The Curse of Enlightenment

 

Something I'm grateful to the pandemic for is the development and greater use of Zoom as a method for attending meetings and lectures. This week I've been at several webinars sponsored by the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, an event they're calling The Buddhism and Ecology Summit: Transforming Anxiety into Awakened Action.  Today's seminar was titled From Mindfulness to Movements and featured activists Michelle King, Dekila Chungyalpa, and Bill McKibben

I've been attending because, like I think.many people are, I am anxious about what is happening to the environment. I'm a child of the 60s and recall too clearly the information, new to the public, that the ecosystem (brand new term) was in trouble and certain things needed to be done or be stopped in order for people to live comfortably in the then-far future of the 21st century. Like many, I calmed myself saying, "By then, practices.will be put into place to counteract all that. There's nothing to worry about, the adults will have it taken care of."

Of course, the adults have not, and in terms of our likelihood of avoiding environmental crises, we're at a further remove than we were then, as solutions like solar, wind, geothermal are more controversial among leaders of industry than to their forebears. President Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof. They become a source of ridicule to the opposition and Reagan had them removed.

So yes, I worry about the end of human life and civilization, although I was also startled by my agreement a few days ago with author Michael Hinton's statement that the so-called 6th Extinction which we are doing our best to bring about by doing nothing at all is as natural as previous extinction events brought about by volcanoes, meteors, and ice ages, and may in fact herald "another set of miracles" like all those others. 

Like Hinton observed I am jealous of anything like that because I'm "in love with the environment as it is now" and don't want to see it changed in a huge way. But a remark by Michelle King about "being the practice" rather than just doing it reminded me too of something I was told at Dhammapada monastery so many years ago.

First, we have to recognize we aren't going to solve the crises. It will take many generations to turn them around just as it took many generations to fuck them up. And secondly, we can't abdicate our--those of us who see clearly and dismsyingly what is happening--responsibility for opening the eyes of others to it. After a period of time at Dhammapada I approached the Abbott during my weekly interview and told him, "Well, I've become enlightened." He looked at me blankly for a few moments and then it terrible sadness crossed his face. "I am so very sorry," he said, clinching my diagnosis. Because it's axiomatic in practice that, once you become enlightened you will see all the problems of the world. Once you can no longer ignore them or rationalize them away, you are responsible for doing what you can to rectify them.

The Fred Durst of Presidents

I'll own to more than a frisson of schadenfreude at trump's indictment and arrest. And while it's a shame not to see him frog-marched ahead of members of his administration, or the sight of trump Force One disappearing over the horizon carrying him, his family, and the clothes on their backs and bound for Argentina or Moscow, there is some pleasure to be had by his being taken down a peg by the petty act of not having a door held for him. But that is petty on my part too, and the truth is he's not worthy of my disappointment or disdain.

Those I save for the United States and the rethuglicans in Congress, the Senate, state and local offices, and individuals in the streets and on TV who support him and would, given the opportunity, vote for him. Again. 

It says something repugnant about our nation that trump won the 2016 election and avoided removal from office for four  very long years in which the policies his sycophants enacted under his--well, you can't call it "supervision" or "governance," so call it "willingness"--caused the deaths and misfortunes of countless citizens and would-be citizens. They were allowed not only to occur but encouraged those results. Donald trump, in retrospect, should have been allowed no closer to the Oval Office than Fred Durst should be allowed on a stage without the involvement of a broom. 

So while I delight somewhat in his troubles, I mourn our own acquiescence in the the fact he was allowed to make them. It should not have happened, and once it did, should have been repaired as quickly as possible. We have the legal means granted by the Constitution and laws to have done so but that we did not is a black mark against us, adult US citizens, a millstone that will hang on our necks. It should. We are finally, finally seeing the results of careful investigation and prosecution, and even if he never spends an hour in an orange jumpsuit, his loss of prestige will inevitably lead to the loss of his apologists. Or it should. I don't think we're headed in any way toward an active war, civil or otherwise, but that trumpanistas and rethuglicans are entrenched in their spider holes and mom's basements, as well as in the seats of power, tells us all we need to know about what they believe. 

We should not have to think about him any more, and that we do is our own fault. 

Audrey and Aiden and Chambers

 I remember my first time driving into Nashville. It was 1988 and I was coming from the west. I  crested a big hill and suddenly, there it was, a beautiful shining city in a valley ringed by a haze visible in the early light. It must have been about 5 or 6 in the morning, and the haze was the residue of tobacco smoke I could clearly smell through my open window. I saw the Cumberland River snake through the city, and I heard faint hints of music on the wind, although that was really the radio station I had on. 

