Notes From A Burning House

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An ongoing project lately has been the Theatre Dojo.

In another space, I have occasionally blogged about the progress. To summarize briefly with links: as early as October, a new kind of acting studio wants to make its debut in Hollywood, drawing on various disciplines to create a unique approach to the actor’s work. There are three of us who have been professionals in the theatre and are also practicing teachers of yoga, meditation, and tai chi.

Mr. Nelson (still re-entering our dream world after a week home), Ms. Swain and I convened at a house in Topanga Canyon last night for a "curricular meeting." That is to say, we had a play date. We did a yogic warmup, sat Zen together, and practiced Chris’s form of tai chi.

The more we do this together, the more parallels we find among the approaches and how they relate to the actor’s work: the use and misuse of the body, including the use and misuse of the intellect; the use of self as if it were a wall dividing us from our world and other beings; the use and misuse of muscular control; the karma or behavioral conditioning or other thinking that writes itself into our body language and controls our perceptions of self and environment.

All of this to consider and then: telling a story, embodying a character, and communicating deeply with scene partners and spectators.

We want to teach acting as a martial art and an awakening practice; and I think we see theatre as a vehicle for making awakening, and creativity, contagious.

Nice little twist on Artaud’s plague, that. He believed that if you ripped off the painted eyelids of "civilization" and "reality" you would reveal the true ugliness of humankind. Some of us think the ugliness is just another illusion, one more idea that can be used or not. Our true nature makes use of all these masks. Our creativity is making everything. Everything.

But for what? What shall we do with this beautiful contagion? Where does the riverbed lead? That riverbed is our discipline. Our vow is to follow it.

With work done and the hour getting late, we ate delicious burritos and guacamole, and then made our way outside to the hot tub. Now this, THIS is the way to have a business meeting: sitting in the hot tub under the night sky with the lightest hint of rain sprinkling us from above.

There are these blog friends of mine who lately have gotten into this thing of writing spicier things on Thursdays. It’s been fun trying to write things that are erotic while ’showing’ as little as possible. This one reveals scarcely more than one bare arm. Hope you enjoy.

______________

"In Indonesia they spread it on the bed on their wedding night."

"Really?"

She burrowed her nose deeper into the space between his jawbone and his ear, taking another deep inhale. "What’s it called? Dang-a-lang?"

"Ylang-ylang."

Deep, deep sniff. "It’s heavenly." She didn’t go for colognes at all, and even natural oils made her wrinkle her nose. Too many oils went overboard on the sweetness. An excess of sweetstink always gave her brain-freeze. This stuff had a sweet bouquet, but in wine terms the scent also had a deep body. When she inhaled the scene she could feel her chest relax and open up. "You know, it also mixes very well with your own, you know, your scent. That’s probably why they think of it as an aphrodisiac."

"Yeah, you’re probably right about that."

"Does it have that effect on you, wearing it? Does it make you horny?"

He did that bashful half-a-laugh of his and said, "It makes me feel better in my body. Brings my mood up. It works in that sense, I guess."

"Never thought about that. I guess if an aphrodisiac did work, that would be why."

She did not believe in aphrodisiacs. The thought of a substance that could magically induce horniness sounded too much like a porn writer’s contrivance or an adolescent boy fantasy to her. The aphrodisiac cocktails she had tried tasted like cough syrup. Sometimes the names of the drinks were more of a turn-on then the concoctions themselves.

Now she could smell it in the air, this doorang-doorang or whatever. It was airborne and the room smelled like him. Whatever this stuff was, however it worked, she felt like all of her senses were convening in her skin and exchanging information. The shapes of the room were sensations she could feel on her back and across her belly. This polymorphous sensual response – yes, that’s how an aphrodisiac would work.

His mind was working on the same idea, even though he was supposed to leave in a few minutes. He took a gulp of his coffee, trying to finish it before he had to go.

"Makes sense," he was saying. "Sensuality lives in your body and smell has a way of opening up all the gates: seeing, tasting, touching. Stimulates the mind, too."

"I can feel it all over my skin," she said. "I actually feel more alert – and it’s kinda fun being alert right now."

"Where do you feel the smell?"

She stood and walked across the room away from him, inhaling.

"Bottom of my belly." Another deep breath. "My knees – weird." One more. "My scalp." She suddenly felt itchy and set down her coffee mug in order to reach her fingers into her fair and give herself a scritch.

"What about your arms?"

"Arms?"

"Yeah." He was regarding her with a curious smile, with his brows upright and his face bright. "They’ve been crossed for most of this conversation and you just crossed them again."

She had indeed. "So what?"

"Come here." Still smiling. Finger pointing to the space on the couch next to him. This gesture was a command. She returned to him and sat down, and put her "whaddya want?" face on him. He extended his palm. "Arm, please."

