"Welcome to England"...

... is how it looked in the morning when we woke. A cold drizzle of rain. Very disappointing, for folks who had come all the way from London to find some sunshine. I said as much to Matthew when I picked him up for the drive out to the Irvine Amtrak station to pick up his Mom, arriving by train from Iowa, via Albuquerque, where she had spent some time with friends. We drove up through the canyon in the rain and arrived in good time to learn that the train was delayed by a few minutes. We were still debating where to pick her up when we were surprised by a shout from the other end of the track... She had taken an earlier train and had been waiting in the drab cafe.

Dropping them off at the hotel I returned at home for a quiet breakfast with Ellie before the gang arrived. Here they are, enjoying yesterday's blog entry...

By this time, the weather was clearing just a bit, and we decided to make the most of the opportunity for a walk we had planned along the long beach at Crystal Cove.

A good choice, as it turned out, because the weather continued to clear and we all had a great time strolling along the water's edge, exploring tide pools and beach combing. Here's Alice...

Georgia is an avid beachcomber, like her grandfather, and I had to explain to her, sadly, that we're no longer allowed to take our treasures with us when we leave the beach--a rule she followed graciously enough, but wanted, at least, a picture of her finds...

Sometimes the hunt is pleasure enough in itself. Joe, who had done a report on fossils at school was interested to learn that the huge, circular rocks along the shore are actually ancient tree stumps and fallen trees...

We must have walked a good mile in each direction, and it was already two in the afternoon before we returned to our starting point, by the Beachcomber restaurant nestled between the beach cabins at Crystal Cove...

A good place to stop for a feast of hamburgers, hot dogs, fish and chips... And the sun came out!

We split up, then, into two parties--one, including Diane and the two grandmas, stopped off at Trader Joe's and The Gap for some shopping needs. Matthew and the kids returned to the hotel with me, where the twins were anxious to spend some time in the pool. Alice came back to the cottage, and we picked up George to give him a good run in the park at the Top of the World. Never at ease with children, George has been learning slowly to accept that these are his family, and that he must be at pains to make himself somewhat tolerant of their attentions. Up at the park, Alice took his leash and threw the ball for him, and thus earned his lasting affection. We hope.

I dropped Alice off at the hotel to join the twins in the pool, and drove back home for a brief rest before Ellie arrived back and the supper prep began. Matthew trudged up the hill a little later, to join me for the drive to John Wayne Airport to pick up his brother, Jason, arriving from Iowa via Minneapolis. He had texted earlier from the gate that the flight seemed to be leaving on time, but we should have checked the updates on flight arrivals before leaving; they were half an hour late leaving Minneapolis, delayed by screw-ups over the loading of snacks. I learned to know the circuit at John Wayne much better than I would have wanted to.

But anyway, finally he arrived, and we drove back to Laguna to find the family gathered and hungry. We (now nine of us!) all sat down around our rather small dining table for a delicious white bean soup, spinach salad, and cheeses with good brown bread. A great and regrettably rare occasion, to have so many of us gathered in one place at one time. Unfortunately, no one had the good sense to bring out the camera. There will be another time.

Shopping, Swimming, Seder...

So the day started out quietly enough, with breakfast at home whilst our visitors slept in, we hoped, at their hotel. We even managed to get in a half-hour's workout at the gym, before heading downtown to meet up with the gang. Shopping, it seemed, as the first order of the day. There were necessities like swimsuits and shorts to be purchased, along with California sweat shirts and the other goodies with which the stores on our main shopping street, Forest Avenue, are replete. Joe and Georgia managed to have fun...

(Joe, who is as full of mischief as a young boy should be, dreamed up this performance, and Georgia happily joined in. It's a little odd, by the way, to have two Georgies around the place, especially when one of them is of the canine kind!)

And Alice managed to find a broom named after her...

We found a much needed cup of coffee for Matthew at the beachfront Starbucks, and some of us headed out to the boardwalk for a stroll while the shopping chores were being brought to a conclusion.

Here's Diane, with her two beautiful daughters...

By this time, we were all ready for lunch. There's a little food stand in the village, La Sirena, which provides excellent Mexican food at reasonable prices, so we gathered there and enjoyed, variously, tacos, quesadillas and burritos at two conveniently neighboring tables--one vacated for our crowd by an obliging couple who saw our need and responded with kindness.

Returning to the hotel--some on foot, others in the car with the shopping bags--we decided to take advantage of the still beautiful weather (there's rain on the way) to try out the beach. A good idea, as it turned out. I had thought the kids might have some fear about the waves, not being used to them, but they had an absolutely marvelous time romping in and out of the surf...

... in what seemed to (paddling) me ice-cold water. Such a pleasure to watch them scream and plunge about--and to remember how much I loved this when I was their age! Here's Georgia, testing out the flippers...

... and Joe in his brand new swimsuit...

... and Alice, looking gorgeous in her new green bikini...

Ellie and I returned home to get ready for the seder. Not much left to be done, really, but to set the table, and to ensure that the proper symbols were provided in their proper place.

The ceremony went off fine, with myself leading and everyone joining in along the way. Here we all are, at the start of things...

Ellie and I were much impressed with the way the children read their pieces, and participated in the meal despite growing fatigue after their long journey--a fatigue obviously not limited to the youngest...

All in all, a wonderful day. Much love spread around, with much joy and laughter. A special thanks to Ellie, for having proposed the seder as a good idea for kids and adults alike, and for having organized it all from start to finish. Sad that she's the only one with a picture at the ceremony... but she does have a nice one with the grandchildren, above.

Family

It's a joy to have the family gathering with us here in Laguna Beach. It started yesterday, when Ellie and I drove up tandem, in both cars, to meet our gang arriving from England at Los Angeles International: Matthew, my older son, and Diane, and their three children, Alice, now 11 years old, and the twins, Georgia and Joseph, now 8. (Pictures later; we haven't had the head to take them yet.) You can see why we needed both cars. Tomorrow, Tuesday, my former wife, Elizabeth arrives at Irvine railway station from Iowa, and my younger son, Jason, flies in to Santa Ana airport, also from Iowa. Thursday, our daughter, Sarah, comes down via Amtrak; and finally her friend, Ed, arrives on Saturday. You can see, it's a busy week. The Buddha Diaries may suffer some neglect...

