Friends?

I had a strange experience this afternoon. Well, I had a strange experience this morning, too.

The day started out unusually cold, by Southern California standards. When I let George out for his morning pee, my cell phone weather app told me that it we 37 degrees. It was still cold, shortly before 9 AM, when I made my way to our Sunday morning sitting group. Our custom is to sit for an hour of silent meditation, and then to talk for another hour about some aspect of the dharma. An hour's sit is usually not a huge challenge for me, but on this occasion, for the first time ever, I had to get up and leave after forty minutes.

I have had difficult moments in the past, when the hour has seemed interminably long, or when I have been seized with sudden physical discomforts like a dreadful pain in the legs or inexplicable heating-up or cooling of the body temperature; but I have always been able to breathe my way through the discomfort and survive the hour. On this day, though, I was overcome by a feeling of dizziness and nausea, along with a body chill that would not go away, no matter how much I tried to ignore the sensations and hold my attention on the breath. Worse, it all turned into a downward spiral bordering on panic.

I opened my eyes and tried, instead, to focus my attention on the pattern of the carpet. I put my head down between my knees in the attempt to counter the dizziness, without success. Minutes went by with excruciating slowness. After five or ten, it still felt as though, if I closed my eyes again, I would keel over and end up on the floor. I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and--as I say, for the first time ever--got up and made my way as quietly as possible to the door. I found a chair outside, and by now the sun was beginning to feel warm, so I spent the remainder of the hour there, to be joined, before the end of the sit, by a worried Ellie who had sensed my unusual departure. Once home, hydration helped; as did, a short while later, a bite to eat.

So... I survived. The other strange experience for the day was a far more pleasant one. By early afternoon we were enjoying warm sunlight on the back patio and I went out to indulge in my once weekly vice--a Sunday afternoon cigar. (So sue me. I defer to our Native American friends, who have long honored tobacco as a sacred healing substance. That's my excuse, anyway.) There I am, then, sitting with my Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle (the hardest of the week; I save it for Sunday afternoon) when I hear the distinctive sound of a hummingbird close by. This was not too unusual in itself, because the hummers like the plants on our patio and come visiting quite often.

What was unusual, though, was that after darting away, this one returned just a few moments later. And again. And again. The bird kept coming back, quite close, a bit closer each time, clearly examining me, as if he (she?) wanted to make friends. I was touched. I told him, quietly, that he was welcome, that I would be honored by his friendship if he cared to stay. But I guess it's in the nature of the hummer to keep darting hither and yon, and our friendship was necessarily a brief and peripatetic one.

I was surprised, of course, by the bird's evident interest in me. I wondered whether it might be the delicious smell of my cigar--though, second thoughts, probably not! And then, more likely, whether it could be the bright red baseball cap my daughter brought me, with the Welsh dragon on the front, as a gift from her visit to the village in Wales where I spent many summer months in my childhood, and where my parents spent their retirement years. Or maybe, as I would like to believe, he just wanted to be friends...

Visiting John Lennon

Having experienced sleep-depriving pain the previous night, I decided yesterday to fill that pain-killer prescription the doctor gave me last week, but which I had postponed taking to the pharmacy. I'm not keen on taking medications, particularly pain-killers, but it seemed like a good idea to give it a try as an alternative to a second wakeful night of pain. I took one pill during the day--more out of curiosity, I have to say, than absolute necessity--and ended up feeling a little bit woozy. And a little bit sleepy. And a little bit high.

So I took another before going to bed and was rewarded with particularly vivid dreams, of which I remember something of two, separate, one late night and one early morning. Both were about dead people.

In the late night dream I went to visit John Lennon. He was living in a mansion surrounded by a vast sunlit estate and greeted me cordially, if somewhat dreamily, in loose-fitting shirt and pants. He was wearing those familiar glasses with round lenses. I can't remember the purpose of my visit, nor what we talked about, but it was pleasant to spend time with John Lennon. After a while he had to leave, for some unstated reason, but before he did so he gave me a gold CD on which he had written my name, Peter.

I wandered out into the garden and was challenged by a young man who was chatting with someone by the entry. I thought he was perhaps a kind of plain clothes security man. He gave me a hard, unfriendly stare and asked: "What are you doing here?" Then he seemed to know without my answering and allowed me to proceed. The garden, it turned out, was a vast, flat, formally landscaped affair with few plants but many statues, pathways, and pebbled areas. The visitors were sparse, and seemingly silent, figures in a landscape... I remember nothing more.

Waking from this dream--and after a visit to the bathroom--I lay in bed wondering if the dream could be some kind of premonition--long-view, I hope!--of an afterlife, a vision of heaven, or nirvana. It was certainly peaceful, serene. Was that St. Peter who challenged me?

The second dream was more bizarre. A once-close friend, now dead for several years, came down to visit from up north with a friend of his. There's little I remember about his visit, except that (Ellie being absent from this dream) we slept in the same bed. In the morning--sensitive readers, close your eyes! This was a dismaying vivid part!--he casually masturbated before getting up and heading for the bathroom. I lay in bed for a while wondering when my turn was going to come, but it never did. Honest!

Then it became a question of whether to have breakfast or brunch. We took a tube train to wherever we were going and I had a rollie suitcase, as did several other people on the train. I nearly walked off with the wrong one. Then we were in a parking lot where there were white cars bumping into each other... and the dream fell apart.

I can't help but feel that it was somehow significant that the two main characters in my dreams were both dead. Clearly, I'd say, there was some projection going on. And I wonder what that pain-killer had to do with everything. The "afterlife" in the two dreams was certainly very different--a formal landscape and a parking lot with white cars colliding! Just thought I'd write them down before they got forgotten...

Have a great weekend, everyone.

PROTEST, ANYONE?

(I was well into writing this entry when I stumbled on a notice of the Rally to Restore the American Dream at Daily Kos. It's a good start for what I'm talking about, but only a start. And how does it happen that I only just discovered it? I try to keep my eyes and ears open... It's far too late in coming to the attention that is needed.)

So, yes...

We need to hit the streets, in massive numbers, everywhere, throughout the country. Not just on one day, soon forgotten about and dismissed by those in power. We need a determined and sustained effort to make our voices heard.

We now have superlatively brave examples in the least likely places, from Cairo to Tripoli, to Madison, Wisconsin. Yet we continue to sit down passively under the onslaught of mindless, nation-destroying right-wing rhetoric.

There is no need for this, no reason for it. I believe that "we" are more than "they." They are just louder, more ruthless, more domineering.

We are a compassionate nation. We care about those less fortunate than ourselves, and we are prepared to sacrifice in order that they have a better chance at equality--not to mention the basic protections they deserve against poverty, disease and hunger.

We expect no less a sacrifice from the very fortunate, the very wealthy individuals, whose numbers and wealth continue to grow in defiance of all need and reason. We expect those individuals to share proportionately in the common sacrifice. We expect the same of corporations now posting unprecedented profits: they should be shouldering their share of the burden. Too many of them have fed shamelessly at the public trough and still manage to avoid taxes altogether.

We complain about the weakness and inefficacy of the Democrats we elect to represent us, too easily forgetting that they need more than just our vote. They need our continuing support and our reminders. They need to know that they can count on us to back them up. They also need to know we'll keep them honest when they show signs of selling out.

