I Ching Hexagram: 61
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This story is about very much. I’m going to begin by simplifying everything to one theme: being the best human one can be. That’s pretty much what everything in life is always about, so to make it interesting and give this piece some juicy substance, I’m going to complicate all of it by mixing up the obvious lesson amidst myriad themes, including but not limited to the following: the difference between being a man and a boy, and which is more desirable; the difference between being a woman and a girl, and which is more desirable; feminism; pornography; the movie Amelie; the television show Breaking Bad; morality; fidelity; teaching immigrants in the Bronx; Halloween parties; Raekwon “The Chef”; a sunny stroll through Central Park on a beautiful autumn day; hiking in bear country; talking to my dead grandfather; and of course, the right songs at the right time. Okay, deep breath…
Name: Chung Fu
Keyphrase: Inner Truth
Formed by the Trigrams: Wind over Lake.
General: To have a deep influence on others you must have
a thorough understanding of them.
Love: For your partner to trust you more deeply you must
take time to thoroughly understand them.
Business: Straightforward communication that is honest
and sincere will benefit your business partnership immeasurably.
Personal: You need to cultivate a deep and compassionate
understanding of people affecting your life.
Chung Fu is about communicating and cooperating
effectively with those around you. To do this and be successful you will need
to take the time to thoroughly understand their natures. Prejudice,
preconceptions, or any other factor must be put aside or receptivity will be
lessened. Once you thoroughly understand someone you can work on gaining their
trust. Chung Fu warns though, that this needs to be for your mutual benefit and
not just your benefit
-(http://www.psychic-revelation.com/reference/i_l/i_ching/hexagram61.html
-(http://www.psychic-revelation.com/reference/i_l/i_ching/hexagram61.html
“No man can judge for
another. Each man must weigh all facts
and circumstances and find truth through his own judgment of righteousness.”
-Popa Wu, excerpted from “North Star Jewels” by Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan
-Popa Wu, excerpted from “North Star Jewels” by Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan
“A woman takes the
time to reflect on the type of human she wants to be, the example she wants to
leave and the vision for her life. She
has put thought into her values and what she stands for.”
- http://universityprimetime.com/school/mu/article/must-read-11-differences-between-dating-a-girl-vs-a-woman
- http://universityprimetime.com/school/mu/article/must-read-11-differences-between-dating-a-girl-vs-a-woman
Woman I know you understand
The little child inside the man,
Please remember my life is in your hands,
And woman hold me close to your heart,
However, distant don't keep us apart,
After all it is written in the stars,
Woman please let me explain,
I never meant to cause you sorrow or pain,
So let me tell you again and again and again...
The little child inside the man,
Please remember my life is in your hands,
And woman hold me close to your heart,
However, distant don't keep us apart,
After all it is written in the stars,
Woman please let me explain,
I never meant to cause you sorrow or pain,
So let me tell you again and again and again...
-"Woman" by John Lennon
I see the North Star shining bright above the waters of the
heart, the wind blowing lightly over the dark yet mysteriously peaceful surface of the lake. I listen to moving, relaxing and energizing music, occasionally glancing behind me to shine a light on the darkness. Each minute I clap and say, "Hey Bear!" I am alive. I am filled with truth of this heart, stories
of the mind, inherent miraculous excellence and inevitable fallibility of the human, bravery of the man, and wonder of the boy. I am filled with joy.
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This story is about very much. I’m going to begin by simplifying everything to one theme: being the best human one can be. That’s pretty much what everything in life is always about, so to make it interesting and give this piece some juicy substance, I’m going to complicate all of it by mixing up the obvious lesson amidst myriad themes, including but not limited to the following: the difference between being a man and a boy, and which is more desirable; the difference between being a woman and a girl, and which is more desirable; feminism; pornography; the movie Amelie; the television show Breaking Bad; morality; fidelity; teaching immigrants in the Bronx; Halloween parties; Raekwon “The Chef”; a sunny stroll through Central Park on a beautiful autumn day; hiking in bear country; talking to my dead grandfather; and of course, the right songs at the right time. Okay, deep breath…
I suppose the entire idea for this weird web of wonder began
two Sunday’s ago. That is, it was
Sunday, November 3, and I was sitting in my friend’s living room surfing the
internet and his couch at the same time.
One of my friends had posted an article on Facebook which caught my eye:
“the difference between dating a woman and dating a girl.”
I’m 29 years old, which means that my range of acceptable
dating partners is pretty much anywhere from 21 years old to… whatever. I’m open-minded. If I happen to meet someone and we’re
simply getting to know each other and having fun, the number of rides around
the magic spin ball isn’t so important to me.
Whatever it is, I don’t like the idea of “dating a girl,” so I wanted to
read this article and find out some anonymous person’s definition of “woman”
and “girl,” especially since many people my age use those words
interchangeably.
Of course, the entire point of the article was to determine
if you are a boy or a man, i.e. “a man dates women” and “a boy dates girls.” That seemed simple enough. Since it turned out to be a college web site,
I realized that this distinction made a little more sense for “men” that age,
but I was still curious. Most
importantly, they defined a man as follows:
“This
post refers to one’s maturity and most points would also apply if you switch
the genders as well. If you are a boy,
then expect that you will attract only girls. However, if you are a man
(independent, knows your worth and value, has a strong moral compass, is
considerate and an able communicator and doesn’t let insecurity dominate your
psyche), then you should be dating a woman.”
At first glance I assumed I was safe, but then I started
breaking down the points and became very concerned about one of them:
independence. I’ve read enough and
taught enough to know that context is everything. What does this invisible person mean by
“independent”? Emotionally
independent? Financially
independent? Spiritually
independent? Politically
independent? What about being able to
camp on top of a mountain by yourself, or live on the road without help from
anyone you know for seven months? Is
that wiped out if you still accept financial help from your parents when you
make transitions? Or live on your
friend’s couch while you save money for your own place after abruptly moving
across the country? Or must I exist in a
vacuum for a specific amount of time before I can be considered a man?
Once my father and I were talking about what makes a man,
and I trust him because although we are living different experiences at
different times in the universe, he is definitely a man. He told me a story about a SCUBA class in
college where the instructor referred to one of their exercises as “really
making you feel like a man,” which my dad thought absurd. He believed that responsibility is what made
a man. Strangely, my boss at the wine
harvest last year said the exact same thing as the SCUBA instructor. I had shoveled several tons of grapes from a
wine vat by myself and he said, “It really makes you feel like a man, doesn’t
it?” I definitely had to agree at the
time. Even though I haven’t shoveled one
grape in over a year, the rest of that day I viewed every human who wasn’t
working as physically hard as I was as a puny little girly man. Which, of course, is total bullshit. Even if I simplified it to the feeling of
“working really hard,” I’m hard pressed to stop my mind from finding dozens of
women who work harder in ways that I will never know, and who endure far more
responsibility than I can imagine. But that’s
not the comparison. It’s not about being
a man vs. being a woman. It’s about
being an adult vs. being a child. And if
it’s hard work that wins the title, then all those kids in sweat shops have us
westerners licked easily.
Back to Sunday, November 3.
Earlier that same Sunday I had been teaching English as a foreign
language up in the Bronx, which is my current part-time job to keep my head
barely afloat in the turbulent financial sea that has been my 20s. I have never cared that much about money, but
I’ve always understood its value as being necessary for the exchange of goods
and services. I’ve spent much of my
adult youth learning how to enjoy life as much as possible without a whole lot
of money, although I’ve had helping hands that many don’t, so I can’t claim to
be a super rugged individualist. I also
understand that the older I become, the more people I imagine/hope might need
me to provide for them, and the more money I will need to earn for them to
enjoy life. That being said, I currently
enjoy single status, which means I don’t have to provide for anyone beyond
myself and my creditors. For now, I
teach people a way to communicate that will help them thrive financially in a
land where some of them can make as much money in a day as it takes them to
make in a month in their home countries.
Many of them have many children depending on them. It’s not my ideal job, but for now, despite
the extensive draining commute, I feel like I’m doing some good honest
work for other people who need it.
I was working on a Sunday because my supervisor had asked me
to substitute for a four hour class, from 10 am to 2 pm. She introduced me as "an excellent teacher" to get them buttered up over the fact they were being surprised by a stranger. I haven't met many of the other teachers, but I have met a few. Some are very cool, and others are strange.
