Wandering shoes
My shoes are full of stories. The sand of Muir Beach is still in the toes. I can’t make myself empty the sand out. Some of the red mud of Santa Fe in its monsoon season is in the treads. Gently, I place these shoes in the closet of my Houston apartment and feel a little dizzy. Soon I must go to a mandatory workshop on “assessment measures.” I’d rather eat a bucket of sawdust. Yesterday I had a migraine (irregular sleep patterns trigger them), but I stumbled around. I visited Manko (she’s fine, enjoying her work selling vacuum cleaners with her boyfriend’s brother’s company). I unpacked, read my mail, and stroked Basho’s soft fur as he kneaded my belly with his soft paws and butted me with his head. (I marvel at his forgiveness.) I feel like a different woman than the one who left here to make that trip. Every time I let go of a delusion I am freer and older.
I took two books with me on the journey, Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund, and Noah Levine’s Dharma Punx. Levine helps me to understand my sons, my grandson, my students. Hesse helps me to examine, from a male perspective, the conflict I feel between my contemplative, rational, disciplined (Apollonian, yang, Narcissus) side and my adventurous, sensual, risk-taking (Dionysian, yin, Goldmund) side. Hesse published the book when he was 53. He was no puppy. He’d been an anti-war activist and lost that battle to the bloody detritus of WWI; he’d read Freud and had been psychoanalyzed by Jung himself; he’d married and divorced, and he’d done some adventuring and some reflecting. I don’t think he had actually been homeless, as he idealizes homelessness and the life of the wanderer–he imagines that wanderers could drift up to any old farmhouse in Germany and be fed, welcomed, and bedded by the lovely wife and daughters of the farmer. As I have said since I first read the book, Hesse knew nothing about women and less about the lifelong consequences and responsibilities a woman faces when she yields to her adventurous and sensual urges. Goldmund did not go adventuring with children in his arms and other mouths than his own to feed. But Hesse does make some observations near the end of the book–which I finished re-reading streaking through the sky from Portland to Houston, above a planet wrinkled with mountains and decorated with deserts, roads, and cities–that resound powerfully for me at this moment. Here’s one, expressed as Narcissus, thinking:
Certainly, seen from the point of view of reason and morality, [Narcissus’] own life was better, righter, steadier, more orderly, more exemplary. It was a life of order and strict service, an unending sacrifice, a constantly-renewed striving for clarity and justice. It was much purer, much better than the life of the artist, vagrant, and seducer of women. But seen from above, with God’s eyes–was this exemplary life of order and discipline, of renunciation of the world and of the joys of the senses, of remoteness from dirt and blood, of withdrawal into philosophy and meditation any better than Goldmund’s life? Had man really been created to live a regulated life, with hours and duties indicated by prayer bells? Had man really been created to study Aristotle and Saint Thomas, to know Greek, to extinguish his senses, to flee the world? Had God not created him with senses and instincts, with blood-colored darknesses, with the capacity for sin, lust, and despair?
Good questions. I would take “God” out of the discussion and replace it with some other word less freighted with delusion, but one of my quibbles with the severe manifestations of Buddhism has been that even if everything is a delusion (including God), I can’t help loving it. If enlightenment exists, I can’t believe that we achieve it through stiffness, tightness, self-denial, a dour expression, and years of self-abuse. Tradition can be comforting, but black robes don’t dance. Joy has to be there, joy in the face of the suffering that life is going to bring us, no matter what we do–not self-imposed suffering, but the suffering that results from saying yes to life, from risk, from making mistakes, from letting go of control, from “not minding that it hurts,” as Lawrence of Arabia is reputed to have said. That’s the message of the bodhisattva, the message of Kwan Yin, Kanon, Quan Am, the Vierge de Rocamadour, the Virgen de Guadalupe, Mary Magdalene (Donatello’s version especially), and the consolamentum of the Cathares. People have created those figures as manifestations that “hear all the sounds of the world.” We like to think of a Presence that can absorb and hold all our cries, those at the moment of orgasm and those at the moment of childbirth, those as we bungee-jump over the cliff and those as we scream in terror. Our job, should we choose to accept it, is to embrace both the Narcissus and the Goldmund in ourselves, to dissolve into the is-ness of life, in a spirit of celebration and abandon. It’s what I saw in southern Africa. When hunger is inevitable and suffering is daily, we might as well break into song, we might as well dance before we’re dead; with our last scrap of energy, sway to the music and exit laughing.
Shakti Khan described to me a ceremony she saw in Japan. The people came forward to an image of Kanon and asked, Shakti said, “May I pass my exams, may I find the love of my life, may we have a healthy child, may it be a boy, may my venture succeed, may the cancer go away, may I have enough money, may my child pass her exams…you know, all the things people ask for.” I laughed with joy, feeling my union with those people, envisioning all the little milagros placed on altars all over Mexico, the little scraps of paper tucked into the Wailing Wall, the prayer flags, letters, penances, and gifts we make to thank or bribe or beg for favors. I thought about all the things I’ve asked for–addressing the universe, a higher power, an image in my heart of the wish-fulfilling jewel. I felt like Tiny Tim, “[God] bless us, every one.” What lovable fools we are, wanting what we want to come, wanting what we don’t want not to come. And life happens anyway, and we suffer, and if the suffering is not too great for us to bear–if we don’t die in the process or go mad or fall into an unconquerable addiction or commit violence or become bitter or hard as rocks–we learn to love each other (and ourselves) with a capital L. Ubuntu. We are human because we are like other people, and we know it.
So I put my shoes into my Houston closet. I prepare to attend the workshop on assessment measures, wearing different shoes. That workshop is no worse than scrubbing brown stains off the toilet seats of rich people attending workshops to learn to embrace their bliss.
Tags: Texas
Kendall
HI KENDALL!
IT’S NICE TO READ YOU AGAIN… THANKS FOR YOUR COMMENT IN MY BLOG.. TODAY IT’S MY LAST DAY OF WORK HERE. I’M GLAD TO BE ALLOWED TO STROLL AGAIN IN THE GARDEN TOMORROW. (HOPEFULLY WITH A GIRL!!!) I ANSWERED YOUR COMMENT THERE IN MY BLOG…
I’M EXCITED BECAUSE I GOT SOME TRAFFIC (AFFLUENCE?) IN MY BLOG. MAYBE IT’S JUST MY EGO… BY THE WAY, I’LL GO ON WRITING TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS.
YOU HAVE A VERY INTERESTING AND LITERARY WAY TO WRITE. I DIDN’T READ YOUR KIND OF BOOKS SO MUCH OR SO EXTENSIVELY. BUT I ENVY YOU. I ALSO TOLD YOU THAT I MISS YOUR FRIENDSHIP HERE. THE ITALIAN – ANDREANA IS DOING THE SESHIN (THAT CRAZY POOR SOUL…) AND BEARING PAIN OF VARIOUS ORIGINS, MAYBE SHE DIDN’T SLEEP WELL, PROBLEMS WITH HER LEG… ETC. 1 WEEK SITTING IN MEDITATION! TAKE CARE
Ditto, Kendall, glad to see you back, after those fascinating entries on joyless monasticism!
Somewhere, deep in the Inferno, is a place for the person who invented the concept of “Assessment.” Don’t know what you’re supposed to be measuring or assessing, but good luck.