failures of the SEC to detect the largest Ponzi scheme in history (Bernard Madoff's) when the evidence stared them in the face.

Do we trust our lawyers? Our doctors? Our police? Our politicians? Our neighbors? No more than our athletes. Where's the integrity? When so many show themselves to be untrustworthy, ruthless in the pursuit of their own interests and heedless of those of others, the whole system is undermined. The glue that holds us together as a society is gone. Our loss of trust in government--and, too often rightfully, in the politicians who represent us--has made our country virtually ungovernable. Without a pact of mutual trust between the governed and the governing, the hands of policy-makers are tied. We look to Washington and see paralysis, in good part because no one is prepared to trust anyone else. In California, where I live, we are now victim to our own mistrust. We are confronted with the spectacle of the results: highways crumble, hospitals close, what was once the greatest educational system in the country--perhaps in the world--is in a shambles. Were the effects not so dire in the lives of so many of our citizens, it would be simply laughable. I imagine myself arriving from another planet and trying to make sense of the absurdity.

We impugn the good along with the bad, refusing to recognize a distinction between healthy skepticism and the rush to mistrust. We elected what I persist in believing to be a man with a good heart and a good head to be president, handing him a mess more monumental than the Augean stables to clean up. How many years did it take to create this mess? But before six months are up--well, nine, now--he is under daily attack not only from those who oppose him but from those who worked for his election. How quick many of us have been to label him "just another politician."

Oh, and lest it be thought that I'm speaking exclusively about America... No, I'm speaking of a global pandemic. Look to the Middle East, to Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan for the effects of mutual mistrust. Look to Iran and Israel. Look to our relations with China, with Russia... I don't usually have much to say for Ronald Reagan, but his principle in this regard seemed a like good one: Trust, but verify. In today's New York Times, again, two articles--one about the theft or damage inflicted on 80 percent (eighty!) of those sturdy bicycles included in a wonderful program to make the two-wheelers readily available and returnable to convenient locations throughout urban areas, in an effort to reduce congestion and pollution; and another about the charges of corruption now being leveled against former President Jacques Chirac.

It seems that these days cheating is the norm. We can no longer expect integrity from our leaders; we no longer expect it of our neighbors; and we no longer expect it of ourselves. And yet... without it, what do we have left to count on in our relationship with others and the world? And where do we start to mend this broken web we so much need for our mutual security and welfare? There's only one place I know of: each of us in ourselves. If it ever happens, it will be a very long, slow process. If it doesn't, woe betide us all.

The Shadow Knows

My thanks to those who wrote in yesterday with sympathies and remedies for those cluster headaches. It is interesting-and a bit disturbing--to watch this series as it develops. Nothing violent since yesterday morning, but several mock attacks, culminating in a very minor event this morning, at the same time as yesterday's. The shadow has been present throughout the day and, as I have noticed at waking moments, throughout the night. It's hard to describe this: it feels like a headache waiting to happen, a space it has carved out for itself inside the head. When I pay attention, particularly during meditation, I notice how very different the two sides of my head feel, the right side clear and relaxed, the left side totally sensitive and alert, self-protective, ready to defend itself against the coming explosion.

The disturbing part, as I suggested yesterday, is the irregularity of this series. It's the not knowing what's coming, nor when to expect it. Were the headaches coming with that precise regularity I'm used to, my mind would be satisfied with the familiar explanation: clusters. Since they're not, the mind loses that anchor, and feels entitled to get anxious and indulge in speculation. It's interesting. I don't know about yours, but I'm learning more and more that my mind is constantly in search of--in need of--explanations. It thinks that if it can only understand why something is happening, it will be able to somehow prevent unpleasant events from occurring and control the world out-there.

Science, of course, is busy doing the same. And to some extent it's right. We need to understand the causes of climate change, for example, if we're to do something about it. Where it gets interesting is the point beyond which we have no satisfactory explanation, or have too many alternative explanations--the point where we must simply recognize and accept what-is for what it is: this is a headache. It's happening now. I have no idea what caused it, still less how to make it go away. I must abide in my headache-ness, observe its progress if I can with disinterested interest, and watch it, thankfully, subside.

Today, I go with my friend Stuart to meet with his class on "Character and Conflict." I think I have the title right. It's always a privilege. And the shadow will likely shuffle off into the wings for the length of the day.

Pain

I have cluster headaches. I guess I may have inherited them from my father, though it was only later, after his death, that I learned about that from my sister. The headaches typically come in series. When a series starts, the headaches come regularly--you can almost set your clock by the time of their daily arrival. They are incredibly intense, like someone driving an axe through your head, and they attack one full side of the head--brain, temples, eyes and nose (they both get clogged and runny), teeth, mouth, jaw. Typically, again, they are of identical duration: I'm fortunate in that mine have usually been of short duration--an hour or so--and this series even shorter than before, from onset to the end of the actual headache, about thirty minutes. But then there's the "aura", a kind of pre- and post-headache echo, where the shadow lurks between times, leaving you in a state where the memory of the pain--and its anticipation--are almost as bad as the pain itself.

What's curious--and frankly a bit worrisome--about this current series is that the attacks have been irregular. It started about ten days ago, with a couple of violent hits. Then nothing for a couple more days, but more hits at the weekend. Since Saturday, the aura has been with me in attenuated form, but not a single headache, until this morning, when I woke just after six with the awareness that one was coming on. Again, the acute part lasted barely more than thirty minutes. Again, I sit with the aura and the anxiety. Why, this time, are the attacks less regular than usual? I've had them at nine at night, at three in the morning, and now at six. (Is there something about multiples of three's?)