One of the ones I observed on my first day is a great case
study of the type of guy who tends to teach TEFL stateside. Two weeks ago I was subbing for a night
class, and since I’d arrived early I hung out in the teacher’s lounge, a narrow
little office with just enough room for two people to sit and one to
stand. An older teacher and I were
sitting quietly when the guy I had observed came in with a big smile on his
face. “Do you want to know what I’ve
been thinking about this weekend?” he asked with enthusiasm.
We shrugged.
“Do you want to know what I’ve been thinking about this
weekend?!” he announced again, his head bobbing and his voice rising and
falling like a preacher at a southern church about to give a thunderous
sermon. “I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking about!” and he pulled out his
iPhone, revealing the image a naked woman riding a man’s penis with her back to
the camera. I believe that position is
called the “reverse cowgirl.” For a
minute I assumed he took it himself and thought, “Huh, good for you,” because
why else would he be showing us that?
But then he scrolled through his phone more to simply reveal pictures of
women in sexy poses, some of them nude, some half-nude, some in skimpy
clothing, etc. His smile was that of a
boy on Christmas morning. Apparently he
had just discovered the internet. Then
he continued his sermon.
“I could never get married, you know why? I would cheat on my wife all the time. It’s true! I would cheat like crazy, because I could never be monogamous. I always get tired after three months and need some new pussy! They always become boring. But we men, it’s programmed into our DNA. We have to conquer as many women as possible. And yet we don’t want them to do the same! We want them to stay home and take care of the kids and be all good and innocent while we’re out chasing some ass!” He said the last point with ultimate excitement and slapped his knee, perhaps expecting a hallelujah from his congregation.
“I could never get married, you know why? I would cheat on my wife all the time. It’s true! I would cheat like crazy, because I could never be monogamous. I always get tired after three months and need some new pussy! They always become boring. But we men, it’s programmed into our DNA. We have to conquer as many women as possible. And yet we don’t want them to do the same! We want them to stay home and take care of the kids and be all good and innocent while we’re out chasing some ass!” He said the last point with ultimate excitement and slapped his knee, perhaps expecting a hallelujah from his congregation.
The other, older teacher nodded with a smile and said, “I’ve
been divorced four times!”
I simply sat with an amused look on my face. I’d heard this spiel a million times. I can’t say I agreed, but it is true that
there are 3.5 billion women out there, and maybe 1.5 of them are of legal
sexual age, and at least a third of them are incredibly attractive, and the
human mind, if it wasn’t already programmed to do so, is becoming more and more
accustomed to a diversity of beauty in its experiences, whether in the physical
realm or simply appreciated through virtual electronic connections such as this
guy’s phone. Even so, there have always
been people who truly loved and sacrificed the thrill of sex with newcomers so
that they could mutually enjoy a deeper bond of affection and satisfaction. Even Wilt Chamberlain, who supposedly slept
with 10,000 women (presumably not all at once), said that it is better to be
with one woman 10,000 times than 10,000 women once each. Even if it was the job of the hunter-gatherer
to impregnate as many women as possible to ensure that the seed was planted in
the name of continuing the egotistic genetic line, all I can say is that times
do change. That’s what evolution is
about. Despite our powerful sex drives,
there is always potential for humans to evolve beyond focusing solely on carnal
desires to a higher level where they feel deep loving connections that go
beyond the vigorous excitement of sexual stimulation and experimentation. If they are combined, I hear that both
partners win the jackpot. Who
knows? To each their own. Different strokes for different folks. The main point is that anyone who says
“everybody is this way,” or “all men do this,” or “all women do this,” has a
brain filled with shit, which is quite unfortunate, because your brain is where
you’re supposed to have an imagination.
That’s how we figured out the wheel and fire, after all…
Like I said, I’d heard this rant before, from many a horny
young man. But the one who comes to mind
the most was a fellow teacher in Japan who seemed to have a lot of anger toward
women, and loved to generalize their behavior and break down all of their
behavioral patterns into predictable scientific postulates. Ironically, this guy had absolutely no
interest satisfying any of his curiosity or sex drive with pornography, if only
to act as a steam valve for his apparent anger.
He only cared about conquering as many real women as possible to prove
something to something. This second
teacher in the Bronx seemed to love both.
What can I say… humans are attractive to each other, and we love orgasms. It’s certainly better than shooting each
other.
Even so, I took a little offense when I heard this “men
conquer” speech this time, although I didn’t express it openly because he was
simply palling around with guys in what he considered to be a locker room
setting. But I do know someone who has
been the victim of the exact “it’s simply in guys’ DNA to conquer and cheat”
explanation that this guy thought he had so eloquently propounded, and it’s
really shitty to be on the receiving end.
Because the person on the receiving end isn’t a role player in a
chauvinistic genetic text book. The
person is a human being with just as much a right to joy, honesty and fairness
as anyone else. Probably more so,
knowing this person. To my co-worker’s
credit, he admitted he should never get married, and I really hope he sticks to
his promise. Although, to be fair, women
cheat too, and it feels just as terrible to be cheated on when you are a man. Dishonesty in romance and love is one of the
worst emotional feelings one can experience.
So back to what makes a man: is it a moral compass? My fellow teacher seems to think it is an
erect penis with a will to conquer unsuspecting vaginas. In San Francisco one of my roommates said
that a boy becomes a man the first time he has sex. If that were true, then all the teenagers on
the day time talk shows fighting with their ghetto and trailer park partners
over who the real baby’s daddy is would be leading our country, and Charlie Sheen
would be the president.
Speaking of Charlie Sheen, and that guy’s iPhone, let’s talk
about pornography. I don’t have any
kids, but if I did have a boy, this is how I would explain it to him when he
was ready. Although, if he’s like me,
he’ll unexpectedly be exposed to it at a slumber party in junior high school,
and the secret will already be out and the first layer of the mystery of sex
(what does it look like?) already solved:
Alright boy, let me tell you something about being an adult
human. Being an adult human means that
you have lived long enough to prove to the universe that you are strong enough
to create new life. If you make it to
adolescence, your body is going to start producing the necessary life-giving
material to keep the most advanced sophisticated loving form of life in existence
going strong: the human being. You start
producing seed. It’s called sperm, and
it shoots out of your penis when you are ready to create new life. You can’t create new life without another
human being though (or until you’ve paid your college loans, as far as I’m
concerned), and due to laws of biology (and not the laws of conservative
Christians), only a man and a woman can create a new human being. The man’s seed goes into the woman’s vagina
to fertilize her egg, and the new human is created. However, there’s an issue here. Life stacks the cards in favor of its
continued existence so high that it can’t possibly fail.
It covers its bases by making the man produce more seed than he, his
partner, or the Earth could possibly need.
Millions upon millions a day.
What’s more, once you start, it’s very unlikely that you will stop. Barring outside interference and genetic
luck, you will be able to procreate until your 90s, should you live that long.
There’s a big step in this procreation I haven’t gotten to yet. It’s about the shooting of the seed from the
penis. It doesn’t just happen out of
nowhere. That’s a good thing. The penis needs a reason to do this. It needs stimulation. Stimulation could theoretically come from any
of the five senses, I suppose, although it mostly comes through three: touch,
sight and sound. Directly touching the
penis is the most surefire way to stimulate it.
Vaginas are the same way. Sexy
music and attractive visual stimulation is also welcomed. By the latter I mean women. Women who attract you. Anything a woman can do to “turn you
on”. That means making your penis stand
up and notice, get to work, and become erect so it can penetrate and shoot out
its seed like it’s supposed to. As we
mentioned before though, it’s not always time to procreate, even if your penis
doesn’t know that. The problem is, men
are thinking about procreating pretty constantly (exhibit A: horny iPhone
teacher). There are women everywhere,
and even if men close their eyes to prevent the constant stream of visual
excitement they perceive every day, their penis is telling them that it’s
healthy to discharge this seed by any means possible (except for forcing
someone to accept it, which is the worst thing you can do besides violently
attacking or killing someone). There is
some truth to this. First, it keeps the
system fluid and functioning, and releases backed up stores of unnecessary
seed. It clears the mind and even helps
prevent prostate cancer in later years.