I haven't spent appreciable time in Nashville since then, a quick drive=through skirting the city on my way somewhere else, so I don't know what it's like there. But my reading has given me some indication that, like most big cities, it has citizens who love and cherish it and would protect its people from their fears. For some, that's the easy accessibility of guns, and for others, it's the life-altering identities their children can access. 

I fear the proliferation of guns, myself, and I try to understand the fears of the opposite side. Usually that's a moot debate but a week ago the two fears collided in the person of Audrey Elizabeth Hale, born a woman and often seen dressed and acting like a younger kid, but also identifying as Aiden and using male pronouns. Audrey had attended the Covenant School as a child, leaving for middle school in 2006, but why Aiden went there with guns and shot three adults and three 9 year-olds, we don't know.

I'll admit to being conflicted, because I want to honor Aiden's choice and use male pronouns. But I don't want to honor what Aiden did. I'm uninterested in the rationales school shooters tell themselves and I don't want to start now. But I don't want to lend ammunition to haters telling us it was Audrey's opting to be Aiden that somehow caused the "quiet, shy girl", as Audrey is described by nearly everyone who knew her, to purchase seven (!) guns, all legally despite being treated by a doctor for an "undisclosed emotional disorder.
They try to lay Audrey/Aiden's possible use of medication containing testosterone as having been responsible for the shooting. Per experts, there's anecdotal evidence that high testosterone levels can lead to more aggressive behavior than usual. I don't know if Audrey or Aiden took testosterone in any form but I know any doctor trusted with a patient's well-being monitors both dosage and behavior. closely I also know the desire to kill strangers is not a side effect of taking too much. Testosterone is no more responsible for this horror than it is for other male public shooters. 

So how do I deal with this conflict? Do I mourn Audrey and condemn Aiden? That may be one solution. As possible as it is to hold two conflicting thoughts in your head, it's possible to celebrate one person's life and disdain a part of the same person. If there's a model for this, it's my former friend Chambers. 

Chambers was a good man who was a road dog of mine. We traveled many places together, visited Rainbow Gatherings together, sometimes worked together. I went across country to start a new life and eventually heard from another good friend he had murdered a woman. There were probably signs most of us ignored or were blind to, but Chambers had become a dealer, and while there is much more to this story, the upshot is that one early evening he broke into another dealer's home, was surprised by her, and beat both her and her dog to death. It was neither drugs nor testosterone that gave him the impetus to kill someone, it was simple greed.

None of us knows what caused Aiden to dress in camo, take two long guns and a handgun -and shoot his way into the school, and then shoot six random people including three 9 year-olds but he left a "manifesto". Once it's read and its contents reported, we may have an idea what prompted his action. 

Meanwhile, we have a situation different from and yet too-similar to other mass shootings. A person undergoing treatment legally purchased a number of guns and then shot several vulnerable people. Despite other information we also know, it comes to that.

Why Aren't Comics Better?

 

Well, of course I don't really have an answer to that. To do so would require knowing inside baseball like costs, publication periods, working with creatives including writers, artists, inkers, colorists, even editors. It would require knowing about readership and buying habits and brand loyalty and other important and necessary stuff. And I don't know any of that.

But I do think I know what's good and what makes for good stories and, frankly, there aren't enough of them available. Every few months I go out and sit to look at the latest offerings (and I'll be the first to admit that skews what I see because I read graphic novels, which necessarily take sometimes years to accumulate enough story to be printed), so what I am looking at is not technically the latest offering. But what I see leaves me depressed.

So I suppose what I really mean is, why aren't comics as good as I wish they were? It's true, don't damn a story for what it's not. But there's so much else they can be. What I think disturbs me most is the tendency in so many stories to kill minor characters or passersby easily. I applaud where this has come from as a response against the unrealistic ability of everyone to save everyone. 

But there's too great the temptation, I guess, to whack people willy nilly to show how irredeemable a character is, how little human life means to them, all that. Is it necessary to show a character slaughtering, sometimes people on his own side, and joking while doing so? The recent Mr Miracle series was offensive in the killing of members of Scott and Barda's own forces while they argued about renovation. There aren't any noble ways to die but it's certainly insulting to be slain by the leaders of your own community while they banter about who puts their closet to better use.

