As my step has slowed some, I am looking to play the corners a bit more on the big stuff. I wait before I make my move. I want to give it my Grand Canyon Treatment, looking out over the landscape and imagining how this could possibly have happened in such a way?
I had no plan to write this evening, especially after posting a couple of stories just a few days ago. When I’m traveling, it seems effortless to write, but in the mundanity of domesticity, I feel the need to recharge. It is a lot easier to make shit up when you’re on the road.
I was starting to think about birth being the leading cause of all deaths. The very first, magical breath, when miraculously sprung from the womb, is one less breath you will have in this life. There is absolutely nothing more terrifying than our mortality and the best we seem to be able to do is practice denial. It’s a kind of spiritual dyslexia that has polluted our sensibility for millennia. The soul is victimized by fear, fed by ignorance and that damn denial.
I wish I could remember the very first time I bumped into the Buddha. I’m pretty sure it was in the late Seventies, with me in my early thirties in NYC. My marriage had turned to dust and I had begun to give serious thought to the meaning of life, which from my distant vantage point all the way out here, seems very sweet of me to try back then.
i would say the corner stone of Zen is impermanence, in every way you could possibly imagine. So much of our distorted behavior makes no sense in light of this singularly inescapable bit of news and there is nothing fake about it. We can argue about everything, but our death is the only certainty.
Let’s pretend I am the world renowned Jewddha. My lineage can be traced back to the merchant trade of long ago India, primarily in the pawn shop business. Legend has it when Siddhartha split from the Palace, he off loaded some gold to bank roll his Vanagon for the seven year road trip, until he side swiped the damn Bodhi Tree.
I have been thinking about pretending to be more like my idea of the Big Guy recently. He was a huge fan of compassion, because so many of us are forced to suffer and there is not one single argument in favor of this behavior. I figure I am closer to the clouds than many, so why not try and be like an angel, in very, very small ways. I try to inflate my heart and give small pieces away whenever i can.
In the midst of thinking about all this, I put on my magic Buddha cap and tried to imagine how I would want him to respond to the insanity, regarding women coming forward with an endless array of horrific stories, told at incredible personal expense. Of course, he came from the same demented way of viewing women in relation to their far more heroic and insecure, penile clutching warriors.
God, when the hell did this start? I have a feeling it had something to do with brute strength and definitely not intellect. Imagine these hairy idiots, watching their favorite Barbie begin to swell around the middle and through some magical force, life emerges from inside her. I guarantee you it scared the shit of those rock heads. Ladies live with the silent inevitability of moon cycles, while guys numbly drag themselves behind a tree and whack it.
I don’t understand why more people didn’t promote the idea of our equality, which is the truth between us. Who has the right to mistreat anyone? Why haven’t we looked at each other as partners in our future?
We are living in a world created by men, intoxicated by power and the myth of immortality. Ladies, I don’t care if you do a shitty job of getting there, as long as you get there. You have played forever in a game that was fixed against you and now our survival depends on you demanding to change the rules.