Manali v. Lakeland

i spoke to Jache yesterday afternoon, while waiting for my mother at a chain restaurant in Lakeland, Florida. we hadn't spoken in some time, and he asked about my yin. i told him she was in Manali.

"she gets India, you get Orlando," he said. "it's like yin and yang."

which one would you choose?

touché, i say, but this is beside the point.

the point is that i believe you can judge a lot about a town by two things: its thrift stores and radio stations. if this holds any bearing to reality, then i would say that Lakeland is one effed up place, in spite of its preponderance of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. the two thrift stores i went to were gigantic, nearly as large as the big box retailer where i bought 88 unbent spoons for the ridiculously low price of $23.54, and seemed to have a book to bible ratio of 2:1.

furthermore they were absolutely packed, not with quasi-slumming semi-hipsters wasting time (comme moi), but with people needing to go to the thrift store. i even saw one car in the parking lot set up with the seats down and a mattress in laid out. i imagined it to belong to the sunburnt bearded man i ran into at both locations. the second time i saw him, he was throwing away a toy car and i felt my heart breaking a little, wondering how long he had held onto it, or what it might have meant to him. was it a new purchase, suddenly realized to be useless, or a final souvenir of a life that no longer belonged to him?

perhaps in this question lies a larger metaphor, an understanding of how we relate to the world around us; perhaps questions like these are merely ways to avoid the sadness i feel when i encounter things that seem so senseless.

as for the radio, Lakeland is marked by dozens of Christian and country radio stations, which outnumber the rock, rap and other approximately 1.5:1. (note: all ratios are psychological rather than scientific.) i heard one man going on and on about the retina and what a wonderful, perfect creation it was. somehow this soliloquy worked its way around to evolution, and the program ended with the host informing the listener that Christians needed to be well-versed in scientific facts because the Bible is, in fact, both historically and scientifically accurate.

flipping stations, i stumbled upon a call-in show about that nutjob church in Kansas. a caller to the show told the host that, when he first heard about [name omitted for the safety and well-being of all sentient beings] he thought it was the work of "atheists" who had "infiltrated" the church in order to discredit true believer.

he really said this.

let me get this right: an atheist pretends to be a churchgoer for the sole purpose of discrediting churchgoers. ah yes, those devious atheist infiltrators....

it was hilarious, frightening and sad that this caller's paranoia and fears of persecution had caused him to project so strongly onto others. but still, i couldn't help but be disturbed that this man (white, male Christian) felt perfectly okay using the public airways to slander a minority group. no doubt part of my outrage has to do with my former longstanding affiliation with this minority group, but still...

anyway, i believe Lakeland (which sits halfway between Orlando and Tampa) serves as this incredible case study as to what happens to the mid-sized towns caught between urban centers. it has its own independent existence, it's not a suburb, and yet it still feel surrounded by the fervor and fever and foment of those scary ideas lurking an hour down the road. it's towns like these that bear the scars of America's schizophrenia, which has been dubbed so eloquently as 'the melting pot' by the dead and dying men that write our nation's textbooks.

Manali, on the other hand, has signs like this:

if only it was always that obvious...

regardless, on the drive home i found myself remembering the trip my yin and i took to St. Pete over two years ago. it was long before we recognized our physical interconnectedness (i think this would make a nice Buddhist euphemism for sex), and she convinced me to listen to Phish for all those empty hours across the middle of the state. i found myself having dozens of mini-revelations about the nature of art, creation and seva as i drove, exploding like the firecrackers i saw tossed out the window of a pick-up truck in Lakeland.

our attachment to the things we make binds us. i see it in myself: fear of judgment, fear of letting go, fear of losing the things that were never ours in the first place. Walter Benjamin believed art was special because it allowed the unconscious and conscious minds to come into contact in the waking state, and my own experience has taught me that the creation of art allows us to resolve problems, to work through issues in a manner that ultimately reveals that any perceived dilemma never really existed at all.

my task during these three weeks of near-solitude is to allow all these things to integrate more deeply, and in this spirit i've made a sankalpa to meditate at least twice each day, regardless of circumstance, fatigue or agitation. this is the gift i've been given in lieu of Manali, and i can feel it happening already. i see signs in the Sign of the Mouse, which is really nothing more than two circles stacked upon a third:

one might surmise my fondness of circles

i dream of insomnia and awake to the empty sunless room of 5am, knowing that my yin is enjoyed the cool mountain air of the Himalayas for both of us. i think of my mother in Clearwater, my father in the mountains, my brother concocting one mad idea for world peace after another – he would be proud to know i shopped at that Wal-Mart in Lakeland.

i think of the indomitable dinner companion, the half-Canadians, and the giraffes in Orlando, who look like trees walking in the dark. i sit up in bed well before 6 am, take out my mala beads, and begin repeating my mantra. i remember the night before, the years before, the lifetimes before this one. i see in my mind's eye seven hours before, when i encountered a smoking cross-legged bodhisattva sitting atop a newspaper stand in Yeehaw Junction.

what secrets does he hold, and why didn't i ask him for his picture?