April, 2009

This is my second posting from a moving train. Today's journey is taking me from Montreal through Toronto and then on to Windsor, where Vince from Still Point Zen Center in Detroit will take me across the border. Zero Defex is playing tomorrow at a place in Detroit called The Comet. We haven't played together in a year. The rest of the guys have been rehearsing without me and I've been practicing on my own. So we should be fine.

The last gig Zero Defex played in Detroit is written up in gory detail in Hardcore Zen. The main things I recall are frozen feet and carbon monoxide. There were at least three bands and assorted fellow travelers packed into an Econoline van along with a drum kit, a half dozen guitars and some amplifiers, all rolling aro0und on top of each other to make the 6 hour journey from Akron to Detroit. The van had rust holes all over the place that allowed the exhaust fumes to seep inside until all of us were woozy. I heard a story later that the Nazis designed a van quite similar to this to kill Jews even before they reached the concentration camps.

It was the dead of winter and freezing cold. I was probably in a pair of Converse High Tops. I don't know for sure. But anyway they were thin and inadequate and my feet froze up. As soon as we got into the venue -- a club known as The Freezer! -- my frozen feet started to swell up from the warmth and itched like crazy. I had to take off my shoes and let them cool back down by walking barefoot on the frigid concrete of The Freezer's floor.

Then our start time kept getting pushed later and later to accommodate Negative Approach who suddenly decided they needed to play a set even though they weren't on the bill. I hated them for years because of that. This was really bad for us because we were set to drive back to Ohio that same night and wouldn't even get on the road until something like three in the morning. We survived, though.

Hopefully tomorrow night's gig will go even better.

Now the train I'm riding is in Brockville. Don't go back to Brockville!

I had a terrific time in Montreal, which becomes more like home every time I go. Linda Dydyk and her husband Bogdan played host. I loved them both and all of their cats. They live in NDG, a very cool part of the city. Montreal is covered in graffiti. Some of it is quite good. Most of it sucks ass. But you could say the same about the other forms of advertising that decorate the buildings.

I got interviewed by the CBC twice, by CJAD once, by The Mirror and by WatchMojo.com. On the CBC I was harassed by a Hare Krishna caller who wanted to warn the audience of the dangers of the impersonal and abstract philosophy of Buddhism. I guess I asked for that cuz I said how I hadn't been very engaged in their philosophy. It's nuts, I tell ya! Actually, it's just old-time religion with a blue god who screws hot Indian babes instead of a white god who shoots lightning bolts. But their food is terrific.

The CBC interviewer mentioned local hero Leonard Cohen and the rumor that when he flies overseas he spends 13 hour plane flights seated in meditation. She asked if I did that. I told her that Leonard Cohen probably flies first class where the seats are roomy enough to do that. I always fly coach.

Wow. We just passed a field in which stood a giant turkey fanning his tail feathers. Life is good.

I talked with a lot of people. Went out with my friend Maya to see a punk rock show. Went to eat Indian food with Thibault, the guy who got me my first gig in Montreal. That was in 2005 when I spoke at Casa del Popolo. I was there again and it was fun. I did my acoustic version of "Drop the A-Bomb on Me" to end the show and opened with a solo version of "God Part III" from Dimentia 13's Flat Earth Society album (1990). In between I got a lot of good questions and did my best to answer them. The first one was, "Can Buddhists jack off?" So you know it was a very cool audience.

I met the Chinese/Japanese girl from Montreal who I wrote about in my current book and her new boyfriend. I was happy and sad at the same time. They seem very good for each other. So that's OK, he said silently holding back a single tear.

I spent hours talking to a beautiful mysterious film maker who didn't want to talk very much. She was super cool but I should have shut up. I spent more hours talking to a beautiful bubbly journalist who told me about vandalizing locker rooms and puking multicolored Gatorade puke. I like Canada.

