Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Your Undivided Attention
It doesn't matter if you're a democrat or a republican, an artist or a businessperson, a right wing pastor or a gay rights activist, mainstreamer or counter culture burner -- as long as you believe in an us and a them, you will never be free.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
"...those idiots I call the unenlightened."
The above was a snippet of conversation I heard over lunch the other day. The irony of it amused me to no end, because I'm pretty sure that if you still consider some people to be idiots, that's a pretty strong indicator that you, yourself, are unenlightened.
The world is, after all, a perfect mirror for our own mind. So everything and everyone we encounter are pretty much like a smartass 4th grader who goes around saying, "I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks on you."
That little phrase also reminds me of an experience I had a few times when I was living in Bali. Because the Balinese have a rather more flexible sense of time than we do (they call it "rubber time"), we'd often find ourselves just kind of hanging around, maybe waiting for someone, with nothing particular to do. Our Balinese friends, probably sensing our American discomfort of having nothing to do, would invariably say something like, "Are you boring?" And we would laugh at the grammatical error, think, yes we're terribly bored, and then emphatically answer, "No, of course we're not boring." Because no one wants to admit being boring. But as my meditation teacher once pointed out: Bored only happens to the boring.
So, if we think, "idiots" - that's the world/people reflecting the irritation, annoyance, pride in our own mind. We think that the way to avoid idiots is to, well, avoid idiots. By being brusque with people we find irritating, honking at the annoying driver, joining groups opposing them on facebook. And maybe we think, what's wrong with that? Well, maybe nothing, if it worked. But it doesn't. The more irritated we become, the more idiots appear.
The only real way to get rid of idiots is to get rid of the annoyance, irritation, impatience in our own mind. Which doesn't seem like it would work, but it does. First, the things that used to annoy us, and then, as if by magic, people actually sometimes change their behavior. It can seem coincidental the first time it happens, but after awhile...
Or maybe we might think, "I'm just imagining it." To which the Buddha might say, "You're just imagining everything, you might as well imagine something good." Like maybe a world with no idiots.
The world is, after all, a perfect mirror for our own mind. So everything and everyone we encounter are pretty much like a smartass 4th grader who goes around saying, "I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks on you."
That little phrase also reminds me of an experience I had a few times when I was living in Bali. Because the Balinese have a rather more flexible sense of time than we do (they call it "rubber time"), we'd often find ourselves just kind of hanging around, maybe waiting for someone, with nothing particular to do. Our Balinese friends, probably sensing our American discomfort of having nothing to do, would invariably say something like, "Are you boring?" And we would laugh at the grammatical error, think, yes we're terribly bored, and then emphatically answer, "No, of course we're not boring." Because no one wants to admit being boring. But as my meditation teacher once pointed out: Bored only happens to the boring.
So, if we think, "idiots" - that's the world/people reflecting the irritation, annoyance, pride in our own mind. We think that the way to avoid idiots is to, well, avoid idiots. By being brusque with people we find irritating, honking at the annoying driver, joining groups opposing them on facebook. And maybe we think, what's wrong with that? Well, maybe nothing, if it worked. But it doesn't. The more irritated we become, the more idiots appear.
The only real way to get rid of idiots is to get rid of the annoyance, irritation, impatience in our own mind. Which doesn't seem like it would work, but it does. First, the things that used to annoy us, and then, as if by magic, people actually sometimes change their behavior. It can seem coincidental the first time it happens, but after awhile...
Or maybe we might think, "I'm just imagining it." To which the Buddha might say, "You're just imagining everything, you might as well imagine something good." Like maybe a world with no idiots.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Lucky
A couple of weeks ago, I had something very exciting, even shocking, happen that occurred completely out of the blue. A script I had written three years ago on spec, a script I did as a passion project but which seemed to have gone the way of so many screenplays in this town, i.e., dying a quiet, unnoticed little death, got set up at a Big Studio. Following which, Big Studio messengered a nice fat check to my lawyer, who then delivered it to me at a celebratory dinner with my manager and a couple of my closest friends at a fancy restaurant where Christopher Nolan was at the next table.
It was a Hollywood moment. It was the equivalent of, in a cartoon world, a big bag of money falling out of the sky and landing on my head. In the world of fairy tales and myths it was the unexpected boon. (In the world of fairy tales and myths, it is also the job of the person who receives the boon to bring it back out of the world of magic and share it with the community, and that’s partly what I’m trying to do here.)
