THE LIFE OF THE MIND

Dreams, fantasies, memories, reflections, meditations... As the body ages, the life of the mind occupies more and more of the reality of my life. 

Last night I dreamt I had become the target of criminal assassins. I lived alone--as I do not--in an apartment--as I do not--on the seventh and highest floor of a low-rise building, in some part of the world that is unknown to me. With the urgency of the hunted, I needed to return to my apartment to recover what was important to take with me on my escape. The elevator... ? No. Too dangerous and too confined a space. I devised an ingenious way to scale the building by running around the perimeter of every floor, each one tilting a little higher to take me to the next. But this design turned out to be a deceptive, M.C.Escher-ish illusion, leaving me trapped in constant motion on the same floor.

Instead, I took to the wooden stairway at the side of the building, like an internal fire escape, running up so many flights I was exhausted by the time I reached the top. Inside, my apartment was fully furnished. Everything was there. What should I take? Clothes? The closet was crammed with them. I realized I could only take what I was wearing, and changed into a pair of light gray pants, a nondescript shirt, so as not to draw attention. 

Next, the safe. A small fireproof box. I recalled having left a roll of money there, in case of an emergency. Thousands of dollars, mostly in hundred dollar bills, all rolled up neatly. But then, reaching for it, I recalled also having decided at some earlier time that it was too much, too susceptible to theft, and had taken much of it to hide elsewhere, leaving only a deceptive roll consisting mostly of dollar bills, as a kind of decoy. I had left myself a note, a hint, to help me remember where I had hidden the rest...

I wanted to tell my daughter--not my daughter; where did she come from? where did she go?--where to find that note, but didn't know what to tell her. I simply gave her the remaining cash and ran out, down the stairs again.

On the next floor down I found a room where a professor--a glib man of deceptively pleasant mien--was preparing for a seminar with a handful of students. I immediately suspected him of being the assassin, but he read my mind and gave me a not unkind smile. It's not the obvious suspects you should be concerned about, he told me. The one should worry about is the one you least suspect...

The dream continued, but faded, from that point, from my memory. 

I suspect the dream's narrative had to do with the literal and inexorable approach of death, as the years pass; and with the understanding that I will not escape, and that any money that I have and all my worldly goods will be left behind. It's a reminder that when I leave this world, it will be with nothing I have accumulated along the way.

As I say, the life of the mind increasingly takes over from the real world as the place in which I am now given to live...

FUNK

 I woke this Monday morning in a horrible blue funk, dreaming of fire lines approaching a city with a mayor who could or would do nothing, and images of a patio covered with fresh dog shit that no one had picked up. Sound familiar? The profound depression in my mind was matched by a body in pain everywhere, mostly (age-related!) aches in every joint, and muscles that felt depleted of all physical strength. 

Not a good way to wake up!

Meditation was a challenge, with words darting everywhere in my head--words trying to describe what it was I was feeling as I sat. Well, "writing." It's my mind's way of dealing with what's troubling it. Namely...

... a country in chaos, with one political party mindlessly obstructing every effort of the other to reach out and help the millions of Americans who are out of work, hungry and, too many of them, sick and dying; with a leader coming in from the golf course to issue senseless and unhelpful executive orders in an attempt to project the impression of powerful action; a leader who so badly needs adulation that he calls in dozens of his hundreds-of-dollar annual fee golf club members to applaud him loudly at a "press conference..."

... a country riven by discord, mutual hatred and mistrust, one-third of them fed on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour diet of misinformation and outright lies, and driven by a hateful fear of the invented specter of "liberals" and "socialism..."

... and a personal sense of dislocation and disorientation: what am I even doing here, in this, my adopted country, that now feels so alien? Where do I belong...? 

I breathe in, I breathe out. That's one saving grace. The other is more mundane: it is that I have enough "English" left in me to get up from my chair and head off to the kitchen to brew up the solace of a morning cup of tea.

A Pleasant Evening; and a Strange Night

We enjoyed a wonderfully pleasant evening yesterday, driving down with our friends Brian and Mary to the village for dinner, indulging (myself and Brian) in the luxury of a martini as well as a glass of wine with dinner and returning, as the heat of the day waned, to the patio behind our cottage for a cigar (myself and Brian) and a glass of Grand Marnier.  Good conversation, relaxed company, a beautiful evening, what could be better?

And then this strange night: I woke up from a dream in which I was attending some art event as an invited panelist, with my usual fears of appearing in public and trying to look intelligent and well-informed.  Ellie, not on the panel but sitting close, started finding fault with me in a very public way, much to my annoyance, beginning with a complaint about  my cigar.  The panel discussion had not yet begun, and she complained that I had taken off my nice brown cashmere jacket (which I do not possess) and rolled up the sleeves of my pink shirt less tidily than she would have wanted.  Meanwhile, talk of my cigar persisted until I tried quelling the talk with a loud "Enough about me!"--to which no-one paid the slightest attention.  Then Ellie piped up with the observation that she was surprised by my use of the word "cigar", knowing me for a plain-spoken man who eschews circumlocution and everyone knew that "cigar" actually meant "penis."  At which I recall exclaiming that this was too embarrassing, and I promptly woke.