Second, it relieves your mind so you can temporarily stop focusing on procreating
and start thinking about other interesting things. That’s because the feeling of procreation is
the most pleasurable feeling in existence, and people tend to dwell on the most
pleasurable feelings in existence. We
call this one an orgasm. One of the
chief reasons humans exist is so the universe can have orgasms. Otherwise it would still be fish, because
that’s just easier. So releasing seed in
a safe private manner is a good way to clear your mind, appreciate and pursue
the other chief reasons humans exist as the universe. Third, if you only approach women with the
intent of shooting your seed into them, or into a plastic thing between you and
their egg so you can both still have orgasms, the worthwhile ones will figure
out that that’s all you care about, and you probably won’t get what you
want. Then again, maybe that’s all they
want, in which case you both temporarily win, and there’s nothing wrong with
that. But that game gets old (if you
ever read The Game by Neil Strauss,
the greatest pick-up artist he gets to meet admits that it’s really all a bogus
cover for lack of confidence, and that eventually you just settle down and fake
it, and then you die. It doesn’t sound
like a fulfilling existence. By the way,
I never read that book, but I skimmed around the last chapter and found that
summary). I know people who had countless conquests when they were young and then found the right person and switched to fulfilling committed relationships simply because they met the right person, and I know others who just couldn't get conquest out of their heads when they became monogamous and couldn't stop themselves from thoughts of cheating. It all depends on who you are.
Even if you aren’t all about conquest and legitimately wish
to share your life deeply with one partner, or at least make each relationship
an honest deep caring attempt at love as compared to a libidinal conquest,
chances are you’re still going to be turned on by attractive humans besides your
beloved. There are just so many of them,
it’s impossible not to notice. In recent
decades the visual arts have discovered an area between using your imagination
to fantasize and masturbate (having an orgasm by yourself) and real sex: watching
other people have sex (who are aware they are being filmed for this
purpose). Or at the least, watching
people move around on camera in a way that is sexually stimulating. This is called pornography. Women who act in films by having sex with
actors with the understanding that some unknown audience is masturbating to
them having sex are called porn stars. I
suppose men who do the same thing to stimulate women or men are also porn
stars, but my sexual orientation hasn’t made me aware of them. Also, because men on average tend to be a
hell of a lot hornier (and dependent on visual stimulation) than women, the
pornography business is geared far more toward males than females. Thus the lucrative multi-billion dollar porn
business, made possible by human beings who have decided that one of their
maximum contributions to the world is to have sex with people they don’t
necessarily like or love (but sometimes, rarely, do), and to do it so well,
despite the pressure from a camera and an unknown audience of horny men and
women touching themselves while viewing their most intimate selves, that the
result is thousands and perhaps millions of other human beings have the best
feeling there is: the explosive orgasm.
Then again, most self-induced orgasms, regardless of what inspires them,
pale in comparison to any orgasm experienced with another human being.
"That’s your own dark person talking. You might also get what I call the twinkle
twinkle of the anima/animus: come, little boy, it’s interesting around the
corner. You’ve never seen girls like
this.
Well,
says Jung, let it come. Let it go. But don’t do it with such abandon that your
ego is entirely shattered. It’s not a
bad thing to happen, because you do get to experience all that’s over on the
other side.” (Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss, pg. 82)
I know what you’re thinking… a world where there are
billions of people who all want orgasms, just like you, and if they aren’t
available, there are beautiful people having sex for you in freely available
movies all over the World Wide Web... heaven on earth! Well, it’s not so simple. Although many porn stars live satisfying
lives beyond the industry and even had happy childhoods, many were abused one
way or another when they were younger.
You can find some stars who say they do it because they like turning
people on, but most of them say the best part is the money. The most famous porn star in the world is a
woman named Jenna Jameson. She has a
book called How to Make Love Like a Porn
Star: A Cautionary Tale (ghost written by Neil Strauss, author of The Game). In it she details how her mother died of
cancer when Jenna was very young, her father was a mercenary in Africa and a
renegade cop who often had shoot-out’s with mobsters in Las Vegas, she once had
to be taken into protective custody because of threats from the mob toward her
dad’s family, she got knocked out and then gang-raped by four teenage guys when
she was sixteen, she got raped again by an older biker at a party her biker
boyfriend had taken her to, and she got addicted to crystal methamphetamine so
badly that when she returned to her family they didn’t even recognize her in
her wheelchair, as she only weighed 80 lbs.
Then she decided to get back at her meth addicted biker boyfriend by
appearing in porn movies, supposedly to make him jealous. She was already a stripper earning $2,000 a
night when she met him, but the porn was a new line she had crossed. Twenty years later she has owned her own lucrative
porn production company (which she sold to Playboy) and is worth tens of
millions of dollars. She considers porn
empowering as opposed to degrading, because it helped her take control of her
life for the first time. For once she felt powerful, as opposed to depending on others who mistreated her.
I did read her autobiography, but I haven’t found her very attractive
since college. That was when I first discovered the easy access of sex videos online, as all the guys in the dorm were talking about it and I desperately needed a
release from the pressure of living with a roommate who played loud violent war
video games with the volume turned up literally 12-16 hours per day. If I found an hour alone in the room when he
was at class, I didn’t care who she was so long as it was exciting and I could
get some temporary stress relief.
While in Japan I knew a man in his 50s who said he caught
his teenage daughter reading that book, and it made him very uneasy to think
that she would get the idea that Jenna was an acceptable role model for a
woman. Then again, this same man had
once had a nice nuclear family until he got caught cheating, and he’s basically
been roaming this earth and getting married to women for visa’s and some
semblance of financial stability ever since.
He’s one of the friendliest, most physically healthy and energetic 55
year old’s I’ve ever met, yet he admittedly still had the mindset of a 17 year
old, as evidenced by certain behaviors, not least of which was his love of
Blink-182. Independence? Moral compass? Considerate?
Speaking of morality, what makes a man and crystal
methamphetamine, I had spent the previous day, Saturday, November 2, watching a
Breaking Bad marathon with my
roommate. He had just introduced me to
the show, and I instantly became addicted to it like some sort of powerful
drug. It’s been critically acclaimed as
one of the best television shows of all time.
The main character is a scientific genius stuck in a teaching job. He expects to die, so he decides to support
his family by manufacturing crystal methamphetamine, one of the most
destructive and addictive drugs on the planet.
At one point he is offered a legal way to finance his medical treatment,
but he turns it down out of pride.
Throughout the series the issues of pride and being a man who provides
constantly surface. He hates the idea of
“charity.” He’s even about to get out of
the business when a very powerful drug dealer draws him back in with his “man”
speech:
“What
does a man do, Walter? A man provides
for his family. And a man, a man
provides. And he does it even when he’s
not appreciated, or respected, or even loved.
He simply bears up and does it.
Because he’s a man.”
Now this “man” clearly isn’t concerned about being a good
human being, what with his approval of using children to murder rival drug
dealers to stake out street corner turf.
He only cares about being a man and being rich. Since men have been known to do a high
percentage of the worst things ever done, I think that makes sense. As my father would say, “Consider the
source.”
The other major theme of this highly popular show is
honesty, or that is, lack thereof. From
the very first episode the main character finds himself weaving a web of
deception that becomes stickier and stickier.
He isn’t even making drugs when he decides to hide his illness from his
family. And then, of course, there’s the
drug dealing, which involves quite a bit of leeway with the truth. The show’s writers are so good at coming up
with excuses that one almost begins to admire the craft of deception, as one
might admire a lawyer at the top of their game.
But then you take a step back from the TV and realize just what it is
that’s going on, and it becomes sickening.
The fact I had my first hangover in years didn’t help matters.
The night before the Breaking
Bad marathon I attended a Halloween party in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It was my first party since I’d returned to
New York City, but I had to wear a costume.
I hadn’t been paid by my new job yet, and I don’t carry a lot of costumes
around with me when I travel, so I had to improvise. Luckily I had some strange gear left over
from my travels around the world: a shirt with Japanese kanji, Thai fishing
pants and a Chinese bamboo walking stick.
I let my hair down, and with the beard and bare feet, I was the perfect
image of a mystic journeying through the East (despite the
t-shirt). It was a great party, and my
friend (Don Johnson from Miami Vice)
and I defeated Waldo and his girlfriend Wilma at beer pong. I met a lot of people from the San Francisco
Bay Area who were living in New York for a year or two to check it out and have
the experience, but planned on going back home because that’s where all of
their people were.
