Hearing the Voices of the Land

This is a picture of the Black Mesas outside of San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico. I didn't take it, and I don't know who did; I had pictures from that time, but they are gone. The New Mexico period of my life was a strange time, a fog in retrospect, just one more image in a sea of images. I lived there for ten years.

At the end of the summer after my first year of law school in California, which summer spent in Nashville in 1981 concreted my resolve that I would never again return here to live, I decided to drive slowly across the country, on and off I-40, back toward Palo Alto. I spent my second night in Amarillo, Texas, and happened to check into a Quality Inn with a bar that got very lively at night, and after an evening of drinking, pool playing, and if my memory serves me correctly (which is not likely), some other chemical explorations I woke up with a blazing hangover and drove over the state border into Tucumcari, New Mexico.

The border between New Mexico and Texas at I-40 is a strange place, one of those odd junctures of the land where the scenery changes instantly -- different vegetation, different rocks, and the land comes alive. Or maybe, not alive, but brimming with ghosts. Because the Texas panhandle scarcity ends to be replaced with something very different. I stumbled into Tucumcari, a town of nothing but endless cheap motels and seedy Mexican bars, and rented a cheap room from people who spoke no English. A storm was brewing, and tumbleweeds flew down the darkened, deserted streets. I thought about braving one of the local bars but was too whipped, and settled down in the motel with a bottle of something or other. I had two phone calls to make - one to my parents in Tennessee, one to my fiancee in California, but the phones wouldn't give me a long distance line. I was enveloped in New Mexico.

The next day I had what had to be the most mystical drive of my life; with a six-pack in my lap, I drove the long, windy alternate route from Tucumcari up to Santa Fe, a highway of high desert, fields of whipping August grasses that sometime overshadowed and nearly covered the roads; occasional isolated littel towns usually consisting of nothing more than a bar and a gas station, where I refreshed my beverages, used the bathrooms and moved on. I have never had a more moving day on the road. At the end of that third day, I checked into a motel outside Santa Fe, and still tired, instead of sampling any of the good restaurants in one of the country's best restaurant cities, I drove to a Wendy's to pick up a cheeseburger. When they asked me if I wanted green chile with it, I knew that I was home.

I split my second-year clerkship between a law firm in Albuquerque and one in Los Angeles, and after graduation came back to Albuquerque. The job there didn't last; a law firm is a law firm and I was no more cut out for corporate law then, than I am now. Nevertheless, I stayed in New Mexico for ten years, times getting stranger and stranger, until ultimately I was forced back to Tennessee, where I never have felt, and never will feel that I belong.

But what drew me to New Mexico and kept me there until after all my options had run out, was the voice of the land. I could feel it so strongly in those Black Mesas pictured above, or in the bosque are where I lived in my adobe apartment in Albuquerque's North Valley. I am one-sixteenth Cherokee, but I have no real contacts with Indians (or Native Americans if you prefer, but I don't) these days, or before New Mexico. But I was drawn to the lands where they lived; there was and I'm sure still a power in those lands, a presence, a huge warm and hauntity entity that I perceived on that first day driving into Santa Fe. Some people feel it, and some don't. Living in Albuquerque was a lot like living in any other city, but I could get on my Yamaha Virago 920 and out into the land from my townhouse in ten minutes, and hear those voices again and feel the connection with the land. It was a hauting and eternal time.

After the first law firm job expired, I worked for a time in a two-man firm whose founder had fled the Department of the Interior when Reagan came in, and took up Indian law by contract. Most of our clients were Indian school Boards, particularly Navajo. During one period that lasted a few months, I was assigned to work with the Governor of Acoma Pueblo, about sixty miles out of Albuquerque, codifying legislation for the Tribe. That was a strange time. The tribal offices were mostly deserted; there was only one nearby restaurant. Like other Pueblos, Acoma had a counsel or legislature and a Governor, to satisfy the BIA and whoever else holds the leash on their funding, but the real governing is done by traditional tribal forces, structure unseen as the ghosts in the mesa, but very real -- often the real ruler of the tribe was a brujo, and old man with a broom you might see around at night when you get ready to leave the office. Shadows of reality under the veneer of a falsely imposed and plastic structure. The feeling of all those days and weeks spent in that place will never leave me, like the experience of flying out into the parched crack land where we saw fit in our greed and power to put the Navajo, towns with no employer but the schools.

I never really developed any good personal relationships with any of the Indians. Their lives were depressing to me. They lived in the shattered remnants of their own culture, which our society had largely destroyed and replaced with the worst and lowest features of our own -- the worst food, the worst entertainment, a culture stripped of value. It seemed to me that there were two extremes of person. Most of them were living only the most shallow and ignorant existence, and yet there were people of extreme depth, whose roots in their largely past-tense culture remained deep, and whose education was due to their own efforts and innate drive and wisdom, not the affect of a culture where all pretend to be educated. These truly impressive and self-made people, embodying the wisdom of their own traditions and their own will, must have been like the people who made this country for our culture, a type gone from everywhere now that the madness has taken over all.

Several times in the last couple of years, I've heard music in my bedroom from a source I couldn't locate. Several times it took the form of a very, very long soft murmur that seemed to consist of human voices, in the rhythm of a tribal chant. On sleepless nights, I would hear this music for seeming hours on end. At first I thought it came through the wall (of a different room) from the other half of the duplex I live in, but when I went to that room, there was no sound. Obviously, it came from outside. But on at least two occasions, sleepless and curious, I went outside and walked all around the house; nothing -- no sound. Until I went back to the bedroom where the chanting continued unabated. It was always gone by morning.

The neighborhood where I live is a livable ghetto, a mostly White underclass area called "the Nations." I've never known, or even thought about the source of the name, until a few weeks ago, my friend Ezra mentioned that the reason for the name was that the area hosted, a long time ago, and population of Indians, and then Indian graveyards. It took weeks for this to come together for me. But now I think I know something about the source of the chanting.

I don't believe in souls, or in ghosts, as those terms are passed on to us; those are stories which grasp at but can't enclose a deeper reality, which is ineffable but which at any rate I feel no pressure to define. What I am learning, as my life enters this latest phase, is that experience is what it is. Who were are and what 'it' is are questions which, if asked to often, obscure the reality of the world. And part of that world, for me, is hearing these voices of the land.

Incidentally, a few months ago the kid who lived in the duplex behind me was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He is gone now, hospitalized somewhere I guess. But he was hearing voices through the wall, which he thought were me, mocking and taunting him. I understand this is common for paranoid schizophrenics, and it sounds like hell. The voices he heard weren't me, but who am I to say they were unreal? Me with my Indian chanting, and that huge feeling of Presence in certain land.

As I pursue my Zen practice, I have been taught and encouraged by my teachers to trust my own experience and to accept what I perceive clearly, even when I can't define it. And one benefit of continued practice is an enlargement of the sense of self (which is also paradoxically, the absence of self) that allows a perspective on the self as if from the outside; and I see that quite justifiably in the minds of those who are enmeshed in the normal grid of social consciousness, I may be quite mad in some ways. I have no desire for most of the things people spend their lives chasing -- wealth, family, and attachments. Some of my best friends aren't even real in any "objective" sense of the world.

But when I see where your mass consciousness has taken you, and me and all of us, to the brink of extinction or purifications, depending, I don't mind. I'm quite happy with a life that some of you may see as insane; and I wouldn't give up the live I've lived, the perceptions and the feelings I've had, for any of the world that you've been building in your heads all your lives.

Have a nice day, and try to experience it as it really is.







This is me in about 1985. Already teetering on the edge of civilization.

Finally, Some Truth About Hunter S. Thompson

I knew this movie was coming out, but I had no idea it would be in Nashville this fast; as it was, I was on my way out of town on Saturday afternoon before I learned, and I knew since it was playing at the local non-profit theatre, I only had a few days. I couldn't find anyone to go with me. People will sell out a theatre to see another Batman movie, but I went to see Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson alone. Not that there weren't people there, mind you, but I wondered how many were there for the right reason.

