(Continued from previous entry)

So here it is again: I seem eternally drawn to some form of this dance with anxiety. (Sometimes literally, dressed as a "pirate wench".)

The game of Cucumber is designed to amp up the anxiety level. Of course it's all in the name of good-natured fun, but the fear is real. Hands shake, voices tremble, and etiquette is thrown completely out the window as trash talk and whining become the primary modes of communication. Even the most demure of players can suddenly display a surprising vocabulary when faced with a bad hand or an imminent foray beyond their comfort zone. Every game becomes an experiment in social Darwinism as players cleave to a single credo: survive at anyone else's expense. But besides the obvious entertainment value, I believe there is also a certain educational merit in experiencing our primal impulses and raw reactions as social facades are stripped away, sometimes literally.

As I mentioned before in the entry "All In", I've always been somewhat annoyed by the existence of my primal survival fears, or more precisely, by what I feel are their inordinate influence on my thoughts and behaviors. One of the primary motivations for my walkabout is to confront these issues directly and teach myself that the strong influence of these deep-rooted fears and hungers are no longer necessary in my life.

There is a precedent in my life for this kind of approach. I used to be quite scared of heights and would avoid high buildings and cliffs as much as possible. I remember a trip to Europe a long time ago with my friend Mike. At the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, we went up on the roof which sloped precariously toward the edge which only had a very low wall along it. We both sat down quickly and nervously watched other tourists and even kids as they happily traversed the walkway along the edge. It took us a while before we could get up the nerve to make our way down from the roof. I can't remember the view at all, but I can still picture the edge of the roof. In Germany, I froze on a high bridge over a gorge near Neuschwanstein Castle. And don't even get me started on the Leaning Tower of Pisa with its slick marble sloping walkways around the outside (!) of the tower with absolutely no rails!

Years later, some friends convinced me to go bungee jumping with them.....from a balloon. It was kind of a spur of the moment idea, one that I obviously didn't give enough thought to. When we got to the place, I suddenly remembered my fear of heights when I realized that all the other people there for the jump were rock climbers, sky divers, and other assorted thrill-seekers. (I'm notorious among my friends for my lousy memory, so believe me, this isn't a stretch.) But I didn't have much time to think about it because the organizers decided that I should be the first to jump that day because if the winds picked up, then the jumps would have to be postponed till the next day, but I had a flight to Guatemala the next day.

I climbed into the balloon's little basket with my heart pounding so hard it felt like it would burst. As the balloon rose into the air, I clutched the basket's upper ropes so tightly in terror that my hands and arms began to go numb. I thought I was having a heart attack and that without the use of my arms I might fall out of the tiny basket since the rim only came up as high as my thigh. But we managed to reach the appropriate height without incident and the operator hooked me up to the big bungee cords. I managed to get my feet over the edge and sit on the rim of the basket. Then I looked down. And froze.

The tiny people down on the ground counted down dramatically from ten to zero, but I just continued to sit there in a daze. Then my mouth re-engaged as I tried to come up with stalling tactics. After a bit of this, the operator had had enough and called down with his radio, "I think we have a screamer here." This comment, I'm sure, was designed to work its magic on me, and sure enough, my fear of ridicule trumped my fear of heights and with the next countdown I forced myself out into nothingness.
 
It wasn't so much a "bungee jump" as a "bungee fall" or a "bungee plummet". (I managed to do the exact opposite of the Thai proverb that I stuck at the end of the last entry: "If you're gonna fall, you might as well jump.") I just sorta slid off the edge of the basket and watched in terror as the ground came rushing up at me. Then the tension of the bungee cords kicked in and I was soon bouncing back skyward where I cart-wheeled over like a rag doll puppet. Images of the earth and sky alternated as I did the human yo-yo thing a few more times, and soon they were lowering me down to the ground. I was still in a daze, but jubilant too.

I hadn't been attempting to "cure" my fear of heights, so it wasn't until much later that I realized that the bungee jump had managed to diminish my fear quite a bit. Tall buildings, roofs, and cliff ledges are no longer the problem they used to be. But to be clear, I am still nowhere near being a fearless mountain climber, as evidenced by my terrifying, achingly slow, and profanity-laced ascent of a cliff face in Joshua Tree National Park, much to the amusement of my seasoned rock-climbing friends.....and everybody else within earshot.