If you're anything like me, when something like this strikes your mind grabs a hold of it and starts imagining the worst. I try to stay in touch with the teachings of the Buddha and remind myself that the mind is capable of creating wonderful delusions. This morning, I sat and watched the headache in action as I meditated, and I think that helped--though the pain was of course a powerful distraction. It's hard to watch that pain and simply tell myself that it is what it is, just pain, just another experience that the mind can either capitulate to or observe with a measure of equanimity, without getting attached. I understand that the attachment itself will simply add to the experience of the pain, but the mind does so badly want to get its hooks into everything it can!

Anyway, I'm relieved that this current headache is on the wane. I'd be interested to hear from other cluster sufferers, if you're out there, especially from those who have experienced the irregularity I have described. Meantime, I'll be spending the full day teaching for the next couple of days, so I may find it hard to find time for The Buddha Diaries. We'll see...

Army of Shadows

This rental sat on our shelf for weeks before we slid it into the DVD player, which promptly refused to play it until prompted a number of times. Army of Shadows (L'Armee des ombres, 1969) is a magnificent piece of work, surely the best of many I have seen on the role of the French resistance during World War II. (Here's a fine, thoughtful review by Roger Ebert, which captures precisely the mood and the quality of the film.)

There is, of course, a tendency to romanticize the dangerous and very often fatal actions of this brave network of people, many of whom died at the hands of the Nazi occupiers for their dedication to the cause of France's liberation. This film refuses that temptation. It is gritty, unrelenting in its portrayal of a small cell of resistance fighters, led by a Parisian intellectual and a hard-nosed engineer, who operate in the shadows, always within a slip-up or a traitor's breath of discovery, torture and execution. Yet it is definitely not an action movie in the usual sense. The scenes--and the individual shots--are long and slow, the suspense is not the moment-to-moment, seat-of-the-chair anxiety that Hollywood movies have inured us to. There is little violent activity--though we are not spared some glimpses of the results of torture. The suspense here is profound, both emotionally and psychologically, reaching into the depths of the souls of the main characters.

There are also moments of release, small triumphs and successes along the way--a rescue by a British submarine under cover of darkness, in a remote inlet; the landing of two small transport places with supplies. You sigh with relief when they are over. But there is also the ubiquitous, dark and pitiless presence of the occupation force, whose eyes and ears are everywhere and whose control is absolute. The resistance fighters have no illusions but that they are destined to die, yet they persist in their battle despite their resignation and despite the remorseless power of their enemy. There is a nobility in their courage that elevates them to tragic figures, admirable and pitiable all at once. They hold us in their grip without pathos or melodrama, simply as men and women who find their integrity and sense of honor tested by the times.

In these days and at this place of relative security--our social fabric, 9/11 notwithstanding, is not immediately threatened as was France during the Occupation--it is hard to imagine ourselves in so extreme a predicament. The moral questions are imponderable: to kill a friend for fear she could be compelled, by whatever means, to provide information that could jeopardize an entire network? To risk the lives of the innocent in order to achieve a worthy goal? It is to the credit of Jean-Pierre Melville, the director of "Army of Shadows", that he manages to put us there, making such questions real and immediate and hard, and asking us to stake, by proxy, our own lives and our own sense of honor.

I wonder that I had never come upon this film before, and am glad that I stumbled on it somehow on the Internet. For those who, like myself, are fascinated by the history of the fight to the death against Nazi tyranny, this is an indispensable part of the picture.

Friends

We're fortunate to have some great, creative friends. Friday evening, we went to the Laguna Playhouse production of "Moonlight & Magnolias" in which our friend Leonard Kelly-Young is playing the part of the Hollywood writer, Ben Hecht. It's the story of a five-day session in which David O. Selznick held Hecht and director Victor Fleming hostage in his office while together they "doctored" the script for "Gone With the Wind." On a diet of bananas and peanuts (Selznick's current fad), the three men engage in hand-to-hand combat in which Hecht vainly seeks to inject a shred of social value into a script that seems to celebrate war, social injustice and racism under the cover of soap operatic histrionics. It provides an entertaining spectacle, and the acting was enough to keep us thoroughly engaged, but we thought the play itself lacked sufficient plot dynamic to be fully successful.

Turns out Leonard shares our view. He and his wife, Lillian--a former professional actor, now a painter--came over for a cup of tea on our back patio the following day, and we enjoyed the opportunity to talk to him about acting and the world of the theater. He has had a remarkably successful run these past few months, but shares the struggle of many others in the creative world, to keep working in a highly commercialized cultural environment. The predicament of the artist in a commercial world where supply now wildly exceeds demand is the subject of my new book of essays, Persist, which will be published soon, so I was especially interested to hear a working actor's insights on the subject.

Sunday, we discovered that Lisa, one of our sangha regulars and a trained singer, would be performing in a free concert at the beach that afternoon; so we wandered down with George in the warmth of the latter part of the day and joined the crowd of (mostly, we thought) locals gathered around the spot where the Laguna Community Concert Band were playing tunes from "Oklahoma!" and other Broadway shows. We had a great thrill hearing our friend's wonderful voice, along with those of a handful of other performers--though George grew quite demanding about his ball. Once he catches sight of a patch of grass, he's convinced we're there for no other reason that to play with him, and he can get quite insistent with his yelps--not the most welcome addition to a musical event.