I'd been really disappointed in the HST movies to date. I'm a big fan of both Bill Murray and to a lesser extent, Johnny Depp, but both Where Buffalo Roam and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas were for the most part pointless exploitations of Thompson's Gonzo image, Raoul Duke come to the big screen. They missed out on the important side of Thompson, the crystal-clear visionary who saw everything, including what comes next for this country and this world, and ultimately decided he'd had enough.

Those ignoramuses who know Thompson only for the darkly comedic side of his work, though not anyone who read Anita Thompson's The Gonzo Way or Thompson's oeuvre, may be surprised by the depth and width of the celebrities who considered themselves his friends. From George McGovern to Nixon speechwriter Pat Bucahanan, from Jimmy Carter to Thompson friend and benefactor George Stranahan (currently of Flying Dog Brewery) who laments that Thompson "never paid the rent, broke up my marriage, and started both my kids smoking dope," the testimonials are many, but mostly on point. And the insights into Thompson's childhood and life, although limited, are invaluable.

Of course, as Jimmy Buffett says, we miss Hunter because we need him now. Its' hard to imagine Hunter Thompson as one of today's cringing, pandering, colaborationist "journalists." We needed Dan Rather, and we need Hunter Thompson. In what may have been Thompson's last published piece, or maybe just one of the last important ones, he laments at the fall of the Twin Towers that all hope for world peace has been lost. Of course, he was right, and I think his vision was clear enough that he knew he'd done all he could do. How can we expect someone who burned so brightly, to burn forever?

I'm not going to urge you to read Thompson any more; if you haven't yet, and you're old enough to remember the sixties and seventies, there's something wrong with you. For those of you who were alive and who cared about your world, I urge you to see this movie and remember. Many of Thompson's pivotal pieces are quoted, particulary his observation that from San Francisco in the late '60's, you could see the great wave that would have changed the world, crest and roll back. Sometime there can be events in one's life that make everything after, just the anticlimax. Especially one who lives in times that he can see getting darker and darker.

Maybe it's just that I see so much of what I'd like to be in Thompson; not only his brilliance, but his absolute courage. And of course, his success. I pretend not to be envious. But there 's no doubt that his example changed my life forever. Of course he was nut, in a way, but so am I, and in lots of the same ways. I just haven't made a living at it yet.

Thompson is not the only writer whose shadow got so big it became hard to live under. Look at Jack Kerouac, who had nowhere near Thompson's talent nor intelligence. Hell, look at Hemingway, or Fitzgerald, the latter whose style Thompson so admired that he typed and re-typed The Great Gatsby just to get the rhythm of the prose.

Sometimes, when I get a little perspective, I see that maybe I'm not really all that sane or normal. But then I look around and see where we are in history, what a disaster human civilization has become, and I realize it's the sane ones, the normal ones, the ones who can live with hypocrisy, the ones who refuse to yell and thrash shoot and point at the imposters, that have put us where we are -- the Good Germans who would allow the whole world to become a mass grave of their unspoken and spineless good intentions. And I'm proud not to be among them, and I'm glad there was a Hunter Thompson, to help me do what I'll have to do, to do what has to be done. And to realize that, warts and all, to be truly human is not to be a peaceful coward, but to be truly alive.

Naked Mole Rap

Deuce made me post this.

A little over four years ago, the descendants of Rufus the Naked Mole Rat entered my life. Now they control everything.

Deuce also wanted me to give you this link to his blog, though he doesn't write often...

"Post-Oil", Jim Lydecker Guest Blog

I've been posting Jim Lydecker's stuff here for since May, 2007; check out the archives for the older posts . I came to realize a long way back that everything he says here is undeniably true, except for those lost in a delusional haze, or those who have a vested interest in fostering that haze in others. I got this one Thursday night and it ruined my whole evening, because this whole thing is staring us right in the face, much closer than we expected, and even the average citizen is starting to get it.

I don't necessarily agree with Jim's "solution" at the end; it would be temporary at best. No, the drain's wide open. There is no solution. Also, I don't know about the sequence of the Iraq pullout and censure in the World Court, though it's not that unlikely The OPEC cut-off is quite likely to occur as stated, as are the consequences

Thanks to Jim for keeping up on the research; I have neither the heart nor the inclination. This imminent future is why I do what I do, and why I think it's so important that it be done right. But before I take it from there, here's a dose of reality.




Greetings-

As most of you know, for the past 10 years I have been writing regularly in the Napa Valley Register. In the beginning it was mostly about national/international politics and economics.

I would probably have stuck to those themes had it not been for a hot summer day in 2004. On that day a woman I was dating and I decided to go to the Sebastiani Theatre in Sonoma where The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream was playing. The filmmakers were in attendance and were to have a question and answer period after its showing.

I knew next to nothing of Peak Oil before the screening. However, from the credits on I absorbed every fact and quote put forth. By the end of the film it was as if a brick hit us. We were both so depressed we did not stay to meet with the filmmakers but instead went back to our apartment in silence.

I recommend this film to everyone. It started me on my path in trying to understand as much as I can about Peak Oil, resource depletion and the consequences our industrial civilization faces due to our decision to turn blindly away from the biggest crisis man will ever face.

On the Internet I found that Peak Oil was nothing new, but something the government and various institutions have been studying since the late 60s. Several of the sites that blew me away were Life After The Oil Crash (www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/), Wolf At The Door (www.wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/) and Die Off (www.dieoff.org/). The latter is a site that has links to several hundred government studies that provide evidence to what we are to expect to get through Peak Oil unless the overall population of the world is not reduced by 90-95%.

Looking into our future was fascinating, frightening and depressing.

On January 7, 2005, the Register published The End of the Road? To this day it remains, I believe, my most powerful essay. (It can be found at www.peakoil.com/printout3276.html.)

Three and a half years later, it is more powerful and current than ever.

However, it was just the beginning of many. Since then I have written a flurry from the Register and have had others published by the New York Times, TruthOut, the Press Democrat and various scientific and ecological/environmental journals.

Most in the beginning, such as Of Peak Oil, global warming and the economy (www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2005/03/11/opinion/export2597.txt) and Overpopulation: Partying as the iceberg looms (www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2005/11/11/opinion/commentary/iq_3161168.txt), were considered very negative in nature at the time. Later brought such essays such as Grim worldview from the deck of the Titanic
(www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2007/07/01/opinion/commentary/iq_4015564.txt) and Overpopulation and Peak Oil: The perfect storm (www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2008/01/18/opinion/commentary/doc479033ed52bb4948686565.txt) which were considered even more so.

Each essay over the years made even more dire predictions. And each prediction came true before I thought.

Examples are:

-I thought world Peak Oil production took place in November, 2005 when 2003 is now considered the accurate date.

-I originally felt Middle East would peak in 2012. We are now finding out that the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia , went over the peak in 2005.

It is not as if we were not warned. No less than such experts as Mathew Simmons, head of the world’s largest energy investment bank, have been screaming the loudest about Peak Oil since the mid-90s. Simmons is also the personal oil advisor to the Bush and Cheney families.

And hate him as most of us do, Cheney gave speeches from 1994 on warning about the soon-to-collapse supply of oil.

While I don’t consider myself an expert on oil, I am the most knowledgeable person I deal with daily on the subject.

These things I know:

-The original estimates of the world supply of crude at 2 trillion barrels were accurate. And we know we have used nearly 1.3 trillion barrels since 1851 giving us a tad less than 800 billion barrels left.

-What is left is going to be exponentially more expensive and difficult to extract.

-The world’s thirst for the stuff is about 86 million barrels a day, and increasing. (Do the math… 30 years from now and we’ll be asking, What happened?)

-The problem is not 'running out,' but when the world's demands can no longer be met.

-The only reason oil production is not increasing to keep demand from outstripping supply is that all producer’s fields, from Russia to the Middle East, are collapsing quicker than imagined.

-Every new field to be exploited is nothing more than the proverbial drop in the bucket. For example, if you could magically move all the oil left in Alaska (ANWAR included) to be used in America exclusively, we would run through it in less than 6 months.

-The decline of world oil production will affect people in more ways than any other event in human history.

As I wrote in The End of the Road:

No substance has been more interwoven into life as oil. Without it civilization will unravel. While 20-30 percent of oil is refined for gasoline, the majority is used for drugs and pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, electricity generation and everything plastic.Oil made it possible for humans to exploit resources basic to civilization in volumes never before seen. We've already depleted the Earth of its surface found, high grade resources. Those that remain need oil and high technology to be mined.