What a blessing it would be if my walkabout could somehow similarly diminish my primal fears. I realize that it's an ideal, but I can imagine the sense of liberation I would feel if I no longer worried about hunger or shelter, or some of the associated fears regarding injury, loss of possessions, income, social status, or accomplishment. And yes, I realize that fear can be a good thing too. A healthy fear of heights, for example, helps keep us away from unsafe precipices. And after all, fear and craving are parts of the human condition, indeed what all life is designed to do. They are fundamental elements of the biological engine of survival and procreation. We are designed to fear and crave, to protect and feed and procreate this bit of universal matter and energy that we define as our "self".

But times have changed drastically since we had to struggle day to day just to survive. As I mentioned in the blog entry "All In", our civilization has improved the state of people of my socio-economic status to a point where we really don't need to fear things like starvation or exposure any more. (This has been achieved through means both wonderful and dubious, but I won't get into that here.) I would actually have to try very hard to truly starve to death. Even then, at some point, someone would have me thrown in a hospital and force-fed with tubes. Yet I am still deeply and unconsciously influenced by these primal fears. This is largely due to the fact that for the vast history of humanity these fears and hungers were vital to our survival. It is only very recently (historically/geologically speaking) that such a large sector of the population no longer really needs these fears and hungers to survive, so they remain very hard-wired into our system.

While these fears and cravings have served our species and our predecessors well throughout eons of life on this planet, it now seems to be a darkly ironic fact that these same fears and cravings now threaten our very survival by causing world conflicts, overpopulation, ecological degradation, resource hoarding, etc. Our increase in population and technological power have caused a corresponding increase in the risk to our survival, not to mention the survival of plenty of other species too, some of whom we've already wiped out.

Perhaps we are at a threshold. Will we mature fast enough to keep pace with our power? Only time will tell. The positive spin: the very threats to our survival may be the engine of our evolution as humans. After all, natural selection decrees that wiser heads will have to prevail if we are to survive. I, for one, remain optimistic. We are learning to coexist. (Hey, look at Europe after millennia of bloody conflicts.) The concepts of conservation and sustainability are finally getting some traction in our civilization. And we seem to be realizing how interconnected this whole world is. Whatever happens, this promises to be an interesting century.....and millennium.

Yikes, I've really wandered far afield here.

Interestingly, though I initially set out on my walkabout to address primal fears like those regarding food and shelter, the fear that has come up the most has actually been "social fear". By this, I mean my fear of rejection and the corresponding desire for acceptance. First and foremost, us humans are social animals, and this walkabout practice severely challenges my ability to fit in with the rest of the herd. Basically, I look like a nutcase out on the street in my monk outfit with my bowl, broom, and dustpan. The vast majority of people want nothing to do with me and do their best to ignore my presence. I don't really fit in anywhere, not even in the various meditation centers where my robes actually delineate me apart from the other monks. This all serves to make me extremely self-conscious and it takes a lot of awareness and practice to relax into this new awkward monk incarnation.

This is another reason why the game of Cucumber is relevant here because it deals directly with social fears regarding self-image, social acceptance, humiliation, etc. These social fears of rejection and the corresponding desires for acceptance are the main way that my primal impulses manifest---not only on my walkabout, but in the rest of my "normal" life too. Self-esteem, image, acceptance, status, achievement, and praise are the carrots that accompany the sticks of my fears.

To be free of my social fear would probably be the greatest blessing of all. This is the ideal of the truly liberated Taoist sage, immune to insult and praise alike, impervious to those "imposters" triumph and disaster (Kipling), free to live from the heart. But social fears are hard-wired into me, just like the rest of my fears.

In fact, there is a distinct possibility that this little experiment could very well backfire and end up exacerbating the very fears that I am attempting to free myself from. By limiting my access to food and shelter, I may end up craving them even more than before. By posturing myself as a social outcaste, I may end up increasing my hunger to be socially accepted.

And the more I think about it and the more I write about it, the more I realize that I will probably lose this psychological game of chicken with my fears. I will most likely fail. But as long as I don't lose the physical aspect of the game in the process (or else, hey, GAME OVER), it will still have all been worth it, for I will have learned an important lesson about my limitations. And it will finally be over. I will have taken my best shot and the monkey will be off my back. (He's been sitting there for quite a few years now, whispering in my ear.) I can give up trying to conquer my fears. (After all, perhaps it is my aversion to fear---the fear of fear---that it would be best to let go of first.) If I'm really lucky, I will let go of ideals, surrender to who I am, and collapse into my being, broken and beautiful as it is. And if I manage to embrace my fears and flaws and failures, then maybe I will stumble into some of the gems that are hidden in the darker corners of the psyche.....silence, space, peace, even freedom. For if we embrace the darkness, what can touch us then? Nothing...

