Infinite Monday

One day in the unforseeable future I will wake up on Monday morning with joy in my heart. With that I will know I have reached perfection. That will definitely be the litmus test.

Mondays just fuck with me, like god poking me with a stick.

"Get up, you blog-writing movie-watching book-reading whore. Get out of the damn bed and go to work. And appreciate it that you even have a job you ungrateful ethically-damaged lazy delusional mess. You think I care that you only got four hours of sleep? Wake up! (poke) Who in hell do you think you are? (poke) Special? I'll tell you who you are you stupid ugly socially-challenged bitch! WAY far from perfect. That's right. So get used to your lonely little life with your insecure little thoughts and your pathetic little dreams, because your life is not gonna change. You hear me? YOU'RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!"

I imagine god sounding a bit mobster-ish here, like Joe Peschi in Goodfellas.

Then I (wincing) crawl out of bed and try my best to put on a good face for god. Make the most of it. Tally ho! (I don't even know what that means.)

In the car (god in the passenger seat) I listen to Sun Kil Moon's Ghosts of the Great Highway, track 2 and 4 over and over and over and over until I realize god is really getting irritated and I have reached total melancholy saturation. I hear Mark Kozelek's voice break plaintively and am startled to realize I feel happy. Glad that I have a warm car (hell, I could live in this damn thing if I needed to) and glad that there are Mark Kozeleks in the world creating beautiful songs.

I walk through the dark parking lot toward the school and say "shit" under my breath one less time than last Monday.

I once had a lover who wore a big winter coat

I once had a lover who wore a big winter coat.

Without provisions we ran toward a wilderness of swirling snow,

Lips breathing steam on my wet face
he unzipped his world of nylon and fur

and brought me in.

My hands. Eager explorers of his warm geography!
I entered the movement of his universe.

Push and Pull

Mallory thinks I pull away from people/experiences because I am afraid of something. (That is, when Mallory "gives" anything at all in our little weekly sessions. She mostly just sits and waits for me to wiggle my way into the "relevant" topic.) I am really trying to face this problem head-on, which is not easy because my mind is used to going in circles, justifying, rationalizing, seeing all sides until I can't think straight or make a decision.

Sometimes I think I am destined to walk a solitary path, and that is what I have been avoiding. Did I get married to avoid that? Has fear been the motivation behind every decision in my life? Sena, my old college friend, says she has seen it happen with her sister and other women friends. They are in relationships that are not good for them and suddenly the moment comes when they realize it and can act. It took a long time for me to see that some invisible thread was woven into the fabric of my marriage that was damaging to me. I actually thought "everything" (and I mean EVERYTHING, thank you Dolly) was my fault. I took it all on. Sena has seen so many women do the same.

So commitment became for me, running away. The hard part is to know when I am tricking myself! When moving toward relationship is healthy and when retreating is healthy. Example: Right now you know what my mind wants to do? It wants me to be a nun! (And this is a pretty recurrent thought.) It says, "Run!" "Run away from intimacy! Run like the wind! Run away from decisions! Run away from committment! Run away from responsibility! Run! Run! Run!"

I know we are all essentially alone in this journey through life and that all things change. We can depend on that. I want to be able to walk toward those things that scare me but more importantly I want to be able to navigate relationships with kindness and dignity. I want to learn how to love. (And I don't mean romantic relationships. Remember? I'm going to be a nun.)

The Gates

Maybe the administration can sense me going over the edge. Yesterday I totally went "off" on a student who threw a paper wad in my classroom. (I picture myself becoming the "animated" Galadriel.) The room goes totally silent as I rise up with unearthly power and rage, and when it is done I am in an altered state, totally depleted. The students slide out of the room, trying to be inconspicuous. Could that be why "they" approved my request for three extra days during mid-winter break? I am so fucking happy!

So from February 17-23 I will be in NYC, visiting AJ and Moe and hanging out in Central Park experiencing The Gates and exploring and thinking and...whatever else comes my way.

