The universe is an intelligence test.
--Timothy Leary
One day when I was practicing chanting in my temple in Vietnam, there was a
durian on the altar that had been offered to the Buddha. I was trying to recite the Lotus Sutra, using a wooden drum and a large bowl-shaped bell for accompaniment, but I could not concentrate at all.
I finally carried the bell to the altar and turned it upside down to imprison the durian, so I could chant the sutra. After I finished, I bowed to the Buddha and liberated the durian.
If you were to say to me, "Thây, I love you so much I would like you to eat some of this durian," I would suffer. You love me, you want me to be happy, but you force me to eat durian. That is an example of love without understanding. Your intention is good, but you don't have the correct understanding.
Thich Nhat Hanh,
The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive."
The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness.
Those who don't like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you.
But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what?
Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.
--sophie scholl
There was a time in my young life when it was necessary for me to go to daycare. I hated it. My dislike for daycare was so strong and fierce that when I didn’t have to go anymore, my dad made me a daycare graduation certificate. It’s not like I was molested or kept in a cage, or anything dramatic. But daycare was not my house, not my toys, and it felt like (even though there were probably only 10 or 11 of us) there were 40 kids crammed into this little house. The lady who kept the daycare was a nice lady, as I remember, who had a penchant for daytime soaps. One of the three things I vividly remember about daycare was being introduced to The Young and the Restless (which I called the Lung and the Restless until I was about five or six), a fact I’m sure didn’t delay my parents in pulling me out of day care as soon as possible.
Vivid memory number two: peeing my pants and getting into major trouble for it, from all directions, and getting teased for doing it. Never mind the fact that I was waiting for the bathroom, and Craig, who I already didn’t like was taking the longest dump in kid history and I told the lady I HAD TO GO. I remember standing in that hallway and feeling the gush down my legs, soaking through the terrycloth of my little kid shorts. Ever since then, I’ve tried my very best to make it to the bathroom at the very first hint of needing to tinkle. Some shit I don’t forget, people.
This brings me to vivid memory number three, and possibly the central reason I hated daycare. The lady who kept us was a nice lady—nice enough to let us be in the same room when she watched her soaps, nice enough to not yell too much when I had a hard time napping, and nice enough to give us ice cream. Not a bad deal, really. Except that the ice cream was always Neapolitan. Always. Hear me now: on the list of things I really don’t like in this world--including cancer, crushing poverty, bigotry, and violence—Neapolitan ice cream ranks just below the threat of thermonuclear warfare and slightly above having to go to the mall at Christmas time. I hated it as a little kid, and I hate it as an adult. If given the choice between Neapolitan ice cream and something you scraped off the bottom of the cat box and froze, I’d have to give it a real long think. Seriously.
See, the real problem with Neapolitan ice cream is that there’s just too much going on. I know, I know…it’s only three flavors, and it’s the three favorite flavors of the entire ice cream eating universe, all smooshed up together in one big happy carton. All I really care about is the chocolate. I can handle the vanilla, if I have to. But, you guys…there is no flavor in the world that makes me want to barf more than fake strawberry. Ugh, I get all spitty and burpy just thinking about it. As luck would have it, the daycare Neapolitan always had chocolate in the middle. You’d think that would be the prime spot to put the chocolate, since it’s sort of the main attraction to all right thinking people in the world. But it’s invariably played down by the vanilla, and the strawberry leeches into it, and you just taste everything all at once. And it’s not just one flavor…it’s all of them. And that, to my three-almost-four year old mouth (and to my almost-35-year-old mouth) was just too much business, especially when one of the overriding flavors is one that makes me want to barf.
Living a real life in Babylon is a lot like eating my way through a huge freaking carton of Neapolitan ice cream. The best stuff, the stuff to get excited about, to stand in line for, to sweat, work, cry, bleed, and truly love is usually sandwiched between the insipid and the outright awful. And I almost never get to take one single bite of any one flavor. There’s no working my way through the strawberry awfulness with a furtively hidden gag and watery eyes, knowing that in two more bites I can have the ho-hum vanilla and the truly sublime chocolate. And that is hard.
My father and my grandfather used to remind me, often in identical phrasing, that we all have to take the bitter with the sweet. And boy, do we ever. And the bitter and the sweet come in the most exhausting combinations…like getting all excited to see my far-flung cousins, and crying for an hour because the reunion is at a funeral, or having a really great tax refund, only to blow out two tires and have to spend the money on the car instead of a fun weekend. It’s knowing that my wedding day was the most special and holy and wonderful day and I got to marry the most incredible man who loves me more than I can possibly comprehend, and that my brother showed up drunk and late. It’s peeing in my pants and having my mother bring me dry ones and giving me a big hug in the middle of the day, and still getting dessert at lunch, except it’s freaking Neapolitan ice cream, every damn time. But that’s life. And it’s life in Babylon, for sure. We take the bitter with the sweet, and know that somehow, in some way (that’s both magical and miraculous) the two sensations buffer each other.
Sweetness can kill us and numb us just as much as bitterness can suck all the moisture from our mouths and make us feel jaded. But because they come together, it’s just about impossible to be carried away by either one, and hopefully, we end up, if not satisfied, at least sated...and if not sated, well, at least we know we had something to sustain and nourish us.
T.S. Eliot understood that concept, and I think that’s why he said that April was the cruelest month, and this month has reminded me of that quote, over and over…the whole world is blooming, and winter is receding and we’re all set to work on our gardens and tans, and I’m celebrating meeting my husband a whole year ago, and along comes North Korea, and the Boston Marathon bombing, and a building collapse in Bangladesh, and George Jones and my Aunt Lu freaking die. The sweet reek of the flavor I most ardently dislike encroaches on the ones I love best, and they are all in my mouth, and there’s nothing to do but swallow and take a big drink of whatever is nearest to hand to clear my palate.
It’s hard to swallow all of those things gracefully and gratefully. But the alternative isn’t as simple as it was in daycare. Refusal is not an option. We lick our plates and bowls clean, in this part of the world. Even the crappiest tasting, crappiest feeling, crappiest of crappy desserts is still dessert. It’s still nourishment, and nourishment brings life—a life that is moving and being and changing and rising and dying, and I don’t want to forget that. Because even thought the strawberry bleeds into the chocolate, and the vanilla is just so…vanilla, there’s this big, wide ribbon of chocolate moving through the middle, and somewhere, I’m convinced there’s a bite that is unsullied by the lesser tastes, telling me that I can and I will finish, and I most likely won’t throw up on the rug, when I’m done. And on most days, days when all I can see are dish after dish of frozen tri-color nightmare stacked up in rank upon rank, with just one spoon and only me to eat them, that is enough.
Mil besos,
rmj
No comments:
Post a Comment