Rapping with the Old Courage Teacher

One of the reasons blog platforms make it so easy to publish a new post is that the posts are supposed to be somewhat disposable.  This is has not been easy for me to master.  Apparently I have been thoroughly indoctrinated by the old-school approach where one must pass through the juggernaut of supposedly impersonal taste makers who apply objective standards in order to determine which content should be shared with the public.  If I didn't feel this way I'd be like these crazy kids who just write it down and put it up there.  Walt Whitman help me.  Is it too late to learn?

It can't be too late to learn, but still, I want to say that there must be some concern for quality.  What is the point of flinging up every few lines I write if they aren't going to make a solid connection with somebody, anybody, at least one person who might come across them?  Then again, maybe it's okay to put out something unpolished as long as it contains one bright gem.  I dunno.  I suppose the fact that I'm at least working for the moment in this blog window as opposed to in a Word document signifies my desire to find a new way out there.  Maybe I won't publish this today, but if I do it again tomorrow and the next day and then maybe one day I take a chance and click the orange button up above which will make it available to all of creation.  Walt Whitman, are you with me?

G is sick today.  Her coughing kept her up for a good portion of the night, and we were up with her as well.  For me it was the proverbial straw after a hectic beginning to the week, and I didn't wake up in time this morning to do my meditation or Yoga asana practice.  Now she is home from school with Yiayia after hanging with me all morning.  I feel very out of sorts.  Even the table I'm working on at the coffee shop is slanted.  It reminds me of the commercials where people roam the earth tilting to one side because they didn't have their V-8.

No doubt I'd rather be home working on my big screen with my height-adjustable desk and my incense and the light coming through the window just so, but there is no way to keep an almost-three-year-old out of the studio, especially if she knows you are easily suckered into hanging out when you are supposed to be writing, and hey, how lucky I am to be able to leave my sick child in the hands of her grandmother and slip away for a few hours to enjoy a decent espresso and dive down the rabbit hole of the story I've been working on?  I have everything I need here in my little travel writing kit.  My laptop screen lights up nice and bright and my earplug/headphone combo block out everything but the giant Mazzer grinding up coffee beans each time someone steps up to the counter.  It's also nice for a change to see people coming and going, to look up every once in awhile and see others going about their days, taking care of their business, trying to do their best as they worry about their sick kids, their jobs, their health, their goals, the responsibilities they feel they've been neglecting, and the things they need to hurry up and do as we all sail along into the future.   We're all in this together people!  I'm feeling it.  Let's each high five the next person we see.

Now showing at the Art Institute.  Om Shanti.

Thanks for stopping by.

Proficiency and the Results of Proficiency

Some joker wrote Karl Marx on the wall. Then some other joker crossed out Karl and wrote Groucho. Then a third joker crossed out Groucho and wrote Richard (which is probably where I would have gone with it). Then some joker who didn't understand the game very well crossed out Richard and wrote Dick (unless maybe I don't know who Dick Marx is). Then the king of all jokers came along and crossed out Dick and wrote Skid, and appropriately no one has touched it since. The editing process at work above the urinal in Cafe Solstice, Seattle, Washington, USA.

What am I doing here? Thinking about how my parking meter has expired, feeling obligated to go to yoga and write, neither of which I want to do. I've been doing a lot of not-thinking too, curled up in a chair in the corner, half expecting someone to come along and tell me to get my damn shoes off the seat. People sit there, after all. It's inconsiderate, and I know this. It's just that I'm comfortable, and I wouldn't really care if someone else did it--especially if they looked like they needed it.

Eek the Freak was here a little bit ago.  "My thumbs are glowing," he told me as he typed a poem on his phone.   He confessed (it sounded like a confession) that he's been seeing halos again.  He calls them energy packets.  He said he sees them emanating from the head and shoulders of people. He said they look like shadows of light, if that makes any sense, and they're harder to find when he looks for them.