On waking, I stumbled blearily to the bathroom for an early morning pit stop and, feeling somewhat dry in the mouth--thanks, no doubt, to the martini, the wine and the Grand Marnier--fumbled under the sink for my white plastic bottle of Biotene mouthwash.  I had taken a big swallow from the bottle and was about to gargle when I realized something was seriously amiss.  I checked the bottle in the dim light and realized that instead of the mouthwash I had picked out a similar container of Eucerin moisturizing cream.  So much for early morning bleariness...

Which reminds me that we had a terrible night a couple of days ago with George the dog wakeful, watchful and restless for the entire night.  I had just been reading in the New York Times about the China earthquake and the strange behavior of the pandas shortly before the quake hit, so I had earthquakes on the mind and of course we are long overdue, here in Southern California, for another "event"... So I was convinced that George's weird behavior heralded some imminent disaster and lay awake for hours making plans for our escape and eventual survival.  In the morning, though, on awakening, I noticed that the covered plastic cup where we keep George's late night snack had remained unopened: the poor dog had been deprived of his habitual bedtime treat.  He could hardly have made his point more eloquently if he'd had the power of speech.

This morning, I woke again at ten past six and slipped out to the garden for a lengthy sit.  A truly lovely meditation, accompanied by the songs of countless birds.

Forgive all this personal stuff for a Sunday entry.  You didn't have to read it.  If you did, my thanks for your tolerance.  And blessings all around...  

The Artist

I had this dream about Than Geoff (Thanissaro Bhikkhu)who was still a monk, yes, but of a different order, more Catholic than Buddhist, more brown- than saffron-robed, with a knotted rope at the waist. Curiously, he himself appeared only briefly in the dream, it was instead a brother monk who was our escort.

Than Geoff had taken over (bought?) this house where a friend of ours once lived. He had completely re-modeled it, removing a rather fussy, grand-scale fireplace that had been the previous owner's pride in order to expand the wall space. For it was now apparent that Than Geoff was a gifted and prolific artist--something we had never known about him before. The walls everywhere throughout the house--it soon appeared that it was something of a mansion--were covered with his work, paintings, construction works and assemblages in a variety of media, etching plates... an infinite variety.

I was particularly struck with one piece, installed in the space where the fireplace had been. It was a large-scale, enlarged photograph of the detail of an abstract painting, in which multi-colored, squiggly horizontal lines of thick, rich paint created something of a landscape, while the blue "sky" above was inscribed with a text in large penciled handwriting--though I remember nothing of the words except that they ended in "the Almighty." (Perhaps this was why, or because, I took Than Geoff to be a Catholic rather than a Buddhist monk.)

There's little else to tell, except that a woman kept appearing to ask where luncheon should be served. Otherwise, the dream was nothing but a guided tour of Than Geoff's renovated mansion, and his art.

I'm not good at remembering my dreams. I may have remembered this one because I was talking on the telephone, yesterday, about dream recall with my friend Michael--about whom I dreamed, and wrote in this blog, a couple of days ago--and about his experience with lucid dreaming. I suspect this dream about Than Geoff had to do with the wonder of the creative mind, and with the beauty of its infinitely rich interior.

Any thoughts?

Bad Dream

We are out on a hike with a group of others, walking along the sea shore until we come to a steep climb up the cliff. There is a choice of two path, one parallel to the cliff's edge, narrow and rocky, the other along the top of what appears to be a pipe line, a path impacted with snow and ice. For some reason--and unwisely, as it turns out--I choose the latter, while the rest of our group proceed along the first path. We walk parallel to each other, within hailing distance.

Both paths follow up and down steep slopes, roller-coaster style. My own becomes increasingly slick and treacherous, and I decide after a while that it's time to attempt a crossing over to the other. A deep chasm separates the two by only a short leap. I call across to the other side for help, but I'm too impatient to wait and make the great lunge toward the other side. Mistake. I fall a few inches short of the path, but save myself by clutching to a small projection, no more than the root of a shrub, perhaps, sticking out from the side of the cliff, close to the top.

I call for help. Ellie and a friend of ours, a long-time neighbor, peer over the side and promise help, but need to get assistance. They disappear. I hang there, waiting, descending ever further into panic when the wait becomes interminable. Have they forgotten me? I cling on desperately. Nothing. No one. I start to yell: Help me, help me! Above, an Asian tourist looks about him. He has heard something, but obviously can't find the source. I shout again, but seem unable to raise my voice sufficiently to be heard. Help me, Help me!

No one can hear. I cling with growing desperation to my root. The tourist continues to look about him with a puzzled air. Down here, I yell. Down here!

My yells had apparently shifted from dream to reality. They woke Ellie, who asked if I'd been having a nightmare. She had never before heard me make the sounds I was making as I yelled, in my dream, for help.


Okay, so what's the gift?

My first thought is that the dream had to do with the fear of dying. I was clinging on to life with absolute determination and wild desperation. Meditating on the dream for a few minutes before going back to sleep, I recalled another suggestion Ken McLeod had made in his dharma talk on Sunday: that an good alternative for that "suffering" we hear so much about in Buddhism might be simply "struggle." He asked us to wonder what it might be like not to have to struggle, to simply give it up....

