2nd thoughts after 1st meeting with the 14th Dalai Lama

according to a local newspaper, he looked like:

photo by Lannis Waters

but what i saw was more like this:

and this:

and this:

i listened to the people around me projecting onto him. to some he was a celebrity, to some a novelty, to some a world leader.

to some he was holy:


he comes onstage and offers pranam to the audience's applause. the woman next to me is beaming and has told me what an honor it is to be in his presence. she hopes the question she submitted is chosen, but it is not.

the talk is enjoyable, somewhere between conversation and satsang. it is neither political not canned, and just before he walks in the energy shifts. i wonder if it is because he has entered the space, or if it is because of our collective knowledge (and silence) upon his entering the space. i close my eyes at times and focus on this energy. i can feel it radiating from the front of the room and wonder if it is from him or my imagination. my mind adds occasional observations, but remains largely at bay.

once the event ends i run into two doctors, one of whom i respect, the other who i love and respect. we walk together across campus in the just-rained humidity, reminiscent of summer and so out of place in mid-February. they speak of the Dalai Lama and i listen. it is amazingly superficial.

i walk with the until we reach the library and then say goodbye. i leave a message for a former swami in Vancouver and contemplate what transpired. perhaps it was only a reflection of my own doubts regarding the borders between the unspeakable truth we call divinity, and the pernicious projections of the mind...

i have never seen
one who so clearly lives
at the junction of worlds
real and imagined.

1st impressions after an encounter with the 14th Dalai Lama

on non-violence:

non-violence is not the absence of violence,
but the practice of compassion.

on compassion:

genuine compassion is not pity.

it is concern and respect.

on smiling:

the smile is one of the unique gifts of the human being.

on peace:

genuine peace must come through inner peace.

on troublemakers:

the practice of love and compassion
requires some people to make trouble.

on strength:

practice outward compassion
to develop inner strength and peace.

on the cleverness:

the clever mind builds cocoons.

on formality:

too much formality is a form of hypocrisy.

on samadhi:

"My excuse is I have no time to practice that."

bounce

my colleagues are in the adjoining room bouncing a ball,
discussing the impending arrival of the Dalai Lama:

what would you ask him?

bounce

i don't know. that's a hard one.

bounce

i heard he got beaten with a golden whip.

bounce

gold?

bounce

not actually gold. colored gold.

bounce

isn't that violence?

bounce

then you wouldn't need a ticket to see him.

bounce

you could take my bag.

bounce

do you think my camera will get in?

bounce

it's cool we all got tickets.

bounce

what would you ask him?

bounce

i would ask him his childhood.

bounce

what happened to your curls?

bounce

it's all for the HHDL. i donated them for love.

bounce

i wonder what's going to happen.

bounce

i don't think it's going to change my life or anything.

bounce

i'm being interviewed on TV tomorrow.

bounce

what time?

i have to be there at 4:30am. it airs at 5.

bounce

are they playing it again.

bounce

then i'm going to sleep in the office.

bounce

he's goofy.

bounce

i could Tweet for him.

bounce

someone already does.

bounce

does he have a Facebook?

bounce

i don't know.

bounce

my camera looks semi-professional.

bounce

do you think he has his own bathroom on every plane.

bounce

he had to have gall bladder surgery.

bounce

some people think he has magical healing powers.

bounce

i admire him to an extent.

bounce

he did like me after he realized he was being a dumbass.

bounce

[M. T_______ breaks the fourth wall:]

bounce

are you writing about us?

bounce.

doubt

Part 1

i went to tonight's class spaced out from a long weekend of work, too much junk food, and not enough sleep. the past weeks have been a model demonstration of the dangers of overcommitment, and - to make matters worse - i had an attack of doubt midway through our discussion of semiotics, somewhere between Darwin and Freud.

the gist of our discussion was how a whole cadre of thinkers, ranging from Einstein to Heisenberg to Marx to Nietzsche, ushered in a new emphasis on materiality during the end of the 19th century, overturning M. Descartes' precious apple cart in the process. what occurred to me, for the first time was:

perhaps the traditional (eastern) view of karma and the evolution (return) back to one's natural state is too anthropomorphized. perhaps the self and the body are more closely tied than the seers and rishis would like to admit. perhaps what the ancient nameless mystics glimpsed was not this now but rather a future now. by all accounts, diachronicity dissolves in the state of transcendence, leaving the individual:

present

the moment at hand

present

the moments that were

present

the moments that yet may be.

perhaps the evolution of Darwin is, in fact, the evolution of the Bhagavad Gita. humans are merely a point, not end point, and it seems a monumental act of hubris to attribute our present level and capacity for awareness onto the generations and species to come -

someday we will be nothing more than someone's common ancestor.

