Category Archives: Gratitude

I Did It, I Can’t Believe It

I saw a well-done Hollywood biography of the Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls, the talented fat kid from Brooklyn.  I saw this movie on TV not long before my mother finished dying her long, lonely death.  I was often sad in those days but I couldn’t cry, even though my mother was in the last weeks of her life  — this movie made the tears flow.  I sobbed because this kid had seen the light, and was, in the screenwriter’s convincing story, making peace when he was shot in revenge for a killing he tried to stop.

I must have cried for ten minutes after the credits rolled, as Angela Bassett wipes her eyes as half of Brooklyn comes out to line the streets where Biggie lived, larger than life, rapping, rhyming, styling like TJ, the Master and mf.

In the Hollywood version he was played by a charming, charismatic actor, a quick witted mostly jovial young man, also quite fat.  He’s mean to his women, breaks his mother Angela Bassett’s heart, and he is a criminal and a thug.   A friend takes the rap for him and goes to prison telling Biggie “if I do this for you you can’t waste your talent, you’ve got to succeed– for all of us”.   By the time the friend gets out of prison  Biggie is a huge star, has an accident and is recuperating in the hospital.   The friend goes straight to the hospital bed and is disappointed in Biggie.   Biggie realizes he’s gained fame, and success, but he’s still  an unredeemed asshole.

And, in the movie, he’s moved by this realization and  he begins to change.  He wants to make amends, seeks forgiveness.  He doesn’t want to hate anybody anymore, and he doesn’t want anybody to hate him.  He makes peace with his ex-wife, his ex girlfriend, starts spending time with his daughter.  He wants to be a positive model for the people he loves.

When he goes back to the studio he doesn’t want to record another  violent, incendiary album, what his fans are hungry for.  He regrets the bad influence he’s had on millions.  He wants to make a tender album, rapping from the heart instead of his killer persona, but he’s afraid people will think he’s weak.

He’s terrified, as he begins to record, with no street bluster to hide behind.  He’s scared  of how weak he must look and afraid to listen to the playback.  But when he hears it a smile comes across his face as soon as the first vamp comes up in the headphones and he starts to shake his head slowly from side to side.

“I can’t believe it,” he says, shaking his head to the slow beat, “I did it…  I did it!” and he laughs, and keeps the beat with his head, and his friends around him at the console all smile too.  The actor who plays Biggie keeps smiling, closes his eyes and floats away on the music.  

In the movie’s next scene he’s shot dead from a passing car.  Then all of Brooklyn is mourning him on the streets as his body comes back for one last ride through the streets, and Angela Bassett looks on weeping, and I’m sobbing long after I turn off the TV.

And then, tonight, after I mixed this clip of the first two animation workshops  I started to laugh.  I said to myself  “I can’t believe it, I did it.. . I did it!”  I pumped my fist in the air as I jumped out of my chair, then I watched it again and again, with and without the headphones on.  I’m smiling as I type this, and I’m laughing too, to think about it.

(animation clip here)

Ahimsa’s all well and good

First do no harm, a very good place to start.  If I can’t help, I don’t hurt.   I do kill cockroaches when I see them, but I do it exactly the way I want to go– fast, in one blow, a certain death, no lingering in agony, even for a second.  I am a bit embarrassed to say I often apologize to the individual as I wipe him or her out.  It’s not their fault they are loathsome insects or that I can’t tolerate them near my kitchen sink.

Gentle is the goal, I tell myself.  I do not want to use the powers, already sharpened and ready inside me, to strike at people who do me wrong.  I want to give them a chance to do right, and, if they don’t, I want to leave without looking back.  I don’t need the last word, I just need to be away from toxic types.

But here’s the thing, sometimes these toxic types keep screaming for a showdown.   They can be very demanding and unreasonable about such things.  They provoke once, and if you let it go, they get furious and dial up the provocation the next time.  Over time they will find a way to set up the showdown they’re looking for, or die trying.   They have this wild west mentality, they want to be the fastest gun and they want a damn shootout to prove that they, and not you, are the baddest killer around.  

I don’t want to have to knock any of these toxic sociopath zombies out anymore.  There’s nothing in it for anybody.  First do no harm, and lastly, do no harm.  Amen.

“So, do you think you’ll ever work things out with X?”