The initiative I mentioned earlier is unfortunately nowhere near achieving national groundswell in the United States. My guess is that few people beyond the more vocal activists have even heard of it, and it's scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday, February 26. Even if it manages to draw large crowds, as I would hope, I'm afraid that it will simply come and go, like the Jon Stewart Rally to Restore Sanity.

My wish is for organizations like Daily Kos to join with MoveOn, ActBlue, Democracy For America and others, and with bloggers and social activists nationwide to spearhead a sustained, unyielding campaign of protest marches against shamefully unfair budget cuts and deficit-exploding tax evasion. Perhaps this is their intention. I hope so. I commit to joining in any march or demonstration within reasonable travel distance.

We need to make it clear that we refuse to worship at the delusional altar of "deficit reduction" without appropriate tax increases, and demand that politicians work to reinstate the concept of tax payment as a privilege, not a punishment. We need to make it clear that we are not ready to sacrifice vital services like education, health care and public safety at the feet of the demonstrably false idol of "spending cuts."

It's time to hit the streets. Time for us to be heard.

Woe Is Me

Do you ever wake up with the feeling that you've been working like mad all night but have no idea what you've been working at? This happened to me last night. I think it might have had partly to do with that bum knee. For exercise this week, I have avoided walking, as per the doctor's orders, and using instead the prone-position bicycle at the gym. Last night, since we had theater tickets, we parked in downtown Laguna Beach and walked about three blocks to the restaurant where we had booked dinner, then five of six blocks to the theater, and a couple more back to the car. Then I woke several times during the night with shooting pains in the knee and had a hard job finding a comfortable place to get back to sleep. (I blame George, in part, for this. He insisted in sleeping right down in the place where I extend my foot, and refused to budge despite several hearty kicks. George sleeps just fine.)

I think this blog is another contributor to those hard-working nights. My head starts to write before it even hits the pillow and persists in thinking/writing while I'm trying to get to sleep. That is, it keeps trying to line up the words just right, then going back over them in a kind of rehearsal, to be sure they'll be remembered exactly when I wake. My theory is that it keeps working away at the same stuff while I'm sleeping. But then, when I wake... nothing. It's all gone anyway, and I have to start afresh.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? It has taken me years to build to the kind of daily writing practice that is, pretty much, my life today, and I'm grateful for it. I have perhaps been a bit too successful, though, because I'm clearly finding it hard to hit the "off" switch. The past few days, it has been the same with meditation. Than Geoff's familiar advice resounds in my head: Not now. But my head has either not been getting the message or choosing to ignore it. I sit and make up words. I write...

This morning I have decided to reverse my usual process: write first, then meditate. This is it, the writing part. I'll report back on the results. In the meantime, metta to all. Here goes.

Little Princes

I have been promising an antidote to the bleak view I have been taking of my adopted country in my past few political entries. Here it is, today, in the form of a book review.

The book is called Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal, by Conor Grennan. Lest you fear, as I did when I first scanned the title page, that this might be just another chronicle of do-good activity in a distant part of the world, let me assure you that it's also an extraordinarily compelling human drama, leading up to a sometimes nightmarish "journey into the interior," in a landscape forbidding enough to put body and soul to the ultimate test.

But first, the context. As a very young man, freshly graduated from the University of Virginia, Conor embarks on a world trek, part as a challenge to himself, part with the vague intention of making a useful contribution to those less fortunate than he. Along the way, in a rather self-conscious gesture of goodwill, he volunteers to work for a spell at "Little Princes," a children's shelter near Kathmandu--and falls, unexpectedly, under their spell. What was initially not much more than a desire to impress his friends and family back home turns into a full-blown obsession once he falls in love with these rambunctious kids and learns something of their predicament.

They are the children of war, torn away from their families in the remotest of villages in the Himalayan foothills by men--there is one particular villain in this piece--who extort the last pennies from parents gullible enough to believe their children will have a better future if they let them go. Instead, once in the hands of their abductors, the children are treated cruelly, starved and beaten in filthy, overcrowded homes, and sold into servitude--or worse. Only a lucky few are rescued by a pitifully small and underfunded Nepali organization and a handful of dedicated and compassionate foreigners, whose number Conor joins.

The children are, properly, at the center of this story. They are a diverse bunch, all undeservedly wounded in varying degrees, all survivors, each in their own way, a maelstrom of energy and mischievous activity whose sheer, naked humanity captivates Conor and compels his commitment to them. It becomes his mission in life to do what he can to protect them, provide them with food and shelter and a rudimentary education--and eventually to attempt to reunite them with their families.

That's the bare bones. The meat is in the love. Initially as self-absorbed as the average young person in the privileged Western world, Conor finds himself confronted with real hardship, widespread suffering, deprivation and violence in a country torn apart by civil war, where hard-line Maoist rebels fight implacably against a feudal monarchy and where the vast majority of people are caught up innocently in the chaos, whether in tiny rural communities or the teeming back alleys of the capital--all evoked in sharp relief in Conor's narrative. In this flight-or-fight situation, he chooses to stay, and the story he tells becomes also, but unobtrusively, about his personal change and growth. Observing, and having to struggle at first hand with human suffering, this young American becomes himself more human, more fully compassionate, more concerned with the happiness of others than his own.

His story is also about the power of family love. The final, harrowing journey I mentioned above, into the hinterland of Nepal, is Conor's search for the parents of the children he has been caring for, with the intention of reuniting them--or at least re-connecting them with the reassurance that they are safe. These encounters in tiny mountainside villages are among the most touching scenes in the book. The author never loses respect for these hardscrabble people, so far from his own cultural background; and he never condescends. When I say the journey is a harrowing one, I think back to the old meaning of that word, the harrowing of the soul--because it involves excruciating pain and daunting physical impediments, described in such riveting detail that we, the readers, feel that we are living through it with the author. That we also experience the towering beauty of the natural environment is sometimes small compensation. But the greater compensation by far is the joy--both for the parents and the children--in reconnecting. Conor shows us that the love of the human family transcends the boundaries of time and place.

There is also, in his book, a love story of his own--as touching, in its peculiarity as the story of the children and their families. It slips in from the side, unexpectedly, and takes a while to blossom; we sense that it is a natural offshoot from Conor's development from that relatively careless youth to a man of substance and compassion, an opening-up to love that might not have been possible for him earlier in the book.

I think I can guarantee you a good deal of joy and laughter as you read this book, and more than a few tears--not the sentimental, tear-jerky kind of tears, but the kind that well up from full and genuine emotion. You will surely share Conor's love for the kids he comes to know, and his concern for their future. I hope you might want to find out more about them and, perhaps, to help them. It takes only a click of the mouse to visit Conor Grennan's Next Generation Nepal foundation, and another to buy a copy of his book or make a contribution--as I plan to do.

Hope & Joy

I was intending to write, this morning, about a book that I've been reading about the trafficking of exploited children in Nepal. Sounds grim? Yes, but it's also a book that tells us a lot about the better angels of America. But I haven't yet finished my read, so it will have to wait until another day.

Meantime, though, on the same topic... I watched the Chris Matthews MSNBC News special President of the World: The Bill Clinton Phenomenon, with a feeling of some dread, largely because of its hyperventilating title which, to me at least, evoked the image of the "Ugly American" striding the world with the arrogant assumption of knowing what's best for other countries, other peoples. Instead, especially in view of the gloom I have be spreading in my past few posts, I was pleased to be watching something that was really rather inspiring. The program explored the multiple ways in which the former President is using his energy, his fund-raising ability and his irresistible personal charisma to spread goodwill and compassion in the world.

