Madness... just a blink away

I wrote this scary piece some time ago. I was traveling a lot at the time and reading quite a bit of Paul Auster. Yeah… I know this doesn’t explain all… In any case, you are welcome to take a tour down the ugly tunnels of a messed up mind…

For some reason I have trouble getting started. The words are suddenly hard to find. They wriggle and slip away, fighting to free themselves from my halfhearted grip. It is as if the natural, fluent stream of thought comes to a sharp stop when I place my fingers over the keyboard. Funny –as so many other things- that the urge to get all this out and finally see it in black over white finds such anonymous, sneaky resistance.

After reflecting upon this for a while, I decide I will type anyway. Even if it is only my doubts, my pacing and my circling that get written. For example, one of the many decisions I falter upon has to do with the intention of this exercise. What am I really doing this for? What exactly do I expect to obtain? And, as all considerations in writing, the pressing question is to whom is this addressed. Both aspects are inseparable, I believe. If this is, as I have argued with myself, just an exercise to clarify my thoughts, then there will be no reader of the final product but myself. But if this is so, why bother writing it out? Wouldn’t it be easier to take some time on my own, slow down and clear my mind and just think things over? I know what I want to write about therefore it is all in my head anyway. However, there is an undeniable element on which I will hold onto simply out of the absence of something better. Something wants to be expressed. That is a start. An image crosses my mind. This something wants to be expressed because it has to be seen for what it really is, naked and dirty and flawed. But since I am this thing that wants to be seen, I can only see it by taking it out of myself; like that old metaphor of the eye trying to see itself. Good, good. That seems to be settled.

There is something else. I guess it is more of a psychological need that must be satisfied. I have discovered –in mental preludes to this very exercise- that the effort of putting some thoughts into an intelligible string of words helps me realize how extravagant and self destructive my fantasies can be. When unchecked, my mind can lead me to believe all sorts of nonsense. Yes. That is not a problem in itself. Many good things can come from imagination. And in our postmodern-wretched world, one should free the mind rather than put a leash on it. Fuck that. I hate postmodernism! Well, that is not entirely true… But in our previous world in which good and evil, convenient and inconvenient, natural and unnatural where so obvious and universally accepted (I shudder with uneasy laughter at this), at least there was some premise. There was something resembling a ground on which to rest our weight, our terrible weight. Now our fucking posmo mindset leaves nothing below our feet. There is just a bottomless pit and we are freefalling for eternity, waving our arms and screaming as we go. Falling and falling and falling… What? Oh… Sorry!

See what I mean? I have to get back to my exercise. I shouldn’t wander off like that. It is dangerous. The daemons come again and make me think awful things and feel lots of pain and anguish. Discipline. Balsam. A balsam! That is it. This exercise is a sanctuary. It is a way to exorcise my daemons by bringing them out into the light. Ugly specters haunt me day and night and I am sometimes afraid that I will just loose my mind. There it is. This really solves part of the problem. The intention of these words is to exorcise my daemons. Exercise. Exorcise. Yes. I think that is settled. It also partially solves the other aspect of my dilemma. Even if this is directed to no one, it is nevertheless important to continue. The mere act of writing these thoughts out would be serving the purpose and the need of a reader could be omitted. However, there is a bit more to this, I am afraid. On one hand, I realize that my words should be written in such a way that they are understood by some other person. The format of the following lines should resemble a piece of writing that was actually intended for reading by other human beings. That is the only way I can establish some rules that will –hopefully- prevent me from playing tricks on myself. If I am able to read words pretending to be a John Doe and make sense of them, the chances that I am spinning around in my own dementia are lessened. I just wish I were John Doe for a while. I wonder if John Doe is a real guy after all. Am I real?

I think that is all…

Putting on robes at the sound of a bell

This was published in JigsawZen.com in 2006

Zen Master Unmon said: "The world is vast and wide. Why do you put on your robes at the sound of a bell?"

I used to have rather strong feelings against ritual stuff. Let me give you an example to clarify what I mean. Before sitting zazen at the zendo we’re supposed to bow in gassho towards the wall, turn clockwise and bow again towards the middle of the hall. Then we sit and wait for the teacher to take his place and make the bell sound three times. Once the three bells have rung, zazen officially begins. Some of the folks bow again from sitting position at the third bell; others bow three times (one for each bell).

From the first time I went to the zendo a few years ago, this bowing thing pissed me off a little. I mean, we’re in the frigging 21st Century fer cryin’ out loud! What pissed me off even more though, was that many of the folks at the zendo took their bowing darn seriously. I couldn’t help having sarcastic thoughts –and I believe I might have even written sarcastically about all this ceremonial earnestness in these very pages-.