Much of Saturday and much our morning, yesterday, went into preparations for the basic necessities--marketing and food prep. It was Ellie's idea that we should do a seder tomorrow evening, to pass on that tradition from her side of the family to the grandchildren, so we had two dinners to think about. In such circumstances, I'm usually appointed sous-chef, and put in a good deal of time on the considerable amount of chopping and slicing required by Ellie's recipes. She's the chief cook and organizer. By the time we left for the airport, we had the two first dinners pretty much in hand. The only thing left undone was a prior inspection of the hotel room we had booked for Matthew and family, but that would not have been possible anyway; we called ahead and discovered that the room would not be available before we left for the airport.

We would not, in any case, have been able to do much to remedy the snafu in our hotel booking. We had reserved, months ago, a very nice suite at the Laguna Riviera, with space enough t sleep all five of them in comfort, and a great terrace overlooking the ocean with lounge chairs and barbeque. On our arrival, we discovered that they were booked in, instead, to a much smaller room, below the one we had reserved, with a narrow balcony instead of the terrace where the children could have played. The confusion resulted in a good deal of calling back and forth from the front office, but nothing was to be done. Diane and Matthew did seem happy enough with their temporary quarters for the week, and the kids were just delighted to be a stone's throw from the beach. We left them to pack, and returned home to set the dinner table...

What a pleasure, finally, after then obligatory tour of the cottage and the changes since our remodel last year--they marveled at the new kitchen, and at Ellie's work in her new studio down below--to sit down around the table in our little cottage with the gang. The children's energy, even after the long flight from London, is boundless, uncontainable, and literally fills our normally quiet little living space. They are all three growing into such different people, and it will be a delight to have this opportunity to get to know them better in the two weeks they will spend with us. No doubt they will exhaust us, but I'm looking forward to a rich and wonderfully rewarding exhaustion! Today, I must remember to take the camera with me.

Sleeping Solo

It's a rare occasion, to be waking up alone. It has not, in fact, happened for years. It happened a bit more frequently in the days when I was traveling for conferences, interviews, and other work-related purposes--but even then it was not frequent. So it did feel strange to be going to bed alone, and waking up alone this morning. The reason? We need two cars down in Laguna this weekend, because we will be picking up our family at Los Angeles International on Sunday and bringing them all down to Laguna for next week. And I needed the extra time in my office to wrap things up for a two-week absence.

That's right, two weeks. After our week in Laguna, we're all traveling to Joshua Tree for a couple of days, then back to Los Angeles, with family, for their last three days' vacation. I don't suppose I'll be spending much time in the office until after they have left. So I'm leaving everything in the hands of my new assistant, Emily, and my new Master Navigator of the web, Craig, until I return. The Buddha Diaries will likely be the exception. I usually manage to find a few minutes for these pages, even when I myself am on the road.

So I went to sleep alone, and woke alone this morning. No Ellie, no George. They left yesterday and spent the night at the beach. I'll catch up with them a little later this morning. I took advantage of the unusual quiet in the house and went to bed at nine! And woke, refreshed, at five. Did my meditation, got up, made a cup of tea, and here I sit, in bed still, with The Buddha Diaries. It feels very quiet. Where we live, we are protected from much of the city's sounds by a baffle of trees and shrubbery. Only a soft hum penetrates, to remind us of the world out there.

I am enjoying the solitude. I would not enjoy it nearly so much if I did not know that it was temporary, but it's good to experience it with attention to its particular qualities. The silence. The freedom that it brings: inevitably, when there are two of us, we make small adjustments for each other. When George is here, he has his needs--the morning walk, breakfast... This morning, I am on my own time, and mine alone. I am in my own space, and mine alone. I expect that Ellie is experiencing much the same down in Laguna--though she has George.

In solitude, we are alone with the core of who we are. No expectations from others, no need to perform the role we give ourselves in relationship to them. It's at once exhilarating and a wee bit scary too. The shadow lurks closer to the surface, the existential doubts, the awareness of the sheer strangeness of being alive, surrounded by inanimate objects, by the sense of hidden living beings, the breath of vegetation. Without distractions, the preciousness of life, along with its precariousness, seems all the more acute.

So I relish this moment, even as I miss my intimate companions and my familiar routines. Soon enough, it will be time to get up, set about the preparations to get on the road, catch the news, have a bite of breakfast. For the moment, though, I breathe...

Bad Memory

Here's a truth about myself that I have known and acknowledged for years, but which I have found hard to accept and have found necessary to keep, where possible, from others: my brain is not good at retaining stuff. Stuff like names, dates; who wrote what and when; what this book was about, or that movie; facts of all kinds. Let alone the factoids.

And the truth behind that truth is that it's not about the quality of my brain. I think I have a good one. I simply have not trained it in the art of retaining things; I have chosen to allow it to be lazy, and I suffer as a consequence. I suffer from the fear of others learning that I'm not nearly as smart as they thought I was, and don't know nearly as much as they do. I suffer from the embarrassment of exposure when, for example, I look into a face I have known for years and can't put a name to it.

There are many things that I remember perfectly well. I remember nursery rhymes I learned seventy years ago! I remember French poems, word for word, that I was compelled to learn at the age of six and seven. But I don't remember the name of many an artist whose work I saw just yesterday. I don't remember what the work looks like, nor where I saw it--unless there's something about it that calls to me and transcends that laziness.

I have always admired those who have minds like traps. They remember who wrote Don Quixote (well, actually, I remember that!) and when he wrote it (I don't.) They remember the names of characters in novels by Dostoevsky. They remember the dates of the Civil War and the names of the generals who fought it. I envy that quality. It makes me feel kind of stupid, less in some way than I feel I should be, but I envy it.

It comes down, I believe, to paying attention, and what I choose to pay attention to. Or, perhaps--as in the case of those French poems--what I'm forced to pay attention to, or else. Too often, I allow things to pass right through my brain, like water through a sieve. No sooner does it fill the void than it drains right out again. No wonder I felt so uncomfortable as a teacher in the classroom. I couldn't remember half of what I was supposed to know!

These stray thoughts emerging from a tired mind today, as I recall, yesterday, not remembering the name of one of the guests at the Standard, when I had my pen poised ready to sign her book; and the shame I felt at having to ask her for it. It's odd, isn't it, that I so easily remember the particular moment in which I failed completely to remember. Perhaps, I speculate, it's easier to store the memory of feelings than the memory of facts...?