What I will never forget about the party was a conversation
with my friend’s old roommate, a good guy I saw every once in a while back
during my first NYC term of residence.
He commented on my years of travel, and asked if I was finally done. I never know if I’m done, but for now, yeah,
it feels like it. Then he made a very
deep insightful remark which I hadn’t given any thought to in quite some time:
“You did it all alone, right?”
I replied, “Well, kind of, I guess. Even though I was a frugal traveler, I got a
little financial help toward the end of each journey, and people were always
helping me along the way. I couldn’t
have done it without help from other people.”
“How long were you traveling? Like, four years or something, right?”
“To be honest, it was really two and a half out of the four
years. In between each one I would go
home for extensive and comfortable stays around very important friends and
family. I couldn’t have recharged
without that.”
“Still… there must have been some moments of just intense… loneliness in there. I mean, you didn’t have anybody familiar
around. It must have been crushing at
times.”
It was then I thought of a few times that fit his
description… and yeah, it was. But what
doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I
appreciated his insight. It made me feel
like I had accomplished something important on a level I hadn’t considered much
recently. Perhaps I did know a thing or
two about independence.
------------------------------
On Monday, November 4, I taught my class of students who are
trying to learn the most universally used language on the planet. We picked up where we left off on Friday, the unit which taught us about reported speech, infinitives and
gerunds within the context of “the women’s movement.” Feminism.
Universe, you’ve done it again!
From Exploring English
6 by Tim Harris and Allan Rowe (p. 38):
Feminists
are telling women they don’t have to conform to expected social roles that
limit their freedom. The feminists
believe that women should be able to act from a position of choice, so they can
do what they want in life… Some feminist groups think that women will achieve
equality only through basic changes in society.
These groups say men should help with the housework and child care to
free women for outside work. They
believe this would result in relationships between men and women based on
mutual interests, respect, and affection, rather than on men’s economic and
physical dominance. The women’s movement
encourages women to be more assertive and to express their feelings
openly. Women are being told they don’t
have to accept a passive role in society or in their relationships with
men. This is causing confusion among
many people who don’t know what is expected of them and are unsure about how to
react to new and different situations.
Then they give an example of a new situation: a woman calls
up a man, invites him to dinner and a movie, and then picks up the bill. Some men would be flattered and then
embarrassed, while others would enjoy the whole thing. Most of my students come from countries with
much more traditional gender roles favoring male dominance, but due to their
stays in America and access to information technology, most of them weren’t
surprised by any of these trends. Some
of them said they would feel awkward in the above situation, but others didn’t
care. I wouldn’t care. I usually go for strong independent
intelligent women with a strong work ethic and some sense of ambition. But I also enjoy some femininity. That’s just my personal preference. If I start hearing anti-man rhetoric, I’m
naturally turned off, because I’m a man.
Just like women, I didn’t choose my sex, and I don’t want to be put down
for it. If some relationships involve
willing partners who enjoy upholding traditional gender roles, then good for
them. And if others enjoy life the most
by switching up the balance in a variety of ways, then the entire species
benefits, because that’s the way of the world.
This brings me back to the article which talked about the
difference between being a woman and being a girl, and which one I’m supposed
to date. If I’m a man, then I attract
women, which, according to the article, means I would attract a female who does
the following:
-communicates clearly
about what bothers her
-has standards, not
expectations
-bases her value on
her intelligence, strength, integrity, values, contributions and humanity
-plans to be financially
independent; a wealthy partner is a bonus
-helps other women
instead of competing
-understands that
being domestic is not a duty, but a way of taking care of herself and others
-wants respect and to
be adored by one
-cherishes her health,
sense of self and talents as her greatest assets, instead of handbags, diamonds
and shoes
-empowers me with
possibility and passion for life
-looks for the
following in a man: high integrity, intelligent, kind, good communicator,
emotionally available
-doesn’t play games
All of those sound great to me. Especially the part where she communicates
about what is bothering her. There is
nothing that drives me crazier than a girl pouting and refusing to tell me
what’s wrong, and assuming I should know.
Then again, nobody is perfect.
Not all men achieve perfect marks on the list created by the same author
either. Every individual is unique. As the textbook said about feminists, people
should not feel constrained by any pre-defined gender role, no matter who is
doing the defining.
The characteristic which especially stands out to my mind is
the last one: “a girl plays games; a woman doesn’t.”
That sounds good, but in the beginning stages of a romance,
games can be very romantic, and even intelligent. They can be signs of creativity and fun. Especially since I love reading poetic clues
and universal signs from the divine, I can hardly whine about a woman making me
solve a few puzzles to figure out what’s next.
But at the beginning. It gets old
after a while.
A case in point is my favorite fantasy girl/woman of
all. I am not speaking of any porn star
or real celebrity. I am talking about
Amelie, from the movie Amelie. Amelie is a French character from a romantic
comedy which may just be one of my favorite movies of all time. I’m sure every artsy creative nice guy longs
for a girl like Amelie: she’s cute, creative, mysterious and filled with good
will. She’s not a virgin, but she’s not
promiscuous either. Sex isn’t her only
focus. She loves the world around her
and wants to make everyone around her happy.
She also does it modestly and mysteriously without need for approval. She has many creative quirky habits (like my
favorite, skipping stones) and uses her intelligence to brighten everyone’s
day. Unfortunately she cares more about
making other people happy than herself, so she often becomes exhausted and
depressed, fearing she will die a lonely saint.
Then again, she’s only 23. She
sees her soul mate for the first time in a subway. He’s hunting for scraps of photographs
beneath a photo booth, which he will later arrange into photos. She finds his scrap book one day when he
races past her in pursuit of his artistic dreams, and realizes he is the one. But instead of simply finding him and meeting
him, she reveals the girl in her: she plays games. Many games.
That’s why it’s a fun movie. She
tries to learn everything she can about him, and the more she learns, the more
smitten she becomes. There are a few
unexpected surprises. First, the
romantic dreamer who fills her shy heart with joy actually works in a
pornography store, surrounded by sexually explicit videos and sex toys. He is poor, so he has a second job at a
carnival, where he dresses as a creepy skeleton on the ghost train ride. She rides the train and he creeps behind her
caressing her neck with his bony fingers and groaning, “Oooooo,” in her
ear. Of course, this only makes her want
him more. The first time I saw this
movie I was in New Zealand, and I didn’t think to watch it again for years,
until I had returned from Japan. At the
time I was fasting from visual sexual stimulation. When I told my friends they told me I was
crazy for not masturbating, because every man has to do it. I said I was still masturbating sometimes, I
just wasn’t watching porn, a distinction almost all of them hadn’t even
considered in this digital day and age.
I had gone 33 days without watching anything sexually exciting when I
watched Amelie as my reward, feeling that I was a clean, noble and
upstanding guy worthy of her excellence.
Then I saw the part where he worked in a porn shop and worked as
a scary ghost train guy, and didn’t feel so bad about getting a visual release before
going to sleep each night.
Anyway, when Amelie and Nino are supposed to meet, she
pretends it isn’t her and he walks away disappointed. Then again, she can’t let it go, so she comes
up with another clue to keep him interested in the mystery. Eventually one of her older and wiser friends
tells her she’s got to make a move sometime instead of living in the fantasy,
fearing that this ideal mate with whom she has become involved in such a
prolonged game isn’t what she hopes he will be.
She says she is devising a stratagem, and he says she is fond of
stratagems, but she’s really a coward who is afraid to take a chance. Meanwhile, her distant love, “Nino” (which
means “boy”) grows impatient, and she fears she has lost him forever. I’ll let you watch it yourself to find out
what happens.
The playful girl in Amelie endears her to us more, but it
also prevents her from being brave and honest in approaching her love. I think she’s ideal for many reasons: she
appreciates dreams and creativity, she embodies those ideals herself, she’s not
afraid of her man’s shadow and she cares about people. Best yet, even though she is a woman and Nino
is a man, she loves and appreciates the boy inside her man.
This brings us to a point raised at the beginning when we discussed what makes a man and what makes a boy, and which is more desirable. Just like Amelie being a mix of woman and girl, I think a great male human being is a mix of mannish and boyish qualities. Like that song by Muddy Waters, “Mannish Boy.” For example, let’s take two of the most oft-cited examples of wisdom in human history: Einstein and Jesus.