For me, all the ritualistic stuff was just a meaningless waste of time and anyone who took it seriously was just a poor misguided fool who was trying to be really, really Buddhist. The losers… In the words of the wise Paris Hilton: “I was like, whatever”. If I had to bow, fine. I would carelessly put my hands together in front of my chest and bend forward a bit. Once I had bowed both ways as stated in the zendo rule book, I would just let myself drop to the zafu and wait there while everyone did their stuff. During the Dharma talk, while most of the people sat in half lotus or in seiza (kneeling the Japanese way) I would just sprawl myself as if I where in the park. What’s wrong with ya guys? Got a stick up yer ass or something?

On Thursdays the activity ends with the recitation of a sutra. A whole set of Japanese drums and bells come alive while we all chant in Japanese phonetics. Before the recitation of the sutra, a special bell rings and we’re supposed to prostrate three times. I screwed up almost everything the first time I took part in one of these ceremonies. I would sit down and everyone would stand up. When I finally realized I had no choice and would have to prostrate myself and put my forehead on the ground, everyone was already half way through with their stuff. I threw myself to the floor not to stand out. After a few seconds, I looked up (see, cuz my face was pressed to the floor) and I saw everyone had already stood up and was doing something else. When they all started chanting, I had the wrong page on the sutra book and couldn’t make sense of what was going on. Ah… But I really didn’t care. What was the point anyway?

Many of us look down upon ritual because we consider the religious / supernatural aspect of it as part of an overall backward mentality of superstition. We are rational, technology oriented people with a scientific based cosmo-vision. There’s no room for all this nonsense about chanting and bowing and burning incense and ‘whathaveyou’. What will the Buddha do if I don’t bow correctly, strike me with lightning? I dare ya!
There’s also a postmodern, rock ‘n’ roll thing in our psyches. You know what I mean? I was attracted towards Zen because there was no god to bow down to and the first things they make me do are prostrate and chant! Geez! See, what bugged me was the idea that I was bowing my head to someone or something. That kind of institutional faith based obedience is something that the generations before us have died to get rid of. That’s what rock ‘n’ roll is all about. It’s about saying ‘up thine’ to social convention and any kind of ideological authority.

OK. I have to grant that the bowing and chanting in Zen has nothing to do with the supernatural. There is no god in Zen and the bowing doesn’t really mean a pledge of obedience to anyone either. However, at the time that didn’t make things any better. Because if all the ritual had no religious or symbolic significance then it was nothing more than a formality, something empty of purpose and meaning. It was simply something that had been repeated throughout the centuries for only God knows what reason. And we morons kept doing it only God knows for what reason… Hey, Master Unmon said it himself: ‘The world is vast and wide, why are you so structured and limited by formality?’ That kind of sums up my frame of mind at the time.

And somehow now it’s different. You’ll see me putting quite a bit of attention in my bowing. Hands pressed together with no space between the fingers, held at one fist distance from the nose with the bent arms parallel to the floor. I’ll take care of making right angle turns during kinhin when I reach the corner of the hall and I’ll respond with a polite gassho when I’m ‘gasshoed’ at. I still screw up big time during the chanting and prostrations, but that’s not intentional (I have to deal with my handicapped condition…). What has changed? How come I am now one of those earnest bowers I once scorned at? How have I been convinced that this ritual stuff is somehow worth it?

I was brainwashed. That’s it. My vulnerable self esteem and my need for peer acceptance have finally made my shield of rationality cave in. I’ve been manipulated and soon will be giving up my worldly possessions to the cult in exchange for eternal salvation (it’s a great deal).

Ah… I wish the answer was that easy. I’ll try to put this into words but I can’t promise I’ll make any sense.

On one hand, what I can tell you is that at some point along the way, I grew tired of being a smartass all the time. Trying to be above everyone else in every situation is utterly exhausting (and a waste of time I have discovered after being an idiot for far too long). It drains the very life juice out of you. It also means being exposed all the time. You see, if no shelter is good enough for you, then the rain in the wind will eventually catch you in the open with your balls dangling in the air. To take refuge in the Dharma and the Sangha means bowing your head. Not in submission but in humility. Not to be accepted by others but precisely the opposite; so you can accept the way you are and the way things are. The bottom line is that if I am honest with myself, most of the things I rant about I don’t know shit about. I might as well shut up and do as I’m told.