About The Gates:

Christo & Jeanne-Claude's works are entire environments, whether they are urban or rural. The artists temporarily use one part of the environment. In doing so, we see and perceive the whole environment with new eyes and a new consciousness.

The effect is astounding. To be in the presence of one of these artworks is to have your reality rocked. You see things you have never seen before. You also get to see the fabric manifest things that cannot usually be seen, like the wind blowing, or the sun reflecting in ways it had not before.

The effect lasts longer than the actual work of art. Years after every physical trace has been removed and the materials recycled, original visitors can still see and feel them in their minds when they return to the sites of the artworks.

There is no other way to describe the feeling of that effect other than to say it is magical.

Christo and Jeanne-Claudes' website

Should I be worried?

I met an old college friend after work last night that I hadn't seen for years, and after we got over the averted eyes/ "you haven't changed at all" phase, it was a really fun evening. We talked a lot about the unusual liberal arts college that we attended as undergrads where a sort of "citizens of the fourth world" philosophy is still fostered.

Today I woke up at 4am as usual, showered, looked at some news, scanned some blogs, waded out into the mounds of snow that fell last night to start my car and then realized it's Saturday. It took a while to convince myself. I didn't want to believe I could be so scattered.

I thought it was Friday. I guess I should be paying more attention. Or something. Corralling my mind gets harder and harder. It drags its feet when faced with responsibilities that are supposed to be taken with utmost seriousness. Like professional development. Or meeting some departmental chair's demands for documentation of this and that. Checking voice mail from irate parents who expect a certain grade for their child. And listening to the meanderings of the principal as he wrings out every side of every issue out loud.

My mind will not concentrate during staff meetings anymore. Not since I first gave it freedom to roam wherever it wishes during those tedious bi-weekly sessions devised for staff torture. Perhaps that is where I went wrong. I never know what is going on. I always catch news at the last minute through the grapevine, which is a sort of challenge. I have always prided myself at being good at "winging it". A staff meeting in two minutes? No problem! I quickly grab a pen and notebook and I'm there, ready to draw pictures of sun and surf.

But to think today was Friday? To believe we had some kind of hideous staff meetings all day long? Didn't I hear hints of a day-long meeting? I guess the day of unbearable meetings is on Monday. God! This is the biggest hit I have taken in my "fake your way through your working life acting all the while like you are on top of things" method. I have actually turned the torture back on myself.

Should I be worried?

Priorities

Today is my second day off work for medical testing, which yesterday involved taking a capsule of radioactive substance.

The hospital tech, with another man watching him, brought out a large cylinder which he painstakingly opened and then slowly pulled from it a smaller cylinder, which he also unscrewed with some effort. He then slid a test-tube from that cylinder and with more struggle removed its cover. Motioning for me to hold out my palm, with gloved hands he silently tipped the test tube and a lone capsule fell into my outstretched hand. It felt like taking communion as I swallowed the pill with the little cup of water and the men standing above me, watching.

There were two scans yesterday and I have to go back for one more today. The whole thing reminds me of The Matrix, of course, only I didn't have my choice of pill. Remember the scene where Keanu gets in the car and they remove the "bug" from his body? I am now glowing green, but at least I have the day off. Is it sad that hospital testing involving radioactive substances would be preferable to going to work? That it would be relaxing and exciting in comparison?

Running up to my car in the parking ramp afterward, my foot slid on the icy cold concrete stairs and I fell forward into the edge of one step onto my kneecap, which HURT LIKE HELL! There was a woman passing me on the steps at the time and she was like, "are you OK?!" I hopped up and said bouncily, "I'm fine!" and strided on like nothing was wrong. I got to my car, fell into the seat and rubbing my thigh, worked through the HORRENDOUS NEARLY UNBEARABLE PAIN that lasted about ten minutes."

