Chris Cornell's "I Am the Highway"

Edit 5/18/2017, upon the sudden and shocking new of Chris Cornell's death:  I'm re-posting this old blog from 2007.  Here is the Civilian/Audioslave demo of this song--






Ok, I have to admit that the first few times I listened to this song (from Audioslave's eponymous debut album), I found it very cheesy. I mean, the dude is singing about not being a flying carpet. Then in May of 2005, I took two weeks off from work and drove the length of Route 50, a mostly 2-lane highway that cuts through the middle of the US from Maryland's eastern shore all the way to San Francisco. Because of the highway and traveling references, I decided that this would be my theme song for the trip. After a few days of listening and thinking about the song as I drove, the words began to mean something to me. I have no idea if my interpretation matches Chris Cornell's intended meaning, but I'd like to think that it might.

Pearls and swine, bereft of me.
Long and weary my road has been.
I was lost in the cities,
Alone in the hills.
No sorrow or pity for leaving I feel.

I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky

Friends and liars, don't wait for me,
I'll get on all by myself.
I put millions of miles
Under my heels,
And still too close to you I feel.

I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky
I am not your blowing wind
I am the lightning
I am not your autumn moon
I am the night

Things are about to get deep here, and I may ramble a bit, so bear with me. You know how sometimes it's possible to "lose yourself" in a relationship (or at least it is for some people)? To me, this song is about fighting to not lose yourself in that way. Relationships can be damned hard, and one of the things that screws them up the most is the issue of perception. I'm not talking just about romantic relationships here, either. Whether it's with a mother, a friend, a lover, a brother, a colleague at work... in any relationship, we are to the other person what they perceive us to be. They see something in us that fulfills some want or need that they probably don't even realize they have (and vice versa, of course). That's why the first six months of a romantic relationship are so magical: We're busy forming those perceptions, feeling that need satisfied, and haven't gotten to the point at which we begin to feel that maybe that person isn't what we thought they were after all. On the flipside, some people go out of their way to make themselves fit the other person's perceptions, to be what that person wants, just to hold the relationship together. I think that in most cases, all of this happens at an unconscious level, but it really seems to explain that "We just grew apart" thing, as well as the "I lost myself in the relationship" thing.

As a kinda-sorta student of Buddhism, I realized that what it comes down to is seeing things as they really are. In Buddhism, great emphasis is placed on seeing the reality of things, on learning to realize when we're projecting our own "story", our own attachments and aversions, onto an event or person we're dealing with. If you do that in a relationship, then you're just setting yourself up to get miffed when that person doesn't behave as you've come to expect them to, or when they have unrealistic expectations for you. I've dealt with plenty of this myself, from both sides of the coin. From my father and mother, to my sister-in-law, to the last guy I dated, to people at work who just rub me the damned wrong way... After coming to this realization, I now try to stop myself and ask "Am I looking at the reality of this person, or are my own expectations and assumptions getting in the way and creating this issue?" Even harder when you're dealing with someone you care for is to ask "Is this person seeing me as I am, or are they wanting me to be something for them that I'm really not?" Before I begin to sound totally sanctimonious here, let me assure you that I don't always succeed in asking or answering these questions. In any case, even if you can see the reality of the situation, it does no good if the other person can't.

To me, it seems as if the character in Cornell's song is someone at that point in a relationship, someone who's maybe experienced it before and is determined not to again. It's the ultimate anthem to self-realization and independence. This person would rather be on his own than to lose himself to another person in such a way. He'd prefer to be "lost in the cities, alone in the hills" than to be under someone else's thumb just for the sake of being in a relationship.

To take it a step further, he even tells the person on the other side of the relationship what's going on. When he sings "I am not your carpet ride, I am the sky", he's saying "Not only am I not just what you see me as being, I'm more than you can even comprehend of me as. I am greater than your conception of me and I will not be boxed in by your expectations." "No sorrow or pity for leaving I feel." A bit harsh, perhaps, but sometimes that's what it takes to get through to that other person.

Again, I have no idea if this is really what the song is about, it's just what it means to me. For all I know, Cornell was stretching his metaphoric muscles in another direction and I'm totally off-base. Either way, it's become a personal anthem of sorts. "I am the highway...", indeed.



If you can, try to get ahold of the demo version of the song that was leaked to the internet back when Audioslave was still just a rumour. Cornell's vocals on the chorus are much more dramatic. And, yeah, I realize that it's really Audioslave's song, but the words are Chris' so as far as I'm concerned it's his song (No offense to Tom, Tim and Brad. Sorry, guys.).

Confessions of a Jack White junkie, part 7: Strike three, Boston, yer outta there!!

The roller-coaster hit a trough this morning as I headed north on 95 past Baltimore on the way to Boston.  I'd been cranky and argumentative in internet conversations the previous evening, but became truly ugly as soon as the car got into rush hour traffic.  Things came out of my mouth directed at other drivers that could've made a sailor not just blush but cower.  I know how easily I become ugly like this, it's a trait that runs through both sides of my family and it used to be much more constant in me.  Discovering both Buddhism and Stoic philosophy several years ago helped me to learn to watch for it, but ten hours of sleep in four days could lower anyone's resistance to irritation and I'd also woken up this morning with the early symptoms of a cold.  So while that couldn't excuse the stuff that kept going through my head, it at least explained why it was happening.  Seeing myself become this way reminded me all over again why I identify so strongly with the song I'd requested from Jack that first night in San Francisco.  While the song is not specifically about these things, the title alone always reminds me of the pettiness, selfishness, rage, jealousy, and condescension I struggle with so frequently, much of it driven by a shadow need for recognition and attention that I've only recently truly acknowledged.   I queued up the White Stripes' Get Behind Me Satan and set I'm As Ugly As I Seem on repeat from the Delaware border all the way into New Jersey, letting the softness of that voice and guitar soothe me as much as possible (live version from the Stripes' appearance on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic, since the album version doesn't seem to have been slapped up on YouTube)-



"I'm as ugly as I seem, worse than all your dreams could make me out to be..." While listening to that song and the rest of that album did calm my road rage, it also caused me to begin wallowing in self-loathing as a response to the anger.  When I look at myself in that state, all I can see is a bitter, vicious hag and who could love themself in such a form?  But it was too early in the day for wallowing and tears, my makeup had to last all the way through that night, so Satan and Ugly were replaced with Lazaretto and Black Bat Licorice in an attempt to perk up both my mood and energy.

One of the main things I've learned from Buddhism is the concept of right thought, part of the Eightfold Path, which is not about controlling emotions and thoughts but about catching ourselves before we react habitually in unconstructive ways, taking the time to look at the situation we're in to see if it warrants such a reaction or if the reaction is really being driven by other things going on in our own mind.  Stoic philosophy takes a similar tack.  I think most people think of stoicism as being a grit your teeth, grin'n'bear it sort of attitude, but the philosophy is similar to Buddhism in that it requires you to look at your actions and reactions and think about them.  One of my favorite quotes from Marcus Aurelius is one I should have tattooed inside my eyelids, so that all I'd have to do when I needed to be reminded of it would be to close my eyes-- 

Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' You would be ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present, and the power of this is much diminished if you take it in isolation and call your mind to task if it thinks that it cannot stand up to it when taken on its own.

