The Entertainer

I mentioned the other day that we had planned a return visit to see Hershey Felder at the Laguna Playhouse, this time to join in his Great American Songbook Singalong. We went last night, and enjoyed a hugely entertaining evening. Encouraging us to sing along with sly cajolements and occasional friendly scoldings, Felder took his audience on a tour of popular favorites by the likes of Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and Gershwin, mostly from the great musicals and movies familiar to everyone who grew up during the forties and fifties--an age group that included most of us gathered there for the evening! The songs were gleaned from Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz...--all guaranteed to jog still meaningful memories for many years back, and of course to tug at the heartstrings.

What held it all together was Felder's lively narrative thread, combining biographical material about the songwriters with stories from his own life and experience. He's a terrific story-teller, in the tradition of the irrepressibly loquacious Jew--and he makes much of the Jewish heritage he shares with many of his beloved composers. In largely WASP-y Orange County, California, it seemed refreshingly bold yet totally unpretentious. Being Jewish is simply another of his passions. He loves it, loves the family rituals and the quirkiness of the Yiddish language, loves the stereotypes as well as the peculiarities of Jewishness, loves the history and the traditions that crossed the Atlantic from Eastern Europe--and is ever mindful of the Holocaust. It is remarkable--and fitting--hat he can allude respectfully to that dark time even as he celebrates the joyfully creative Jewish gene. Such is the complexity of the human experience in the world.

This work, to Felder, is clearly a deeply personal commitment. He is an enormously (and multi-!) talented performer, who manages to break down that "fourth wall" and speak heart-to-heart to his audience, drawing them into his narrative by revealing his own passions with seeming artlessness and finding that authentic place of common human experience that we all share. It's a bit like watching a magician who shows his audience how it's done even as he's doing it. He moves us easily from the farcical to the comic, from the sentimental to the genuinely tragic without our feeling manipulated along the way.

Toward the end of the "Great American Songbook," Felder explores the source of his need to reach out and touch other human beings in this way: it lies, he explains, in part in the experience of watching his mother die of cancer at a very young age, and in learning from her passion for life, her generosity of spirit, her courage, and her love. It is a moving tribute, and one that allows him to dim the lights, at the very end, without sentimentality, on a note of hopefulness and inner joy.

The Arab Street

I was out this morning before dawn with George, the dog, who had awoken earlier than usual to answer nature's call. It was still dark, but I was struck by the unusual brightness of a lovely crescent moon--which put me in mind, of course, of Islam, and of recent and current events in the Islamic world: the startling removal of long-standing tyrannical rulers in Tunisia, the rise to power of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the violent demonstrations in Yemen and, yesterday, dramatically, the turmoil on the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and Suez in troubled Egypt.

We have been hearing reports for years about the outrage on "the Arab street," and about its suppression by various despotic regimes. It is an outrage that has been skillfully exploited by extremists, a simmering cauldron of grievance amply justified by deprivation and repression, poverty, joblessness, and absence of political power and educational opportunity. And now, thanks to the marvels of satellite communications, we watch in real time as the anger of the Arab street erupts on our television screens. The current events surely do not warrant the surprise that some of the pundits of international relations are expressing. "Power to the People" is a heartening cry, where tyranny has been rampant. The human heart can only take so much abuse before it awakens and rebels.

America's aggressive role in the region in recent years leaves us with a legacy of distrust and hatred. The tear gas canisters littering the streets of Cairo bear the message "Made in the USA"--an irrefutable reminder that we have been busy propping up dictators with our money and our arms, in order to assure an artificial stability and protect our vital interest in maintaining the steady supply of oil to which we have become addicted. The unintended consequence was to provide extremists with evidence to fuel their fires of hatred.

My concern is the obvious one: that the power vacuum left by the ousting of Middle Eastern despots will be rapidly filled, not by the genuinely democratic spirit that created it, but by a new tyranny--a fanatical and extremist religious one. Islam, after all, is the most powerful alternative organizing structure in these nations; and it seems that, at this historical moment, Islam is easily co-opted on the political front by its extremists.

We have seen this before, in Iran, which is hardly, at this point, the exemplar of a free and democratic society: the recent repression of people power by the mullahs in that country was yet another display of brutal despotism.

So I fear for the future of a Middle East in turmoil, and for its potential to cause global havoc. I fear particularly for Israel. Egypt was hardly a warm friend, perhaps, but at least one indispensable source of balance in the Arab world. If that balance is seriously upset by the rise of avowedly Israel-hating forces in Egypt and Lebanon, Israel will become even more of a tiny, armed, defensive bunker in an ocean of hostility.

And that's not even to mention the bloody, implacable, fratricidal warfare between Muslim and Muslim. These are dark days, indeed, in that region of the world, and they portend great danger for the rest of us. Some will say I have no business poking my Buddhist nose where it does not belong, into the morass of international politics. They may be right. I acknowledge that I speak out of vastly limited knowledge. Still, my humanitarian instincts refuse to let these events pass without some moments of reflection. We're all in this together, in this shrinking world. It's not just George and me in Laguna Beach, and the lovely crescent moon...