But there’s another reason. One day, our teacher Ricardo was doing his usual Dharma talk and was explaining ‘Ichigyo Zanmai’. To make things simple, one could say that ‘Ichigyo Zanmai’ means ‘paying attention to what one is doing’. It means being attentive. When you are eating, your attention is in the eating. When you are walking, the attention is in the walking. When you listen to someone talk, you listen instead of thinking what to say next. Ricardo told us a bit about his years at Eheiji to illustrate the concept. There the activities are very limited and very repetitive. If you’re not prepared, you can go out of your mind with boredom. And yet all these very simple activities are done very ceremoniously, placing a lot of attention in every little movement. Waking up and tending to your mat, putting on your robes with all their folds and layers, sitting zazen, chanting, prostrating and bowing. All is done with a lot of care and attention. Not because there’s some ritual significance to these actions but simply because one is involved, one is attentive, one is concentrated. The repetition of these simple acts becomes somehow fascinating because when one pays attention, each bow and each zazen is different and unique. And that is the very practice of Zen. Being attentive; once and again, and again and again.

Of course, as Ricardo pointed out, one can’t go around bowing at work and prostrating before one’s food at a restaurant. Good thing he pointed this out; I was about to chant the Zandokai before the Commercial Committee… But the point is that there is a place and time for things. You can’t go about the street looking like a robot or like Frankenstein. Of course you can be attentive during your daily activities but, at the same time, there is a place for practice and that is the zendo. And when one is in the zendo one practices ‘Ichigyo Zanmai’ with the activities that are proper of the zendo. One must be attentive while bowing in gassho with the palms pressed together at a fist’s distance from the nose. One must be attentive while prostrating at the sound of the bell and while chanting the sutra. One must be attentive of the posture and the breathing during zazen.

It’s funny. When newcomers visit the zendo for the first time and see all us dorks bowing and prostrating I can’t help a little silent laugh…

Lobby Bar

This was written some time ago but I found the notes in an old file and brushed them up for the blog. Hope you enjoy...

Hotel Lobby Bars in New York have a special lighting. It’s the combination of dark oak walls, luscious carpets and the ochre shades of lamps. They are usually noisy as well. Somehow just a few Americans are able to create a whole racket all on their own. It’s not unpleasant though; I would say it makes the otherwise dim environment lively. The lobby bar at the Roosevelt Hotel is no exception. Perhaps the outstanding element is the lousy service. I sometimes get the impression that all of New York is in too much of a hurry to be polite. There is always something more important happening elsewhere. There is no time!

I manage to find an empty spot in a corner. These are my favorite. It’s like having a little space all to myself without giving up the view; my own personal observation centre and base of operations. The bar is crowded and the minute tables are cluttered with empty glasses and fallen cashews. There is a skinny Asian who apparently tends this area but he passes me by and ignores me once, twice. He has been clearing some tables and taking orders but not mine. Is it a self service joint? A family of Spaniards sit at the table next to mine. They come with their own drinks. Perhaps it is a self service joint after all. Such elegance in furniture and decoration spoiled on this American vice of informality… Of course I am here on my own with my laptop. Should I stand up to help myself my own drink; leaving my baby alone and unattended?

It’s New York after all so I get to my feet and approach the bar. The barman is a big guy with a hostile look. What’s wrong with you people? I just want to wash away my misery with some scotch. Is that a sin? Am I bugging you? He finally looks at me square in the eye and makes the minimum gesture of acknowledgement. Now that I think of it, I am not even sure what part of his face has moved. If I had to guess, I’d say he has slightly arched his eyebrows… ‘What?!’ he seems to be asking.

I order a double Black Label with ice and inquire about the food menu. ‘Are you at a table?’ I nod upwards with a snarl, trying to be impolite on purpose. ‘You think you can push me around big guy?’ I tell myself. He looks away as he leaves the glass in front of me and I can barely hear him say: ‘You’ll be waited on at your table, Sir’. The funny thing about New York is that rudeness is almost a part of the mystique. You come to the city, you shop, you take pictures of fucking Times Square and you get ill treated. Just part of the show! The Asian guy finally shows up at my table while I am in the middle of my first, wonderful gulp of cold scotch. I order the ‘Sea Food Trio’ and wonder what the hell will come. It turns out to be a wonder of deep fried squid, genetically modified oversized jumbo shrimps and a glass full of fishy bits and pieces. A delight! Mmmhhh. That’s another thing about New York. It’s hard to go wrong with food. That is, of course, if you are ready for spicy bites and weird looking stuff. What a delight. I munch it all up while I type. Yes sir, I am the one and only ‘gobbler of dregs’! See if you can find out what that means! I dare you!