Wow, how lucky, you might be thinking. Yes, yes, very lucky. And very, very welcome after about two years during which I literally felt as if my luck had completely run out. So, yes, I feel very fortunate indeed. Especially because, you can’t really control luck. Or can you? Most of my friends and family responded with cheers, screams, “It’s about times” and “I knew it would happens.” But there have been others, of a little more, shall we say unusual spiritual bent, who have asked, how do you think that happened? Or, how did you do that?
Well, as much as I can know (because, really, who does?) is this: What I think, what I suspect, is that it came from what I can describe most simply as an attitude adjustment. A little internal switch in which I moved from feeling unlucky to lucky, from feeling like everything I wanted was out of my reach to feeling like, really, I have a ridiculous amount of most of the things anyone could possibly want, or, as one new friend recently put it, from struggling to swim upstream to relaxing into the downstream flow.
How did I do that? Well, I think it all started with a little gratitude list. Yes, one of those little list of five things each day that I’m grateful for. I know, I know. How self-help-y, right? That’s what I used to think, too. Until, well…see above. And I also tried to start giving more.
And it does seem strange, and maybe to some, pretty unlikely, that something so small can have such a big effect. It seems like, in order to make changes in our lives we have to do something big, we have to make the grand gesture, do something outwardly significant like, I don’t know, start getting up earlier in the morning, like really early, like your grandfather who grew up on a farm used to do. It seems like we have to struggle, to labor, to claw and scratch and suffer. This idea reminds me of a quote from one of the very first spiritual books I read as a teenager. To paraphrase: Life is not a struggle. To realize this takes struggle. But life itself is not a struggle.
I think life seems like a struggle because trying to affect the outward conditions of our lives by trying to rearrange external things is like trying to rearrange the images on a movie screen once the film has already started to roll. Read: impossible.
In reality, internal changes are not only the most effective changes we can make, but are actually the only way to affect our life, our circumstances, our world.
Another friend, a fellow meditation teacher, recently explained this with a perfect analogy. Imagine an archer, in position, bow taught, ready to release an arrow. If he or she moves their body even a tiny amount, a millimeter, if he or she breathes one millisecond earlier or later, that arrow will go in a completely different direction.
This is the power of our minds. We shift what’s going in our minds even slightly (but decidedly) from negative to positive, and we have no idea how big a shift the trajectory of our lives will take.
Why? Well, to lay a little Buddhadharma on you: because our lives, our world, our experiences are a perfect reflection of our minds. That’s why, if you don’t change your mind, but you still try to change your circumstances, or the experience of your life, it doesn’t work. It’s like you’re sitting in a movie theater and watching a movie you don’t like. So you get up, go to the projection booth, pick up the film, get in your car, drive across town or across the country, go into another theater, give the film to the projectionist, sit down, and then can’t figure out why you’re watching the same damn movie.
But once you make an improvement in your mind: new movie starts to play. Then you feel better, and then other things happen in your life that also make you feel better. Sometimes it seems like coincidence or luck, but I’m becoming more and more convinced that this is how things work. And I’m becoming convinced because getting this surprise, this unexpected boon, was not the thing that made me feel happier and luckier than I had in a long time. It was not the big pivot point in my life that we always imagine something like this to be. Not that it isn’t amazing and great and spectacular, because it is. But the point I’m trying to make is that I was already feeling lucky and happy and in the groove/zone/flow* before it happened.
And I got there by working on the stuff I actually had control over, i.e., paying attention to what I already have, and giving away whatever I could. Gratitude and giving. What I think I will now call: The Seeds of Luck.
*Epilogue: By coincidence, or maybe not, the screenplay that got set up at WB is an adaptation of the book Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach, which begins with the following apropos parable illustrating the upstream/downstream mind, or as Buddha might put it, grasping vs. patient acceptance, which, by the way, despite how it sounds, is a joyful mind, to wit:
Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all--young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.
Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, "I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom."
The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks and you will die quicker than boredom!" But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!"
And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure." But they cried the more, "Savior!" all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Savior.
It was a Hollywood moment. It was the equivalent of, in a cartoon world, a big bag of money falling out of the sky and landing on my head. In the world of fairy tales and myths it was the unexpected boon. (In the world of fairy tales and myths, it is also the job of the person who receives the boon to bring it back out of the world of magic and share it with the community, and that’s partly what I’m trying to do here.)
