NPR gets Existential

It has been a strange week for news that has gotten my brain a-thinkin’.  It started on NPR last Sunday during my favorite show, “This American Life,” with a story about a mother’s new realization of her child’s diagnosis with Downs Syndrome.  She took her toddler to see a stage version of Sesame Street and saw an adult afflicted with the disease and realized that her child will still be excited about Elmo in 10, 20 years when all of his peers will have moved on to other, older things.  So, the smarter you become, the less excited you get.  Is the smartest person in the world also the dullest by implication?

Then I heard a story about a woman who had a stroke which was preceded by a surreal experience that morning.  She awoke and jumped on her exercise machine.  Suddenly she looked down and her hands appeared to her as primitive tools.  She felt a disconnect with her body as if it did not belong to her.  She called them “primitive tools.”  This phrase has reverberated in my brain since that moment.  She was filled with euphoria and I could relate in some faraway part of myself, my childhood maybe, when I inhabited my body as some great adventure or toy or…gift.  The stroke victim reported that the future and past were absent and so she was completely disconnected from rational thought;  she was completely in the moment.  It seems to imply that consciousness is something that is held down by the constraints of time, the laws of nature.

I have oftened wondered if the “mentally handicapped” don’t know some grand secret and are unafraid to live a life unfettered by social constraints. What if?

Starbucks, Hippies, and the Visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama

I am inundated with choices on a daily basis, all of which require spending money.  I do not like spending money.  I don’t particularly like thinking about making money, or should I say turning my heart, soul and time into something as grubby as money.  I do like keeping money.  I am wary of the ways in which people will try to separate me from my money.  McDonalds, the example in my political argument against spreading democracy in the Middle East (Yes, Iraq is seriously lacking a McDonalds on every corner), was one day replaced by Satanbucks…I mean, Starbucks.  At one time, getting me into Starbucks would have been quite a feat.  The prices are ghastly, certainly, but more than that, a Starbucks on every corner strikes a chord of terror in my heart.  But a friend of mine who lives in the midst of materialism, nay, the dead center itself, asked me to pick up a cup.  And so, in the spirit of friendship and sharing, I got one for myself.  Actually, her specifications were exact and I poured in too much cream and then took a sip so as not to spill it to find heaven on my lips.  I started sneaking off to one of my many local Starbucks in disguise and under the guise of keeping my enemies close.

As a enjoy my tall breve latte to the soothing sounds of the new Starbucks record company radio station, I secretly worry that I haven’t escaped my roots of the white upper middle class background that I have been in rebellion against since I was a child.  I’d rather be a white trash redneck hillbilly than a superficial snob that pretends that she’s giving back to the world by jumping on the latest bandwagon of whatever charitable fad is in vogue at that moment.  “Global Warming” is the latest bunch of hooey solely designed to ease our guilty, wealthy conscience by giving us something to worry about momentarily in between the endless moments we think only of ourselves.  The real problem is “Global Spending,” and we will continue to enslave the world while we mow down every tree so that I can go buy the latest plastic whatchamajig at Target.

In real time, my affluent background has given way to a more meager existence – by choice – where I cringe over replacing my three year old contact lenses that turn my eyes red when I put them in now.  I am repairing a jacket that I bought two years ago at a thrift store for sixteen dollars with shoe polish.  There are lots of things I want.  I want the Iphone, the Imac and everything else at the Apple Store which I try to talk myself into on the grounds that anything Apple makes is considered a “good buy” by the general public — the general public being the same group of people that always go with the flow and have nothing at the end of their lives but memories and the trendy new gadget by whichever company that is hot …as if time itself will stop and they will hover in their momentary technological heaven forever.  In truth, they will tire of that thing they cannot live without within minutes, hours, or days;  they will find its inherent flaws almost instantly (perfection exists only in our heads) and then become deflated, walking around just a little more stooped than before.  They will find that their little gem, even at the height of their true, new love, will not change their lives for the better.  It doesn’t change anything.  It cannot ever reach the innermost part of them like the idea of it did. Because in the end it is the idea of it that reaches into our hearts and minds and lets us dream, the actual physical representation is irrelevant.  It is the idea that we love – the idea that the salesperson sold us, the idea of who we will become when we buy it.  No matter what we choose to have in our life, including things and people, we deal in ideas;  the physical is just a manifestation of a conglomeration of ideas.  The more ideal the idea, the quicker we are sold.  I know this, I joined a cult for the ideas that they peddled.  Any man I have ever been with has been for the ideas that he embodied.  And while matter may just be one big idea, which is why it seems rather pointless to reside in the camp of the “haves”, I still cannot in all good conscience exist in the camp of the “have-nots”, or hippies, or bums as the “haves” generally call them.  The last thing that a hippie could be bothered with is money, or making money, or taking showers.  And I like money enough to be cheap with it.  And showers.  And toilets.  And indoor plumbing in general. ( I think Man created Indoor Plumbing for Woman because he loved her so much.  Indoor Plumbing IS Civilization.)