In contrast to the anger and animosity that dominate our current political scene, the prevailing mood that Bill Clinton projects is joy--and the joy is evidently infectious. Wherever he goes, he seems surrounded by joyous crowds, no matter the often desperate conditions of their lives, singing and dancing and jostling to touch him. He brings, as much as anything, hope. And it's clear that he inspires the same in the wealthy of this world, who flock to his conferences, generously support his causes, and feel better about themselves as a result.

It's Clinton's enthusiasm and generosity of heart that represents the best of America, and the mean spirit and small-mindedness of those who tried to drag him down that represents the worst. We do not know much, of course, about the life and work of those former Presidents who choose to withdraw from the glare of public life; but it's hard not to make the comparison between Clinton and his quieter, perhaps more modest fellow-Democrat, Jimmy Carter, and the two Bushes. The latter two, I know, have stepped forward in emergencies, but so far as I'm aware are not involved in the kind of continuing, daily, dedicated activity of Clinton and Carter to bring about change for the better in our world.

And I can't resist the opportunity to observe the similarities between Clinton and our current President. Both rode into office on a great wave of hope: remember "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow" and the ecstasy of the Clinton inauguration? Yet Republicans sought to destroy him, as they are now attempting to destroy Obama, through insult, deliberate lies and personal attack. Clinton was literally and irrationally hated, as Obama is widely, irrationally hated today. Both took a "shellacking" in the mid-term elections during their first term. And both were constrained to move to the center, to the dismay and outrage--remember this?--of those who had placed so much hope in them for an about-turn in American politics.

Hope, it seems to me, is all about ourselves. We merely project it onto others, expect them to fulfill it for us, and get upset with them when they fail to live up to our projections. It's up to us, if we indulge in the luxury of hope, to do the work necessary to fulfill it for ourselves. If we can trust the Chris Matthews special to provide an accurate picture of Bill Clinton--and I'm inclined to believe, despite the title, that we can--he offers us the example of a man who's doing just that. Which is, to repeat myself, inspiring.

The Question

Here's the question for the day. Why are we so ineffectual, and they so effective? By "we" I mean, of course, those of us leaning toward the left, or even far out on the left wing--which is where my political instincts take me. By "they" I mean those people I was talking about yesterday, the ones who appear to run our lives.

The answer I come up with is this: they have been winning out simply because they are ruthless, like those autocrats in the Mideast. They are hard, ungiving, unresponsive. Monolithic in their thinking, they act out of an unquestioning sense of rectitude. Their minds are closed. Think Reagan. We, on the other hand, are by nature open, ready to listen, prepared to concede the possibility of error. Pluralistic. Self-questioning. Think Carter.

(George Lakoff says all this more eloquently and persuasively, perhaps, though differently than I do; he "frames" their strategy as paternalism.)

Am I flattering "us"? Maybe. Am I tarring "them" all with the same brush? Quite possibly. But it's a genuine puzzlement for me, and the source of infinite frustration. There are hard-liners on the left, too, I know--those who insist that we should never compromise on principles. But one of those principles is the democratic one, that each of us has a right to an opinion, a right to voice it, and a right to vote. We are opposed to tyranny, whatever form it takes---including, then, presumably, our own. We argue endlessly amongst ourselves. We do not coalesce into the kind of solid--and hence powerful--block that gives the other side their strength.

Take Obama. I know there are many who disagree with me on this, but I believe we do ourselves a disservice in castigating his every departure from the hard lines we believe he should be taking. We feel free to attack him publicly when he takes the time to listen. We accuse him of weakness and complicity when he makes a concession or a compromise. We fault his "leadership," but are unwilling to follow. We provide no firm ground for him to stand on. Contrast this with the other side, with "them." How many Republicans were ready to stand up and criticize George W. Bush in public, no matter how egregious the errors of his judgment, no matter matter how glaring and costly the mistakes? Consider his ill-considered tax cuts, his rash wars that remained, contrary to all conservative fiscal wisdom, unpaid for. He was subject to criticism, often severe, from our side, yes. But from his own? Scarcely a murmur.

Some will consider this a retreat from what I was saying yesterday, but I say, No. My own Buddhist principles urge me to opt for the "Middle Way"--the way that Obama urges with remarkable consistency and patience, and to his cost. I look around me in the political world and see mostly those who reject this as the way of weakness and inefficacy. I wonder how differently things would look if "we" were to rally unanimously to the President's support? If all the "we's" were to step forward, stand up, suspend our differences, and form that solid block for him to stand on. But that is contrary to our nature. We, on our side, are born to question, argue, quibble, doubt. All of which is great--except when it comes to effective political action, where bullying and certitude win.

Which leaves me with another Buddhist speculation: At what point does karma catch up with those who have grabbed on to the reins of global power and their misguided policies? At what point will the delusion they have fostered in our country meet up with the consequences that will inevitably result?

Tomorrow... good news! I have found something rosier to talk about!

Stand Up

Sorry, friends. It's my bleeding heart. Today, another jeremiad... There are times one has to say what's on one's mind.

Do you think there are enough among us willing to stand up, like those good people in Wisconsin, in the face of bully conservatism? I mean, enough to make a difference? Can America be saved? I really think it’s time to ask that question.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Hillary Clinton was right. She was widely mocked when she raised the specter, in 1998, of a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” but subsequent events and trends have only confirmed her suspicions. What we boast to the world as our “democracy” has been appropriated by the avatars of power and money. It is now being used exclusively to their advantage, and at the cost of the people of this country.

Okay, so call me a conspiracy theorist. I have always distrusted people who hide behind the accusatory “they,” but I’m going to use it because I am convinced that this “they” does in fact exist. They inhabit the boardrooms, the penthouse apartments and the country estates where excessive wealth prospers and multiplies with virtually no hindrance. They have disposed of everything that could once have regulated their insatiable appetites. They gobble up power wherever it exists like gourmands at the table, leaving none for others. They are the American oligarchs, unrecognized as such because they wear the camouflage of respectable conservatism, hiding in plain sight without fear of discovery.

The most effective weapon of this cabal is fear, and they have used it to suborn every institution and value. They have persuaded vast numbers of people that up is down and down is up, that right is wrong and wrong is right. They have bought our politicians and dictated our politics. They have co-opted those in political power to assure a “permanent majority” favorable to their purposes, in part by gerrymandering congressional districts, in part through the use of promotional and advertising dollars to disseminate half-truths and lies. The electoral system—indeed, the electorate itself—has become theirs to manipulate at will. Their efforts have created a Republican “base” that can be relied on to think, vote, act—and of course, consume—in accordance with their wishes. And their representatives engage in open-handed lobbying, exchanging munificence for votes.

They have succeeded in suborning the judicial system. The Supreme Court of the United States is now in their pocket, for possibly decades to come. It was their Supreme Court that assured the election of their minion, George W. Bush, in the 2000 election; it was their Supreme Court, in Citizens United, that further empowered them to manipulate elections with their money. It is to the Supreme Court they will appeal to overturn the hard-won health care bill that entitles a further 30 million less privileged Americans to access to affordable medical attention; and as I see it, given the Court’s track record of partisan decisions, there is a chance they will succeed.