Wow, how lucky, you might be thinking. Yes, yes, very lucky. And very, very welcome after about two years during which I literally felt as if my luck had completely run out. So, yes, I feel very fortunate indeed. Especially because, you can’t really control luck. Or can you? Most of my friends and family responded with cheers, screams, “It’s about times” and “I knew it would happens.” But there have been others, of a little more, shall we say unusual spiritual bent, who have asked, how do you think that happened? Or, how did you do that?
Well, as much as I can know (because, really, who does?) is this: What I think, what I suspect, is that it came from what I can describe most simply as an attitude adjustment. A little internal switch in which I moved from feeling unlucky to lucky, from feeling like everything I wanted was out of my reach to feeling like, really, I have a ridiculous amount of most of the things anyone could possibly want, or, as one new friend recently put it, from struggling to swim upstream to relaxing into the downstream flow.
How did I do that? Well, I think it all started with a little gratitude list. Yes, one of those little list of five things each day that I’m grateful for. I know, I know. How self-help-y, right? That’s what I used to think, too. Until, well…see above. And I also tried to start giving more.
And it does seem strange, and maybe to some, pretty unlikely, that something so small can have such a big effect. It seems like, in order to make changes in our lives we have to do something big, we have to make the grand gesture, do something outwardly significant like, I don’t know, start getting up earlier in the morning, like really early, like your grandfather who grew up on a farm used to do. It seems like we have to struggle, to labor, to claw and scratch and suffer. This idea reminds me of a quote from one of the very first spiritual books I read as a teenager. To paraphrase: Life is not a struggle. To realize this takes struggle. But life itself is not a struggle.
I think life seems like a struggle because trying to affect the outward conditions of our lives by trying to rearrange external things is like trying to rearrange the images on a movie screen once the film has already started to roll. Read: impossible.
In reality, internal changes are not only the most effective changes we can make, but are actually the only way to affect our life, our circumstances, our world.
Another friend, a fellow meditation teacher, recently explained this with a perfect analogy. Imagine an archer, in position, bow taught, ready to release an arrow. If he or she moves their body even a tiny amount, a millimeter, if he or she breathes one millisecond earlier or later, that arrow will go in a completely different direction.
This is the power of our minds. We shift what’s going in our minds even slightly (but decidedly) from negative to positive, and we have no idea how big a shift the trajectory of our lives will take.
Why? Well, to lay a little Buddhadharma on you: because our lives, our world, our experiences are a perfect reflection of our minds. That’s why, if you don’t change your mind, but you still try to change your circumstances, or the experience of your life, it doesn’t work. It’s like you’re sitting in a movie theater and watching a movie you don’t like. So you get up, go to the projection booth, pick up the film, get in your car, drive across town or across the country, go into another theater, give the film to the projectionist, sit down, and then can’t figure out why you’re watching the same damn movie.
But once you make an improvement in your mind: new movie starts to play. Then you feel better, and then other things happen in your life that also make you feel better. Sometimes it seems like coincidence or luck, but I’m becoming more and more convinced that this is how things work. And I’m becoming convinced because getting this surprise, this unexpected boon, was not the thing that made me feel happier and luckier than I had in a long time. It was not the big pivot point in my life that we always imagine something like this to be. Not that it isn’t amazing and great and spectacular, because it is. But the point I’m trying to make is that I was already feeling lucky and happy and in the groove/zone/flow* before it happened.
And I got there by working on the stuff I actually had control over, i.e., paying attention to what I already have, and giving away whatever I could. Gratitude and giving. What I think I will now call: The Seeds of Luck.
*Epilogue: By coincidence, or maybe not, the screenplay that got set up at WB is an adaptation of the book Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach, which begins with the following apropos parable illustrating the upstream/downstream mind, or as Buddha might put it, grasping vs. patient acceptance, which, by the way, despite how it sounds, is a joyful mind, to wit:
Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all--young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.
Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, "I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom."
The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks and you will die quicker than boredom!" But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!"
And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure." But they cried the more, "Savior!" all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Savior.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Jedi Mind Tricks for Influencing the Election...with some advice from Buddha and Ghandi and MLK
Oh boy, a Republican taking a lead in the presidential polls…anyone else having an acid-reflux inducing Monday? If you are, I have some good news – these are not the polls you’re looking for.