I then added:

No economy is more at risk to oil depletion than ours. Without growth we no longer can make due on the interest on our national debt.Oil depletion means economic anarchy is on the way.

Are our leaders aware of this?

In another Register essay I asked this question and wondered:

-Are our leaders blissfully totally clueless?
-Are they aware but just hoping we can get through this crisis “fingers crossed?”
-Or are they aware of the problem but know there is nothing we can do, so why disturb the masses?

My answer was all of the above though the latter now makes more sense. Last week on Face the Nation, people no less than George Will, David Broder and Jim Cramer were discussing why the price of crude is entering stratospheric levels. They said the problem has nothing to do with speculation but simply that demand outstrips supply. That, and a large unmanageable population.

All admitted they felt there is no way out.

I agree.

On every format, from the Internet to live speaking engagements to one-on-one debates, I have spoken about whether something is coming down the pike to rescue us from the demise of oil. This is not the place to dialogue this, but I am telling you, there is not.

As Matthew Simmons says:

Economists and politicians love to say once the price reaches a certain level, we will invent our way out of this. For the first time, scientists and physicists are asking, Like how?

As government studies predict, we are looking at societal and civilization breakdown around the corner. We are talking mass migrations, starvation, disease and a die-off of biblical proportions. Peak Oil will cause a sheer magnitude of problems unlike any before.

This is happening as I predicted. However, like the filmmakers of The End of Suburbia, I was dead wrong about how fast it is barreling down on us. It is literally right around the corner.

An interesting fact of interest: Back in 1997, two independent studies, one by the CIA and the other by Osama bin Laden, asked the question, At what price per barrel will the US economy be shattered?

Both arrived within two cents of each other: $176.00.

We are currently at $144 and the price seems to jump daily. Goldman Sachs, which has been incredibly accurate since the 1990s, predicts $200 before the end of the year.

$200 a barrel means over $10 a gallon of gasoline. This is only the tip of the iceberg since the price of every product we purchase is directly influenced by the price of crude.

The most oil intensive industries? Agriculture and pharmaceuticals, and they are just the beginning.

In a book I am writing, I ask what will happen if we pull out of Iraq ? My answer is that chaos will be the rule of the area with Iran taking over southern Iraq while the north will be controlled by the Turks.

We can then expect to be dragged into the World Court for war reparations, which now are estimated to be in excess of $9 trillion.

Think this is far fetched? The Bush Administration has said we are no longer compelled to answer any decision issued by the World Court . They knew this was coming.

The next step will cripple us: OPEC will cut us off and no longer accept dollars for oil. The latter will bankrupt us overnight.

Society breakdown will reign in America . Think about all the people in places like Southern California where they grow no food, have no natural resources (i.e., water) or energy. Southern California will make Somalia during the 90s look like a walk in the park.

How do we survive?

There is only one place in America to turn to and it is the place all the original titans of Peak Oil have relocated to: Oregon and Washington State .

The Pacific Northwest generates more hydroelectric power than the rest of the country combined. The Columbia River also provides enough irrigation to allow the eastern half of the states to grow enough food for themselves, and then some.

They are relatively isolated which is important to survival in a post-oil crisis. Every study on survival after Peak Oil maintains that you need to be as far away as possible from the masses.

They have small, manageable populations. (They are also educated.)

There are deep water ports offering access to the Pacific.

The two states have most natural resources necessary to allow an economy, though contractive, to exist without serious disruption to the standards of living.

The one resource they do not have? Oil.

The simple answer to this is: Strike a deal with Alaska . Oregon and Washington would provide Alaska with food Alaska can not grow in exchange for oil they do not have.

How would you defend the Pacific Northwest from the rest of the nation where societal collapse will ensue? You bring back the troops from the Middle East and have them defend their borders.

Is this outlandish? Absolutely.

But just a decade ago no one thought about the collapse of the world’s supply of crude oil. As we head into the era without oil, the only rule that will be followed is chaos.

Friends of mine ask if speculation in oil futures is worth considering and my answer is yes, you will make money.

But if you want to invest in your future, my answer is, Go Northwest.

Do you, your family and loved ones a favor and buy some land near Portland or Seattle .

Jim Lydecker
Napa, California
July 3, 2008

Nashville Zen Center Jukkai Ceremony

I monitor the hits on this site through a free tool called Google Analytics, and I notice that a lot of people have been looking at my last post. It's quite possible that a lot of those hits are from people who are associated with the Nashville Buddhist Festival, and they quite probably consider themselves slammed by that post. That's unfortunate, because those are all really well-meaning people, and you certainly could do worse that to practice with any of the groups associated with the NBF. Perhaps I need to learn the lesson implied by the name my teacher Taiun Michael Elliston gave to my friend Ana at her initiation Saturday, Annin, which means something like "patient forbearance."

But you know, when something is important, it deserves to be done right. Which is what we did Saturday. I do indeed feel that the Nashville Zen Center was reborn Saturday, and was reincarnated in the way that it needed to go. If you missed the previous post, go read it; what I said we'd do, we did.

There were lots of great things about our half-day sit, followed by our Jukkai ceremony. Probably the best thing was the way I feel about this group of people. We were supported by some of our other members who either haven't chosen to go the initiation route, or had been initiated otherwise; and best of all, by some of the "old" Nashville Zen Center members whom I hadn't seen since schisms hit us right after I started there. Lisa and Patsy, from One Dharma, a group that splintered from the old NZC in 2005, and now has dwarfed us in size; Bill, the founder of the NZC, from 1982! And Jeff was there, and a host of others; a picture below includes a lot of these people, without whom we would not be who we are now. We are immensely grateful for their support.

And thanks to our families and friends. From my point of view, thanks to Stephanie, and to Ana's mother and sister, and all the other friends and relatives who really didn't know what was happening but knew there was a good thing there.

This blog entry has no rhetorical point. I just wanted to share with you my good feeling, and the conviction that something right has happened. And my thanks to everyone involved. And to invite you to join us. Because words can't describe the benefits of what I'm talking about. And I'm failing miserably at trying, so I'll just let you look at these great pics from Nat's wife Kathy. You can see them all here, by the way. More later.

Buddhism®

Tonight, I was exhausted. Maybe it was that really good Yoga class I did last night, or maybe it was the fact that my job has become so stupefying I can barely make it through the days. And then on top of it all, my Buddhist practice, which is my point of reference when everything else become intolerable, is so infested with bullshit these days that I'm tempted to clear it all out and start over.

But I was exhausted, and whereas when I'm in that frame of mind, in the old days I would have probably got drunk, passed out and woke up about this time (1 a.m.) with a hangover, last night I had a salad and a barbequed chicken breast, read as much really good sci-fi as I could stand, and went to sleep about 7 p.m. Go figure.

When I did wake up, I found Brad Warner's latest Suicide Girls article. Go on, read it, it's free, especially if you're Buddhist. If I had stayed in California where I started sitting zazen about twenty-seven years ago, I might feel like he does about institutional Buddhism.

Bonnaroo, ten days ago (sob!) did for me what I hoped it'd do; it cleared some of the bullshit out of my head and let me reconnect with a part of my "self" that I was missing, the one that liked to stand in a field in Manchester, TN, and scream "Bullshit!" at the world, all done of course with a beer in my hand and some really good music. On the other hand, it made me want to call a spade a spade, and that makes it really hard to go to work and pretend to be someone I'm not (or more accurately, to refuse to admit who I really am), and on top of all that to deal with Buddhism®.

You've heard all this before, but for some reason, at the two times in my life I've really felt drawn back toward Buddhism, I've had trouble finding it. The first time was in Albuquerque, where now there is a big Albuquerque Zen Center apparently (Rinzai), but when I was there I had trouble finding anything authentic and instead wound up with Nichiren Shoshu for a few years. The second time was in Nashville in 2004, when I did find the Nashville Zen Center. When I discovered the NZC, I had hoped it was a source for connecting with real Zen. I was motivated to come back to Zen by Brad's first book, Hardcore Zen. I think the preface of that book -- Brad's basic "philosophical" questions, the "What is This?" which is the basis for all real philosophical, existential inquiry, was the same as mine. I just needed to find people of a like mind.