I don’t think so, I told him, because I realize now that we brought out the worst in each other.  I was the worst I’ve ever been and he couldn’t do any better.  It was a long goodbye, and I tried my best to make things better, but in the end I didn’t see another way.

Said without defensiveness, because, finally, I understand that we can only proceed with good faith.  I’m not playing games or trying to win contests, I am in this to be interactive, to create things with people who want to play.   Whatever the world may say about that is really not my concern any more.  Trying to play with unhappy critics is not fun.  I need to play with people who just love to play.

My goal is to be present, direct, and as good as I can be.  People I have to be polite around I’ll be polite around until I can get away from them.  People I can be creative with are the ones I’m looking for now, not people who test my abilities as an improvisational actor by insisting I pretend that a bowl of moldering snot is actually a tasty dip.

The Internalized Victimizer

He drew himself a line in the sand and dared himself to cross it.  “Do it, this time, you fucking loser,” he snarled as his toe dug the line.  He couldn’t cross the line he dared himself to cross.  He stared at it, finally drew himself back and cried.  “The same old story,” he said to himself, “the eternal fucking loser…” and he struck himself about the face and head, and cried some more.

That voice was not his voice, not the voice he hears paddling his kayak or gliding on the back of Lew’s glider at 5,000 feet, or even rolling on his bike, the autumn night damp against his face.  The voice he hears when he is soaring is not that punishing, unremitting voice.  That sour voice belongs to the internalized victimizer.  Spit that shit out, man, it’s no good for you.  

Heed the words of your favorite preacher, for God’s sake.

Calmness

Easier to be totally calm during a crisis, sometimes, than in the course of the average day.    Might be helpful to think of the churning of the average day as the Chinese character for “crisis” which translates to “opportunity”.  

This sleight of hand offers the opportunity to change the way we see the challenge and then, seeing it differently, to treat it with more creativity.  

Yah, best to create yourself out of uncalm moments, it seems to me.  Going to go do that right now, in fact, after stretching my creaky body a bit.

Bitterness vs. Generativity

According to Erik Erikson the final stage of human life is marked by stagnation and bitterness or continued growth and a giving back that brings a kind of fulfillment.   As I have entered this last quarter of my life I opt for continuing to grow and become a force for hope, compassion and creativity, rather than a bitter old bastard.

I am, however, at the moment, one bitter old bastard.  It is a surprisingly bitter battle not to become bitter.  If friends toast my “success” without even asking how things went the other day in the first actual workshop, it is merely the way of the world and I should not linger on any darker feelings it may raise.

So I take this moment to express my gratitude for the hope I possess, in spite of myself, in the face of almost unanimous indifference, that I will continue to learn and grow and help others do the same.  

These tiny steps I take with the candle, cupping my hand around its small flame as the bitter winds whip the darkness all around, I am very grateful for them.  Each heavy-legged step is a step away from bitterness and toward the light.

Creativity

Warning: this is a mild bummer, forced up like a synthetic hairball; it contains little of the spontaneity it seeks to evoke

The pursuit of creativity (he begins pedantically) might sound like a frivolous add-on for somebody who already has enough and might want to enrich some downtime.  I could be drinking my own Kool-aid, but to me creativity is essential to just about everything.  Creativity is the life force, what makes our lives here possible in the first place, and as rich as they can be, no matter how otherwise poor, after that.

Why bother to invent a new way to say things when the old ones are tried and true, fine and dandy?  Because we need to, cleverness is a net gain, like a laugh, the difference between a grim march and a healthy hike.  Why do we laugh?  If I have to ‘splain it, Lucy, it won’t be funny.  We laugh because we hear something comically unexpected, or see something that surprises us and makes us lose it.  If the moment hadn’t been spun that way, by someone creating it just right, we’d still be yawning.

Creativity is a moment of grace that refreshes and restores the creator and the beneficiary of the creation, the aerialist spinning amazingly from one trapeze to another rather than plummeting to splat like a pumpkin as the crowd shudders.

Creativity is a moment of faith, taking a chance to do something new with belief in success.  It’s done with a freedom we might not otherwise see in our day.  