I saw a large congregation of hippies recently when I went to see “His Holiness the Dalai Lama” speak at Centennial Park in Atlanta.  The President of Emory’s opening address implied that the producers of this show were expecting more black people by referring to Atlanta as the birthplace of Martin Luther King, Jr. and home to the positive integration of black and white. (Has the President of Emory ever been to Atlanta?)  I have had the privilege of being a clown and entertaining at children’s birthday parties all over this city for the last decade, and I have seen the children’s parties become more and more segregated since I began 12 years ago. Now I either go into a black neighborhood or a white neighborhood.  At “The Visit”, as it was named and bannered all over the park, there weren’t many black people, just white hippies.  There was one guy with fuzzy dreadlocks and superlong, disgusting fingernails that the crowd surrounding him pointed at while whispering. There was a big pink female Buddha sitting on the lawn that reminded me that I had eaten too much that day: her tummy hung like Buddha and rested on the ground as she sat cross-legged. I got a slap on the hand from my friend for pointing her out, but she was hard to miss in her hot pink outfit. There was a smoking hot Hari Chrisna who was selling the Bhagavad-Gita in his traditional religious costume. My friend did not see his beautiful eyes, I assume she was distracted by his outfit. But I know what it’s like to be a human being trapped in a cult and I wanted to go back and buy his book so that I could talk to him, but he’s in a cult so it would have been a one-sided conversation in an attempt to convert me. Besides, I already have a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita.

The Dalai Lama came on stage just as I was getting back from my sight-seeing trip of the CNN Center with a fresh cup of Starbucks. He got more respect than I imagine the President George W. would have received with reverent applause and then silent-as-a-pin-drop quiet as the audience drank in His Holiness’ speech about war being caused by unaffectionate mothers.  He called America chauvinist and arrogant with his happy, can’t-hurt-a-fly smile and the spectators laughed on cue.  He talked about everything we used to talk about when I was in a cult: positive feelings create! …a fact I find completely bogus and new-age hokey now that the general public has jumped on the bandwagon.  (The general public in this case being hippies and anyone who watches Oprah.)  Freud would call this mindset “repression” for its lack of desire or ability to deal with negative emotions that are inherent in the life process.  I would call it idiotic for missing out on the entire other half of life, albeit the dark half, that makes the light half look so bright.  It reminds me of when I was in the cult and a fellow cult member had shot herself in the face in a church parking lot.  We were not supposed to feel sad because we had been taught for years by this point that we were in charge of our emotions.  But I cried.  I cried because I realized how quickly that could have been me – when you feel so sad and all alone and all you want to do is tell someone but they don’t want to hear it because it isn’t happy or perfect enough.  I usually did everything I was told because I was a good student and that’s what good students do, but I cried anyway.  I didn’t think I would ever stop crying until I saw a butterfly flitting around as if trying to tell me something.  (The Dalai Lama mentioned butterflies in his speech. He supposed that butterflies must be generally unaffectionate – and therefore a warring species? – because they are born from a cocoon and not held in their mother’s arms.  Does he know that butterflies only live one day and might not want to waste their only day being coddled by their mother?  Or more scientifically, has anyone told the Dalai Lama that a butterfly is actually born as a caterpillar?  I’m glad that the Dalai Lama has a serious dialogue going on with a wide variety of Western scientists…maybe they could fill him in on a couple of facts…)  I imagined that butterfly was my blessed dead friend reincarnated to live one day and be beautiful.  What do butterflies do other than be beautiful and spark people‘s imagination about the idea of transformation?  I mean, in the great scheme of things…. Do they spread pollen around?  And do they worry about how much pollen they have collected, saved, and spent?   I imagine they do not. I imagine that their life goes by in the blink of an eye and they spend that day of the rest of their life marveling at the vastness of the big blue beautiful sky.  That’s what I would do if I were a butterfly.  I would spend pollen freely as I found it and laugh and cry and suck every moment out of that one day that I could and I would never worry about how much a cup of pollen cost me, or how much pollen I was spending to put some new butterfly eyes in.  I would love all butterflies – black and white alike, and…who am I kidding?  If I were a butterfly, I would worry constantly every second of my little 24-hour lifetime.  I would spend the only day I had left to live finding the inconsistencies in butterfly civilization.  Maybe I could help fight the butterfly war that his Holiness the Dalai Lama speaks of….I would be a butterfly rebel…and I would start a butterfly blog about the absurdities of butterfly life…