"KEEF"

I'm finally finding time to do some reading, now that we're back at our cottage in Laguna Beach after nearly a month away. Both the front balcony (sunny) and the back patio (shady for the most part at this time of year) offer the kind of tranquility that is conducive to the opening of a book.

I have Montaigne in mind. I'm dying to get back to him. In the meantime, though, I knew I'd never reach the end of Keith Richards's long Life if I didn't make the conscious decision to spend time with it. And I have just turned the last page, 547, not counting the lengthy acknowledgments and index.

It was quite a ride. I'm not, honestly, that familiar with the work of the Rolling Stones, nor with the rock 'n' roll scene in general. I enjoy hearing the band occasionally, when there's one of their more familiar tunes playing on the radio. But I am not a regular nor a particularly enthusiastic listener, and I would likely not even have picked up this book had it not been so widely praised.

I can see why. Despite its length, it does speed along through the years at a nifty pace, in a colorful, effortless romp of language that combines the musician's idiom with a kind of cocky, irreverential Brit-talk that you hear in a Monty Python episode. The narrative, I'm sure, is told orally by Richards and transcribed (by co-writer James Fox) with all its rough edges, non sequiturs and profanities intact--all of which makes for refreshingly salty prose. It's fun to read.

I have been aware, of course, of the bad-boy reputation of the Rolling Stones. Who hasn't, of those of us who have been and awake these past forty years and more? If it's hard not to like "Keef," it's also hard to know why. He does many dreadful, even despicable things. What to make, for example, of a man who is always on edge, ready for a fight--whether verbal or physical--and habitually armed with a knife or a gun? A man who consumes drugs with the abandon of a child let loose in a candy shop? Who never met a drug--including heroin--he didn't like? A man who takes his seven-year-old son on the road with him on a rock 'n' roll tour and uses the kid as a buffer between himself and the cops? Who delights in tempering a genuine tenderness and reticence with the women who love him with a loud and unabashed misogynism? Richards confronts us unapologetically with all the seamier aspects of his life, to the point where the reader--I refer here to myself--finds himself asking: Why am I reading this?

I thought about that. And I found several good answers to explain why I couldn't tear myself away.

The first is the kind of dreadful fascination that makes you want to watch the proverbial train wreck, whether in reality, or vicariously on a movie or a television screen. It's just so awful, you have to know how this disaster will turn out. You know already that our hero is going to survive, but how? What will it take to save him from himself?

Next is the complex character of this rock 'n' roller. It may seem strange to say this, but it strikes me that there is a child-like innocence to him, an (often naughty) boyish curiosity that is willing to climb any tree, take any risk, for the sheer joy of finding out what it is all about. It's the quality that makes women want to mother him.

He has other qualities, too, that endear him: his fierce dedication to his music is the most obvious. We read of his insatiable quest for mastery of the full potential of his instrument and a huge resource of knowledge about musical genres and styles and those who practice them, an adulation for the work of great pioneers. We watch his process as he composes songs, with and without collaboration. It's an unending and delicious love affair with the practice of his art.

We also come to like Richards for his genuine acts of kindness, a surprising sensitivity and tenderness, an unswerving loyalty, combined with an honesty that allows him to lay into lifelong buddies (like Mick Jagger) without, for the most part, seeming nasty. There's also a modesty about him that sees himself always as a part of something bigger than Keith Richards, be it a band (he's a great, if somewhat biased historian of the Rolling Stones) or family. It's a pleasure to get know his English mum and dad, his aunties and mates at the local pub.

There's another reason I kept reading, this one deeper and more personal: I was learning a lot about myself. Because Richards plunges without a moment's hesitation into the very place where I have always feared to tread--the place of darkness, chaos, the unknown. There is a great tradition of artists of his kind, from Francois Villon in medieval France to Arthur Rimbaud and, more recently, William Burroughs (who gets a frequent mention in "Life.") These are people who are willing to risk everything, including their lives, to discover something new. Against such artists--often geniuses--I measure my own creative timidity and, yes, envy their ability to shed the constraints of the socially acceptable and the controls that can provide useful formal boundaries, but also limit vision. Richards achieved notoriety, true, but also greatness, by embracing without restraint the demons of his inner nature.

These days, a man approaching a respectable age, he has been clean and (relatively) sober may years. He has been banging his head about severely--requiring, most recently, serious brain surgery. He is a grandfather, hanging out in his Connecticut retreat and relishing visits from his children and grandchildren. His greatest joy in life seems to be his extensive library--the site of one of his falls. The last picture in the album included in "Life" shows him lounging in this den, surrounded by shelves weighted down with a freight of books and record albums. A chalkboard reads, in child-like capitals, KEITH RICHARDS, MAIN OFFENDER.

