(happy) birthday!

tonight my yin and i are playing hooky from our weekly meditation group to attend a friend's birthday party at some Cuban bar two towns north. aside from the obvious dilemma of finding a pork-free dish (the pineapple tamale looks promising), there is the more pressing concern of what to get a woman whose hobby is collecting art from Thailand. i suppose this, like all things, will resolve itself and so i've decided just to trust that the perfect gesture will reveal itself in its own time.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that my friend and i met in a graduate seminar entitled "Sex, Violence and Hollywood" a little less than a year ago, and within weeks were debating one another over the potential feminist message (or lack thereof) contained in Whip It. eventually i adopted her point of view, and in this way my friend reminds me of a woman i knew my first year of college, whose intelligence, wisdom, and life experience seemed to surpass mine by decades.

thankfully my life has been full of such teachers, the people who teach without trying, the individuals who change our lives without effort, the friends whose presence (and passing) comes to shape the people we become.

this, too, is beside the point albeit less so.

the point is that when i was kid, my dad would ask me every time i had a new birthday, "do you feel any older?" i would invariably laugh and tell him no, but over the years i've come to realize that my father was teaching me a profound metaphysical lesson:

each day we live is the only one we have, and the notion that one is more important than the other is both inaccurate and hateful.

needless to say, i did not possess this sort of awareness at 6 or 7, or even 26 or 27 for that matter, but over the years of repetition it eventually sunk in, bypassing my head, seeping into my heart, and then finally making the return trip up the spinal column to my brain, which controls the fingers i use to write this.

as far as i can see, most changes result from experience and practice, and we take on the characteristics of the little things we do with consistency each day. the smiles and prayers and condemnations and judgments take a toll on the people we are, and it seems both reasonable and just that we ultimately end up feeling the way we treat others. i find some comfort in knowing that we have the ability to control and influence these things.

(on the other hand)

large, sudden changes do happen, but they are not so much a matter of will (sorry Nietzsche) or power (sorry Foucault) or even necessarily faith (sorry Aquinas). in my own experience, doubt can be just as powerful as belief, and i would like to pause a moment to acknowledge Nagarjuna and his skepticism:

Nagarjuna, aka "the second Buddha"

the source of dramatic change seems to be utterly beyond our control, and this is a fortunate thing because it prevents our fears regarding the future from getting in the way of fulfilling our dharma...

something else my father taught me, using different words.

ahimsa, commitment and fish (but not Phish)

two years ago today, i broke my strictest, longest running bout of vegetarianism to date. i was in St. Petersburg at the time, on a platonic vacation with the woman i would come to call my yin, and Mardou had told me about Hook's Sushi, which was known all the way across the state for its fantastic hand rolls. i went with my best intentions:

List of Best Intentions

#1) visit this house, where Jack Kerouac was living with his mother at the time of his death in 1969:

photo appropriated from Paul Verizzo

#2) visit the Dali Museum and sit on one of its funky benches:

stuffed weasel is not my own

#3) recuperate my scarred memory of the Tampa Bay area, inflicted three years earlier:

author, and an unremembered canal in Tampa

although, owing to a lack of foresight, my first intention was left unrealized, the latter two were wholly successful and the roadtrip still stands as one of my most memorable. my future yin and i went to the Dali Museum on a Saturday afternoon, and the weekend managed to wipe clear all that had transpired in 2005, rolling back my point of reference a full decade to a mad night of punk rock and smelly feet, sleeping in a park in Clearwater and hiding from the Church of Scientology.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that Saturday night, after the Dali Museum, my resolve crumbled under an unbearable desire for Hook's delicious tri-color roll. i could have withstood the tuna, and i can always pass on salmon, but the inclusion of yellow tail pushed me over the edge. i ate the fish, and on the ride back i received my karmic retribution, when my future yin forced me to listen to Phish for hours on end –

the laws of the cosmos can be a cruel, cruel mistress.

since then my vegetarianism has been something of a moving target, and i've had to come to grips that my practice of dietary ahimsa is riddled by a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. i eat curry when i go out for Thai (inevitably made from fish sauce) and, for that matter, i eat at non-vegetarian restaurants without batting an eye (unavoidable cross-contamination).

as a result, i've taken to calling myself a pescetarian rather than "a vegetarian who sometimes eat fish." my logic is simple: it's better to sound pretentious 100% of the time rather than sound like an asshole every 4-6 months. i like to think of this as the delicate balance between non-violence (ahimsa) and truthfulness (satya), but the fact remains that i may just be (mis)using Sanskrit to justify my own lack of commitment.

i wonder how much we do this sort of thing every day, using one pillar of our belief to alternately buttress and undercut the others. and, in doing so, can it be said that we really practice either?

i need only think back to yesterday, when i discussed the hazards of our society's unbridled consumption with a couple of friends in the air-conditioned, iced coffee comfort of The Devil's Watering Hole.

how do we reconcile these inconsistencies in our being?

my own solution, thus far, is found in something Mardou once told me about the four essential "C's" of any relationship: Commitment, Consistency, Communication, and Congruency (which she memorably explained as "when i feel sad, my face looks sad"). in other words, given that i've made this commitment to non-violence, how do i account for the inconsistency of my practice?

for me the answer is this, communicating my lack of congruence, acknowledging the ways i fall short of the person i want to be, and doing my best not to delude myself any more than necessary...

thank you for your participation in this experiment.