They have undermined the power of the presidency. The people-oriented Carter was replaced by the business-oriented Reagan, whose powerful kitchen cabinet of business executives took advantage of his malleability to promote their own agenda of corporate advancement, along with the disempowerment of working Americans—and particularly the unions. When Clinton succeeded in becoming too successful and too popular they set out to destroy him, even though he had embraced a centrist agenda that alarmed his supporters to the left. Failing to achieve their purpose ideologically, they made it personal, resorting to a specious impeachment process to discredit him and weaken his political standing. Now, lacking any rational or personally scandalous basis on which to attack the elected President, they spread lies about Obama’s very identity and his religious affiliation—and with apparent success in some quarters: a recent poll shows that, contrary to all factual evidence, over 50 percent of Republicans believe the President to be a Muslim, and that he was not born in the United States. In this way, they seek to undermine the very legitimacy of the current presidency.

Clearly, they could not do this without the cooperation of the media. One of their more successful strategies has been to paint the media as “liberal,” even while assuring its steady movement, over thirty years, to the right. Even the “mainstream” media today, perhaps for fear of being denounced as biased, is constrained to give “equal time” to the most absurd and extreme of radical conservative views, as though their arguments had equal standing. And the extreme right wing media and talk radio hosts are given free rein to promote the lies and distortions that serve to misinform and inflame their public.

Worse, perhaps, than all this, because it runs so deep, has been the subtle co-option and reversal of those values that truly made this country “great”: a sense of fairness, justice, opportunity for all; a willingness to lend a hand to those in need or trouble; a respect for community and shared responsibility; a long, sometimes difficult struggle to assure equal rights for all its citizens. Success, these days, is too often a matter of ruthless competitiveness; it is judged by the pile of money a person can amass.

The clamor in Wisconsin, as I see it, is a revolt against all of this. It’s a plea for common cause, for respect and recognition for those who serve the greater community, a sense of mutual responsibility for the well-being and proper functioning of the social system in order to ensure that it works for all and not just for the favored few. I admire these people for their determination to stand up against the mindless march of radical conservatism.

Anyone with half a brain and the ounce of good sense needed to apply it must know that the nation’s financial woes will not be solved by window-dressing budget cuts aimed at those who can least afford it. Nor by slicing away at vital necessities like education, justice and other public services, or international relations. This is the time, as Obama says, for an adult conversation about who we are and where we’re going. It has to be one in which people on all sides of the table are prepared to make significant sacrifices. Civil servants will certainly be among them. But it is absurd to declare in advance, as Republicans persist in doing, that spending cuts alone will be sufficient. Railing against taxes may appeal to popular sentiment, but it is not responsible argument. Unless thoughtful consideration of the revenue side of the equation becomes part of the discussion, we will get nowhere.

So how many of us are prepared to stand up to the would-be oligarchs and the right-wing bullies who are their willing, if unwitting tools? Are we ready to follow the example of Wisconsin, if necessary—and those brave protesters in the Mideast!—and take to the streets to demand the conversation that we need? I think of the missed opportunity of the Jon Stewart “Rally for Sanity” with regret. There, people did show up, in massive numbers. That we stood up and were—literally!—not counted, at least not accurately by the media, serves only to show us how much work is to be done. That we stood up and were fobbed off with a glib distortion of the reasons for which the vast majority of us came was even sadder. We came—I came—to show my anger and frustration at the continued domination of our political system by the wealthy few, and by the suppression of the voices of genuine humanitarian concern.

We have been meek and passive for too long. I say, with the Boss, Rise Up! Our city is in ruins…

True Story...

Well, yesterday we decided to go to the movies. There are still a couple on our list, and we had heard good things about "The Fighter." We discovered that the most convenient location was up in Pasadena. But first...

We wanted to visit our friend Jayme Odgers who, as you'll remember, has been though a nasty health crisis, so we stopped by to see him at the hospital in East Los Angeles and were greatly relieved to find him in good spirits and looking a great deal better than we had feared. And with a hair-raising story of his own to tell. No details here. Enough to say that after a roller coaster months-long odyssey of misdiagnoses and agonizing worries, the doctors finally hit upon a cause for our friend's problems that turned out to be relatively easily addressed with medication. Once administered, the appropriate drug produced almost immediate results and accompanying relief. I'm sure you all have your own stories about the limits of medical knowledge, and the sometimes egregious blunders of its practitioners. This one was amazing--and would have been quite comical... had it not put our friends's life literally at risk.

With gladdened hearts, then, we headed out into the rain and up the old Pasadena Freeway from downtown, arriving in time for a cup of coffee before the movie. We were looking forward to sitting back and enjoying a couple of hours' entertainment...

So we show up at the theater. We are puzzled to find something rather different from the functional ticket sales office we remember from our last visit to this same place. Low lights, carpets, drapes, occasional furniture... A crowd of young people standing around and chatting, as though at a party. We worked our way through the crowd to a long, low, well-appointed desk with three or four young women in attendance. "Oh," we said, "we must have come to the wrong place. We were looking for the movie."

"No, no, this is the right place," said one of the young women. "Which movie did you want to see?"

I told her. "Two seniors, please." I had my twenty ready, anticipating six or eight in change.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "We only have two prices. It's twenty dollars a person, twenty-nine at the weekend."

"What?" I was aghast.

"We're a dinner club theater," she explained patiently. (I may be wrong in remembering the exact name she gave it.) "You can sit comfortably and order your meal and a glass of wine, which will be brought to you any time you want them." She pointed to the menu lying open in from of her. Everything from shrimp cocktail to prime rib--at eye-popping prices.

"That's... in addition to the movie tickets?" Ellie asked, just to be sure.

"Oh, yes." The young woman looked at us as though it were we who were crazy.

We declined. Missed the movie. Went instead to the Italian restaurant next door.

Have you ever heard of such a thing? It gives new meaning to "dinner and a movie." And, for us at least, a not terribly attractive new meaning. I'm not keen on watching a movie while the waiters move in and out with trays of food and drinks and my fellow-movie goers clink their glasses. Was a time, in my own living memory--remember?--when every seat in movie theaters had an ashtray for the convenience of smokers. That was bad enough. But this is ridiculous. This was a whole new "what's the world coming to?" moment.

Or maybe you disagree?

Wisconsin Rises

First, this is about the saddest must-read that I ever read. Thanks to my friend Michael for having brought it to my attention. Things have to change. We hear the voices of those clamoring for democracy on the streets of the Mideast and we admire their courage. We overlook the real imperative that we should be out on the streets ourselves, with peaceful demands to save the tatters of our own democracy.

Is it not ironic that--at least until the past couple of days--those who have been getting noisy on the streets, believing that they are clamoring for the restoration of the American middle and working classes, have become instead unwitting tools in the hands of profiteering interests who cynically promote their exploitation? Is it not ironic that those who loudly claim, in Congress, to speak in the name of "the people" are acting, instead, for the benefit of those same profiteers? What in the name of sanity has happened to our sense of the common good? What, in this "Christian" country, has happened to those supposedly Christian values of mercy, love of one's neighbor, compassion...?

