Notes From A Burning House

I am coming to regard laughter as a civic duty.  Someone – was it Freud?  Who’s got a Bartlett’s? – described laughter as a social sanction against rigid behavior.  The press keeps telling us voters are demoralized and feel like their suffrage is superfluous; lobbying is a major industry, and activism is alive and well in our streets.  We know about voting (whether we show up at the polls or not), we know about activism, but what about the role of laughter in civic life? 

One of the wisest politicians I have ever heard about is the former mayor of Bogota, Columbia, Antanus Mockus.  During his regime, he launched many unconventional initiatives.  One of my favorites was the way he addressed the problem of traffic in the city, with menacing drivers and jaywalking pedestrians causing lots of problems.  His approach was to employ 20 mimes to make fun of scofflaws and rude people.  They would follow jaywalking pedestrians and mock the reckless drivers (sometimes brandishing huge banners that said INCORRECTO!).  They would also incite other citizens to join in razzing the rude.  The mimes became so popular that Mockus added a veritable battalion of them to expand the program.  Instead of weapons or punitive laws, civic order – or some sense of cooperation, at least – was instilled using humor.  Laughter as a doorway to common sense.  How wonderful. 

 

For more on Mockus’s two terms as mayor, read: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html

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What passes for “dialogue” in our society is a lot of noise and entrenched verbal warfare bereft of reason or honesty, and conventional activism has not found a way to cut through it.  Lobbying is an industry, and street activism is easily contained and ignored.  If you can’t buy a seat at the table, you can try holding up a sign and shouting.  But you know who really has the attention of our lawmakers. 

Then there are people like the Yes Men (www.theyesmen.org) who have managed to pull off some really subversive stunts that throw a bright light on corporate amorality and cynicism.  Go to their website, click on “Hijinks,” and enjoy.  They do a good job of documenting their work.  You can also rent or purchase their self-titled documentary, which was a theatrical release last year. 

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Laughter does not necessarily deride.  To me it feels impartial, a simple release of pressure.  Defending our opinions and our perceptions creates pressure; trying to prove our opinions and perceptions are the truth creates pressure; reconciling ourselves to the anarchic nature of our place in the world creates pressure; and then we get into the pressure of society – dealing with all these other human beings.  (Monkeys with car keys, that’s all we are - an unreliable muddle of brutes with dangerous toys, prone to insanity.)

There are signs of hope in the generation after me.  Earlier this week, Tim Russert, the NBC news anchor, gave an address to graduating seniors at Harvard University.  Some students had read news articles exposing the fact that Russert has been recycling the same commencement speech over and over again for years, many passages repeated verbatim.  Some students saw humor in this even though there is nothing ‘wrong’ about it, per se. 

On Wednesday, two graduating seniors – Max Brodsky and David Ferris – produced and distributed “bingo cards” with phrases from Russert’s canned speech.  During Mr. Russert’s speech, there were periodic cries of “Bingo!!” from around the auditorium.  In spite of the joke, Masters Brodsky and Ferris admitted that they found the speech to be good quality, recycled or not. 

What they did was bear witness to something strange in the situation, instead of conspiring to ignore it, which is the more socially-accepted response to strangeness.  There is something there that gladdens my heart.  More to the point, it provokes laughter; and if there is anything left that I trust, it is laughter. 

Changing?  Who says everything is changing?  What is there that is changing?  This fire is much older than my objections to it. 

Die — then live
Day and night within the world
Once you’ve done this, then you can

Hold the world right in your hand!

                                                           -Bankei (1622-1693)  (unknown trans.)

Driving on San Vicente Boulevard last night, I found myself behind an automobile with a bumper sticker that proclaimed, “I am too blessed to be stressed!”   

I promptly ran him off the road.

A frequent whistleblower for the press, speaking on condition that he/she/it not be named, says that anonymous sources are so angry about the controversies surrounding press reports using anonymous sources that an organization is being formed to advocate for anonymous sources and bolster their image in the public eye.  Mark Felt, recently revealed as the true identity of

America’s most famous secret tipster, Deep Throat, will serve as honorary chairman.  The names of other board members have not been released. 

In other anonymous news, a source revealed that an unnamed journalist has interviewed fictitious subjects for a major daily newspaper, but a conflicting report suggests that the previous source fabricated the incident.  Attempts to reach the source were unsuccessful, as his phone number is unlisted. 

