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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

CSI - Feline Offense Unit

Okay, I wasn't going to be one of those people who blogs about how cute their cats are, but I figured I could have a dispensation in this case because I am not, in fact, going to write about how cute my cat is, I'm going to write about how my cat is like a felon. If he were human he might be in the worst of the worst category. But he would also be like Edward Norton's character in Primal Fear, because he would be all cute and adorable and you would never suspect that he was really up to no good.

Fuzzy Tummy of Doom

Yes, I understand that cats are predators and natural hunters. But some cats are more skilled than others, and some cats get a particularly wacko "kill kill kill" look in their eyes, while other cats are content to stick out a paw to pin down an almost dead house fly every few months. The former is my cat. His name is Frodo, but don't let the cute name fool you.

At my old house, he and his bad influence friend, Goldie, from across the street wiped out the feral bunny population in the neighborhood. Once, the neighbor kids found a dead bunny, and to comfort them, my former roommate held a funeral service. She asked if any of the kids would like to say anything about the passing of this cute, furry thing, and Suzie, the youngest girl expressed her feelings most accurately by simply saying, "I hate Goldie."

Frodo also once treed a raccoon at our old place. It's his distinct lack of fear that gives me the most fear.

So now we're at my new place. And for the first few months, I thought, alright, these Burbank birds are much smarter and wilier, because none of them have turned up dead on my front step.

But then, the lizards started to appear. Tail-less lizards. I believe tearing a body part off another creature counts as mayhem. So here: Count number one. Sometimes I would find the lizards still alive and rescue them to grow another tail another day. But sometimes not. At this point, though, still no birds.

That soon began to change. At first, there was still no obvious evidence. Just the circumstantial evidence that, every time I let Frodo outside, a bird would fly down to the eave of my roof and yell at him. So I figured, hm, he must have done something wrong. I know it's hearsay, and I know I'm like that guy who was with me on a jury panel once who had the sure fire, get out of jury duty free line, "I figure the guy must have done something wrong, or he wouldn't be here."

But then, evidence, just feathers at first and then cat with bird in mouth wanting to come into the house at 4am. Second count: murder.

And now for the third count. Frodo is a cat who likes to come in and go out many, many times between the hours of 4 and 7am. Of course, I attempted to sleep through his pleas to come back in once he has been chucked out, but he soon figured out that he could get the screen door to bang loudly against the door until I let him in. Then, clever me, I started propping the screen door open. No banging, and I could get back to sleep. But then, one night, I left the window open. Frodo got chucked out at around 4, but then was suddenly pouncing on my bed at 7. What the--? I got up, and sure enough, he had pried open a corner of the screen and climbed in through the window. Count three: breaking and entering.

Not much to do about the screen, except to look into getting a cat door. But then came the night, now known as the "the last straw." Frodo, as usual got chucked out at 4 am. I heard him crying to come in again around 4:30, and when I heard him go for the screen, I got up to let him in. Only to find, on the front step, actual guts, entrails, identifiable intestines, and part of a snout. Maybe a rat, I don't know. Ew! I know! But it's 4:30! So I let the cat in. Now it's 5 and he's messing around with stuff he shouldn't be messing with, so I chuck him out again. And close the window, so he won't be tempted to burglary.

Hours pass, and I get up at 7, and go to the door to let the cat in, and the front of my house looks like a crime scene. Blood and guts on the front step, and the screen torn completely off the window. So now it's clear, we named Frodo after the wrong ring bearer. Surely he should have been named after the one who likes his food "raw and wriggling."

But that was it, I went to work and promptly got online to order the "cat bib". This ingenious looking device that hooks onto a cat's collar and greatly inhibits their ability to kill. You know, in lieu of a concscience. I anticipate that the other cats will tease him mercilessly, but that's unfortunately his cross to bear for having a Buddhist for a guardian, because, yes, I'm concerned for his karma. There's not much I can do about it - and that's why Buddha said, It's easier for a human to attain enlightenment than for an animal to attain a human rebirth. (So what's taking you so long? And, again, by "you" I mean, "me.")

Also, the "Wheel of Life" which pretty much sums up all of Buddha's teachings and the nature of life and death in visual form, the entire wheel of life is held in the jaws of "Yama, the Lord of Death" because all living beings have to pass through the jaws of death. And Yama, if you ask me, looks like a cat. I don't think that's a coincidence. Many creatures have passed through Frodo's jaws.

That's his negative karma ripening as a creature who can't help but kill. He also has many good qualities: he's very friendly and outgoing, so he was probably a people person; he's cute and everyone (who isn't prey) loves him - so he must have been very patient; and he has very good living conditions: lots of food, bed to sleep on, warm dry house - so he was also very generous. I imagine he was something like an Italian grocer. Very kind and outgoing, and treated all of his customers like friends, and was always giving away food and donating money to local organzations and helping people out who had fallen on hard times. But who was maybe also a ladies man who cheated on his wife once or twice.

So, really, the least I can do is get him a cat bib, maybe help out his karma a little bit.

Crocodile Talk Show

I've been meaning to write about my new city of residence for some time now. So, perhaps this blog should have been titled "Beautiful Downtown Burbank." But it's not. And later, maybe you'll see why.

