Please Happy

When I got home from Austin, there was a thin letter waiting for me from a fellowship I had been counting on to take me to The Next Level. I sat at the kitchen table watching the future I had pictured myself in fade and fall away (like Marty’s hand in Back to the Future when it looks like George McFly and Lorraine won’t end up together at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance after all).

I didn’t want to be hugged or talked to or told that I was going to Make It despite this. That my excellence would eventually be noticed. I wanted to sit in the shittiness of it. And sulk.

Then, Jake, from the other side of the room where I made him sit, suggested this:

J: Maybe you should listen to Pink Floyd.

Me: What?

J: When my friends and I all got our first college rejection letters, we went and sat in the dark together and listened to The Wall.

I thought it was kind of a dumb idea, actually. First of all, he and his friends are really smart and all ended up at Ivy League schools. Second of all, the only Pink Floyd album I like is Dark Side of the Moon. Third of all, I wanted to be miserable.

But, I did it.

In the light. With an iPod and speakers.

Mother.mp3

And, the future continued to crumble in front of me. The well-laid path from fellowship to career to family to happy world travels of journalism and discovery fell away and away, leaving the airy space of the unknown while Pink Floyd screamed and played through two entire Walls.

I’ve been thinking a lot about meat recently. About packaging. About how real and natural it felt in Australia to kill a lobster (called a “cray” over there) and eat it. About how when we went fishing with Dad as kids, we would thank for the worm for giving its life and thank the fish we would eat that night. Been thinking about the disconnect between people and food. Glad this issue is so publicized. Glad movies like The Cove and Food Inc. have brought this thinking to the fore.

On that note, Jake found this response to The Cove winning an Oscar. I think it’s worth re-posting his blog entry.

From More Perfect Market:

“Everyone around here knows about it. The water nearby turns red during the hunt. The actual killing is done in a concealed area because it is unpleasant to look at, as is true of killing cows or pigs or any other animal.”

Hisato Ryono said that. He’s a town councilman in Taiji, Japan. And he doesn’t think it’s fair that the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove calls Taiji “a little town with a really big secret.”

While I’m sure he’s downplaying the secrecy, he’s right to compare what happens in his cove to what happens in slaughterhouses worldwide.

So I hope we don’t dismiss him entirely. I hope we see that he’s accidentally reminding us to look.

Since returning to Los Angeles after the holidays, I’ve been reading Billy Collins (the poet I fell in love with over a few haikus about an eel and the moon). In truth, I’ve been hoping to read about death and dying. Something to either ease the panic I feel at night after everyone else is sleep. Or something to make me feel like I’m in the perfect place of despairing self-pity. Or something that says “enjoy the quiet of the early morning and stop whining about the fact that one day you’re going to die. Go Live.”

Excerpt from New Year’s Day:

And one more night be a small consolation
to us all for having to face a death-day, too,
an X in a square
on some kitchen calendar of the future,

the day when each of us is thrown off the train of time
by a burly, heartless conductor
as it roars through the months and years,

party hats, candles, confetti, horoscopes
billowing up in the turbulent storm of its wake.

I have a million things I love about the former New York State and US poet laureate. One of them is how I can hear him saying the poem. Another one is the winding path we travel with him in each poem, from his birthday to his death-day, from the kitchen to the Andes. Today, I’m thankful for poetry. The real stuff. The stuff that makes you cry because he said exactly how you feel.

This one below is not as overtly about death as some of his others. And it doesn’t necessarily describe how I feel.

But, suddenly, I LOVE IT!

Tension
By Billy Collins

Never use the word suddenly just to create tension.
-Writing Fiction

Suddenly, you were planting some yellow petunias
outside in the garden,
and suddenly I was in the study
looking up the word oligarchy for the thirty-seventh time.

When suddenly, without warning,
you planted the last petunia in the flat,
and I suddenly closed the dictionary
now that I was reminded of that vile form of governance.

A moment later, we found ourselves
standing suddenly in the kitchen
where you suddenly opened a can of cat food
and I just as suddenly watched you doing that.

I observed a window of leafy activity
and beyond that, a bird perched on the edge
of the stone birdbath
when suddenly you announced you were leaving

to pick up a few things at the market
and I stunned you by impulsively
pointing out that we were getting low on butter
and another case of wine would not be a bad idea.

Who could tell what the next moment would hold?
another drip from the faucet?
another little spasm of the second hand?
Would the painting of a bowl of pears continue

to hang on the wall from that nail?
Would the heavy anthologies remain on the shelves?
Would the stove hold its position?
Suddenly, it was anyone’s guess.

The sun rose ever higher in the sky.
The state capitals remained motionless on the wall map
when suddenly I found myself lying on a couch
where I closed my eyes and without any warning

began to picture the Andes, of all places,
and a path that led over the mountains to another country
with strange customs and eye-catching hats,
each one suddenly fringed with colorful little tassels.

(Pic by John Frame. Shot yesterday before the fire got really close.)

It’s crazy to think that an entire artist’s studio, life work and home could be gone in an instant. I mean, that’s the risk we all take by being humans on earth. Everything could be gone in a flash, a crash. And, in the case of sculptor John Frame and his family, it all rests on the direction of the wind and the speed of the firefighters. The Sheep Fire is moving closer every second, despite the relatively cooler temperatures. The Frames sit in their car, packed with as much of his work as possible. They’re waiting to see what happens. They left under mandatory evacuation orders. We’re sending them love, and if the roads open up again, we’ll be sending them ourselves and a rental van. With a small team of friends, we could pack a couple vans full of work and get the wooden pieces and the people out of there to safer ground. For now, we wait. 

Thich Nhat Hanh’s monks and nuns are in trouble.

The monastery in the hills in between Dalat and Saigon is under attack. About 100 police showed up at the monastery last night. Three monks have been taken to who knows where. The remaining monastics between the ages of 15 and 35 stand in the rain, supposedly waiting to be loaded on to trucks.

This from Thich Nhat Hanh:
“Please practice to send your energy of peace and support. Your help now is more urgent than ever. If any of you can help in any way, especially those who might be present in Vietnam, thank you. Let the Bodhisattvas protect our young brothers and sisters.”

This is the Podcast that has the translation of the SOS message.

SOS from Vietnam.

Practitioners with connections to Vietnam are urged to call anyone they know in-country to try to get information and help. Others are encouraged to call the Vietnamese consulates in the States to tell them what is going on. Thich Nhat Hanh is asking everyone else to sit and breathe and sending loving energy to Bat Nha Monastery.

I actually visited this monastery last summer while traveling in Vietnam. I had hoped to stay for a few weeks to practice there with the monks and nuns. Once there, I could only stay one day because the police were suspicious of my American presence. Here’s the post I wrote about that.

The hills surrounding L.A. are literally on fire. In West Hollywood, it smells like Tanzania. That is, like burning.

Driving to dinner at J’s uncle’s house last night, I snapped this pic with my iPhone.

The out-of-control wildfire in the Angeles National Forest has burned more than 35,000 acres and, as the wind changes, is threatening residential communities in the canyons around the forest.

The LA Times has a wonderful, if frightening, photo essay as well as continuous written updates. ABC has an interactive map (screenshot below). And Twitter, as usual, has tons of tweats: #fire.

People are also buzzing about a pic called The Light At the Top Of The Smoke Cloud.

If it’s smoky down here, I can only imagine the air up there. Sending love to all the people.