The Standard, Part II

Well, it was a lot of fun. Each new venue, I have found, brings its own challenges, and the Cactus Lounge at the "Hollywood's Hippest Hotel" (see yesterday's entry) was no exception. Through my own inattention, I had the timing off. I read the detail of the hotel's flyer only yesterday. The 7PM start was billed as a warm-up hour with wine and conversation; my part was scheduled to start only at 8PM. The lounge itself is a pleasantly luxurious space, with patio-style easy chairs arranged around small drinks tables and (what else?) desert scenes with cactus painted on the walls. The entire south end of the room opens out onto a view of the hotel pool, with guests lounging still, on a warm evening, on chaises, and a wide view of the city beyond. Music, programmed by a DJ in the neighboring lobby, pervades the space.

The lighting in the lounge itself, as night approached, became low and atmospheric--an interesting challenge, and one that proved critical because I had decided, unusually, to do a good deal of reading from the book. The event had been billed, after all, as a "reading," so I thought I should make good on that promise; and, not having read very much at past events, I decided that this would be an interesting change of pace. So I watched the daylight disappear at the skyline outside with some concern, and wondered what to do about my plans. They were clearly going to need some modification.

We started promptly at 8PM, with a nice introduction by Paige Wery, the publisher of Artillery magazine, co-sponsor of the evening with the hotel. There had evidently been an unsuccessful search for a lamp for me to read by, and the only solution to the problem turned out to be a flashlight, with which Paige valiantly volunteered to stand behind my shoulder to cast light on the book. So we started out that way, a bit confused as to whether to sit or stand--Ellie signaling unambiguously from the back that I should stand--and I read the first passage I had selected to describe the predicament of the creative person in today's money- and celebrity-dominated cultural environment. But I soon concluded, even as I was reading the passage, that this was not going to work; and abandoned my plan in favor of a series of riffs on the contents of the chapters I had planned to read.

It went well. I was happy to see a number of good friends, along with several unexpected faces and a gratifying supply of new ones. Unexpected--and a delightful surprise--were the long-time, well-respected art dealer Gail Feingarten and her husband, Jerry; Peter Shelton, of established reputation as one of the most innovative and powerful artists working in the medium of sculpture today; Tom Bussler, a man I know through his dedication to work in the ManKind Project. Old friends included Judy Karfiol, a doctoral student from my days at USC in the 1970s, and a dear friend since then; Carey Peck, skydiver extraordinaire; and Jayme Odgers, well-known as a prominent designer back in the day, now devoted to his work as a painter. New(er) friends and wonderful supporters included Gregg Chadwick, fellow-blogger, whose monk paintings I reviewed just a few days back in The Buddha Diaries; the young Iranian-born artist, Ardeshir Tabrizi; and Lisa Adams, the painter.

So, thanks to Paige and Jenni Boelkens, art director at The Standard, all went well. I left feeling truly gratified and privileged to be able to attract such gathering of wonderful and diversely talented people. I was happy, too, to have my two new collaborators with me for the evening: Emily, my new assistant; and Craig, to whom I have given the title, in my mind, of Master Navigator for my online work in spreading word about "Persist."

Oh, and before we left, the DJ from the lobby stopped by--to buy a book!

The Standard

A very different venue tonight for my speaking engagement series, the Standard Hotel in Hollywood, described as "Hollywood's Hippest Hotel" by no less an authority than Playboy Magazine. It may feel a little odd, in this context, to be talking about the negative effects of celebrity and money on the creative spirit! Still, as I have reiterated frequently, when asked about this, I have no objection to material success, for those fortunate enough to achieve it. My worry is for those many talented artists, writers, musicians, and so on, who have not achieved this kind of recognition and success, and who perhaps never will. Does this make them any less "artists" in their heart, their sense of who they are and what they were given to do with their lives? I think not. So then the challenge is in knowing how to "persist," how to live in integrity despite all obstacles and discouragements.

I know there are some who will disagree with me, who feel that our (still!) new President has betrayed our trust and dashed our hopes for change. For myself, I was struck by one line in the brief speech he gave, late at night, after the result of the House vote was known. He said, "This is what change looks like." Those of us who longed--still long--for radical change on almost every front in American life do well to remember the struggle for change in our own lives. It rarely happens fast, in a bolt of lightning. And even if the bolt of lightning strikes, with a sudden epiphany of realization and determination to change, the change itself takes a long time to process. I still find myself slipping back into old behavior patterns that I had hoped to leave behind me, still re-fighting the old battles, still finding new areas of resistance.

My choice is to see in Obama not the savior, not the rapid game-changer, but one who offers the model for what it is I fervently believe in: persistence. I do not believe that the change in our health care system could have happened without any of the anguish we have experienced this past year. Sure, there were missteps along the way. From my comfortable distance, I could have handled everything much better than Obama did. Fortunately, though, I'm not in charge of the situation. My magic wand exists in my imagination only--a fond delusion.

And sure, I would have fashioned a more perfect bill than this one--in my dreams. I find it particularly galling, speaking for myself and I'm sure for many others, that the abortion issue was allowed to play so large a role, and that those I personally disagree with were granted so much power.

That said, however, this is a big, difficult country, intolerant of government, intolerant of change. And the health care problem was--is--a big, difficult problem, no matter how much we would like to reduce it to simplicities. Decades of neglect have made it even more complex than perhaps it needed to be, had we addressed it in good time, before it loomed to critical proportions. Seen in this light, I believe the achievement of Obama, his administration, and the Democrats in Congress to be one of huge significance, and I honor them for having managed it, with all its imperfections.

There is a piece in a poem by Robert Creeley to which I return often in my mind. The poem is called The Innocence, and the last two lines read thus:

What I come to do

Is partial, partially kept.

I find in them a quiet serenity, an acknowledgement of limitations, a permission to be less than perfect in "what I come to do." In this, they are profoundly comforting, as is the poem itself...

Plop, plop! Fizz, fizz...!