There's an enormous pleasure to be had in such occasions. We creative folk--especially those of us trained in the schools and armed with advanced degrees to validate our talent--can get a wee bit precious about what we do. We become so attached to deluded notions of recognition and success that we set ourselves up for disappointment--even failure. The passion that originally inspired us sours; our talent becomes a liability, the source of anguish rather than joy. One of the essays in my book celebrates the giveaway--a way of freely sharing our gift that offers a wonderful sense of freedom and fulfillment in return. As a daily practitioner of the giveaway with The Buddha Diaries, I can vouch for those satisfactions with a full heart, and I honor all those who are willing to share their gifts, on occasion, without the expectation of return.

So there was a special delight in Sunday afternoon's concert at the beach, to see so much talent gathered for no other reason than to provide entertainment for their fellow citizens. Laguna Beach is a remarkable place for many reasons, not least the sense of community that thrives here as nowhere else I know. Ellie and I are grateful to count ourselves among its denizens.

Freaks

One of the books that taught me much about myth, archetype, literary convention and more broadly about the human condition when I was a student of literature many years ago was Leslie Fiedler's Freaks. I thought about the book again yesterday, when Ellie and I took the trip downtown to see the installation by our friend Peter Shelton at the handsome new...

...Police Administration Building across from City Hall, whose reflection figures in the pirated picture above. (On the way, we were surprised to find this street market right out front...

... with many local produce stores and multi-ethnic lunch choices: Mexican, of course, but also Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Middle Eastern. Unfortunately, we had eaten before leaving home!)

The Peter Shelton installation is called "sixbeaststwomonkeys" (he has always strung together his words and used the lower case in his titles). For many years now, artists who undertake public art projects have wanted to address the "plaza plop" problem; even large sculptural works are dwarfed into absurdity by today's immense buildings. Peter's solution is to occupy the full length of an entire city block--for locals, on Spring Street, bewteen 1st and 2nd--lining up his "sixbeasts" and "two monkeys" in a row of quirky, strangely human figures whose bronze surfaces gleam pleasantly in the Southern California sunlight. Here's the long view:

And here are some of the individual "beasts"...

They are charming, rotund, voluptuous, fleshy, slightly risible...

... and even though animal, strangely "human." Pig, rhino, hippo, whatever these creatures are they are very down to earth, very comfortable in the avoirdupois of their own gravity. The artist, clearly, will have to get used to them being adapted to their environment--used, here, as a convenient support for gardening gear:

The "monkeys", on the other hand...

... are tall, skinny, a little wobbly on their pins, above it all, reaching absurdly for the heavens.

"Freaks"? Yes, because they are freakish, these creatures. Their forms are distorted, pulled out or squished down, expanded, ballooned, rounded out, twisted. Deprived of limbs or heads, they are somehow complete in their incompletion, entirely satisfying to the eye and mind. It's Fiedler's point, in his book, that the freaks that once were the features of fairs and circuses never failed to fascinate because they reveal to us much about ourselves. As children, Fielder suggests, we experience out first years of life as freaks, tiny creatures surrounded by giants, feeling freakish in our own skins--too fat, too thin, to short, too tall--and falling about as we seek to gain control of our bodies in an alien environment.

It's this freakish quality that I find irresistible--and weirdly comforting--in Shelton's work. He reminds us of the human vulnerability of our bodies, of the fears and neuroses that we project on these odd vehicles in which we are given to travel around. Most of us never feel entirely comfortable and confident with what we see when we look in the mirror in the morning, and while the mirror Shelton offers us to look into is something like those fun show mirrors that provoke ridicule and laughter, they share the same truth: that this is how we fear others may be seeing us. His creatures makes us smile and want to touch them, to feel in their rotund surfaces some of the sensual satisfaction we ourselves so often yearn for. Or tower above us, gangly and awkward, asking for nothing better than that we reach up to comfort them.

Well, enough pontification from me. The best thing is to see them. Maybe sneak a touch...

A footnote (have I told you this one before?) Some years after finding so much to nourish my understanding of literature in "Freaks," I invited Fiedler to speak to a class of students at USC. Before he came from back east for the engagement, I asked if there was anyone he would like to join us for dinner, the night he was to spend in Los Angeles. His immediate choice was a man whose face was at that time universally familiar: Archie Bunker... the late Carroll O'Conner. We took the two of them and their wives to an Italian restaurant on Melrose and enjoyed both the lively exchange between the two men, and the star-struck stares of our fellow diners!

The Form of the Book

I'm rediscovering the pleasure of holding a nicely-made book in my hands. Most books these days, even the hard-back ones, have a mass-produced feel to them. No matter how well designed they are, how good the "look" of them, the paper feels toothless and the pages are hard to turn, the print is unexceptional, slick, and hard to keep one's eyes on. The one I'm reading now--more detail later--is special. It stands out from every other book I've read recently, and I was not surprised to find that it was designed by its own author, a former Buddhist monk. I can't resist quoting from his postscript, entitled "Colophon"--an end note about the book's authorship and printing. Here what he says about his choice of typeface:

This book is set in Linotype Sabon Next. In creating this typeface, Jean Francois Porchez revived a revival. The original Sabon typeface designed by Jan Tschichold was itself a revival of Claude Garamond's 16th century types for the 1960's. By referring to the original metal versions of Sabon for Linotype casting, Monotype machines and hand-setting, as well as Garamond's 16th century pages, Porchez has created a typeface of great utility and beauty.

Now there's devotion to detail for you. In the same passage, the author acknowledges the inspiration of Tschichold's collection of essays, The Form of the Book, subtitled Essays on the Morality of Good Design, whose "hilariously rigid principles," he writes, "have gravely influenced my ability to communicate visually and literally." Absolutely!

