Introspective ramblings of a dreamer who was heavily involved in the NYC underground music scene from c. 1978 – c. 2000. (in memoriam CBGB.)
I'm a work in progress, currently collaborating with some pretty terrific teachers who guide me in my process. Sometimes a lesson or conversation inspires me to new or deeper understanding, and these essays are a way to capture the thoughts before I forget them.
I spent the weekend in the country recently, and as always happens when I change scenery, I got some new perspectives.
It has to do with lawns. (For the strictly city-folk among you, lawns are expanses of ground covered with grass and the occasional shrub for use as status symbols, areas upon which to play touch football, dining areas for summer barbecues, and sources of "good healthy outdoor exercise" in the form of lawn maintenance [consisting of watering, weeding, seeding, and cutting the grass, preferably while riding a fancy tractor-like lawn mower].)
You see, I have something in common with a lawn:
I have a lot of knowledge spread out over a wide area, but it rarely goes very deep.
Although I value my interest in a wide variety of subjects (more on that in my next post), I feel that now I want to spread out a little less and dig down a little more; I want to deepen my understanding of something and concentrate on it for a while (for example, I'd like to increase my fluency in French) rather than my usual practice of flitting from subject to subject.
Just a few minutes ago I was reminded of how much I love, love, love to learn from someone who is passionate about his/her subject. I was watching an episode of TED Talks [sidebar: TED is "a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading," and TED Talks are watchable online at ted.com; you don't need to watch them on television], and after two lectures I had to stop watching and blog immediately.
The first lecture, given by writer/director/producer J.J. Abrams, was engaging, funny, and inspiring. His view of the unknown, as mystery to be anticipated with excitement, was beautiful. However, it was the second lecture, given by Princeton molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler, that prompted my need to write today.
Her lecture described how bacteria talk to each other (with a molecular chemical language, since you asked), and how that enables them to behave in concert—including a very satisfying, oh-right-that-makes-perfect-sense explanation of how "bad" bacteria can become virulent. I noticed partway through the lecture that I was grinning as broadly as a child at a cartoon festival. Why was I smiling? After all, this wasn't humorous pop-culture stuff; there was hard science here (although Bassler made everything easily understandable to the layperson). Then it dawned on me: this woman was as excited about her team's discoveries as a kid pulling on your pant leg to say, "Hey, look what I found! Lookit, lookit, lookit! Isn't this the coolest thing you've ever seen, ever?" Her enthusiasm was infectious enough to reach out through the tv set and grab me. Granted, I would have been interested in the subject no matter what (because I'm such a nerd), but her love for her science and for its possibilities permeated her lecture and filled me with delight.
As I sit here typing, the smile still lingers. I'm still excited about what I learned. And I'm excited to be excited; the thrill of learning something new, the joy of discovery, the delight and fascination at how things work, it's all still inside me.
You're never too old to learn, and it's still just as much fun as ever.
I only learned the term Metta recently; I knew the term lovingkindness, a lovely comforting and comfortable word. So many letters all crammed together like a nice squishy hug, a nice long word like arms spread out to say, "I love you this much." Lovingkindness meant something different than either word separately; I always saw the word as an overall serene benevolence, a soft smile that misses no sentient being in its scope (and to me the smile encompasses the vegetable and mineral kingdoms as well as the animals). Lovingkindness is the state of being or emotion that reminds me the most of deism, because in my early religious training I was taught of a benevolent god who loves all his creation, and I associate lovingkindness with the state of mind that such a god would possess all the time.
Metta is different. Metta sounds like meta, which means several things to me: it has its computer meanings (e.g., metadata), its scientific meanings (e.g., metatarsal bones), and other meanings that come from its Greek origins as a prefix meaning after, next to, or regarding the self (e.g., metatarsals are the bones next to orafter the tarsals, and meta-emotion is a person's emotion about his/her own emotion).
Metta practice is a meditation on lovingkindness in which one first thinks compassionate thoughts towards oneself (meta-Metta when meta refers to self), then towards someone close (meta-Metta when meta refers to next to), then towards someone who's not as close (meta-Metta when meta refers to after), and then towards everyone (meta-Metta when meta refers to beyond). The bigger picture is that all these various separations—I, you, he, they, others—are artificial. In truth we are not separate from each other, and metta is a way to remember that.
Considering how difficult that concept is, it's easier to start with thinking compassionate thoughts as close as our own hearts, and then letting the compassion spread out in expanding waves just like the ripples of a pebble in a pond. The waves begin at the center place where the stone plops into the water, and then roll out in circles that continue to expand farther and farther way from the center point until they reach to the edges of the pond on all sides. The vibrations never stop until the entire surface of the water has been affected; not only that, they don't even stop at the shore, but bounce back off the edges and ripple back into the middle of the pond again.
There's a show on the CUNY channel* called Voices and Visions that has various different kinds of films about poets.
Next week it's supposed to be a repeat of their show on William Carlos Williams, although on cuny.tv's schedule it says it'll be a show on Hart Crane. I'm hoping the cable TV's schedule is the right one, because I saw the Williams episode before and enjoyed it.
This is Just to Say, by William Carlos Williams
artwork by Ivan Boothe, on quixoticlife.net
*For those of you not in New York, CUNY is the City University of New York; CUNY TV is their television station, on Channel 75 on the various NYC cable stations. They have podcasts and YouTube videos of a bunch of their shows for all you out-of-region folks, but sadly I don't think Voices and Visions is one of them.