I met a woman who writes a blog called Full Contact Enlightenment that she says trashes me. She was nice. I haven't been able to get the blog to load up yet. The wireless on this train is free but, like I said, oh so slow. I met a guy who wanted to hypnotize me, but I didn't have time. Or maybe he secretly hypnotized me while we were talking and I am now doing his bidding! I met some students at Dawson who played "Oh Darling!" from Abbey Road on guitar and asked great Zen questions.

I visited the used book stores of the city and picked up a couple of old books about sci-fi films that I didn't have. And a copy of the Battlefield Earth DVD for 4$ Canadian. Battlefield Earth is a bad movie classic that must be seen to be understood and appreciated. I bought a red hoodie with a maple leaf on the breast.

We're passing now though wheat fields, past rusted cars and cows. The train is shakier out here than it is in the city, but we're moving faster.

Whenever I give a talk, a bunch of people come up afterward to chat. And that's fine. But I think maybe from now on I'm going to go out and try to talk to people who don't line up to chat. I think they might have stuff to say as well.

All the Detroit gigs are listed on the link to your left. So if you're in town, please show up at Still Point.<<<<<<

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As I see it, someone is always bound to turn Buddhism into "Buddhism." It's just the way of the world. Suffering has that effect on people.

It's just Buddhism and it's serious.

But it's not that serious.
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Sawaki Roshi: Often a kid does things by blindly following others. When his friend eats a potato, he wants to eat one. If his friend wants candy, he wants some. When someone he knows gets a Kintama-bue (a bamboo whistle with a balloon attached to one end), he begs his parents, "Please buy a kintama-bue for me." And he is not always a kid.

Uchiyama Roshi: At the time that Dakkochans (a type of plastic doll) were in fashion, I read a letter in the readers' column of the newspaper. It said, "Because my daughter wanted to have a Dakkochan, we went to buy one at a department store. We had to stand in line, but they sold out while we waited our turn. We have a very disappointed daughter. Please produce many dolls for the girls so that everyone who wants one can get one."

It was really a stupid letter, but I found it interesting because it expresses an attitude that is so common these days. I remember the letter exactly; the mother complained as if she were weeping. Dakkochans would soon go out of fashion and no one would pay anymore attention to them, but for her, being behind the times was a fate worse than death. Similarly, parents think that in order to go to a first class primary school, their childeren must go to a first class kindergarden, so they stand in line in order to obtain admission. (Acceptance is base on the ordr of arrival.) Kyoiku-mama wants her chideren to play the piano, so they go into debt to buy one.
By following the fads of the day in buying things, many people find their lives worth living. First, three kinds of electric appliances; next a camera; after that a new car; and then an air conditioner. "Grow up a little" is my immediate response.

Yesterday I conducted a memorial service.

As I prepared for this as is my wont I interviewed the individual's daughter. I actually prefer more family members when possible, but if I can snag a daughter, I'm at least moderately confident I'll get most of the details. (Those who only have sons are probably going to get a sketchy biography. It appears the majority of sons are moderately confident their parents were born. It goes downhill from there...) I got a good story...

And within that life story I heard something worth repeating here.

It had to do with the deceased's mother. The family were Croatian coal miners who immigrated to America to work the soft coal fields in Southern Illinois. Father would die of black lung. Mother was the best educated having gone through the third grade.

I'm not sure she knew exactly what college was, but somehow sure figured out it was the ticket for her children to make better lives. She worried less about her son, other than being a fierce taskmaster and making sure he studied hard. And he did okay, became an architect.

It was the daughter she worried about. Had plenty of smarts, but we're talking the early decades of the twentieth century. It was going to be hard for a girl from her background to get into college and then to get through college.

Beyond making sure her children put school first, the mother had one skill. She could sew. She taught her daughter that skill. Then somewhere along the line, I think during High School, she scrimped and saved. I'm pretty sure it took a couple of years. And she bought a sewing machine.

She presented it to her daughter, saying "Use this to go to college."