I notice a girl sitting alone at the bar. She is pretty and she is wearing a black dress with an insinuating cleavage. I wonder if she is expecting someone. I watch her for a moment and manage to see the hulky barman approaching her. Will he be as rude to her as he was to me? I should wear cleavage to bars to get my damn drinks! In any case, I am a bit surprised when I notice they seem to know each other. Big guy cracks a joke that I can’t really hear and the girl giggles. She looks sweet and for some reason I change my focus towards the empty whiskey glass. All this traveling really takes its toll and I sometimes feel a bit alienated: cars with drivers, lines at the airport, sitting around in linoleum floored and fluorescent light waiting rooms, airplanes and their NASA food, hotel lobbies and dim, impersonal rooms, eating alone in restaurants, etc, etc, etc.

I am distracted by a voice: ‘Will you want anything else, Sir?’ Now you guys are going to suffer rudeness! You know the saying: when the going gets tough, the tough get going! I look up with a slightly annoyed expression. ‘Huh?’ ‘Would you like another drink, Sir?’ It’s the Asian guy. So now you suddenly worry about the customer? I ask him if they pour Sam Adams Beer. If I order another whiskey they are going to have to drag me out. He nods and I just raise my finger to order one. I won’t give him the pleasure. It is kind of funny after all; just a little macho display of feathers and penis measuring. The guy is doing his fucking job after all and I am just miserable and feeling suicidal. Can’t we all just get along? I guess this is alcohol talking. Suddenly I want to be friends with the Asian dude?

The girl in the black dress moves away from the bar and sits on a tall stool in front of a mic. Who would have said? It turns out she is the singer and as soon as she takes her place the voices and general clatter start competing with some soft pre-recorded music. She sings ‘Killing me softly’ and I start feeling a bit like Bill Murray in that wonderful movie, ‘Lost in translation’. Nobody pays the least attention to her. In fact, I would even say that people have raised their voices to be heard over the music. I wonder how that feels for her. Does she have aspirations as a singer? Is this something she does while she’s waiting for her break?

By this time I feel pretty drunk. I suppose the glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and the Glenlivet I had earlier in the afternoon are still circulating through my bloodstream. I am such a waste of good life, health and intelligence... Why is it so hard to be happy? Is it all my traveling that has put me in this gloomy state of mind? After hours and hours of moving from one anonymous hotel room to another, of talking about the weather with countless anonymous drivers, of shaking hands with guys I don’t give a rat’s ass about, of sleeping on planes and wondering if the neck pain I have will ever go away… The Asian guy returns to my table and I look at him with lost eyes. Whose turn is it now to be weak? I stutter and falter. What do I want? He just looks at me and his face is a collection of impatient gestures; as if Giselle Bundchen were waiting for him with her thighs spread open somewhere else. So what do you want stupid?! Do you want to get it over with and blackout? Black… Yes! ‘A double Black Label with ice!’

The whiskey tastes sour. I look into its depths when I take the glass to my mouth, as if something within held a hypnotic effect on me. It seems to enclose a mystery, a cipher. It is the mother of all questions, the Holy Grail we all seem to chase our entire lives. As the ice melts a bit, the chunks move around and make that tingling sound that only ice in a whiskey glass con produce. A mystery, huh? Will I solve it sitting here feeling pity for myself? Not likely. In any case, I am pressed with a more urgent question. How the fuck will I get back to my room?

Madonna: bigger, louder, better…

Give it to me! Yeah! No one’s gonna stop me! Now!

Boy! What a concert! I went to see Madonna the other day at the River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires. My feet still ache from dancing and jumping around like a kid (and I hadn’t done that in quite a while, lemme tellya!).

However, our story doesn’t begin altogether well. The concert started about one hour and a half later than we all expected. That is, over two hours later than it was announced. We had been standing there (dancing a bit to Paul Oakenfold) for a few hours and even if the Sun was already going down it was sticky, damp and hot. A few raindrops started falling and then more until the whole thing turned into a copious rain shower. F#@&*.

People started getting angry. Madonna had changed the dates of her performance and that meant a headache for more than one. People flying over from Chile, Perú and Brazil had to go into a lot of trouble to show up. Why wasn’t she showing up! A few girls behind me started calling Madonna names. Let’s just say that they were not nice names. I let out a scream myself (an innocent ‘Daleeee Madonnnaaaaa!). Eventually she came onstage and the display was quite something. She started singing some of the songs from her new album which were good but nobody really knew and therefore could not sing along with. We were all just standing there, still a bit pissed off and praying for more rain since it had already stopped and things started getting stuffy again.