Don't you want to run out and buy this book, which so honors its own form. When you have it in your hands you have... well, a real book. The typeface is attractive, inviting, and easy on the eye, which does not tire at all while reading. The paper has tooth to it, comfortable to the touch, and the pages turn effortlessly as you read. A further delicious touch is that the front ends of the paper, where the fingers reach to turn the page, are not straight cut, but ragged, torn. They remind me of those old French Gallimard publications (do they still do this?) where the pages were not even cut. You had to work with a paper knife to slice them open, to get inside the book to read.

What is this marvel of a book? It's called The Novice: Why I Became a Buddhist Monk, Why I quit & What I Learned, by Stephen Schettini--an improbable name for a man brought up in Gloucestershire, England--but then his journey, as I'm beginning to discover as I read, is improbable, too. The title is published in Canada by Greenleaf Book Group Press, and the quality of the book alone is more than worth its price. I'll be talking more about the content in due course. Suffice it to say that the texture of the writing is as meticulously attentive to detail as the book itself.

It's good to know that even in these days of often shoddy mass production, this kind of quality is still attainable to those who strive for it.

A Dream

You'll know how infrequently I remember dreams, or even fragments of dreams, because I generally note them down here in The Buddha Diaries and it doesn't happen often. This is the latest: we are headed home from the airport and arrive at the place where we left off our car. It's the gold Lexus SUV--a vehicle we bought a number of years ago, in pre-Prius days, at a time when we still believed we needed something in which we could transport stuff hither and yon, whether for business (Ellie's) or pleasure. We scarcely ever use it these days. It sits in the garage and waits for those times when we decide it's time to take it out for some exercise, to turn the engine over and charge the battery. Over the years, it has accumulated only a little over fifteen thousand miles.

But that's beside the point. We arrive at the place we left it, which turns out to be a cross between a service station and a parking lot, and start to look for the car where we thought we left it. The lot is not that crowded, and we walk up and down the nearest rows, clicking the unlock button on the key ring in hopes of hearing the beep. No luck. Yet we could have sworn we left it here...

We find an attendant, somewhat grumpy, who asks if we have looked upstairs. We didn't even know there was an upstairs--we have been walking in the sunlight. But now we realize, yes, there is a floor above, even though we're sure we left the car on the ground level. The grumpy attendant bestirs himself, remembering vaguely having had to move a car, and that some damage had been inflicted in the process, a door caught against a sharp turn and dented. He would help me look.

To get to the second floor I have to climb a very narrow spiral staircase with a cold metal railing. It seems to get higher and narrower at each turn, and the task of climbing it more difficult. By the time I reach the top and emerge half into the light, I am both exhausted and trapped by the last turn of the staircase. I make excruciating efforts to break free, to release my body, attempting to haul myself up with the remaining strength in my arms.

It's no good. I can't do it. I have to get the attention of the attendant, telling him how embarrassing I find it to have to ask for help...

I'm not sure if the dream ended before I was actually rescued from this predicament, or whether I was still trapped. For that matter, I don't know if I ever found the car or not. No matter, I was happy either way to be back in the land of wakefulness! Any dream interpreters out there?

Smoke & Mirrors

Surfing through various news sources at various times of the day, I now take note that a big chunk of the 24-hour news cycle is devoted to the non-story of the boy who was not in the balloon. The father, it seems, was hungry to have his face on television screens around the world. His wish has been more than generously fulfilled by the networks and the cable channels.

Ah, well. I suppose there's really not much else of importance to be talking about. Health care, the economy, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran... trivial stuff when compared with a six-year old boy who just might have been in a balloon as it drifted photogenically through the Colorado skies--but turned out to to have been.

No wonder the rest of the world looks at us funny. We've lost our minds. The insurance companies, at least, must be breathing a long sigh of relief, with whatever attention span we once had now distracted from their grand rip-off scheme. I wonder, could they have financed this gift from the media gods?

Talk about smoke and mirrors, friends! Before we know it, our pockets will have been thoroughly picked--again!--by the wealthiest among us.

(This morning's news suggests that support for the public option seems to be gaining a bit of ground. I'll keep my fingers crossed.)

Something for Men

I'm coming off an unusually busy weekend. In three weeks, I'll be off to serve on the staff at one of those men's training weekends I have written about in the past, and preparations--for me at least--began on Saturday with a lengthy meeting to set the tone and assign responsibilities. Then, yesterday, a country-wide phone bridge to connect those men who will be in leadership positions. As I may have mentioned in the past, as one who has attained a respectable number of years on this planet and who has been involved in the ManKind Project since 1992, I am now regarded with much appreciated respect as a leading elder who is credited with more wisdom than I actually possess!

I always approach these weekends with a mixture of skepticism, judgment, fear--and real excitement. It's always an adventure, a risk whose opportunities I at once welcome and reject and which requires me to put myself on the line without hesitation or compromise. Before, there's a whole big part of me that arises (out the fear, for sure) to mock the whole notion of spending a weekend in the company of men who are, pretty much, in search of their own hearts and souls. But when I get to the site, I'm in. The event itself never fails to be unbelievably inspiring, a kind of return home to some true place, an elevation of the spirits I have experienced nowhere else. From Friday night through Sunday afternoon, it's a beautifully orchestrated drama that leads toward a powerful catharsis. And the results, for me, back in 1992, were literally life-changing; the weekend opened up powers and paths I had never dreamed possible or available to me before. I have witnessed the same since that time for too many men to warrant my skepticism, yet it never fails to return.