But now there's Wisconsin. I have been watching news reports from that state, where those whose pocketbooks have been targeted to ante up for the deficit, state workers, are finally in full revolt. Their new Republican governor, having doled out huge tax benefits to business, is now trying to essentially dun the middle class to pay for his munificence. The handful of remaining Democrats in the Wisconsin government have fled to other states, to deprive their Republican opponents of the quorum they need for passage of the proposed union-busting measure to deprive state workers of bargaining rights. And those affected have been out on the streets in masses for the past three days, in a peaceful protest that emulates the events in Egypt and elsewhere in the Mideast. Amazing that we are now beginning to take lessons from countries long dominated by autocracy, in a fledgling attempt to undermine the oligarchy at home.

I have no idea who or where "Mark" is--the writer of the letter to which I link, above. It may be that, as he suggests, he is no longer with us. His cri de coeur should, by rights, be required daily reading for every Congressman and Senator, as well as for every American voter; it should also be a spark equivalent to the one that set the unemployed Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi on fire in an act of self-immolation, and led to the turmoil we see today throughout the Mideast as the underprivileged rise to demand their rights and dignity as human beings.

If we want to see democracy take root throughout the world, we should first see to it that it works "for the people" here at home. Complacency ill becomes us.

Another Plight

It pains me to have to add yet another name to the list of good people whose sickness and suffering I include in my daily meditation practice. This time I discover that a friend has prostate cancer. Anonymous, of course; I would not wish to be betraying any confidences, but there is no reason in the world to think that any readers of these words might know this friend. And I think that, from an entirely transpersonal view, his story raises an important and rather agonizing dilemma that we all might need to think about one day. I spoke to him yesterday on the telephone and heard about his struggle for the first time.

Here's what I heard: my friend was diagnosed a number of years ago on the basis of a high PSA count, and advised to submit to a biopsy. He did not like the doctor, nor did he trust him. He distrusts doctors and Western medicine generally, but he distrusted and disliked this one particularly because the doctor seemed careless, inattentive, and arrogant in his dismissal of the patient's concerns. And my friend had heard--rightly of wrongly, I don't know--that the interference of a biopsy tends to provoke the cancer into rushing to its own defense, increasing its energy and reinforcing its hold on the body. He refused the test.

My friend assured me that he has been what is casually called a "health nut" for years. He believes strongly in the body's power to restore itself to health, given the right diet and the right attention. After refusing the biopsy, he continued to take what he thought was good care of himself. But recently he started to feel that all was not well. He was suffering from a lack of energy, a general malaise. So he went back to the clinic where he had received his diagnosis, and was dismayed to be referred to the same doctor he disliked and distrusted in the first place.

After new tests, he learns that his PSA count is now alarmingly high. The doctor recommends once again what Western-trained doctors recommend when they find evidence of cancer: a biopsy, to be followed by chemotherapy and radiation--precisely the kind of things my friend most deeply mistrusts. He is now faced with a dire decision, and one that could clearly prove fatal, between what the (mistrusted) medical profession tells him and his own deeply rooted convictions. He says he is not afraid of dying, but he does seem torn. There are few of us who would consciously choose death when the extension life--at a relatively young age--is a viable alternative.

(This did not come up in our conversation, but I'm acutely aware that for many in this situation there is the added worry about the cost of treatment. I have, truthfully, no idea of this particular friend's situation on the health insurance front but I do know that, in this country, today, a disease like cancer can ravage a family's financial security as well as the patient's health. I do know, too, that the physical suffering of too many of our citizens is redoubled by the fear of financial devastation. This simply should not be.)

I myself am fortunate to be with a medical plan that has served our family well for years, and with a doctor who knows me and in whom I place my trust. Like my friend, I believe that Western medicine has its limitations--but then, fortunately, my doctor agrees with me on this point. He is open to discussion, and will think seriously about alternative treatments when asked. I believe, too, that hospital is the last place you want to be when you are sick, and am leery of the easy dispensation of drugs for whatever ails you. I lament the widespread practice of defensive medicine to protect doctors and hospitals from lawsuits; and, on the other hand, believe strongly in the kind of preventative medicine that is often overlooked in the obsession with "cure."

That said, I believe that if I were in my friend's place I would be inclined to follow the doctor's recommendation. Even acknowledging its limitations, Western medicine has proved and continues to prove itself remarkably effective in innumerable ways. It can perform what once would have been considered miracles. I hope, of course, that I will never have to face the kind of choice my friend now has to face, but I would be blind not to recognize that this could very easily happen. Considering the plight of all those friends to whom I send wishes for happiness and good health in my metta practice every morning, I count myself fortunate to have nothing worse to complain about than a sore knee and a touch of vertigo.

The broader dilemma I describe, between medical intervention and letting our human frailties run their course is one we are increasingly likely to have to face as we grow older. Indeed, these days, as death approaches and with an array of medical options for artificially prolonging life, it is virtually inevitable--whether I am able to make choices for myself, or my family have to make them for me. In the latter case, a living will and advance health care directive seem the only sensible course to take. That these legal instruments should have sparked the absurd "death panel" debate in the discussion of a national health care system is an unhappy indication of the apparently willful ignorance rampant in our society.

But I have begun to stray far off course. My original purpose, to which I should now return, was the simple expression of compassion for all those struggling with illness in all its multifarious forms. May they be restored to health and happiness.

From Amsterdam...

Here's a moving story from Amsterdam. This blog is a heart-rending reminder of "how fragile we are," as the Sting song has it. I'm including a link in my blogroll, so that I'll remember to check in with Rose and her family once in a while. In the meantime, I hope you'll join me in sending metta out to them.

AND FROM FLORIDA... as if we needed yet another remind of our vulnerability, news of the death of the Dalai Lama's nephew, hit by a car as he participated in a "Walk for Tibet."

Jayme Odgers

I am posting one of my gallery rounds entries later today (SEE BELOW). First, however, this important message...

I was writing only yesterday about my small aches and gripes. Now I feel more than a bit ashamed for having brought such trivia up at all. The same day, I heard for the first time that my friend Jayme Odgers suffered a stroke last month, which has affected his ability to swallow, speak and work. This is a man who made a substantial reputation for his work in the field of graphic design, and who in recent years has turned his creative attention to painting. It is another sad reflection on our country's health care system--or rather its absence--that Jayme's stroke has landed him in the kind of devastating financial bind that all of us dread, because it could so easily befall us. There is a benefit Exhibition and Sale for him, scheduled to start this Saturday, February 19. It continues through next Saturday, February 26. I trust that those among my readers who are involved with art and artists will find it in their hearts to take an interest in his plight, spread the word, and if possible support the effort to help him last out until his supplemental insurance kicks in, a little later in the year. He should not have to bear with financial anxieties in addition to the physical affliction. Nor, indeed, should any of us. Please pass this on.

Gallery Rounds/Bergamot Station

We actually found quite a lot to like in the course of our afternoon at Bergamot Station late last week. (Bergamot, for readers unfamiliar with the topography of Los Angeles area galleries, is a former train station in Santa Monica, and has been a lively center for galleries and design studios for a number of years now. Soon, I have heard, the trains will be running through the station again. No idea how this will affect the galleries.) It has been too long since Ellie and I last made our gallery rounds, so it was a good moment for a catch-up. I mention here only a few of the highlights, with apologies to some good shows passed over and, to those mentioned, for the brevity of attention to work that deserves more than it gets here.