It is one of the mantras I used to use, but haven't in a long while (I've been sticking with the Avelokiteshvara mantra for a little over a year now). Oh, what the heck--here's a throat singing version of that one, too:
Yesterday afternoon on the bus I met a very angry five-year-old boy. I don't have any idea why he was so angry; his father led us to believe he had been denied something and wasn't happy about it. This young man was determined to remain furious for the entire bus ride. I've never seen someone frown with such focus. He concentrated with all of his being on pulling his brows down as far as they would go. His teeth were clenched and his face was scrunched up tight. He stomped his feet as hard as they could stomp, and then he squatted down and put his arms around his knees. It was the most exquisite sulk I've ever seen. The lady sitting next to me and I couldn't help laughing with delight at the boy's display. He glared at us dolefully and then worked on his frown some more. I couldn't help but be impressed by this kid. Okay, right now he's causing his father a lot of grief, and his father is responding by muttering, "He's gotta learn that he can't get everything he wants." But when he's older this same stubborn refusal to budge could turn him into a hero. When I saw him glaring over his knees, the phrase that came into my head was, "We shall not be moved." I thought, if this kid gets some encouragement to stick to his guns when it really counts, he could become a great force for good. I envisioned him becoming an advocate for people with lesser-heard voices, and when the powers that be want to push him around, he'd glare at them with the same frown he's been perfecting since he was five, and say, "We shall not be moved."
This is a song from Joe Jackson's album Look Sharp:
The lyrics are:
I've just been to see my best friend/ He's found another girl
Says she's just about the best thing/ In the whole damn world
And he says, "Can't you see/ what the little lady's done for me"/ Says it like he thinks I'm blind
But the things that you see/ Ain't necessarily the things you can find
Happy loving couples make it look so easy/ Happy loving couples always talk so kind
Till the time that I can do my dancing with a partner/ Those happy couples ain't no friends of mine
People say I'm too damn fussy/ When it comes to girls
Happy couples say/ I must live in a lonely world
Wanna be, wanna really be/ What my friends pretend to be/ Be it in my own good time
Being kind to myself/ Till I become one of two of a kind
But those happy loving couples make it look so easy/ Happy loving couples always talk so kind
Till the time that I can do my dancing with a partner/ Those happy couples ain't no friends of mine
You ain't no friends of mine/ You ain't no friends of mine
You know what I mean/ happy loving couples/ In matching lamb polo-neck sweaters
Reading 'Ideal Homes' magazine, yeah
Wanna be, wanna really be/ What my friends pretend to be/ Be it in my own good time
Being kind to myself/ Till I become one of two of a kind
But those happy loving couples make it look so easy/ Happy loving couples always talk so kind
Until the time that I can do my dancing with a partner/ Those happy couples ain't no friends of mine
You ain't no friends of mine/ You ain't no friends of mine/ You ain't no friends of mine
You ain't no friends of mine/ You ain't no friends of mine/ You ain't no friends of mine
Right, that's enough
I have been single for quite some time now, but that didn't mean I didn't have a partner or a lover if I wanted one. Over the past year I've become increasingly dissatisfied with sex without relationship; I'm more interested in love and partnership than in "just sex." So what was not an issue has become an emptiness.
Then I run into someone I used to be in love with, deeply and achingly. The tough thing is, I'd thought that after so many years those feelings would have subsided. They had--until we reconnected a couple of years ago. At first I didn't feel anything out of the ordinary, and I didn't even remember how much I'd cared for him, but just in the past month or so all those memories have come flooding back, and I'm aching with loneliness and misery. And the stupid thing is, we were never anything but friends, we never will be anything but friends, and my rational mind understands that completely. The part of me that uselessly, ridiculously fell in love never got the message. It's so unnecessarily stressful. I'm miserable whenever I'm around him, which is often lately.
I've also reconnected with some online gaming buddies from back in the day. These are people who were so introverted they made me look like a social expert. I just got an email telling me that my two best friends, my favorite shipmates, both have significant others now. All of a sudden everyone and their cousin Arthur is telling me all about their love lives. I'm sick of it. And it's not because I resent the happiness that my friends and acquaintances have--far from it, I'm thrilled that they have people who they care for and who care for them--but because every time I hear about "my girlfriend" or "my boyfriend" I'm reminded of the empty space that isn't being occupied by a significant other of my own.
The latest thing is being teased by some of my friends. One of my friends has a set of car keys at my house, and I've been waiting for him to come and get it. We used to be lovers occasionally, but as his business has grown so does his travel itinerary, and I rarely see him anymore. When I do, it's usually just for five minutes. But he has made plans to come and pick up his keys and then cancelled several times. I'm feeling like the girl who waits by the phone for the boy who never calls. I don't even love him, but I feel rejected when he keeps cancelling on me. Then there's this teacher who goes on and on about what should he do if he's attracted to a student, and it's excruciating. He's got someone fabulous in his life, so why on earth is he even looking at another person? And why should he mention it to me, when he knows how I feel about infidelity (or maybe he doesn't; guess that will be my next blog subject)? I feel like he's showing off; not only does he have one partner, he's looking at another one, and here I am with none. I tell you, it makes me grouchy.
Till the time that I can do my dancing with a partner, those happy couples ain't no friends of mine.
You ain't no friends of mine/ You ain't no friends of mine/ You ain't no friends of mine
Right, that's enough