So I headed straight for Barnes and Noble, limped inside and bought myself Chronicles of Tao, by Deng Ming-Dao (which I have on hold at the library, but is taking much too long getting returned) and rented "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle". This made me very happy, even though I should have bought some boots instead.

The Fourth World

This morning I came upon some words, scrawled hurriedly and buried on my desk:

Jan Morris - People all over the world who believe in kindness are citizens of the fourth world.

The Dalai Lama - My religion is kindness

We are not alone - the only thing that counts is kindness, really.

Searching for more about the travel writer Jan Morris, I came upon quotes from her book Trieste, in which she says that Members of the Fourth World "...come in all colors. They can be Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or pagans or atheists. They can be young or old, men or women, soldiers or pacifists, rich or poor. They may be patriots, but they are never chauvinists. They share with each other, across all nations, common values of humor and understanding.

Among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean. They are not inhibited by fashion, public opinion or political correctness.

....always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it."

Carlos Amantea, in his review of her book says that Morris... "finds a melancholy there and calls Trieste, which lies along the Adriatic, the last outpost of Italy before the Balkans, 'the Capital of Nowhere."

"And what does [The Fourth World] have to do with Trieste, that decent city that no one can ever find on the map? Those of us in the Fourth World, she says, need a capital, our own nation. What would it be called?

It is the nation of nowhere, and I have come to think that its natural capital is Trieste."

How to Read a Roadmap When it Doesn't Matter Where You Are

I have been grading papers since 5 am, including unknown lengths of time spent staring into space or eating or stretching or reminding myself I'm alive. Semester exams are Thursday and Friday and then grades are due. God! Maybe there is an easier way of doing this "grading papers thing", or at least not hating it so much. I find myself renting movies set in tropical climates as a feeble attempt at escape. I watched 50 First Dates last night, which was set in Hawaii, but Blue Crush would have been better. Waves. That's the ticket. And a nice soundtrack. I love the ocean.

My friend Veronica and I, at 15 years old, sat on the beach in Hollywood, Florida and saw our futures approach us like sandy conveyor belts of wealth and happiness. Her family spent weeks there each winter, and I was the lucky friend that year, chosen to keep her company, and we were perfect beach bums.

Veronica and I met in kindergarten as I flew buzzing like an airplane up a row of school desks. Our eyes met, she joined me and we were immediate best friends, which continued through elementary, junior high and into high school. Veronica's father owned a car dealership in our small town but the differences in our way of life were lost on me until high school, when I started "philosophizing" too much, as Dolly put it. Dolly liked it that I had friends like Veronica. She didn't so much care for those on the "other" side of the tracks.

Veronica was wild. Not in a random way, but in a calculated, logical, skimming-above-the-surface way, not even touching the ground and getting dirty like the rest of us. We reveled in grassers, kissed the boy-next-door, mixed our blood through fists, through love, but not Veronica. She held out for guys from bigger towns, she grew bored and tasted forbidden waters. She hustled high school teachers and had visions of "Italian men" in her future. Veronica was beautiful and rich and all the local boys wanted her.

On a northern summer evening, cool and full of anticipation, she picked me up in her big blue Eldorado convertible that her father gave her for an early graduation present. Approaching the City Fruit Market, a hovering cloud of fruit flies dimmed the light above a steaming mountain of soft black bananas. To enter was to pass through a veil of their deep sweet odor, and the Junebugs crunched under our feet and stuck to the screen door as it slammed behind us. Back in the car, we poured rum into our glasses, added coke, took a deep warm gulp and headed north, to the Palladium.

Leaving town was like crossing the border, entering a new climate. Once the lights of town were behind us, and the sun setting at our left, the cool night bit at our necks as we squealed and yelled at the darkening sky and tipped our glasses high to let the sweetness run down our throats. We were in strange land. No map, no navigator, just the memory of dirt roads, a familiar-looking house here, we stopped to pee there once, I think. Do we turn there? No let's try this road. Headed north on the backroads, we pass a familiar car, we stop to talk with other pilgrims, all of us headed north, to the Palladium.