My frustrations with the Nashville Zen Center have been well-documented, and I won't reiterate them here. In the spring of 2006 I went to Atlanta to the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and found what I'd been looking for. I found a teacher who insisted on staying with what I feel to be the true essence of Zen, and of existence; the essential staring down the void which is the self. And he/they was/were still able to do that essential thing within the context of a semi-formal, mostly dignified Zen practice. I made that connection and it's the best thing I've done since my life changed when my mother died in 2003. I will not refute it.

This coming Saturday, Michael Elliston, Abbott of the ASZC, is coming to Nashville to conduct a Discipleship ceremony for my friend and NZC president Nat, and to initiate some really great people into formal Buddhism. These people are people I'm thrilled to share the experience with, people who were drawn to Zen of their own accord. Paul and Ana, you are two of my favorite people (you too, Michelle and Walter). The ceremony will take place after a half-day sit at the new 12South Dharma Center, which is a cooperative effort among several Nashville Buddhist groups and a kind of dream space (with problems, of course). So why am I not happy?

In my efforts to bring what I find to be real, essential Buddhist practice to Nashville, I have of necessity found myself among the purveyors of Buddhism®. To do what I had to do, I myself had to become visible and prominent in the Buddhist® community, which is something I never wanted to do, and now I'm paying for it.

See, I would never want to be a visible leader of any Buddhist group I'm a part of. I've got too much baggage, for one thing. For another, I have, of my own design, very little tolerance for bullshit, and that's not what you want in the occupant of a position which becomes, in some sense, political. I just want to sit on the sideline and throw these japes in. Unfortunately, in this case I had to help create the thing that was there to throw the japes at. Hence the dilemma.

Last year, I and representatives from four other Buddhist groups conducted the very successful Fourth Nashville Buddhist Festival. You've read all about it. It went well, and it made me a lot of friends, and I was happy with it. Unfortunately, this year I'm still on the Board of that, and I don't like it any more. Can't stand it, in fact. I got them incorporated, but I'm done with it. They want to do the same thing as last year, and I never do see the point in that. Introducing the Buddhist-curious in Nashville to some options. For some of the groups, it's a recruiting tool.

Yes, people can be recruited to Buddhism, just like any other religion, or any other -ism, for that matter. Because, see, people want that. That's what religion is all about, isn't it? The desire to find people of like-minded belief. To gain a purpose larger that oneself. To mutually reassure one another that, yes, despite, the vicissitudes of this life, Life has a bigger meaning, and everything will be OK in the end. God or the Buddha will take care of you. I'm OK, you're OK. Horseshit.

Because my Zen practice has nothing to do with that. Zen is about confronting reality. Michael Elliston and 90% of the ASZC members I've practiced with (of course, I only tend to meet the serious ones, at the retreats) understand that. Brad Warner certainly understand that. And I choose these people to be my teachers. Don't think I'm in any way refuting my authentic Zen practice here. I have found, in my sitting on my cushion, a lifetime practice. Something that always comes back to the real. Something I won't give up. And the only sincere Zen practitioners I've ever met came to Zen on their own. Wandered in off the street, as it were. You can't recruit people to the real question; they must have it, to start.

I've been told by my teachers and by people who've been sitting zazen for a long time, that once you've done it for a while, everything you do is Practice. It took me until now to understand that. Because now, not sitting zazen is also Zen practice. Bonnaroo was practice, definitely. Writing another vitriolic blog entry with a Red Bull® at 2 a.m. is also practice. Knowing I have another mind-numbing work day to follow, followed by a refreshing NZC meeting tonight, is also practice.

And sitting in a room with a bunch of delusional religiosos who happen to call themselves Buddhists instead of Christians is also practice. I'm talking about the Board of Directors of the Nashville Buddhist Festival, not the NZC (the latter being, in its present incarnation, made up of quite sincere people). And there are some NBF Board members whose practices I admire, and in fact consider teachers. But in a group setting, it all makes me puke. Because at this point I may as well be on the Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

And now of course there's the informal committee set up for running the Dharma Center, which is made up mostly of the same people. Good people, good intentions, more bureaucracy. I'm not made for Bureaucracy. I'm made for sitting in a field at dawn with a beer in my hand. That's existential realization. That's Practice, too.

So for now I have to stay with the Bureaucracy for a little while longer. Pretty soon I'm gonna get off all these committees. Maybe someone else will take my place, now, maybe not. But for now it's the place in which I've put myself and I have to deal with it. I should be typing the minutes of the last Nashville Buddhist Festival Board meeting right now, instead of bitching about it. Hopefully I'll get that done, sometime.

Photo courtesy of Paul Felton, Shambhala Nashville®.

Bonnaroo and Beyond

Now that I've survived it, enjoyed it, and was in fact revived and transformed by it, I'll admit that I was approaching it with genuine trepidation. The version of myself that had evolved to deal with my "current" reality just wasn't geared up for it. My friend wanted to camp, and I didn't; I was thinking I wouldn't sleep for three nights, be tired, comatose and cranky. I was thinking that I'd need a Port-o-Potty every thirty minutes and have to stand in long lines for them. In short I was afraid that I was gonna have a really shitty time. But I'd committed, so I bought or borrowed all the necessary supplies, girded my loins, and charged in.

The other factor that was making me hesitate was that the thing is, after all, supposedly mostly a musical event, and my interest in music in these latter days waxes and wanes, and lately has been kind of at a lower point, so that seeing Metallica and Pearl Jam sounded OK, but the idea of listening to a lot of new bands, particularly the noodling jam kind, didn't appeal to me.

And actually that worked in my favor. Because my friend and I winded up having fairly different experiences. He threw himself into the music, watched it all day and into the night, and hated the camping. I, on the other hand, threw myself into the social experience (including the contents of our coolers and the beer booths in Centeroo) and missed a lot of the music. But in the process, I think I made a reconnection with a part of myself that's been either missing or scorned lately, and it's a big step forward for me, in terms of self-realization, if that term has any meaning, and also in terms of my practice of Zen.

Because I sure as hell violated a lot of precepts those four days, and I'm a better man for it. Neither the career world nor the zendo values a beer at dawn, but I can tell you it's one of the more mystical, meaningful and beautiful experiences I've had in a long time. I don't know if it's modern society or just a component of the general social makeup of mankind that I lack, but I find most people to be effete pussyfooters. They seem afraid to do much more than prance or cower, for fear of the judgments of others, or worse, of their own Freudian superegos. And I agree that you can't live too well in the modern world they way I lived those four days, and I'm back to playing my old roles with a bit more awareness of their arbitrariness, and intrinsic falsehood. But I've had a catharsis.

It's been a hard lesson for me as I've had to deal with the social aspects of helping establish genuine Zen practice in Nashville, that most Buddhists aren't really any better than most moderate, reasonable Christians (forgetting the more rabid species of the latter for the moment). They want to wring their hands and nod sagely at platitudes and ring little bells, assuring themselves that they've become more enlightened thereby (and also thereby conquering their basic, animal selves, and becoming better than their fellow humans who are non-Buddhists). I'm sure they have no comprehension of why Hunter S. Thompson will always be one of my foremost idols. And if I have to sit in any more meetings after this year of watching these people plan puppet shows to en-trance more people to be like them, I'll barf.

I don't particularly want or expect anyone to be like me. My mission is to become more fully myself, and now I can throw myself into my zazen with more dedication and more knowledge. I wouldn't want to live every day like I did at Bonnaroo, not anymore, but that experience will help me live each day more truly as myself, and that is indeed "a blessing."

Incidentally, I do want to commend the great people who attended, especially the kids in the hard-core camping all around me, and the people who kept order at the Festival without becoming cops. This is the social experiment that proves that the Bush Cabal are wrong; people are not ignorant savages to be kept in check by the Forces of Order (for Profit). They are just like me (and you); noble savages in greater or lesser degrees of denial. And joining the Order of the Spotted Palm or whatever won't change that.