Oh, what a relief it is! Alka-Seltzer has nothing on the pill that Congress (finally!) prescribed last night to reform the health care system in this country. I know, I know. Like many of my readers, I would have preferred something more... radical. But I believe that our Barack Obama has an instinctive, practical wisdom about the minimum and maximum achievable, and that he gauged this right, not for me personally, but for the country. And he got it done. Kudos to him, and to Nancy Pelosi and the House leaders, for this great achievement. A vast number of Americans will rest easier for this legislation, particularly the most vulnerable among us--those who do not have, or choose not to use, the megaphone of the Tea Party-ers and other right-wing conservatives. These are the people who have written anguished letters to their representatives and to the President, whose very lives are threatened by the callous, bottom-line priorities of the insurance companies, and who face the threat of bankruptcy and family disintegration.

Bravo, then, Democrats! Shame on Republicans for their cynical, lock-step rejectionism. Not one could summon the courage to cast a vote in favor of this much-needed change. Not one!

Attachment to Outcomes

An old friend and a fellow-sitter in our sangha brought in some cards this morning for our feedback. The cards are a part of a whole project she has long been working on, having to do with the application of Buddhist teachings and principles to our daily lives. They are designed for one to be picked blind from the pack each morning--as when the magician offers the pack for our selection--and set in a decorative stand as guidance and inspiration for the day. The one I picked, in what she intended as a demonstration, was headed "Attachment to Outcomes."

No accidents. I guess it's a little like throwing the I Ching: no matter what shows up by apparent chance, it happens to be totally relevant to the situation in which we find ourselves that day. Attachment to outcome is what has been keeping me awake at night. My mind has been so attached to the "success" of Persist that I have been unable to sleep. It keeps coming up with new plans and strategies; it keeps rehashing the old ones.

And here we are, today, Sunday, March 21, 2010, awaiting the outcome of the congressional vote on health care reform--and unsure, even at this last moment, of what that outcome will be. I have the TV set turned on, even as I write, because I am so attached to the result. They just played a clip of President Kennedy, back in the early 1960s, proclaiming his passionate belief in the need for a just and sensible health care system in this country, and noting that every other developed country had provided for the health of its citizens for years. That was nearly fifty years ago, and since then nothing has been done. There are still millions of Americans with no health care insurance at all, and millions more whose insurance can too easily be snatched away from them the moment that it's needed.

The wonder of it all is that so many Americans have been persuaded to consider it some kind of devil's work. The wonder is that our representatives, even two dozen or more Democrats, lack the courage or the wisdom to do what is morally imperative. I continue to watch this spectacle of lunacy in utter disbelief.

So yes, here's another outcome to which I must confess to being passionately attached. Is it enough, as my friend's card suggested, to take in the information, smile, and breathe...? The Buddha's wisdom teaches that it must be enough, if I'm to retain some measure of serenity. And yet... there are moments when the Buddha's wisdom just sails out the window of my mind, and I frankly fret. I admit that my fretting doesn't do me any good; it doesn't change the situation. It's not going to change a single vote in Washington. But try telling that to a mind that's passionately engaged...

I'm touching wood, I'm keeping my fingers crossed... Perhaps, if I believed in an all-powerful divine being, I'd be praying! But no, I'll settle for good old-fashioned superstition. And hope that common sense and reason will prevail.

Reticence

It came to me yesterday, not for the first time but in one of those fine moments of clarity where things come unexpectedly into focus, that virtually every leap forward in my life has come as a result of my having had to confront some reticence, or prejudice, or fear. It happened most recently with the publication of "Persist," in that week before my first speaking engagement at Th Inside Edge. I was all set to do what I have usually done in such a circumstance: write out a script from which I would be able to read. Then I read the letter I had received, inviting me to speak. It said quite clearly: "Please do not read. Our members are sophisticated listeners; they do not like to hear speakers read prepared speeches." Time to panic...! You know the rest of this story. I have been enjoying this new medium every since.

But this was only the most recent example. As I was speaking yesterday in my friend Stuart’s class, as I do every semester, I heard myself repeat the joke that so often gets a laugh: I describe something—a workshop, a retreat, a challenge of any kind—as the last thing in the world I want to do, explaining the reasons for my reticence and the fear that accompanies it. And then I add, “So then of course, I immediately signed on.” And whenever that happens in my life, the adventure starts anew, there’s some huge lesson to be learned, some new step forward to be taken, some new freedom waiting to be seized.

So these days I find it useful to watch out for those moments where every fiber of my being says, No, don’t go there; or, No, I don’t like that, because I know that this is nothing more nor less than a signal that I need to pay attention. My fears and prejudices, I understand, are there to protect me. But sometimes I don’t need their protection. Sometimes it’s better to take the risk, jump in, and find out that much more about those deep, reactive patterns that can govern my life and limit my opportunities without my even being aware of them. Because when I do, the reward is always infinitely greater than the risk.

Freudian Slip

I woke thinking about my father again today. I suspect he spent much of his early life in an inner conflict with his ego--between a part of him that wanted to "show off" and another part that wanted to hide. I mentioned yesterday that before he went into the Anglican priesthood, he wanted to be an actor. I forgot to mention the in-between part, where he wanted to be a monk. I believe I remember right, that he had already signed on as a novice when he met my mother. As he told it, it was meeting her that deterred him from the monastic life.

Here's the story I found myself remembering this morning: it dates from the time, again, like yesterday's story, when I used to serve him as an altar boy. After the communion service we would recess solemnly to the vestry, where my father would remove the ceremonial robes that covered his cassock and re-hang them reverently in the closet; and then would sit at the table to fill in the registry, first with the date and time, then with the type of service just conducted, and finish with his signature, Harry L. Clothier. (The "L" was for Legg, a matter of some slightly embarrassed amusement for me as a child.) Well, there was this one occasion when he sat down to perform this ritual, wrote in the name of the service, Holy Communion, then thoughtlessly signed his name with a flourish, "Holy Clothier."

Talk about Freudian slip! We had a good laugh about that--he was not without the healthy ability to have a good laugh at his own expense. But it did say something about the man, and about the self-consciousness with which he played his role.

I suspect, too, that he had a healthy id--and that he judged it unhealthy. Or at least felt very uncomfortable about it. I judge, in retrospect, that he had a real battle with his sexuality. (I remember once when he told me, out of the blue, somewhat later in his life, that he had never been much interested in masturbation!) I believe that, like Jimmy Carter, he "lusted in his heart" after the several young women who were assigned by the War Department to live with us in the Rectory with us during the war (WWII, that is!) They were working, we discovered much later, on the Enigma machine at nearby Bletchley Park, de-coding Hitler's messages to his armed forces.

