March 17, 2009

I want everything!

I am an open, pulsing wound of wanting.

MOST PEOPLE ARE,

I wager. I want this day to be over. I want steak for dinner. I want to go to Europe. I want to sleep with so-and-so. [Gordon Ramsay -Ed.] I want to graduate from law school. I want to get married. I want a bigger house. I want another house, a summer house on the lake. I want a boat for that lake.

Many people not only want these things, they are waiting for them and often working for them. They won’t be happy until they have them. They are relieved of the burden of enjoying their lives until their golden dreams pan out. And what if they don’t? They still have to live those lives, somehow.

Joe Williams has a great blues tune, “Five o’clock in the Morning.” “I’d be so happy baby, if you were where you ought to be (this morning). My whole world is empty, darling, because you’re not here with me…Until you are here with me, baby, well there’s no way in the world for me to be satisfied…”

People lay that on themselves. Pop culture is full of it—I can be this if I have that; I can’t be happy unless, until. OK, well if you say so! See you in heaven! That’s the ultimate waiting-for game of all time, where your crucified dreams are resurrected and fulfilled.

EVER SEE

the short film dramatization of the Ambrose Bierce story “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”? It’s about a man, Civil War era, about to be hanged at Owl Creek Bridge. Well, the guy is bound and dropped into the river, but he is able to get himself out of his noose, cloth bindings and boots, and swim, swim, swim away from his pursuers, then run, run, run away from his pursuers until he runs into the arms of the beautiful plantation woman a-waiting him. Except that it’s a last-minute fantasy. Just as the woman embraces his neck, it snaps backwards and he is truly hanged.

But in his dream, under the water, he removes the binding ropes and his boots and emerges gasping from the water, while a haunting song of bass voice and guitar accompanies him as he reaches the good earth and clutches handfuls of wet sand:

A living man, a living man, I want to be a living man. In all the world, he moves around, he walks around, he turns around. I see each tree. I hear each thing. I hear each bug upon each leaf.  The buzzing flies, the flashing fish, they move around this living man. A living man. A living man. I want to be a living man.

OH, HOW I WANT TO LIVE!

Even while living, how I want to live. Just like in my twenties I used to look forward to lighting the next fresh John Player Special while still smoking the one in my mouth. So many people live their lives wanting to do anything but what they are doing, anywhere but where they are.

EVER WANT WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE?

That’s called contentment, appreciation, not taking for granted what is granted to you—life itself. How I want to live! Well, am I not? Am I not living? I’m breathing, walking down the street, meeting friends at Yoshi’s, hanging at Muddy Waters with Beau, writing this column. No, I am not living. I am life. The “hanged” man in the film, upon the shore, literally stops to smell the flowers and hug a tree. He and water and the earth and flower and tree, they are all life, all part of the same life he is so grateful for.

AND NOW, A WORD FROM ECKHART TOLLE…

Bizarre. No, that’s not the word. It’s my word for what just happened. I woke up around 3:30, couldn’t sleep, and fired up my laptop. I had the Word file of this column open, and checked my email. Then, from out of nowhere, came the voice of Eckhart Tolle, speaking into the night surrounding my lit screen. It didn’t startle me, it felt friendly, welcoming. I had been listening, the day before, to the download of a live webcast he did last May, but I had paused it, minimized ITunes, and went on with the rest of my day and night, returning often to the computer to write, email, etc. I was up until around midnight, and slept for a few hours. So here I am in front of the screen, with my file and Safari open, ITunes turned off as it has been for hours, when all the sudden the program picks up where it had left off yesterday, inexplicably. I hadn’t touched the keyboard. It was as if I’d been summoned from sleep to hear what this man has to say to me. So I listened, and listened, and listened.