Part 2

i drove home after class and listened to an episode of This American Life. a man told his story of losing his memory in India, of having to look at his driver's license even to know what he looked like.

when a police officer told him he must have taken drugs, he thought and felt and believed like a person who had taken drugs. he called his mother to apologize; she told him they had spoken last week.

the police officer took him to the mental hospital. he woke the next day with bruises on his arms from the restraints; the orderlies filled his veins with holoperidol and Valium; he thought and felt and believed like a person who needed his veins filled with haloperidol and Valium.

the loss of his personality cast this man into the unknown. there was no memory; the building blocks of individuality were gone. there was no return to an eternal, blissful nature. faced with the nonexistence of a specific self, the man shaped his being by the behaviors around him.

how much of our own being is defined in this very way?

Post-Script

eventually the man, a Fulbright scholar, regained his memory.

the amnesia was a side-effect.

creepy

sometimes - like today - my job really has its benefits:


it's not often that one gets to see neon swastikas and fishnet-clad women dancing in high heels without going to some degenerate supremacist strip club. but this is beside the point.

the point is that the job also has its downsides as well, like when the group's truck driver came into the office asking if anyone could help him with his computer. he told us it was an Apple product, and my colleagues - technophilic Macophobes - turned to me in unison.

i said, "sure," and followed him outside.

in retrospect, the first sign of something awry was the fact that the truck driver apologized to me about his cab being a mess. the potential implications of his need passed unnoticed, however, and i sat down and started bringing up programs on his computer, unsure of precisely what it was he expected me to do. i'm no Luddite, but nor am i anything more than proficient when it comes to binary and batteries.

to diagnose the problem, i started opening up random programs, placing a strain on the processor and seeing what happened. in my fervor, i happened to click on a .jpg file on the desktop. the picture opened:

[image deleted]

unfortunately the same cannot be said for my memory; when i close my eyes i still see the pornographic photo of truck driver from Texas, well-cocked and self-photographed, in my mind's eye.

needless to say, i closed the program and continued working. an uncomfortable minute passed before he spoke, explaining that it was his wife that put the picture there.

i mumbled, "uh-huh," and returned inside.

dream of Rastafari and vampire

last night i dreamed of a vampire leaving in small rural town, not unlike the one in which i was born. the vampire embodied part of my own being, but (a portion of) the rest was dispersed throughout the dreamscape, allowing me the omniscience - but not omnipotence - of third person narration.

[lapse]

the vampire is trying to do no harm, hitchhiking up a mountain road to his home. a vehicle stops to offer him a ride. it is a gray panel van, no windows, and a single ripped bench seat near the front of the cabin. there are four Rastafari inside, and one can discern an odious atmosphere taking shape amidst the ganja haze rolling out the doors. the vampire sees none of these things - or pretends to see none of these things - and hops inside. as the door closes, the narrator wants to stop the sequence. the Rastafari are zombies.

[lapse]

the vampire is making his escape and finds himself atop a mountain, looking down into the dense forest of pines below him. the drop is hundreds of feet, but he knows he will survive. the zombies are getting closer. a decision must be made. the landing will hurt but her will survive. the vampire jumps but does not fall.

[lapse]

the Rastafari drain all the blood from the vampire, turning him into a cardboard cut-out version of himself. the vampire is approximately three centimeters deep now, and the Rastafari drop his body downtown near the center of anonymous city that may - or may not - be Denver. they place him up against a brick wall, hidden behind some other pieces of corrugated cardboard, and drive back up the mountain to their mountain abode.