I have no problem with being angry, anger can be constructive.  But the sort of irrational rage I let loose in the car this morning is not.  I can accept it in myself to a small degree, but I have to constantly watch and be ready to reel it in when it goes too far.

Self-loathing is just another habitual negative response that's no more constructive than those directed outwardly.  Another tenet of Buddhism is compassion, not just for others but for ourselves.  We have to be just as understanding and patient of our own weaknesses as we should be of those of other people. Such weaknesses are something to work on, not something to condemn.  We need to work on them because these emotions are all very productive, they breed tremendous amounts of negativity. But they're not constructive, you can't learn anything from them.  Unless you can catch yourself, step back from them, and observe them.

Whoa, wait a minute... What's going on here?  For a moment there I almost forgot that I'm supposed to be an obsessed Jack White fan-girl, er, I mean junkie.  Who do I think I am getting all verbose about philosophies and stuff?  Gotta get back to the program! 

And snideness is yet one more unconstructive reflex.  Oops.  So anyway, I was heading north on 95 to Boston today to meet up with Sharon and see Jack fucking White perform at the Bleacher Theater at Fenway Park.  Made it through the morass of interchanges that are the NJ/NYC area to find myself admiring one beautiful Art Deco bridge after another along Connecticut route 15 and then the hints of color in early-changing leaves along I-90 in Massachusetts.  And there was a whole 'nother cast of characters joining Sharon and I today, people we'd not seen since Jack's Blunderbuss tour two years ago. So I had much to look forward to.

One of the coolest things about the Lazaretto tour is how Jack's mapped it out to coincide with his recent dive into baseball.  From attending games to taking batting practice to visiting museums of the sport, to throwing out the first pitch at a Tigers game in Detroit, it's obvious that he's gone deep into the history and minutiae of baseball the way he seems to with everything that interests him.  So it had to be a huge deal to him to perform at Fenway Park in Boston, one of the few historic ballparks left.  When I scored my ticket, I half jokingly said to anyone who would listen that, at the end of Seven Nation Army, I wanted Jack to jump off the stage of Bleacher Theater, lob a left-handed homer with the Kay (he didn't have to make it over Fenway's scoreboard, dubbed the Green Monster, though it'd be an extra thrill if he did), then run the bases.  I would scream my throat raw if he did something like that. But it was not to be.  I should have been tipped off early that the night would not be at all what I anticipated when Sharon and I grabbed a pair of hot dogs on the concourse.  Most bland dog I've ever eaten.  The minor league ballpark in Frederick, Maryland has better hot dogs than Fenway.  

An incident with the tour photographer on the concourse after we'd finished our dogs left me again feeling embarrassed that I'd barged in on Sharon's thing. She's been to twice as many shows on this tour as I have, in part because she has a job that allows her to coordinate business travel with show dates.  Not everyone has such a convenient situation. But she's also admitted to putting herself into debt with all this travel and is incredibly single-minded about doing what it takes to get up there on the rail, so while I'm ridiculously envious of her I also admire her dedication.  We've been great partners at the shows we've been to together, accomplices with a common goal.  We've had tons of fun in line and very emotional experiences together in front of (and on) the stage.  But as I see her being acknowledged by Jack's crew, demon jealously keeps rearing up and making me make comments I shouldn't to try to feel that my dedication lives up to hers.  It's that need for recognition and attention that I mentioned above. But where anger-driven feelings make me picture myself as a vicious hag, these feelings of jealousy cause me to see myself as a petulant little child. I can't deny that the silly little fan-girl in me is pining for Jack to to see and acknowledge my devotion.  The rational side of me understands that's never going to happen. Not only is it never going to happen, it doesn't need to happen.  Life will go on and be just as fulfilling without it.  I've been in one-sided relationships before, in which the other person expected me to share their interests but didn't share mine and in which it felt I was loved for how I made that person feel rather than for myself.  I swore I'd never be in a relationship like that again and, in fact, that's part of what led to my recent Facebook friend list clean-up--  I don't even want "friend"ships in which I comment on other people's posts and they never comment on mine.  And yet here I am with Jack, in the most one-sided sort of relationship anyone could ever hope to have. Incidents like the one this evening, the ones that have left me feeling embarrassed for my attempts to connect, make me wonder why I bother.  But who am I fooling?  I know exactly why I keep reaching out, babbling incessantly in the Third Man Vault, on message boards, here in a public blog, needing to be right in front of him at shows to be seen as well as to see--  Because the fan-girl addict will never give up wanting to be acknowledged.  She and the rational side battle over this, but the rational side often ends up indulging her because it realizes that we've rarely in our life been so swept up and moved by anything as powerfully as by Jack's music. When a tour's going on... forget about it. The rational side may as well go take a nap. 

And I know that I'm not alone in this craving. The majority of fellow fans I've spoken to want to meet him, even if it's just for an autograph or hand-shake.  There are always people at shows hovering by the tour bus, waiting for an opportunity.  What's behind this craving?  I tend to shy away from hanging by the tour bus, I've had that experience before with rock stars I admired and it was anti-climactic, so I have trouble understanding why such brief and often hectic encounters are so important to people. And I'm honestly not even sure that I want to actually meet Jack. As I said, I've had that opportunity with other people like him and it's never once turned out the way I imagined it might.  A couple of the experiences have been decidedly negative.  I got to know one of my dearest friends when she stumbled across my blog and contacted me with a story of how she and her grandson had written to Jack and received a letter from him in reply.  She's shown me this letter and it's a beautiful thing.  It's brief, but he made the effort to touch on every subject they'd written to him about.  While I'd be amazed if he would remember writing that letter, to me something like that is a much more meaningful connection than the five-second hand-shake, "Your music means so much to me", "Thank you very much" encounter by the tour bus.  For some people, though, that five seconds is all they need to be thrilled right down to their socks.  

And what I'm talking about here really applies to any musician, actor, athlete, or celebrity that people revere.  Why do we all need this so much?  Is it an altruistic impulse, do we want to be able to give these people the gratification of knowing that what they do is meaningful (might have to question that in the case of some celebrities) and touches people ?  Or is it a more selfish desire to have our own existence elevated by their acknowledgement? I've seen people in the Third Man Vault chatroom who've gotten a response from Jack in chat gush after he'd left that, verbatim, "I'm so excited, Jack White knows I exist!"  Is the motivation for this need some combination of the altruistic and selfish?  Is it an individual thing, varying from person to person?  Interesting stuff to think about.