Yes, I now live in Burbank. And, yes, I do realize that it actually has "burb" in the title, and that Johnny Carson meant the "beautiful" part ironically. But as I came out of the post office on Magnolia yesterday, the post office where the workers greet you pleasantly, and, if you've been going there awhile actually call you by name, and walked past the record store (yes, record, as in vinyl), and various other small non-chain gift and furniture stores, I remembered that my first introduction to Burbank came in the form of a crocodile. A famous crocodile who knew my name.

It was one of those personalized books that my parents must have ordered for me. So my name showed up on just about every page of the book, in conjunction with my adventures with this famous crocodile. I can't remember why the crocodile was famous, but maybe it was because he could talk and maybe do a soft shoe. In the end, he became so famous that he got a talk show. And this talk show, as any talk show worth its salt did, taped in Burbank.

Which, come to think of it, is a little odd. I mean, if you're writing a children's book, and one of the characters becomes so famous that he gets his own television show, wouldn't you say that he went to Hollywood to be on TV? Instead, the writer of this book, having shot realism to the wind with a talking, dancing crocodile, decides that, no, accuracy is important here, The Tonight Show tapes in Burbank, so this Crocodile show is going to tape in Burbank.

And now that I live and work in Burbank, I have to say, I appreciate that. Because how much of what happens in "Hollywood" actually happens in Hollywood the city? There's actually only one major studio still located in Hollywood - Paramount. Guess where the other ones are? Burbank, even-more-maligned Glendale, and once-maligned-but-now-hip Culver City.

Actually, Hollywood, the idea of Hollywood is an excellent example of the Buddhist idea of emptiness, or ultimate truth. (Never thought you'd see "Hollywood" and "ultimate truth" in the same sentence, did you?). Often, emptiness gets misconstrued or misinterpreted as nothingness. But this is not its meaning. To illustrate: When I say "Hollywood" you probably get some idea or image in your head of what Hollywood is - movies, movie stars, swimming pools, fancy cars, red carpets - probably that ubiquitous shot of a studio backlot teaming with extras from westerns and apparently ongoing productions of Spartacus and Cleopatra. Your image of Hollywood is probably also populated with movie stars who are no longer living, and landmarks that may or may not still exist.

So now, Buddha might say, if that Hollywood actually exists, you would be able to find it. So you get in a plane or you get in your car and you start to look. Now, Hollywood Boulevard isn't as seedy as it used to be (much to the chagrin of some, I mean, you used to be able to find free street parking in Hollywood. No more!), but it probably still doesn't live up to the image in your head. Maybe you go to a studio, where precisely no one walks the lot in costume. (Okay, one exception, at Disney, you do occasionally get to see Mickey and Minnie and other costumed characters.) You drive down Sunset Blvd, maybe you buy a star map. But you can buy as many maps as you want, and you will never find the Hollywood you are looking for, the one that matches the image in your head (or maybe it's just a feeling).

This lack of a Hollywood "out there" that exists separately from your idea of it "in here" is the emptiness of Hollywood. That Hollywood only exists as a concept, idea or image in your own mind. This is the ultimate truth of Hollywood. Conventionally, of course, there is a physical place called Hollywood, there are studios, there is...Burbank.

But it's useful to remember, especially when I'm feeling that I haven't quite "gotten there" yet, that most of what I'm imagining "there" to be doesn't exist. That, in the end, most of it is just, pretty much, a crocodile talk show.

62 1/8

That's how many pages the pilot is now. And I'm not making up the 1/8 thing. When you break down a script for production, you measure the pages by eighths. So there. That's (nearly) 25 pages cut from the script, almost a third. (Can you tell I'm proud of myself?) I tried not to cut out the good parts, but I did have to kill some babies.

That's another show biz (tm) term. When you're trying to trim pages or minutes from your script or movie, there are those scenes that you just love, or maybe it's just a few lines of dialogue. They're fabulous, they show how witty and talented you are as a filmmaker, but they aren't absolutely necessary to the story. You love them, yes, hence, they are your babies. But in order for the script or the film to be a reasonable length, they must go, you must kill them. And it's painful, but... (see "Beauty Saloon"). If it was easy, it'd be called, oh, I don't know, management consulting?

On the other hand, we do tend to make more of a drama out of things like this than is merited by our relative impact on the well being of others.

It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.
-Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

Eau de La La Land

There's a particular smell, that when it occasionally wafts toward my nostrils, makes me think "That smells like LA." I know what you're thinking. "Jen, that's smog." But no! It's a much more complex, calming, yet energizing at the same time, nostalgic kind of aroma.

I'm pretty sure it hearkens back to my childhood visits to grandparents in LA, so, I will grant you, smog may be the base note of this particular perfume. It also contains sun-baked cement, swimming pool chlorine, and, I think, gardenia. And it evokes images of, yes, swimming pools, Disneyland, and a particular excitement I got just visiting the big city.

When my cousins and I used to visit our grandparents, we'd stay in a gigantic bedroom of their very large apartment, which was on a very busy thoroughfare. I remember lying in bed and hearing the traffic, and that just adding to the thrill of being here. "Wow! People are actually awake and doing stuff in the middle of the night!" Having grown up in the country, where the sounds at night were...absolutely nothing...yes, total silence...I don't even remember crickets or anything like that...the sounds of the city at night were totally invigorating to me.

This is a good memory to summon when life in the city gets too overwhelming or irritating. I bring it to mind and remember that I did once, find the whole thing exciting and inspiring, so now, when I don't, I can realize that it's not the traffic, which is the same, or the crowds of people, who are the same, but my mind, which is overwhelmed and irritated instead of excited and inspired.