"You’re going to be late."

"Arm."

"Aren’t you leaving?"

"This is science. Arm. Now."

"All right already."

She presented him with her arm, which he took gently in his hands. As if examining a specimen, he brushed up and down her arm lightly with his hands, and gently rolled up her sleeve all the way to her shoulder.

"Were you concealing an erogenous zone?"

"On my arm?"

"Mmmm-hmmmm."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Surely you jest."

"Surely not."

Tenderly, he turned arm upward and held it in both hands. He lowered his face toward it, breathed deeply through his nose, and said, "Well what about this?" Then he lowered his lips to the pit of her elbow.

Immediately, oxygen itself turned color and began to taste like steak marinated in wine. She managed to say, "You’ve got to be kidding—" before he began to French kiss the spot, alternating suction with teasing motions of his tongue. Her brain began to turn itself inside out. She squirmed. Her legs kicked. Speech was impossible.

"Oh my….haaaaaaaa….."

Now he drew upward and warmed the spot with his breath. It was like being wrapped up in a blanket of raw silk. From behind. Oh mercy, she was panting. How embarrassing. It simply could not be this easy. Her other arm was hitting the back of the couch and she grabbed and raked the sofa cushion with her free hand. The feet were still kicking. He had to stop this immediately. She hoped he wouldn’t.

But he is a bastard, and stop he did. Very abruptly. "You’re right," he said, and set her arm down by her side. "Nothing there. Hey, I’ve got to go."

"Oh no you don’t."

"I have to go."

"You’re missing your appointment."

"No, really-"

"Really. I’m afraid something has come up." She knocked him to the floor.

And that’s just where she took him: there on the floor with the smell of his damned oil weaving their scents together in the air.

Humankind knows little vexation like making a left-hand turn in Los Angeles. You sit there and sit there while the world passes by, waiting for a sliver of opportunity to gun the motor and complete the turn.

Several minutes had gone by and I wondered what the woman in the Crown Vic ahead of me was waiting for. My own car idled behind hers as she waited and waited. Several long gaps in the traffic came and went like a flickering candle, yet the Vic stood there.

My impatience was beginning to flirt with despair when the sound of a siren distracted me. As it drew closer, I could hear there was more than one. Several, in fact. Louder and louder, closer and closer.

Into the intersection, a motorcade arrived. Six highway patrol motorcycles escorted a limousine to the corner, then fanned out and closed off the intersection. Officers kicked their bikes onto stands and raised their arms to halt traffic. What was going on here?

The door to the limo opened, and out came the mayor. Crowds were quickly forming on the sidewalks, and flash bulbs were going off. As the mayor emerged, he smiled his best Kennedy smile and waved. The crowd roared with adoration.

To my astonishment, the mayor made his way to the Crown Vic in front of me, his smile unrelenting. The driver’s side window pulled down with an automated hum, and the woman – bespectacled and behatted – stared up at him. The mayor held his hands in the air to quiet the throng.

"Mrs. Ethel Stoat of 34 Roxbury Drive?"

"Uhh…yes."

"Ladies and gentlemen!!" cried the mayor. "I present to you – Mrs. Ethel Stoat of 34 Roxbury Drive!"

The crowd applauded warmly. The mayor continued: "Mrs. Stoat, I am here to welcome you to the intersection! Please, I prithee, feel free to make your left-hand turn and be on your way!"

Somehow, without my noticing, a marching band from the local high school had assembled, and they began playing something rousing by John Philip Souza. The crowd began to applaud for extra encouragement.

And slowly, surely, Mrs. Stoat’s car rolled forward and, with six officers from the highway patrol holding up the oncoming traffic, the mayor waving her on, the marching band pounding away, the car tentatively completed the turn. As the Vic accelerated out of the turn, a burst of fireworks exploded in the air.

The crowd was in a frenzy. Confetti flew everywhere as the mayor flashed a ‘victory’ sign and climbed back into the limo.

The crowd began to disperse, with some lingering to buy hot dogs from the food carts that had quietly arrived during the hubbub. The marching band broke ranks. The limo and the motorbikes pulled away, without ceremony.

And the traffic healed itself right up.

Now I sit here waiting to make a left-hand turn.

It is still September 11.

On a walk with her Zen Master, a woman was moved to ask, "Why is there so much evil in the world?"

Without missing a beat, her teacher said: "Because of you."

Earlier today, something very terrible took place in our republic. It had never happened here before, but it had been happening and has been happening ever since, around the world. The rage and violence penetrated our defenses and brought down our illusion of safety from the madness. No longer could anyone feel like they weren’t involved.