...and, perhaps, Everything.

But for now, I'm still a scatter-brained, anxious monk poser, pondering if I'm going through some mid-life crisis or if I'm just eternally immature. Does it really matter?

And the new year is already upon us. Plan A looms on my horizon. I'm hoping to start my walkabout again in a week or two. Still haven't figured out any logistics yet, but I try not to let the details bother me too much. Though in some ways, it's been more difficult waiting to hit the road again than it was being on the road. The dance with anxiety never really stopped.....and probably never will.

But who knows, while I probably won't be able to overcome my fears, perhaps I can at least be brave enough to dig through my old box of photographs up in my mother's garage and find one of those infamous pirate wench pictures and post it back in the last entry. Heck, maybe I'll post a few of the Cucumber photos through the years while I'm at it.

So chess, poker, tennis, and now Cucumber, eh? The opportunities for practice are everywhere at all times, for life is the Ultimate Game after all.

Or perhaps you see it as a dance? A Divine Dance?
Or maybe you see life as a struggle, a battle? A Big Brawl?
Or a dramatic Bottom-of-the-Ninth at Bat?
Or a Tremulous Trapeze Trick?
Or darkly, the Nameless Noose?!

After all, Reality tends to be highly reflective. How you see is usually what you get.
So choose your metaphor.....and come out swinging! 



"Can you start over from a hundred?"
---me asking the crowd for a new countdown at the bungee jump

I have decided to start the next stage of my walkabout right here in Los Angeles. After my experiences in New York City, it seems appropriate to conduct a comparative experiment here in LA. So will it be the "City of Angels" or "Hell A"? Probably a bit of both, just like the Big Apple.....and just like me, and everything else too---a bit of light and dark, yin and yang, and lots of shades of gray. Exactly the way it's supposed to be.

I start tomorrow. And yes, the butterflies are doing some kinda slam dance in my stomach. So here's the fear, Monkboy---watch it, learn from it, embrace it.

My family still doesn't know anything about my walkabout, so it's going to feel a little awkward doing this in their city. But it's a big town, full of lots of nooks and crannies that some guy in a zen clown suit can get lost in.

Ironically, as something of a joke gift for my birthday, my sister's family got me "The WORST-CASE SCENARIO Survival Game". It's full of all sorts of wonderful survival gems like: "HOW TO TREAT A COMPOUND FRACTURE" or "HOW TO DEAL WITH AN OUTBREAK OF THE BUBONIC PLAGUE" or "HOW TO MAKE A SNOW HUT" (arched roof, okay?) or even "HOW TO DISABLE A CAR" (stick a banana or a potato in the exhaust pipe---in case you're fleeing the mafia, I guess). I'm hoping that I won't need any of this information anytime soon. I thought of rifling through the cards to see if they had "HOW TO DUMPSTER DIVE" or "HOW TO BREAK INTO A BURGER KING AFTER HOURS", but I fought the urge, cuz hey, I'm learning "HOW TO TRUST", right?

I will blog as much as my circumstances (and inclinations!) allow. This blog is well in the thrall of my ego, so I still have some reservations about its role in my practice. This whole thing sorta jumped the rails (jumped the shark?) ever since I started talking about poker and Cucumber...

I want to take this opportunity to wish you well on your journey too, at the beginning of this new year. For we really aren't so different, you and I. We breathe, we eat, we sleep, we wish to be happy, and we even wish others to be happy too. We dance this excruciatingly gorgeous dance of light and darkness.

And we are unaware of what amazing creatures we truly are...
...unaware of the grace that rains down on us, unabated...
...unaware that we walk toward the horizon hand in hand...
...cuz hey, we're One, ain't we?

Nothing less than the Universe becoming conscious of itself.

Love, All.



"It's dangerous to be alive."
---my sister, regarding "The WORST-CASE SCENARIO Survival Game"

"I don't worry about you so much because you're not around poor people anymore."
---my mother, referring to my trips to third world countries

I decided to start this stage of my walkabout in Santa Monica. One, because it's along a beautiful stretch of beach and I thought it would be somehow appropriate to start out as far west as possible. And two, because I remember Santa Monica as being fairly progressive and reasonably supportive of homeless folks. I have no plans whatsoever, so I don't know how long I'll be here or what direction I'll be heading next, except that I probably won't be heading west!

I told my mother and my sister's family that I was getting a ride east and then I had my friend Rebecca drop me off here in Santa Monica instead. Yeah, sneaky and deceptive, I know. But again, I don't want my family to worry.