All these thoughts and memories were sparked, remember, by that observation of myself as "showing off" in my speaking gigs. The ambivalence I feel may be something inherited from my father, either by having watched--and perhaps emulated--his behavior, or simply in the genes. And I suspect more and more, as I grow older, that we tend to find more of our parents in ourselves, sometimes even to our own dismay. I am certainly--and unexpectedly--finding something of the preacher in myself; and I find co-existing in him, the preacher, both the show-off and the genuine investigator of the human soul.

Show-Off

I remember being taught at a very early age how bad it was to be a "show-off." Not sure how much resonance that expression has for (my now fellow-)Americans, but in England, back in the day, it was very much frowned upon by teachers and classroom peers alike. And the memory of that old rebuke returns when I find myself standing in front of rows of people gathered to hear what I have to say about "Persist." I feel like a bit of a naughty boy, doing something I'm really not supposed to do.

And yet... is this a guilty pleasure? I find myself having an awful lot of fun doing it. Last night, for example, I drove down to Long Beach City College for a gig that had been some time in the planning, and thoroughly enjoyed the evening. I was greeted by an old friend, a wonderful artist, Coleen Sterritt, who teaches there, (here she is on Facebook, and here are some images of her work) along with several of her colleagues, and was treated to a fine Italian dinner at a local restaurant. Good food, good conversation, such as can be had with artists, all engaged with passion in their work and lives...

On, then, to the small gallery where I found some fifty chairs set up and a podium, which I hardly used. I had been told to expect a diverse audience, some returnees to college, some just new, some advanced in their studies, some quite fresh--and it did seem, as they arrived, to be an accurate assessment. I wanted to be sure that I found just the right note for what I had to say, as I have tried to do for each of my very different audiences; and somehow the magic worked again. Up there in front, you can absolutely feel when you have the attention of your listeners, and when the energy is right: the flow of communication is tangible and exciting, much more so, of course, than in the act of writing. It's something I have begun to experience as a performance.

Perhaps, in part, it's in the genes. My father, before he entered the ministry, had wanted to be an actor. My memory of his presence in the chancel is definitely theatrical. Whether celebrating the communion service, or standing at the lectern to read from the Bible, or preaching from the pulpit, he was a skilled performer. My memory leads me to believe that it was, for him, one of the guilty pleasures I mentioned earlier. I could tell that he knew when he'd done a good job. He glowed. And sometimes, if memory serves, he would slap his own hand in mock rebuke for his pride: bad Harry. On one memorable occasion, when I was serving as an altar boy, I caught him in the act. Instead of bowing, properly, to the altar as he strode back to his place, he turned and bowed to the "audience." Then he caught me watching him, and realized his mistake. I won't ever forget that flash of knowledge that passed between us, father and son, in that moment. He knew I was onto his act. He was "showing off." I can't have been more than ten years old.

Anyway, listen, I'm discovering that there's a reward to showing off. I'm not very funny, but I can understand how the stand-up comedian feels when he's hitting his stride. For me, there's a gift involved, an act of pure generosity in speaking out, which is more than generously returned. Having spent a good deal of my life trying to hide myself from public scrutiny, I now begin to understand what I have missed. It's kind of humbling, and kind of exhilarating all at once. Tomorrow and Friday, I'm off to share some thoughts with students at CSU Fullerton, where I have been going for years at the invitation of a good friend who has been teaching there for many years. His class is called "Character and Conflict." I have written about it before now in The Buddha Diaries. Tomorrow, thanks to these new experiences I've had in connection with "Persist," I'll be bringing a whole new sense of what is possible.

Monks

It has been a week now since I visited the studio of a friend, painter, and fellow-blogger, Gregg Chadwick, and I have been meaning to post a few words about his work ever since. You'll have noticed that the past few days have not allowed me the time to get my thoughts focused. This morning, perhaps, at last, saving possible interruptions...

Simply put, Gregg has recently been doing paintings of Buddhist monks in saffron robes, often striding forward into a shimmer of light. The series originated in an experience which the paintings themselves reveal only secretly: Gregg was returning home from a trip to Thailand in September, 2001 and, while waiting for a connecting flight in Bangkok airport, found himself watching a television monitor with the disbelief and horror he shared with the rest of the world as the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. Earlier in the day, he had been wandering the streets of Chiang Mai and was enchanted by the sight of some monks on a morning pilgrimage. "The almost incandescent light," he writes, "and the blur of movement seemed to create paintings for me. I just needed to pay attention... For me, these monks are spiritual pilgrims that lead us away from the destruction and waste of violence, racism, and hatred."

The resulting paintings have a remarkable serenity. The figures of the monks lack focus. They exist in an aura of light rather than on some earthly plane. They move through space like transient beings, absorbed in their own silent, meditative isolation. In this way, they seem to project some of the real values of their Buddhist faith: the inevitable passage of time that is at the root of so much human suffering, the illusory quality of what we take to be the real world and, most importantly, the promise of an escape from suffering into enlightenment.

There is an other-worldly quality to these paintings, a sense of liberation from the bonds of gravity that define our physical existence. They celebrate the dedication of the monks they portray and convey some of the quiet joy that freedom from earthly needs invests in them. And yet, too, there is an elegiac tone, a kind of nostalgia for a manifestation of the purely spiritual that most of us can never hope to attain. The paintings are truly captivating in that they invite us irresistibly into their spaces and hold the attention there in their swirl of light and color, suggesting inexhaustible depths of experience for the eye to explore.

I think I have spoken elsewhere in The Buddha Diaries about the "One Hour/One Painting" series I offered in a number of gallery and museum contexts a while ago. The idea was to bring together a small group of people to sit with me in front of a single painting for a whole hour, alternating closed-eye meditation with open-eye contemplation in order to experience the painting as we rarely do, in our habitual rush to grab an eyeful and move on to the next. I left Gregg's studio thinking what a treat it would be to offer a session with one of these paintings that so invite precisely that kind of slow and attentive interaction; and whose effect is to wonderfully elevate the human spirit. It is, after all, as Gregg suggests, a matter of paying attention.