This brings us to a point raised at the beginning when we discussed what makes a man and what makes a boy, and which is more desirable. Just like Amelie being a mix of woman and girl, I think a great male human being is a mix of mannish and boyish qualities. Like that song by Muddy Waters, “Mannish Boy.” For example, let’s take two of the most oft-cited examples of wisdom in human history: Einstein and Jesus.
From Einstein: His
Life & Universe by Walter Isaacson:
Throughout his life,
Albert Einstein would retain the intuition and the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the
magic of nature’s phenomena—magnetic fields, gravity, inertia, acceleration,
light beams—which grown-ups find so commonplace. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts
in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel
when he could smell an underlying unity.
“People like you and me never grow old,” he wrote a friend later in
life. “We never cease to stand like
curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.” (Isaacson
14)
Do you believe in
God? “I’m not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited
minds. We are in the position of a
little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written
those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which
they are written. The child dimly
suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know
what it is. That, it seems to me, is the
attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and
obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.” (Isaacson 386)
Curiosity, in
Einstein’s case, came not just from a desire to question the mysterious. More important, it came from a childlike
sense of marvel that propelled him to question the familiar, those concepts
that, as he once said, “The ordinary adult never bothers his head about.”
(Isaacson 548)
So there we have it from Captain Science: a healthy
child-like sense of awe and wonder is a good recipe for experiencing, achieving
and spreading the excellence of the universe.
Now let’s check with everyone’s favorite person to crucify. From Paulo Coehlo’s The Pilgrimage:
“For the ancients,
enthusiasm meant trance, or ecstasy—a connection with God. Enthusiasm is agape directed at a particular
idea or a specific thing. We have all
experienced it. When we love and believe
from the bottom of our heart, we feel ourselves to be stronger than anyone in
the world, and we feel a serenity that is based on the certainty that nothing
can shake our faith. This unusual
strength allows us always to make the right decision at the right time, and
when we achieve our goal, we are amazed at our own capabilities (Coehlo 106). Because when we are involved in the good
fight, nothing else is important; enthusiasm carries us toward our goal.
“Enthusiasm normally
manifests itself with all of its force during the first years of our
lives. At that time, we still have
strong links with the divinity, and we throw ourselves into our play with our
toys with such a will that dolls take on life and our tin soldiers actually
march. When Jesus said that the kingdom
of heaven belonged to the children, he was referring to agape in the form of
enthusiasm. Children were attracted to
him, not because they understood his miracles, his wisdom or his Pharisees and
apostles. They went to him in joy, moved
by his enthusiasm.” (Coehlo 107)
As I rode the train home from work on Monday after class I
found myself falling asleep. I had
barely slept the night before, a pattern which is really beginning to bother
me. I have to be at work before 8 am,
and it’s over an hour away, and it takes me an hour to get ready in the
morning, what with showering and eating and brushing teeth and putting on ties
and moving slowly from sleep deprivation, so I need to get up by 5:45 am. However, I am a night person, and I sleep on
my friend’s couch, so it’s not like I can just turn in at 10 pm and get a solid
night’s rest. I’m lucky if I doze off by
12:30 or 1 am, which means just about every day I am running on less energy
than all experts say you need to make it through the day without a nap. Luckily I work a half-day and I can go home
to nap for an hour or two, but then I’m really groggy afterward and it takes me
forever to get going with the writing.
And that’s if I don’t have to go back to work at night, which
thankfully, lately, I haven’t had to do.
I know I’m complaining, but my friend told me it’s my right as a human
being, so I’m going all out. Also, I am
well aware of the opposite scenario, which is me not having a job right now and
being very panicked and far more financially dependent on others than I would
like or is even possible. I am happy to
have the job, but I wish one of those noon or 2 pm classes would open up so I
wouldn’t feel miserable so constantly.
It’s one thing when you can just slink in front of a computer and slowly
wake up to some form of caffeine. It’s
completely different when you’re on your feet and leading a group of people who
are paying hard-earned money to improve a valuable skill. Anyway, the point is that I was exhausted,
and once again all I wanted to do was go back to the couch and take a long nap. No enthusiasm. At least no one will confuse me with that
crucify guy.
The thing was, it was the first clear blue sunny day in over
a week, and the autumn leaves had just begun to change to totally unique
beautiful colors that weekend. I had yet
to visit Central Park, and you never know when it’s going to cloud up for a
week straight again during autumn in New York, which I hadn’t experienced in
four years. As we approached 86th
street on the Upper East Side I remembered that the Alice in Wonderland statue
was somewhere around there, and that it would be a perfect place to hop off the
train and stroll through the park. Then
again, I wanted to sleep. I was
listening to a very important musical playlist on my iPod, and that’s when God
started Deejaying the clues for me. At
the last second, J Dilla’s “Dilla Says Go” saved the day:
It’s
alright, I’m gonna win baby
I jumped up and ran through the doors into the crowded
subway platform, and then to the stairs.
It was a very short song, and the next one was “Fight Test” by The
Flaming Lips. It’s the opening song on
my beloved Yoshimi Battles the Pink
Robots album.
The test begins…now!
I ran up the stairs and out into the open sunlight with a
clear blue sky. I walked from Lexington
Avenue west toward the park. Yes, this
was it. This was what was missing back
in the day when I lived here before: the spontaneous creative impulse for an
adventure, despite the crippling fatigue and exhaustion from mostly
mind-numbing work.
Because
I’m a man, not a boy, and there are things you can’t avoid, you have to face
them, when you’re not prepared to face them…
Then, as quickly as it had come, the song ended with, “The
test is over…now!” and the next song came on.
I should mention that I had my playlist of 87 songs on the random
setting, so I didn’t know what would come next.
Also, I had created this playlist back in August, so I didn’t quite
remember what was on it. The next song
was “The Champ” by Ghostface Killah, the most recently prolific member of the
Wu-Tang Clan.
[Dialogue borrowed from a
"Rocky" movie]
This guy is a bulldozer with a wrecking ball attached
He'll leave a ring around your eye and tread marks on your back
He's an animal! He's hungry! You ain't been hungry, since "Supreme Clientele."
Remember what you first told me when I took ya in. You wanted to be a fighter! (Yeah!)
You wanted to be a killer! (New York Stand Up!)
You wanted to be THE CHAMP! (Got your boy in the booth)
You ain't hungry!
Matter of fact I don't want you in my gym
Get out of my ring, you disgust me
This guy is a bulldozer with a wrecking ball attached
He'll leave a ring around your eye and tread marks on your back
He's an animal! He's hungry! You ain't been hungry, since "Supreme Clientele."
Remember what you first told me when I took ya in. You wanted to be a fighter! (Yeah!)
You wanted to be a killer! (New York Stand Up!)
You wanted to be THE CHAMP! (Got your boy in the booth)
You ain't hungry!
Matter of fact I don't want you in my gym
Get out of my ring, you disgust me
Okay, God! I get
it! I’m going to go take some pictures
and have poetic moments instead of taking a nap and feeling groggy like
always. And then I’ll write all
evening. Yeesh!
I love that song “The Champ” because I first heard it right
before graduation and moving to New York City in 2006. My friend Jake (Don Johnson from Miami Vice) introduced me to his
music. I was wary of gangster rap, but I
trusted his taste because he is the most literate human being I’ve ever met,
having previously introduced me to masters Thomas Pynchon and James Joyce. Years later I lamented that I loved
Ghostface’s music but had almost nothing in common with him, and he said, “Sure
you do! You both love words!” Then I made it
my business to take a lot of risks in the name of enjoying life and finding
poetry amongst the living architecture of existence, and somehow I didn’t feel
like a poser when I listened to his tunes.
After all, being badass isn’t about selling drugs or killing people for
money and braggadocio; all it requires is a little bravery on behalf of
quality.
Speaking of champs, as I approached the reservoir the next
song that came on my playlist was “Time Travel” by the greatest musician of
all, Hiromi Uehara. I once listened to
that song while balancing myself standing upright in a canoe on a lake in
Montana at dusk, waiting for the stars to come out and keeping an eye out for
grizzly bears who, yes, know how to swim.