It all depends on the mind, people. All, everything, the whole enchilada, alpha and omega. So I'll thank you (and by "you," I mean, "me") to kindly remember that from now on.

Beauty Saloon

That was the misspelled banner I saw on a newly constructed building last Sunday. I laughed a little. But then my mind was barraged by images of women with bee-hives wearing chaps and spurs. Swinging doors, and stylists with holstered hair dryers. Someone knocking over a manicure station and starting a fight by smashing a bottle of polish and wielding a file.

In the third grade I played the lead in "Clementella" a Western version of Cinderella. I imagine Clementella would have gone to a Beauty Saloon. I don't remember much about that production -- I can't even remember who Prince Charming was -- but I do remember that my veil for the wedding finale apparently came off a wedding cake, or something, and smelled kind of sickly sweet, like decaying sugar, like maybe what Miss Havisham's veil smelled like. I remember it gave me a headache, but I went on stage smiling anyway, because, you know, show business.

And that pretty much sums up what it's like to exist in this business we call "show." Sometimes it makes you smile, sometimes it gives you a headache, most of the time it's both, but we go on anyway, because, really, there's nothing else to do. Or, as I heard Steven Spielberg once say, "The only thing worse than making a movie, is not making a movie."

Which means we're always somewhere on the "the show must go on" spectrum from: "Everything about it is appealing! Everything the traffic will allow! No where could you have that happy feeling...!" to "...It will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on." (That's for you Beckett fans.)

It also means, we drive by misspelled banners and signs and imagine the show with that name. So even if we're only entertaining ourselves, well, you know...it's someone.

87 Pages

...this is the length of the rewrite I just completed on my pilot script. This number may not have a whole lot of meaning to those of you outside of the industry. And, in fact, if I were writing a feature comedy, this would be an excellent page count. I am, however, writing a one-hour drama. And, at 87 pages, well, I might as well be writing Roots. In other words, that's way too long. About 27 pages too long. That's almost half again as long as it should be.

Maybe, said a good friend who is also a writer, it wants to be a feature. It could be a feature, but here's the irony. Not enough happens for it to be a feature. So that's where I am. Too much is happening for a one hour pilot. Not enough's happening to be a feature.

There is the tantalizing idea of what is sometimes called a "backdoor pilot" - which is a TV Movie that becomes a TV series. However, I'm not sure it's something I should actually be aiming for.

So, what to do? One of the first screenwriting books I ever read, one that I actually used, and, actually, the only one I recommend (How to Write a Movie in 21 Days), recommends closing your eyes and watching the movie. You know what the movie (or, in this case, the show) looks like, at least subconsciously, so sometimes, if you let go of the need to describe everything in words, you can find what is missing. Also, if it's not there when you watch the movie in your head, then maybe you don't need it. This is what I'm hoping will happen.

So, here I go, closing eyes...and...roll film....

My Eyes! My Eyes!

I just saw two of the Disney squirrels engaging in a decidedly un-G-rated act. I just had to tell you.

Hey, anyone else remember The Gnome-Mobile? One of my favorite live action Disney films ever, with the same brother and sister team from Mary Poppins.

Boing, Boing

It's Spring! Starting last week, I know. But I had a cold and was neither bright-eyed, nor bushy-tailed. However, the blooming that is currently occurring in LA, and which wafted through my house this weekend, plucked me from the depths of phlegm-dom with the beguiling scent of orange and lemon blossoms, mixed with the ever present jasmine, and added to by whatever blooming tree that is that lines my street. (I've even seen what look like cherry blossoms on occasion).

What smells better than orange or lemon blossoms, I ask you? Not much, I tell you back. I remember as a pretty young kid going to a Moroccan restaurant in San Francisco, where you sit on the floor, and they pour tea from about five feet above your cup, and you get to wash your hands in orange blossom water. Really, is there anything to make you feel more like a princess than orange blossom water? I'm not even going to wait for an answer on that one. That one's rhetorical.


Of course, as a seven year old, I was much more interested in being a princess than I am now, some cough-cough years later. Although, it was probably always the Princess Leia kind of princess, who, as my friend Kira points out, is a superior kind of princess because she gets to be a princess and shoot a gun.

And while, as an adult, and a Buddhist, I'm maybe not so interested in the shooting the gun part as I used to be. But maybe the powerful princess is not such a bad role model. Or even, dare I say -- powerful queen. Yes, I dare. Because, actually powerful queen, when you add in attributes like compassion, wisdom and purity of mind, is an entirely apt description -- and a utilized description at that -- of many of the female Buddhas.

Female Buddhas? You (maybe) say? I've never heard of such a thing. Well, let me tell you something... and here I will use the phrase: grrrllll (Oprah-like) (and, as an aside, I'm about as likely to use that phrase as it's counterpart: dude). If there were no female Buddhas, my becoming a Buddhist would have been way less probable. Because the female Buddhas are where it's at (for me, at least).

