Notes From A Burning House

The strange death of "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin yesterday may not be good P.R. for the Stingray Benevolent Society, yet marine experts have been quick to remind us that stingray attacks are rare, and that usually these stings are not lethal.  (Just very, very painful.)  Irwin’s death was as likely as a lightning strike.  The barb found its way between his rib and pierced his heart.

On the other hand, stingray tours are continuing as scheduled and the operators continue to feed the creatures by hand. As one of them says, "They come in and play with us because we’re offering them free food. … They consider people to be another set of legs with a possible squid at the end, and they’re very happy to see us."  I feel reassured that manta rays will still be accessible at Sea World. 

You see, I have a very fond memory involving a manta ray and my mother. 

Manta rays are filter feeders and they have no stingers.  At the age of nine or so, my parents accompanied me on a trip to SeaWorld in Orlando.  We had just arrived for our day-long family expedition, and my father and grandparents left my mother and me to find a bathroom and find some confusing maps.   

My mother and I found ourselves near a large white basin that came up about waist-level.  Looking inside, we were treated to the sight of a large manta ray.  We both exclaimed over how beautiful it was, and laughed at the way it swam right over to us.  The little attention whore! 

Our family raised Russian wolfhounds for many years and my mother is very comfortable around animals.  She is no Steve Irwin, yet she has a quiet, brave affinity for creatures great and small.  Something about the manta ray was communicating to her.  What my mother said was, "He’s acting an awful lot like a puppy." 

Indeed, the manta ray was swimming back and forth, pulling back, and doing a roll in the water, then lapping right up at the edge nearest us and breaking the surface of the water. 

My mother pursed her lips and looked around the park to see if anyone wearing a badge was around.  "You know what, I wonder…"  She put her hand in the water, and the manta ray approached.  "Do you think they like to be pet?"  She pulled her hand out. She knew that manta rays don’t really have teeth to speak of, and can’t sting.  In any case, this one’s behavior was not threatening in any way.  What could it do?  Shove you?  My mother looked around again, shrugged, and stuck her hand back in.

Within seconds, she was scratching the belly of a very happy manta ray.  It had no face, but it roiled about her hand and shivered.  My mother laughed with delight.  "It IS a puppy!" 

We enjoyed this for a few more minutes before the rest of the family returned and my father saw his wife with her hand in a tank at SeaWorld.  Naturally, he asked her what she was doing.

My mother withdrew her hand and very innocently replied, "Nothing."

After Ukie got his new strings, we stopped for coffee at a Starbucks in Claremont Village.  As always, I ordered a "tall in a grande cup," which is my way of getting them to leave me plenty of room for milk. 

As always again, they filled the cup plenty full anyway, and I was obliged to do something I hate: pouring off a little bit of coffee into the trash.  Oh, I hate that.  That little O-shaped opening in the counter with the sugar packets and the napkins and wooden coffee stirrers, the pitchers of milk and half-and-half, clearly meant for paper trash only yet inevitably customers pour out their coffee into the trash. 

Making a face and silently apologizing to whatever employee would have to take out the trash, I poured just a bit of hot coffee into the trash, then set the cup down and reached for a sugar packet.   

"Ow."

This voice stopped my arm dead in its tracks if a reaching arm were to leave tracks, that is. 

The voice came from the O-shaped opening.  From the trash.  It was distinctly a voice.  A slightly pettish voice.  It had said, "Ow." 

To test this, not thinking very clearly, I slowly positioned my cup in the air and dribbled a little more hot coffee into the trash.

"Stop it." 

That was confirmation. 

Losing my reflexive timidity, I leaned down and looked into the trash. 

Napkins and empty sugar packets and tons of little stirring sticks.  The trash seemed to arrange itself roughly into the features of a jowly face with sunken eyes.  Could this be? 

"Yes, thats right, I spoke."  The trash spoke with a mouth animated by discarded napkins.  For someone who was just learning that he was insane, I felt rather calm. 

"Sorry."

There was no reply to that.  Feeling somehow a bit embarrassed - it was my first time being reprimanded by trash - I mixed sugar into my coffee and stirred.  Just as I was about to drop my stirring stick into the trash, I hesitated. 

It spoke right up.  "Go ahead, Im ready."  I dropped the stick in.  "Please forgive me," said the trash.  "I usually don’t complain.  Today I’m just in a bad mood." 

"Not at all," I assumed it.  "If you don’t mind my saying, you sound remarkably cultured are you from around here?"