Lack of creativity makes us wince, someone trying to be original by imitating something many others have already done trying to be original.  Or when the attempt misfires like, for example, a mildly embarrassing moment from yesterday’s nice chat with an old friend.  This guy is very funny, and it struck me, toward the end of a serious talk, that we hadn’t had a single laugh, which is rare for a conversation with him.  The subjects we talked about had been serious, we were both concentrating hard.  My mind was sluggish trying to shift gears as I was reminded by something he said of a certain joke.  I asked him if he’d heard the one about…. and I dick-fingeredly handled the joke by the punchline to jog his memory.

“No,” he said with a smile.  I could hear over the phone that the same smile was there a few moments later, along with a slightly surreal laugh, as he acted like the punchline I’d already told him had been a surprise.  He created a little reaction to distract us both from the embarrassment of my moment of anti-creativity.

But how about the person somewhere down south who first described someone’s clumsy attempt to do something as being “dick-fingered”?

Supremely creative.  If you think about it, even for a hot little moment, you will realize I am right to extoll its importance.  Now go forth, be fruitful and multiply yourself, and have a nice day.

Prayer for a Full Recovery

In the dark night where my dead ancestors sing their sorrowful chorus, I put my guitar aside to think for a moment of the living and send out a prayer for their health.

And those who cling to health now, may they be restored to their full powers speedily.  And for those who won’t be restored to their full powers, may they recover enough of their powers to rejoice.

We are a carping and querulous bunch of bastards, those of us who enjoy good health we take for granted and believe, in spite of overwhelming evidence, that our run of under-appreciated good luck will continue forever.

Even the stars in the fiery blackness will blink their last one day.

I’m lucky in this

 In stories we identify with characters whose motives make sense to us.  Odd to say, then, that the forces driving many of the heroes and heroines we meet are unknown to the characters themselves.   Their heroism itself is also often invisible to them.  

Our lives are not novels or movies, as far as we know, but they might as well be since we’re each the main character of our own life, as well as the narrator.  

I’m lucky in this:  the driving force in my life is clear to me.   In a nutshell, my parents were both raised by parents who broke their spirits.  My father was a prick (and sincerely regretful about this on his deathbed), my mother was a poet who never wrote, both were singers who never sang.   When I needed to be heard as a child I often got a deaf ear and eventually a lecture about attention-seeking and whining.  They were unable to give what they never got.

So my back story can be told very simply, and I understand it clearly.  And I’m lucky in this.   Parents who were hurt, doing better than their own parents did, but still not getting it right, raising two children with a lot to overcome.  The driving force of my life is doing better than they did, overcoming more than they overcame, giving what they were largely unable to give.  Becoming, in the overused phrase, the change I want to see in the world.  What is hurtful to you do not do to somebody else.

In the darkness here, where so many stumble cursing, I am blessed to see by the light of this dim candle, and I am lucky in this.   I have finally chosen a path that makes sense to me, using my skills to create a workshop where children are carefully listened to, allowed to imagine what they will and bring it into the light.  This path is straight up a steep and rocky hill, to be sure, but it makes sense and is motivated straight out of my life story.

I’m lucky in this.

The obligation to do right

I heard national treasure Bill Moyers interview a brilliant and courageous woman named Vandana Shiva.   You can hear their discussion here.   At one point Moyers asks her how she can continue to fight huge, immensely wealthy and aggressive agricultural multinationals with such little hope of success.  She tells him of a passage from the Bhagavad Gita that explains it is not whether you can succeed or not that determines whether you should do a thing, but whether you have an obligation to do it.   It resonated deeply for me.

The following week Bill Moyers interviewed Chris Hedges, former seminary student, who came to his calling– speaking truth to power– from a Christian perspective.  After discussing Hedges’s work witnessing slaughter, systemic poverty and oppression the world over, and writing and speaking about it in eloquent detail, Moyers asks him the same question.  How can you, a good person driven to despair, continue to resist in the face of such odds?  Hedges gives the same answer Vandana Shiva gave the week before.  We are obliged to do what is right, no matter if we can succeed in changing things or not.  

This rang that bell of mindfulness inside me again.  Death waits for each of us, more patiently or less patiently.  What would you do now if you knew for certain that you had six weeks to live?   What would you do if you had six years?  Or twenty-six? The question seems to call for the same answer.  Do what you are called to do, what makes you feel most useful, what makes the richest demands of your talents without diminishing you.  

One thing not to do is spend a second more than is necessary with people who prove toxic to your unique and infinitely precious self.