That last bit put me in mind of the law of reversed effort, which I was reading about in The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan Watts. In typical fashion, Watts didn't really explain this "law," but he seemed to take for granted that I would know what it is, and what I took it to mean is that the harder we try to do something, the more we tend to get in our own way, the more we suffer. Seems I sort of got it right. A quick search led me to this quote from Aldous Huxley:

There is a Law of Reversed Effort. The harder we try with the conscious will to do something, the less we shall succeed.
Proficiency and the results of proficiency come only to those who have learned the paradoxical art of doing and not doing, or combining relaxation with activity, of letting go as a person in order that the immanent and transcendent Unknown Quantity may take hold.
We cannot make ourselves understand; the most we can do is to foster a state of mind, in which understanding may come to us. 

I tend to think he's right, and it leads one beautifully to to the inquiry: Who am I?  If you let go as a person, who is there to even foster a state of mind, let alone employ a will or make an effort?  And as I write this, I find myself aware of not trying, and that IS yielding something--not just the words rolling out on the page, but also a feeling of peace and expansiveness and ease. I'd rather not say more about that right now, so I'll share with you the poem Eek just emailed to me:

What's experience?
A hot demitasse
Between thumb
And the fingers
You sniff?

There's synaptic firing,
Massive hard wiring,
Eons of fine tuning.
Contrast up
Brightness way down.

And we have the nerve
To feel about all this?
Well sure we do.
Go easy you ruthless bastard.

No one
Gave you permission.
No one
Held out his hand,
And outside came in.
The sky fell on your head,
And the distant train
Rushed through your heart
And blew it into one million
Colorful flowers,
And seeing yourself among them,
Falling,
You found yourself back in the room,
Strangely deceived
By that old bag
Of skin.

Thanks for stopping by.

P.S. I looked up Dick Marx.  Wikipedia tells me he was an American jazz pianist and arranger and also the father of Richard Marx.  If that's what was intended, it's too obscure for me and not far enough from Richard Marx to really work.  Once again, the bathroom editors got it right.  There's your Tao, right there.

Ghosts

My contributor's copy of the Spring 2014 edition of Witness is here.

It looks great, and it reads great, and I'm pumped to have my story, "Orphans on the Moon," included in such a fine production.  The issue's theme is Ghosts, and you can order your copy here.

Thanks to all the hard work from everyone at Black Mountain Institute, and congrats to my fellow contributors, who have seen so much.  The modern writer as witness, indeed!

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Outsiders

Hey everyone.  I'm long overdue in announcing the publication of my conversation with Kate Blakinger over at the New Stories from the Midwest website.  The editors at NSM decided to call it "Outsiders" which has a multivalent appropriateness.  In the conversation we set out to talk about our experiences writing in and about the Midwest from the position of people who came to the region from other places, and along the way we began to explore how the process of fiction writing can bring you from the outside to the inside of an experience, including the experience of yourself.

Working with Kate was an absolute treat, and I'd like to thank series editor Jason Lee Brown for his vision and drive to give us this platform.

Amazing what you find when you start to look inside.

The Transcendental Nomads of O'Hare International

All these people hitting the gate out of breath. To think I used to plan to arrive twenty minutes before takeoff. There's a kind of crazy hubris in that, but so too is there hubris in expecting any of our plans are going to work out.

These days I get to the airport way early, and look at me now. My noon flight got cancelled, and I've been bumped to a four o'clock. At least United gave me a seven-dollar voucher. That almost paid for my salad. There are definite perks to flying the friendly skies.

But complaining is dumb. 

Earlier today I was reading on gratitude, and this is what Bro. David Steindl-Rast had to say:

If we really had to choose between dependence and independence, we would be in trouble. The choice is actually between alienation and interdependence.

And I have to say, my fellow passengers seem to get it. Sure, we all tried to out hustle one another to get to customer service after they cancelled our flight, but there was no cutting as the line formed, and no one pitched a fit at the counter, and now hours later, we greet each other again and again as we travel from gate to gate, our hopes for standby passage low, our shoulders rolling forward as the day wears on and our bags become a burden. We exchange frustrated looks and pessimistic remarks, but it's obvious we're in this together, like some nomadic tribe following the migratory patterns of the great metallic bird on which our way of life depends. If we had to do this for the rest of our lives, we'd be a family before long, dividing up tasks, selecting leaders, falling in and out of love.