Now I was at the Central Park reservoir in autumn, gazing at glorious
yellow and red leaves falling softly to the ground amongst tourists speaking
myriad languages. I wonder how many of
them understood the universal language of poetry.
I walked in search of Alice in Wonderland but realized I had
overshot it by many streets. Instead of
the 90s it was in the 70s. So I walked
south and stumbled upon one of the greatest treasures in New York City:
This is an Egyptian obelisk named Cleopatra’s Needle. Talk about a strong woman. Somehow somebody took this enormous ancient
work of art across the Atlantic Ocean so that one of the most modern
representations of humanity could always remember its links to the great
civilizations of the past.
I had managed to live in NYC for three years without even
being aware of its existence, mostly because I rarely wandered up to the Upper
East Side section of the park. I finally
discovered it during my last month in the city.
In fact, the day before I had been unceremoniously booted from my most
recent temp job a week earlier than expected.
Management had voted against extending my assignment by one week even
though the woman for whom I was covering had received a one week extension on
her maternity leave. That meant my boss
would be without an assistant for one week.
Unfortunately she forgot to tell me, and I found out the hard way by
realizing that my security clearance card no longer worked during lunch. I called HR, they called my temp agency, and
my temp agency told me to leave ASAP and I would be paid for my time that day,
but I wasn’t supposed to be there. Then
my boss yelled at me for trying to get her attention when she was on a personal
cell phone call, and my other boss yelled at me for interrupting him during a
meeting, when I was just trying to tell them I didn’t work there anymore and
they wouldn’t have an assistant. Then
the second one called me an hour later to find out if I had managed to submit
that last $50 expense report for him. He
sucked. It was a shitty way to leave the
city, but I pumped myself back up with The Hold Steady’s “Stay Positive.” Then the next day my great friends Brad and
Robert came to visit, and we wandered in the park until we saw the enormous
ancient Egyptian architecture that made me do more than a double-take upon
first notice. I was putting together a
plan to go on a spiritual adventure/mystic journey through Asia at the time,
although none of the plans were solidified.
I would eventually start in India and finish in Ireland, but I had no
idea that I would end there or pass through Egypt on the way.
That was in March of 2009.
In April of 2012 I returned to the obelisk, once again while wandering
through the park. This time I was alone,
which made sense because I had been exploring the earth on my own for most of
the intervening three years since I’d been to the statue. I remember the date was 4/11 (April 11th),
and I had just returned from a year of teaching English in Japan. The previous night I had seen an amazing
Hiromi concert at the B.B. King club in Times Square, having begun my NYC
reunion tour a few hours before. Now I
was able to explore the park and take in the cherry blossoms, a welcome grace
since I was missing the fancy festivals in Japan which had just begun. I visited the Alice in Wonderland statue, and
then made my way up to the obelisk.
It was then that I noticed a statue nearby which I hadn’t
noticed the first time. The statue was
of a Polish warrior king. I forget his
name, but I remember being very happy to know he existed. You see, I am 1/8th Polish. If you’ve read this web site before and ever
suspected traces of jingoism or nationalism favoring British blood, I assure
you that nobody brags about the racial brilliance of the Poles. Until now.
I always used to explain my foolish ways as a result of my Polish blood
(there are so many jokes about
Polacks being stupid, and lord knows I’ve been stupid), but this statue finally
gave me a Polish hero to look up to.
Every culture has their heroes and their assholes. You may look to the roots of your tree for
inspiration, but ultimately, who you are is determined by who YOU are and what
YOU do within the world currently around you.
Now, on 11/4 (or 4/11 in Japan), I was finally seeing
Cleopatra’s Needle pointing up to a clear blue sky. It had been cloudy the other times. I swear that there was a faint rainbow
reflecting from a cloud behind the obelisk.
I took pictures, but it was so far away and faint that it is hard to
reproduce with a camera. I assure you,
it was there, and it was beautiful.
There was one thing missing though. As my luck would have it, the park conservancy had fenced off the obelisk for some sort of photographic survey, and no one could get up close to it. That was okay because I had taken close-up pictures during the previous visit, so I stood in contented sleep deprived silence on the lawn beyond the barrier. I didn't have my headphones on. I remembered the awesome wonders of the many journeys that had transpired since I first discovered this mysterious ancient gift of art. So much had happened in between. Pyramids, peaks, people, pleasure, pain, persistence, providence, poetry...
After about ten minutes I decided to move on. That is, until I rounded the corner to take a few more pictures and a woman began talking to me. She must have been in her 50's, and she began with, "Well that's not fair! Some people come from around the world to see this thing, and they've got it closed off!" We chatted a while about the obelisk before she asked a passing park attendant if we could get permission to go in beyond the barricade. He said with a smile that he couldn't give us permission to go in, but that he could turn his back and walk away, because he wasn't the police. I moved the gate aside, and we entered. Sometimes you just have to ask. She told me all sorts of facts about the angle of the obelisk and how to view its perspective with a camera. Apparently she had been visiting this thing since college, which must have been decades ago. She loved traveling and had recently been to Rome. I would love to go there someday, but I can't complain about my travel fortunes. I mentioned that I had been traveling off and on for four years, and that this visit to the obelisk was some sort of round circle milestone, as I had just moved back to the city this month and had discovered it during the last month of my previous residence in the city.
We put the barrier back in place and then said good bye. As she walked away she turned around and asked where I was going to next. I thought for a second and replied, "Actually, I think... I'm back."
She paused and said, "That was a good thing you did. I tell everyone to do it when they're young. Take care!" I waved and thanked her. She reminded me of Maude from the movie Harold & Maude. One of my favorite lines from that movie is:
Vice, virtue. It's best not to be too moral. You cheat yourself out of too much "life." Aim above morality. If you apply that to life, then you're bound to live fully.
There was one thing missing though. As my luck would have it, the park conservancy had fenced off the obelisk for some sort of photographic survey, and no one could get up close to it. That was okay because I had taken close-up pictures during the previous visit, so I stood in contented sleep deprived silence on the lawn beyond the barrier. I didn't have my headphones on. I remembered the awesome wonders of the many journeys that had transpired since I first discovered this mysterious ancient gift of art. So much had happened in between. Pyramids, peaks, people, pleasure, pain, persistence, providence, poetry...
After about ten minutes I decided to move on. That is, until I rounded the corner to take a few more pictures and a woman began talking to me. She must have been in her 50's, and she began with, "Well that's not fair! Some people come from around the world to see this thing, and they've got it closed off!" We chatted a while about the obelisk before she asked a passing park attendant if we could get permission to go in beyond the barricade. He said with a smile that he couldn't give us permission to go in, but that he could turn his back and walk away, because he wasn't the police. I moved the gate aside, and we entered. Sometimes you just have to ask. She told me all sorts of facts about the angle of the obelisk and how to view its perspective with a camera. Apparently she had been visiting this thing since college, which must have been decades ago. She loved traveling and had recently been to Rome. I would love to go there someday, but I can't complain about my travel fortunes. I mentioned that I had been traveling off and on for four years, and that this visit to the obelisk was some sort of round circle milestone, as I had just moved back to the city this month and had discovered it during the last month of my previous residence in the city.
We put the barrier back in place and then said good bye. As she walked away she turned around and asked where I was going to next. I thought for a second and replied, "Actually, I think... I'm back."
She paused and said, "That was a good thing you did. I tell everyone to do it when they're young. Take care!" I waved and thanked her. She reminded me of Maude from the movie Harold & Maude. One of my favorite lines from that movie is:
Vice, virtue. It's best not to be too moral. You cheat yourself out of too much "life." Aim above morality. If you apply that to life, then you're bound to live fully.