Getting back to the show...  I was initially very upset about my seat in Bleacher Theater, all the way over at the end of the first row far from the side of the stage, and concerned about being on a step with nothing in front of me to hold onto for balance as I danced and jumped about.  Not to mention being all alone and far from my friends, who were all one section over and spread around.  Ended up rocking my ass off anyway, despite only being able to see drummer Daru Jones from the back and bass player Dominic Davis barely at all.  And I watched Jack all night trying to engage the group of people directly in front of him, a bunch who sat for much of the show, who kept leaving to get beers, and some of whom several times stood up and turned their backs to him while talking to their friends.  I kept wanting to run down the row and shake those people, to make them turn around and realize what they were missing. I don't know what else he was seeing in the crowd, but that group definitely caught his attention.  At least once, he stepped to the front of the stage and stared fixedly at them, much like he stared down the camera man at Merriweather Post Pavilion two nights before. And I know from Cleveland just how penetrating yet impenetrable that stare is, but it seemed lost on that group (I later found out they were apparently some of the owners of the Red Sox and their wives).  And it seemed that they weren't the only part of the audience with better things to do, because he didn't even bother to invite the crowd to sing on any of the songs that are perpetual crowd sing-alongs-- Not on Hotel Yorba, not on Hello Operator or Steady As She Goes, not even the line in Seven Nation Army about the Queen of England and all the hounds of Hell. But the most unbelievable thing, for me at least, was when it came time for the Seven Nation Army chant.  This is the chant that can be sung even by people who have no clue who Jack White is because they've heard it in stadiums and via television broadcasts of sporting events for the last several years.  But could Boston pull it off in their own venerated sports stadium with Jack and his Kay guitar there on the stage right in front of them?  Fuck no.  I heard two repetitions of it and then it died away.  Jack stood in front of his amps with his guitar, waiting for the response that most audiences wait all through the show to be able give to him, and Boston couldn't muster it.  He didn't even bother to clap and gesture for the crowd to join him as he usually does, didn't bother to spur them on, just finished the song, then thanked the crowd, stressing over and over that through the night it had been "Just you and me!  Just you and me!!" I couldn't tell whether there was sarcasm in his tone or if he was trying more obliquely to let them know that they'd not held up their end of the arrangement or if, bizarrely, he'd felt a connection despite the lack of one that I'd observed.

Through it all, even though I'm not sure he or the band saw me at all, I danced and sang and jumped and cheered as usual (and only fell off of my precarious spot on the ledge a few times), feeling like a wallflower at the prom, dancing by herself and watching the Prom King have a lousy experience with the cool kids, just knowing I could show him a great time if only he'd come over and ask me to dance.  But alas, it wasn't to be.  I continued dancing by myself and he continued to be stuck with the kids who were too cool to clap.  During the break between sets, I suddenly heard a voice over my shoulder say "We've been watching you and you know how to enjoy a show!  We want to dance with you!!"  I turned around to find two young girls whose seats were two rows up and across the aisle who'd hopped down and squeezed in next to me.  I said that if security would let them stay, it was cool with me. One of them was convinced that we'd be able to get down into the empty VIP section in front of the stage when the show continued, and I didn't bother to tell her I doubted it highly. Sure enough and sadly, security chased them back to their seats when Jack and the band came back for the second set.  I would have enjoyed their company.

This is the most subdued performance of Hardest Button that I've experienced yet, fourth song to the end of the show.  Fiddle player Lillie Mae Rische is more animated than Jack is.




Compare that to this bit of the ending of Lazaretto, four songs from the beginning of the show--




The difference in his energy is notable and, again, weird to me.  Jack's typically the opposite, amping up himself and the crowd more in the second half of the show than the first. And yet despite the weirdness of the crowd response and its seeming effect on his energy, this was not a bad show. And I certainly hope that the musicians on stage got something out of it. Just like at Cleveland, the negative aspects were balanced by many high moments--

Each of the band members emerged one at a time from a door in the Green Monster and headed from there to the stage, with Jack making his entrance last.  It was a brilliant idea. Wish this person had caught his entire jog across the field, with the pouring of about half his bottle of champagne onto the grass.




One of my favorite moments was a version of Black Bat Licorice that could've been re-titled Black Bat Gibberish, and I do not mean the word gibberish in any derogatory way.  Jack started inserting mostly unintelligible verses in between the regular ones, causing me to throw up my hands as I tried to sing along and yet giggle at the same time. It reminded me very much of the second show at Roseland Ballroom back on the Blunderbuss tour, at which he pretty much completely lost the lyrics of the first song and flubbed another one shortly into the set, but then later in the evening made up an astoundingly beautiful song on the spot.  And, dammit, I love this song in any form, it's one that just speaks to me.  Loved the slight twist to the final line-- "Whatever you feed me, I'll feed you right back. But it will do me no good."




Did I say something about snideness being unconstructive...?  Just never you mind, I hope Jack never removes his King of Snark crown. He uses it so delightfully to make a point.



But despite these moments, there was still that seeming lack of connection with the crowd. My buddy Steve, seeing him for the second time this tour, said he thought Jack was just tired.  But Sharon and I have seen him at so many shows and this felt different. I mean, the man played on a sprained ankle with more energy than he displayed at some points in this show.  Was he, like me, just exhausted?  Or was he getting a vibe from the crowd similar to the one I picked up?  Hell, for all I know, he had the flu that night. But when Sharon and I found each other after the show, we looked at each other and said "What just happened?"  One of us said almost immediately that it was like Radio City Music Hall and the Detroit Fox all over again.  After the backlash from Radio City, it's possibly not likely that Jack would ever cut a show short again (though he's ballsy enough that you never know). And his tour manager mentioned in the pre-show announcement that this show at Fenway was being recorded, so we wondered if that was why he pushed through, only giving up at the very end when he didn't bother to encourage the audience to participate in Seven Nation Army. It was an experience I never would have thought I'd have at one of his shows.

All show photos by David James Swanson

Yes, there were moments when this show felt more like other recent ones, with that infectious smile.

And there I am, next to Lillie Mae Rische's right shoulder

Interestingly, there's this video of Seven Nation Army that makes it sound as if the upper reaches of the audience were much more responsive than the folks down front. There's the chant, however faint. Like Radio City and the Detroit Fox show, perspective on this one might depend on where you were in the crowd and what you have to compare the experience to.  So now I really don't know what to make of the night.





To be continued in Miami.  And this is where it began- Introduction.

Carry this burden now until the moment of your last breath

Old Mary, full of grease,

Your heart stops within you.

Scary are the fruits of your tomb,

And harsh are the terms of your sentence.

Old Mary, sister of mine,
Mother to the world,

Carry this burden now until the moment of your last breath.

Now until the moment of your last breath...

So, I went back to Nashville. Got home from my Dead Weather DC-to-Memphis road trip Friday night.  As I was catching up on teh intarwebs, a fellow blogger/Jack-fan messaged me to say that she was one of 20 people who'd won entry into The Dead Weather's pre-release, invite-only, live performance of their new album, Sea of Cowards, that was to take place at Third Man Records on Monday night.  Did I fancy a trip back to Nashville as her plus-one?  Considering that I was still high from the road-trip, the Memphis show, and visiting Third Man on Thursday, I'll leave you to imagine my response. 

Yet I had to immediately catch my breath, as this would be more complex than just hopping a plane.  I was due back at work for a partial day on Saturday and full-time as of Monday.  How to get a few more days off for yet another show?  Here's the kicker--  

I'd already been planning to ask for another day.  On the way home from Tennessee, I'd received a call from my father informing me of a death in the family.  My parents and sister were going to drive up from Florida to Virginia for the funeral, could I get time off from work to join them?  Knowing my employer's dictum that family comes first, I knew that would be no problem.  Of course I would join them at the funeral on Tuesday.