There's Green Tara, who, besides all the previous descriptions is also called "the swift one, the heroine" - she's a total super hero. Or, again, heroine. Most Buddhas are depicted with their legs crossed in the vajra posture (or lotus position), usually in a version of a meditation posture. Tara has one leg sticking out, showing she's ready to get up and come to your rescue. Here's one of the most awesome things about Tara. Before she became a Buddha, she was a princess (ahem), in another world system (not getting into that right now), who was a very advanced spiritual practitioner. At one point, a monk told her she should pray to reborn as a male in her next life, so that she could attain enlightenment. (Oh, no, he didn't!)

At which point Tara tells him (or them, depending on the story), that it is only the limited minds of ordinary beings that see genders as inherently different and a barrier to enlightenment. She does, however, note that there is a lack of beings who have become Buddhas in a female form, and so she makes this vow: "I have developed bodhichitta as a woman. For all my lifetimes along the path I vow to be born as a woman, and in my final lifetime when I attain Buddhahood, then, too, I will be a woman." So, as you see, she's the bomb.

The Perfection of Wisdom is depicted as the female Buddha Prajnaparamita.

And then there's Vajrayogini, a female tantric Buddha. (A small aside about tantra here, so you don't get all distracted. True tantra is first and foremost an inner realization. There's more, but that's not for here.) All I'll say, is that Vajrayogini will rock your world.

Sometimes people wonder why, in Tibetan and other Northern Himalayan traditions, the Buddhas are depicted in so much detail, and why, in their practices, there's so much description of what they look like, what they're wearing, how they're sitting (or standing), what they're holding. Two reasons: these are folks you want to get to know, and when you really get to know someone, you know everything about them, you see them clearly in your minds eye. Secondly, these are our role models. We want to become like them. One of the ways you become like someone is to visualize yourself as them. (Like, if you wanted to become a rock star, you visualize yourself as a rock star, you visualize yourself directing a movie, or becoming a successful surgeon, or being a good parent, or whatever. That's what you do.)

It's a Buddhist practice to relate to the Buddha nature - the potential to become a Buddha - in everyone we meet. We relate to that potential instead of to the deceptive appearance of what we normally see. We also relate to that potential in ourselves. It's like building a house. You can't build a house without first visualizing what it will look like. And you can't become a Buddha without imagining what it would be like.

When you're a kid, you imagine yourself as different kinds of people, and maybe different kinds of animals or made-up creatures, all the time. We stop doing that when we're adults, and we start to harden our image of who we are. Sometimes this makes us get stuck. So, just as, as a kid, I imagined being Princess Leia, now I imagine being one of those other powerful compassionate princesses/queens.

Imagination. I think that's the key to getting unstuck, to moving forward, to doing anything extraordinary. Don't you? So let the wafting perfumes of spring make you feel like a princess (or a prince). Everything's only your imagination anyway.

Leap Day

It sort of feels like getting an extra day, doesn't it? And in some ways it is, someways it's not - it just goes to show, again, that everything is just what we name it. Feb. 29 vs. March 1. The "day" is the same. The name is not. Leap day also shows how arbitrary time is. Einstein says a couple of great things about time. "The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." and "The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." In other words, time itself is just something we make up in our minds to try to make order. Past, present, and future, are also just names, just concepts. There's nothing "out there" that constitutes time. Time is a fiction we invent, a story we tell ourselves in our own minds, just like everything else.

We, like time, are also fictions, created in our own, and others' minds. Which leads me to this from Jorge Luis Borges - an Argentinian writer, and a favorite of mine. "Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire."

We are devoured and consumed by the fictions we create. This is one way to understand what Buddha meant when he taught that desire creates suffering. We think that there is something, some one, some situation or place that exists "out there" that will make us happy. But since everything "out there" is a fiction of our own creation, the closer we get to it, the more it disappears, like a mirage in a desert, or changes into something we no longer desire.

There's nothing wrong with our desire for happiness, we're just looking for it where it doesn't exist. Remember that song "Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places"? It's kind of like that.

The same goes for people, places and things that we think make us unhappy. We push them away, get rid of them, leave them, somehow they turn up again, maybe in different guises, but causing us the same kinds of problems. Why? They are also fictions created by distortions in our own minds. And guess what? Our minds follow us everywhere.

So what do we do? We stop believing what we're seeing. Like waking up from a dream. We can dream about an elephant and the elephant will seem entirely real. But then we wake up and we go, huh, it was just created inside my own mind. Our waking reality is exactly the same kind of "appearance to mind" - it's just that it appears to our waking mind instead of to our dreaming mind. If we wake up from a nightmare, we can experience profound relief - Thank god that wasn't real!

That same relief is what happens when, in our day to day lives we're disturbed, unhappy, frustrated, angry, suffering, and we remind ourselves "This doesn't really exist." It's like we're asleep, struggling with our covers, trying to run but can't, maybe moaning a little bit. And Buddha's going, hey, wake up, it's okay, it's only a dream. You're making it up.

This is good news. Why? Well, as my teacher says, "To change your reality, all you have to do is change your mind."

High Tower

Last night, on a little Craig's List adventure (the very desk I'd been looking for! given away free! just come to Hollywood and find it next to the dumpster!), I ventured into the Hollywood Hills near the Hollywood Bowl to find the aforementioned desk, on a street called High Tower. This is not a street named after someone called "Hightower" that was accidentally split into two words. No this street is named after a high tower.

Think Rapunzel, think a hunchback but without the bells, think - I have come to learn - of "The Long Goodbye", or think (as something similar) of that house in "Dead Again." I think this must be something particular to the Hollywood Hills (along with that heady, intoxicating perfume of ancient jasmine bushes), an elevator, housed in a dizzying tower, probably just for the effect. You must love this, you must.