Ah, well. Richards is no Montaigne, and I'm sure he would not claim to be. But this was, I promise you, a good read.

The Leonard Bernstein Story

There's always something of the primal, campfire experience in going to the theater--especially a small, intimate theater like the Laguna Playhouse, where we went last night. It's a gathering of the tribe around a glowing pit, to witness the performance of a ritual that speaks to some deeply buried, inner need. There is magic involved...

Last night's performance was called Maestro: The Music of Leonard Bernstein, one in a series of one-person performances about music and musicians created by Hershey Felder, a Canadian-born, Paris-based pianist/singer/actor/playwright/composer of Polish Jewish origin who tours the world with his theater pieces. His extraordinary repertoire of performances includes impersonations of Beethoven, Chopin and Gershwin as well as Bernstein, and Ellie and I are also booked to see his Great American Songbook later this week.

This, clearly, is a man of many parts. Felder's "Maestro" spans the career of Bernstein from a childhood dominated by a disapproving Russian immigrant father--whose accent and bearing Felder replicates with great zest and humor--to his discovery of the world of music and his early studies at the piano. The portrayal shows him as a man painfully torn between his ambition to be the next great American composer, never quite fulfilled, and a world-wide reputation as an adored conductor, which he comes to spurn; and a man equally torn between his innate homosexuality and a deep, genuine love for wife and family. The curtain falls on Bernstein as an old man, still longing for the "one piece" that would distinguish him as a composer. The "one piece" he falls back on (in this performance) is that haunting song of unfulfilled desire, Somewhere, from West Side Story.

Have I ever mentioned pete the parrot in these pages? I suspect I have, since he's a favorite character of mine, along with archy the cockroach/poet and mehitabel the cat, the reincarnation of Cleopatra in Don Marquis's archy and mehitabel (lower case, since archy composes his work by hopping from key to key on the typewriter, and obviously can't hold down the shift key simultaneously to type a capital letter.) Anyway, pete the parrot is an old timer, who recalls the days when bill shakespeare used to show up at the mermaid tavern and weep hot tears in his sherry because he never made it as the sonneteer he always wanted to be. Instead, he ended up as a "lousy playwright," churning out these "cheap shows," "slap stick comedies and blood and thunder tragedies and melodramas" to please the public. It's a hilarious poem, well worth the read.

And it's a propos, because Bernstein's problem, as Felder presents it, is precisely analogous to bill shakespeare's--not quite the "I coulda been a contender" syndrome, but something like it, a bitter sense of having been diverted from one's true purpose in life. It's a feeling that resonates for me--which is probably why I have always loved that poem. Not only did I spend a great number of the most productive years of my life pursuing a career in academia even while knowing, at heart, that I was supposed to be a writer; I am also subject to that self-deprecating (and, honestly, if I'm not careful, self-pitying) feeling that I am not the writer I could have been had I believed enough in myself from the start and had the courage to follow my convictions.

In a significant way, then, I was watching some part of myself up there on the stage with the eventually tortured Bernstein. I am grateful that good fortune, perhaps karma, led me to the discovery of the wisdom that is Buddhism--a wisdom that allows me to see such truths about myself with a certain clarity, and teaches me that it's possible to be clear and honest about them without succumbing to the temptation of attachment and causing myself more suffering. That's when I'm actually paying attention, which is not always the case!

Bravo to Hershey Felder for a bravura performance. There were, I thought, some moments where the pacing failed and the action slowed, but it was all in all a thoroughly entertaining evening. Ellie and I enjoyed both the story-telling and the music--Felder is an accomplished pianist and singer--and are looking forward to a return visit with him this Sunday. We're also hoping to get tickets for his "Monsieur Chopin" next month.

Obamatics: The State of the Union

Depends on how you listened to it, of course. Last night's State of the Union address. There will be those to my left who will judge it overly cautious and centrist. The President will be accused--from "our" side--of playing politics (call it Obamatics, as in "Obamacare"; this will soon get to be like adding "-gate" to every scandal!) at a time when he should refuse accommodation to the noisy and irrational ideologues on the right.

I myself thought the speech was well-calibrated and appropriately conciliatory, given the circumstance to which we have been driven by the toxic mix of ignorance and ideology that has dominated our political discourse. The tone and substance of the speech were perfectly concordant with what we have come to expect from a man who does not regard compromise as capitulation; who agrees with the proposition in JFK's famous inauguration speech, that "civility is not a sign of weakness"; and who offers a pragmatic, rational understanding of what it is possible to achieve. That his speech managed to do so without sacrificing the obligatory celebration of America's greatness and strength was, I thought, pretty remarkable.