So I got a haircut (almost a buzz cut) to lop off all of this unruly hair that I hadn't cut since I first started the walkabout back in July of last year. I've got the same faded blue samue robes and pretty much the same gear as before, except for a few extra layers of clothes and a warmer sleeping bag for the winter. And I got rid of my watch. I find that I am a bit too driven by the clock, so I want to try to learn to relax into the simpler rhythms of the day and the natural rhythms of my body.

I got a free library card here at the Santa Monica Public Library, but again, my time on the computer is limited, so I will try to be succinct.

That very first evening, I camped out on some of the most primo real estate in the world---Palisades Park on the bluffs overlooking the beach and that big beautiful ocean. And as I gazed at that gorgeous view and marveled at the vast canopy of stars overhead, the wind picked up and the chill set in, and already I began to envy that guy in the high-rise building behind me who was watching the Laker game in his warm cozy apartment.

There were a number of homeless people scattered throughout the park. In the short time before I went to sleep, I saw one guy talking to a tree, another screaming profanities down in the beach parking lot by himself, some young guys doing drugs (marijuana? crack?), and met another fellow who lamented that he used to own this whole coastline, but was having some trouble getting it back.

I wonder how many of these guys led "normal lives" (all of them?) and what it took to push them over the edge into homelessness, some into mental illness. I've heard it said many times that there are a great number of people living paycheck to paycheck, hand to mouth, mortgage payment to mortgage payment. They are especially vulnerable during this era of foreclosures, recession fears, and general belt-tightening. How many are only one step away from financial collapse and don't have family or friends to fall back on?

I chose a spot near the railing along the cliff so that I would be more out of the way and farther from the noisy traffic. This turned out to be not such a good idea since the wind picked up even more as the night wore on, and then a drenching mist came along to assure that I would spend the night shivering through the cold.

Back at my mother's house when I was saying goodbye to my mother's cat Mimi, I finally realized what she's been yowling at me every time she stretched out on my bed: "Hey stupid! Why do you have to make things so hard? Relax. Enjoy life. Enjoy what you have. Now get over here and pet me."

Too late, my little guru! Too late!

"Once things change, it's hard to change them back again."
---the man who lost the coastline

"You're one step away from crazy."
---my friend Rebecca

 

My first few days have been spent sweeping and cleaning up around Santa Monica and generally enjoying the gorgeous crisp sunny winter weather. My sweeping mantras: "No need to hurry" (after all, it will take at least a couple of weeks to starve to death); "Oh yeah, no  need to care what others think about me"; and, of course, the occasional "What the hell am I doing?!"

When I am able to relax into it and let go of expectations, the sweeping truly becomes its own reward. Which is a darn good thing cuz I went the first few days without any food donations. Like New York, most people give me a wide berth, glancing at me sideways and probably wondering which mental institution I've escaped from. And as before, this provides an opportunity for me to let go of some of my self-conscious fears. For the most part, I've been doing fairly well, even trying to emulate one of my heroes, Diogenes, who lived in a big barrel in the middle of Athens.

When Alexander the Great asked him if there was anything he could do for him, Diogenes famously replied yes, then asked Alexander to step aside because he was blocking the sun. Philosopher king or just a king slacker? As a Taoist, I am called upon to question the barriers between apparent opposites. After all, Diogenes "non-doing" (wu wei in Taoism) was actually a great doing. (Alexander is said to have later stated, "If I were not Alexander, then I would be Diogenes.")

In the ubiquitous Taoist symbol, yin and yang contain part of one another as well as merge together. They don't just balance one another-----ultimately they are one another. Relative opposites such as beautiful and ugly, success and failure, far and near, mundane and divine, life and non-life, and even you and I, blur and merge and even disappear as the greater whole (the Tao) is perceived.

Whoa, Monkboy----I'm starting to rant again.

Well, we'll see how snarky this Diogenes remains once he starts getting a bit thinner. I've been rationing a few smoked salmon sticks and fudge caramels (leftovers from the holidays) that I brought with me. By the third day, my meager food supplies were almost out and I'd only managed to find a few peanuts left in a snack pack I swept up. I was getting pretty hungry, but I knew I was still far from true hunger because I still wouldn't have eaten any eggplant if someone would have offered it to me.

Then, on the third day I received my first donation! A fellow who turned out to also be a meditator put a granola bar on my begging bowl. He also told me about some meditation groups in Santa Monica. And sure, a granola bar might not sound like much, but it was quite a treat to this hungry monk.