The Palladium was an enormous rustic wooden three-level dance hall that sat on a lake surrounded by pine trees and cottages. Roads wound around the lake's edge, snaked around the houses and into the countryside. These were dirt roads, the kinds kids know best, the remote ones where you meet and talk at 3 am, or the ones where some friends have to die in a car in the middle of the night. But this is part of our teenage life in this land, isn't it? The death in cars, the wondering if our friends were lying out there in the dark, smelling the weeds so close to their face, thrown from their car, listening to tires speed by out of sight, or if they heard the sounds of kids partying in the air before the sun rose.

The Palladium is lit up like a huge firefly above the dark lake, its' reflection gently lapping on the surface. We want to get wet. We want the cold water to close over our skin, deep and complete. We want to go under.

Leaving the dance hall, Veronica and I stagger to the car, the top still down, stale drinks waiting on the floor. The coke tastes flat and we feel numb. The liquor has no effect and we drink some more, trying to keep tomorrow away. "God, Veronica. You can't drive for shit!" Veronica is laughing and she is driving fast down the cool black road, into the soft dirt at the side, then swerving back, gripping the road again and laughing, driving faster. We ignore the 90-degree turn and we are traveling sideways on the grass, the car sliding, spinning. I glance sideways and squint as the corner of a white farmhouse moves next to me. Slow and easy, I can touch it with an outstretched finger, and then it is gone.

I am relaxed, enjoying the graceful movement and the force that pushes me back against my seat and tight against the car door. My face to the stars, I close my eyes to stop the spinning. I am laughing too, with Veronica, as her tires cut deeply into spongy lawn, as we jerk back across the ditch onto the road and head south, toward home.

SNOW DAY! A Day for Reflecting on the Weather and Giving Thanks for White Colonization

I. Morning: No school today!

There is a god. And she granted me a snow day. Which may be the only good thing about living in this (what I thought was) god-forsaken climate. My ancestors must have been retarded. (Fade-in to a shot of them bumbling their way through the woods, "discovering" everything they laid eyes on.)

"Let's settle here. There are 7 days of sunshine a year, the summers are humid and stiflingly hot, the winters are also humid, and uninhabitably freezing! What are we waiting for? Since there are so many inches of heavy snowfall and it rains as much as freaking Seattle, let's build flat roofs, too. And big houses that are hard to heat! And another plus is the short growing-season. Hey! Let's all get guns, too, and shoot people if they try to make us pay our taxes. And-and-and-let's have a club! like a militia! With explosives and stuff. Let's not let anybody but us in the town, OK? And let's make sure our cities die by not allowing street vendors or musicians or outside cafes or anything uppity. Shit, let's keep the kids out, too. Who wants those freakin skateboarders all over our future concrete hell on earth? And frankly, if we have a library, is there any way we can keep people from touching the books? Goddamn it, get those homosexuals outa here, we will vote for marriage between one man and one woman. Procreate, people. Procreate!"*

*(Really important ancestral conversation preserved amidst my treasure-trove of memorabilia in a closet overflowing with valuable historic family documents. This particular gem later became part of the state constitution. You can tell that my ancestors were amazingly foresighted!)

Since I am such a good person that god brought snow and ice to give me the day off , I may take the opportunity to sort through some more of my priceless family history today. I'll keep you posted!

II. Afternoon: After more rummaging

Here's my latest find from a book chronicling the "history" of the town where I was raised:

"...the spring of 1833 is the era of civilized occupation. ..The 28th of May brought our pilgrims to [where the town would be]. It was too late for putting in crops by clearing the land, so they bought an Indian plantation, plowed and planted five acres with corn and potatoes. They paid the Indians $25 for their crops and improvements...The Indian settlement was where the city... now is. Some five hundred Indians, who were under the Flat River chief, stopped there, for making sugar, fishing, etc. They also raised some corn. As friends, the Indians and settlers lived together, with mutual benefit. The first winter passed, the Indians knowing they had sold their rights, cheerfully gave up their cherished homes to the whites. They knew they occupied only by the sufferance of the government."