Our first stop was Shoshana Wayne Gallery, where we were astonished to find a painting depicting a session very much like one of our artists' groups, led by people who looked startlingly like Ellie and myself...

Group, 2010 Acrylic on canvas, 49" x 66"

(My i-phone snapshot)

... seen here at the far left. Brad Spence's paintings feature the kind of air-brushed haze with which we are familiar since Gerhard Richter opened up that possibility, so it was impossible to tell whether this particular painting was based on an actual photograph of one of our workshop sessions, but it sure looked like it. (We were with a handful of artists from our regular Tuesday group, who all agreed on the remarkable similarity; but we heard later from Shoshana herself, who had called the artist to ask, that he thought it was "some religious group"--hence unlikely to be us!) Spence's haze suggests an oneiric perception of reality...

Cocktail, 2010, Acrylic on canvas, 55" x 53"

(This and all images below courtesy of the respective galleries)

...where the absence of clear focus evokes the frailty of receding memory and the always questionable nature of reality itself.

I was intrigued by what Stephen Aldrich manages to do with cut-ups of Victorian etchings in his remarkable collages at Craig Krull Gallery. With meticulous precision that fools the eye into believing that it's looking at a singular image, Aldrich pieces together disparate images which, on closer examination, offer wonderfully surreal, often whimsical, sometimes even hilarious juxtapositions. Some of his collages create crazy, eye-catching architectural puzzles...

Point Counterpoint, 2010, collage, 18 x 24 in

Others, like the fabulous creatures invented by the appendage of one familiar animal or bird head to the body of another, content themselves with a simple visual pun...

Menagerie, 2011, Collage, 20 x 26 in

They tickle the imagination with mischievous humor and intriguing visual conundrums. Also at Craig Krull, there's a collection of exquisite, small-scale black and white photographs by Yamamoto Masao...

#1589, 2010, gelatin silver print, 10.5 x 7.5 in

#1579, date not listed, gelatin silver print, 8.8 x 5.6 in

...nature studies whose chiaroscuro effects are a superb refinement of the camera's potential. The gallery's press release appropriately evokes the haiku as a kind of verbal equivalent of these distillations of pure presence into a single, intense moment of insight.

I also loved the playfully meandering lines of Patrick Nickell's painted plaster sculptures at Rosamund Felsen Gallery. Organic, brightly colored and entertaining to the eye, Nickell's big, three-dimensional squiggles beg to be circumnavigated, changing contour with each step as they play positive against negative space in a dance that is at once, curiously, both elegant and amiably clumsy...

Gazing (blue), 2010, Acrylic, plaster, metal armature, painted wood table (lt. blue), 26 ½ x 35 x 21”, table 32 3/8 x 27 ½ x 22 ½”

These structures work well not only individually, but with each other...

The Lending Library Lends A Hand, Installation view

The installation has its own peculiar choreography, in which the viewer is invited to play his or her own interactive part.

It seemed like a good day for visual fun. At Lora Schlesinger Gallery, we found Bruce Houston's "Nefertetes, Trucks, and Assemblages." Houston has been playing around with trucks for years--toy rigs put to work to transport disproportionately-sized ( or shaped) icons of contemporary art. They are the most fun for me when they are made to climb steps, turn the corner...

Mondrian Corner Truck, 1989, mixed media, 14 x 11 x 7 "

... or go around in circles...

Orange Truck, 2009, mixed media, 11-1/2 " in diameter

New to me were Houston's delightful "Nefertetes," combining the ancient Egyptian icon with those of our own time, whether Warhol's tomato soup can...

Warhol Nefertete, 1995-1996, mixed media, 9-1/2 x 8 x 8in

... Jackson Pollock, or Groucho Marx. These small satires make us laugh, but also challenge us to reconsider how cherished cultural icons can morph swiftly into cliches---unless we manage to somehow reinvent them.

A highlight of our tour was the discovery of a gallery that's new to me, though its doors have been open for several months now. Luis De Jesus (not to be confused with long-standing La Luz De Jesus Gallery, also in Los Angeles) seems focussed on bringing in new work from outside Los Angeles, currently Margie Livingston from Seattle and Geoffrey Todd Smith from Chicago. Both are addicted to bold color, and both flirt with--but, I think, escape--the salacious temptations of pure eye candy. Todd Smith's engaging small paintings create intricate patterns out of myriad, carefully hand-painted ovate dots...

Spectral Hex, 2010, Gouache, ink and acrylic on panel, 12 x 12 in

Exotic Socks on an Erotic Fox, 2010, Gouache, ink and acrylic on panel, 20 x 16 in

... which set the eye dancing in somewhat the same manner as op-art. Margie Livingston creates delicious three-dimensional objects out of nothing but pure acrylic paint. In this installation, hundreds of multi-colored disks--tiddlywinks, anyone?--form an eye-level line around the entire gallery wall, or are stacked in a twenty-foot high line from floor to ceiling...

Paint Objects, Installation Shot

Paint Objects, Installation Shot

Strands of pure color are woven into solid eggs--some chopped open, like geodes...

Paint Objects, Installation Shot

... to display their interior layers. Large, paper-thin sheets of poured paint are folded like blankets or hung against the wall. This is "painting" joyfully redefined.

There was much more to see, but I'll have to content myself with one last stop, at William Turner Gallery, to see an old friend, the painter Ned Evans. I'm no painter myself, but Evans, surely, is one of those people we mean when we're taking about a "painter's painter." This installation includes a series of strong, bold works which bear the stamp of someone who knows what he's doing with color and form, and does it with the authority of one who has been at it a long time, and with at least the appearance of ease. They are formally elegant variations on a theme, musical in structure, rhythmic in progression...

JOGU, acrylic on canvas, 78x94

ZANBIL, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 30x48

GOA, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 18x16

They invite us to follow that progression from painting to painting, and deepen our perception of each one as we go. They are also knowledgeable paintings, steeped in art history. As I looked around the gallery walls, I found myself thinking about Paul Klee, about Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase," and about a whole range of late twentieth century American painters. A thoroughly satisfying experience.

The Body

I'm afraid it's getting to be time to write about the frailties of the body. You probably don't want to hear about them, and I don't very much want to write about them, but this body of mine has been yelling out for attention these past few days and when something calls to me like this I know I have to write. It's my way of listening to the call and anwsering it.

A couple of days ago, it was a prolonged bout with vertigo. Today, it's the knee. It started yesterday morning with a few small twinges and grew throughout the day into full-blown pain. This morning, getting out of bed was agony. Without movement--i.e. when I'm sitting or lying down to sleep--it seems to freeze up, then screams at me when I attempt to get it moving again.

Now, I don't want to seem to be whining about this pain, but it does seem important to observe it. As the Buddha wisely pointed out, the body ages and gets sick. Eventually it dies. This particular body I happen to inhabit is doing the aging part. I look at my face in the mirror and barely recognize myself for the wrinkles. My skin is drying out, particularly, I have noticed, at the extremities--arms and legs. Blotches appear. The skin bruises at the slightest bump, and blotches appear without apparent cause. The torso inexorably expands: what belonged once to a wiry youth has become heavy, lumpy, loose. In the past quarter century I have effortlessly put on an extra forty pounds. And I will spare you news about the plumbing.