Monday morning

This is not a great moment for The Buddha Diaries. I am mightily distracted by events arising from the publication and promotion or "Persist"--all good things, really, but more demanding of attention than I would wish.

Today, please note this review by Ken McLeod who teaches Buddhism, his blog, Musings, announces modestly, "from time to time for 'oh, these many long years.'" Ken is the author of an excellent call to Wake Up to Your Life, a book which I reviewed years ago for the Los Angeles Times; and of An Arrow to the Heart, a bold and innovative poetic commentary on the Heart Sutra. His blog is called Musings.

I now have to get back to the task of reviewing all those applications resulting from my Craig's List post for a replacement for my part-time assistant Daniel. I trust that I will find more time tomorrow.

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.

Megaphones

This morning, rather than write anything myself--because I feel lazy--I offer you this link sent to me by my friend Stuart, an artist and a stalwart reader of The Buddha Diaries. In other words, he has his head screwed on right. I think this video is brilliant, because it shows us how we could make our voices heard, if we chose to do so. Too often I know I sit around and mope a bit about how bad things are and wish I knew how to wake people up, because in my judgment vast numbers of us are asleep. These guys have the guts and the balls to actually go out there and do it. With wit. With biting humor. (Or, in this case, humour.) Thanks, Stuart. Good on you, as they say Down Under. See you Wednesday at The Ebell Club in Highland Park. (I should use a megaphone.)

1001; and a Sneeze

If it was 1000 yesterday, it must be 1001 today, and counting... Entries, that is. In The Buddha Diaries. It's a good number. There were, as I recall, 1001 nights...

Anyway, this sneeze. It came during meditation this morning, and I thought it worth writing about, because its sudden arrival reminded me how valuable a sneeze can be. It announces its imminent eruption with a tiny tickle in the back of the nose--a tickle to which it's impossible not to pay attention. It comes as wake-up call to attention particularly in sangha, where you think, oh my god, I'm going to sneeze and disturb every other sitter in this circle. Got to stop it before it happens.

Well, you know how hard it is to stop a sneeze. The tickle persists, grows more insistent the more you try to hold it back. The passing seconds split up into milliseconds as you observe its progress, struggling, but helpless against its inevitability. This is a really good moment to heighten your attentive powers, watching and waiting for the sneeze to reach the surface. It arrives, explodes, sends shock waves throughout the body, and seemingly beyond, out into the surrounding space...

You now have the opportunity to watch the recession of the sneeze as you might watch the recession of the breath, only more dramatically, as a physical sensation. The initial shock waves are strong, wracking the whole system with their intensity. Then, gradually, stage by stage, they come in diminishing strength, like slowly fading ripples on the surface of a pond until, at last, they disappear forever and the body re-establishes its calm.

And sometimes--have you noticed?--it is possible, by dint of very careful, very minute attention to the detail of its presence, to stop the sneeze in mid-path, before it can arrive. It's kind of like catching a speeding bullet.

What a blessing! What a wonderful opportunity to learn better how to observe the breath which, after all, does exactly the same thing but with greater subtlety. It arises, gathers strength as it comes in and reaches a peak before it starts to recede and arrives at its most distant point of departure. If every breath could be a sneeze, we would be far more adept, I think, at paying attention to it.

There. I had not intended to write today. I'm off shortly for a full day's retreat and then, this evening, have a speaking gig downtown. Kind of a twelve-hour day. But then the sneeze came... So, friends, Gesundheit! And have a great weekend!

1,000; and Some Art

Here's another milestone. Today, I get to write my 1,000th entry in The Buddha Diaries... Hard to believe!

We made a few gallery stops yesterday. I had been intending for a while to stop by the Taylor De Cordoba Gallery to see some new paintings by Kimberly Brooks. A word of disclosure here: Kimberly is a colleague on The Huffington Post, and has been a welcome reader and supporter of my writing. I don't suppose that anyone comes here to The Buddha Diaries looking for anything other than a very personal take on art and other things. As I have written elsewhere--notably in "Persist," "I Am Not an Art Critic." That is, I no longer need to abide by the conventional rules of criticism--like the one that says you can't write about your friends. I understand the reason for the rule. I just don't choose to be bound by it any more.

So let's take a look at Kimberly's work. She's a proficient painter, mostly pictures of people in environments that could be called "genre paintings," and she has been concentrating recently on portraiture in what she identifies as "The Stylist Project." They are portraits, mostly, of women, presumably themselves stylists for the movies, advertising, or the fashion industry. I have to confess ignorance on this score. But they are, we sense, comfortable enough in the material aspect of their lives and for the most part in themselves, for who they are. They are in touch with their own sensuality, with the physical world, and clearly enjoy the pleasures of clothing, jewelry, shoes, ranging from high-end designer to art-world eccentric.

There is, in these portraits, certainly, a celebration of the feminine, a delight in the "style" these women create for themselves and project. At the same time, there is an awareness of the inherent paradox of "style"--that, while glamorous, it carries with it the seeds of its own superficiality, its attachment to outward appearances--which is implicit in what I take to be a hint of satire in these paintings. In making a "project" of the series, I'm assuming that the artist is wanting to discover, in the paintings, something about what these people share in common, how their passion for style is reflected in the way in which they present themselves to the world. What she arrives at is an observation of our culture that suggests a fascinating surface--and a disturbing depth.

Lloyd Hamrol is another friend. I have known him for more than thirty years, and for that long have admired the way he uses sculptural forms to engage the viewer in a participation in the work, often in public spaces where they are in daily "use." (Check out some of these wonderful Sited Works and Installations, which are so satisfying in their relationship to the environment in which they're built, so "user-friendly," so very human in their scale and invitation.) I'm delighted that Lloyd's work is being celebrated at Cardwell Jimmerson Contemporary Art in Culver City, a space I've mentioned before as one that pays deserving tribute to artists whose work should be better known, and more frequently seen.

The current installation is a re-creation of Lloyd's 5 x 9 series from 1966, a selection of the many possible configurations of these playful, elegant objects constructed out of five pivoting elements of plastic laminated plywood, each 6" x 30" x 30". The basic form is utterly simple, the five pieces lying in close alignment on the floor. Swivel them on their pivots, though, according to your preference of whim, and they transform magically into three-dimensional fantasies with plain, reflective surfaces that shift color and shape at shifting angles and in shifting light. They have something of the quality of articulated children's toys made large, for adults who have come to understand the sophistication of aesthetic choice and the pleasures of the interplay of form. (I regret that I have been unable to pirate a picture to post, but the link above will give you a good sense of the work.)