The Yoga Lesson

The lights are turned off as we settle onto our mats and prepare for a concentrated class in yoga.  The uninitiated yogi comes from another part of the gym, perhaps the weight machines, thinking incorrectly that he is in for a casual hour of stretching. Men can be extremely proficient in yoga with much practice, but first they must conquer their egotism and innate male conceit. Yoga initially seems to be more natural to women who are taught to be humble and flexible, the latter most literally and figuratively.  When a man finally does overcome the inherent obstacle that a yoga pose constructs, he is a fine thing to behold indeed.  Until then, I must suffer with the stray male in class who thinks it his duty to have a running commentary with guttural grunts as if he is the only one who is turned upside down while balancing his head on the ground, legs stretched out while holding his toes (wide leg forward bend).  He becomes a little boy looking for his mommy’s approval for his hard work as he incorrectly balances with his back hunched like the disfigured in a freak show, desiring to appear that he is more limber than he really is.

I sense an apprentice as he sets up his mat behind me.  The telltale signs of a beginner abound:  not knowing how close to put his mat to mine, mimicking those around him unsuccessfully with moves that ensure minimum benefit and probable injury. Then I sense that I am the main point of his focus as I see in the periphery of my vision that he is following my moves.  I imagine him joking earlier with his weight lifting buddies that he is going to yoga while a lot of nudging and eye winking goes on.  My eyes half close as my plan crystallizes.  I take my leisurely stretch to its limit and hear behind me a grumble as my new protégée follows suit.  A deep breath and I achieve another inch and a half followed by his low moan as he begins to comprehend his shortcomings.  We begin a sun salutation as our heart rate and breathing increase and the body behind me realizes that this is not his grandmother’s yoga class.  Still attempting to ogle, he balances precariously in Half Moon briefly with one arm and one leg in the air until he falls onto my mat.  My gaze stays steady on my reflection in the mirror as I witness my most beautiful expression of the pose that I have ever done.  My leg has a height that only the most self-righteous competition could inspire. While he struggles, my cool disgust turns to enjoyment.  A series of balances ensues as we are taken to our limits, even the most practiced muscles shake while holding our bodies aloft.  My foot becomes the root that reaches into the ground as my arms reach like braches to the sky in Tree.  The sapling behind me is blown over by the racing thoughts of his mind.  My legs bend deeply into a wide-legged squat as my arms stretch out like an arrow focused on its target in Proud Warrior.  The wannabe behind me quickly snaps his arrow in half as he pitches forward.  We go down to the floor and I feel him relax as if the hard part is over so I increase the stakes.  My form is perfect;  I didn’t know I had such depths of stretch within me.  He tries to quiet his groans but they escape him before he knows it because he is not listening to his body but trying to keep up with me.  Have I not sufficiently expressed my expertise?  Is he so pompous to think he can keep up with me?  I take a deep breath and deliver the final blow.  A terrified gasp behind me has halted his practice;  frozen, he holds his leg as we continue to the next pose.  He slowly rises to his feet and gathers his shoes and his mat.  He limps towards the door, holding his leg.  A snail moves faster.  I fall deeply into my pose. I close my eyes, fully satisfied.  Certainly, he has learned his lesson.  Maybe next time he will approach that which he does not know with a little more reverence.  Hopefully, he will be more humble; he will not mess with me again.

Circus Freak

My life is fodder for your amusement. I am the example of what not to be one when grows up. I have wasted the bloom of my youth so that I could entertain you and yet I am lower than the celebrity garbage that you worship in the gutter. Children either laugh and point or cry when I arrive. Who am I? I am a clown.