I admit it. I myself find it hard to locate a remaining shred of optimism in my heart for a country that seems hell-bent on self-immolation. I look to the right of our political spectrum and find no moderation, no rational discussion of the increasingly thorny issues we face in our social and political life, no openness to different views. I see only entrenched ideological posturing, the reiteration of meaningless cliches, and hatred--hatred, I believe, is not too strong a word--for a President who continues to reach out to his opponents in a good faith attempt to work toward solutions for some of our problems. It seems that the sole agenda on the right is exactly what Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell famously said it should be: to bring the President down, no matter the cost to the country.

I was happy that Obama did not shrink from a clear affirmation on the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Many of us were distressed by the lame-duck session compromise, but the President made it clear last night that he plans to revisit this anomaly. However, as the New York Times lead editorial suggested this morning,

letting high-end tax breaks expire won’t raise enough revenue to pay for needed investments or reduce long-term deficits. Mr. Obama proposed to simplify both the corporate income tax and the personal income tax, but he did not call for raising other taxes. Americans may not want to hear that taxes have to go up, but until Mr. Obama and other political leaders are willing to say so, credible deficit reduction will remain out of reach.

At a time when we need to invest in our future in the ways the President eloquently outlined, Republicans have their knives out. They are targeting (among other things, once again!) the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. And, of course, education. Forget about essential services like police and fire departments, national parks, justice... Talk about job-killing! But as Paul Krugman points out in a current blog entry, in a comment on Congressman Paul Ryan's Republican response to the President's address, "government spending is dominated by the big 5: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and interest payments; you can’t make a significant dent in the deficit without either raising taxes or cutting those big 5." If we're committed to what Obama described as the "need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world," we'll need to either swallow an increase in the deficit--or raise taxes, and not just on the rich.

It's unclear when, if ever, Americans will be ready for any real sacrifice. It is clear, however, that sacrifice will be necessitated at some point by circumstance, if it is not consciously chosen and planned for. I myself would have wished for the President to have acknowledged this reality more openly in last night's address; in evoking the "Sputnik moment"--a moment when Americans might have been called upon, once again, to "pay any price, bear any burden"--he created an opportunity that his speech failed to exploit.

The tone of the speech was in keeping with the much-touted amicable seating arrangements in the audience. Until the rousing peroration, there was a modesty and civility about it that was echoed in the comparatively subdued response: no loud cheers, no prolonged standing ovations. The President did not court the usual flattery, nor did he receive it. He settled his audience down quickly to listen to his words and left, at the end, without haste, but also without dallying at length to bask in congratulation. It was, to my mind, well done. A glove was thrown down, along with the offer of mutual collaboration. We'll see whether that glove will be picked up by his opponents with civil intention, or whether (as regrettably in the past) it will simply be thrown back rudely in his face.

Another Transition

This morning we were up early to get ready for a return to our Laguna Beach hideaway...

We made it down here in good time and were unpacked before noon. It's great to be back! I plan to take advantage of the day to get some rest. That chair looks inviting...

Some Thoughts Prompted by Dick Cheney's Heart

I promised yesterday to post some thoughts about Dick Cheney's heart--thoughts prompted by a glimpse of the former Vice President on a television morning news show the other day. With his familiar glower and sudden, scary, lop-sided grin, he was showing off the technology he wears these days under his jacket to keep his heart beating and himself alive; and I thought to myself—as I’m sure did many others of my political persuasion—how appropriate.

All joking aside—and I confess to having enjoyed the Tin Man and Darth Vader jokes as much as anyone—I have been concerned for a number of years about the condition of Mr. Cheney’s heart. One concern, to be sure, was the possibility of a man with so shaky a vital organ ending up in the Oval Office. Another was of an even more speculative nature: is the physical heart—that muscular pump—truly the source and generator of human compassion, or is it simply an age-old metaphor for the same?

I do not, of course, have the pleasure of any personal acquaintance with the former Vice President; but based on what I have seen through media reports about his actions and his words, my judgment from afar is that he is markedly lacking in the quality of compassion. Most recently, aside from the television news interview mentioned above, I saw an excerpt from a report covering his participation in George H. W. Bush's reunion with some of the former President’s key cabinet members. On both occasions Cheney seemed remarkably affectless, remarkably disconnected from the human consequences of his actions—particularly his aggressive promotion of the invasion of Iraq. For him, it seemed to me, an action that cost countless human lives and caused unfathomable misery was nothing more than a business decision.

My cheerfully uninformed judgment, then, is that this is a man whose severely dysfunctional heart is the physical manifestation of an equally severe spiritual and emotional dysfunction.

As readers of "The Buddha Diaries" will know by now, it is my habit when I find myself making powerful negative judgments about others, to spend a little while looking in the mirror, in order to see what I might need to learn about myself. In this instance, my mirror reminds me of the many years I spent in denial of my own heart. While my head was wonderfully well educated, my heart was taught at an early age to armor itself against the dangerous and hurtful world outside. In this I became so skilled that by the time I entered into young adulthood, the very mention of the heart was an embarrassment to me. In poetry, my chosen medium, I deemed it capable of generating little more than squishy, self-indulgent sentimentality. I dismissed the heart as a foolish and inconsequential thing, though in retrospect I think this was probably because I was afraid of what I might find there if I dared to explore its hidden depths.