[lapse]

the narrator is concerned, worried for the vampire, and uncertain of how to resuscitate him once he is found. the narrator walks the streets of the city that may - or may not - be Denver. there is a neon sign that reads "Jesus Saves" on the corner of the building, which has escaped from the waking memory of the narrator into the dreamscape. as in the Waking, this sign is mixed, holding both portent and promise.

corner of Lawrence and Park

the narrator discovers the cardboard vampire under the sign and carries him back to an antique shop where friends have gathered. the vampire was born a vampire, and his blood was stolen by the Rastafari for reasons unknown. none of this matters now. the narrator prepares a vat of blood, which is shaped like a glass coffin. the origin of the blood is unknown. a siphon, tube, and funnel are connected to the top of the vat, and the vampire is placed inside.

[lapse]

the vampire returns to life, weakened and confused by the ordeal. he is no longer a born vampire, and the taste of copper in his mouth - the taste of blood not his own - will never leave him.

mon frère

i spoke to my brother today and, as par the course, we had an eclectic conversation, ranging from climatology (he's been researching the price of procuring weather station data) to the Haitian relief efforts (he has an opportunity to go, but is hesitant to live in "a Baptist fort")

;

other topics included Myanmar, tweets from his favorite Nascar driver, and the meager square footage of homes in Paris.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that my brother and i spent a large portion of our respective childhoods and adolescence living apart from one another. he moved to Texas when he was 11, and i left home to attend a school for nerds in Durham. more than a decade passed with us seeing each other only on holidays or the occasional summer vacation. no phone calls, no visits, no correspondence, save one heartbreaking letter he wrote to me during a particularly bleak portion of my life

;

i never told him how much it meant to me.

over the years my regret has largely subsided, but sometimes i still think how nice it would be if we had grown up closer. he has always been smarter than i, surer of himself, and made better life decisions

;

i wonder what might have been in different circumstances, in different families, in different personalities.

i think in some ways i'm still coming to terms with how and how much our relationship has shaped who i am

;

i arrive at a pause:

how
much of
our being is
formed long before
we have the
words to
express
it?

transcription of anecdote by John Cage, presumably plagiarized

A young man in Japan arranged his circumstances so that he was able to travel to a distant island to study Zen with a certain master for a three-year period. At the end of three years, feeling no sense of accomplishment, he presented himself to the Master and announced his departure. The master said, "You've been here three years. Why don't you stay three months more?"

John Cage, preparing a piano

The student agreed, but at the end of the three months he still felt like he had made no advance. When he told the Master again that he was leaving, the Master said, "Look now you've been here three years and three months. Stay three weeks longer."

Arnold Schoenberg, in front of a blackboard in Los Angeles

The student did, but with no success. When he told the Master that absolutely nothing had happened, the Master said, "You've been here three years, three months, and three weeks. Stay three more days, and if, at the end of that time, you have not attained enlightenment, commit suicide."

Daisetz Suzuki, with a kitten

Towards the end of the second day, the student was enlightened.

(transcribed from Silence)

channeling your inner adolescent

(inspired by Francis Scott Key,
boredom, and a room full of geriatrics)

i close my eyes and listen...
to the vision of a banner,
spangled and splattered,
smothered and covered,
hoisted and dropped,
from the rooftop of Waffle House:

stitched together from the scraps of Sicily
and the dregs of Dublin
and the bums of the Balkans
and the crumbs of the Caucuses
and the niggers of the Niger river basin
and the ten thousand bastard Amerasians
from the hundred thousand homeless vets
whose Vietinsemination was such a success.

can you see that banner?
can you see that billboard?
the one over the streets of Baghdad:



the one bragging in Bangalore:

the one towering over Tel Aviv:

can you see?

the dawn’s early light over Bikini Atoll
with sheep lashed to the railings of destroyers,
and GI’s washing their clothes later that day,
eating gyros and laughing at Oppenheimer.

are you still there?

have I lost you Tet?
what a lovely new year and many more to come,
holidays in the sun
holidays in Cambodia
holidays in Laos.
i have a friend who was there in ‘61,
19 years old
jumping into the jungles
with plenty of advice
and a canteen full of vinegar
for the purpose of douching the wounded.