And yet, now I had my own priority staring me in the face.  Musical obsessions are a difficult thing to explain to most people.  Star Wars fanatics or Trekkies might get it, as they'll move hell or high water to make it to their costumed conventions.  A more apt comparison, though, might be to the junkies who prowl the methadone clinic next door to Third Man Records.  Music has such an emotional impact that it can get into your system like a drug, and your chosen musician can become the supplier that you'd figuratively crawl through broken glass to get to in order to satisfy your cravings.  And Jack White's a pusher extraordinaire, coming up with increasingly enticing methods to deliver the raw purity of his musical vision.  

So what was I to do?  This was the sort of offer that just does not come along every day.  The answer jumped right into my already worn-out and over-stimulated brain-- Use the funeral as an excuse.  The logistics would be tricky, getting to Nashville for Monday night's show and then back home by Tuesday morning to meet my family.  What was trickier, though, was the conversation with my boss the next morning.

Was it worth trying to explain why I really needed both Monday and Tuesday off?  No.  Much simpler was to re-write the death to be that of a more immediate family member, say, an uncle instead of a great-uncle.  And if that uncle were being buried in Florida instead of Virginia, then that would necessitate two days off so that I could fly down to be with my family.  It would work.  But did I have the balls for the fabrication? 

I've done some bad things... They get easier to do

I've told some doozies in my time, back when I was a kid.  But I'd more or less developed some integrity by the time I became an adult, especially after discovering Buddhism.  Now, I've never actually referred to myself as "a Buddhist" because I haven't felt ready for a total commitment to the practice, but I have tried over the last few years to follow the Buddhist precepts as well as I can.  My moodiness and impatience have made this quite a challenge, but it's a way of life that makes so much sense to me that it's worth the struggle.  A lapse of the sort that I committed this past weekend is a violent one, in that I can see the two sides of my self at war--  The moral side that wants to live with right thought, right action, and right speech; and the other, perverse side that wants something badly and thinks of nothing but how to get it.  In this instance, craving won hands down and didn't give a flying fuck that morality was left bruised on the mat.

So I told my fabrication, and was given much sympathy along with a green light for the time off I'd requested. The butterflies that had taken over my stomach through last week's road trip began fluttering back, along with a few nasty, dark-winged moths and other creepy crawlies that were obviously not mere excitement.

When I got in the car the next day to head to the airport, The White Stripes' Get Behind Me Satan was still in the cd player from the road trip.  The song that came up this time was not as nifty a coincidence as on the day I left for Memphis.  This time I was hit in the face with "Red Rain" and Jack's refrain of If there is a lie, then there is a liar too / And if there is a sin, then there is a sinner too... 

The irony doesn't end there.  Jack White's a born'n'bred Catholic who reportedly almost attended seminary school to become a priest, though he's apparently since developed a less rigid spirituality.  While it's possible that he'd likely have become a hard smoking, hard drinking priest of the Scotch/Irish variety, I get the impression that he's also intensely moral and committed to his own code of truth.  And I'd lied in order to fly to this man's base of operations and watch him make music.  

By the time I met my compatriots in Nashville the moths from my gut were practically crawling up my throat, but the junkie in me squashed them down.  It was too exciting to meet these people, and the event we'd come to attend was just too intensely amazing.  After the first song, Jack greeted the audience with a hearty "Welcome to my house".  I feel a pang thinking of it now--  Did I deserve to be there?

I'm a prick when I sin, and I know I can't win

There is no sin in Buddhism, only the discipline of the Eightfold Path and the much misunderstood concept of karma.  Most folks think of karma as the old cliché of "what comes around, goes around."  It's actually more direct than that.  Our intentions and resulting acts set chain reactions in motion and can reinforce habitual behaviors.  Sometimes shit just happens, but most often our choices create the atmosphere in which we live.  One of the best explanations of this comes from, of all places, The Huffington Post:

...the analogy of a game of billiards can be a useful way to describe the process of karma --- the table is set up, you hit the ball, it in turn hits other balls, moves the configuration on the table around, and then sets you up for your next shot. After that, maybe another person takes a turn and moves the balls around and then it's your turn again. Just as in the analogy of a billiard game, our thoughts and actions ripple outward, collide with others' thoughts and actions and generate consequences. These consequences create the setting in which we initiate our next set of thoughts and actions. 
  
When our choices are consistently unskillful due to self-centered motivations, we're just setting ourselves up for a fall.  Yet we can always make a more skillful karmic decision to act from positive intentions, and stop ourselves from making negative choices into habit.  I'd like to think that the drive to meet and connect with people I'd only previously known on-line was a benevolent enough intent to counteract the raging desire to just see Jack again.  But for all I know, that's just the junkie validating its behavior.

The question at this point is where things go from here.  I could confess to the boss, but I won't.  Craving gave me the guts for commission of this lapse, but I know that I'm not brave enough for the consequences of admission.  My best hope is that confession to the anonymous intarwebs will serve as a springboard out of the sea of cowards and back onto a truer path.



Edited 2/17/2011: I've just re-read this and decided that the final paragraph is bogus. I don't know what I was trying to say there. It reads more like a lame attempt at clever justification than a conclusion. And so it's struck out.

On the path, but left of the murder

The process of awakening is like walking on a footpath. When we find such a path after hours of struggling through the undergrowth, we know at last that we are heading somewhere. Moreover, we suddenly find that we can move freely without obstruction. We settle into a rhythmic and easy pace. At the same time we are reconnected to others: men, women, and animals who have walked here before us. The path is maintained as a path only because of the tread of feet. Just as others have created this path for us, so by walking on it we maintain it for those who will come after us.
(Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs)

As always, I read those words through the prism of my own experiences and mind-set, and used them as a springboard for self-analysis.

Paths are a common feature in my life, from the Buddhist path I've been attempting to follow to the literal paths I tromp through the woods. Along each of these sorts of paths, the greatest source of conflict for me has been that connection to others to which Batchelor refers. I've written before (ad naauuuuseaum) of how I go through periods of connection, when I find a handful or so of people with whom I can relate and try to develop friendships, and, at other times, through periods of solitude. Invariably, at some point, the periods of connection contain moments of inconvenience, annoyance, frustration, and/or anguish. It's often hard for me to balance all of that against the moments of fun, sharing, learning, and/or growth that are also part of connection. And the periods of solitude can be full of richness and contentment, yet at the same time feed my egoistic misanthropy.

In the woods, on those literal footpaths, I'm also frequently annoyed by the presence of others, and not just the noisy, oblivious folks who are so busy making sure they say "Hi!" that they scare away the deer I've been watching for five minutes... First, an example of that type: I recently headed up to a state park that allows hunting in season, hoping that would deter most other hikers. The trail I planned to hike is aptly named Old Misery. It's short, but ascends 500 feet or so within the first half-mile, through a series of switchbacks so rocky it's sometimes hard to follow where the trail's headed.



Beyond this, though, it levels out along the top of the ridge and passes through a dense fern sea.

Picture all of that orangey-red growth as lush green ferns in the summer-time...


It then skirts the edge of the ridge and at one point runs next to a talus slope that overlooks the spine of the mountains heading north.