I have, of course, other issues, mostly about the hypocrisy of fine tuning the reality of a series which continues to feature the same cast of a half century or a century ago. But there's something instructive too about looking backwards at those old series. What sets art, even middlebrow art, apart from the sniggering of porn and nihilistic jokes is that it presents a world a reader wants to work for or against. Here's where the optimism of space opera and the pessimism of dystopian stories come in. At their worst, they leave the reader with the sense that "this is a future I want to see/avoid." The Ronin/Hawkeye vignette in Avengers: Endgame, which might seem counter to my point, is instead an excellent example. Ronin's indiscriminate killing of drug dealers while cosmic forces are at play elsewhere is perfectly at home with his (and maybe the viewer's) belief that a world in which people who profit off other people's pain are punished as resolutely as a multiple world destroyer is a future worth working toward.

Just One of Us

There's a debate between Stephen Fry and Gay Byrne on Irish tv in which Byrne askes Fry what he would say to God if he arrived at the gates of Heaven. “I’d say: ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about?'" Now Fry, as a roundhouse humanist who doesn't play around, continues, demanding of God "'How dare you! How dare you create a world where there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?’ That’s what I’d say.”

It's a good question, and as any religious student knows, it's the basis for the study of theodicy, the fact that there is evil in the world and how do we respond to God's role in it. If God is an omnipotent force for good, why do so many good people receive punishment in this life, while so many bad people flourish?

There are, of course, all kinds of answers relying on an afterlife and one's soul, but putting those aside, to say "It's part of God's plan" just doesn't cut it. It shouldn't, because by letting God off the hook, we let ourselves off as well. As an old adage goes, "I dreamt I asked God, Why is there suffering? And God said, I was just about to ask you."

Earlier this week while I was walking, I was singing "One of Us", a Joan Osborne tune I especially like because of the inclusion suggested by it. And there's a wonderful lyric that says, "What would you ask [God] if you had just one question?"

I'm not as pugnacious as Fry, so I'd leave out his How dare you! But my question would be almost word for word: Why do children die painfully from disease?

God's answer, I would hope, would be "I don't know." Which both horrifies and relieves me. Horrifying, because while I've long cast off notions of an all-powerful God, there is enough left in me to say, You mean, no one's in charge?

But my relief would manifest more powerfully. I believe that nothing is outside or not God, and that includes cancer and pain and horrible death. I don't accept the bumper sticker theology "God is good all the time," because God can't be. No one who has read the Bible and paid attention to the annihilation, murder on a whim, child-head-bashing, enforced slavery, and straight out genocide its writers attribute to God, can. My relief would stem from the idea that terrible death is not a part of God's outline, that it doesn't mean God has some ending in mind that requires, for instance, that babies die alone when left in the forest by desperate families hoping to reach a better life. Cancer and hunger and rot and mental illness are not evil. They simply are. To look at them any other way is to accept that God is a cruel son of a bitch who has stacked the deck against us. While I don't believe God is good all the time, I also don't believe God is evil. By answering "I don't know" (assuming God did; I don't have a secret conversation to share), God accepts there are some things even outside God's understanding. Far from meaning there is something greater than God, this is my understanding of God's Mystery. 

There's a lovely meme attributed to Adi Da Samraj running around Buddhist circles that says, "Relax, nothing's under control." I'm all right with that and I like to think God, for all the mystery, is too. 

Uncomfortable Places Where I've Slept

 

There are no chickens in this story

MY LIVING ROOM FLOOR, NORTH CHESTNUT STREET, 

NEW PALTZ

 

I’d met this guy Jonathon while working semester opens at the college bookstore. He was really introverted but we got along. He invited me to a party in The City, although who he knew there I never figured out. The two of us rode out on the Trailways bus and took a subway to wherever the apartment was. I’m necessarily a little hazy on the details.

Most of the night for me was in bursts and flashes. I remember drinking tequila and then fashioning some concoction from other alcohols. I remember making out with a woman in a room away from the party but other than long reddish hair I don’t remember anything about her. This is a big part of the reason Jonathon later stopped being friends with me because I found out she was someone he liked and had hoped to get to know at this party. I wasn’t much of one for niceties like that in those years.