but who needs all this when we have the Rock?

and the Rock’s red glare,
staring down Stone Cold Steve Austin:

keeping us warm at night,
bringing us in from the cold.
it reminds me of my childhood
and the last icy villain
and his Red Scare.

an actor brought him in from the cold, too:

a real cowboy,
but this is a new era,
with a new almond-faced hero
(it’s okay he’s Samoan)
no miscegenation here, boss.

and the planes bursting in mid-air?

not since Lockerby;
5 million screaming Scotsmen can’t be wrong.
and 19 dead Arabs can’t be right
and 1 balding municipal servant
who had one good day in September nine years ago?

he can run for president.

but the flag is still there:

the flag is still there.

the flag is still there.

and what does it say?
alone at night, naked
and cold.
shivering from night terrors and kicking at the covers,
holding on with both hands,
trying to stretch that blanket a little further,
pulling it overhead and trying not to breathe
because Ed Jenner is nowhere around.

the land?
the land was free.
a manifest destiny quilting bee,
a landscape stitched together
with all those poxy small blankets:

three thousand miles from sea to shining sea.

our home?
how brave it is,
to leave a single tribe in all of Georgia.
no more Apalachee,
or Cherokee,
or Shawnee.
only a single tribe left in all of Georgia:

bought because
it was the cheapest
programming in town.

who wouldn’t want to own a part of this dream?

Doctor/patient (flashback, commentary, and foreshadowing)

Part 1: flashback (6 February 2009)

What are you feeling?

the unnamed dread of anticipation

How often?

every time i open my mouth

Why?

i think i’m in love.

I suggest you walk jaw agape
until the taste of longing
dissolves into honey.
Take two teaspoons
and call her uncle
in the morning.

her uncle

Yes,

a dead Russian was born in St. Petersburg

the unshaven scoundrel of Minsk;
the fitful scoff of rose petals and tuberculin;

the dripping faucet palate tap
of rereading Lolita, alone
in a bed full of
play
germ
ism.

is the one i should call?

Oh yes.


Part 2: commentary (Chapel Hill, dates unknown)

i do not know the man pictured above;
i know the one pictured below:

Vladimir Nabokov, photographed by Jean Vong

i met him on an unknown day in the spring of 1997;
he spoke to me:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.
Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip
of three steps down the palate to tap,
at three, on the teeth.
Lo. Lee. Ta.

she was not:

Kubrick's Lolita

or:

Lyne's Lolita

or even:

his Lolita.

Part 3: foreshadowing (on a precipice in Carrboro)

i discuss her with a woman whose name i do not remember.
my roommate is next door, preparing to pretend to masturbate.
the room is covered in aluminum foil:

a different wall (Washington Heights, 1999)

on the table there is:
a mirror, a razor blade, a book:

my Lolita,

it was all in the name of art.

Raging Bull (or teaching Scorsese how not to fight)

i'm preparing to go teach Raging Bull

(obviously not really)

and find myself at a loss.

how to start?

where to begin?

i hear Aristotle arguing with Freud about catharsis.

a second Austrian, also dead, is making love to a French nobleman.

bloodshed and ejaculate ensue.

(the previous sentence contains two nouns, the second of which suffers from a long "a" sound in its more-frequent usage as a verb.
if it were French - like the nobleman - i would spell it ejaculàte.)

but this is beside the point.

the point is that this type of bawdy unproductive ramblingness is exactly what i'm hoping to prevent in my class...

[lapse 57 minutes]

i returned, feeling not unlike Jake after his final fight with Sugar Ray:

the blood.
the masochism.
the ropes against the skin.
the clever brutality of the camera.

i think of Jake.
i think of Jache.

he called last night and told me his woes.
i told him i heard little left of his life save the narration.

the bouts lost before the bell.