Then again, she says not to be “too moral.” She doesn’t say
to throw it away completely. I know
someone I looked up to who cheated on his wife an astounding amount, and that
really bothers me. He could have used some
morality there instead of sleeping with other women to find out about what kind
of life he was missing. Or at least been honest up front that he wasn't happy. Then again, my
own curiosity concerns me. Even though I
have committed to people and sacrificed guilty pleasures for them without being
asked, I don’t have any experience of being in a committed relationship, and I
have spent years honing my thirst for freedom and improvisation. I’ve been able to talk to and pursue any woman I
please, and when I’m alone and want to take care of business myself, I’ve been
able to see a lot of pornography to get my release. I think that’s fine or I wouldn’t do it, but
sometimes that makes me feel guilty. For
example, sometimes I fall in love and think I should be completely purely
devoted to the woman I desire, but whenever that happens, it takes forever and
I’m left with a lot of free time on my hands, so I put my hand to use, but only
because they’re not around. Other times
I turned off the tube and committed all of my heart and imagination to whoever
struck my fancy, and it always turned out that they were secretly seeing
someone else, and even if I got beyond that somehow, they would lie to me
anyway later on. I think that’s
worse. I know a lot of married couples
who watch sex for various reasons, whether it’s to stimulate their mutual sex
life or simply to give the man an extra release because the wife simply doesn’t
have time for all of his semen screaming out for an escape. I know other liberal married couples who
consider porn to be vile, filthy and degrading to women. That’s their opinion and they don’t have to
watch it. Unless my partner insisted out
of some sort of mutually agreed personal freedom, I wouldn’t have much
interest in looking at other women if I already had a real one with whom to
share my love. Some people just think it's a waste of
time when you could be doing the real thing. Yet the real thing isn't
always readily available. As for feminists,
some hate it and deride it as degrading.
But there is also a large contingent of feminism called “sex positive
feminism” which encourages women to celebrate sexuality openly, and does not
consider pornography problematic, but instead calls it empowering. As with everything, I’m sure it’s a mix. Just like any business, it uses people and
spits them out and ruins their lives while rewarding a few lucky stars with
fame and fortune. Music, television and
the movies aren’t much kinder to humans.
In fact, Jenna Jameson, “the porn queen,” said that beyond the sick
independent production guys with cameras who abuse new girls as much as possible during their
first experiences on camera, there is actually a much deeper feeling of camaraderie and support in the porn industry than in the mainstream movie business, according to her experiences with both.
Regardless of all of that, I asked the woman who had been cheated
on by her husband about the issue of watching porn, and her response was, “Oh,
but those can be exciting! As long as
you can turn it off when your partner is with you, I don’t see how that’s an
issue.” I’m probably talking about this
way more than most people ever think about it, but it is sex-related, and
everyone thinks about sex, so that’s why I think about it. I tend to be a sexual camel with all of my
traveling, so besides thinking about someone I have feelings for, wondering
about the morality of televised sexuality tends to occupy my thoughts
lately. Somehow I think my virtual
explorations of human sexuality will help prevent me from ever feeling the
desire to cheat when I finally do meet someone with whom I want to enter a monogamous relationship. I’m already aware of what’s out
there, and even though I’m not having porn star sex every night, I’ve had some
excellent real sexual adventures, and there’s plenty of time for more. I’ll trust whatever the universe has in
store. In the long run, I know that
trusting one other in love offers much more.
Like most adults, I think about sex a lot. Sex is beautiful. It is how the world continues, and I love
this world and how it chooses to continue.
But I wasn’t thinking about sex as I continued on to the Alice in
Wonderland statue, because I was too tired and Alice is a little girl. I walked through the golden trees to where
the sun shined brightly on sailboats floating on a pond before the homage to this
wide-eyed child who experienced the wonder of the world by jumping down a
rabbit hole and ingesting a magical mushroom.
I paid my respects to the Mad Hatter and recalled the first time I unexpectedly
found this statue. It was October 2010,
and I was wearing an enormous backpack, army combat jacket, bandana, hiking
boots and a huge smile. I had a bamboo
walking stick, fresh from my voyage through the East, and ready for a journey
across America. I was ready to
hitchhike, camp in the snow, stay with strangers, explore new cities, ride Greyhound buses through the South and brave Mexico City on my way to the top of the
Pyramid of the Sun. Maybe I would meet a
special someone.
------------------------------
As I mentioned earlier, I had a very important playlist going
on Monday, the 4th day of the 11th month. I wasn’t aware of its full meaning until
later in the day when I began writing about it and decided to see which one it
was (I wrote about half of this piece a week ago, but have been very busy in
between). It was the same playlist I
made for my airplane ride home on July 31st, 2013: “Have a Safe Ride
to New York.” That ride home was
important because it marked the longest I had ever been away from my family and
closest friends. I had moved to
California fourteen months earlier, and I was finally going to see everyone
again. That meant this playlist had to
have the most meaningful songs from the journey so I could fully experience the
moment. Apparently I’d picked it that
morning without thinking about the title or its significance, set it on
“random,” and let the magic flow.
The joy began with “Do You Realize??” by The Flaming
Lips. A great way to greet the
sunrise. Then “Midnight Rider” by The
Allman Brothers. That one’s always fun
when you’re enjoying goods the rest of the world hasn’t woken up to approving
yet, and you’ve got to keep a friendly eye out for the law to make sure they
don’t misunderstand you and make things more difficult than necessary. I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn't completely sure I would succeed freely, but I enjoyed my third eye in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid
to the fullest, and I’m eternally grateful to the one poem that it didn’t have
me facing an Egyptian firing squad. Then again, I wouldn't have done it if I wasn't sure I would be safe.
As I waited for the train in the underground and Allman
finished singing, “but they’re never gonna catch me, no, never gonna catch the
midnight rider!”, the cosmic deejay picked as a follow-up one of the all-time
most intense, powerful and serious songs I experienced during my series of journeys: “North
Star Jewels.”
When I was in Ireland I met a French nomad five years my
senior who had been wandering the earth experiencing spiritual depth and honing
his soulful connection to the world inside and around him as best he knew how
ever since he was my age. I had been
doing so for a mere seven months at that point.
The highlight had been meditating inside the King’s Chamber in the Great
Pyramid at Giza, Egypt, and realizing that no matter where I was, who I was,
what I was doing or who I was with, there had always been one constant: I. Eye.
Aye. Ten days later I asked this
man how he dealt with the loneliness and isolation, and he said he was never
lonely because he was with his soul.
Do you know how I dealt with the solitude, loneliness and
isolation inherent in the solo journey around the world? The Universal Soul. One Love.
God. Call the divine poem what
you will, but it’s here, right now, and it’s speaking to everyone who
listens. And sometimes it speaks in the
strangest voices from the most unexpected sources. Whenever I reached an important goal on a
journey, I took great delight in making sure that that Raekwon song was on the
playlist to encourage me. I don’t care
if that sounds strange or even crazy. If
it’s really the universe, then it’s one verse, and it talks to everyone.
Thomas
Merton made this point by saying that God speaks to us in three places: in
scripture, in our deepest selves, and in the voice of the stranger. (Huston Smith,
The World’s Religions, p. 390)
My favorite experience where I listened to “North Star
Jewels” was July 24, 2012, at Heart Lake in Yellowstone National Park. I was in the middle of a journey through the
northern US to move from New York to California, and I was seeing every
national park possible along the way, which created somewhat of a sidewinder
itinerary through every state above the Mason-Dixon (although I’m aware it
doesn’t extend that far West). The
previous day I had hiked twelve miles through a grizzly bear management area to
camp at Heart Lake, and I was still in the area. In fact, I would find tracks a few hundred
feet away at a nearby creek the next morning.
The poetry of 7/24 was that my grandfather “Papa” had died
on that day seven years earlier. It was
also the day of my 21st birthday celebration. I’d been camping on a hill with my friends,
partying around a campfire all night, and when I returned in a car with
supplies, ten minutes ahead of the pedestrian crowd, my mother rushed out of
the house crying and saying, “He’s gone!” as she embraced me. He had died after 94 years on the love
ball. As she hugged me and told me she
loved me she added, “I think it makes sense he chose to leave the day you
became a man.” I didn’t know if I was a
man yet, or if he chose to leave, but I hugged her harder anyway.
Seven years later I celebrated by the lake under a starry
sky with a moon smiling up above. I
understood the whole Cheshire Cat resemblance, as I was currently loving some
of the same mushrooms that Alice sat upon in the park. As I enjoyed the sky, I thought how my mom
told me that their only big trip west was when she was a girl and Papa took
them all to Yellowstone National Park. I
wished he wasn’t so old and I could have known him better. I was so young when he began to lose his
grip. My youngest memory of him was his
80th birthday party. He was
one tough man, though. He fell off the
back of a pickup truck while cutting wood with my dad a few years later and
simply dusted himself off afterward and continued walking. Then he had a heart attack while cutting
lumber with a chainsaw on a summer day, and he survived a triple bypass surgery
at the age of 89. That makes sense for a
man who was run over by a truck while playing outside school at the age of 8, and
had to walk home several miles with broken ribs. He also raised a lot of hell, trying to steal
the family car when he was 10, only to crash it into a tree, amongst various
other pranks my mother was always fond of telling me about. He was a great man with a kind heart, but he
taught his wife how to have fun being naughty too.