The Dalai Lama once tweeted, "The many factors which divide us are actually much more superficial than those we share."  The truth of this would be so obvious if only we could see what's really going on around us, but most of the time we don't. What we see instead are the projections of the mind, that great purveyor of the atomistic illusion. 

Of course I would have rather made my flight, but it's been a good day. There have been babies to wave at, and the light coming through the glass ceiling has been gorgeous, and I've not once felt alone, even though my itenerary says I'm a party of one. 

And maybe best of all, that feeling of presence, solidarity, and kinship has allowed me to build from the rubble of my expectations something I can turn around to share with you. 

Plus my salad was fucking delicious. 

G, who never met a stranger.

                             @@@

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How to Build Shit

I've been thinking a lot lately about making things. I picture an open garage, maybe in Southern California, and I'd have all kinds of tools in there and scraps of stuff I'd salvaged from the ocean or maybe just the regular trash, and I don't know exactly what I'd build but probably it would be robots. Mostly I'd like to build robots that don't do anything except love you in an unconditional way, and I'd put them around our house so when people came over to hang out and drink wine, they'd be super impressed. I once wrote a poem about making robots, and this is how it goes:

How to Build a Robot

First, you need to get a big heart.

I recommend an elephant or a whale.

The bigger the heart the better.

Next come the arms.

Travel the world to find the arms.

If you see many things,

They'll become a part of you,

And that will go into your robot.

Next come the the legs.

You want very sturdy legs

So your robot can walk without you

And do all the things it is supposed to do.

You can give your robot a tail

If you want to.

Personally I always do.

I find it adds a touch of whimsy

And helps to keep expectations in check.

Now you know everything

You need to know about building a robot.

I hope you'll enjoy

The process of making yours. 

The way I see it, the biggest problem would be trying to get the veins and arteries to link up with the circuits and the pistons and also the gears. I like my robots to be more man than machine--if you know what I'm saying.   

Another thing I'd probably do in my garage would be pictures of Jesus. I'd like to do one where he looks like I see him when I put my hat over my face and try to take a nap. I see a close up of his face so you can only see one eye, half his nose, and part of his beard. A series of these could be pretty freaking sweet. 

Now that I'm thinking about it, there are probably all kinds of things I could make in my workshop, but before I can get this plan in motion, I have to wait for G to wake up from her nap. She's in the back of the car, and she's out cold. 

This is us at Venice Beach. Peace y'all.

 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Now Who the Type Built to Last?

My good buddy +Jesse Ziegler just introduced me to an awesome interview with Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, sui generis hip-hop impressario and hurricane x-factor behind the inimitable and unstoppable music act The Roots.  Some of you, unfortunately, will only recognize him as Jimmy Fallon's drummer, the guy with the big afro.

Anyway, he had some great thoughts about creating a sustainable life as an artist, a sort of do-your-own-thing-and-just-keep-doing-it-and-don't-worry-so-much-about-it ethos.

If you’re not going to compete with what’s winning, like Rihanna, Drake, or fun., then maybe you should just do what you know how to do best and wait for the guillotine to drop. Then you release it, the guillotine doesn’t drop, and you’re like, phew, let’s do it again!   

I'd call Questlove a genius, but maybe that's just because he's so embodied this way of working that he's become irresistible.   As Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, the patriarch of the Ashtanga Yoga, often said, "Do your practice and all is coming."

Not that you're going to become Jimmy Fallon's drummer, or go platinum, or win a Nobel Prize, but if you can apply the spirit that develops from your practice to the rest of your life, you will reap your reward for your steady application.  Dig one deep hole, as they say in Zen.  Could it mean the same thing as "Do your thing, buooyy!"

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