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A waiter said, “But Monsieur Mumun, you are Buddhist, so surely you will be eating vegetarian.”  I said not at all, that anything I eat was probably living once, and my correct direction was to take responsibility.  Whenever possible, I told him, it is best to do the killing oneself.  At which point I shot him.  What I did not eat there, I would store in my freezer.

My anonymous dining companion was taken aback and even felt insulted, which means she was simultaneously taken aback and taking affront.  She wondered how one could practice meditation for so long and still be so prickly.  Wasn’t I supposed to be nice by now? 

“It doesn’t make me nice,” I said.  “It keeps me raw.”  To demonstrate, I cut my arm and peeled back some of my skin.  “See?  Pink!” 

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Unnamed sources say that President Bush feels his critics are stuck in masculine ways of thinking and failing to consider a more balanced perspective. 

“The problem with men,” said President Bush during a closed conference with the Anonymous Sources Union, “Is they rigidly hold onto the objective and do not take the subjunctive into account.  They don’t consider feelings to be relevant.  They are too oriented around facts and logic and hard evidence.  This makes them slow to respond, stiff in their thinking.  You have to trust your feelings, you have to be keyed into that.” 

When questioned as to whether he destroyed a middle-eastern nation that posed no threat to us because of a mere hunch, rather than any accurate intelligence, Bush said, “My feelings are my feelings.  Do not oppress Liberty with your patriarchal value system.  Look, now I’m crying.  Next question.” 

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A sign for my Italian Zen Center (following Dante):

Per la mente si va ne la citta’ dolente.

Per la mente si va ne l’etterno dolore.

Per la mente si va ne la perduta gente.

Dinanzi alla mente non fuor cose create!

Dinanzi alla mente ci sono la somma sapienza ed ‘l primo amore!

Lasciate ogne delusione voi ch’entrate!

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A couple of centenarians observed their 80^th wedding anniversary and were asked how they had hung in there together.  Their recommendations were simple, including never go to bed with a fight.  They also recommended holdings hands each night. 

My love took their advice to heart, and cut off my hands while I was sleeping so she could hold them as much as she wants.

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Everything I write here is true, just not in a literal sense.  (And it has no literary sense, none whatsoever.)  This event actually happened. 

I sat in the Zen Center office typing a letter.  In burst Hyon Gak Sunim.  While ordinary men may be cocksure, only this man can be described as GAK-sure; he has a patent on it.  In burst the world famous, Ivy-educated Korean-styled Zen monk.  This is what he said, pretty much as it appears here, pretty much as a monologue.  To get the full effect, you must read it aloud in a booming voice that causes dogs to hide under the bed.

"You know what?  In October, you get on a plane with John and come to Korea and you both sit Kyol Che and be monks.  Leave this shit behind.  What is all this?  Okay, a little tit here and there.  Believe me - how old are you?  34?  You’re already dead.  Your best sperm is gone.  Anything you give at this point is end product, end of the line product.  You’re dead in that respect.  Forget this, just put it down.  You come in October.  Get on the plane."

What a pile of Hinayana Hoodoo.  Monastic life = superior, lay life = prison.  The commitment to life as a celibate monk is something I respect highly; I also honor the path of marriage as a spiritual vocation.  The mind that divides things into ‘spiritual’ and ‘less spiritual’ is the prison; preferences are a prison; pride and arrogance about one’s own path and one’s understanding is a prison.  Zen is a prison.  This guy needs a wife and cholicky triplets and a mortgage to kick his ass.

 

But don’t quote me on that.

My house is on fire.  I alternate sitting in contemplation of the blaze, as the forms change all around me, including me; and wanting to write something about it, document it in some way, even though the effort is like grabbing at the tracks of a flying bird. 

This is an experiment, at a time when this child could use some creative distraction.  Nothing is certain in an inferno, and so there are no promises here about how long this will continue or what will ensue in this space.  There may be recipes, riffs on the madhyamika, nursery rhymes, or arrangements of words and objects that are pleasing.  There will be damned lies and tortured fantasies.  There will be delirious sallies.  There may be trouble. 

Umberto Crenca, a visual and performance artist in Providence, once told me he liked paintings that had nails or thorns coming out of them.  He liked art that could defend itself against an attack.  I wish I could create a blog that periodically sprouted sharp needles, tied itself into knots, or exuded the aromas of garlic, pine nuts, strawberries, burning oil, and sweat.

Let us be friends on the level where it hurts.  Let us witness each other in sorrow and joy.  Let us release all of it.  Let change be us.