There are so many questions I want to ask him. Such as, “Papa, you didn’t meet grandma until
you were almost 30, and then you guys were inseparable for over 60 years. What did you do before then? Did you have sex with anyone else? Did you date anyone else? Did you ever jack off? What could a guy like you do back then? I know you weren’t 100% wholesome and pure,
and that you didn’t buy all of that Catholic stuff. You even said the whole ‘don’t let your seed
touch the earth’ stuff was nonsense because people have wet dreams beyond their
control. From what I hear, you were an
enlightened guy for your age. You always
extended your hand to new people and asked if you could help. Am I making you proud? I heard that when I was less than a year old
you saw me smiling and said to my mother, 'That kid has the biggest shit-eating
grin I’ve ever seen.' I don’t know if
I’m as tough or as kind as you, but I think I’m doing my best, which is all
anyone can do.”
Sometimes, when I know Papa can’t answer, I listen to “North
Star Jewels.” I’m aware that that
appears very insane on the surface. It
is the concluding song to Raekwon’s Only
Built 4 Cuban Linx album, which practically created the Mafioso gangster
rap genre. Rae was a crack hustler
growing up, and his nickname is “chef” for many reasons, one of which is
supposedly that he cooked great crack.
In Breaking Bad they always
refer to making meth as “cooking.” After
seeing that show, if I didn’t already think that selling drugs and murdering
people were sickeningly romanticized by our culture, from Scarface to Jay-Z, it’s even harder for me to stomach some of the
lyrics of that very song I love so much (did I mention that my nickname as a
toddler was ‘Scarface’ because I was always running into things and cutting up
my face and running around anyway?)
During the song Raekwon raps about killing someone to get his drug-selling
corner so he can “feed [his] babies,” and, well, that’s depressing. Then again, Papa helped load bombs onto
airplanes to kill Japanese soldiers so the United States could get its corner
and feed its babies, a tale as old as human history (the scene from 2001 where the apes smash a rival gang
with a bone to gain control over a small puddle of drinking water comes to
mind).
Well, what’s done is done.
I’m not Raekwon or Walter White or Jay-Z or Scarface. I’m just Ben, and I’m the seed of Papa
Sullivan, who fed his babies by growing and selling trees for lumber, which
builds houses and businesses and can make paper for writers with dreams of
feeding their own babies someday.
So even though I’m not huge on the middle rap verse
romanticizing gangster lifestyles, I still love the pep talk from Popa Wu. As I looked at the North Star from the shores
of Heart Lake, I imagined that Papa Sullivan was talking to me, albeit with a
slightly more urban ghetto accent than I recall him having. Maybe he would have said something different,
but whatever he said, he would have been saying the same thing God had to say,
because God speaks through everyone, since God is everything: I and U and Chung
Fu through and through:
“What’s
up baby? God damn, look at you man! Damn, God, I love the shit out of you,
man. Man, I done watched you man, since
you were a little crumb snatcher, a little weed-hopper running around here,
man. Look at you, baby, you look good
(we’ve got the powers to resurrect the dead).
I’ve watched you go through a lot of trials and tribulations. But you know something, like I always used to
tell you baby, if you listen you can learn?
(G-O-D’s my reality) I see you listened VERY well, you understand? Your time is coming, baby. See some time, it could be, like a rare
jewel, and people don’t know when their blessing comes. But I watch you grow. Man, you is a very intelligent man. Man, I watched you when I used to sit down
and you would trick me out of my money shooting dice, is you crazy? (G-O-D’s my reality) I’ve been through all those things, man I’m
watchin’ you growing. But remember one
thing like I used to tell you, the child you was is making you the man you is
today. And if you don’t know where you
came from, baby, you damn sure don’t know where you’re going. Can you see what I’m saying? Know which way you’re traveling. You understand? And follow that destiny and follow the light,
and it’ll set you free. Cause I’ve
watched you baby. You my main man. (Elevating strong and we’re gonna go on to
the highest degree)
More recently I heard this song the morning of November 4th
while waiting in the underground for my train to come. It’s a gritty New York song, so even though I
couldn’t see the North Star, the surroundings fit. When the train approached, “Pyramid Song” by
Radiohead came on. That kept me awake
just long enough for “Joy” by Hiromi Uehara to carry me to the connecting
train.
Later in the week the textbook talked about leadership and
heroes, so I asked all of my students about who their heroes were. Unlike my previous class, almost everyone
said their parents were their heroes because they helped them when they needed
it. I thought of my Grandpa Sanford
telling me stories one night, and how when I bemoaned my intermittent financial
dependencies on my parents, he shrugged it off and said, “I helped your father
and your parents for years after they finished school. We even let them live in our house for the
first few years after you were born. And
they’re helping you now, and you will help your children when you are ready. That’s what parents do.”
At the end of the week my host’s parents were visiting him,
so I took another ride upstate to visit my parents and spend some quality time. I had just enjoyed a great lunch with my dad
the day before, as he had been driving through the city on his way upstate
after visiting his mother on the island.
I didn’t tell my friends I was in town.
I just wanted to see my folks.
Also, I had an ulterior motive: a huge comfortable bed in the quiet
countryside where I could catch up on sleep.
On Saturday the Palinski family had a party to celebrate
their son John’s recent wedding so the townspeople could meet his new
wife. I stopped by briefly to give the
father, Mark, a flash drive with some Bob Dylan and Paul Simon songs he had
requested, and said hello to the rest of the family. I also got to see my first ever employer, Mr.
Bailey. He was a former math teacher who
started a Christmas tree farm when he retired, just up the street from my
family’s farm. I became his assistant
when I was 17, and it was my first real job outside helping my dad or mowing
some guy’s lawn. Shearing trees with a
battery-powered rotating blade at the end of a long pole with New York summer
humidity and flies swarming around my face is still one of the hardest jobs
I’ve ever had. I’ll never forget the
chats I got to have with Al Bailey during our water breaks. He was also the Justice of the Peace. I doubt either of us foresaw any of the
liberties I would take with this nation’s rules regarding certain types of fun,
but I never got in trouble or hurt anyone, so he still smiles when he sees
me. He says he’s in the best part of
life now: every day is Saturday, and you still get a pay check twice a month. Strangely, I only got that job because my
predecessor, Billy Palinski, quit that summer to work somewhere else.
After saying my hello’s I left the party and got back in my
car. The crescent moon was faintly
smiling through the clouds. I turned on
the iPod and once again it was “North Star Jewels.” It had been on my mind since that morning
subway ride and all of the television I’d been watching about fifty year-old
high school genius teachers who became evil drug dealers supposedly to support
their families. I realized that if I
didn’t break this pattern of complacency during my transition and get serious
about moving forward with my writing production and distribution, I could find
myself being a bitter old man unable to provide for the ones I love, wrapped
in a web of lies and going against everything I stand for. It’s a stretch (especially since I have no idea how to make drugs and neither I nor Papa Sullivan are/were especially talented businessmen), but it’s a good image to keep
me focused on the future. Popa Wu says at
the end of the song that “no man is good and bad at the same time. He’s either good or he’s bad.” I disagree, although not completely. His definition is too simplistic to describe the most complex and highly evolved beings perhaps in all of the universe. Every human has good and bad in them. You can channel your dark impulses and urges
however you like so long as you do not seriously harm this reality which is
G-O-D. It’s up to you to choose if it is
your darkness or light which one shines upon humanity.
As for teaching, please don’t misunderstand me. I feel the joy of life when I am spreading
knowledge and wisdom to my fellow humans through the vehicles of imagination
and creativity, but I can only take so much of a chalk board and explaining
basic grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary to mostly bleary-eyed students who have some other place they would rather be, just like me.
I want to “elevate strong” and “go on to the highest
degree.”
It’s time to plant (12718) the tree. For you and (724) for me, with universal
destiny.
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