Up in the Air

my yin and i went to see Up in the Air this past Friday night, our last jaunt into South Florida's hectic spinningness before taking the weekend to devote some time to various unmentionable rituals.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that the film was interesting, but not in the way i expected. quirksome? yes. topical? yes. Clooney's signature je ne sais quoi? oui. what grabbed me, however, was the odd collision - and sometimes collusion - of its economic and metaphysical themes.

on the one hand, i couldn't help but be underwhelmed by the film's heavy-handed treatment of the economy. an early sequence near the start of the film had me hopeful, when a montage of Clooney at the security checkpoint augmented the mechanistic efficiency of the whole process. it referenced (obliquely) the underlying mode of production, and i crossed my fingers waiting to see how this tendency would be developed - it wasn't.

instead of Marx, the film proceeded to unveil two hours of quasi-populist tripe. the economic system that produced these inequities disappeared almost entirely, subsumed by Clooney's star persona and the Heteromance of Ryan and Alex. thankfully, i was still able to evoke some sense of empathy for the nameless office employees laid off by the handsome man from out of town and, later, his bitchily naive Ivy League sidekick:

this was one of the biggest drawbacks.

on the other hand, the treatment of gender was atrocious, and the Anna Kendrick subplot was little more than a distasteful mélange of postfeminism and bildungsroman, with the dumb doe-eyed girl passing on her own career for a boy in Tulsa, only to be rescued in the end by emotionally unavailable patriarch who helps her reclaim her dreams while simultaneously protecting her from the disillusionment of the professional down-sizer.

likewise, the near-miss romance between Clooney and Vera Farmiga was rewarding only in that it didn't bring them together. her duplicity makes itself known in the final reel, and the audience is coerced into feeling sorry for the man who tried to love but could not:

this was the saving grace.

in spite of its best efforts, Up in the Air has nothing to do with the economy. it says nothing about materiality or the complexities and contradiction of late capitalism - can we even call it that any more? - the film as a parable:

his bag is empty.
he is a cog. he is a spoke.
the prayerful emptiness of longing.
the machine of capital. the wheel of karma.
the people he fires are not even his own.
he lives in planes. he lives in airports.
he is groundless. he has no mother.
he yearns for his existence.
he chases the arbitrary.
he has transcended.

on problems of mechanical reproduction

i woke on a windy Friday

morning to find the specter
of Benjamin had abandoned me
in the night. i remembered only the
splices, the celluloid scars of the psyche.

we dream
in fragments.
we live in pieces.
our memories are
a scrap heap of the
people we were, the
lies we have lived, the
i's that might have been:

is a matter

of perspective.

last night
i read Genet
to my lover. she
fell asleep listening:
Erotic play discloses a
nameless world which is
revealed by the nocturnal
language of lovers. Such
language is not written
down. It is whispered
into the ear at night
in a hoarse voice.
At dawn is it
forgotten.

i read until i was hoarse.
i dreamed in montage.
i did not forget.
the words of
the specter
remained:
A man who
concentrates
before a work
of art is absorbed
by it... The distracted
[man] absorbs the work of art.

concentration?
distraction?

plagiarist?

It is
hard
to define
exactly how
the words have
changed the image
but undoubtedly they have.

The image now illustrates the sentence.

(approximate) Bibliography
...
images 1-4: author (1999, 1980, 1995, 2001)
images 5-7: Jean Genet, Walter Benjamin, John Berger (dates unknown)
quote 1: image 5; quote 2: image 6; quote 3: image 7

all other text and montage by author

the dastardly days of February malaise

i don't know what it is about February, but there seems to be some strange repetitive quality to this week so far. besides Sid, besides the Novocaine, besides the San Franciscan correspondences - besides all the circles i keep seeing spinning out of control in front of me - i also sense an odd déjà vu just beyond my field of vision. it's an unusual feeling, not entirely comfortable, and it hasn't gone unnoticed that i was pushed just beyond my last substantial breaking point almost a year ago.

it's difficult to fathom how much has changed. that particular experiment was undertaken in haste after months of missed opportunities, and each time i remember the way it all unfolded, i can't help but get a chill. it was perfect each stage of the journey, and each misstep i made only served to cement the magnificence of the experience in my memory.

since then things have moved more and more of their own accord, and i often think of a friend who told me that - eventually - my life would feel less and less like my own. maybe that's what this is, maybe it's the opposite. maybe it doesn't really matter.

groundhogs, Sid and the Dreaming

Sid Vicious died 31 years ago today, and it looks as though the anniversaries have become an opportunity for me so sing paeans of happenstance to his passing. a year ago, this took the form of a trip to the library. this time it came to me in a dream:

3:22am

dream of a recording studio on the border between the United States and Canada. i'm there with my yin, except that she is not herself. we're there to visit an art gallery on the second floor, but wait in the studio.

we wait. we wait. we wait.

the room - which is a courtyard - begins to fill up with unsavory types. a pair of men are smoking cigarettes in front of us. one of them asks:

"are you a baghead."