As I stood there watching, arms crossed and quite cranky, I drifted off to think the following: Nothing surprises us any more. We seem to need more and more and more and MORE! Even when the display of technology was grotesquely over the top, when the sound was so loud it made your chest beat, when a 50 year old goddess was singing and dancing about and looking 21, we were all there wanting more… unsatisfied and unimpressed…

I remembered a time when I was a small kid. There was a large barren lot near the highway that crossed my neighborhood and we used to go down there with our bikes and pretend we were in a far away land full of adventure and mystery. One summer, the circus came to our neighborhood and settled for a few weeks in that same lot. We stood there in awe watching the tent go up and the trucks unload wonder after wonder. My mom took me and my brothers to the show and everything was dazzling. There was a kid –not that much older than I was- who performed a number in which he would stand on his hands on top of a pile of bricks. An assistant would add layer after layer of bricks while the kid just balanced his way up. I was so impressed! Later on in the show, that same kid was walking through the audience selling gimmicks and souvenirs…

And as I looked around the stadium watching thousands of girls wearing Madonna t-shirts, hats and what-have-you, I realized that this was also a circus. Bigger, louder and better but a circus none the less. And there I stood, together with another 60,000 unimpressed ticket holders…

But fortunately something happened. I can’t really explain what it was. Magic? Perhaps. I don’t really know. The bitch found some way to get to us all, even when we all knew she was being a phony and didn’t really give a damn. She found a way of piercing through this shield of sarcasm and rationality. How? When she sang ‘Don’t cry for me Argentina’ my eyes got literally wet. I was angry at myself! I made an effort to wipe a rogue tear from my cheek without anyone noticing (not that anyone was watching me either…). What was happening to me??? Jajajajajajaja. Moments later I was jumping and dancing and so was everyone around me. And as I laughed and sang I felt like a kid again and it felt SOOOO good. I felt nothing but gratitude towards this crazy woman who has dedicated her entire life to a create a circus she herself doesn’t seem to believe in.

Well… I don’t really know what my point is. Have we outsmarted our ability to feel like kids again? Are we paying $80 (US dollars) for a trip back to our childhood? Or am I just a sick, cranky man who thinks too much?

Ah… I promise to ponder that as I sooth my sore feet. Stay tuned…

Delacroix 'La tricolor'

Kung Fu Panda

Nah… this one’s not about Zen or any funny Kung Fu stuff. Relax.

It’s more about story telling. Yes, I could have picked anything from a number of subjects to talk about this movie: the growing importance of animated features in cinematography, the fact that the voices of the characters are played by these awesome stars, my nagging question about where the hell the tortoise went… But story telling is my pick because one thing that struck me about the movie is how classical the plot is. It is the utmost ‘by the book’ classical tale of the hero.

Often referred to as the ‘Hero’s Journey’ and not so often referred to as the ‘Monomyth’, the tale of the hero can be decomposed into several stages. We owe a lot on the study of myths to an American mythology professor named Joseph Campbell. He spent quite a while describing the archetypal patterns of myths and identifying examples of just how universal these were. Across the ages and across the globe, all cultures have created myths that fall into these archetypes. It makes you wonder… Anyway, although the stages Campbell identified are quite complex, they can be grouped into larger clusters which are essentially about departure, initiation and return.

I am not a professor –of any sort- and that grants me a certain ‘layman’s freedom’ which I will abuse as much as I can on this website.

This is what I thought of as I watched Kung Fu Panda (I sure know how to enjoy a movie…)

Stage one: the hero has a dream (Po works in his Dad’s noodle shop but secretly wants to be a Kung Fu hero)

Stage two: the call of destiny (Po, apparently by accident, becomes the Dragon Warrior. Note that destiny and accident come together. How can we know if he is really ‘the one’?)

Stage three: initial failure (Po sucks badly. Everybody doubts him. He even doubts himself)

Stage four: the foe / the threat (Tai Lung breaks free and he is really pissed off. He defeats the Furious Five.)

Stage five: the hidden talent / first success (Shifu discovers that Po can be a very good fighter when faced with the right incentive: FOOD)

Stage six: the insight / intuition / faith (Po discovers that the secret of the scroll is that there is no secret ingredient, you do not have to be special to be special)

Stage seven: with self knowledge and a clear sense of destiny, the hero triumphs (Po beats the crap out of Tai Lung)

Stage eight: the return (life returns to normal but now Po can face his Dad and reconcile his future with his past)

Of course some parts of the movie are blurry in my memory. The first time I saw it, I was with my wife and my four year old son. I can’t say I captured everything because I was stressed out by the fact that my little boy would run through the isles and make a hell of a racket. The second time I saw it I was on a plane and I am afraid there were a few interruptions with the meal and so on… plus, I might have dozed off a coupla times.

Stay tuned for more movie reviews.

Hot model with funny hat