Then that evening I found some quarter-full bags of cereal that someone seemed to have left out intentionally in an alley----Cheerios, Raisin Bran, Frosted Flakes, and a whole lot of Captain Crunch. Looks like I've at least got my recommended daily allowance of sugar covered.

And a block later I found a brand new loaf of bread. Like manna from heaven (Jewish rye even!) it was just sitting on the sidewalk like it had fallen out of the sky...

...or someone's shopping bag.

Hey, manna is manna.

"A UFO can take me away right now. I'm done with this planet!"
---big Jackie, a homeless veteran

"Are you on probation? Are you doing community service? You look so sad sweeping by yourself."
---Isaac, who runs LA Checkered Cabs (290 of ‘em)

I spent the first several nights sleeping in windy Palisades Park with its stunning panorama over the Pacific. The park lights and nearby streetlights actually keep the place fairly well lit, so I slept in the shadows, trying to blend in with the darkness. The following nights were not quite as cold as that first night, but I still had a hard time sleeping, mainly due to these feral buses prowling Ocean Avenue, growling, groaning, and even hyena-laughing with their strange keening air brakes.

Late night lovers out for a romantic stroll and midnight joggers also frequent the park, often making their way right past my spot in the shadows. And twice I've been woken by dogs. One jumped back and began barking madly when I sat up, and its owner backed away in terror as if the shadows were coming alive. The next night I awoke to another dog sniffing at my head. I scared the dog when I moved and he reflexively bit at me, but luckily, he only got my sleeping bag. The startled owner apologized profusely and dragged her dog off. Both times, I remember wondering why these people (and dogs) were so surprised to find a person sleeping in the park. I should have pondered that conundrum a bit further, but hey, I was sleepy. At least no dogs peed on me. I think.

One night I decided to try to sleep in Reed Park, which is about six blocks inland. As I was setting up my spot, I wondered why there weren't any other homeless people sleeping there. Then, right when I was beginning to doze off, the park sprinklers turned on. Luckily, I was able to grab all my gear and hightail it out of there before I got soaked.

So I headed back to Palisades Park and went to sleep. Late that night I got up to pee off the cliff (hey, they lock the restrooms at sunset!) and realized that I was totally alone in the park! When I had gone to sleep at about 10 or 11pm, there were plenty of other homeless people scattered around the park. But now, eerily, they were all gone.

The mystery was soon solved when, at 3:30am, I was rousted out of my sleeping bag by a blinding flashlight in my face. Santa Monica's finest were sweeping the parks for vagrants. Apparently it's illegal to sleep in the parks between midnight and 5am. (And here I've gone and left my watch behind!) And apparently Santa Monica ain't as friendly to the homeless as they used to be. The police gave me a citation and when I asked them where all the homeless people went, they suggested that they all went south to Venice, a couple miles away. Upon further prompting, they admitted that maybe some of them went to the 3rd Street Promenade.

When they found out that I had recently been in New York, they very helpfully mentioned that Santa Monica has a policy that will fund transport for the homeless to go back home. It's called the "Homecoming Program", AKA the "Get the Hell Out of Our City Program". Already I was thinking of the possibilities.....hey, to a Taoist, everywhere is home, right? Hmmm.....

The cops were also very curious about my arrest and court case back at UCSB when the CIA planted an agent onto our faculty and we all (students and faculty alike) went ballistic. But that's a long story.....

My court appearance is set for late February. I have since called the court to find out that they will not move my court date up, so it looks like I will be here for at least a few more weeks. Oh well, I didn't really have any plans to go anywhere else yet anyways.

So I finally made my way over to the 3rd Street Promenade, a popular walking mall of upscale stores that stretches about four blocks. And there were the homeless, crashed out on benches or entryways to the hoity-toity shops. Why Santa Monica prefers them here than in the parks, I don't know. I almost slept in the entryway of a store called "La La Land" cuz that's where some people think I permanently reside. And I was sorely tempted by "Victoria's Secret". (I know, I know, as a Taoist, why not?) But I ended up choosing the somewhat more monk-appropriate "Shiva's Imports" and hung out with some old friends beaming at me from the display window---peaceful Buddha, lucky Ganesh, playful Krishna, amiable Hotei (Laughing Buddha), several delicious Taras, and a couple of imposing Chinese dragons to guard my dreams through the rest of the night.

"If they wanna get rid of the homeless, then all they gotta do is spike the cranberry sauce at the Thanksgiving dinner they serve at the convention center. That shit already tastes like anti-freeze!.....I say you just give all the homeless a gun. They'll all kill eachother within a week!"
---big Jackie, homeless veteran