It took me, I regret to say, more than fifty years to admit to myself and the world that I actually possessed a heart. I described the painful process of discovery in great depth in a book I wrote nearly twenty years ago. It was called While I Am Not Afraid, and its subtitle was “Secrets of a Man’s Heart.” The short version is that I was confronted with a moment of appalling crisis which shocked me into the understanding that I could no longer continue my journey through life neglectful of the need for a functioning heart; my own deficient organ was revealed to me in all its shrink-wrapped vulnerability in the course of a memorable weekend’s retreat in which I was quite simply cracked open like an egg. It was a humbling and a shattering experience, and one that radically changed the direction of my life.

I have made every effort, since then, to keep my heart in mind, and I look back at certain youthful acts of heartlessness with shame. I have come to believe, in good part through what I have learned from Buddhist teachings, that the heart is the true center of our humanity, the seat not only of the love we put out into the world but also of the courage and honesty with which we observe our actions and evaluate them; and of the loyalty that characterizes the best of our relationships with others. I love the notion of “a stout heart,” and aspire to have one.

The heart, as Blaise Pascal reminded us, also “has reasons which reason knows nothing about.”(“Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point.”) It has "a mind of its own," a thinking capacity as powerful as the brain’s, and one we allow the brain to override at the risk of losing touch with our humanity. For this reason, it is also the seat of our integrity—if we think of integrity as the way of having all our faculties in balance and ensuring that they work together for the benefit of others and ourselves. This way, according to what I know of Buddhist teachings, lies happiness. Here’s Thanissaro Bhikkhu:

If we think of the heart as the side of the mind that wants happiness, the head is the side that understands how cause and effect actually work. If your head and heart can learn to cooperate — that is, if your head can give priority to finding the causes for true happiness, and your heart can learn to embrace those causes — then the training of the mind can go far.

Thanks to Dick Cheney’s mechanical heart, I have been more careful in the past few days to watch the workings of my own. The best moment to do this is during meditation, when I can observe both its physical and its emotional activity. I bring my attention to its location in the chest and hold it there, intently focused on the physical sensation of the beating organ, the muscular contraction and release; on the flow of blood as it pulses out through the arteries and saturates the furthest extremities of the body; and on the cleansing process as it returns to the point of origin for recycling.

All this is fascinating to watch. But the other part of the work is to activate that cooperation of which Thanissaro Bhikkhu speaks. I find a special additional delight in using the intentional focus of the mind to open up and soften the heart. The practice of metta affords me the opportunity to practice compassion toward, first, myself (if I fail to feel it for myself, how could I feel the same for others?) and then to the human and other living beings with whom I share this planet.

My thanks, then, to Dick Cheney--but this is not intended to let him off the hook. I find it instructive to look back at the Cheney/Bush relationship in terms of the head and heart. Seen in this light, George W. Bush would be all heart (not necessarily the compassionate kind!) and no head; and Cheney all head and no heart. But rather than working in a benign, symbiotic collaboration where each would have corrected and modified the other—head softened by heart, heart tempered by head—the pair charged ahead in the grip of the worst impulses and excesses of each. The result, fatally, was the most disastrous eight years for America in living memory, and a cautionary tale about the consequences of ignoring either head or heart when it comes to taking action in the world.

A NOTE

For those interested, we'll be re-arranging the posts on our Costa Rica/Panama trip in sequential order in the next couple of days, and will be posting the whole log in chronological order in the "Travel Logs" section of The Buddha Diaries, to be found near the top of the right hand sidebar. Then back, tomorrow, to our usual interests. I'm working on a piece about Dick Cheney's heart...

Costa Rica/Panama, Part IV

Friday, January 14

We must have moored somewhere on Lake Gatun overnight; when we woke in the morning, we were cruising again over the smooth waters of this expansive inland waterway...

... toward our destination, the Barrio Colorado Island and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute based there.

Originally just another hilltop, BCI was created when the waters rose after the construction of the Chagres River dam as a part of the Panama Canal. As our daily briefing noted, “Its small area (a total of 1500 hectares) and new island condition made it a natural choice for a laboratory, important in studying both tropical ecology and biogeography.” To give us a fuller sense of the work being done there, we were offered a lecture by one of the senior staff scientists. I should have taken notes, but memory tells me that his lecture was largely about biodiversity and the interdependence of species. It was, believe me, utterly fascinating.

After, breakfast, then, we dropped anchor in the sheltered harbor and made our final excursion aboard the Zodiaks to the research center’s dock. We were greeted there by the open jaws of a small crocodile...

... perched comfortably in the sunshine atop a buoy just across from the pier. Following instructions (long pants, tucked into socks at the beginning of tick and chigger season!) and the now familiar drill of slipping out of our life vests, we met our guide—a charming young woman whom I presumed to be a graduate student...