That's where I was, relaxing in the crook of a low-growing tree limb and taking in the vista. From behind, I suddenly heard "Hey! Hey there!" I turned and traded the beautiful view for the sight of a yuppie doofus in what appeared to be ski tights, big-ass shin-high climbing boots, and a backpack. He stood in the middle of the trail and called down the hill to ask me what was ahead. We went back and forth for a while as I tried to orient him to the area in order to explain what his options were. Three times I asked which way he had come to get to the trail (i.e. along what road), and three times I was told that he had come from the Old Misery trailhead down by the lake. No duh, dude, that's only way you could have come on the trail considering the direction you were headed. The equally big-booted teen-aged boy with the guy (who at least wore his big-ass boots with plain old jeans) finally spoke up and I was able to describe to him what other trails they would meet and where those led. But I spent the rest of my hike wondering what someone like that guy was doing out in the woods. What could he get out of it? Laughably over-equipped, he didn't know where he had come from and was clueless where he was going. Being so incredibly oblivious, what sort of connection could he possibly have with his surroundings, what intimacy with nature, if any? That boggles my mind.

Even when physically absent, the implied presence of other people on the trail irks me. As the population in the mid-Atlantic has grown, attendance in local parks has increased along with it. The result is trails that were once the width of my two feet are now side-walk wide. And trail stewards in the parks suddenly feel obliged to mark these trails with painted blazes every hundred feet or so. I assume this helps limit their liability, as there's less chance of oblivious types wandering off and getting lost if they can always see at least five blazes away into the distance and follow them like beacons. But for those of us who are more comfortable in the woods, such thoroughly defined trails spoil much of the fun. The tread of others may maintain the trail, but also diminishes the sense of discovery. Early on, I picked up a habit of bush-whacking-- wandering off the established trail to follow animal paths, or just picking a break in the trees and plunging in. The occasional struggle through the undergrowth was a challenge that could exhilarate at the same time that it frustrated. And, more often than not, these solitary, off-the-beaten-path wanderings have led to fantastic discoveries-- a gorgeous overlook, a small cave, a bleached turtle shell or deer antler.

So, just what sort of metaphor is this for the figurative path I've been stumbling along? What does it mean that I prefer the unbeaten path, the road less taken, or even no trail at all? Can I find just as many treasures on my own as I would through personal connections? Or can I awaken only by following the paths trod by others? I'd like to think that there's a middle ground to the Middle Way, that I can spend time on both sorts of paths, that I can be both "out of the line and indivisible", and yet still find my way to some semblance of enlightenment.

A Crow Left of the Murder

Unlearn me.
Ditch what I read
Behind what I heard.

Look. Find. Free.
Yet! Do you get it yet?
Do you get it?!

From here on it's instinctual,
Even straight roads meander.
Every piece contains a map of it all!
It all!

Evidence
In the march of the ants,
Pulse of the sea.

Look. Find. Free.
Yet! Do you get it yet?
Do you get it?!

From here on it's instinctual,
Even straight roads meander.
Every piece contains a map of it all!
It all!

Out of the line and indivisible,
A crow left of the murder.
Every piece contains a map of it all!
It all!

Everything I wanted,
Wanted to know...
Everything I wanted,
Wanted to see.

Unlearn me...
Do you get it yet?
Look, find, free.
Do you get it yet?

The annual pilgrimage, 2008

Got back last night from this year's trip out to Cumberland, MD, which is something I look forward to all year long. The fact that I have such high expectations for the trip created issues this year and gave me a whole lotta thinking to do. Lessons in dukkha and attachment are, of course, never easy.

I wrote last year about the indulgent way that I always begin the pilgrimage-- a massage at The Bath House in Berkeley Springs, WV, and the scrumptious (cheesy word but, damn, it's appropriate in this case) snow crab legs at the Texas Grillhouse in LaVale, MD. Added a slight twist this year in having a hot stone massage for the first time. I honestly don't know how I've lived this long without the sublime feeling of hot river stones slipped between my toes. First time I've ever blissed out enough to fall asleep during a massage.

So far, so good. Things started out just as wonderfully relaxing as usual. Monday began well, also. It was chilly overnight, and morning revealed a thick mist rising along the Potomac River and Tom's Creek between town and the surrounding mountains.







The day's plan was to drive over to Garrett County and ride a trail that runs between Herrington Manor and Swallow Falls state parks. I headed out fairly early to explore a new road before breakfast, and ended up driving all the way to Keyser, WV. I was hungry by the time I got there and began the hunt for any place besides McD's or Burger King at which to chow down. Passed a sign for The Candlewyck Inn that included the words "fine dining" and pulled in to check it out. Turns out they don't serve breakfast on weekdays, but that didn't stop the owner from offering to cook something for me. I ended up with a wonderful veggie omelet and home fries, and a pleasant conversation about the perils of small-town restaurant ownership. He also tipped me off to a shortcut from Keyser to my intended destination and within less than an hour I was passing through Oakland, MD, on my way to Herrington Manor to get my ass kicked.





I have no mountain biking skills to speak of, and I ride a rigid cyclocross bike. But a few very fun rides through the kiddy roller coaster that is the main trail at Rosaryville State Park made me confident enough to tackle this trail that is rated as "beginner". A guy working in the park office also confirmed that there was "one short rocky section", but that the rest was pretty easy. That "one short rocky section" that he pointed out on the map apparently grew significantly before I hit the trail. It was rocky from the freaking get-go, and I'm talking rocks ranging in size from dinner rolls to full loaves of bread. I bucked and bounced for two miles before deciding I was risking busting either my fork or my head, then turned around and hike-a-biked it through the worst sections on the way back. But I wasn't ready to give up just yet, so I loaded the bike back on top of the car and headed to the other end of the trail at Swallow Falls to see if perhaps that was the easy part.

It started out being fairly lovely, much smoother, swooping through hardwood forest and then descending quickly into hemlock groves. But then, rocks. And not only rocks. Big, freaking, tangled hemlock roots. This ride was nothing if not a lesson in why bicycle suspension was invented. If I'd had a bike properly designed for this type of trail, with full-on double suspension, I could have had a major blast. As it is, I think my cervical and thoracic vertebrae have fused into one great big hunk of bone, the thoravical. My chiropractor's got his work cut out for him at our next appointment.







The trail heads up through those tree roots on the left


The best section of all (again, the trail's on the left)


After another roughly two miles of torture I gave it up for good, again walking the bike through the most stone-choked sections. It was frustrating to quit with so few miles under my wheels, but I have to admit I'm fairly proud that I handled the bike so well on the portions I did ride. I was able to remain relaxed enough to let the wheels bounce over the rocks without bucking me off, and I picked up some decent speed on the smooth sections. Certainly a worthwhile experience, despite the discomfort.

And then things took a turn. This year's pilgrimage is notable in that it's the first time in eleven years that I chose to spend part of it with people I know. The ladies with whom I ride had planned a five day thru-ride of the C&O Canal. When the idea first came up months ago, it sounded like it could be lots of fun. For a variety of reasons, though, I decided against it. But I planned my trip for the same week with the intention of joining them for one of the most interesting sections of the towpath, the Paw Paw Tunnel. As a result, this particular pilgrimage ended up less time- and care-free than usual. Having to plan and schedule and interact with others added a hectic element and made the time spent with them turn into the focus of the trip, when it should have been just one enjoyable portion of the whole. Leading up to this day, I questioned a few times why I'd made this decision. I was sure that it would be fun and would further develop my friendships with these women, but it's counter to the purpose of the pilgrimage.