Standing in the Doorway

I was trying to get somewhere close to finalizing my preparations for Bonnaroo last night, and I realized I was way too stressed out for the occason. After all, it's a four-day camping trip, albeit in crowd and 90-degree heat, but I'll survive. It's supposed to be fun, dammit. I just wish I knew how I was gonna set up camp; I haven't really done it since I was about 11. Oh, well.

At any rate, I finally figured out that I was using the occasion as a metaphor. We're all on the edge of so many things, right now. The world is on the edge of what may be the final Depression, and deeply in denial. Try watching the Post-Oil Man again (isn't that a cow pasture in Manchester?); he may seem a little less humorous now.

I think the denial is the worst part. People continue to spew out offspring as if they hadn't clogged the planet enough. Mankind is indeed a virus that is killing its host. And the host is staggering. Witness the ice caps. Witness the fact that all animal life on the planet not directly being used for man's (approachingly) desperate survival is nearing extinction, and the hell on earth the survivors are being forced to live in (anyone been to Greeley, Colorado, lately?).

Mankind is nearing extinction, there's little doubt about it. We sit zazen for our sanity, not to save the world. If there is a hope for the survival of intelligence, it lies beyond man. The postmodern era is doomed to be a short one, postmodernity being nothing more that the breakdown of all the walls that have kept the cultures apart and intact. We are moving to the posthuman era; and the question is, will there be a posthuman intelligent creature?

It is becoming more clear that the survival of intelligence on earth, if it does occur, is going to be by virtue of the one area in which man has progressed in this new millenium, at unprecedented breakneck speed -- his technology. Man is on the edge, some would say over the edge, of creating machines which are smarter than he is. The first true artificial intelligences are around the corner, and which of us is so say when they become "conscious"?

We in the West, being a victim of the Three False Relgions, have a misguided view of what it takes to be an intelligence, to be aware. As long as you're thinking of souls and spirits, you'll have a problem. Your only hope of survival into the near future is the availability of technology to upload your personality, to preserve it in some alternative form which you may or may not recognize, and which may or may not recognize itseelf. Actually, your personal hope of survival is pretty damn low, so you have to get over that, unless you're extremely rich. But it shouldn't matter.

Maybe the posthuman intelligences of the future can evolve before we destroy all the fuel sources they'll need before they become self-sustaining, in some way unimaginable for us. I could be wrong; maybe there will be humans in the new world. Maybe we'll even figure out how to get off this dying planet in time, though the odds of that are damn low; that's not the area in which our tech has been progressing.

Look at how William Gibson's imagination of the future became the world we live in; look at Charles Stross's work (start with Accelerando) if you want the top of your head blown off, to see what could happen. Maybe aliens really did give us a language, and they'll be back to turn the universe into computronium and make it one big, smart Ipod. I don't really know, and anything is possible.

But your current life is over; surely even you can see the world ending. My advice? Hang on, accept what happens and enjoy the ride. I can relax at Bonnaroo, relatively speaking, but sometime soon there won't be any sunscreen or insect repellant or bottled water, any electric music or motor vehicles. Enjoy it, Man. You may just be in the last generation of Civilization, and what comes next is probably not fit for a dog (if there are any dogs left).

Beyond that, things get interesting.

Language is a Virus

"Language is a virus from Outer Space" - William S. Burroughs.

My point being, not just to give you this 1986 video from Laurie Anderson -- surely one of the most thought-provoking and just plain ahead-of-its-time ever made -- but to give you my own little myth that's been churning around in my head for quite some time.

Laurie Anderson, by the way, was a pioneer of thoughtful performance rock; the fact that she was actually successful for a while in the 1980's tell you that we've lost something. These days she is also known as the other half of Lou Reed, one of my all-time favorites from the 70's and 80's. So go figure.

Anyway, the idea of language as a virus is anything but original to me; the idea has been posited in many other places I haven't bothered to look up for you. As I said in a previous post, you should know how to Google by now. I'm not even sure if the famous quote attributed to Burroughs is from one of his works, or not. Burroughs is one of those writers whom for me, like Kerouac, the bio is worth more than the oeuvre.

No, but the final self-convincing moment, the birth of the entry of that phrase into my own personal pantheon, came at the Circle of Friends retreat in February, as I was trying to get to sleep with too much caffeine in my system. I had one of those kensho moments when everything is clear. Of course it's when you try to write about it later that you realize how limited your vision was. However, to eschew digression:

Let's say that language was just a disembodied entity floating through the abyss looking for a host and found one in early humans. Maybe it did come from outer space; I wouldn't be the first to adopt that theory. Maybe its existence is not quite on the physical plane, as the spiritualists would say. I'd say all those expressions are a bit off; let's say Language is a creature, an entity which is not biological. Somehow it couldn't adapt to any other creature, but it found itself able to infect and then form a codependent relationship, and to coevolve with him into what we now call the human race.

Because when I look at other mammals, I don't see anything different from us, except language. Sure our brains are bigger and evolved a bit differently -- but isn't that just to produce the lobes to house language? And what other difference is there between you and your pets, or the slaves you eat, the cattle and the hogs? I just don't see any.

Of course, it's a BIG difference. Because language takes over everything. Why do we feel the need to "meditate"? To get beyond language. When, for that rare moment of freedom from concept, maybe in some sort of meditative experience or more likely in some instant of sport or dance, maybe for some in sex, or in war, or traffic accident, or blind submission to any passion, do we escape language?

Or who is the "we" that would escape language? For if the consequence of the above is that the noise in our heads we fruitlessly try to escape is not the "monkey mind" of yoga nor even the "thoughts" of Zen, but simply the bare essence of language, true and simple; then is not the falseness of the concept of self not due to any "co-dependency of causes" or emptiness of skandhas, but simply to the fact that we are not one entity, but two; the animal man, plus the beast of language? This, right here, explains the inability to find the unique self (as well as schizophrenia, by the way),

So play with the concept for a moment. You are an animal, just like your cat. But when you were born, your mother passed along to you a virus, an entity split off from the one that infected her all her life: Language. This is the other being you almost see with your mind's eye; but "he" is so closely connected to "you" that you cannot see where one ends and the other begins. When you feel the other, it's the animal feeling the virus; when you describe it, it's the virus describing the animal.

So that's all the explanation needed, for all of man's religions and psychologies. No gods, no souls, no skandhas, no devils, no ids or ego. Just the beast and the virus. Locked together, forever. A composite entity. Could you deny that a human without language would be less than human? A beast.

And need I mention, in terms of human culture and history, language is everything. Language alone gave Man the ability to create and pass down ideas. You couldn't dig those oil wells, build those computers, or create all those bullshit religions and philosophies all by yourself any more than your cat could. Culture is built up brick by brick over time, with ideas passed down and maintained by Language, hosted by man. Human history is nothing more than its artifact.

As I said, it's a myth. Any reduction of "everything" to a simple formula is just that, and to mistake the myth for reality is once again to mistake the map for the territory. But this myth makes more sense to me than anything from Freud or Genesis. And it makes it a little harder ot eat that cheeseburger, doesn't it?

By the way, I purposely didn't invoke the Autostart on the video, just to make sure you read this blog entry, because I think it's an important one, as they go. But watch it!

"Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better. "
Laurie Anderson, Language Is A Virus

Bonnaroo Bound!

Sixteen days from now, I'll be in the thick of it.

If you'd told me when I was growing up in Manchester, TN, that one day it would be the regular annual home of a huge music festival that regularly brings 80,000 people to a town with a population of about 7,500, I would have told you that you were full of it. Of course, I wouldn't have expected to see buffalo in the pastures nearby, either. But both of these things are true, and starting Thursday, June 12, I'll be there to see for myself for the first time.

The site where Bonnaroo is held is about three miles from the house where I grew up from age 5 on. When my mother was alive, she could hear the music from her carport, and I think sometimes she used to sit out there, listening. The site was first used for some badly-conceived dinosaur rock circus before Bonnaroo, which was doomed to failure -- how many people wanted to go to bumfuck to see Moby Grape? So I sneered at the first Bonnaroo, which sold out immediately on the internet, and then, after it sold out, proceeded to add act after act which I'd have loved to see. So I resolved that if it kept up, I'd go.