Do you know of men who are looking for the next step in their lives? Who are ready--I mean this literally, though I know it sounds odd--for adventure? Who have reached a glimmer of realization that they want something more from their lives and loves, but don't quite know what it is? Who are ready to take a risk, to step into the void in order to discover something new? Do you know men who are in some way removed, detached for whatever reason from themselves and those they love, and want to get reconnected with the joy they once experienced? If you know such men, please send them my way. Or send them to this site to find out more. When I first read about the opportunity, my skeptic had me almost convinced that this was not for me; but that was more than fifteen years ago. I signed up anyway, and here I am today, still battling with my inner skeptic, still showing up, and still ending up refreshed, rejuvenated, and inspired.

A Global View

I loved Bono's op-ed piece in today's New York Times. A refreshing view from one who sees things from the global perspective. We Americans seem these days so limited in our capacity to look beyond our own self-interested concerns and our demands for the immediate satisfaction of our needs. To nail Obama to the cross of our various, conflicting, but too often uncompromising principles, left and right, as we seem intent on doing, still seems to me to be an absurdly short-sighted behavior. I wish him equanimity, and patience.

Yes...

What a beautiful day in Laguna Beach, sunny and warm but with a cool breeze flowing in from the balcony. The sound of the Buddha fountain playing in the back yard, a hummingbird flitting past to visit, and checking out the long red bells of the fuchsia for nectar. The uppermost leaves of the ivy gleam in the sunlight and cast dark shadows on the leaves behind them... Ah, serenity!

Joan Baez

I first heard Joan Baez sing in 1962. I had just crossed the Atlantic for the first time, and was living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I was fairly newly married, and my wife and I were expecting our first child. My wife fell in love with the voice and we played the record constantly on the little portable stereo--brand new at the time!--in the tiny apartment we had rented on Edinburgh Street. We had perhaps a half dozen records in all, and this was certainly the favorite. I recall the haunting, melancholy quality of those old folk songs she used to sing, about love and loss and strange pain of it all.

I recall those moments now with an acute memory for that pain--the voice brought back by the Joan Baez installment of the American Masters series on PBS. The pain has to do with the passage of time, certainly, and the way we have all aged, Joan herself becoming more graceful, more mellow, of course, and perhaps even more beautiful with the years; but also, for me, with the memory of that time, my own subsequent failures that led to a separation and eventual divorce.

All this came back to me as we watched the special last night, along with a lot I either do not remember or never knew, precisely because I was new this side of the Atlantic in h

er early years. I did not live in the US until the mid-1960s, and was not at all familiar with the cultural environment in which most of my American contemporaries grew up. I was not aware, I think, of the depth to which this remarkable woman was involved in the Civil Rights movement, nor of her close association with Dr. Martin Luther King. I learned from the program last night of her extraordinarily courageous participation in the movement, not only lending her celebrity and her talent to the cause, but putting herself at risk in the front lines of the sometimes brutal action.

I did know more about her involvement in the anti-Vietnam war movement, her calling upon young men to surrender or burn their draft cards, to resist government efforts to enlist them. She endured not only the rigors of jail on several occasions, but also the rank abuse of some of those men she sought to persuade of the futility of the war. She put herself at risk again in her visit to North Vietnam to meet with and deliver letters to US prisoners of war, where she lived for eleven frightening days under a blizzard of US bombs. Moving footage of her and her comrades from the period suggested how deep that experience went, how much it changed and saddened her.

Baez's preaching and practice of non-violence seemed to come not from some desire to capitalize on the huge name she had made for herself with her music, but rather from a clear and principled conviction in its underlying morality. There were times, surely, when she was confused about herself, and by the gap between her private and public personae; but she was never confused about what she stood for, nor afraid to take the stand.

Another thing: I did not know about her visit in the 1990's to war-ravaged Sarajevo, to show solidarity with those suffering from the violence there. A lovely sequence followed her meeting with a brave cellist, who would take his cello out into the dangerous streets to play for whoever was there to listen; and how she then took his chair in the middle of a shell-scarred street to sing "Amazing Grace"--not the act of someone craving for attention, but of someone who wanted nothing more or less than to show her sympathy with the plight of other human beings.

I was deeply, almost painfully humbled by this documentary. This woman has managed to do so much, to share so much of her talent, to plead so often for the cause of humanity in a world where human rights are trampled on mercilessly by the power-hungry, the bigoted, and the ruthless. In her songs, she manages to put us all in touch with the sadness and the pain that characterizes too much human experience of the world, and she does it with a grace and gentleness that do credit, finally, to the human spirit.

Bad Faith

I see only one or two possible conclusions after yesterday's Senate committee vote on health care: that Republicans are simply choosing not to think beyond purely ideological lines, to put party allegiance and self-interest ahead of this country's self-evident needs, and to ignore the voice of the majority of people in favor of the more profitable voice of the insurance companies. Or that they are so vengeful, and so concerned with their return to power that they are willing to do anything to obstruct even the least liberal of efforts by the Democrats--and particularly this democratic President.

Why else would it be impossible to gather more than a single, very reluctant vote for this pitifully watered-down version of health care reform?

If those Senators and those Republicans were actually giving serious thought to the moral and economic implications of their lockstep opposition, there would surely be some tiny glimmer of dissent among their ranks. Nothing. There is no serious debate, no engagement of ideas, no compromise from that side of the aisle. And yet the Democrats have offered compromise after compromise. I'm sorry, friends, this is cannot be considered a matter of honest disagreement. This is bad faith, pure and simple. Bad faith on the part of the insurance companies. Bad faith on the part of those whom they have apparently bought off with their money and their influence.