The plan had been for a pleasant mid-day ride with my buddies, 25 miles or so at an easy pace that would serve as a recovery from the beating the day before, with the fun of Paw Paw Tunnel as the centerpiece, and ending up having a lovely dinner by myself in Cumberland.









It turned into me riding alone down to (during which time I snapped the pics above) and through the tunnel, meeting my friends on the way back, then exerting myself pretty damned close to my physical limit, driving 60 miles that I hadn't planned on, and not getting back to the hotel and a shower until after 9:00pm. Dinner was with the gang at Bill's Place in Little Orleans, but consisted of a surprisingly good $3 bowl of lima bean soup.

This unexpected deviation from the usual course of pilgrimage events left me ping-ponging between concern and compassion on one hand, and resentment on the other. The bitterness I felt (am still somewhat feeling) over what happened is certainly not very Buddhist of me. But I wasn't able to obtain the peace of mind and quiet reflection that I so look forward to during this annual trip. The time I spend alone out there is time in which my mind can empty of all the responsibilities and issues and neuroses (my own, mostly) that I find to be part and parcel of every human relationship in my life. It allows the same freedom I experience when I escape to the woods, or onto the bike, or cruising country roads in the car, but for an extended period of time that creates a deeper rejuvenation and euphoria.

The fourth day out there, my last, didn't serve to improve the situation. The morning began not with curling mists rising in front of the mountains, but with totally grey, overcast skies. After breakfast at a favorite coffee shop up in Frostburg, I decided to just head home. Along the way, I was pulled over by a cop for doing 83 in a 65. Despite ending up with a warning instead of points and a fine, this was like insult (deserved, I know) added to injury.

I could have considered all of this some perverse "reward" for yesterday's good deed, but it wasn't. It was just weather patterns and not paying enough attention for radar traps. And yesterday's strained afternoon and evening were just a case of doing what needed to be done in response to an unexpected situation. The events and atmosphere that we find ourselves dealing with are not rewards or punishments. Nor are they good or bad luck. They are just what is. What creates the difficulty is how we classify and respond to them. My first response (after attempts to squelch my resentment) was to wonder how expectation fits into a Buddhist lifestyle. What the hell is the trick to looking forward to something with pleasant anticipation, without forming an attachment to the resultant expectations?

The conclusion I came to is that it's a matter of control. My desire for escape from schedules and responsibility, my craving for the freedom I feel during those escapes, isn't freedom at all. It's an attempt at control. Doing what I want to do when I want to do it, being impulsive or indulgent as I see fit, is just control in a different form. It feels like freedom, but isn't it really just enslavement to a need to feel that I'm calling the shots, instead of squeezing my life into the jigsaw puzzle of work, commuting, home ownership, family, and friendships? And it's my disinclination to give up that control that caused resentment to override the concern I felt for my friend. That's one of the hardest things about following the Buddhist path-- having to relinquish all sense of control and deal with things as they are, learning to want something yet being able to live with not getting it, developing the ability to gracefully flow with the alternatingly pleasant or painful stream of life. It's kind of like riding tricky singletrack. Ya gotta let go and relax enough to let the bike pick its own line through the rocks and enjoy the ride despite any bruises you end up with.

And that's enough of the philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Despite the lesson learned, I headed out today for one of those temporary escapes and cruised the back roads of West Va up to Shaharazade's. Lunch was great and the drive was great, but by far the brightest spot so far this week has been one brief moment this afternoon when I drove past the spot of the burned-down trailer (described here and, later, here). I had noticed on a similar drive several weeks ago that a new trailer had been installed on the lot. Today, as I was coming around the curve leading up to it, I noticed a basketball lying on the ground next to the basketball hoop that's been standing in the same spot along the road ever since I first saw the place. And, strolling across the yard, the same tow-headed kid I'd managed to avoid running down almost a year ago. The sun gleaming off his blond hair and the hand he raised in a wave gave me the biggest smile I've had on my face in many days. If I didn't know better, I'd almost consider it a reward.

By saying less today, I will gain more...

Blood on the Ground

I don't want to talk to you anymore,
I'm afraid of what I might say.
I bite my tongue everytime you come around,
'cause blood in my mouth beats blood on the ground.

Hand over my heart, I swear I've tried everything in my power.
Two weeks and one hour I slaved, and now I've got nothing to show.
Oh, if only you'd grow taller than a brick wall.

From now on I'm gonna start holding my breath when you come around
and you flex that fake grin, cause something inside me has said more than twice
that breathing less air beats breathing you in!

I don't want to talk to you anymore,
I'm afraid of what I might say.
I bite my tongue every time you come around,
'cause blood in my mouth beats blood on the ground.

Hand over my mouth, I'm earning the right to my silence.
In quiet, discerning between ego and timing.
Good judgement is once again proving to me
that it's still worth its weight in gold.

So from now on I'm gonna be so much more wary when you start to speak
and my warm blood starts to boil,
that seeing you is like pulling teeth and hearing your voice is like
chewing tin foil.

I don't want to talk to you anymore,
I'm afraid of what I might say.
I bite my tongue everytime you come around,
'cause blood in my mouth beats blood on the ground.

High fives to better judgement. By saying less, I will gain more.
Low twos to you, my fickle friend who brought the art of silent war.

So, I'm still riffing on the remorseful theme begun in my last entry. That episode involved a failure to act. This particular drama revolves around the failure to refrain from action. During a conversation in which I was debating whether to stir up trouble in a message board thread, a friend told me "there's a difference between impishly perverse and straying into malicious territory".

Of course, it's not like I don't know this already. But having it pointed out by a friend made it sobering. My mouth (or, here on the intarwebs, my fingers) more than occasionally gets me in trouble. Driving in traffic, at message boards, even sometimes at work, my shadow overtakes my persona and acts out. Snarled curses at the steering wheel, sarcasm intended as humor that comes off merely as snide, general snarkiness that slips out like verbal diarrhea. But I'm in my 40's, for crying out loud. Shouldn't I have gained the maturity and experience to control these urges? And yet, perhaps it's not so shadowy after all. There's heredity at work behind these nasty impulses. I grew up with parents who consistently reverted to sarcasm and insult to deal with stress or conflict (and still do). My brother and I quickly learned to do the same. It's probably no wonder that writers such as Ambrose Bierce and movies like Dangerous Liaisons are favorites of mine. But at this point in my life, I don't want to be that way anymore. As another friend recently wrote at her own blog:

"It was a place I needed to go to survive... Even when I no longer required it, a piece of me remained, inextricably tied there. Finally and cautiously I moved beyond it. I haven't fully examined what it means to live where I now reside, joy is still sometimes elusive and love even more so, but I am happy to be here. These old feelings have awakened in me a desire to move further away from them, to continue to search out experiences of joy and light"

Sometimes it seems that this behavior is worse during times of worry, stress, or depression. I've overcome the slothful symptoms of depression I wallowed in over the past winter/spring, is this how it's manifesting itself now? In a dropping of my guard, lowered vigilance that allows bitterness, resentment, and spite to roll off my tongue disguised as wit or righteousness? Or, again, am I just fooling myself? Am I just afraid to admit that I'm too weak to control myself?

Could this be the face of my shadow?