As for the joints... This morning's pain in the knee surprises only with its ferocity. The hips and knees--the weight-bearers, along with the small of the back--have been troubling me for a while. They have served me faithfully, thus far, for more than seven decades, giving me trouble mostly only when I have treated them unkindly. They have earned the right to complain a bit now that the cushions that facilitate their comfort wear thin and the juices that keep them oiled flow less easily. I make every effort to be kind to them with recommended dietary supplements, exercise, and a measure of circumspection when it comes to putting them to work. I have no idea, in the present case, what I might have done to offend the ailing knee, but it is there to act as a reminder of the aging process.

I am glad to have had the good fortune to encounter the Buddha along my path. His teachings remind me that what I am now experiencing is entirely natural, and that my mind is the only reliable aid in moving further forward into old age and, eventually--not too soon, I hope!--death. What's truly important is to be able to observe today's pain without rancor and without attaching to it. I am grateful to have been given the tools with which to do this, and regret only that my skills are sometimes inadequate to the task...

I breathe, I direct the breath to the place of hurt. I work to let it go--if not the pain, at least my stubborn need to cling to it, which only makes it worse. And breathe again.

A Very Special Evening

We spent a delightful evening yesterday as the guests of Herb Alpert at his jazz club, Vibrato. He and his wife, the singer, Lani Hall, were premiering a new show, I Feel You, which they will be taking on tour in the coming weeks. How does it happen that your Buddha diarist was so honored? You might remember that I wrote a piece, a while ago, about the exhibition of his ambitious Black Totems at Ace Gallery--towering bronze sculptures that impressively filled even the rather cavernous space of Ace's front gallery. The piece was cross-posted to my site at the Huffington Post, and came to Herb's attention...

What a strange coincidence that we had recorded yesterday's CBS Sunday Morning from earlier in the day, and switched it on as we were getting ready to go out for the evening to discover that the profile of the week was an interview with Herb Alpert!

The evening was a lot of fun. First, Herb's table included some fascinating guests--writers, producers, and others whose names might be familiar. Having met most of them for the first time last night, I do not feel free to include their names in my report; but it is rare in my experience to sit down with a group of such interesting and creative individuals. Across from me was a woman working on what she described as a "chick lit" novel; next door, a man currently working on an extended piece about Herb Alpert for a major publication; down at the other end, a brilliant thinker about human creativity, whose TED talks have been a major draw for audiences world wide; a fellow blogger who also writes about the arts for the Los Angeles Times; a Hollywood publicist who, we discovered, grew up not five miles from one of my father's parishes where I lived as a child; and more. A lively table, then, with plenty of interesting cross-talk over drinks and dinner--until the music made further conversation impossible.

I'm not going to act the music critic. I have mentioned at frequent intervals in The Buddha Diaries--most recently in my review of Keith Richards's autobiography--that my knowledge of the medium is truly abysmal. (I caught myself thinking, the other day, sitting in an audience of people listening to a contemporary cello sonata, how the discordant noises did not sound like music to my ear; and then remembered the multitude of people to whom contemporary art does not look the least bit like art. It is necessary to have taken the trouble to be informed before making judgments of this kind.) No matter, the subtleties may have escaped me but Herb Alpert and Lani Hall's music was a delight to this uneducated ear--lively, foot-tapping, head-nodding interpretations of familiar tunes by some of the great composers of popular American music and jazz, including a medley of those songs made famous by Herb and his Tijuana Brass back in the 1960s.

It was, too, a great way to spend the eve of Valentine's Day. This wonderfully gifted musical couple have been together for more than thirty years, and the chemistry that still glows between them is an inspiration. As the show's title suggests, the numbers it includes are mostly love songs, and it seemed to me that the show itself is a celebration of that mutual feeling that holds couples like Ellie and myself together for, now, more than forty years. It was a joyful and deeply pleasurable evening.

Vertigo

As I write this entry, I have one eye on the television set where hundreds of thousands of Egyptians are wildly celebrating the departure (finally!) of now former President Hosni Mubarak... Yesterday, here at home, I suffered a day-long bout with vertigo, but that seemed trivial compared with the dizzying day in Cairo, which began with a moment of anticipatory joy and ended in the fury that followed the speech in which Mubarak defiantly refused what he had seemed to promise hours earlier.

Today's spectacle is utterly amazing, a historic moment which literally cracks open the region and brings with it a vast ocean of uncertainty. Hand it to those brave people who initiated this movement, and who stuck with it peacefully through eighteen days despite all disappointments, frustrations and provocations. Just when it seemed, late last night, that there was no other possible outcome, they rejected the violent option and responded with contained fury and, thankfully, still peaceful resolve.

As for Mubarak, I find it sad that the man's vanity and need for power should blind him to the opportunity to act in a way that could, even at the last moment, have preserved some vestige of dignity. Talk about clinging! How much easier he would have made it for himself had he been able to concede, even yesterday, "I hear what you say. It's time for me to step aside and leave the future of the country in your hands. I wish you well." Instead, for no other apparent reason than his own ego, he chose to make one last effort to cling to what had already obviously been lost. The Saudi king pleaded with Obama, so I heard, to avoid humiliating the Egyptian president. A futile plea; the man humiliated himself.

I have heard a lot of complaints, both from home and abroad, about the way in which Obama handled this crisis. There were those who seemed to think he should have ploughed right in with overt condemnation of Mubarak and support for those who opposed him. To do so, as I see it, would have been to disempower the demonstrators and inject America and its interests into a situation that needed--and eventually achieved--resolution by the Egyptian people themselves. His patience and restraint, in retrospect, along with measured words that made principles clear but did not make American demands, were exactly the right strategy. I wish that these qualities were more evident here at home, in addressing the enormous problems that we face.

Meantime, here at my house, I proved to be more prescient than I imagined when I wrote in my last entry that "'nothing' is what I should be doing more of." It happened that yesterday, while the people of Cairo spun from dizzying jubilation to dizzying fury, I was having my own battle with dizziness. And I actually did nothing.

It was not exactly by choice. I woke early and tumbled out of bed in good time for my daily sit; but afterwards, getting up, my head started to whirl uncontrollably. It's a not unfamiliar feeling; it happens fairly frequently, when I stand too quickly from a sitting or lying position, that I experience a few moments of vertigo. It might have something to do with age. We need to be a little more circumspect with how we treat our bodies.

The difference was that, yesterday, the sensation persisted. The room turned about me, reminding me of how I felt when I'd imbibed too generously, in younger days. My first instinct was to ignore it, on the assumption that if I paid no heed it would simply go away. It's what I try to do with all passing uncomfortable sensations of this kind, and most frequently it works. I pulled out my workout bench, thinking a little exercise might help. It didn't. After one brief attempt, the room began to gyrate alarmingly; I pretty much fell off the bench and lay there on the floor for a while, imagining the end was near...

Well, I did manage to get up, but the sensation persisted. The stairs were a challenge. I had been intending to get to work as usual, but did not feel up to it. All morning long, I sat around feeling sorry for myself. I did nothing. At first I had to work to resist that need to chastise myself for not having greater fortitude, not "getting over it" and getting down the the writing I had planned. I could not even bring myself to pick up a book, for God's sake! I went outside on the balcony and dozed for a while in the sunshine. I came back in and switched on the TV, to see what was going on in Egypt. In the afternoon, still not feeling right, I worked though the crossword from last Sunday's New York Times magazine.