This week, after the exuberance of the democratic convention and the cringy-ness of the republican convention, my class in Buddhist studies started up again, and just in time. As a rule, sincere Buddhist practitioners do not involve themselves in partisan politics. This “hey, we’re Switzerland” stance is encouraged for many reasons. First, as Buddhists we’re supposed to be training our minds in things like peace and equanimity, and if there’s anything that will make your mind unpeaceful, and will make you think that all people are not like you, and that certain groups of people are worthy of your anger, it’s politics. Also, it’s usually the case that if one group of people gets what they want, that means another group of people doesn’t, and the whole point of training your mind to the point of enlightenment is so that you can relieve the suffering of all living beings without exception. And that means that all living beings without exception are legitimate objects of your love and compassion, even republicans.
But! You exclaim, Some parties/candidates are more about helping people than others are. Doesn’t that matter?! And my answer to that is this post, because I know I'm not the only one feeling some anxiety about all this. Here goes...
Say you want to elect a candidate that is all about hope, and bringing people together, and not starting ridiculous wars, and helping people out of poverty, and taking responsibility for our planet. How exactly do you do that?
Well, you might say, you canvass, you call people, you donate money, you get involved, you get active you do, you know, political stuff. Okay, people have been doing that, and here we are. So let me bring in a different perspective with a small quote from Mahatma Ghandi:
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
With that in mind, I’ll ask the same question again. Say you want to elect a candidate who’s all about hope, and helping people and bringing people together. How do you do that? And now let’s say you watched the republican convention and now you’ve seen the follow up polls, and now you’re feeling angry, and maybe a little discouraged, and you can’t possibly fathom how some people can believe the things they do, and maybe you’re saying things like “Sarah Palin is the devil,” and maybe you want to strike someone down with your hatred.
Is that you being the change you wish to see in the world? No, that’s you crossing over to the dark side and making the emperor gleeful.
EMPEROR: Good. I can feel your anger. I am defenseless. Take your weapon! Strike me down with all your hatred, and your journey towards the dark side will be complete.
(And, here, again, by “you” I mean “me”, and by emperor I mean the forces of darkness, I think we know who they are.)
But now, with the dark side threatening, maybe it’s better to take advice from Yoda and not from the evil emperor.
YODA: Remember, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware. Anger,fear, aggression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, foreverwill it dominate your destiny.
Hands up, who feels like our destiny is currently dominated by anger, fear and aggression? I don’t think I’m the only one raising my hand.
But, here’s a surprise, guess where that anger, fear and aggression is coming from? You, young Skywalker, you.
My mom once asked me, from a Buddhist perspective, why we have George Bush as a president who got us into a war that many of us did not want. The (possible) answer (possible, because, as some of you may be aware, I am not omniscient, so this is just my best guess), is collective karma.
Buddha taught that it is impossible for us to experience anything that we did not create the karma to experience. He also taught that the world “out there” is not separate from our mind. In fact, the world out there is a perfect reflection of our own minds. (In other words, Republicans don’t make us angry. Our anger makes Republicans.)
Bad news, this means you can’t blame anyone or anything for your unhappiness, even Republicans. The good news is, in order to change the world, the only thing you need to do is change your mind.
So, one more time (this time with feeling), say you want to elect a candidate who is all about hope, and helping people and bringing people together. How do you do that? By cultivating hope, and peace, and love within our own minds. (Yes, you must even love Republicans – just think of them all as your Republican grandmother, it makes it easier). Our minds are the most powerful things in the universe, and karma changes moment by moment. Anything can happen. And if we want people (and by “people” I mean “swing voters”), to act out of hope love and compassion instead of anger and fear and aggression, we have to do the same thing.
Because that’s how things work. So sayeth one of the most powerful “agents of change” to ever walk our shores.
We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured. – Martin Luther King
Keep hope (and love, and compassion) alive. Because if you do that, the world can’t help but change.
