Reality Won’t Destroy Me

I hadn’t written in quite a long while and then suddenly, here was Ray Bradbury telling me You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

So this morning, my faithful Waterman and I chose to go back to writing our Morning Pages.

It was about time…

QUESTION: What does a girl do, on a Friday night, when she has no television, no internet, and when the only stations she catches on her radio are Radio-Canada Première chaîne, CBC Radio One, and CIME FM (antithesis of CHOM)?

ANSWER: She drives hundreds of cloves into oranges while listening to her collection of old CDs.

Once the arts-and-crafts part of the evening is over, she settles down on the couch with popcorn and grape juice to watch Christmas in Connecticut, a four-dollar-and-ninety-nine-cent-DVD she discovered soon after entering her local Canadian Tire store — where she was on a quest to find the perfect toilet bowl scrubbing brush —, a black and white movie, circa 1945, starring Barbara Stanwyck and the ever-so-handsome Dennis Morgan.

That’s it.

That’s what I did last night.

Because as of November 2, I now live in Mont-Tremblant / Saint-Jovite, where I’m not connected to Cogeco or to Sirius or to any other highly technological device. Actually, I still don’t know if I’ll ever end up being connected to the Twenty-First Century, but one thing I do know for sure is that I’m not afraid of 2012. Nope, not one bit afraid of the end of the world. For me, the end of the world happened this year. And I don’t feel like talking about it.

At the moment, I’m chilling. I’m relaxing.
I’m taking things as they come.

You see, I’ve decided — finally — that from now on,
everything will be all right,
everything will be okay,
everything will be fine.

Life is beautiful.
Oh yeah!

P.S.: I’m grateful for Van Houtte‘s internet connection.

P.P.S.: My tiny one-and-a-half apartment reeks of cloves. Good thing I didn’t decorate the whole bag of oranges. Sheesh…

P.P.P.S.: Thanks for reading my stuff after all these months. If you have the time, please leave a comment and tell me how you’re doing.
I LOVE YOU

Lunch with the Dalai Lama

Yesterday, I had supper with Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
Today, I had lunch with the Dalai Lama.
Lucky moi, eh?

You see, I’ve been living all by my lonesome self for 12 years now, and it’s become a habit of mine to read while I eat my meals.

Today, for instance, I had the honour to share my sandwich and salad with His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama via his book, How to See Yourself As You Really Are.

Here’s what the Dalai Lama has to say in the introduction:

My Perspective

When we rise in the morning and listen to the news or read the newspaper, we are confronted with the same sad stories — violence, wars, and disasters. It is clear that even in modern times precious life is not safe: I cannot recall a single daily news program without a report of crime somewhere. There is so much bad news nowadays, such an awareness of fear and tension, that any sensitive and compassionate being must question the “progress” we have made in our modern world.

Ironically, the most serious problems emanate from industrially advanced societies, where unprecedented literacy only seems to have fostered restlessness and discontent. There is no doubt about our collective progress in many areas — especially science and technology — but somehow our advances in knowledge are not sufficient. Basic human problems remain. We have not succeeded in bringing about peace, or in reducing overall suffering.

This situation brings me to the conclusion that there may be something seriously wrong with the way we conduct our affairs, which, if not checked in time, could have disastrous consequences for the future of humanity. Science and technology have contributed immensely to the overall development of humankind, to our material comfort and well-being as well as to our understanding of the world we live in. But if we put too much emphasis on these endeavors, we are in danger of losing those aspects of human knowledge that contribute to the development of an honest and altruistic personality.

Science and technology cannot replace the age-old spiritual values that have been largely responsible for the true progress of world civilization as we know it today. Not one can deny the material benefits of modern life, but we are still faced with suffering, fear, and tension — perhaps more now than ever before. So it is only sensible to try to strike a balance between material development on the one side and development of spiritual values on the other. In order to bring about a great change, we need to revive and strengthen our inner values.

I hope that you share my concern about the present worldwide moral crisis, and that you will join me in calling on all  humanitarians and religious practitioners who share this concern to contribute to making our societies more compassionate, just, and equitable. I say this not as a Buddhist or even as a Tibetan but simply as a human being. I also do not speak as an expert on international politics (though I unavoidably comment on these matters) but as a part of the Buddhist tradition, which like the traditions of other great world religions, is founded on the bedrock of concern for all beings. From this perspective, I share with you the following personal beliefs:

1. That universal concern is essential to solving global problems.
2. That love and compassion are the pillars of world peace.
3. That all world religions seek to advance world peace, as do all humanitarians of whatever ideology.
4. That each individual has a responsibility to shape institutions to serve the needs of the world.