She led us up the hill past the complex of research buildings...

offices and dormitories to the start of the “Fausto” trail...

... the hardier of the two hikes being offered that day.

There was much of interest along the trail...

... a beautiful hollow tree, looking up...

It was all made all the more interesting, as usual, by our local guide and by Jose, one of our own tour guides and the photography expert of the expedition—a great bird spotter. New to me was the aguti, a rodent about the size of a large guinea pig, apparently abundant on this island. We saw quite a number of them scurrying around in the undergrowth, but I was only able to get a picture at the very end of the hike, when one was kind enough to pose for me in a nice patch of sunlight.

Returning to the Sea Lion, we set sail again across Lake Gatun, now distinctly yellow with silt...

... (looks brown here; it was mellow yellow--see croc pic, above) toward the second set of locks leading down to the Caribbean.

Unlike the previous evening, it was still broad daylight when we reached the locks, so we were offered the spectacle of the whole procedure in a different light. We found ourselves in line behind the massive Indiana Highway...

... a Panamax car carrier from Kobe, Japan, whose bulk left only inches on either side and whose towering height effectively blocked our view of the way ahead. Still, it was once again a fascinating experience to watch our progress through the locks...

... and into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

We docked, at the end of our voyage, in Colon, and it felt strange to be back in a busy industrial environment.

We were sad, that evening, to have to say goodbye to new friends. Sitting down to feast at the traditional “Captain’s Dinner,” we had the opportunity to raise a toast to our fellow travelers, as well as to the staff and crew who had done such a great job in guiding us and taking care of our needs. Still, knowing that we had to take a very early bus ride back to the airport in Panama City, we made an early night of it to be ready for the long trip home.

Saturday, January 15

Sleep came hard. We were up and about at 4:30 AM, even earlier than necessary for our 5:30 bus departure. Bags parked outside our cabin door, we had time for a leisurely cup of coffee and a snack breakfast before heading down the gangplank and out onto the dock.

It was a long drive, mostly through darkness until we reached the outskirts of Panama City at daybreak. The skyscrapers glittered regally in the distance as we drove through crowded streets past rickety roadside stands and clustered shacks in hectic, sauve-qui-peut traffic, past lines of working people waiting for the brightly painted buses or besieging the food stalls, past billboards advertising everything from beer to underwear and luxury automobiles, past decaying industrial buildings and brand new shopping centers. Humanity, in other words, at work…

Arriving at the airport in good time for our Miami-bound flight, we bought another cup of coffee and waited for our boarding announcement. The rest—the arrival in Miami, the US customs, more security checks, the crowded airport restaurant at lunch time, the flight back to Los Angeles with an overworked, hastily heedless crew—all this is best forgotten. There were too many good things to remember, including a much enhanced sense of the incredible beauty and diversity of our planet--as well as its infinitely delicate balance and its vulnerability.

And it was good, finally, as always, to be back home.

At the 16th Annual Los Angeles Art Show

Here I go, I interrupting myself again, taking a break this morning from my Costa Rica/Panama travel log--now nearly finished, just one day to go--to report on last night's gala opening of the 16th Annual Los Angeles Art Show at the downtown Convention Center.

Over the past quarter century, international art fairs like this one have become a significant driving force in the engine of the contemporary art world economy. They have proved a boon to many of the participating dealers in terms of the sales they generate and the opportunity to expand their clientele, introducing their artists (or their wares) to an international community of collectors; and sometimes to prowl the aisles to survey the competition. They are unabashedly about commerce rather than aesthetics, and for this reason are anathema to many artists and critics. A crowded convention center floor, clearly, is not place to display or look at art works, mixed higgledy-piggledy with thousands of others, all of wildly divergent quality which ranges from the schlockiest of schlock to the occasional surprising new discovery or the familiar masterpiece.

The 2011 Los Angeles Art Show is no exception. A vast affair, it features 144 galleries from all over the world showing more than 10,000 art works. There was plenty to scoff at--unfairly, perhaps, because who really stops and take time to look at anything with great care or attention? I confess to being one of those who--last night, at least--strolled up and down the aisles with plenty of snap judgments (mostly negative) and little in the way of thoughtful appraisal. Still, it was fun to take a snapshot of the international art scene, with ample representation from China--the new powerhouse in this, as in so many other economic fields--and other Asian countries. (Europe, however, was only patchily represented.) In my scant perusal, I have to say, I was not overly impressed with the Chinese participants, with certain notable exceptions like this wonderful wall painting which seeks to impress us with the identity between the intricate structure of our bodies and that of vegetative life, the great Oneness of being:

In all this, we did pause for long enough to take a good look at the work of an artist with whom Ellie has worked as a consultant in the past, Yisrael K (Kenny) Feldsott...