Jen
…and now, because I am in showbiz and am thus superstitious, just to balance out the word count, because I am in showbiz and am thusly superstitious: Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama
This week, after the exuberance of the democratic convention and the cringy-ness of the republican convention, my class in Buddhist studies started up again, and just in time. As a rule, sincere Buddhist practitioners do not involve themselves in partisan politics. This “hey, we’re Switzerland” stance is encouraged for many reasons. First, as Buddhists we’re supposed to be training our minds in things like peace and equanimity, and if there’s anything that will make your mind unpeaceful, and will make you think that all people are not like you, and that certain groups of people are worthy of your anger, it’s politics. Also, it’s usually the case that if one group of people gets what they want, that means another group of people doesn’t, and the whole point of training your mind to the point of enlightenment is so that you can relieve the suffering of all living beings without exception. And that means that all living beings without exception are legitimate objects of your love and compassion, even republicans.
But! You exclaim, Some parties/candidates are more about helping people than others are. Doesn’t that matter?! And my answer to that is this post, because I know I'm not the only one feeling some anxiety about all this. Here goes...
Say you want to elect a candidate that is all about hope, and bringing people together, and not starting ridiculous wars, and helping people out of poverty, and taking responsibility for our planet. How exactly do you do that?
Well, you might say, you canvass, you call people, you donate money, you get involved, you get active you do, you know, political stuff. Okay, people have been doing that, and here we are. So let me bring in a different perspective with a small quote from Mahatma Ghandi:
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
With that in mind, I’ll ask the same question again. Say you want to elect a candidate who’s all about hope, and helping people and bringing people together. How do you do that? And now let’s say you watched the republican convention and now you’ve seen the follow up polls, and now you’re feeling angry, and maybe a little discouraged, and you can’t possibly fathom how some people can believe the things they do, and maybe you’re saying things like “Sarah Palin is the devil,” and maybe you want to strike someone down with your hatred.
Is that you being the change you wish to see in the world? No, that’s you crossing over to the dark side and making the emperor gleeful.
EMPEROR: Good. I can feel your anger. I am defenseless. Take your weapon! Strike me down with all your hatred, and your journey towards the dark side will be complete.
(And, here, again, by “you” I mean “me”, and by emperor I mean the forces of darkness, I think we know who they are.)
But now, with the dark side threatening, maybe it’s better to take advice from Yoda and not from the evil emperor.
YODA: Remember, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware. Anger,fear, aggression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, foreverwill it dominate your destiny.
Hands up, who feels like our destiny is currently dominated by anger, fear and aggression? I don’t think I’m the only one raising my hand.
But, here’s a surprise, guess where that anger, fear and aggression is coming from? You, young Skywalker, you.
My mom once asked me, from a Buddhist perspective, why we have George Bush as a president who got us into a war that many of us did not want. The (possible) answer (possible, because, as some of you may be aware, I am not omniscient, so this is just my best guess), is collective karma.
Buddha taught that it is impossible for us to experience anything that we did not create the karma to experience. He also taught that the world “out there” is not separate from our mind. In fact, the world out there is a perfect reflection of our own minds. (In other words, Republicans don’t make us angry. Our anger makes Republicans.)
Bad news, this means you can’t blame anyone or anything for your unhappiness, even Republicans. The good news is, in order to change the world, the only thing you need to do is change your mind.
So, one more time (this time with feeling), say you want to elect a candidate who is all about hope, and helping people and bringing people together. How do you do that? By cultivating hope, and peace, and love within our own minds. (Yes, you must even love Republicans – just think of them all as your Republican grandmother, it makes it easier). Our minds are the most powerful things in the universe, and karma changes moment by moment. Anything can happen. And if we want people (and by “people” I mean “swing voters”), to act out of hope love and compassion instead of anger and fear and aggression, we have to do the same thing.
Because that’s how things work. So sayeth one of the most powerful “agents of change” to ever walk our shores.
We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured. – Martin Luther King
Keep hope (and love, and compassion) alive. Because if you do that, the world can’t help but change.
Jen
…and now, because I am in showbiz and am thus superstitious, just to balance out the word count, because I am in showbiz and am thusly superstitious: Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama Democrat Obama
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
My Cat is Luca Brasi
I saw it coming, and yet...
A while ago I mused that, in a former life, my cat may have been a popular Italian grocer who was maybe a bit of a philanderer. Well...I got the Italian part right. And although he is much cuter than the above mentioned mafia enforcer, he nonetheless has a predilection for the same kind of, shall we say, "offer."
Several days ago, I came home from work and found a little something next to my bed. Please pay attention to the "next to" part of that sentence. It looks rather odd, like maybe a large beetle or something. But, on closer inspection, it turns out to be part of a rat snout.