Leaving Culver City, listening to NPR in the car, we heard a wonderful quote from the song-writer Bill Withers ("Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone"--a personal favorite.") The NPR piece was about a new documentary about the elusive Withers, who chose to escape the limelight in favor of a kind of personal retreat. The quote goes like this: "It's okay to head out for wonderful, but on your way to wonderful you're going to have to pass through all right. When you get to all right, take a good look around and get used to it, because that may be as far as you're gonna go." Ah, yes!

From the galleries, we drove on--through hideously dense traffic, to the Skirball Center, to attend a fund-raiser for the Progressive Jewish Alliance. More about this in another post. Not tomorrow, since I'm busy all day from early morning until late at night. But soon...

Teaching Ignorance

Did anyone else come across this article in yesterday's New York Times? It seems that, not content with promulgating their absurd antipathy to evolutionary science, the "creationists" in several states are now seeking to include their rejection of the science of climate change in school curricula. I tend to attribute most of this country's problems to its long-standing starvation of the basic education system for its citizens. The willful ignorance of much of the electorate has led us into the deplorable state in which we find ourselves today. Too many voters, it seems to me, are led by the nose to vote plainly against their own interest because they lack the essential skills of critical thought and readily accept the lies and half-truths that are fed to them; and then turn around and blame those they have elected.

Where once we might be able to attribute this to a "starve the beast" attitude toward education (a process that now, after fifty years and more, has produced what was perhaps the desired result--an easily manipulable citizenry,) we are now treated to the spectacle of people in power who want to go one step further: to actually teach ignorance in the schools as though it were knowledge. The fact they they have a base of support and are not simply laughed out of court should surely be enough to dismay all right-thinking--sorry, make that "thinking"--people. Whither these United States of America, when so many of these states capitulate to the fear-mongering, religion-driven agenda of the willfully ignorant? Their passionate dedication to the cause of ignorance itself may well be the end of all of us.

BRANDING

(I read this piece at my event at LAAA's Gallery 825 last night...)

Sometimes a notion so offensive comes along that you wonder how it managed to work itself into the popular consciousness. Such a one is the concept of branding.

You hear it touted as a value everywhere—in the marketing of products, celebrities, politicians, ideas… And to judge by its ubiquity, you’d have to believe it works. Everyone has to have a brand. Or be a brand. Once you get branded, you or your product become instantly recognizable to the masses eager to consume it—or you.

But let’s pause for a moment to consider the origin of the word. Branding is the practice of burning an icon into the flesh of a living being by means of a red hot iron, to assert ownership. Slaves were branded. Cattle were branded. Perhaps they still are, to this day. It is worth bearing this origin in mind before we delight too much in its transference to the field of marketing. I personally have no wish to be imprinted with the mark of a corporate owner—who will the presumably have the authority to tell me what to do. I become a slave, whether to some image of self I wish to sell, or to others, it matters not. A slave is a slave is a slave.

Had branding remained the domain of the corporate world, it might not have been quite so offensive. They, after all, are defined by their need to satisfy the bottom line. Unhappily, its toxin has spread into the creative world, and it risks poisoning our collective cultural life blood. Consider the world of books, for example—my own pet beef (with apologies for the pun!) The major publishers depend more and more heavily on the brand to market their product. We need look no further than the “success” of former Governor Sarah Palin’s book to understand that it’s not a celebration of the writer’s art but rather a product that is profitably marketable thanks to its author’s “brand.”

Or consider the world of fine art. Who wants to be known as “the guy who…” (fill in the blank: paints Campbell’s soup cans, immerses sharks in formaldehyde, whatever); or, “oh, yeah, she’s the woman who…” (fill in your own blanks.) One sad effect of this kind of thinking is that it stifles creativity: the market does much better, thank you, if artists simply repeat their previous successes. How many artists have started out, in the past fifty years or so, to great éclat, only to fade into obscurity? Thank God, the best of them have learned to ignore the dictates of the market, only to be “rediscovered” much later in life—like Carmen Herrera, a wonderful artist, 94 years old, written up a few weeks ago in the New York Times after decades of obscurity. You have your own favorites. They are more numerous than they deserve to be…

It “pays”, then, to be branded as an artist, too. It pays to do the one thing you’ll be known by, recognized by, sold as. It pays to create a certain name associated with a certain product. But whatever happened to the “Renaissance man”—or the Renaissance woman? The artist, writer, philosopher, scientist whose curiosity about the world led him or her to explore many different paths, many different outlets for the life of the mind? Try “branding” Leonardo! The guy who…! What?

It’s in this way that our culture gladly sacrifices true creativity to siren call of commerce. In this context, it seems to me, the true task of the artist, the writer, the musician is to learn the difficult skills of non-collaboration, the art of finding their own distinctive voice, yes, but with the understanding that the voice must articulate, always, something new.

Wrecks: A Theater Review

It's a rare pleasure to have a fully satisfying theater experience, and worth celebrating when it happens. Last night, Ellie and I went to see Ed Harris in Wrecks in the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse--a short, 80-minute, one-person performance written and directed by Neil LaBute, the screenwriter and director best known, perhaps, for his movie, In the Company of Men, a brutally honest exploration into the male psyche and current cultural attitudes about masculinity.

"Wrecks" could be seen as falling into that same category. At one level, at least, it's a sometimes humorous, sometimes painful study of the workings of its protagonist's mind. With a simple set--a funeral parlor, a coffin, a couple of plush benches, a couple of potted plants that double as ashtrays for the constantly smoking Edward Carr, played by Ed Harris--this performance is perhaps more a story-telling event than conventional theater. The dramatic conflict exists only in the mind of the narrator, and it's his monologue that keeps us engaged from the opening words to the shocking end.