White people never cease to amaze me. "Cheerfully gave up their cherished homes..." I wonder how the Indian version of this story was told.

III. Evening: Wild child

What began as a tirade about weather in the midwest turned into an angry rant about the places we have created for ourselves to live and then skidded off into contempt for those who stole those places from the people who were already there. I am feeling a bit hysterical.

One last thought: Remember Jim Carey's black sons in Me, Myself and Irene? He just wasn't aware of the fact that they were different than him, and neither were they. They all just loved each other, unconditionally and energetically. I liked that movie if only for that dynamic, which created some really funny moments.

Sometimes I feel like I have been captured by white people and raised as one of them. I'm gonna go have a glass of wine and pray for snow.

Rosa, the Mexico City Airport, the Officers' Bar and the Stowaway: Mexico Diaries III

The Mexico City Airport was so much smaller that I imagined. I was immediately approached, considered and queried about my flight. It turned out the weather had delayed my plane. I had 5 hours to kill in a tiny airport not unlike the one I had left on the first leg of my trip south, where I sat sipping Bloody Mary's with a fretting Dolly at 8am and watched workers spray great clouds of chemical deicer on the plane wings. Dolly saw no beauty in that early morning composition so vivid outside the enormous plate glass window, which, much like a Diego Rivera industrial mural, contained anonymous uniformed workers creating beautiful god-like natural phenomena, only toxic.

A smartly-dressed thirtyish professional-looking Mexican woman approached me, took my hand, apologized for my delay and asked if I needed anything. Surprised, I looked at her and smiled. A scruffy young girl who blatantly disregarded the dictates of proper dress and behavior was not used to such treatment.

"Are you hungry? I work for the airline. Can I get you anything? A candy bar? A sandwich? A drink?"

I smiled again, and after unlocking a door behind the ticket counter and leading me back into the metal labyrinthian recesses of the airport, we came to a nondescript door on which hung a small sign that read, "Private: Officers Bar".

Maria and I (yes! already on a first-name basis) cozied up to the nicely-lit bar, where the bartender, whose duties included a lot of polishing of glasses and blending into the woodwork, didn't even look up at us. It was obvious that Maria frequented this place. She said something to the bartender in Spanish and, without looking our way, he nodded slightly. There were uniformed pilots scattered here and there, and they glanced up at Maria with recognition, but she made no move to greet them. I imagined that she felt some deep disregard for them, even contempt.

The bartender waited quietly before us as Maria grilled me. "Cerveza? Do you want a drink?" She ordered in Spanish, "Dos Margueritas, por favor." Maria turned to me, totally tuned in, and asked, "What brought you to Mexico?" And over the course of the next three or four hours, Maria and I shared our deepest thoughts. She knew of my sexual laisons, and what Norte Americana girls were thinking and doing. I learned of her dislike for her mysterious job at the airport. Men passed in and out, always looking at her, and she stayed with Rosa and me, giving me advice. "You know how I stay so young? Lots of liquid, any liquid is fine," she said, sipping her third Marguerita.

I knew she didn't fit in here. She was smart and beautiful, but a woman, and there was nowhere for her to climb. I said she should come to the US, the land of milk and honey. She could come and visit me. She admired Rosa, who reclined on the bar in front of us. She wanted to know why I was drawn to such a doll, and when I talked about the simplicity of Rosa, she nodded.

Once a man entered the bar, whispered to Maria and her voice began to rise. The man left and she turned to me with a smile. She was doing her job, who do they think they are? We became co-conspirators in sisterhood, surrounded by men in uniforms. We laughed and ordered another drink.

When the message came over the intercom that my plane was boarding, Maria hustled me to my gate, and by then we were arm-in-arm. I handed Rosa to her and said "goodbye". She said she couldn't take Rosa, but I insisted. She hugged me and said we would meet again. Turning, I entered the plane and walked down the aisle, full of white faces looking up at me. Where had all these gringos come from?