And now I feel compelled to issue a grossness warning. It only gets worse from here. So if your stomach is easily disturbed, stop reading now.
Yes, in fact, only part of a rat snout. Apparently head and ears, delicious. Eyes, nose, tongue, whiskers, not so much. (But, as another cat-owning friend pointed out - probably a delicacy in China.) The cat got a scolding - like how you do with a puppy - you put their nose in it, and say "No" rather forcefully. And if you know cats, you also know that all this was done to no avail.
Let's call this "The Rat Snout Incident." After this happened, I began to compare it to a certain scene in The Godfather. It turns out I did so at my own peril.
A while ago I mused that, in a former life, my cat may have been a popular Italian grocer who was maybe a bit of a philanderer. Well...I got the Italian part right. And although he is much cuter than the above mentioned mafia enforcer, he nonetheless has a predilection for the same kind of, shall we say, "offer."
Several days ago, I came home from work and found a little something next to my bed. Please pay attention to the "next to" part of that sentence. It looks rather odd, like maybe a large beetle or something. But, on closer inspection, it turns out to be part of a rat snout.
And now I feel compelled to issue a grossness warning. It only gets worse from here. So if your stomach is easily disturbed, stop reading now.
Yes, in fact, only part of a rat snout. Apparently head and ears, delicious. Eyes, nose, tongue, whiskers, not so much. (But, as another cat-owning friend pointed out - probably a delicacy in China.) The cat got a scolding - like how you do with a puppy - you put their nose in it, and say "No" rather forcefully. And if you know cats, you also know that all this was done to no avail.
Let's call this "The Rat Snout Incident." After this happened, I began to compare it to a certain scene in The Godfather. It turns out I did so at my own peril.
And now, you can see what's coming, too.
In the wee hours of this morning, I hear the cat come in through the window, meowing in a rather muffled tone, accompanied by a kind of swishing sound. Oh no, I thought. And I was right. He's standing next to the bed with a rat in his mouth. So I scold him, and bound out of bed, and he jumps back through the window. I go back to bed.
Here, I will point out my fatal mistake: I did not close the window.
Sometime later, I roll over in bed, and feel something soft and furry and a little lumpy at my ankle. The irrational, still hopeful, part of my brain thinks: It could be fuzzy dice, or those tennis socks with the little pom-poms on the end. Rational part of brain: You don't own fuzzy dice or tennis socks and how would they get into your bed anyway? Irrational part of brain: Please let it miraculously be fuzzy dice or tennis socks anyway.
I turn on the light. I pull back the sheets. Dead rat.
I didn't do that scream where the camera pulls back through the universe. I just thought, "Of course." And, "At least it's not a huge ugly sewer rat, but one of those cute fruit rats that's somewhere between a mouse and a rat... poor cute fruit rat." And also, "At least it's in one piece."
And now I'm happy that my former roommate's mother bought a gigantic box of surgical gloves from Costco. I remove the deceased rodent to the outdoors (while saying some mantras for his/her benefit). Frodo immediately shows up and starts stalking it again. So I whisk him inside and give him what I believe is referred to as "A Good Old Fashioned Talking To."
He's looking at me with his cutest face, and responding with his cutest high-pitched meow, and I'm not buying it. I keep at it. I almost went to "I'm very disappointed in you," but at that point, I think he's got it. He knows I'm unhappy with him. I'm also fairly certain he has no idea why.
So it's back to the cat bib. Although, I'm not sure it will make much of a difference, since once he showed up with the cat bib on and a rat in his mouth. Maybe it's time for the extra large cat bib.
Also, now that I think about it, if you were to meet Frodo, you might think, "Hm, cute, quiet, unassuming, sleeps a lot." I guess we know who the real serial killer in the neighborhood is.
Monday, August 11, 2008
It turns out one of my neighbors is a Knife Thrower
So I get home from a little grocery shopping last night, and hear, from somewhere in the neighborhood, a loud twangy whacking sound. Like someone beating cement with a lead pipe. I think, Wow, that's loud. And also kind of annoying for a Sunday evening. Someone must be... and here I draw a blank. This kind of sound does not correspond to: a. car maintenance b. home repair c. croquet, badminton, bocce ball or any other sort of back yard amusement (no, not even horse shoes).
