Notes From A Burning House

On 29 November 2005, my Honda Civic is packed heavily and your correspondent is hitting the road for his fourth cross-country drive. I am visiting friends and family at a couple of stops on the way, but making the best time I can to reach Rhode Island. There I will be staying for a long visit. Inshallah, these posts will resume from the east coast. In the meantime, wish me luck. (And yes, I know about all the trouble on the 70 in Colorado. Looks like it will be the southern route.)

In the news: it seems I am not alone.  Indeed, I am in good company.

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Previously in this space, I wrote of the joys of shopping for discount clothing among the other beasts of my sex at places such as Ross.   Shopping at Out Of The Closet recently availed a very different kind of experience.

As I will be a guest at somebody’s wedding next week, I was browsing in hopes of finding a good navy blazer for thirty bucks.  While I was poking through the jackets, another customer in the store approached me and began our acquaintance by saying, “Hey, this is a great suit but it doesn’t fit me.  You should try this on.” 

Straight men never do that.

Oh, some might assume he was flirting, but he clearly wasn’t.  This wasn’t about sex, it was about clothing.  A good suit should not be languishing in a thrift shop on Sunset Boulevard; and if someone is on hand who might help the suit express its innate handsomeness, it is appropriate to make the introduction.  These are moral convictions I understand. 

He had a good eye, this stranger.  The suit was not a perfect fit, but for thirty-five dollars it was worth taking to a tailor. 

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From what I’ve read recently, tailors are getting scarce.

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In his later years, Alan Watts wrote a delightful essay (or you might call it a very long op-ed) about clothing, ridiculing the restrictive styles of western haute couture and common fashions.  He advocated, as the most practical and beautiful way of covering ourselves, the sarong.  Of course, in some climates that would not be practical at all; still, I am with him on the beauty part – both for men and women.  Sarongs are simple and versatile. They can be modest and dignified, and they can also be sexy. 

Sarongs would offer a lot of color and a standard of comfort to the workplace, an area that is often starving for both. 

Watts goes as far as to suggest that if we swaddle ourselves in fabric instead of cramming ourselves in constricting uniforms, we would have a harder time taking ourselves too seriously.  I wonder. 

I will be told I live in a dream world for entertaining such notions.  That could be true.  For my part, I find the “real” world odd in many ways, and this is one: we adapt our bodies to fit our clothing styles, rather than adapting the styles to be compatible with our bodies. 

You know what I mean? 

Mu Sang Sunim took me out to lunch recently at one of our favorite haunts, Sante La Brea. It is just about my favorite place to eat, and it is within walking distance of the Zen Center. (We don’t walk there, though.  In Los Angeles, pedestrians are considered strange.) 

As I tore open a sugar packet, I started reading the back of it.  The turbinado sugar I was about to pour into my coffee was produced, I read, in the country of Mauritius.  I had never heard of Mauritius, but my sugar packet told me it is an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa known for its lovely beaches.  Later I discovered their amusing tourism site, funny both for its text and some of its posed photographs (go there and click for info on honeymoons). 

The word association that played in my head went like this:  African island à sugar à  COLONY.  It also occurred to me how rare it is to be told where one’s granulated sugar comes from.  How is it that I was reading about this place on my sugar packet today? 

The island has changed hands more times than a ball-point pen.  The Arabs and the Portuguese did not find it worth exploiting, and quickly moved on.  The Dutch introduced sugar cane and African slaves to the island, but the colony withered.  Later, the French East India Company – who were skilled at the word association game themselves – sailed in and built sugar mills.  Much later, the English forced regime change after Port Louis became a haven for pirates, and eventually forced slavery was replaced by wage slavery (and the wage slaves came from China and India as well as Africa).  Mauritius, named for a colonial emperor, is now a parliamentary democracy trying to find ballast in an evolving global economy.  Sugar prices have dipped and swayed nauseatingly, unemployment is up.  Ah, so.  It is no accident that I read about Mauritius on my sugar packet.  They are spreading the word, sweeping up the beaches and putting a fresh coat of blue on the friendly skies - time to harvest a tourist industry. 

There is also an initiative afoot to make Mauritius a “cyber-island.”  If, while reading this drivel, your computer’s operating system conks out and you call the support desk, you might possibly find yourself talking to someone from Mauritius.  That someone could even be a Creole descendant of the island’s original labor force.

     So sail, ye mighty ships, sail on to Mauritius.  We are still in business.  Like it says on the official tourism site, “past and present are smoothly blended together.”  Drink up your coffee and follow this packet to find your fortune. 

When I walk to work I feel like I live in a place; I feel better acquainted with the neighborhoods I walk through.  It’s a three-mile hike to the office, starting near the Miracle Mile westward into Century City, “the other downtown.” 

Showed up this morning at the elementary school to cast a vote in the Special Election, as per my sample ballot.  As the polls opened there was a line but a great many of us were sent away because our polling place had changed at the last minute, without explanation.  I wonder how many voters gave up rather than be late for work. 

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Borak showed me a news clipping from the Religion News Service with a story about a Zen meditation group at a Jesuit center on Staten Island.   The Mount Manresa Jesuit Retreat House hosts a Tuesday night Zen group at St. Joseph’s Chapel, and monthly retreats. 

Correctly, the group’s leader says, “There is no Catholic Zen, Jewish Zen or Islamic Zen.  It has no theology.”  Here is something Jews, Catholics, Muslims, evangelical Christians, Buddhists, and anyone else can use to contemplate the great matter together without having to argue about their understanding. 

Sometimes understanding doesn’t seem to help the world much. 

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If a weekly Zen group does not inspire you, perhaps a week on Whidbey Island at my friends’ place of retreat would hit the spot.  Or you could come with me to the Diamond Hill Zen Monastery and take part in Kyol Che.  

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When I walk to work I catch smiles and meet dogs, peek in at interesting vestibules and smell people’s flowers (yes, I do – let them sue me).  On foot, it is possible to catch sight of shops one never notices in the driver’s seat, where one is focused intently on the line of cars that are keeping one from one’s destination.  On foot with three miles to go, destination takes its proper place and there is license to enjoy all the gratuitous things one might pass by on the way, things that are for us and not for us.

       For a moment, this very walk itself makes a wonderful retreat.  No reservations required.  Renunciation optional.