... who shows with San Francisco's Paul Mahder Gallery. We were also fortunate to have a few minutes to talk with the artist; based in Northern California, he is from a Russian Jewish immigrant family and, aside from being a painter of great skill and passion, is a devotee and sometime guardian of Arctic wolves. A world traveler, he has devoted considerable time to the study of Central and South American culture, lore and ecology, and has received shamanic training in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

The results, as you might expect, are paintings of great depth and humanity. This artist thinks of his work in much the same way I would like to think of my writing: each painting is a personal foray into the depths of consciousness and the heart of the human psyche--a journey on which he asks his viewer to accompany him. Archetypes abound as powerful images in the work--wolf, bird (light or dark, dove or crow), boat, river, man and woman, sun and moon--with associations that speak with deep resonance to some ancient place in the soul of each of us...

(I apologize to the artist for not having images that more faithfully represent his work. What I have are simply the snapshots I took to serve me as aides-memoires.) This one records his response to the death of his father...

Surfaces, dense with material in places, are worked and reworked, revealing as many layers as an archeological dig and requiring the eye to pursue the artist's arduous journey in the creation of the painting.

Scratch the surface of any of the religions our species has created, from Judaism to Tibetan Buddhism and the rites of the South American shaman, and you'll find a common need to account for the great mysteries of living and dying and to provide solace in the face of suffering and loss. It's in this area that Feldsott works: confronted by his paintings, we are invited to encounter the darkness and the ecstasy of our own inner life.

So yes, it's worth pausing once in a while along the way at events of this kind. There is always much to be seen and much to be learned, if one simply pays attention.

I Interrupt Myself...

... briefly, to celebrate this gracious visit from a hawk, outside my office window.

The picture is taken from my desk. What a treat!

Costa Rica/Panama, Part III

Wednesday, January 12

We woke after cruising during the night to find ourselves anchored off the tiny Granito de Ora island in the Coiba National Park in Panama. The island is basically just a chunk of rock...

... jutting out of the Pacific Ocean, with a mop of dense vegetation atop and a few smaller rocks clustered around it...

On one side, a small stretch of sand provides a sheltered beach...

A cozy desert island, in other words, and an ideal spot for our morning of gentle relaxation. Here's the Sea Lion, from the shore:

The Zodiaks shuttled us with our snorkeling equipment from the Sea Lion to the beach, where the staff and crew had already been busy before breakfast, off-loading kayaks, underwater cameras and other gear for our enjoyment...

Since we were still relatively early in the day, Ellie and I decided to do our kayaking before the midday heat and, this time, requested the singletons. Barely launched from the beach, I somehow managed to lose my balance and overturn the little craft completely, ending up upside down in the shallows. Once aware of what was happening, I worried for a few moments about the possibility of being trapped in this position; but I actually just slipped out and came quite easily to the surface. Had I not, there were plenty of willing rescuers on hand. We had a good laugh about the incident—particularly when I heard that this was a first. Apparently no one before me had ever managed this feat.

(Sorry, no pictures!)

Once righted, I joined Ellie in a paddle around the entire island—not a huge achievement, since the island is so small, but a quiet pleasure in these blue waters, with a clear view, even at some depth, to the ocean floor.

Safely beached again, we donned our snorkeling gear. (How did we manage to miss this photo-op?) Like Ellie, I have had difficulty with this paraphernalia in the past; perhaps our equipment was of a cheaper, less reliable variety. This time, with the application of a little Vaseline around the mustache, I managed to get a good seal with the mask, which made everything a whole lot easier. (We had been advised, too, when the gear was initially distributed, to smear the inside of the mask with toothpaste and leave it to dry; once immersed and cleaned off, the toothpaste left a film on the inside of the mask effectively kept the lens clear of fog and condensation. A useful tip.)

The wild marine garden below the surface was magical. We swam around the rocks, above the coral beds, amongst fish of all shapes and sizes, some with lovely, bright, iridescent colors, who seemed as incurious about us as we were curious about them. Some spotted a shark lurking in the depths, but I was not so fortunate. I did, though, see a moray eel snaking in and out among the seaweed. We found ourselves in a beautiful, silent, constantly shifting alien world where we humans seemed the clumsy intruders—as odd, in a way, as if we were suddenly flying with the birds. Again, no underwater pictures, I fear: we did have a waterproof camera bag, but were too much concerned with other things to be willing to risk it. A little more familiar with how it should be done, however, we are encouraged to repeat this wonderful experience in the future.

I have always loved beachcombing...

... collecting shells, a hobby that’s now as inappropriate as collecting birds’ eggs—another of my youthful sins, as a boy in the English countryside. After our swim...

... and with the understanding that nothing could be removed, we combed the beach...

... and found some lovely shapes and colors....

Nothing very complete, to my astonishment. Mostly fragments. We made a collection of them...

... knowing that the tide would soon restore them to a more natural location. I suppose there must still be places in the world where perfect seashells are to be found. Here, those that remained intact, the small ones, were mostly occupied by the hundreds of hermit crabs scurrying everywhere along the shoreline.