In another discussion prompted by the post at that other friend's blog, she talked about the realization that being alone isn't good for her. As she put it, her usually full schedule is "a concerted effort to get out of myself." Maybe that's my issue, as well. I've generally chalked my solitary ways up to misanthropy, but maybe there's more. I've always known that I sometimes don't play well with others. Don't get me wrong, I fully enjoy the time spent with friends and the things we do together. But the only time I feel true contentment is in solitude. Working, driving in traffic, any situation in which ego can be involved, sets me up for the slip into shadow land. In brooding the other night over not helping a person in need, I stepped back at one point and watched myself. It dawned on me that the contentment I find in being alone is perhaps due to the fact that, with no other people to deal with, there are no stumbling blocks for my ego. By myself, I don't have to worry about intention or whether I'll say or do the right or wrong thing. But in escaping to solitude and avoiding those challenges, there's also less opportunity for growth, isn't there? There've been times in the past when I've considered doing some sort of volunteer work to get out of myself and away from my own ego. Literacy, in particular, is an issue close to my heart and I've considered learning to tutor. But do I have the patience for it?

Another possibility would be to find a local sangha. That indeed might be what I need. I wrote at the beginning of this year about how I felt I had made some progress in my attempts to follow the Buddhist Eightfold Path:

1. Right View: "to see and to understand things as they really are"
2. Right Intention: "commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement"
3. Right Speech: "to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warm, and gently and to talk only when necessary"
4. Right Action: "to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest"
5. Right Livelihood: "one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully"
6. Right Effort: "1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen"
7. Right Mindfulness: "to be aware of the process of conceptualisation in a way that we actively observe and control the way our thoughts go"
8. Right Concentration: "wholesome concentration, i.e. concentration on wholesome thoughts and actions"

Sounds fairly simple, doesn't it? But now I think that Buddhism for me is like kicking drugs or alcohol. I'll find something, some book or magazine article, that resonates and wakes me up for a bit and I'll go along fairly well, making headway in forebearance and letting go of ego. But then I'll fall off the wagon and the dark nasties will begin poking up their heads and taking over my thoughts and speech. Perhaps, like a junkie, I need to admit that I can't do it alone and go find myself a meditation center or sangha where I can re-commit to the Path and have reinforcements to help keep me on it.

A final confession: I have to admit I've been hesitant to write about these things. I want to be honest here, and there is value in exploring these issues in writing. Blogging is free therapy. But I've begun to develop relationships with the handful of people who read these entries, and I do worry that confessional posts of this sort will affect their opinion of me. Then again, perhaps they can help me. The conversations we have are another way of getting out of myself and seeing things from another perspective. And, as my friend did with her comment the other night, they can remind me of what constitutes Right View and Right Speech. Maybe together we can share some "high fives to better judgement".

Coming out of Agoraphobia

Agoraphobia

Two people touching lips
Hands on each other's hips
Nothing in else in the world but one another
The 42nd floor
On a distant shore
I wonder how we've strayed so far from this
Remember when we were
Just flesh and bone
You, sir, may have forgotten how good your world can be
So, put down your hollow tips
And kiss your lover's lips
And know that fate is what we make of it

Please end this, please end this
Before this ends us, ends us
I wanna stay inside
I wanna stay inside for good
I wanna stay inside
For good

I read the news today
And everything they say
Just makes me want to stay inside and wait
But the better part of me knows
That waiting in the throes
Is on par with reading with my eyes closed
"What can I do?" you say,
"It's just another day
in the life of apes with ego trips"
Put down your hollow tips
And kiss your lover's lips
And know that fate is what we make of it

Please end this, please end this
Before this ends us, ends us
I wanna stay inside
I wanna stay inside for good
I wanna stay inside
For good

I'm gonna stay inside
I'm gonna stay inside for good
I'm gonna stay inside
For good

I wanna stay inside
I wanna stay inside for good
I wanna stay inside
Don't want to stay inside for good

I was listening to this song while driving recently and originally decided to post it with little comment, just because I feel it's a good one. But since then I've finished reading Three Cups of Tea and watched the film Into the Wild, and I suddenly found some connections. In the latter, a man walks away from the evils that he perceives in society and into the massive solitude of the Alaskan wilderness, where he succumbs and perishes. In the former, a man wanders out of the solitude of a mountain wilderness and into a tiny Pakistani village, after which he devotes every bit of his financial, emotional, and physical resources to improving the lives of the people he encounters. Both are incredibly moving true stories, though only one of them continues as I write this.

I'm gonna cheat here and use Amazon's description of Three Cups of Tea:

Some failures lead to phenomenal successes, and this American nurse's unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, the world's second tallest mountain, is one of them. Dangerously ill when he finished his climb in 1993, [Greg] Mortenson was sheltered for seven weeks by the small Pakistani village of Korphe; in return, he promised to build the impoverished town's first school, a project that grew into the Central Asia Institute, which has since constructed more than 50 schools across rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Co-author [David Oliver] Relin recounts Mortenson's efforts in fascinating detail, presenting compelling portraits of the village elders, con artists, philanthropists, mujahideen, Taliban officials, ambitious school girls and upright Muslims Mortenson met along the way. As the book moves into the post-9/11 world, Mortenson and Relin argue that the United States must fight Islamic extremism in the region through collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education, especially for girls.

What Greg Mortenson has done is absolutely amazing. He's the polar opposite of the anti-social creature described in Brandon's lyrics above, and of Christopher McCandless' disenchantment. I can't imagine doing anything like what he's accomplished, but that's ok. Not all of us have the drive and energy to dedicate our entire being to helping others. But the rest of us can certainly do small things here and there to support people like Mortenson, or to find other avenues to connect, give back, and avoid agoraphobic dissociation.

There was a time when I rarely thought about any of this. I actually once prided myself on my misanthropic tendencies, and I still have many, many days when I make every effort to escape into solitude away from other people. It was through exploring Buddhism that I first began considering not only being more tolerant of others, but also the possibility of taking steps to actually help someone else. In Ethics for the New Millenium, the Dalai Lama writes:

What is entailed, therefore, is... a reorientation of our heart and mind away from ourself and towards others. To develop a sense of universal responsibility-- of the universal dimension of our every act and of the equal right of all others to happiness and not to suffer-- is to develop an attitude of mind whereby, when we see an opportunity to benefit others, we will take it in preference to merely looking after our own narrow interests.

In a nutshell, looking beyond our own desires and perceived needs and doing something to alleviate the external suffering of others will, in turn, ameliorate our own internal suffering. Even the littlest thing can do the trick and, in the process, go a long way towards changing the atmosphere of evil in the world that has been perceived by souls like Chris McCandless.

Getting into Incubus and reading about their Make Yourself Foundation has further encouraged me. Knowing that buying the band's cds and dvds means I'm contributing in some small part to worthy causes has made me proud to be a fan, and motivated me to figure out ways in which I can do more. For anyone else out there who's considering the same, here are a few avenues I've found:

-- Three Cups of Tea homepage and the Central Asia Institute.

-- 10,000 Girls, an organization in Senegal providing education and employment for young girls through their own efforts.

-- Kiva.org, investing instead of charity as a means to help others.

-- FreeRice.com, an addictive word game that helps to provide food for the hungry.

-- Make Yourself Foundation MySpace profile, at which there's a PayPal donation box.