It's a disgrace, and one that leaves the rest of the world aghast at the inability of this "beacon of democracy" to achieve what every other affluent country achieved years ago. Despite all our wealth and privilege, we are apparently still unwilling to make the moral and financial commitment to provide for the health of our own citizens. We are, however, willing to make it possible for those with power and influence to increase their wealth and power at the cost of the suffering of those who lack them. As I say, it's a disgrace.

I understand that the legislative process still allows for modifications to the proposal that received a bare nod of approval yesterday. I would like to believe that they will lean in the direction of access and affordability for all Americans. But, given the deplorable political comedy that has characterized things thus far, I don't hold out much hope.

Out to Dry

Okay, the laundry--that piece I didn't get to yesterday. Reading the front page section of the New York on Sunday, I discovered that there is actually a live political debate in this country about the use of clotheslines in one's own backyard. Apparently there are 60 million people living in the United States in areas where clotheslines are outlawed!

What? Is this a conspiracy by GE and other corporate giants to insure purchase and use of their energy-hungry drying machines? (Full disclosure: we dry our wash that way. Sorry!) At a time when the planet is dying as a result of our human species' increasing need for energy sources, when we even go to war to be sure we get our share, we make it illegal to hang out the wash to dry on a sunny day?

The problem, it seems, is that the sight of clean laundry on the line is offensive to the American eye. It's that same eye that requires that fruits and vegetables be without defect, regular in shape and color--even at the sacrifice of taste! It's the eye that gobbles up those glossy advertisements for unaffordable designer clothing lines in magazines, but rejects the mundane clothesline as unbeautiful. The eye that had, during the last administration, to be protected from the sight of coffins returning from Iraq.

Let us all please not be disturbed by anything unsightly. Let us please be protected from anything that disturbs our comfortable blandness. Lord, spare us from the sight of other peoples' underwear.

Beep, Beep, Beep

First, welcome back to The Buddha Diaries! Best thanks to those who followed along with our trip back East, and especially to those who took the time to comment. I loved hearing from you and though I did not find time to respond while on the road, I intend to look back over the days and respond individually where I can.

Before I get to the issue of the day--it's laundry, friends!--though, I have a few words for Andy Rooney, whose customarily self-congratulatory rant on 60 Minutes last night must have touched a nerve for anyone who has the slightest problem getting to sleep. For Andy, it seems, it's easy. He can do it standing up, sitting down, or lying. On the bus. At work. Morning, afternoon, evening. He did not spare a compassionate thought for others, though. I'm pretty good myself, in the normal course of things. There are times, however...

Like last night. My body-clock has me still somewhere between here and Washington DC. Even so, I managed to get to sleep okay and was dreaming vaguely, I think, about visiting JKF and Jackie in a rather grand environment when I noticed, in my dream, a continuous, annoying beep occurring every ten seconds or so. It was so penetrating that it soon woke me up--to the realization that the beep was not only in my dream but in reality. One of the fire alarms installed during our remodel was beeping--not in full alarm, but persistently, in intervals of perhaps ten seconds.

Could I get back to sleep and take care of the beep in the morning? I considered this option, loath to get out of bed in the middle of the night, find the flashlight and the step ladder I'd need to reach the ceiling. But the beep was obstinate. My mind latched onto it mercilessly. After perhaps ten minutes of debate, I could tolerate it no longer, found the flashlight and the step ladder, and climbed unsteadily to investigate. When I touched the thing it beeped more furiously. I pulled. The whole contraption broke free from its moorings. It beeped a few more times, frantically, then stopped. I stood on my step ladder for a full two minutes, listening... Nothing.

I retreated to my place beneath the duvet, pleased with myself, and set about the task of falling back to sleep. My mind was now in gear. It likes to play with words, selecting them and arranging them in just the right order, to say exactly what I need to say with clarity and precision. When I lie awake, Andy, that's what my mind does. Perhaps the words come effortlessly to you when you need them. I have to work at it. Besides, that's how my mind has the fun it needs. Anyway, there I was, trying to get my mind to shut up and struggling with sleep.

And the fire alarm goes off again. After what I judge to have been fifteen minutes of silence. Two short, sharp, penetrating beeps. So now I have to wonder whether it will repeat itself, perhaps in another fifteen minutes. I lie there, sleepless, waiting.

So, forgive me, thinking back on it was I lay there waiting, I concluded that your rant was a little bit on the smug side, Andy. Oh, and I never did get to the laundry. Tomorrow, perhaps.

The Last Day...

Due to leave Washington later afternoon, we were up in good time to pack our bags and enjoy a leisurely breakfast with our hosts, Damien and Marjorie...

There was more than enough to keep us busy for the remainder of our time. Fortunately, Marjorie was good enough to join us and act as chauffeur and guide--and also offered to drive out to the airport, saving us a great deal of time and stress. We started out at the Hirshhorn, where we had missed the opening of an important Ann Truitt exhibition the previous night. Having seen little of her work in the past, we enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with an artist I think of in much the same way as Agnes Martin and our friend Marcia Hafif--women whose dedication to an intense personal vision results in work that is at once idiosyncratic and of extraordinary beauty and serenity. Ann Truitt's monoliths in single shades of color or subtly shifting tones reminded me of the great power and grandeur of simplicity, and how hard that is to achieve. For all their restraint, her mostly human-scale columns manage to embody a richly emotional intensity. No pictures, I'm afraid. Check her out online. (I've noticed that most museums allow pictures these days, except for special exhibitions. See again below...) Anyway, here's the picture view from the third floor of the Hishhorn:

... and a shot of the interior installation of the museum's permanent collection;

the circular courtyard, about which the museum is built;

... and a Jeff Koons piece on the way down to the Hirshhorn's wonderful sculpture garden...