Late morning, the Zodiaks arrived to take us back on board...

... where, after lunch, we enjoyed a slide lecture by Patty Hostiuck on butterflies and moths. Her talk was packed with fascinating, often surprising information; and once again, we were amazed at the complexity and refinement of the natural world, its innate intelligence, and the extraordinary perfection of its relationships.

After enjoying the luxury of a peaceful nap, we made our way to the ship’s prow, where we watched in more amazement as a quartet of dolphins sped through the water just inches ahead of us, rolling joyfully and leaping clear of the water to splash back down—as though to prove their agility so much superior to this human mode of marine transportation. A joy to watch. I’m afraid, again, that I did not manage to click my camera at the precise moment to catch the best of their leaps and rolls, but here they are...

At dinner, we shared a table with Gustavo, our expedition leader, and enjoyed his passionate discussion of Costa Rican history and politics. Less fortunately, the conversation degenerated into a discussion of our own, sad political state. We had heard by now, through the daily New York Times abstract available in the ship’s lounge, of the deplorable event in Tuscon, Arizona, with the gunning down of a US Congresswoman. Our progress toward a just and peaceful world is all too slow, and our country does not provide the leadership and example that it might.

Thursday, January 13

We had been warned. The Sea Lion’s captain took a moment a dinner time to announce that we would be traveling a good distance, all night, in fact, toward the Panama Canal; and that we would be passing, along the way, the Punta Mala—the “bad point,” where waters could be rough. And indeed, there were moments when the pitch and roll was quite dramatic. I do not suffer from motion sickness, but I did feel more than a little queasy at times during the night.

We were still sailing when we awoke, and came to anchor only at breakfast time, off the Otoque and Bona Islands in the Gulf of Panama. This is an area, our daily information sheet tells us, where “a break in the mountain chains that parallel the western coastline of several Central American countries allow the trade winds to blow over the Gulf, pushing surface waters away. Nutrient-rich waters from below upwell to replace these, bringing about an extremely high productivity that forms the basis of a complex web of life.” This last stop in the Pacific, then, was to allow us the opportunity to take a final Zodiak ride around one of the islands and enjoy the spectacle of some of the millions of seabirds who take advantage of this ecological wealth.

We joined the first of two expeditions, speeding across the gulf...

... to the remote island home of many of these birds...

The rocky coastline was an amazing sight...

The cliffs were crowded everywhere, mostly with Pelicans, Blue-Footed Boobies...

... and soaring Magnificent Frigatebirds—so named for the M marking on their plumage. We had arrived, it seemed, at the beginning of the nesting season, and already the white, fluffy hatchlings of the boobies were clearly visible...

... their parents perched close by in attendance. Again, our naturalist guides proved a well of information; and again, I have already forgotten much of what I learned. What stays with me are the majestic images, the moving experience of being with so many living creatures in their wild habitat. It is comforting to know that such places continue to exist in a world where human beings have so wantonly co-opted much of nature’s wealth.

Of which we were soon to be reminded, sailing on toward the Canal and finding ourselves a now tiny vessel amidst an international armada of massive cargo ships...

... all waiting at anchor for their turn to make the transit to the Caribbean. Beyond them, in the far distance, a view of Panama City with its (to us) surprising skyline of towering skyscrapers...

... many of them still under construction. Our own passage had been booked, so there was little waiting to be done. Approaching the entrance to the canal, we were boarded by the pilot...

... who would see us through the locks, and by a crew of blue-shirted line handlers...

... whose job it is to work with their counterparts onshore...

... to secure the towlines to the powerful locomotives...

... that move the traffic from their rails along the docks. A rowboat...

... ridiculously tiny and primitive beneath the hulking cargo ships, is used to assure the connection of lines thrown out between ship and shore; even an outboard motor, we were told, would risk tangling lines. All this was narrated, along the way, by Christian, a Panamanian, proud of his heritage, who had been one of our guides during the cruise.

Oh, here's Ellie, windswept, margarita in hand, as we approach the Bridge of the Americas:

Darkness had fallen by the time we began the eastward transit...

... upward through the Miraflores and the Pedro Miguel locks and through the Culebra Cut to the man-made Lake Gatun, which separates the rising from the falling set of locks; and we all stood out on the decks, transfixed by the process—and by the engineering feat that made it possible. (We had watched, in the lounge with Christian, the David McCullough Nova episode on the amazing history of the canal, from its disastrous beginning in the hands of the French to its triumphant completion by American engineers—all at the cost of hundreds of human lives.) The canal is certainly one of the great engineering achievements of the human species. It is an awesome experience, to watch the “Panamax” ships—designed to just squeeze through the locks—being lifted by the rising water level between the massive concrete walls; but, all in all, I’d rather be in the rain forest.

Once through the locks, the Sea Lion set sail once again across Lake Gatun in the direction of the penultimate mooring place of our cruise... Still more to come.