This sense of security reminds me of the wall that once surrounded a prince named Siddhartha. He grew up and lived in a huge palace compound, a remote fortress within a land that knew much suffering and injustice. When this prince was born, there had been a prophecy suggesting the boy might become a spiritual seeker instead of a king. Papa wanted none of that and kept his son a virtual prisoner of luxury and wealth, for fear that seeing what life was like outside the palace would change his son’s consciousness and drive him to religious life.

Indeed, seeing what was beyond the walls hit the prince’s mind like a bolt of lightning. When he scaled the walls out of sheer curiosity, he saw a land where rich and poor lived separate existences, where humans languished in desparate conditions, a land of violence, disease, poverty, old age, sickness - and death, the appointment everyone has and no one misses. Death comes no matter how good you are, rich you are, righteous you are, or healthy you are.

The human suffering touched the prince as deeply as anything could: there was no separation, no sense of insulation from human life. Time, he saw, is limited. He was involved. Involved with all of it. All of it.

Getting past the walls and seeing life as it truly is, a prince’s mind is transformed by an enormous question. What is this? And the great awakening begins.

This is NOT the story of a person who lived a long time ago and became known as the Buddha. Forget it.

This is our prophecy. Yours and mine. Yep, you and me. It’s our story.

Another way to handle our question is to build taller walls, to instill a better sense of security. Walls look like they should do that for us, so we build lots of them. We build gates and fences around our houses, we take our religions literally, and we bask in the cold shade of nationalism. We try to build bigger and bigger walls keeping us uninvolved with the rest of the world - the enemy. We speak of "our way of life," we believe we are right, and we see no need to look critically at our lives or our history - and least of all, our consciousness itself. Oh no. As best we can, we must prevent our consciousness from being changed.

Just as many Americans have consented to believe that dissent is tantamount to treason, we also have come to feel there is no role for compassion or non-violence at all in confronting terrorism, fanaticism, violent crime, oppression and viciousness. We turn to familiar refuges - martial law, militarism, nationalism. Those who make decisions on our behalf promise bigger, better walls. They can be forgiven for this. Walls are their business and walls have uses. It is the walls we don’t see clearly that need to be climbed.

Hammers do what we do with them. A hammer cannot wake up, only the person wielding it. I am convinced there is no sane response to September 11 except to wake up. Nothing will make sense from this point on until there is a shift in consciousness.

There is no "post-September 11" world, there is only this moment and our sanctuary has been compromised. The walls stand for us to scale. Our assumptions stand for us to look at in the light and question. What is a human being? What are desire, anger, and ignorance? The choice is to accept our utter involvement in the wholeness of all life.

It is as if the air we breathe is on fire and we are pissing gasoline, wondering why we feel so hot.
Generation after generation, we kill one another because we don’t understand what we are.

From the beginning, we have embraced the suffering that afflicts us and deny every opportunity to wake up and try a different way. Those who have argued for a different approach are ignored. Those who will not be ignored are dispensed with. The walls stand.

The best we could possibly make of September 11 is to treat it like a temple bell in the center of the earth that tolls so loudly we wake up. Then we climb the walls and explore the territory of good, evil, and everything else we have made.

We are all princes and it is time for the bad news: we made the walls, we made the country, and we made the suffering. We even made us. (And I am not your friend, because I am making things right and left.) We made the whole painful thing. If we don’t understand our involvement, we don’t understand anything.

There is good news, though.

This is not intended as poetry. It will remain September 11 until we climb the wall. Nothing else will work.

* * *

If you have made it this far, I thank you sincerely for reading. Let us practice together. Let us look into the sources of evil - we can begin with the greed, anger, and delusion and seriously consider "Who’s asking?" We are involved. Let us wake up.

We best honor our dead by making a vow to wake up and, from wherever we stand, stop believing insane things. A small cup of water will extinguish a wall of fire, whereas no amount of fire ever will.

I am a youngster and cannot teach you anything; but I will gladly hold hands and walk with you. One step. One step at a time.

Today there has been a little bit of progress on a writing project I’ve been working on. This is a competition for original radio scripts and there are cash prizes. If you, dear reader, would like to take a shot at it, click that link! You have until November 15 to postmark your entry.

At the moment I am a little bit fried working out my plot. (This is something I did not inherit from my father. He’s good at plotting. I do the zany madcap satire stuff.) So let me come and tell you of my Friday evening.

On Friday, after a strange day at the office, I reported to the historic McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica to meet my ukulele teacher for the first time.

After checking in, I was sent upstairs into a dark hallway lined with photographs of famous musicians who have played at McCabe’s. The air reeked of incense. The stillness was so intense it gave me a shiver. As directed, I sat in the seiza position and waited for sensei to hit a gong within his room.