... where we found a fascinating structure in mirrored glass by the artist Dan Graham...

... whom I praise in my forthcoming book Persist as one of those artists who prides himself on being a passionate amateur rather than a haughty "professional." There are also a number of Rodin works in the sculpture garden, including this famous piece, "The Burghers of Calais."

From the Hirshhorn, we walked across the Mall to the National Gallery...

... seen here in full Indian summer splendor. (It was over 80 degrees in Washington at noon, this 8th day of October!) The National Gallery is a splendid museum, of course, and we regretted that we had so little time left to spend there.

We did manage a quick bite in the underground cafeteria, with its upward view of this waterfall...

... descending from the plaza above. And walked far too quickly through a magnificent exhibition of Renaissance Spanish royal armor--a change of pace from our contemporary tastes! No pictures--see above. But this is a detail of the huge photomural that adorned the entrance to the show:

From the West Wing, we made a final dash over to the now not-so-new I.M.Pei East Wing--a wonderful, airy building with ample space for the massive Alexander Calder mobile that hangs in the atrium. This is one very small detail of the whole...

On the ground floor of the East Wing, we also found a wonderful (permanent? I hope) installation by one of our favorite artists, Andy Goldsworthy, using natural materials--in this case, carefully stacked slate) to create en environment of quiet yet awesome beauty. If you haven't ever seen Goldsworthy's film Rivers and Tides, I'd suggest you run right out and rent it! Here's a poor shot of his installation. In case you can't read it well, some parts of the domes seem to penetrate through the thick sheet glass of the windows...

Here's another interior shot of the atrium, with rows of monochrome paintings by Ellsworth Kelly on the wall.

This was another museum that would warrant a full day's visit by itself, but alas, our time was up. We ran through a few of the galleries, then met up with Marjorie for the drive out to the airport.

One small incident--that might have been a big one. After checking our larger bags, I offered to put Ellie's side bag on the rolling case in which I lug my computer and other stuff around, and we failed to notice until we were half-way up one of those long airport escalators that it was missing. A few fellow passengers were gesticulating helpfully, but it was now too late to start running down the up escalator and go back for the bag; I was stuck, and had to wait until we reached the top before turning back and dashing down the stairs to where the bag had dropped. By this time, the offending piece of "unattended luggage" was surrounded by airport police, who had already called in an alarm--which Ellie was hearing broadcast loudly on the public address system. After an unsmiling interview with security, I was allowed to leave with the bag and the security alert was thankfully called off before the whole airport was shut down.

Once aboard the plane, we heard that something had gone awry in the cockpit, and we sat at the gate for a good hour before finally taxi-ing for take-off. I suppose, given the horror stories we have heard, we should consider ourselves lucky that it was no longer. An uneventful flight. We were upgraded to business, but business is not what it used to be. It's not even what economy used to be! But we did land safely, though late, and fairly easily found a taxi to bring us back home. As always, it felt good to be back on familiar territory!

Hallowed Halls

This was to be our last full day in Washington before our return home, and there was much left to be done. Obviously, we didn't do it. Well, not all of it. We headed out first on the Metro for a visit to the National Portrait Gallery, expecting somehow to be done with that in short order. But we found on arrival that it didn't open until 11:30, so we had to kill some time at the nearest Starbucks--so many of them to choose from!--before getting into the museum.

It's actually two museums, adjacent and connected by long corridors in a single building--the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Walking the corridors...

... one slips almost imperceptibly from one into the next. We started out in the portrait wing. Here's Teddy, again, with a young admirer, whose teacher was trying to shoo her away from my camera, while I was hoping to catch the shot of the girl actually looking at the picture...

We stumbled on a magnificent array of dozens of 19th portraits of Native Americans by the explorer/anthropologist/painter George Catlin...

In the multitude of galleries featuring portraits of the famous and the not-so-famous by the famous and the not-so famous, I particularly liked this one of Dashiell Hammett...

... (gotta love that suit!) while we both loved this clay portrait of Gertrude Stein...

... looking for all the world like the Buddha himself! On the top floor on the Portrait side, we found an excellent collection of (non-portrait) contemporary art, including a couple of epic works by Nam June Paik, using in his familiar electronic media. This one...

... is about two-thirds of a map of American using neon and scores of video monitors, flashing on and off in giant patterns or single units. Endlessly fascinating to watch, and an exciting "portrait" of both the greatness and the challenges of this country. We found some old friends. Thus massive painting...

... by Alfred Jensen reminded us of the small one we have at home. There were also works by actual friends we have known and worked with over the years, like this beautifully polished leaning plank by John McCracken...

... and this delicate assemblage by Betye Saar...

We also found, on the American Art side of the building, a huge retrospective exhibition of the work of Northern California-based artist William T. Wiley, whose sly humor and idiosyncratic narratives we are already much familiar with. It was good to see him recognized with a show of this importance... but this was the one area where photographs were not allowed. Check out some of his imges here.