But then the last few years there haven't been line-ups that would've made it worthwhile for me; Bob Dylan played, but I'd seen Dylan several times in Nashville the previous few years and wouldn't pony up the bucks or the time for him. This year, with Pearl Jam and Metallica headlining, we (I and my friend, who will remain anonymous -- let's call him "Joe") decided it was now or never.

So hopefully, my tickets will be mailed out tomorrow. Just getting our hands on the damned things will be the first hurdle. But enough of that -- I don't want to curse the process.

Lately I'm afraid I'm seeing patterns which may be only constructed in my head. It's been clear for me for some time, this year that I'm in a period of change and redefinition. For a while there, it seemed everything was in flux, and a lot of it still is. I'm anything but unique here -- the world is going through momentous change right now, and we're all living in it. But coming through the darkness of April, I feel stripped down and redefined in a way that makes events like this, which for most people is just a mini-vacation, seem important and pivotal. For some reason, I feel that a four-day period of sleep deprivation and disorientation is just what I need.

Which is probably what I'll get. Mind you, my dad has a house five minutes away which is mine for the asking during the festival. But Joe, reasoning we'll only do this once, wants to camp out with the herd, so here we go (although I do reserve the right to reconsider in the case of extreme weather or other dire events). Now bear in mind, the last time I did anything like this was in the late 1970's, when I was about nineteen. Being thirty years older is gonna make a big difference. Whereas the bluegrass festival I'm thinking of in North Carolina was for me fueled by little other than Scotch, beer and hallucinogens, that's not an option at this point. Further, I don't sleep much these days (witness the posting time of much of these blogs), and I don't expect that trying to sleep in a borrowed tent on an air mattress, in heat, amidst a horde of noisy people, is going to help.

So I have to throw myself into this at full strength will all options open, and just try to relax and float. The required What the Hell attitude is much harder at fifty, I tell you.

Luckily, I have a lot of friends who've been at Bonnaroo before and I've been collecting information and advice. Unfortunately, none of those people are going this year; interestingly, most of the younger ones don't like the line-up this year. Dates me, I guess. Anyway, I'm looking forward to it, with a mix of eagerness and dread.

SO, if you are going to Bonnaroo this year, or if you have any advice for me, post it here or email me. I'm anticipating from this, one of a series of transformative experiences to come in the month of June. I have some other topics to address in this blog, before, during and after, and I'll see you on the other side.

Double Meat Palace

If anyone were to ask me for my favorite TV series of all time, there's no doubt, it's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I admit that these days, I don't watch TV at all; my friend routed my TV out of my cable hook-up while he was checking for trouble spots after the great computer and phone crashes of April, and although I could do it in two minutes, I haven't hooked the damned thing back up. It's a combination of my aversion of commercials and propaganda and the fact that I've never bothered to get a DVR and the few things I'd watch come on at the wrong times. I do watch TV series, but on DVD. Most of those are through Netflix; Buffy is about the only one I'd buy, and I'm up to Season Six.

There was at one time a decent amount of SF and fantasy on TV, but it all died in the early years of the new millenium (although it's back to some extent; Heroes, at least as far as Season One, is really good). But's it's not the supernatural elements of Buffy that make it worth watching; it's the brilliant writing and ensemble acting that make it the best of all time. Whedon and his people always managed to stay on track with essential truths abou the human condition; the more surreal the events on the screen, the more we can identify with the characters. Some of the story arcs on Buffy (the death of her mother, the unexplained appearance of Dawn in Season 5) are the some of the smartest things I've ever seen in fiction. The show just refused to insult your intelligence, as opposed to most of the "realistic" drama on the tube (if you're a CSI or ER fan, this is probably not for you).

And re-watching the series as I am, I'm occasionally gripped by some truth I missed or with which I couldn't identify the first time around. Season Six is all about a lull, a low spot in the lives of the characters after the grand drama of Glory (and Dawn) in Season Five. In Season Six, the only recurring villains are three low-rent geeks who are more annoyance than threat, the characters' stable relationships all fall apart, and Buffy has to deal with a new antagonist: the economy.

The early seasons of Buffy were set in, and ended with the destruction of, her high school. Season Four has her in college, but by Season Five, after her mother's death and way too much missed class (fighting monsters, saving the world, etc.) she drops out. By Season Six, she's out of money, and is forced to go to work. Having no education past high school and no marketable skills, she wind up working fast food, at the Double Meat Palace. Hence the hat.

I don't know why I never identified with that the first time through, but last night, watching Buffy confronted at the order counter by Riley, her boyfriend from Seasons Four and Five (who needed her to go kill some monsters and to incidentally get some closure on the character, it seems), it hit me. Now I've never worked fast food, but finally, I could identify. Heavily.

OK, it's partially the economy, which is grinding everyone to their knees. But I've been under-employed for at least the last fifteen years, and it's getting very old. Occasionally I get some dipshit reminding me that my income should have been in the high six figures for most of my life, and although it never would've happened, when money is pinched, yes, it hurts. I never could have been a big corporate lawyer. To this day, I hate the legal system and the courts, and the more legal my job gets, the more I dread it. Right now, it's Monday morning and I feel like I have an 8 a.m. ticket for the gas chamber. When I was making money, it was tolerable. My job at that point was so easy I could check my mind out all day, and do the job a taped loop of my personality. And I could afford to live pretty much like I needed to. Now the money has gone to shit, and the work is harder and more frustrating. If the situation doesn't fall apart altogether.

It's not my current employer's fault. After all, they don't know who I am. I took my education after my B.A. off my resume because I was so obviously under-employed, no one was hiring me. And no one ever thinks to ask me what I did between 1983 and 1993.

But these jobs one does to eat, to live, at whatever level, never were me. I just do what I have to do; all my important work is done on the evenings, on the weekends, and in these early mornings. They make my life worth living. I know, I'm supposed to find acceptance and gratification in every moment. But these days, from 8 to 5, I fail.

It's only the fact that the last few years have been so rewarding outside of those dreaded hours that inspires me to keep on slugging. My involvement with Zen and its adherents has redeemed me these last years, and I have to say I've accomplished a lot there. And I'm proud of a lot of what I've done in these Ratzaz Diaries, and person to person, I have to say I'm pretty damned sure I've made a big improvement in some people's lives. And some of what I've done, I've been recognized for, I'm known for. And sometimes, yes, I admit I feel like a superhero working fast food.

Yet I can't find decent employment, and right now I'm not making even enough to live on. Something's gotta give, and soon. There are changes coming in every aspect of my life right now; some of them are voluntarily, but some are brought in by the tide. The work/money thing has to give. I hear people say this every day and I'm just one of them, a microcosm of what's happening in the world, right here, right now. Peak oil? Right here, right now. Results of overpopulation and its concurrent globalization and the end of the American Century? Old news. Right here, right now.

But until and unless something breaks, I have to go back to the Double Meat Palace today, and hope I don't wind up in the grinder. Living for the weekends and for the future is not a very Zen attitude, but I'm stuck in it right now. Maybe I'll work my way out of it. There is, after all, worse happening all around me. Businesses failing, workers going unpaid; the owner of the scumball company I used to work for needs to be put in jail for using the trust account like her personal piggy bank and leaving the clients and employees hanging. I may just have to contribute to that.

But for now, just survive. Hang in there, everyone. World Salvation comes in Season Seven. Maybe.

Clear Your Head: Witchblade and Cassandra Kressnov

For the last couple of weeks, I've had the strong impression that my job,at which I spend most of my waking hours is quite a brittle situation. Brittle on both ends; I think at one point they liked me a lot, and now don't know what to make of me. Brittle on my end, because a lot of the work I've done is being credited to other people. Now this or any job is not something I put a lot of ego into, except for some pride in being good at what I do, no matter how mundane or meaningless that activity is. But when I say "credited" I mean "paid", and my income has gone into the red for the first time in quite a while, so something's gotta give (to quote Johnny Mercer via Frank Sinatra).

So. Sometimes you have to wait for things to fall into place. Everything else in my life is going well now, as opposed to last month, and I have, as I intimated in the last post, a feeling that change is coming. I said "something good" but I'm not sure that's the right word. "Powerful" maybe.