Settling in, I pulled my journal from my backpack and looked up to see Maria hurrying down the aisle toward me. She stopped and hushed me. "Shh. Don't say anything. I am coming with you." Taken aback, all of my human impulses were tested at once. Seeing my look of panic, she said "I can't stay here. I will die if I stay here. I will be in the bathroom. After the plane takes off I will come and sit with you." She was surprisingly calm and confident, like an organized professional efficiently doing their job.

"You can't do this!" I was mortified at the law-breaking levels toward which I had veered, and suddenly became Pollyanna. "You will get in SO much trouble!"

But what about me? I could see all of the white peoples' eyes on me, as I sat in a morally frozen state between co-conspirator with my new-found soulmate and co-conspirator with an international law-breaker. "Holy Shit." I fumbled, and the white-haired couple across the aisle came to my rescue. "She tried to tell her to get off the plane," they told the men in suits who boarded in pursuit of my sister in crime. "She had nothing to do with it!" they cried, pointing at me. "That WOMAN is in the bathroom!"

As the men escorted a broken Maria down the aisle toward the exit she looked at me and said "We will meet again. I will call you."

And she did, once or twice, a few months later. I was living in my old bedroom in my parent's house and my main pastime was smoking dope and walking the hilly terrain of the town where I grew up. Funny, I hadn't noticed the geography all that much before. Her voice was distant and had a desperate but controlled edge. I kept the conversation light and aloof, holding on to my advantage, losing touch, letting go.

Leaving San Miguel: Mexico Diaries II

I woke up before dawn, took one last shower in my scorpion-fucking-infested shower, pulled on some jeans, a t-shirt and well-worn guarachi's and wondered how I would carry that monster of a suitcase two blocks down a cobblestone street in the dark. I grabbed Rosa, shut the door of my little house one last time, walked down the curved garden path that led past the lime tree where I hung my clothes to dry, closed the huge wooden door to the street and stood for a moment looking toward the distant corner, lit by a streetlight. A bus would soon stop quickly at that corner, open its' doors wide to encompass me and take me in its' unsympathetic way to Mexico City, where I would fly away forever.

My body said, "go to the ocean," but my mind answered, "go home." "Fuck." I dragged the red suitcase another six inches. Getting a good grip I lifted it and pushed with my knees, moving it another four inches, tops. "Shit." I sat down on the suitcase and dug in my backpack for a cigarette. The Virgin of Guadalupe watched me from the match box as I sat in the dark and wished some mystery would appear. Some person to prophecy my future, tell me I had a future, love me, reassure me that everything was OK. God, I would give anything for a joint.

So I worked my way down the street that way, stone-by-stone, smoke in my lungs, already almost beaten by that red suitcase, heading away from a place I couldn't get enough of to a place I knew all too well: my parent's house and my old bedroom. "Fuck." The basketsellers were entering the street, and two of them lifted my bag and carried it quickly, skillfully and joyfully to the corner. "We are thankful that you decided not to die in a strange land, Gringa." They smiled their toothless smile and I was left alone again at the crossroads, but anyhow, we all knew this girl's soul had been used as hard currency one time too many in the kingdom of childhood.

I stood alone with Rosa, a paper mache doll with movable arms and legs that I bought on a trip to the market in Guanajuato with some Canadian friends. She was a beautiful Mexican Indian, and wore an embroidered blouse and long skirt that was frayed at the bottom. Her hair was of black yarn and braided, and painted on her chest were the letters "ROSA". I carried her with me for no particular reason, other than she would get totally flattened in my suitcase and I couldn't part with her. She was a thing of beauty and I valued her more highly than all of the silver and pre-columbian beads and precious stones that lined my red suitcase. The bus stopped, a gray haired woman in a rebozo got on and she and Rosa and I watched the desert landscape pass as the bus carried us to the future.