We were amused, amazed, delighted to find, on the top floor of the American Art side, a great archive of all kinds of Americana at the Luce Foundation Center for American Art. Significant parts of this immense resource are displayed in three levels of narrow, closely packed alleys and. below the display cases, drawers that slide open at the visitor's touch. It's put together like a huge, three-dimensional encyclopedia, amongst whose pages you wander in sheer awe for the potential of the human imagination. Here are but a few examples. Carved animals and birds...

... folk art figures...

... canes:

You'd be amazed, as we were. We could have spent more hours in this incredible resource, but had already outspent our time there. Our intention had been to stop at the National Gallery--or at least the East Wing--on the way to our Capitol appointment at our Congressman's office; but had only the time for a rather hurried walk down 7th Street and Pennsylvania Avnue, past the Capitol...

... to find the Longworth congressional office building; and for a hasty salad lunch in the basement, amidst crowds of staffers, security people, lobbyists, fellow visitors, and maybe even, who knows, a congressperson or two. Quite a fascinating spectacle.

We are not exactly in agreement with our congressman, John Campbell, an Orange County Republican. Ellie and I changed our registration a couple of years ago, in order to vote in a place where our voices might be more contrarian than in our safely liberal district in Los Angeles. Campbell is opposed, of course, to the significant health care reform of the kind we would wish to see; and was a co-sponsor of the bill requiring presidential candidates to submit birth certificates--an obviously inflammatory slap at Obama.

We did not run into Campbell. If we'd had the opportunity, I would have asked politely the reasons for his position on health care and made it clear that we, his constituents, would want him to vote for a public option. I did make that point to a very pleasant young aide in his office, but without the conviction that it would make a difference.

It was another young aide, Michael, an intern, who led our tour. Here he is, with the young daughter of, I think, a Korean family who joined us...

The tour, despite Michael's valiant efforts to keep us amused as we waited in line after line to get to the various locations, was not quite what we had hoped. We admired the grandeur of the dome from the inside...

... the serried statuary--two from each state--the old supreme court chamber, and sat for a few minutes in the gallery of the House chamber, where a congressman was holding forth about the importance of maintaining the already-abandoned anti-ballistic missile system in Easter Europe, which no longer even has the support of the military. Talk about inspiring! We left via the subterranean ways we had arrived, passing by this nice bust of old Abe. I paused to wonder what he'd be thinking of the way things are today...

We leave shortly for a final shot at a couple of the museums we have missed thus far, then head out to the airport to catch a late afternoon flight. I'll be doing one final entry on this travelogue when we get back home...

Another Day...

... in Washington DC, this one quite different. More pictures, today, I hope, than words. We started out from our friends' home...

... headed for the noted Phillips Collection.

... and spent a good couple of hours there, admiring the extraordinary collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Modern art. After the Barnes Foundation, where so much depends on the installation, it was refreshing to find a more traditional installation, with individual works nicely spaced for individual viewing, and with excellent, even gallery light. Good enough to explore some outstanding paintings by the likes of...

... Arthur Dove; the detail of a wonderful

... Van Gogh; and a marvelous...

... Marsden Hartley. After a while Ellie and Marjorie...

... needed a brief sit-down, before entering a small gallery filled with this series by Jacob Lawrence inspired by the great immigration of African-Americans from the South to the cities of the North...

I had the good fortune to interview Lawrence once, in Seattle, some years before his death. His work deserves a good deal more attention than it has yet received. Here's a magnificent painting by...

... Richard Diebenkorn, which I remember having seen in the home of the Gifford Phillpses many years ago. Gifford was the nephew of the original collector Phillips, who put this collection together. Lunch in Georgetown at ...

And thence on to Dumbarton Oaks for what we intended to be a quick visit to a show we had read about by the artist Charles Simmonds. It turned out to be something quite different, as we became thoroughly engrossed in an exception display of classical and Byzantine art and artifacts...

... and an incredible collection of Pre-Columbian art in the setting of a magnificent extension to the original Dumbarton Oaks house by the architect Phillip Johnson. Here are some of the pieces, beautifully displayed...

The Dumbarton Oaks Museum is a real treasure, though a little off the regular tourist route. It's notable particularly for the careful installation and labeling of the objects in its collections, making them easy to understand and place in context. The house is worth visiting, too, for its vast and exceptionally beautiful gardens, immaculately kept and rich in both long views...

and short...

It was a truly wonderful experience, to spend an hour perambulating these serene and lovely spaces.

Oh, and about that artist, Charles Simmonds, who has pursued his vision of miniature civilizations for decades: his work is everywhere in evidence. We had expected a regular gallery exhibition but found, instead, a museum-type display case in the main museum, with a detailed introduction to the artist's fascination with the human species and its relation to the animal and plant world; and, installed in showcases interspersed throughout the Pre-Columbian section of the museum, examples of his small works in clay and porcelain--tiny, elaborately-imagined architectural sites and structures, like this walled city...

... and these wilting towers...

... these sexually-charged, club-like phallic shapes and totemic figures--architectural, archeological, anthropomorphic, anthropological, call them what you will--some scattered through the gardens...

... some with tortured faces...

This monstrous, organic shape...

... hangs in the conservatory, swinging lightly in the breeze, a suggestion of fungal roots and inner entrails, the sheer, physical earthiness of our being and our interdependence with all other beings, our rootedness in the ancient world and our connection to the universe. I find Simmonds' work to be among the most challenging, fearsome and thought-provoking that I know.

And... in the evening, a delightful dinner out with our Washington hosts--a small way of thanking them for their kindness and hospitality. We are fortunate indeed to have such friends.