But until that happens, I have to just face into the wind, do what needs to be done, and be patient. But I do have meaningful activity every night of the week; with other workout options gone I've had to get more serious about yoga (which I'll never be good at, but in this, more even than most activities, it's all relative), plus the Zen stuff finally taking off (though if if I don't get this Jukkai ceremony set up soon I'm gonna kill something), plus I've finally solved the omnivore's dilemma (more later on that).

So with forty hours of dead zone behind me and forty more to come, what do I do? Witchblade!

Actually, I just finished two really, really good SF series this weekend; the Witchblade anime, above, and Joel Shepherd's Cassandra Kressnov trilogy of novels (which I do hope turns into a longer series at some point; actually I'm thirty pages from the end but I don't see him killing off these amazing characters).

Witchblade, as you can tell from above, has great visuals. Most of you probably recognize the name, I hope. Witchblade is a long-running and very popular series from Top Cow comics. The witchblade itself is an enigmatic entity that is very, very old and attaches itself to one female wearer at a time; it grants immeasurable power, but its desires and motives are its own. The featured wearer in the comics was one Sara Pezzini, a NYC cop (also featured in the short-lived and well-done if underbudgeted TNT TV series, which ended when star Yancy Butler went to rehab and the series was cancelled). The anime series is set in Tokyo in the near future -- the next wearer, I suppose. The series is powerful not just because of the witchblade, but because its makers go into great human depth; the driving force behind the series is the relationship between the witchblade's bearer, Masane Amaha, and her young daughter. I won't give you any spoilers; you should watch this one. It has everything, including a good dose of humor.

As to SF novels, all the books I like these days are the godchildren of William Gibson. Shepherd's Cassandra Kressnov is an artificial human who is created too complicated to just follow her programming and joins the opposition; her well-written development takes place through the novels Crossover, Breakaway and Killswitch. Shepherd is a young author; he appears to be about 33 at the time he finished this series, and you can watch him evolve as you read the three books, his first published. Much like the works of Richard K. Morgan, when he starts writing in the first book, his ideas are better than his writing, but it all catches up (as also in Morgan's case) by the end of the series, and Killswitch is just excellent. The only thing that bothers me is that all of these new writers are obviously angling at movies; whereas in say, Gibson's case, the novel is the ultimate expression of the work (which is probably why Neuromancer has never become a movie, why Red Rose Hotel was such a lousy film, and I have mixed feelings about Johnny Mnemonic).

Anyway, this stuff is how I clear my head. Good Zen, good food, good anime, good books, and a weekend thankfully devoid of human voices, as much as possible. Now it's time to gird my loins, as they say (which sounds really painful).

But I have to leave you with my favorite quote from Killswitch. Kressnov, a sophisiticated artificial human who's been considerably refined by contact with humanity and real-world experience confronts Jane, a stone killer of an artificial human running on tape learning and blind loyalty. Jane is mocking Cassandra for what she considers her humanistic pretentions and says, "Happiness is accepting your true nature."

I really can't find anything wrong with that. So if your true nature is to be a killer android, be the best killer android you can be. And survive for forty more hours.

I'll let you make your own links on this one. Surely if you've gotten to this point you can Google just as well as I can. Or not. And no, I didn't make that AMV video; click on it to follow the link to YouTube and its rightful owner.

Renaissance?

As I mentioned previously, on April 27, Ana and I conducted the third editon of a "Zen Meditation" segment at the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention. This year, like last year, it was the first "panel" up on Sunday morning, replacing some sort of nondemoninational service that apparently hadn't been working too well at previous conventions. The above is apparently the only extant picture of the session itself; it shows Ana and I but unfortunately doesn't show the twenty to thirty people who were in the room at various times; at least twenty of them did zazen and kinhin with us, which has to make it the largest Zen session I've ever led, or co-led. And no, I'm not checking my email in the picture; I was using my PDA as a timer.

The MTAC presentation honestly won't do a lot for Zen in Nashville as a whole (although the first one two years ago made Ana's connection to our group, which makes it worthwhile, and we do seem to have gained another sitter this year), mostly because most of the people who show up are from out of town, or out of state. MTAC reportedly had about 4,000 attendees this year. But the growing attendance, and the growing degree of maturity, genuine interest and understanding in the attendees, seems to be indicative of something. Likewise, the Tuesday night Nashville Zen Center sits at the Barn, reintroduced in January for new members and the Soto Zen protocols, are taking off. Of course, most people who are shopping Buddhism or "spirituality" in general won't stay with Zen. Zen is sort of the end of the line, the giving up of all spiritual pretenses, and most of the people who are out looking aren't ready for that. Nevertheless, I am coming to recognize the kind of people who come to stay; they simply aren't having any of anything else. And finding these people is as encouraging to me as it is, hopefully, for them.

And honestly, as the world falls apart around us, it's nice to have something going well. On a personal level, having finally come out of the funk I was in for most of April, I find that (surprise!) the problems I wasn't facing very well are still there, but now have to be faced. My economic future at the moment seems to be a microcosm of the country as a whole; the income at my present employment seems to have gone to shit across the board, and I'm faced in the next month or two with figuring out how to make a living wage, whereas I'd thought this was all worked out a year ago. Another surprise: problems continue to arise. Yet I do find from past experience that these periods of crisis are more productive in important ways than the times when I have the illusion that all is going well. So having my brain chemistry back, as well as probably the best social support I've ever had in my life, I do feel ready to deal with the next problem. Thanks to Shawn's yoga class Monday night, by the way, which finished bringing me "home" (warning for locals: avoid the Downtown Y like the plague right now, it's a mess, and the best yoga is at Green Hills anyway).

Anyway, it's amazing to me that what I envisoned for the Nashville Zen Center years ago is coming to pass. Whereas I had hoped to be involved in a Soto Zen group which started to evolve inside the NZC, enough of the old NZC seems to have fallen away that the old group seems to be evolving into a new one with an actual lineage and teachers. Hardly anyone (maybe one or two) seems to have been driven away by the change itself; but life takes its toll on those without firm convictions. And as the country song says, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. If you're currently reading The Secret, please take note.

So, life right now is some good stuff, some bad stuff, just like always, but I have a deep feeling that something important and good is happening. And as darkness descends upon the world, that's a very powerful feeling to have.

By the way, my post on last year's MTAC is here. And then I couldn't leave without showing you this picture of Ana (on the right) and her friend in costume. No, I don't know who they're supposed to be.


And by the way, there's a half-hour video of the MTAC presentation out there somewhere. If I can figure out how, I'll try to post all or part of it if and when...

Empty Bowls

I think a lot of people misunderstood that last post. For someone who's tried to adopt Hunter Thompson's
"Never apologize, never explain" as a credo, I seemed to be doing a lot of both there for a while. My little 2 1/2 - week period of dysfunction in April impacted some people, and I had to apologize for that, and assure them that I'm back up to speed (which at this point, I think I finally can say that I am).

The explaining part is a little harder, really, and I'm somewhat ambivalent about it. But I think some people read that last blog entry to mean that I was devastated by the death of my cat and would never recover. It ain't like that. Ms. Johnson has passed on, with my help, and I've accepted that. Yes, I'll always miss her. I just took her bowls to Manchester and ran them through a dishwasher (which I've personally never seen much use for) to sanitize them. She used them for over ten years, and I can't see throwing them away. I'm going to be putting her ashes (seen in the final pic on the preceding blog) on my little Zen altar along with pictures of my mother.

And people keep trying to give me kittens. I'm certainly not ready for a kitten at this point, and I probably never will be. My mother died five years ago; I don't want a kitten at this point any more than I want some other old lady pretending to be my mother. Lifetime attachments are just that. Paul McCartney should have learned.

No, that last post was supposed to be a little poetic, a little sad, a little philosophical. The point was not that everything will never be alright, not because Ms. Johnson died, but because that's the way things are. Things are never alright. As Gildner Radner said, I think, it's always something. There's always something keeping you from that perfect happiness you think you deserve. And the something is your own desire for perfect happiness. Trying to get from this real place to that imaginary place of perfect happiness is what keeps you unhappy.

But I'm not going to waste any more time regurgitating obvious truisms here. Go sit zazen and figure it out for yourself.