My Fourth Life: Mexico Diaries I

I traveled to Mexico a year or so after college and lived in a little town called San Miguel de Allende. I enrolled at The Instituto Allende, a school which specialized in arts and crafts and Spanish American Studies, where my time was spent learning about Mexican history, doing some autobiographical writing and printmaking. Disenchanted with school in general I searched out more interesting activities, which always included altered states of consciousness. I moved toward the precipice with precision.

It was not uncommon to find myself at 4am with my newest local friends, mescal bottle in hand, staggering arm-in-arm down some cobblestone street singing at the top of our lungs. In the morning I would wake up in a deserted house with a wicked headache. Light-sensitive and bedraggled I would pass the basket-sellers on the street, who perhaps had some compassion for the young, stupid American and would try to protect me in their way. "Don't walk to Cerro de las Tres Cruces by yourself". Don't die down here in a place you don't understand.

I learned only after I left that the railroad tracks outside San Miguel were the place where Neal Cassidy, four days short of his 42nd birthday, wandered in an altered state and died of exposure in the high desert night. I felt that I understood Cassidy's pull toward greater experience, even as it lead to death, and I recalled my last night in town, standing mesmerized, alone under a streetlight on a narrow cobblestone crossroads, gazing drunkenly up at what seemed like thousands of bats flying overhead. Head back, I watched them circle upwards and downwards in hypnotic patterned chaos, so much smarter than me. I knew, that night, that I must leave Mexico. My luck had run out and all that was waiting for me there was disaster.

A week or so earlier I swashbucklingly decided to CLIMB TO THE ROOF! after drinking for several hours in my jardin. Several precarious roof-crossings later I was delighted to find myself carousing atop neighboring houses in the deep night hours that I loved so much. I looked down at surreal green lime trees lit by moonlight in hidden gardens and I plundered unexpected barren landscapes housing goats and chickens, secrets in the middle of the city. With some strength and balance I traveled atop the architecture, and was allowed a new perspective of the world.

In my altered state I was infallable. I didn't see death drawing so near my soft body that its' delicate breath gently wound around my bare neck. I mistook it for the Mexican night breeze as my foot slipped from the narrow garden wall. When I landed it was flat on my back with a great thud on the quiet ground packed hard by animals. And with that impact time began to beat again and my vision cleared to a close-up of a hundred separate miniscule particles of dirt and flour and glass and bone that made up the unfertile earth beside me. A jagged thick metal pole, sticking a foot and a half into the air and solidly planted, stood inches from my torso, a marker for where I should have landed. A peasant woman with grey hair, her body wrapped in a rebozo stood looking down at me. Simply looking.

The night of the bats came soon after, and marked the end of my time in Mexico. I headed for the airport in Mexico City early the next morning with my bulging suitcase and my stolen artifacts, hoping I could get out of town before destiny caught up with me. I wasn't ready to sleep a long sleep in this country that was so well-fitted and alarmingly familiar to me.

Other than Fucking

My ten days of vacation have dwindled to one, and my mind is drawn toward familiar anxiety-ridden places. I seem to be losing the ability to heft myself up and pummel myself into acting like I enjoy my job. I don't really see an answer in sight for that dilemma, so I will ignore it. Yes. Pretending it doesn't exist is surely the answer.

I guess I'll write about something that has been on my mind lately other than fucking. How about The Dalai Lama?

I have been very critical of the institution of marriage in this blog, and have seen it as a coercive model that oppresses women. (Hell, it is probably in a biological sense more coercive to men, because it forces them to contain their seed-spreading to one woman.) Generally it is considered the only acceptable way to live your life in our culture, and to promote that belief system, a mythology of romance has been built, fortified and maintained to support it. For instance, the romantic notion of love says there is one true love (soul mate) for each of us, and we just need to wait for that person to magically enter our lives to be emotionally happy. Maybe Walt Disney is the worst culprit in perpetuating this in popular culture. New versions of Cinderella are regularly animated and spit out for new generations of starry-eyed girls. But it goes far beyond Disney. There are Cinderella stories everywhere, from Pretty Woman to Maid in Manhattan to Bridget Jones to.....