I used to be a regular girl; I came from an upper middle class family, but was born with a deviant gene predisposing me to the theatre. In olden days, actors and entertainers were a step above prostitutes. Even further back in feudal times, the clown was the literal fool of the town – retarded, misshapen, or just plain ugly. Even now, I sometimes get the sense of being the servant not good enough for the front door, but this life was my choosing. I had all the opportunities to either marry well or be a secretary. To my parents chagrin, I chose neither. I am an attractive, well-educated, clever and rebellious girl with a strong streak of deviousness. I chose to be an entertainer when I was young and had no concept of failure, money, death, social status, or healthcare. But these are all just the dark shadows of my job. To me, being subjugated to a man as his wife or secretary seems darker than the obvious shadow of the Big Top. I like to be upfront and I appreciate when someone or something displays its dark side prominently alongside its good graces. Most everyone else I know wants to hide what makes them human. The dark side of the circus can be overpowering but most of the time I revel in the magic of my work.

I have become the star of the show, using my intelligence and cunning to poke fun at those who would distrust me for the mask that I wear, the same mask that has been fashioned in their image. I have the biggest dressing room. I have had my affairs with the other circus folk, finally settling into the real romance of my life which is the one with my audience. They have made me the star because I have given of myself completely with every joke, gesture or pratfall. I feed their souls out of the palm of my hand which is also where I hold them while they are mine under the tent at night. It has been a tumultuous relationship at times where I have had to reach into the depths of my soul to find the morsel of laughter that would tempt them out of their shell of monotony. But I always accomplished my mission even if I fell exhausted behind the curtain as it closed. I crave their attention while pretending that I don’t know what they think of me. I am content to let them go at the end of each night and wait patiently until I see them again when I step into their spotlight.

Today, I am sitting in a café in another nameless town, enjoying a latte and writing my thoughts. I feel as if everyone has the sense that I am different. I wonder if my “plain clothes” are somehow off and give me away. Maybe it is the ease with which I feel in my own body – one is never more in one’s body than standing in the spotlight with a tent full of people looking at you. I used to think that being a clown was temporary – the job that one got right out of college, an easy way to see the world; or even now, something I can discard when I step out of my clown costume. But somehow the lifestyle has swallowed me and I have finally accepted that there is nothing greater for me out there than this. I still long for prominence, for a life where I am taken seriously, but most of us are simply spectators of greatness. I walked around for a couple of years, downtrodden with this detail, and I drank too much. But then I got to the fork in the road where I would have to choose to either continue to hate my fate and drown myself in alcohol or meet my destiny head on and enjoy the little things here in my little life. So, I chose life and the myriad little things. I enjoy my meditation, my yoga practice, my lattes. Later this afternoon, I will train the elite clowns of tomorrow, though I know most of them can’t hack the life and will be out in six months. Even my clown co-workers automatically hold back. People would rather be the dangerous trapeze artist or the respected Master of Ceremonies. Who wants to be the best clown? That is like being the biggest fool.

The secret that nobody knows is that besides the few little things you have to give up (like a steady relationship or respect from your peers) it is quite the swanky little life. I don’t make a lot of money but I have all the time in the world. And the little time that my job does take is cake. Everybody else works for the machine and I live my life with lots and lots of time. In my youth, I spent my time frivolously, thinking the point was total immersion in enjoyment which meant celebrating the show at the inevitable after-party. I would drink to remember the applause as if it was love wrapping me up in its warmth; get drunk to forget that they will remember me fondly – like a kiss from a stranger, the guilty pleasure or the toy one takes out of the closet to play with occasionally.  It took some time to climb out of the hazy stupor, and to figure out what enjoying life really means if not the instant gratification of wine, or a corona and lime, or any fine time that liquor provides. But the aging clown receives less fun per drink along with a proportional increase of cynicism and frustration. Besides which, I began to realize that my drinking was being encouraged because it was fun to laugh at me, not with me as I mistakenly and drunkenly thought. It was a sad fact to figure out that I was not only a clown in my professional life but in my personal life as well.