IF YOU WERE A POLICE INSPECTOR

and you were looking for a criminal called “time,” a very dangerous criminal, because he goes around murdering people, all the time, and killing off everything, first deceiving them that time is going to get them where they want to get to, and then after this criminal has deceived them, he or she kills them. Everybody’s hoping to get to the future, and of course the very essence of future is, in the end, it kills you. Time kills you. Everybody’s hoping for more time to fulfill themselves, and then, time gets you. So the police inspector, looking for the criminal called “time,” can only find secondary evidence. “Yeah, he’s been here, there’s a dead body.” Or, “He’s been there—there’s a rotten apple here,” and then you can go on looking, or you can look at a photo of yourself, twenty-five years ago, thirty years ago, and then look in the bathroom mirror and then you see, again, you have secondary evidence of what this criminal has already done to you. And he’s going to do more, even more damage.

AND YET, TIME ITSELF

you cannot experience…you experience only, ever, the now…you don’t experience past, you don’t experience future, you cannot experience time, the criminal can never be caught, because the criminal is a phantom. And yet, bodies die. So who kills them, if there is no time?…We cannot deny that in this surface reality there seems to be such a thing as time. We use [the word] “time,” really, to fill in some void that we don’t understand—OK, it’s time, time does that. It seems to exist, it seems that you cannot get out of it, it seems that it drags you along, you deteriorate further and further and finally you dissolve. That seems to be the case as far as the world of form is concerned; forms are short-lived. And the very essence of the thinking mind is that it’s usually thinking about past and future and its very thought processes are conditioned by the past; what you think is conditioned by your past. The question is, is there another dimension to you, to me, where what is ultimately an illusory thing, does not apply anymore? Is there a dimension in you where there is no time—not as something to believe in, some comforting belief, but actually to be known, first-hand?”

OF COURSE THAT DIMENSION IS NOW.

Presence. Awareness. Stillness. The primary purpose of your life, he says, is “oneness with what is,” to be where you are, doing what you’re doing. That is foremost.

Ever experience water? Not “water,” but water. If you didn’t know what water was, you wouldn’t call it water, if you called it anything it might be “miracle.” Most people, says Tolle, live in a “phantom conceptual universe” in which the next moment is going to be better than this one. Suppose you want a drink of water. In your mind you’re already drinking it. You know what the experience of drinking water is going to be like, and when it happens, there’s nothing miraculous about it. Nothing remarkable, except that drinking the water was better than the moments before of going to the kitchen, turning on the tap, holding the glass, raising it to your mouth. As soon as you drink it, you’re going to finish your crossword, go back to work, whatever. You barely notice what you just did.

In this manner, says Tolle, “every doing is a means to an end…and where’s the end? In the future. And where is the future? It’s a thought in your head.” But if the primary purpose of life is to always be where you are, doing what you are doing, you are always fulfilling your primary purpose, right up until your death. (Your secondary purpose is, for example, being a lawyer in this “surface reality.”)

WHAT IF

you were in the desert, what if you were at Burning Man, parched and dehydrated, far from your camp, and someone handed you a bottle of that which you have never experienced—water. Damn! What is this wonderful reviving stuff?! What if you were hot and dusty and exhausted and that person led you into their camp and treated you to a beautiful cool sun shower, this same magical liquid raining on your face and trickling through the sand on your body in rivulets? What if on a humid day you could at will fall into a pool of the stuff and swim through it? You’d never stop talking about the wonder of water, the answer to so many needs. Hey, buddy, let me tell you about water!

I GOT LOST

on Monte Alban in Oaxaca, and wandered the plaza of ruins looking for the museum. No water bottle, and my mouth was as dry as the dust I tred. I asked some German tourists if they could spare a drink of water—Wasser?—and when they said no, it was like I was being denied life. I was physically taken aback, looking at their retreating forms in astonishment. Do you know you’re killing me? By the time I caught up with my group, I knew viscerally how easy it would be to die of thirst. The magic elixir handed to me was indeed the most amazing drink of anything I’ve had in all my life. It was water. Wow!

HOW ABOUT THIS?