And developing the trust in your own perceptions that one develops from zazen can take you to very interesting places. I know for sure that my mother visited me after she died, and since; and that Ms. Johnson came to me the night she died and gave me a meaningful dream. There is no place for such happenings in the philosophy of Zen, if there is such a thing. But I know what I know. And I apologize to those whose beliefs and perceptions as to such things, I mocked a few years ago.

April is over, and I hope not to go back there any time soon. I'm not sure what caused or encouraged my temporary descent into darkness; I just know I'm through with it. Obviously, there was something I wanted or needed to learn, or to do. I did acquire a deeper realization as to some things I already knew, at least on a surface level. There is no normal "my life"; its's just a story I tell myself. "My life" is in eternal flux. I actually came through relatively unharmed. Maybe some people think less of me, as I told the truth about the incident; I feel like I cleared the air. If anyone out there hasn't figured it out, I'm far from perfect.

But I did get a fresh perspective on what's meaningful for me, and what's not. And I do need to look at making some changes in the sets and settings. But I did my first yoga class in a month yesterday, and I've realized that what's important to me, to reduce it to a physical level, is my own brain chemistry. From another perspective, this is the spirit. But I maintain this by:

1. Abstinence from intoxicants or toxins;
2. Meaningful physical exercise;
3. Spiritual practice.
4. Creativity.

Those all would take a little explaining; part of me gags on including zazen as "spiritual practice", but honestly other practices have worked in the past, just not as well, and they inevitably led to some sort of cognitive dissonance. Zen is what works for me. I don't insist anyone else try it, though I do my best to make it available when I can, and where it's wanted. "Creativity" includes a lot of things people may not see as creative at all; like wrapping myself up in good sci-fi. Yeah, someone else was creative. But my appreciation can be all I need to keep moving on.

Meaningful exercise? It just has to be something I like, and makes me feel good, in and about myself. Yoga works, but so do the few remaining step aerobics classes which are correctly done. Anything I don't enjoy doesn't work here (i.e., weightlifting, jogging). It has to be meaningful activity.

Intoxicants? This one is totally explainable on a chemical level. When you put chemicals in your brain to make it happy, it stops producing its own "happy chemicals". I've tried both, and the ones my brain produces are better.

So, moving on. Will the job produce enough income for me to survive? Dunno; I hope so, I actually like the people I work for and with, for the most part. But we're moving into a time of economic collapse, and we'll all share in that, one way or another.

My dad is 85; he's always raised cattle, but he hasn't kept any the last few years much; he tried last year, but it was so dry here that there was hardly any pasture for them. This year he's keeping four steers for a cattleman down the road. Yesterday morning, two of the four mysteriously vanished; the fence had been broken or cut. I suspected cattle rustlers and wanted him to call the Sheriff. But hours later, a Sheriff's deputy and someone else, along with eventually their owner, found the steers standing in the middle of a busy highway, and drove them home. So my dad, at his age, was out fixing fences yesterday afternoon. And I'm sure he was thinking, 'I thought I was over this....'

Tomorrow surely brings changes, but I no longer fear them. I should have known better, and I went through what it took me to learn. I keep thinking of Natalie Maines singing "Taking the Long Way Around."

The fences are mended, and the cattle are back in the field, for now. Next!

Alright for Now

This blog doesn't look right. It's not the way I made it to be. I never made the center so narrow, the margins so huge or so bright.

Everything on my computer looks wrong. The type is too small, too unclear. None of this is the way it was three weeks ago.

I don't know if it looks wrong because my computer has died and been resurrected three times now since Ms. Johnson died, or because the world has changed; or if I've just noticed that the world has changed because I'd been denying how bad things were getting. In four or five days after Ms. Johnson died, my computer died, then my phone died. Then I spent ten or twelve days battling an old demon, and I was held down by the throat til the end. I'm still fighting in fact, though I seem to be winning for now.

Right at the end of all that insanity, my young neighbor turned full blown paranoid schizophrenic, decided I (talking through the wall) was the source of the voices in his head. He assaulted me -- with an egg. He got diagnosed and sent away for awhile, but I feel he'll be back all too soon.

Too often I, too, have heard voices in this house that weren't there, heard music that came from nowhere, even when I went outside and searched. Maybe he's really not insane. Maybe the house is just haunted.

I was away from my job for seven days. They let me come back, smiled at me and stabbed me. I'm still there, bleeding, for now.

But there was consolation in this sadness, this insanity. I have a lot of friends, it seems. Two of the best came by near the end, house looking like a gorilla cage in Baghdad. One fixed this computer, twice. Everyone emailed; some of them got through. No one could call.

And Zen saved my life. The Nashville Zen Center has cooked itself down to a core group that are all people I care about. The chaff has been cast out from the center. The Board meeting on Saturday morning was the first thing I'd truly enjoyed in almost two weeks. But the peak came Sunday morning when Ana and I repeated our performance at the "Zen Meditation" segment of the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention. To see that there are people that age, in this doomed world, who can still be like that, is sweet light to me.

And then, when I came home, after I'd picked up Ms. Johnson's sweet cremated remains, a card from the Murphy Road Animal Hospita, consoling me for her loss. Yes it's a business practice. But it still warmed my heart.

A lot of things are going to change, soon. The look of this blog will change, but it still won't be right. I'm going to change, too; I've become harder and softer in ways that will never let me live as shallow. I know what's important to me, now; I am, and you are, you as you never knew you were.

And it still won't be right; it never will be. But it's alright for now.

Ms. Johnson

Ms. Johnson (1990 - 2008)

Rest in Peace.

Zen Noir

One of my many pet peeves -- along with small children in restaurants, women who douse themselves in perfume, and bad unannounced fitness instructors -- is reading about some obscure art film that can't be found in Bumfuck, Egypt, which is just anywhere outside of New York or California. Until recently, such was the case with Zen Noir, an independent film by director Mark Rosenbush, evidently a friend of Brad Warner. Brad wrote about it in his blog in 2006, but at the time it was only available at selected screenings, and then on DVD by mail order from the website. But at some recent point, Netflix snuck it out, and I finally got to see it yesterday. If you're a Zen practitioner or anything close, it's a must-see.

Zen Noir was made on a low budget and shows it at times, but it's well done, quirky, funny, and remarkably true to Zen. As for the "Noir", the premise is that a down-and-out private detective is called to a zendo to solve a mysterious death. It's a comedy, and for the first few minutes, despite Brad's recommendation, I thought it was going to be reinforcing the stereotype of Zen teacher spouting meaningless conundrums; after a while I realized it was mocking those perceptions, including mine.

Of course there are problems with the film. If you do sit zazen, the first thing you'll notice is that none of the actors know how to do it correctly. They sit there with splayed legs, curved spines, and have their chins stuck out like suicidal rock-em-sock-em robots. I'm amazed at how this got past the director, since he is obviously no novice. The only thing I can think of is that the film claims inspiration by Thich Nhat Hanh, and from what I hear, the local group at least doesn't really do zazen. Other than that, pretty much everything rings true, in a surrealistic sense of course.

Normally I'm no fan of movies with a mission to expound any particular philosophy, including that of Zen (which does have one, though... well, see the previous blog entry). In terms of spirituality, I think filmmakers handle it better when they tell it as a story, like Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring, or my own favorite of all time, The Razor's Edge. Usually, you wind up with total crap like What the Bleep Do We Know? (a badly concealed infomerical for some rip-off about some shitheads channeling a fake entity called Ramtha) or The Secret (for the extremely gullible). But don't get me started on the prophets of the New Age. Even in the fiction realm, you usually get stuff like The Peaceful Warrior, which makes Kung Fu look pretty damn profound.

But Zen Noir has the wisdom not to lecture us about Zen, but merely to suggest some of its unhidden secrets; and has the temerity to suggest that practice might be the key to understanding. Now it's hard to do Zen in a short (70-minute!) comedic film without the intimation of kensho, which rubs at my Soto parts, but this film is the best I've seen on the topic. It also has a commentary with the director and Brad Warner, which I admit I haven't listened to/watched yet, but it's waiting on my Ipod.

So watch this thing, and let me know what you think. Or come sit with us at the Nashville Zen Center on Tuesday night and tell me about it. The NZC web page hasn't been updated in a coon's age, but contact me for info or join the Yahoo group for notifications and information.