More info at: http://www.varley.net/Pages/Hollyweird/A%20Hollywood%20Day%20-%20Dec%208%2006.htm

Random Yahoo! Subject of the Day

Did you or did you not order the CODE RED?!

Actually there's two, here's the other one:

It turns out Harold's not a Jedi.

I Heart Contact Paper

Hey, I'm as surprised as you are that I have developed a fondness for any product involving vinyl. But there's something so satisfying about resurfacing a cabinet shelf with something that's sticky on one side, and shiny and smooth on the other. Mind you, I did not run out and buy this contact/shelving paper, but rescued it from certain demise in the trash heap, from a forgotten corner of the hall closet in my old place.

In the process of moving -- I have now reached unpacking stage -- I have dredged up many artifacts from my, and my family's past. Several boxes that reached my new abode, originated in my grandmother's kitchen. When she sold the apartment building that she used to own, and in which I lived whilst in film school, I took everything from the kitchen in one fell swoop. I mean everything. Except the proverbial sink, but still: refrigerator, microwave, toaster oven, electric can opener - who has those anymore?! It's such a luxury. Along with every single item from the cabinets and drawers.

So here it is, almost six years later, and opening these boxes is like Christmas day combined with opening someone else's time capsule. There are many...uh...utensils...whose possible function completely baffles me. There's one I call "poke you in the finger thingy". It's a small round plastic thing that you depress on the top, and then a sharp needle comes out the other side and...pokes you in the finger. I can't figure out what this is for, other than Easter egg decorating. Did you ever do this? You poke a hole in an egg, blow out all the innards, and then you decorate the egg and you don't have to throw it out because there's nothing left to rot. Who knew there was a tool for this?

There's something that looks like an Afro comb. Several knives that look like they should be warn on the belt of a Shriner. A boiled egg slicer -- which is common enough, I guess. But I never thought about slicing a boiled egg myself until encountering this slicer. It reminds me of a genius tupperware piece that is designed to carry deviled eggs. Having once tried to bring deviled eggs to the Hollywood Bowl in some generic piece of plastic, I can definitely appreciate the specificity of that particular container.

My favorite so far is a pie server with a little sliding piece that pushes the piece of pie off the server and onto the plate so you don't have to use your finger. I'm thinking of putting it in a display case with an old copy of Emily Post I picked up somewhere. No, you may not use your finger, ever!!! (And also, no wire hangers. But you already knew that.)

There are also many different sizes and shapes of casserole dish. I don't think I've made a casserole, ever. Ever. Although, looking at one of these dishes reminded me of a casserole my mom used to make that I think involved spinach and egg noodles, and one that my grandmother (the other one) used to make that's called something like tamale surprise. Come to think of it, maybe I should make casseroles. I bet you can eat them all week and never get tired of them.

This is, by the way, my new plan for cooking: Step 1: Cook a bunch of stuff on Sunday. Step 2: Reheat for the rest of the week.

All of these dishes and utensils reminds me of the fact that, in times gone by, if you were a woman, it was your job to have all these tools, make all these casseroles, and keep your house tidy and clean to an insane degree. I mean there's my version of clean, and then there's my grandmother's version of clean. (I also brought with me at some point, a whole box-load of specific cleaning products that she used to use which proves this point. I mean, when was the last time you polished your bathroom fixtures with chrome polish? That's what I thought, you filthy thing.) In December, my roommate's mother came down for a visit, and things got even cleaner. We did a pretty decent cleaning before she came, but just so we wouldn't get the "I don't know how you girls can live this way." Still, she cleaned again when she came. She even said that we should be cleaning the burners on the stove every time we used it. What?! I barely have enough time to clean myself every day, let alone an appliance.

This is the difference between housekeeping as something you do when you're not working/something you do when people are coming over vs. housekeeping you do as your job. And this brings up, again, one of my favorite phrases. "Good enough." "Clean enough" goes along with this. Especially since as a society we've probably gotten too clean. My dad and his brothers used to play in the ditch, and as a kid, I too, spent some time in a ditch. Now kids are are bombarded with bleach every time they encounter anything vaguely organic, and they're allergic to everything.

Remember in 4th grade, when they boys used to say things like, "God made dirt and dirt can't hurt." (I used to say, "God made snakes, too, they can hurt." But you get my meaning).

We can't do everything. Actually, we can do everything, but only if we have a housewife from the 50's. Guys? Any takers?

Still, I guess we all long for neatness and order, even though it is the nature of the world to be the opposite (ah, entropy, you are such a lovely word for messy and unpredictable). And maybe that's why we develop affection for things like shelf-paper, deviled egg tupperware containers, and anything that comes from the Container Store.

See the USA...

...on Craig's List-a.

Here's the fun thing about selling something on Craig's List. Sure you make a little bit of cash from random stuff you can't remember why you're saving. But you also get to meet the people who are willing to give you cash for random stuff you can't remember why you're saving. This is a great way to meet people you would probably otherwise never come across, except for when you're called for jury duty.