How often do you check your email? Let’s say you don’t conduct business through your email, you don’t depend on it for vital information, just for whatever the world brings your way. Let’s say that you are often at your keyboard doing your thing. How often do you check? Pretty often, I would guess, because you’re afraid you’ll miss something, and it’s a break from routine. You’re thinking, the email is preferable to what I’m doing. No mail? What? No one this whole world over is thinking of me or needing me? But there might be a crackerjack surprise, and bingo! a twinge of delight—you do have an email, or several. Ah, yes, this is going to be good, better than what I was just doing. Also, there is the ego boost of having your existence and worth verified throughout the day. How many Facebook friends do you have? How many people following you on Twitter? How many personal emails do you get?

PARDON ME, I’M GOING TO CHECK MY EMAIL

Ah, cool! A reminder, which I appreciate, from the SF Symphony that the Opera’s future new director, Nicola Luisotti, is conducting Brahm’s 4th this week. I saw him conduct “La Boheme” and it would indeed be cool to see him do something symphonic. I’ve heard Brahm’s 4th, both live and recorded, countless times over the past thirty years. Do I want to spend the money to hear it yet again? Yes, because I have never heard it conducted by Luisotti, at this time in my life. In that context, I have never heard it before.

I also stop to respond to a comment on a link I posted on Facebook, and glance at a couple news stories about a scheme to place 2.6 million pennies on the steps of the Tallahassee Capitol building, and about falling property values on the moon. You can buy an acre for $799 Czech crowns at the Lunar Embassy, down from $999. One fellow took advantage of the 20% discount to buy land for his 18-year-old daughter. “I simply can’t give her more, as a father.” You can also get a Galactic Passport (travel not included). Talk about living in the future! But for all I know, a wise investment. Get in while the getting’s good!

I also take the 2.01 minutes of running time to watch my American Idol download of Danny Gokey singing “Pretty Young Thing,” and give little Zahra a belly massage. I love living with cats. They are expert at the here and now. In all, I am distracted from the column for half an hour. Where was I? I have blown my momentum. OK, quit Safari and,

GET A LIFE!

Ever use that expression, or lament, “I have to get a life,” or “I have no life.” Tolle points out that you can’t “get” a life, because that would mean that you and life are two separate things. If you lost your life, what would be left? You. In other words, you are life. There’s nothing to get. You already have what you want.

“I AM THE UNIVERSE,”

he says, “experiencing itself temporarily as this form and as this life story.” How miraculous is that? “Life wants consciousness to manifest into this world…Jesus says, ‘You are the light of the world.’ …You are the consciousness that illuminates the world. Know yourself as that, and that’s freedom, that’s liberation, that’s awakening, it’s the end of suffering, and madness, and it’s happening right here, through this form. That’s something to be grateful for.”

SO TONIGHT,

St. Patrick’s Day, “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” is at the Castro, Wednesday I have a dinner-and-movie date, Thursday the Symphony, Friday a poetry reading, Saturday (324th birthday of JS Bach) Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Requiem” at Mission Dolores Basilica, and Sunday I have a 2:00 chamber ensemble concert at Davies and a 7:00 violin recital at Herbst. So, those are all things to look forward to, but right now I’m passing on O’Gill and am back on my couch with my laptop, where I so love to be, here in the apartment that miraculously came to me through a friend just when I needed one. Grateful. Content. Appreciative. In this life, you have the opportunity to feel that way too, right here, right now, because, whatever else you have not or are not, still, you are life.

 

Who is wiser, the owl or the pussycat? 

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Short Attention Span Poetry Corner

In the contest between the owl and the cat
As to which of the two is wiser
Well, I can certainly tell you that
If you're looking for an advisor

There is no contest
It's a total tie
Their secret is
They live, then they die
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Six-word life story: Born. Lived. Loved. Lost. Found. Died.
3/17/09

goofcitygoof@yahoo.com

copyright Alexandra Jones 2009