Posts from — October 2007

Consistency is more important than duration (i.e. 10 minutes a day is better than an hour a week)

I’m never going to get it right.

If I have an itch, I can scratch it.

I don’t have to feel like doing it to do it.

If I’m all fidgety and jumpy, it’s okay. My meditation will be fidgety and jumpy today.

Don’t try to not have any thoughts.

It IS working. I just don’t know what “it” is.

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Mother Earth
Memphis Slim
I was working as a bartender at Antone’s: Austin’s Home of the Blues when blue piano player and shouter Memphis Slim came to play, which was a big deal for blues fans—it was his first stateside gig since he had expatriated himself to Paris in the 60s. And his gig fell on my night off, so I’d really be able to listen. On the appointed night, I banged in through the screen door in the alley out back, found my favorite seat stage right and took Ecstasy.

The band played a few numbers before bringing Memphis Slim up to a standing ovation. He sat down and began with “Mother Earth,” one of his best-known songs.

I don’t care how great you are,
Don’t give a damn what you’re worth.
When it all comes down,
You’ve got to come back to Mother Earth.

His playing was completely relaxed and his voice boomed out, commanding and round. My new boyfriend, the guitar player in the house band, was on stage backing Memphis Slim, and he sounded like a genius to me—knew exactly where to fill, where to lay back, where to mimic the old records, and where to throw in something completely new. Between numbers, he would look to make sure I was still there and wink when he saw me.

I began to feel happier and happier, maybe even beyond the beyond of any happiness I had ever experienced. Was it the drug or was it the music, so present and real but about to pass out of existence altogether? Maybe it was my new boyfriend, on stage, playing like a dream, so subtle, so exact. With each note, each perfect fill, each full stop, my sense of happiness escalated. There was nothing but happiness everywhere I looked. Happiness didn’t feel like I imagined it would, all giggly and bouncy. No. It was quiet and deep and completely everywhere. Tears began to stream from my eyes.

Why couldn’t it be like this all the time, I asked myself and the moment I did, it was. Something ceased to be and its cessation is what caused me to notice it, like when you turn off a television you hadn’t realized was on. I realized that I had spent every moment until that point fighting some kind of fear. Every job, every boyfriend, every haircut, phone call, and trip to the market had been motivated in some way by fear. In an instant, it all disappeared. I stopped being afraid. I drew in the antenna that checks the environment for malicious content and saw that everything was actually okay. Then, like every moment, it passed into non-being—along with the song I was hearing, the song I wasn’t hearing, along with Memphis Slim, the Blues itself, and all those friendly waves and winks. I was alone again with my conventional mind. So I exhaled and came back to Mother Earth.

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I’m always tinkering with mine. Found this article on writer’s rooms on the Guardian website. I sort of can’t stop staring at it.

Here’s what my office looks like currently. I LOVE to stare at pictures of other people’s workspaces. Hint, hint.

Who knew there was such a thing as Books for a Better Life! Suddenly I love them.

Would a Buddhist enjoy a job as a waitress? How would a Buddhist approach a job as a waitress? Since I have been seeking enlightenment, and have room to grow, I believe I know the answers. Let’s say I was a fully enlightened Buddha. I would enjoy a job as a waitress. I would not think about what the job would be like, I would not think about acceptance and what others may think. I would not worry about the money or the status of the work. In fact, work and worth are so unrelated to a Buddhist I would stay away from the topic completely. Where is the right place to waitress? A Buddhist wouldn’t care. How much would I make in tips? A Buddhist would take it moment by moment and live in the present, table by table, moment by moment. A Buddhist would know reality does not exist and money is nothing, wealth is meaningless. She knows living is to be lived and that is all there is. She knows a job with people, on her feet moving, and around good food she might like. In an Iranian reastaurant she could use her Persian language skills. A Buddhist would know not to grasp at the idea for pleasure, that only when one ceases to seek pleasure can it really be found. A Buddhist would put away her pride and go forth where she has never gone before. She knows a path is winding and makes turns, that change is inevitable and learning is all there is. She knows there is no “me” and no “success” and that results are not important. A Buddhist would watch the process and stabilize the mind, so that there is emptiness and stillness. Go forth Buddhist, use your wisdom and apply for a job as a waitress.

Dancing in the Dark
Bruce Springsteen
dancing-in-the-dark.mp3
I was sitting outside the Tam O’Shanter Lounge in my cab, waiting for last call to see who might stumble out too drunk to drive. Cabbie was one of my first post-high school jobs and the best career alternative I could think of at the time. It was late August, about a zillion degrees inside and outside the cab, even at 1:30 in the morning. (lady cab drivers do not get dibs on the air conditioned vehicles.) I was smoking cigarettes, slouched down, soles of my feet on the dashboard, one foot on either side of the steering wheel, radio on. Blah, blah, this party, that good time, we’re really whooping it up over here at KISS 108 and we know you out there in radio land are too, went the DJ. What the hell was I doing there? I mean middle class Jewish girls don’t sit in cabs waiting for barroom fares when they should be choosing a major or throwing up their dinner in the bathroom. But maybe sticky summer night cabbie was where I fit best. I had no idea how to make my life work. I had no idea what I was doing. “Dancing in the Dark” came on the radio but I didn’t really listen cause I’d heard it about a thousand times already.