A little tangent on jury duty at this point. Other than having to wake up at the crack of dawn and schlep myself downtown (And here, another tangent, going downtown to jury duty in LA is the perfect time to use public transportation, i.e., the metro. Part of the reason is that you do have to get there so early, so there's still parking available at the metro station. I once got to a metro station at, oh, 7:45 a.m. and all the parking places were taken, and there was no street parking available. "But, Jen," you say, "couldn't you have taken a bus to the metro station?" In fact, no. There were no buses from anywhere near my house that went to the metro station. I looked up a possible route on the handy-dandy "trip planner" on the metro website, and the first step was, "Walk 2.5 miles to x bus stop." Seriously. "But, Jen," you say, "walking is healthy! Couldn't you have walked 2.5 miles at 6:30 in the morning? If you're asking that question, you clearly don't know me. Hi, I'm Jen, nice to meet you.

But back to jury duty, and then we'll get back to Craig's List. Other than the waking and the schlepping, and the waiting around in the jury room, once you get into a court room, it gets pretty interesting. Again, because of the interaction with people you would otherwise not meet. And people will say the most interesting/personal things out loud in court if they think it will get them out of jury duty. It could even be a reality show, "Get out of jury duty." People will tell the court their income, the amount of their rent, how their ex-husband won't babysit the kids, how even though they're a practicing psychologist making over $100,000 a year, 3 days of jury duty would financially bankrupt them. People also don't mind looking like idiots, "No, I don't understand any of the instructions you've just given me." "Well, if the guy's in court, he must have done something wrong." Me, I've gotten off with, "I don't believe civilians should be allowed to own handguns," and "I was in a car accident last year." I've also learned things like, in Iran, you're guilty until proven innocent.

Ah, the sea of humanity that is Los Angeles. Which brings me back to Craig's List. When you sell stuff on Craig's List, little inlets of that sea come to your doorstep. A Korean-American woman from, yes, Korea Town, came to buy a dining set for her back yard. A very nice Latino man and his daughter (skinny jeans, lip piercing - he let her do that?) came to buy a tape deck (yes, a tape deck), and insisted on paying $10 instead of the $5 I was asking because "it was fair." A hipster young white woman in short-shorts who bought a 60's hanging lamp for her "cabin." A young Latino man and his father who bought an ancient washer and dryer set, to take back to his new house in the very city from whence the appliances came.

My roommate also sold a DVD player to an Armenian man and his son, and an off-brand 23" TV for $25 to an older hippy guy in a BMW converitible. I also posted a pair of gloves on eBay and got an email from a woman in Croatia asking about them. Humanity, people, I'm telling you.

The internet, connecting people through commerce. But isn't that how cultures have always connected, through trade? You know, the Silk Road and all that. That's not news, I know, but getting to play in that arena for a little is like getting a taste for what it must be like to haul your goods to the market town where anyone and everyone can come haggle with you for your wares. Also, it's probably more fun than if your livelihood depends on it.

Okay, here's something funny...

I saw that Pottery Barn apothecary table on Craig's List. No, I didn't buy it.

Chocolate, Cappuccino, Butter

These are the paint colors I picked out for my new abode. I wonder if this says anything about me. I think it does. But really, who doesn't like chocolate, cappuccino and butter? I've heard there are people who don't like chocolate. One of my best friends from college doesn't like chocolate. I try not to hold it against him, but I do consider it a minor character flaw. On the other hand, we all have flaws, and I guess not liking chocolate ranks pretty low on the scale compared to something like, I don't know, genocide. I wonder if Hitler liked chocolate? But I digress.

I thought, yes, chocolate, cappuccino, and butter do fit me. But then something happened. These were the names of the paints I chose from Restoration Hardware. I know, picking paint from Restoration Hardware is like buying that apothecary table from Pottery Barn (I know you remember that Friends episode). But really, the whole paint choosing thing is mind boggling enough when you have 40 choices, let alone the thousands of choices I'd have if I went to, say, Home Depot. So I decided to limit my choices, and give myself a break.

Because, this is what our mind does. We start off thinking, oh, you know, any color is fine. Wait, I have a choice? Okay, then... and then our mind goes, pardon the expression, apeshit. We find some colors we like, and we think we're done. But no, then our mind asks, "But are they perfect?" Ahh...the temptation of perfect. If I find the perfect colors, I will be happy in my home forever and ever. (ed. note*: Well when you put it like that, of course it sounds absurd.) So, then, we start agonizing. This golden yellow? Or that golden yellow? If I get the wrong golden yellow, I will be quite put out. Yes, that's agony.

This is why I limited my choices to begin with. But still, my mind went a little apeshit. (Buddha says our minds are like wild rampaging elephants, so maybe a little apeshit wasn't so bad). But to tame it, I had to use this expression: "Good enough." Ah, the calm contentment of "good enough." It's the close cousin of my other favorite mind-taming expression of late, "For now." Is this job good enough for now? Yes, it is. Is this living arrangement good enough for now? Yes, it is. Are these colors good enough for now? Yes, they are.

But back to chocolate, cappuccino, and butter. As I said, these were the "perfect" Restoration Hardware colors I picked. But then this happened: I found out that the painters painting my new abode could not, would not, eat green eggs and ham. I mean, could not get RH paint. So I had to translate the RH colors into Benjamin Moore (there's a genius website that does this). So now my colors are these: Brown Sugar, Hemp Seed, Goldtone. Which means, I've gone from yummy goodness to 70's Record Labels.