Given this set-up, much depends on the actor's skill to hold the attention of the audience, and Ed Harris is pitch perfect, delivering a bravura performance that rivets us from beginning to end. Alternately cynical and ingratiating, intense and casual, Carr speaks a language that makes up in self-deprecation what it lacks in eloquence. He tells his story without frills, sometimes with feigned honesty, sometimes with transparent self-deception, sometimes with seemingly genuine emotion. He rambles, prevaricates, deflects, and sidesteps neatly when he feels he's getting too close to the bone. It takes him 78 of the 80 minutes to get to the point.

Ed Harris masters not only the words but the body language of this complex character who dodges in and out of his theme with the dexterity of a bantamweight boxer. Light on his feet, quick with his facial expressions and gestures, lithe with his body, this actor is in constant motion on the stage, providing the needed "dramatic action" where there is none. And what makes for the success of his work is not only the playing of the role, it's the relationship he establishes with the audience. A part of this is written into the script: it's understood that the protagonist, Carr, is addressing us directly. A big part of it is the way in which Harris himself creates a sense of intimacy, sharing confidences with his audience as though with the closest of friends. He is helped in this, by the way, by the delightful intimacy of this tiny black-box theater, where every seat is close to the stage and the actor is virtually a part of the audience himself.

I can't tell you the "story"--nor even any part of it, since it builds from the first moment with a kind of inexorable singularity of purpose--except to say that what we see is a man beside the coffin of his wife, telling the story of their life together. If that doesn't sound like much, it isn't. Except that it is. LaBute deserves great credit for the skill with which he builds from the first casual asides to the final revelation which lets us know, in the last moments of the play, just exactly what the thing was all about. If this sounds manipulative, I can only say that it doesn't feel that way. It feels, as I started out by saying, like a fully satisfying evening of theater. (And short! Who said that every play and every movie had to last two hours...? Short is good. Short essays are good. Short reviews are good. Bottom line: see it, if you possibly can.)

100,000: Detective Work

Well, we passed the 100,000 visitor mark on The Buddha Diaries yesterday evening at 6:55 PM Pacific time. Our 100,000th visitor, I discovered from my Sitemeter, was in Roanoke, Virginia. He (I suspect "he" for reasons that you'll understand) was online in Roanoke at 9:55, his time. He had followed the link to The Buddha Diaries from an article I wrote for the ManKind Project's Journal, published in December, 2009. The article was called Persist: The Ongoing Journey, a topic clearly connected with the publication of my book. The ManKind Project is the international organization of men with which I have been associated for nearly 18 years, since June of 1992; and indeed, last night, at the moment of this 100,000th visit, I was on my way to a meeting of our small local group.

I would like now, as promised, to send this reader a copy of "Persist," but in order to do so I need to have him identify himself and let me have a street address to which I can mail it. If he happens to be returning to The Buddha Diaries today, and happens to read this entry, he will surely recognize himself and let me know. (My email address is PeterAtLarge@mac.com.) If there's any other reader who knows who this might be, I'd be grateful for a lead. And I'll also plan to contact the Roanoke center of the MKP, or the center closest by, to see if there might be some lead to follow there.

I'm hoping that there will be more to follow! Meantime, my best, genuine thanks for all those other readers of The Buddha Diaries who don't happen to have been reader number 100,000. I wish I could send books to every one of you.

Op-Ed

Here's an op-ed piece I wrote this morning, and I'm wondering whether any newspaper would print it. What do you think?

ANGER: IT’S NO WAY OUT

How often have you heard recently, if you’re a part of the great American electorate like myself, that you are angry? Often enough, I suspect, to make you even angrier.

We are an angry people at this moment in history, we hear constantly. We are angry about “Washington.” We are angry about our government, about our leadership and about our representation in both houses of Congress. We are angry about health care, no matter which side of the issue we are on. We are angry about the taxes we are required to pay, and angry about the way in which they’re used; and at the same time we’re angry about the poor quality of such social services as education, and about our deteriorating infrastructure. We are angry about the economy, angry at Wall Street, angry at the bankers. We are angry about the wars in which we are engaged and angry at those we blame for them. We are angry at each other: I’m angry at you and you’re angry at me.

I’m no psychologist, and I’m no expert on anger or its management, but I do know that anger is nothing more that a feeling, and that feelings by definition are fickle things. They change from moment to moment. I share the anger that so many of us are experiencing and yet, if I watch myself with a measure of awareness, I know that the anger comes and goes, to be replaced by other feelings as they come along. By nature, as a feeling, it’s ephemeral. It only seems like a permanent condition when I get hung up on it and refuse to let it pass. And when that happens, it profits no one, certainly not those around me, who feel its heat; and certainly not myself. It eats at my gut, serving only to increase my level of stress and make me sick. And still angrier.

Like most of us again, I suspect, I’m pretty good at blaming others for my anger. My observation is that I get angry when I don’t get what I want. It’s the reaction of the child, who screams and stamps his feet in fury when his immediate need is not immediately satisfied. When that happens, when rage floods in to overwhelm the rational mind, the easiest—perhaps the most natural—thing to do is to project it out and find someone else to blame. I get mad at mom, for depriving me of my rightful due.

But we’re supposed to be adults. We’re supposed to understand that anger doesn’t get us what we want. Nor are we entitled to “what we want” just because we happen to want it. We’re supposed to be able to recognize the difference between the passing feelings that “move” us this way and that, and the rational thought we use to free us from the reactive patterns they dictate. If insulted, my natural reaction might be to strike out in anger; a moment’s thought, however, brings me back to the reality that this response would result in a still more grievous outcome. What seems to be missing in our culture is the ability to watch our feelings without being controlled by them, the understanding that, while they are an inevitable and necessary part of the way in which we experience the world, they are not the most useful tool in making decisions about actions.

I don’t call myself a Buddhist, but I have learned enough from the Buddhist teachings to recognize their wisdom and their relevance to the way in which we live our lives today. When we allow ourselves to be governed by reactive patterns, they tell us, our actions lead more often than not to unintended, undesirable consequences. The trick is to be able to recognize my anger for what it is at the moment is arises, and to avoid giving it the power to lead me into actions that will help no one, least of all myself, and will more likely cause harm.

Instead, we are all now celebrating anger, as though it were some kind of worthy badge of honor. I am angry, therefore I am. The result of our indulgence in this feeling—our “clinging” to it, in the Buddhist sense—is the hostility and stagnation we are experiencing as a nation. We will not emerge from our current collective snit until we learn to acknowledge our anger—and let it go.