By this time, it was clear to me that it would be a mistake to go out in the evening, as we had planned, to see Kodo at the Music Center--a performance I had been very much looking forward to. We saw this incredible troupe of Japanese drummers years ago and I had loved their energy, their precision, their passion. Fortunately, our daughter was able to take advantage of my ticket, so I stayed home and watched a recorded episode of MI-5 on television. And went to sleep early. And woke, this morning, thankful that my head was back to normal.

Making Space

When Ellie and I are in Los Angeles, we make a point of taking a half hour in the morning to walk around the hill on which we have now lived for forty years. We walk up past the little house we rented for a couple of years, starting in 1970, when we first knew each other; and down the other side of the hill past the big old Mediterranean-style house we bought in 1972 (we discovered it on one of the daily walks we had started even then,) and where we lived until about five years ago. Having decided to downsize, we spent a good while searching out other locations in the city--but ended up in the smaller house on the very same hill, where we live today.

So this morning we were taking that familiar walk with the friends who frequently accompany us, and I was talking to our friend and neighbor, the artist Nancy Turner-Smith, about the book project she is just now working to finish up. Then the conversation turned to me and what's going on in my own work, and it proved to be a good moment to get clear about the clutter I have been carrying around in my head, and my need to create some inner space in order for new things to happen.

It seems to be easier to do in Laguna Beach than in Los Angeles. In part, it's surely because the physical environment itself is quieter and more spacious; in part because there is less in the way of those "busy" mental distractions with which we are all familiar. But making that space is an art in itself, and it involves a certain discipline, a practice, a determination that can easily be undermined. It involves an understanding of how time and energies can be economized, because their possible expenditure is boundless while they themselves are not. I need to start examining how much of them is wasted, and where I can make space.

And by "wasted" I don't mean doing nothing. In fact, I'm sure that "nothing" is what I should be doing more of. The "doing nothing" is actually the space I'm talking about. At our artists' group meeting last night we watched a video interview with the wonderfully subtle abstract painter Agnes Martin, often described as a minimalist--though she rejected this association--who died at the age of 92 in 2004. In this interview, she spoke about her need for an "empty mind" out of which to do her work. She regarded the thinking mind as the enemy of her creative process, and worked hard to abandon it. As she described her studio work, she would make it a point to empty out the mind in order to allow space for inspiration to arrive; then, when it did, to focus the mind on where the action of the painting was wanting to take her, rather than on thinking about what needed to be done. "I have no ideas," she said--and wanted none.

It's a bit different for the writer. A bit harder, I think. Because words, unlike paint or musical notes, are freighted down with meaning. It's all they seem to exist for. And it's the first thing most readers look for: what does this mean? And the writer, too, tends to get caught up in this quality that language seems inevitably to have. But, to my way of thinking (there I go again!) the writer stands to benefit as much as the artist or the musician from the empty mind. Hence my own favorite adage, oft repeated: How do I know what I think 'til I see what I say?

One of the things I'm trying to make space for, as regular readers know, is a reacquaintance with the 18th century French writer, Michel de Montaigne. And Montaigne, I believe, would find much in common with Agnes Martin. His starting point is always ignorance: what do I know? And his answer: I know nothing. His Essais are ventures into the unknown, "attempts," with words, to observe the workings of the mind from inside its own spaces. As such, the essays are poems, dances with the medium in which the medium leads and the writer follows--just as I imagine Agnes Martin followed her paint.

This, for me, is the hardest part: to stop "thinking," planning, and controlling, and to allow the mind to empty out before the words come along to lead me into the unknown. This is the risk I need to take, the space I need to make, if I'm to arrive at something new.

Reagan

The Ronald Reagan worshippers have been out in full force these past few days, celebrating what would have been his 100th birthday, had he lived so long. I am not among his admirers. Nothing personal. I do realize that Reagan was a rather accurate reflection of who were/are as a nation at this point in our history, but that knowledge does not make him any more appealing to me. It's interesting that one of the few who manage to see the former President with a measure of clear-sightedness is his son, Ron, who speaks of him with genuine filial love but without the rose-tinted glasses that effect the vision of the vast majority of Americans.

I watched a part of the HBO special, "Reagan," last night. It presents Reagan, convincingly, as the great salesman, who learned the art of the pitch after his acting career fizzled, and brought to it the skills he had learned in his previous profession. Once an avowed liberal, he soon caught the conservative bug from his corporate employers. To put it unkindly, he found out which side his bread was buttered--and, not coincidentally, that he enjoyed buttered bread. He became the instrument of those business interests, and his skills were such that he managed to sell their values and aspirations to what was once working class America. The conversion of the working middle class to conservative economic ideals was a feat that brought about a radical change in the politics of this country--and, to my mind, not for the good. Over time, it led to the vast gulf that now exists between the super-wealthy and those who struggle to make ends meet.

The benevolent, avuncular Reagan who blessed America with his simple, homespun wisdom has been woven into a lasting and destructive myth. His actions in office, both as Governor and President, gave the lie to that myth. He rode the wave of taxpayer revolt into the Governor's office in California, and thence on into the White House. He spun ignorance and self-interest into gold for those who knew how to use the myth to their advantage. Like so many whose good fortune--and, yes, to be fair, hard work and single-minded dedication to success--led them to the top of the heap, he was blinded to the reality that this yellow brick road, this "American dream," while available to some, was never, could never be, available to all; and that its achievement by the few necessitated its denial to the many. This blindness led him on the one hand to the mean-spiritedness of "welfare queen" conservatism; and on the other, to a steadfast belief in the efficacy of "trickle-down" economics, all evidence to the contrary.

There seems to be little doubt that the spirit of Reaganism has permeated the American world view in the past half decade. His myth has only been aggrandized with time, softened at the edges as he faded into the mists of Alzheimer's. (I myself am as persuaded as his son, Ron, that his judgment was already impaired by this disease during his presidency.) His legacy is false optimism--call it denial--and deep division. Our political leaders are either genuinely seduced by this myth, or eager to exploit it, cynically, for their own purposes. The American electorate is readily persuaded to ignore the realities of the world in which we live today in favor of the illusion he helped to create--and the way they wish it were. We respond, it seems, to slick salesmanship and false promises rather than truth-telling.

As a result, we sink ever deeper into the mire of ignorance, believing that we shall be healed by the snake oil we buy--at considerable expense--from glib salespeople who claim the mantle of Ronald Reagan. We are mistaken. Those who produce the snake oil and those who sell it make their profits, and we persist in the delusion promoted by the greatest snake oil salesman of them all.

But what about that "tear down this wall" moment? Should we not credit Ronald Reagan at least with facing down the threat of world-wide communism at the end of the last century? I would like to find something for which I could credit this genial gentleman, but, sorry, this is not it. It's my belief that Soviet communism was responsible for its own demise, thanks to decades of monumental mismanagement and abuse of power, all based on a cynically misappropriated ideology. (Come to think of it, how long might it be before we can use the very same words about capitalism?)

So let the hagiographers say what they will. I believe that Ronald Reagan did more damage to this country than any other President in history, but with the full understanding that "he" was "us." In electing him, we were suckered by those who stood to profit by empowering him. A snake oil salesman survives only on the credulousness of those who believe his patter and come under his spell. That we continue to idolize his myth and swallow down his remedy a quarter century later despite its proven inefficacy says less about the salesman than about his mark.