"Lots of places," said the trash.  "Consider where these napkins are printed.  Between the coffee cups and the lids and the napkins and the sticks alone, you have several states represented here.  You couldn’t guess the variety of items customers drop in.  You could say I come from everywhere."

I couldn’t help but ask the next question.  Somehow it seemed particularly relevant when trash was talking.  "Where does your ‘I’ come from?"  I asked.

"This is why I don’t pipe up often," said the trash with a weary tone augmented by the rattling of plastic lids at the bottom of the can.  "People hear trash talk to them and they jump right up into their minds, trying to figure it out.

"You use your mind to look at things.  If you don’t use your mind to look at things, that’s awareness."

Somehow I could not dispute what the trash said.  The only problem I had with the situation was in my mind.  Part of my mind was telling itself that what it was observing wasnt true.  The trash didn’t have a problem; I had a problem. 

One doesn’t engage trash in public conversation.  It is considered strange.  Still, I lingered.  This trash seemed to understand a thing or two about the Way but I wanted to see.  So I asked it one more question.

"Bodhidharma said Buddha has three bodies.  He called them the transformation body, the reward body, and the real body.  I wonder, which of these bodies are you?"

Like a shot, with the popping sound of a tiny explosion, a plastic fork shot from the trash and caught me right in the forehead.  I rubbed the spot while laughing.  The trash, on the other hand, was having none of my nonsense.

"Bodhidharma said something else, you know."  The trash did not pause for me to respond.  "He said that someone who hears the teaching of a sage IS a sage, and someone who hears the teaching of a mortal is a mortal.  Do you know what that makes you?"

"Excuse me, sir."

I turned and there was an employee, Starbucks smock and hat, ready to take out the trash.  I was moved to protest, yet something kept me from interfering.  She rolled the counter out, and within seconds, she had the bag of trash out and was tying it shut.  My new teacher-friend kept talking, albeit the voice was muffled through the sealed bag. 

"Don’t lose your time, little man!  True sages are not in faraway places!"

Now we were outside.  I followed the employee towards the dumpster while the trash kept speaking, its face gazing at me intently through the opaque plastic.

"Appearances are not appearances, dipshit! Stop seeking your prize within time and space!  That way madness lies!"

And there ended his teaching, for the employee had hoisted him over her shoulder and flung him into the dumpster.  She gave me a polite smile as she turned and made her way back to the store.

"Excuse me," I said to her.  She looked at me as she might look if Lee Harvey Oswald had shown up to order a chai latte.  "What did you think of all that?  Were you listening?"

She blinked at me several times and said, "I don’t know what you mean.  I didn’t hear a thing."

That was it.  She walked back into Starbucks and I decided not to gild the lily.  I sipped my coffee, patted my ukulele, and walked towards the car. 

Today the ukulele made its first trip to the vet.  I was worried how it would go.  One might not think of ukuleles as being temperamental creatures, for they sound so affable and easygoing, but you never know. 

Today, it was time.  The rainbow-colored strings that came with the instrument were old and whiny even when they were in tune.  It was time to make a trip to the Folk Music Center and get new strings, maybe pick up another songbook. 

Gathering up the uke’s carrying case, I spoke soothingly to the instrument so as not to arouse its suspicions.  As I slid it into the carrying case, it could tell something was up.  In the car, ukulele was intensely curious.  Ukuleles travel well, in general, and this one is no exception. 

The Folk Music Center is where I adopted this critter, and upon entering the store the uke seemed to recognize the place and feel happy.  Soon we got the business and this was where I worried.

Fortunately, my ukulele is not highly strung.

Unzipping the carrying case, there was an initial hiss and a bit of a growl, but once we got to the business it cooperated.  Laying there as we took off its strings it may have whimpered a bit, yet this was barely audible.  He kept a brave face.  The Center let me do the stringing myself, and I think this helped Ukie feel more at ease.

A general inspection suggests Ukie is doing quite well indeed.  A cheerful and sprightly instrument.  Our companionship is just over two months old.  Next week, a nice fella by the name of Steve Ross, over at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, will start working with us.  We are already making beautiful music together but Steve is gonna help us take it to a new level, I know it. 

Already I am wondering whether Ukie needs a friend.  Besides me, of course.  Another instrument, a playmate for when I’m not around to play with him.  Right now, I can’t handle another one, but maybe in the future.  We’ll see how things go with Ukie.