If it wasn't so sad it would be funny. Millions of people are scanning the horizon, waiting for that special person, the ONE other person in the world who can make them happy. Heterosexuals, homosexuals, black, white, whatever, all humming various versions of "Some Day My Prince Will Come". My god, talk about setting ourselves up for disappointment! Have we learned nothing from JLo? Our cultural princes and princesses drop like flies when it comes to marriage.

We long for human connection and intimacy, and since we are not taught to question our subjective belief systems, we buy into that impossibly flawed fairy tale. And now, due to high divorce rates some Christians are promoting a more binding form of marriage called a covenant marriage, along with laws that provide slightly more limited grounds for no-fault divorce. But is making marriage harder to leave the answer? Sounds more like prison to me.

Howard Cutler, co-author of the book The Art of Happiness asks the Dalai Lama, "...in Western culture, it is not just the physical sex act but the whole idea of romance - the idea of falling in love, of being deeply in love with one's partner - that is seen as a highly desirable thing. In movies, literature, and popular culture there's a kind of exaltation of this kind of romantic love. What's your view of this?"

Without hesitation, the Dalai Lama said, "I think that, leaving aside how the endless pursuit of romantic love may affect our deeper spiritual growth even from the perspective of a conventional way of life, the idealization of this romantic love can be seen as an extreme. Unlike those relationships based on caring and genuine affection, this is another matter. It cannot be seen as a positive thing," he said decisively. "It's something that is based on fantasy, unattainable, and therefore may be a source of frustration. So, on that basis it cannot be seen as a positive thing."

The Dalai Lama sees our cultivation in the west of the idea of one special person to share our deepest feelings, fears, etc, as one that leads to problems if a person is deprived of that kind of intimacy. He never felt deprived because he didn't develop intimacy with one special person such as a spouse. He had intimate relationships with all sorts of people in his life, including the person who swept the floor during the threat of Chinese invasion of Tibet, with whom he would share his disappointments or unhappiness. He has an expanded vision of intimacy.

He describes a new model for intimacy (new for western culture, that is) that begins with compassion. We are totally interconnected with and interdependent on all other beings, and if we can realize that, and walk through our lives with an attitude of friendship and warmth, he believes we will have enough interaction with other people to enjoy a happy life. Instead of focusing on one person as the cure for our lonliness the Dalai Lama recommends maintaining closeness with as many people as possible.

The Dalai Lama isn't against marriage. He says, "Now, I've heard many people claim that their marriage has a deeper meaning than just a sexual relationship, that marriage involves two people trying to bond their lives together, share life's ups and downs together, share a certain intimacy. If that claim is honest, then I believe that's the proper basis on which a relationship should be built. A sound relationship should include a sense of responsibility and commitment towards each other. Of course, the physical contact, the appropriate or normal sexual relationship between a couple, can provide a certain satisfaction that could have a calming effect on one's mind. But, after all, biologically speaking, the main purpose of a sexual relationship is reproduction. And to successfully achieve that, you need to have a sense of commitment towards the offspring, in order for them to survive and thrive. So developing a capacity for responsibility and commitment is crucial. Without that, the relationship provides only temporary satisfaction. It's just for fun."

Our romantic notion of that 'One Special Person' with whom we have a passionate intimate relationship is a product of our time and culture. As the Dalai Lama says, it can be a proundly limiting viewpoint, cutting us off from other potential sources of intimacy, and the cause of much misery and unhappiness when that Special Someone isn't there.

Maybe if we were to take our eyes off the horizon and look around, we would see others with whom we could open ourselves, "forming genuine and deep bonds based on our common humanity." The Dalai Lama is telling us that we will not find happiness in our romantic myths and that on the contrary, they create distance around us that make us lonely.