I wonder at the paradox of life; the absurdity of my profession and the luxury with which I conduct my private life. I enjoy the finer things that time, not money, can afford. It is a luxury to simply take one’s time while studying life. People who meet me outside of my job do not believe that I am a clown because I present a cultured and well-traveled human being. My insistence at their disbelief is always tiring and I wonder what paradox they live in on a daily basis. Do royalty like to spend their leisure time slouching around? The child plays the adult, the actor plays a human being…which side of me am I? Am I the person in the middle, balanced by both ends? I must pursue the higher ideals when confronted with the inevitable lows of my job. And then I bring elevation, inevitably lifting my lows higher. Am I a clown or the trickster who has escaped the mundane? Am I the cultured individual or the clown who points out the cultural in discrepancies that I find of those who I look down on while they are looking down on me? Because that is the crux of it: I chose a profession I know is looked down on by people I consider myself smarter than. I could have chosen to judge the proverbial You self-righteously from the ivory tower neighboring yours but instead I chose to judge you from the low point that you think you are above. My trickery is all-encompassing and further evidence of my superiority. I will judge you silently while in your face from a place that you don’t expect that you should have to protect yourself from and then unleash my fury upon you more harshly for every backhanded compliment, derogatory comment and humiliation that I have suffered as the clown that will redeem you by pretending to be you. Honestly, when the curtain raises and everybody is watching, how far can you go? Can you be the butt of the joke? Can you get the raw end of the stick; can you get screwed, and then fucked? You have to be willing to show yourself completely, to be completely vulnerable in the spotlight. You speak for everyone then. You then become their savior – Saving them from the spotlight. Though I hate your baser instinct, I love you enough to commit my life to making you better by putting a mirror up to your face so that you might evolve. You consider me your pet, your diversion. I consider my art the highest calling in the masquerade of life.

from the January “Circus Freaks” issue of Heroine

An Anthropological Study of Habits

 Modern man (or woman as the case may be) is awash in a daily grind of maintenance that masquerades as comfort and security. This daily maintenance becomes mindless as the actions one performs become habits. After several years, the human being is lost in the habit whereas the actual need for action disappeared long ago. Man may have changed his action out of necessity to maintain a new habit, and yet still practices the old habit out of his necessity for comfort. Small unnoticeable habits define a human being and become more pronounced as the years go by. Examples of such can be found in habits of speech ( rhythm, cadence, or choice of vocabulary), physicality (the way a woman plays with her hair, the way a man tries to secretly adjust himself in public¼or not so secretly as the case may be), or even belief systems ( I am [blank] because my family has always told me so).

            One habit, interesting in its uselessness, is smoking cigarettes. Usually tried early in life, the person who has been caught in nicotine addiction has not yet conceived of his own death. So when confronted with the myriad benefits of smoking, he only finds himself smarter than the rest. Smoking in conversation can hide brief pauses that allow the speaker/smoker to be more thoughtful with his responses and so appear more intelligent than his non-smoking friend who has no such tool to help him think before he speaks. Also, smoking is highly advantageous when one wants space from the unintelligent-sounding non-smoker who will inevitably begin to list all of the drawbacks of smoking cigarettes at the first sign of a cigarette being lit which makes him seem even the more unintelligent to the smoker who has already heard it all before. A non-smoker cannot pierce the wall of smoke (or stench) that surrounds the quick-thinking young smoker. But then, in a reversal of fortune, the smoker is left behind where there is smoke-related paraphernalia such as (chairs and ashtrays) while the dumber non-smoker is off on non-smoking adventures, using their lungs to full capacity. The smoker has forgotten such fun and so makes fun of the dumb non-smoker for being just that: dumb. The smoker, in a perfect illustration of the cementation of habit, does not relate his disinterest to his need to smoke; nay, he has convinced himself that he does not like biking, roller skating, swimming, or the outdoors. As the smoker ages, his list of dislikes grows to include sex, showers or any other activity that does not include cigarettes. The smoker blames his apathy on his superior and cynical intellect. Or he can cite age as a scapegoat which is partially true as he is aging himself double the rate of his fellow non-smoker. It is once the smoker is brought abruptly into a confrontation with his own demise (that he is hastening forward to faster) that he becomes truly addicted. He must smoke to distract himself from this vision and so seals his own fate thinking, “What’s the big deal? Everybody dies in the end.”  The increasing mucous that his body expels in an attempt to fight the increasing level of toxins in the body only becomes the smoker’s reminder that it is time for another cigarette.

 

from the December ”Road Rage” issue of Heroine