What does this mean? Alright, so maybe I am a little hippy girl at heart, maybe these colors will bring out that aspect of me. But probably not. After all, when someone comes into my house, they'll probably just see "brown, tan, yellow". After all, they're just words. "Mere name," as my teacher says. Even "Jen" is just mere name, a convenient way to refer to whoever you think I am at any particular moment. There is no actual Jen-ness about me, no one thing, nothing permanent, just a particular collection of Jen parts that happen to be appearing right now....or, for now....

So even if the paint is brown sugar, I can call it chocolate, or better yet, call it nothing at all. That's actually, believe it or not, a step on the path to enlightenment, when we stop labeling things, stop believing that they're anything but a collection of stuff that's appearing for one moment, and one moment only, and will be different in the next moment, or might not appear in the next moment at all.

In this moment, I am writing this blog, full of vanilla latte goodness and a couple of almond Hershey kisses. And then this moment, just like that....is gone.


*"ed" in this case is my own mind.

A Bodhisattva's Version of Einstein

The method taught by awakened sages
to develop this skilful mind of kindness
is to cut the root of all selfish projections
by repeatedly and intensively studying Perfect Wisdom,
meditating single pointedly on its essence
in a state of contemplative stillness and stability.
With the clarity and honesty of such concentration,
projected worlds of self-serving desire will melt
in the sunlight of meditation, like structures of ice,
revealing the magnificent secret of our existence,
its total significance and absolute justification,
which is active compassion for all conscious life.

- Je Tsongkhapa

Awesome

It is 11:52 a.m. on January 31, 2008. I have caught myself saying "awesome" at least five times in the last 48 hours. Now, if this was, say 1984, this would be cause for concern - only five times in the last 48 hours? That indicates a distinct lack of awesomeness in one's life. But it is now 2008, so... wherefore so much "awesome"?

I should point out that 2008 was heretofore characterized by an increase in my use of the word "sucks". Again, another word I have not used with such frequency since the 80s. But with the Writers Strike grinding on, and having to move without having a real job, well..."sucks" seems to have been the word of choice, the mot du temps, if you will.

I will also point out that I have not used the word "awesome" for anything that is actually awesome. And not in the grammar police - hey you're saying awesome when the thing your talking about is not actually full of awe or awe-inspiring, but in the usual "pretty cool" or "that doesn't suck" sense. It's pretty much just been in the "thank you for doing what you normally do in the course of your job" sense. And, really, that must stop.

Or must it? Maybe people just being normal and helpful is a cause of "awesome". Maybe we all deserve to be called "awesome" a bit more often in the course of daily life. Life is hard enough without feeling like you suck. (And for the sake of this post, of course, I'm assuming that it's a choice between the two.)

Awesome, on the other hand, takes some skill to pull off. In the wrong mouth it can sound disingenuous, or just plain meaningless. But there are some... My manager is one of these people who can pull it off, once you know him a little. The first time he ever called me, after reading my spec script, he left a message that began, "I read your script, I think it's awesome." And I thought, "'Awesome?' Who is this guy?" But, later, after talking to him, I believed him. I still believe him when he says awesome. Other people believe him, too. This is why he is good at what he does. He can turn a no into a yes with his enthusiasm. And, yes, that's awesome.

But me? I'm a little less effusive, most of the time. "Calm," I've been called. (Which means, maybe the meditation thing has been working?) So maybe "awesome" doesn't fit so well with me. Or maybe I should just reserve it for something actually awesome. This suits the grammar policewoman in me. Word choice is important. As Peter O'Toole's character in The Last Emperor says, "You have to be able to say what you mean, otherwise you can never mean what you say."

We can all be kind of like the Boy Who Cried Wolf, except we cry awesome or sucks when things actually aren't or don't. (Don't get me started on the use of "less" when you mean "fewer" or any various other grammar pet peeves).

I mean, not to get all, English major seminar in Semiotics on everyone, but, though I realize that, in reality, language only refers to itself (and from a Buddhist perspective, language is kind of the problem, in that we think that just because we're able to give something a name that it actually exists (it doesn't)) - for the moment, we're stuck with language. So we might as well make the best of it. At least I might as well. Who am I to tell you what to do?

So I'm going to try to say what I mean. And try to not sound like a high school freshman.

Was Einstein a Bodhisattva?

Kinda starting to think he was. As I was preparing to teach Great Compassion in meditation class tomorrow, I came across this quote:

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Amen, brother.

More on this later...

Who am I anyway, Am I my resume?

It's times like these, identity crisis times, when I believe one should take refuge in musical theatre. Nothing says unemployed in show business like a number from A Chorus Line.

Nothing says you're not the first one to have a broken heart, and you're probably a better person for it, like The Fantasticks -- "Deep in December, it's nice to remember:Without a hurt, the heart is hollow...."

A line on the efficacy of revenge in response to betrayal? Okay so you have Macbeth...out damn spot...blah, blah, blah. But even better, from Sweeney Todd --"The history of the world, my pet, is learn forgiveness and try to forget."

You know what I think it is? I think it's the rhyming. Nothing helps life seem to make more sense than a good rhyme. A rhyme is like a nice little bow made out of language. Which actually works for us because we can't look at our life directly, we have to talk about it with language. If we can fit our life into an understandable storyline, we feel better. If it fits into a description we can understand, we feel okay.