* * *

Throughout the book, His Holiness offers step-by-step exercises to help us shatter our false assumptions and ideas… and see the world as it actually exists. So if you want to discover the reality behind appearances, put your 3D glasses on and read the book!

P.S. : I’m not too sure about No. 3 = that all world religions seek to advance world peace. How about you?

exCerpt du jour (1) – Erica Jong on Henry Miller

“exCerpt du jour” is a new series
all about… excerpts!

Excerpts from books, magazine and newspaper articles,
songs, poems, even excerpts from my personal journals.

So whenever I feel like sharing something that stirs me in some way,
I’ll have a “special box” to put it in.

Today’s excerpt is from
The Devil at Large — Erica Jong on Henry Miller.
Published in 1993

The book jacket describes it as being “part biography, part memoir, part critical study, part exploration of sexual politics in our times.” But for me it’s the story of a beautiful friendship, one that began in 1974 when Erica Jong, then the author of a relatively obscure first novel called Fear of Flying, received an enthusiastic fan letter from Henry Miller, then an old man of eighty-three. The friendship would last until Miller’s death in 1980.

I first read Devil at Large in May 1995 (jotted the date inside the book). Back then, having previously struggled through Miller’s infamous Tropic of Cancer and, of course,  knowing full well his reputation as  a misogynist and writer of smut, I was surprised to learn that he was actually a spiritual man. His “aha! moment” came in 1939 when he left Paris and settled in Greece, hoping to wait out the war there. Aged forty-seven, Henry was about to be transformed.

And so it is that Miller found in Greece the inspiration for his book The Colossus of Maroussi which brought about many discussions. Here’s what Jong has to say about Miller’s transition from lewdness to light:

Mary Dearborn acknowledges the beauty of Maroussi‘s prose, but she dismisses the book in a few lines: “His recounting of one spiritual experience after another tends to bore readers who are not taken up with mysticism.”

Of course, “mysticism” — the very word has become pejorative — is always boring to those who believe only in materialism. “Boring” is in itself a codeword for fear — as any psychoanalyst can tell you. There is a whole school of journalists and critics who will dismiss as “New Age claptrap” everything from Maroussi to Walden to the Tao Te Ching to Shirley MacLaine’s bestsellers as if there were no difference in quality or in kind.

Probably the fear of enlightenment is greater in some people than the attraction toward it, but some of us are drawn to it, while others stubbornly turn their backs, claiming the light does not exist. One cannot argue about the possibility of enlightenment any more than one can argue about the existence of god and goddess. It requires a leap of faith, an act of amazing grace. Miller made that leap of faith in Greece. Many of his chroniclers cannot follow him.

Even Robert Ferguson, who is a somewhat less grudging and bitter critic of Henry than Mary Dearborn, says of Maroussi that “a second rebirth, coming so soon after the first one in Paris with Tropic of Cancer, might seem like one rebirth too many.” But spiritual experiences are cumulative. They gather like waves and result in breakthroughs. Creative life does not proceed by accumulating anthills of  “facts.” Rather there is a slow accretion of experience, of learning one’s craft, of growing spiritually, until suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, one soars to a new level. If you’ve experienced it, you believe it. If you haven’t, you disbelieve.

Of all Henry’s biographers, Jay Martin best comprehends Miller’s mission to free his readers. He records the sense of liberation and ease Miller felt in Greece. After the frenzy of the Paris years, where he wrote and wrote to empty himself of the bitterness of his past, he was finally able to draw a long breath of life and light. He returned to America a new person. In a sense, his soul had been shriven.

Perhaps Maroussi is played down by Miller’s biographers because it is “a book without sex,” as one of his Greek friends predicted. It doesn’t fit the Miller stereotype, so it is safer to ignore it than to acknowledge that Miller was multifaceted, both as a human being and as a writer. In this age of electronic sound bites and media stereotyping, few public figures are allowed complexity, compli- cation, or chiaroscuro ⁽¹⁾. Miller is seen as the antic goat, nothing more. How can we notice that his central book is full of sea and sun, not slime and sperm? It would make our precious point of view seem wrong! The truth is that Miller was on a spiritual journey his whole life — and Greece was at the heart of it.

…

Henry turned serene, almost seraphic in Greece, and all his friends noticed the change. He began his lifelong romance with the wisdom of the ages — yoga, Zen, the I Ching. His friend Ghika (whom he called Giks), the painter from Hydra, predicted that Greece would change Henry: “If you came to Greece as a Parisian bohemian, you have become a pilgrim,” he said. “Henceforth your writing must be different.” Maroussi was to prove Ghika right.

⁽¹⁾ Chiaroscuro: here’s the meaning… just in case you don’t know.
I sure didn’t!

Now off to the library I go…
to fetch The Colossus of Maroussi.