36 months, check

this morning, i felt not just the weight of this day, or the one that came before it, but of the three years of joy that preceded it, the seven years of numbness that came before the joy, and the six months of mania that started it all. looking back now, i know they were all the same

– Empty –

and that no matter how many words i wrote or spoke or mimed to try to explain, i would never be able to express the unspeakable size of this impossibly small life i call my own:

"Maman" by Keffer

with these things in mind, i set about setting my affairs in order – making visits, saying hello, whispering goodbye. i tried my best to embrace the futility of my endeavor and not fall prey to maudlinism or regret. i tried to remember that all the things i think i am can never equal the Nothing I Am:

"From Haunted Castle" by Kai Stuht

and so, instead of trying to fill the Void, i returned once more to pen and paper, started writing these words, and took comfort in the knowledge of having seen so much – even if it was from far, far away:

title, photographer unknown

The Last Bolshevik

my yin is doing an anusara yoga immersion in Hollywood this afternoon:

not that one.

this one:

image from Larry Clark's Bully

and while she's busy "opening to grace" using her "inner spiral" and "organic muscle energy", i decided (like any good would-be intellectual) to watch Chris Marker's documentary on Aleksandr Medvedkin, The Last Bolshevik:

a communist, stone-faced and decapitated

my love for Marker's work is well-documented, and The Last Bolshevik is formally stunning: the letter-writing premise, the intermission, the alternate endings that precede the film's final conclusion. Marker interrogates the image, sound, and history of the Soviet Union by examining a man who not only helped to film it, but also whose life itself (1900-1989) coincided so perfectly with the dream of a communist state.

there is something still sticking with me, however, something i can't quite name, something that makes me think back to 1997, when i took a class entitled "The History of Socialist Thought." i remember the professor (whom i dismissed as a washed-up revolutionary), the well-read anarchist (who pronounced "bourgeoisie" with a flair that has yet to be equaled), and his dreadlocked girlfriend (for whom i felt the unrivaled admixture of political and carnal desire).

but this is beside the point.

the point is what i don't remember, the words of the men (and women – Rosa Luxemburg was there indeed) who i engaged only topically, one of the many half-hearted intellectual affairs that marred my undergraduate studies.

i sometimes wonder what i missed, what might have been if i had looked one way rather than another, or even if i had just looked a little more closely. how much is forever lurking below the surface? i suppose that may be what speaks to me so strongly in Marker's films – they underscore the fact that even the most solid of images is always perforated with all the things we didn't see. and, even is we spent a lifetime looking, how could we know how to make sense of all the things we saw?

image from Medvedkin's Happiness

bonobos, sex and Gandhi

earlier this week i was listening to the Diane Rehm Show, and the second hour was devoted to bonobos, a great ape that, along with the chimpanzee, is our closest evolutionary relative. apparently, for the novice, the two animals are difficult to distinguish, but over the course of the program i was able to discern some key differences.

first and foremost, unlike the chimpanzee, bonobo males don't kill their babies, possibly because they look like old men:

luckily, this freakishly cute baby bonobo will grow up to have a cool haircut like this guy:

whose hair is coiffed not unlike like Alfalfa from Our Gang:

chimpanzees do not have cool haircuts, opting instead for crew cuts:

this chimp is bored with his own haircut

as an aside, i used to look like Alfalfa's best friend Spanky:

perhaps this childhood memory explains my burgeoning love for the bonobo, but it could also be something more primitive:

bonobos have sex

lots of sex:

exhibitionist sex:

(notice the female's gaze at the camera)

and solo sex:

sometimes they even have arty, black and white sex:

all this sex discharges tension, leading bonobos to practice ahimsa. needless to say the bonobos are in good company:

notice a resemblance between Gandhi and the baby bonobo?

the bonobos' non-violent, matriarchal societal structure undoubtedly speaks to their deep sense of spirituality and respect for the Shakti energy of the Divine Mother. furthermore, although not mentioned by the experts on the Diane Rehm Show, i believe they may have developed some manner of meditation practice as evidenced by this bonobo in the San Diego zoo:

bonobo hand in chin mudra

human hand in chin mudra

the Mahatma would be proud...

for more information on the bonobo, please visit and support:

The Bonobo Conservation Initiative

Friends of the Bonobos

happy (belated) birtday

this past Sunday i was too concerned with balloons and birthday parties to take notice, but May 30 marked the second anniversary of this particular piece of html and java script. so, happy (belated) birthday – we've come a long way since that first Friday morning together:

new website coming this summer...

dream of former lover and future novel

1:35am

dream of train, beach, sand, and J______. the train is moving; the train is time. i step out on one edge of the platform and take a picture. i take pictures from all angles. N_____ is there; she is J______'s best friend. i take various photos from various angles.

as i walk down the platform i age. i take pictures, trying to remember all the things that were. i catch glimpses of J______
in the passing train. i cannot believe it is her. i take pictures, wondering if she will be there when i get back, wondering if
she has forgiven me.

eventually we are face to face. i begin sobbing, not knowing if we will speak, not knowing if i will live long enough to explain and make it all up to her – not knowing if she will listen.

in the back of my mind, i start writing the story both ways, so that art will be made if she listens, art will be made if she doesn't listen. this creative force – this manipulation – pulls me from the experience, pries me from the dream until i wake in bed, half-panting and wondering what just happened.

will i ever be able to write this book and give form to the things i feel and felt and explain it into being? am i lazy or just too afraid to try? how will i know if i don't give myself the time to finish?