I think for writers, it might even be possible to say that, we wouldn't even care...or maybe...bad things suck a lot less...if we can fit those certain events into a well-written narrative. And if that narrative is set to music and rhymes, well, really, how bad could it be? Sure you've been wrongly accused and spent 15 years transported to Australia, and now you've just murdered a bunch of people, including, accidentally, your wife...but Stephen Sondheim is making pithy rhymes about you, so it's all coming together in a nice little bow!

But maybe this is true for all people -- if we knew the hard times and suffering would all be worth it in the end, would lead us down the road we were supposed to go down -- then we would probably accept it happily. After all, every biopic needs scenes of struggle, otherwise the inevitable triumph would seem flat and less...triumphant. No one wants to see a movie where the protagonist triumphs over easily surmountable odds. In real life, however, that's exactly what we want.

But that's exactly what we don't get. We don't get to flip to the back of the book, skip to the end of the movie. So what do we do? Maybe we start by not expecting to go in any particular direction, for things to go in a particular way.

My first Buddhist teacher always responds to whatever news I give her about myself, with the following phrase: "Oh, good!" This is especially true when things go wrong. Or "wrong".

We train, as Buddhists, so that whatever comes we try to think, "Oh, good!" Oh, good...I'm learning patience. Oh, good...I'm learning how expectations can set you up for disappointment. Oh, good...this makes me want to attain enlightenment as soon as possible. It definitely helps. But it takes practice and a certain amount of mental stamina. Otherwise you get my to-date, favorite subject line generated by Yahoo! Mail's random subject generator (see note below), "Oh, no! Not another learning experience!"

But if we think about it, we have a choice, another learning experience, or another disappointment. Oh, good! or Oh, crap! And what we hopefully start to learn, is that the situation responds to our choice, it responds to us...and not vice versa. It's actually the happily accepting that takes us down the road we're supposed to go on.

And that is the ultimate reason for hope. Oh, good.

Note: If you have the beta version of Yahoo! Mail, click on the "Subject" button, and Yahoo! will generate a subject line for you. It's endlessly entertaining. Today's favorite: Hold me closer, Tony Danza.

In Retreat on Craig's List

It's Lam Rim retreat week at my Buddhist Center. At our center, retreats are structured to accommodate those of us who hold down that inconvenient obstacle to total retreat, namely, a job, so there are sessions before and after work, as well as during the day. (A job, by the way, is in no way an obstacle to meditation practice, we need other people with whom we can practice patience and develop love and compassion for. No other people = no enlightenment. (In fact, Buddha said that, one day, all living beings will become enlightened, and when there are only a few unenlightened ones left, the Buddhas will appear as ordinary beings, angry, difficult, rude, delusional, you know...ordinary, so that those who remain will have someone to practice with. So, you never know, you could be the last one. Or maybe it's me, I really don't know.))

And now I will pull my post back from the tangent, in the same way I'm supposed to be pulling my mind back from delusion, by saying that, even if my body is not in formal retreat, I can still keep retreat in my mind. I do that by avoiding distraction, and continually pulling my mind away from delusion (mainly anger/aversion and attachment), and re-placing it on minds that create happiness and inner peace.

That task, this time around, is complicated by the fact that I am looking for an apartment. And if there's anything that generates both aversion and attachment in your mind very strongly and at the same time, it's looking for a new place to live. Must have air conditioning! Can't possibly live that close the freeway! Will be blissfully happy forever if it only has a dishwasher! Who the hell would swim in that pool?

It also forces you to define yourself in ways that maybe you haven't thought of before, with the totally false promise that if you figure it all out, exactly who you are, exactly where you want to live, and if you can afford it...that you will be happy for all time.

So...am I edgy enough for Silverlake? Hip enough for Los Feliz? Urban enough to scale the Hollywood hills away from the valley, or, banish the thought, have I really become a valley girl in my heart after all? Valley hai will find you.... mmm....actual yards....plenty of parking...apartments with air conditioning... attachment. attachment. attachment.

Because, in reality, everyone, including me, is really like a turtle. We carry our happiness or unhappiness around with us like a shell on our backs. Our circumstances are only incidental.

So, I will remind myself that a one bedroom apartment, in select valley or Los Feliz/Silverlake locations, with air conditioning, remodeled kitchen with dishwasher, yard or garden, on a street where my cat can run around safely, in a quiety building where I can meditate or write without interruption, with paid utilities, for $1,000 or less, is not - even though it seems that way - is not, in fact, Nirvana.

Lovely Intangibles

I know Christmas is over... but I wanted to remind myself of the truth of this little exchange from one of my favorite movies... Miracle on 34th Street
(my apologies for the formatting, can't quite figure that out, yet)

FRED

Faith is believing in things when

common sense tells you not to. It's

not just Kris that's on trial. It's

everything he stands for. It's

kindness, joy, love, and all the

other intangibles.

DORIS

Fred,you're talking like a child.

You're livingin a realistic world!

Those lovely intangibles aren't worth much.

You don't get ahead that way.

FRED

That all depends on what you call getting ahead. Evidently, we have different definitions.

DORIS

We've talked about some wonderful plans.

Then you go on an idealistic binge.

You give up your job,throw away your security...and then you expect me to be happy about it!

FRED

Yes, I guess I expected too much. Someday, you're going to find out that your way of facing this realistic world just doesn't work.

And when you do, don't overlook those lovely

intangibles. You'll discover they're the

only things that are worthwhile.