I sat in the uncomfortable position for half an hour. This was a way of testing my mettle. It’s known as a mettle-nettle, because a lot of nettling has a way of meddling with your mettle. So I sat on my feet and endured the mettle-nettle until, from within the master’s chamber, I heard a small gong being struck three times.

Painfully, I regained my feet and stepped gingerly into the room, being sure to turn to the left and bow first to the altar dedicated to Ohta-san. There were also figures of Daniel Ho and his father, and there was Iz, as large and full of aloha as Hotei the laughing buddha.

The master, Steve Rose, regarded me cooly from the pillow on which he sat. He wore a lei of tiny skulls and his ukulele looked like it could put a serious dent in a lazy student’s head.

I knew not to speak until spoken to. Eventually, sensei broke the silence with a command.
"Play an E-major."

Cripes! One of the most miserable chords to play on a uke! Keeping my face as neutral as possible, I willed my fingers to twist themselves to fret an ‘E.’ I strummed, and a weak, tinny ‘E’ rose from my Ukie.

The master’s brow clouded ever so slightly, but he said, "Passable."

He motioned for me to sit down. I sat, again in seiza, with the ukulele laying down in front of me, parallel to his. The master asked me another question:

"What do you think of Jake Shimabukuro’s cover of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ on the ukulele?"

He was referring to an astonishing performance that has been heard all over the world thanks to YouTube. I knew I had to choose my words carefully, and I studied his poker face as I spoke.
"He is of course an enormously skillful player. The arrangement is clever, yet perhaps a little showy. All that rock and roll flash. The ukulele has a personality all its own - it is not a rock guitar. Speaking as an unworthy beginning student, I wonder if this performance amounts to little more than a stunt. Yet perhaps it will attract 10,000 students more worthy than myself to explore the ukulele and discover its true character."

The master left several minutes of silence. I wondered if he would kick me out of the room.

Finally he said, "I agree. You may study with me."

I had passed the master’s barrier gate! To celebrate, we sipped iced green tea - with little umbrellas adorning our cups - and then we began.

Ukie and I have a long way to go.

Hi friends,

There’s a new (and true) story (with hilarious illustrations) at the new blog home(insert one more parenthetical comment here):  http://algerblog.blogspot.com .

And sometime today, The Blue Doodle should be updated and present this week’s Letter To The Moon.  Please enjoy.

May as well bookmark that blogspot page - I hope you will. 

Burned in the lad’s memory are the words of John D. MacDonald, who wrote an introduction for Stephen King’s first book of short stories. The lad read this at a very young age, when he was getting up every morning and banging out sentences on a manual typewriter his parents gave him as a present. MacDonald named some of the things it takes to be a writer. Cardinal among these, wrote MacDonald, is a love of words. He wrote that you must want to "roll around in them."

Time passed, and so did MacDonald. The lad grew up, loving words every step of the way. Then, once upon a time, he had a brief, fun fling with somebody who showed him how much fun rolling around in the words could be.

On their third date, they were lounging in her apartment eating some food, drinking beer, and staying cool as best they could. The television was on, with the sound off, and the lad’s eye was caught by a strange-looking commercial. "Check this out," he said, and the lady laughed with him. The commercial featured images of ladies with their midriffs exposed, and close-ups of lovely bellies with advertising messages written on them in greasepaint.

"At least it’s not the one with the talking belly buttons," she said. "That one really disturbs me."

"You know what job I’d like?" said the lad, eyes on the tv screen and all its belly-billboards.

"No. What job would you like?"

"I would like to be the guy on the set of this commercial who knelt down and wrote on the ladies’ bellies."

This intrigued her. She arched an eyebrow in mock hilarity and said, "Really now?"

"Totally hot," he confirmed.

The lady thought this over, stood up, and went into the other room. She returned and handed him a personal item. She said, "You’re hired."

It was a lipstick.

She raised her shirt to expose her belly. "Go on. What, do you have writer’s block?"

"Uh, no! No! Just catching my breath."

He uncapped the lipstick and rotated the ruby red point upward. He leaned in very close and wrote the first message that came to mind. He wrote the words slowly, enjoying the way her skin quivered and sensing her pulse rising. He wrote: Ask me what I’m thinking.

She looked down and read the message upside down. "Okay, what am I thinking?"

This time he wrote slowly, with teasing motions of his lipstick pen - in the space beneath her naval: This is really hot.

"Hmmm," she spoke barely above a whisper, "While I don’t disagree, the statement is a bit vague. You will need to elaborate."

And elaborate they did, slowly revealing more and more space to be filled with words, ruby red words that teased and provoked until, beaded with moisture and bent in the heat, the words began to run and wear off on skin and clothing and sheets, as the pair took to rolling around and getting altogether slicked up in words.

And they agreed that what they received was much more gratifying than any literary award. No doubt, John MacDonald would agree.

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