I go inside, put groceries away, feed the cat. Still very loud whacking sound. I can't stand it, I have to see what's going on. So I go and stand on one of the benches next to the fence that surrounds the back patio/pool deck and look over into the neighbor's back yard. And there's a guy, holding three throwing knives, looking with concentration at a wooden target, and throwing his knives.
At this point I think, should I say something? And then I think: Hm. Airborne knives. Maybe not.
I go inside, put groceries away, feed the cat. Still very loud whacking sound. I can't stand it, I have to see what's going on. So I go and stand on one of the benches next to the fence that surrounds the back patio/pool deck and look over into the neighbor's back yard. And there's a guy, holding three throwing knives, looking with concentration at a wooden target, and throwing his knives.
At this point I think, should I say something? And then I think: Hm. Airborne knives. Maybe not.
So I go back inside. And decided that this was a good thing. Why? Because at least I know he's not a serial killer. Whenever they interview the neighbors of a person who turned out to be a serial killer, they always say things like, "He was so quiet and unassuming." If there's anything knife throwing is not, it's quiet and unassuming.
I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that I will never say these words: "Oh, yeah, that guy who murdered eight people and left a weird circus-like crime scene behind? I TOTALLY saw him practicing his knife throwing. And everyone within half a mile TOTALLY heard him practicing his knife throwing. But he wasn't quiet and unassuming, so we weren't worried."
It's kind of like that scene in The World According to Garp when an airplane flies into the house that Garp and his wife are looking at, and he goes, "We'll take it." Because what are the odds of that happening twice?
Instead, I'm going to think that my neighbor is practicing for the circus, or some other profession in which knife throwing is important. I don't know, do they do it at the Renaissance Faire?
I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that I will never say these words: "Oh, yeah, that guy who murdered eight people and left a weird circus-like crime scene behind? I TOTALLY saw him practicing his knife throwing. And everyone within half a mile TOTALLY heard him practicing his knife throwing. But he wasn't quiet and unassuming, so we weren't worried."
It's kind of like that scene in The World According to Garp when an airplane flies into the house that Garp and his wife are looking at, and he goes, "We'll take it." Because what are the odds of that happening twice?
Instead, I'm going to think that my neighbor is practicing for the circus, or some other profession in which knife throwing is important. I don't know, do they do it at the Renaissance Faire?
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Reunion
Don't Know Mind
So it was my high school reunion last weekend. It was really fun, and a little surreal. Surreal because, here's the thing, people change and don't change, both at the same time. And both of these things are good.
First, people change. So, I don't know if this is true for everyone, or is just more the case if you grow up in a small town, because, not only do you know people from high school, chances are, you've known them for a very long time, from elementary school, from when they cracked their head open on a desk and had to go to the office to get bactine put on it, from when they used to shoot spitballs at the ceiling, from when they broke their tailbone sledding down the hill at your house, through all the times they decided to change the spelling of their name for cultural and/or esthetic reasons. When you've known people for that long, they tend to get stuck in one period of time. And so, you go to a reunion thinking that, while you've grown and changed and been out in the world and hopefully learned some stuff, they're still the person you remember from high school, the person who teased you, or thought you were stuck up, or who maybe didn't even notice you (you thought).
I'm happy to report that this is not the case. Everyone has grown, and changed and learned some stuff. And most people I talked to had grown and changed and learned enough stuff that we could laugh at ourselves as much as we used to laugh at each other.
But, people also don't change. Why is this good? Continuity. We are people who remember each other. Some people remembered things about me I had forgotten about myself. We remember where we all came from, so we know each other in a different way (even if it's been cough cough number of years since we've seen each other) than people who only know us from work or even from college. We know that we were all dorky, or skinny, or short, or shy, or whatever. And so when we see each other as functioning, productive adults, it's both reassuring and revelatory at the same time.
What makes it surreal is when we try to integrate the person we see in front of us now with the stuck-in-time image we have of them from the past. But, actually, what this disconnect does is give us a glimpse into the true nature of existence. Both our own existence, and the way other people exist.
It feels surreal to have two images of one person in front of us, because we have the mistaken assumption that only one of them can be the right one, the real one. Our brain struggles to reconcile the two. But if we hang out in that space for a moment (what the Zen Buddhists call "don't know mind"), if we let ourselves feel that disconnect, we may discover something profound.