If anyone who reads this is so inclined, please feel free to add your own links in the comments section.

On Smile Lines and loving-kindness

A few mental ramblings that came to me while wandering through the woods today. As is so often the case, it began with a song...



Smile Lines or, High School Never Ends

Met my match today
Felt the blood rushing and mingling
A curious and enigmatic thing
Now spiders in my dreams...
Synchronicity weaves like a web when
You were meant to be a meal!

I want you bad!
I want you bad!
I understand why they say,
"High school never ends"

I'll never act my age
But you can tell by the lines in my smile
That I have been around for awhile
So, insecurities
Are about as useful as trying
To put the pin back in the grenade

I want you bad!
I want you bad!
I understand why they say,
"High school never ends"

This isn't coincidence
There's no such thing
This isn't coincidence, no
This isn't coincidence
It's no such thing.
This isn't, no...

I want you bad!
I want you bad!
I understand why they say,
"High school never ends"

My interpretation of these lyrics is that Brandon's speaking to some woman he's met and to whom he's intensely attracted. And that's fine. As such, it's a perfectly respectable boy-meets-girl type of rock song, with the typical Boyd-esque twist that Incubus fans know and love. But disregard the chorus and there's so much more to it. Looking between the lines of lust to those references to synchronicity and insecurity is a great jumping off point for mental meanderings.

I've discussed synchronicity a bit recently with various friends, and it's something that I wonder about often. But what exactly is it?

Synchronicity, since Jung's introduction of the concept in 1951, has remained among the most original and controversial ideas in analytical psychology and, at times, one of the most difficult to grasp. The title of Jung's work on the subject, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, provides the term's definition: Synchronicity is a principle that links events acausally, that is, in terms of the subjective meaningfulness of the coincidence, rather than by cause and effect. Thus, understanding synchronicity and synchronistic events requires a way of thinking almost entirely foreign to Western culture, a way of thinking that does not separate the physical world from interior psychic events. The phrase that often occurs with regard to Jung's concept of synchronicity is unus mundus, Latin for "one world". Synchronicity requires that one consider the world a unified field in which subject and object are fundamentally one, two different manifestations of the same reality.
(A Guided Tour of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Robert H. Hopcke)

So, where do we draw the line between coincidence and synchronicity? How do we know when something's truly synchronous and when it's just chance? Is it ever really just chance? I've come to the conclusion that coincidences are what's left of those "curious and enigmatic" moments that we notice yet do nothing with. If we take something from it, if we use the moment as a springboard of some kind, then it's synchronicity. You just have to be aware enough to realise it.

Did you ever observe to whom the accidents happen? Chance favors only the prepared mind. -- Louis Pasteur

"I'll never act my age..." Every now and again, I stop to think about the fact that I'm addicted to a band made up of people significantly younger than me, the majority of whose fanbase is even younger than them, and I wonder whether I should feel weird about that. There are times when it does feel curious to be so inspired by the wisdom of someone younger. Aren't I supposed to be the wiser? And I often feel a definite generation gap when reading posts at the Incubus forum. I frequently sense that many of the people who post there are going through that "I'm cooler than thou (and I'm working so hard to maintain that cool!)" phase that I know I went through in my 20's. At this point, I just don't worry anymore about being cool or accepted. "Insecurities are about as useful as trying / to put the pin back in the grenade" If I post something there that brands me as a dork, if I'm too eager in expressing my appreciation for the band, so what? "You can tell by the lines in my smile / that I have been around for a while" and I've earned the right to be a doofus when I wanna be. I'd like to think that I'm too busy watching out for synchronous events to bother with trying to be cool.

While sitting in the woods scribbling my thoughts on the song above, I found some notes for another blog I'd planned to post a while back that never came to fruition. But now's as good a time as any. On another rambling day, I did post that I'd begun reading Brad Warner's book Sit Down and Shut Up and that I couldn't wait to find out his take on the Buddhist concept of metta, or loving-kindness. Most of the descriptions of metta that I've read have given me serious pause. This one particular concept has been the hardest thing for me to grasp about Buddhism. The traditional Western translation, "loving-kindness" is the stumbling block. It reminds me of that bumper sticker that reads "Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty." I think of folks with that bumper sticker as 'random senseless' people, and I don't really wanna be one of them. I want to be able to maintain my off-beat, sometimes cynical, sense of humor and my curmudgeonliness. I also, though, want to be able to treat other people with respect, occasionally even graciousness. So, when I got to the chapter in SD/SU in which Brad addresses metta, he blew me away.

Up until reading SD/SU, I had apparently only been exposed to a small part of the Metta Suttra. There are entire meditation practices devoted to this particular suttra, and the recommended mantra goes along these lines:

"May all beings be happy,
may all beings be secure,
may all beings be happy minded and
may their hearts be wholesome."

But Warner took it one step further. Reading his chapter on metta was the first time I'd ever seen the entire suttra:

This is what should be accomplished by the one who is wise,
who seeks the good and has obtained peace:
Let one be strenuous, upright and sincere, without pride,
easily contented and joyous;
Let one not be submerged by the things of the world;
Let one not take upon oneself the burden of riches;
Let one's senses be controlled;
Let one be wise but not puffed up;
Let one not desire great posessions even for one's family;
Let one do nothing that is mean or that the wise would reprove.
May all beings be happy.
May they be joyous and live in safety.
All living beings, whether weak or strong, in high or middle or low realms of existence, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far, born or to be born, may all beings be happy.
Let no one deceive another, nor despise any being in any state; let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another.
Even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over and protects her only child, so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things, suffusing love over the entire world, above, below and all around without limit; so let one cultivate an infinite goodwill toward the whole world.
Standing or walking, sitting or lying down, during all one's waking hours let one cherish the thought that this way of living is best in the world.
Abandoning vain discussion, having a clear vision, freed from sense appetites, one who is made perfect will never again know rebirth in the cycle of creation of suffering for ourselves or for others.

Ok, so I can kind of understand why most books and magazine articles don't usually print the entire thing. It's freaking long. But focusing only on the brief wish that "may all beings be happy, etc" leaves out all that great stuff about how you get to the point of being able to wish such a thing for all those beings who, basically, act like assholes much of the time. And Warner uses a different translation for metta:

The word metta is hard to translate and is usually given as "loving-kindness". "Benevolence" may be a better translation, since it's a little less drippy sounding.

Thank you, Brad, oh so much. And, since the book is basically an explanation of the Zen Buddhism taught by the 13th century monk Dogen, he goes on to mention that, in all of Dogen's writing, the Metta Suttra is never mentioned. Apparently, Dogen preferred to teach compassion instead of love, and boiled that practice down to four basic elements: free giving, kind speech, helpful conduct, and cooperation. The trick to following these prescriptions is, of course, to remember that we're all here trying to accomplish the same thing-- a happy life. In that sense, we're all one, as in Jung's unus mundus. Like synchronicity, metta "requires that one consider the world a unified field in which subject and object are fundamentally one, two different manifestations of the same reality".

There's a lot to strive for in living according to the Metta Sutra, but goodwill and benevolence are way easier for me to reach towards than "loving-kindness". So, to anyone who's bothered to read this far: May you be happy, secure, and wholesome (even if you are one of those 'random senseless' goofballs).