It worked. The memorial service, for her daughter, was for a distinguished professor of Political Science. The mayor was present as were other dignitaries. And what was surprising for someone in her late eighties, there were lots of people present...

A footnote.

I needed to make a note in my text, marking a small shift in the program we'd agreed to. And I asked the professor's daughter if she had a pen I could borrow.

She replied "No, I'm sorry, I never carry a pen. When I was coming up, I saw that women with pens became secretaries at meetings."

She is a high powered attorney.

The strategy for one generation is not necessarily the right one for another.

But that's a footnote.

For me, the lingering memory is of that woman born at the cusp of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who appeared never to quite master the English language, who worked hard her whole life, and who had a vision of something more for her children and their children.

And with enormous diligence, frankly some good luck, and more work than many I know understand, accomplished it...

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Today, I woke up scared. In that just-awakened state that maintains the undefended clarity of a dreaming sleep, it was as if some longtime assumptions were shattering or shattered and the remaining shards were somehow closing in, sucking from things the safety once provided, weakening what was once 'strong,' and stifling the moment in some mortal way. It was, and to a certain extent remains, frightening.

At the nearest point to sleep, there was a piece of a dream to remember. In the dream, Bruce, a guy I roomed with at the monastery I flunked out of, was lying on the floor in his robes and talking about Zen with a third unrecognized person off to my right. Bruce was a guy I knew as very strong in his determination in practice. If he was slightly dotty in my mind, still I knew him to be kind. Bruce once memorized the entire Diamond Sutra -- a thing that few if any monks in Japan had accomplished. The whole damned thing! Wow! Useful or useless, it was a hell of an effort.

Anyway, Bruce lay on the floor, saying something about Zen practice to the third person in the scene. He broke into a chant -- something we both knew in easy memory, maybe the Heart Sutra or maybe the Kanzeon ten-clause sutra ... easy stuff -- and part way through the chant, he lost his way. He had recited part of it, but then, with a mock-sheepish humor, segued into something akin to "yadda, yadda, yadda..." And as he said this, he looked up at me, knowing I would know he had forgotten ... and, with a challenging smile, he winked. He really had forgotten and, like it or lump it, wasn't that the way of things? the honest way? the way we had both, in our own ways, worked so hard on in the past? the way that, if it were any good, was bound to go poof?

It was all as easy as pie on the one hand. And, on the other, it was scary.

The proximate cause of waking up afraid, I imagine, is the fact that today I will sign the papers that will assure my retirement from the newspaper. That signature will seal my fate. And in a lousy economy with a family I would like to defend and support, the pay cut will mean a large shift in how things work ... how the house runs, how I run. My investigations into health care insurance and other issues connected to a 'life without work' have been exhausting and frustrating and somehow guiltifying ... how come I can't just keep going, keep on keepin' on, keep up the efforts that provided for myself and others ... it all seems simultaneously imperative (the newspaper is dying and I am tired) and somehow insane. How can I lay claim to control when there is so much evidence that I am not in control? What was once an easy, complain-about-it habit is now falling to bits and those bits surround and smother and mock me.

But another slightly-strange aspect of the situation is this: I am not afraid at all. It all feels appropriate and relieving in some sense, as if I had been carrying a suitcase and it had been heavy and now I got to put it down. So ... on the one hand is the whine-festival of fear and on the other is some relieving exhalation that whispers, "There. Isn't that better? Stick with the facts."

Yesterday, my older son took part in a track competition. For reasons that escape me, he throws the discus. If, he told me before the competition, he threw the discus 118 feet, he would be eligible to join a statewide competition. He really wanted to join that group -- that wider, more accomplished group -- and yet had never thrown 118 feet.

Yesterday, he did it. And as he came towards me after that accomplished throw, I congratulated him with an ironic, "Too bad, Angus." And he smiled. Like Bruce, he knew the meaning of a wink.
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