I'm sitting across from a classmate, and my mind is going, here's this interesting, intelligent, funny, grown up person who doesn't match with the skinny, short, yes still funny but in a different way image of this person in my head. Which one is the real one? The answer is both. Or neither. Both are the same in their level of reality. But neither are actually real. Our image of that person, or any person, is primarily a projection of our own mind. I say primarily because, it's not like they don't exist at all - your mind, for instance, can't turn Kelly into Shelli. But most of our experience of that person has to do with us and not them.
A high school reunion is a great venue for this kind of revelation. Even just on the level of: If I knew then what I know now. One example: Then: these boys are arrogant and cocky and won't talk to me because I'm not a cheerleader. Now: those boys were afraid of girls. Ergo: Those arrogant cocky boys were a projection of my own insecurities.
I know this is not a breakthrough, and logically, we all know this to be true, but when you sit down with someone who you knew then, and they tell you what they were really thinking and what was really going on, you get it on a whole new experiential level. And then, and then, you may realize that whatever story you told yourself about high school (and that's an important story, because those years are so formative), was just that...a story. And with new information, you can create a new story. If you want to.
And maybe that's the lesson here. You can always create a new story. About yourself, about anything that happened to you, about anyone you know. We're making it all up anyway, you might as well make up something good.
So that's what I learned at my high school reunion. Go Bears.
First, people change. So, I don't know if this is true for everyone, or is just more the case if you grow up in a small town, because, not only do you know people from high school, chances are, you've known them for a very long time, from elementary school, from when they cracked their head open on a desk and had to go to the office to get bactine put on it, from when they used to shoot spitballs at the ceiling, from when they broke their tailbone sledding down the hill at your house, through all the times they decided to change the spelling of their name for cultural and/or esthetic reasons. When you've known people for that long, they tend to get stuck in one period of time. And so, you go to a reunion thinking that, while you've grown and changed and been out in the world and hopefully learned some stuff, they're still the person you remember from high school, the person who teased you, or thought you were stuck up, or who maybe didn't even notice you (you thought).
I'm happy to report that this is not the case. Everyone has grown, and changed and learned some stuff. And most people I talked to had grown and changed and learned enough stuff that we could laugh at ourselves as much as we used to laugh at each other.
But, people also don't change. Why is this good? Continuity. We are people who remember each other. Some people remembered things about me I had forgotten about myself. We remember where we all came from, so we know each other in a different way (even if it's been cough cough number of years since we've seen each other) than people who only know us from work or even from college. We know that we were all dorky, or skinny, or short, or shy, or whatever. And so when we see each other as functioning, productive adults, it's both reassuring and revelatory at the same time.
What makes it surreal is when we try to integrate the person we see in front of us now with the stuck-in-time image we have of them from the past. But, actually, what this disconnect does is give us a glimpse into the true nature of existence. Both our own existence, and the way other people exist.
It feels surreal to have two images of one person in front of us, because we have the mistaken assumption that only one of them can be the right one, the real one. Our brain struggles to reconcile the two. But if we hang out in that space for a moment (what the Zen Buddhists call "don't know mind"), if we let ourselves feel that disconnect, we may discover something profound.
I'm sitting across from a classmate, and my mind is going, here's this interesting, intelligent, funny, grown up person who doesn't match with the skinny, short, yes still funny but in a different way image of this person in my head. Which one is the real one? The answer is both. Or neither. Both are the same in their level of reality. But neither are actually real. Our image of that person, or any person, is primarily a projection of our own mind. I say primarily because, it's not like they don't exist at all - your mind, for instance, can't turn Kelly into Shelli. But most of our experience of that person has to do with us and not them.
A high school reunion is a great venue for this kind of revelation. Even just on the level of: If I knew then what I know now. One example: Then: these boys are arrogant and cocky and won't talk to me because I'm not a cheerleader. Now: those boys were afraid of girls. Ergo: Those arrogant cocky boys were a projection of my own insecurities.
I know this is not a breakthrough, and logically, we all know this to be true, but when you sit down with someone who you knew then, and they tell you what they were really thinking and what was really going on, you get it on a whole new experiential level. And then, and then, you may realize that whatever story you told yourself about high school (and that's an important story, because those years are so formative), was just that...a story. And with new information, you can create a new story. If you want to.
And maybe that's the lesson here. You can always create a new story. About yourself, about anything that happened to you, about anyone you know. We're making it all up anyway, you might as well make up something good.
So that's what I learned at my high school reunion. Go Bears.
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