I don't know about you, but I find myself struggling a lot in my life. It's sometimes a struggle just to get out of bed in the morning. I find myself struggling when I write. And yet I know that the best of my writing comes when I give up the struggle, when I allow myself to be the channel for the writing, not the "writer." The same applies, when you think of it, to almost everything we do.

What if, in my dream, I had been able simply to give up the struggle to cling on? What if I had been able to let go, and fall into... I really did not know what lay beneath me. It could, yes, have been a long, steep fall leading to treacherous rocks below. It could have led to my death--which was obviously what had me in such a panic. But I'm thinking now that this is what Buddhism is really all about, achieving that kind of spiritual serenity where it becomes possible to enter into death without the fear that brings more suffering with it.

It's evident that I have some way to go!

Sheer Terror

A classic thriller: an upper middle class family is terrorized by unknown, invisible assailants. The threat is clear and imminent, but unspecified. The father is in a state of high anxiety, needing desperately to protect his family. I watch all this as one does a movie, anxious and scared, but somehow for them, not for myself. But totally engaged, "on the edge of my seat." It's "so real." Intense. Then I wake up for a bladder break in the middle of the dream and realize that I'll never know the end. I'll never know who these people are, or who is threatening them, or how, or for what reason. I'll never know if--or how--the family manage to extricate themselves from their predicament. Very Kafkan. Before heading off to the bathroom, I lie in bed and try to write an ending that feels right, but you know that never helps. The dream is a world unto itself, and an ending written in the waking world just doesn't quite do it...

This morning we leave for Ojai, with a stop in Santa Paula. Exciting times. We have chosen the hottest weekend since the September heatwave, with fierce Santa Ana winds blowing in from the deserts. Wish us luck.

Nightmare!

It was one of those dreadful nights you wouldn't wish on anyone. It started out okay. We watched "The History Boys"--one of those Brit schoolboy flicks with a good few laughs along the way and a good few poignant moments as the band of engaging ruffians grow up. We should have quit when that one finished. Instead, we slipped "Zodiac" into the DVD player (we had run out of Netflix, and picked up two movies at the local video store in the afternoon. Mistake.) "Zodiac"--which had great reviews when it came out, remember?--was the interminable story of the attempt to track down the killer of its eponymous title, with more tedious detail than anyone could possibly want to know and, after hours of teasing and hooking the viewer with the promise that one day this monster would be found, concluded with the revelation that he never was. Not really. We had to be satisfied with the exchange of a signifcant stare--indicating, presumably, that this was indeed the guy, though the case was unindictable. Ah, well. Give this one a miss.

And so to bed, much, much later than our usual time. Then the bad part started. I spent half the night, it seemed to me, embroiled in this dreadful dream--that also never ended. Coincidence? I don't know, but it started out with us going to a conference in a strange city in a foreign country--Spain? Mexico? It seemed somehow Latin--and parking the car at the outskirts because, well, you know why: it's impossible to park in the inner city these days, and taking the tram from there. Anyway, the conference was long and deadly dull on a topic that had no conceivable interest to us and it went on and on and when finally it ended we took the tram back to the area where we had parked the car...

... and found ourselves walking along a narrow path behind a crowd of impossibly slow fellow conferees until I gave Ellie the high sign and we managed to jump ahead which was when we suddenly realized that George the dog had been with us all along and had disappeared but then he happily reappeared and went ahead tail wagging for some reason off-leash which worried us of course but we didn't have one to put him on...

... and then we found ourselves in this strange kind of civic building with shopping mall attached and everything was closed and empty and we couldn't find our way out the other end and by this time of course we were totally lost but we finally did see "light at the end of the tunnel" in the form of big glass doors but the only way to reach them was down a steep slope of very fine sand with footprints sinking three feet deep so we looked for another way and found some concrete steps...

... but when we got down to the bottom of the steps a line of uniformed cops was barring the exit even though one of the doors was open a crack and we slipped through but one of the cops stood in our way and stopped us from getting out into the street until another friendlier one finally stepped in and let us pass with something like a shrug and a smile...

... and then soon we found ourslves in a strange house looking down into a kind of Dickensian parlor filled with the kind of things that fill a Dickensian parlor all for some reason in high color and high contrast and George the dog who was also in high contrast seemed to recognize this place because he began to bark excitedly though we ourselves still hadn't the first idea where we were and a portly old gentleman in the parlor looked at us askance over his newspaper as we walked nervously down the stairway into his parlor and slipped out through his parlor door and out of the house still hopelessly lost and kept on walking through the streets feeling, well you know how it feels to be lost in a strange city...

... and then when I woke up in our little cottage in Laguna Beach that feeling persisted and I found I couldn't stop looking for the damn car even though I was awake and aware that it had only been a dream. I just couldn't stop looking for the longest time until I finally got up to take George for his morning poop walk.

So riddle me that one, friends! I checked in with the Buddha a little later, to see what he might have to say about it. But he just kept saying, Breathe. Bring the attention back to the breath. I guess it helped.