When the party broke up at 1 or 2 we took the subway back to Penn Station but there were no busses leaving until 7. So we joined the ranks of the homeless who squatted in the one room inside the station the cops kept open for them. Once an hour they rousted us to another end of the room, saying “No one sleeps!” But I did as I was riotously drunk and between bouts of laughing at the cops (not a practice I’d suggest) and trudging from spot to spot, I huddled on the floor and slept the fitful half-doze known to both the inebriated and those trying to have conversations with them. Jonathon spent the whole time standing and trying both to stay near me, like I was protection, and being as far from other people as he could.

Eventually the sun came up and at 630 we could buy tickets, with which we could stay the half hour to 7 while the others were bounced into the street. The bus ride was two hours but to me it seemed both like hours longer and just a few moments. We reached town, I walked with Jonathon as far as the corner of Main and North Chestnut where we parted, him to his room and me  to my apartment.

Now this is where it becomes uncomfortable.

I’m one of those lucky few born with some immunity to the bad effects of drugs and alcohol. I’ve never had a bad trip from LSD, never gotten paranoid while smoking weed or hash, never experienced anything but stupendous and unremembered epiphanies on shrooms or peyote. Never had a hangover no matter how much I drank. Except that time.

My headache began on the bus but I put it down to the sun in my eyes and lack of solid sleep. As I walked, I could feel each step travel from my foot through my body to the tiny hammer banging my brain. I had never felt so happy getting to my apartment, so much so I opened the door and did a faceplant on the floor. I didn’t feel like I could make it to bed, I just laid there and slept.

Or I tried to. It seemed that day everyone in the world I knew chose to visit me, either in groups or singly. Again, only fleeting memories but I do remember a stream of drool from my mouth to a small pool next to me when the first person, whoever it was, knocked at the door. Stupid me, it never occurred to me not to say, “Come in,” although that wouldn’t have accomplished much as I had a habit of not locking my door and encouraging people to walk in.

I alternately curled into the fetal position or spread full out like DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man. I may have even resembled that drawing a little as my hair was curly and long and sweat-plastered to the floor. I vaguely recall Jonathon coming by with another friend of ours, I don’t remember who, and looking smugly down on my pain. I probably cried once or twice. No one, fortunately, stayed long, or I don’t think they did, because I kept drifting back off to sleep after a few sentences describing my head variously as a deflated basketball, a cracked egg, a fishbowl full of fecal water, a balloon blown up by a congested drunken bum. There may have been more.

Eventually the night came, and far from being refreshed, I was so worn by the exhaustion of breathing through a mouth equal parts dry and swampy I fell finally into bed wearing the same clothes I’d worn to the party now 24 hours before and drifted in and out of consciousness until 5 or 6 the next morning, when I got up, stretched my 45 minute routine, and then put on running shorts and took a ginger mile and a half jog. Outside the day-long, incessant hammering, that was my usual start to the morning, which may have been why I didn’t usually suffer otherwise

Showering Starfish

I've volunteered at a day program for travelers and homeless in town the past couple weeks. For two afternoon I'm at the shower table, giving out baskets of body wash, shampoo and conditioner, deodorant, towels, sometimes socks, and checking for folks' mail. In between guests, I mop and spray down the shower stalls. It's not what I envisioned doing there but it's solid and it's a ministry.

My single fret is, no matter how I try, I can't get everyone in a shower who wants one. When I arrive in early afternoon, there can be as many as twenty names listed. Each person gets fifteen minutes before I begin to ask them to finish up. But the program closes at 3 and the showers end at 230. Even when everyone complies, it still won't work.

My initial impulse is to stay later in order to get the last folks through but I know the downside to that.  If I do so for one I need to do it for all, and it's unfair to the volunteers on the days I'm not there. A couple days ago I caught myself getting frazzled as I tried to get everyone through, so much so one of the staff touched my back and said, "You're all right, you can do this."

I move slowly and purposefully because I want everyone I come into contact with to know they aren't a burden on my time, that I have the time and patience to give them. The stalls are clean and sanitary. I remember the showers on the lower levels of Grand Central Station. There were two, you paid 50¢ for maybe ten minutes and the attendant was very aware of the number of people waiting, telling you to hurry. He sat on an overturned box in e corner of the tiny anteroom you waited in. There was a communal bar of soap, no shampoo, probably a towel. The dim light was a blessing because you couldn't see how grungy it was. But you could still feel the film on the floor and the slime if you touched the walls. But I still felt cleaner on leaving.

This informs my work and I've realized that, like counseling the dying and listening to the mentally ill, I can't do far them all. Like the fellow on the beach told his throwing a star fish back in the ocean makes no difference, it makes a difference for that one.