"no."

the scene is growing grim.

a man fires up a butane torch.

the man inhales.

i tell my yin:

"we need to go."

as we get up to leave,
a slight distance emerges between us.

all of a sudden, metal shutters collapse down blockading the courtyard and locking her inside. i am on the outside, and she is trapped with the dangerous characters from the asylum. i look around: the streets are empty, and a subdued panicked terror grips the air. i run towards a better section of town - but there is none.
i find instead that the drawbridge leading out of the United States has lifted, leaving me stranded.

a terror attack has shut down the nation, and i wonder if this is the Armageddon i dreamed of as a child. the streets are full of black people, the good people of the neighborhood trying to get out.
they stare at the bridge across the divide. it is New Orleans all over again, except this time New Orleans is all of America:

unknown Louisianans, 2005

i have two table knives and one steak knife.
i wonder what will happen if i am discovered;

my parole is nearly reinstated.

i rush through the streets before the anarchy takes hold. there is the feeling of Renoir's La grande illusion, and i dart into a building and discover it is a state-run detox or work farm. the junkies and madmen are being turned onto the streets. people with only three and four days away from the horrors of the asphalt. i see beautiful whorish girls wrapped in towels, about to be turned back out.

i go outside and run into a muscled white guy with styled hair. i tell him i need help. he tells me he works nights, that i don't want in because i can't handle it. i realize this man is a pimp who has come to the asylum looking for product.

as i start falling from the dreamscape, i realize that the orders to shanghai the nation came through while my yin and i were waiting to see the art, and the bums who enveloped our gathering were a result of this decision. it is Reagan's Manhattan all over again, and i know i must i act. i must find a way to save my yin, whose very being has become unstable and compromised. it is a crisis of ontology, and i hear her singing in Chan Marshall's voice:

Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power

it is already beginning, and in my panic i run into Thurston Moore who was there to produce an album. we speak of Chapel Hill and Sorry About Dresden. i tell him of my yin. he agrees to help:

Thurston Moore, aka Sonic Youth's guitar player

...the dream ends as i start to regain a sense of hope.

Saltines - the matzo for goyim!

when i was a child, i had many unusual eating habits. among them included eating frozen fish sticks, salting my palm, and microwaving hot dogs until their fleshy sheaths turned one shade shy of charcoal. i still remember perfecting the leathery delicacy, and over time i learned that even fifteen seconds too long would turn the whole processed mess into a disgusting log with insides the consistency papier-mâché.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that although the frozen fish and cauterized sausages eventually disappeared from my diet, one perennial holdover was the Saltine cracker/whole milk combo. in this particular culinary abomination, i would take the cracker, chew it to a medium coarseness, and then wash it down with a big gulp of milk. the purpose of this exercise was to provide the perfect balance between the saltiness of the cracker, the sweetness of the milk, and the consistency of the mush once the two were brought together. over time - like all things - this too came to pass.

but yesterday it resurfaced.

at approximately 5:03pm yesterday afternoon, my yin and i took a walk to the grocery store in order to procure a half-head of cabbage. the need for this particularly disgusting vegetable is too nuanced and neurotic to explain at present, but suffice to say it involves my aversion to the word "casserole."

returning to the point, at approximately 4:57pm yesterday afternoon i took out a box of matzos and proceeded to eat one half serving, accompanied by almond butter. at that moment i had a revelation,

an epiphany,

a salted satori,

a unleavened awakening.

i had the thunderstruck realization that all of my pre-pubescent crackered excursions were little more than an attempt to mitigate my ancestry by means of transubstantial carbohydrate consumption. it was this riddle, the obscene extravagance of my own existence, for which i finally found an answer:

Saltines - the matzo for goyim!