Message keeps getting clearer, radio’s on and I’m moving round the place
I check myself out in the mirror I wanna change my clothes my hair my face
Man I ain’t getting nowhere just sitting in a dump like this
There’s something happening somewhere baby I just know that there is

Kyosaku is what Zen guys call it when your teacher hits you with a stick to wake you up in the meditation hall and the downbeat of the last syllable of the last line struck me right between the shoulder blades. I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face. There’s something happening somewhere. I just know that there is. I burst into tears. I had to find the something cause it wasn’t going to walk out of the Tam O’Shanter Lounge and rap on my window. It wasn’t waiting for me in a college class, a fancy restaurant, or the front seat of a cab. I didn’t know where it was, I just knew that that someplace was not here and come morning I was going to quit my job, sublet my room, put all my stuff in the back of the car and drive until I found it. So I did.

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Blue Skies
The Allman Brothers
blue-skies.mp3
My boyfriend and I were lying on the floor listening to music, smoking pot, waiting for the pizza delivery guy. I think I was about 18 years old. He wanted me to listen to “Blue Skies” by the Allman Brothers. Sure, I thought. Whatever. I like music. He cued it up and when it was over I said, “yeah, that’s pretty good.” I mean it was fine, good sounds, nothing wrong. Plus I was stoned and had a cute boyfriend, so what’s not to like. “No,” he said. “Listen again. Amazing guitar solo.” I didn’t really know what a guitar solo was, but assumed it meant some guitars would start to play louder than the other instruments at some point. So I listened. When it came to the part he wanted me to hear, he poked my shoulder and pointed to the stereo.

I can’t really describe what happened next. Suddenly it was like I had never hard music before. I heard that the song was made up of dancing, spinning parts. I listened for the drums to see if my ears could track their line and then I picked the bass out of the mix. There were two guitars playing and soon I could tell the difference between them—this one was a little sweet, that one a bit fuzzy. I found that I could zoom back and forth between listening to each instrument or the whole song, but I couldn’t do both at once. They call this dependent arising in Buddhism, meaning everything exists only in relation to something else—there is nothing on this earth with a separate identity.

The guitar solo came to the foreground and it was so unforced, it was like dangling your hand in the water while someone else rows, soft, smooth, effortless. Then the second guitar soloed, ending with a cascade of perfectly picked single notes in a repeating pattern and then—at 3:57 exactly—the first guitar came out of nowhere and mimicked the line exactly. With no effort whatsoever they found each other and played in tandem, one sweet and the other fuzzy, totally separate and completely joined. This is what had always been happening, I just never heard it before. I burst into tears.

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A wonderful, non-denominational piece by Chris Bynum about different ways to connect with silence. What a daring thing to write about anywhere, but especially in the New Orleans daily paper. I was interviewed for it and am quoted at the end.

Some months ago, Beliefnet taped me giving a few short (5 mins) talks on various topics:

Becoming Fearless

Loving Yourself

Spiritual Discipline

Healing a Broken Heart

What is Meditation?

Yesterday, Duncan and I were talking about what qualified a song as melancholy. Melancholy is not quite sadness. It seems to also include an element of longing, even of sweetness. As an enneagram 4, I feel eminently qualified to compose a melancholy playlist. (For more about the enneagram–and my obsessive interest in it, click here.) And so I did, and here it is:

I Can’t Stand The Rain     Ann Peebles
Kothbiro Ayub Ogada
He’s Funny That Way Billie Holiday
Too Long at the Fair Bonnie Raitt
One For My Baby Charles Brown
Blue Gardenia Dinah Washington
Sentimental Walk Diva (ST)
I Will Not Be Sad In This World Djivan Gasparyan
I Cant Tell You Why Eagles
Layla Eric Clapton
Someone to Watch Over Me Etta James
When I Get Like This The Five Royales
When Your Lover Has Gone Frank Sinatra
Unnatural Habitat The Greenhornes
There is an End The Greenhornes & Holly Golightly
For A Dancer G regson & Collister
Dark End Of The Street James Carr
Carolina James Taylor
My One and Only Love John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman
When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder Kelly Joe Phelps
Unsuffer Me Lucinda Wiliams
Round Midnight Mel Torme
You Look Like Rain Morphine
Feel Like Going Home Muddy Waters
Withered on the Vine Nick Lowe
I’ve Been Loving You Too Long Otis Redding
On the Other Hand Randy Travis
Landslide Stevie Nicks
Whole Wide World Wreckless Eric

Thoughts?