Milch, Fancy, and Imagination

I am on a BIG David Milch jag. I've downloaded hours and hours from a new blog I stumbled on (here), the bulk of which is Milch talking to a Writers Guild of America crowd right after the strike started at the end of last year. It's like listening to the English professor I never found in college, an erudite man with a deep life history who can find the humanity and numinous in the worst piles of crap.

Milch started as a literature professor at Yale, and a very active junkie, until getting hired to write for Hill Street Blues. He then co-created NYPD Blue, and then a couple short lived projects until he did Deadwood for 3 seasons, and then John From Cincinnati for 1 season, both with HBO. (I've written about both shows, below.)

In the WGA lectures, a central theme--and remember that he's talking with fellow writers--is the difference between fancy and imagination. He defines "fancy" as arbitrary and idiosyncratic connections of two events or objects, his example being, "When I think of the Del Shannon song 'Runaway,' I think of the first time I got a blow job from a white girl." His fanciful connection is not going to be shared by anyone but him, or a precious few anyway. Whereas imagination is the deep structure of meaning, the "natural" associations that will be shared by most people (whether in a cultural unit or more broadly would be a whole different lecture).

He say that authentic writing is the act of keeping company with the fanciful long enough that it yields up its imaginal meaning, and that the act of writing is the mind resting transparent in the ground that gave it rise, from which imagination can occur.

All his raw and beautiful stories in these lectures are about these two points: fancy vs. imagination, and the method of purifying the former into the latter. He makes huge digressions in this discourse, with rank profanity and lurid stories, but manages to bring it all together in exquisite summations and proofs, as it were, of St. Paul's revelation on the road to Damascus, that God's love is available to all people. That, Milch says, is what writers write about: the availability of God's love, with very very good examples.

Milch really points me to the fundaments of writing which were never explained or demonstrated in my romantic gropings through my undergraduate English degree, that is, what makes writing authentic, an act of service rather than a self-serving act.

I think James and I both floundered on this point, in our longings to be writers, in that neither of us knew how to surrender and serve, though both of us longed to find out how. We could feel it in other's writing, but could not figure out how to get into their company. So our attempts were contracted, limited, and thin--and therefore frustrating of the basic want of communion. If we'd been content with our own egos, or the slavish gratifications of others desires, then maybe we could have moved ahead. But I think both of us maddened from the inability to surrender, and both went in other directions in our lives. I still rarely read a novel, and the last one I started, "Divisidero" by Ondatje is so small and careful that I couldn't bear to continue it.

What has gripped my literary heart has been Milch's dramas. I'm watching the 3rd season of Deadwood again, and each episode leaves me...emptied. As my friend Michael said of John From Cincinnati (Milch's last show, last year), about the central character John's efforts towards all the other characters, "He's going to redeem every fucking one of them, isn't he?" Same for Milch, as he keeps giving very very good examples of what St. Paul got converted by, on some dusty road: God's love is for all the creatures, available always and freely.

Zohan!

After our swing dance class last night, with our perky Swedish instructor Cat ("tree-pull step!"), we went to see You Don't Mess with the Zohan. I wasn't expecting much. Adam Sandler has had about one good movie and one half-funny movie (Punch Drunk Love, and Anger Managment), and a lot of dumb-ass productions, like drawn out SNL skits.

But this was not only funny in an outrageous but not heavy-handed or contrived way, it was actually very sweet. Sandler's clueless superhero Zohan, an Israeli counter terrorist agent who apparently usually works on his own because he doesn't really need anyone else (he catches bullets in his teeth and up his nose, and sticks a piranha down his pants without flinching), comes to realize that he's tired of all the fighting, and longs to go to New York to be a hair stylist. OK, funny setup which could play the macho Israeli male stereotype against the male stylist stereotype--which does get some play, but Zohan is so sincere and unaware of the stereotypes, without irony, that he comes across as rather clean and pure. When he talks with the young man whose mother takes him in, and whose mother Zohan quickly starts screwing, he's sincerely tells the son how happy his mother is and how could he want anything different (apparently in Israel there's no such thing as the primal scene, i.e., walking in on your parents having sex). And he really means it, and you believe it totally. There's really not a wink-wink nod-nod in relation to Zohan. You are expected to take him at his word.

Thus what we get is something of a checking of the American ironic stance via this foreign transplant, who doesn't even understand irony and is fearless about his own sincerity. When he starts seeing hair clients, little old women from the neighborhood, and adds a little shagging at the end of his hair care, you get the sense that he really and truly appreciates these women who American culture (and American film culture) view as hags or sexless wisdom figures. Zohan sees an inner quality of beauty and lustiness that is so obvious to him, that you start actually seeing the obviousness yourself. It's in this way that the film really tweaks some of the dehumanizing that goes on in American culture.

Not to mention what Zohan is doing with the Middle Eastern conflicts. It's essentially a pacifist and humanistic film. All of the characters (except the evil-doing mall developer and his hick-terrorist hireling) have dreams of a better life, free from conflict and inherited hatreds and divisions. The super-terrorist The Phantom (played wonderfully by John Turturo) secretly wants to sell shoes. His hatred of Israel is something giving to him, and forced on him by circumstance; essentially, he wants to live a useful, joyful life doing something he loves.

Same with Zohan, the master soldier, who is tired of the constant fighting and wants to make the world "silky smooth." He also wants to serve others, not support division and dis-integration. He also wants to find his own internal integration, where he does not have to choose only one incarnation of himself, the soldier, over the lover or the servant or the artist. He is tired of only choosing a part of himself, and having his culture insist on only that part.

So in a sense, the film is upholding a cherished, and older, value of America, that you can come here and shed the Old World--the cultures of rigid relationships and inherited animosity--in favor of a life of opportunity. However, here's where the film updates this story to one of not Horatio Alger-like rising to the top, not a narcissistic climb over the bodies of your fellows, but of self-integration, the expansion of the human community to include all struggling, yearning beings. Even the hick hireling--played by Dave Mathews, in a weird and wonderful casting decision--is not killed in the end, but rather catapulted by the combined, uh, singing of The Phantom and Zohan--never done in 2000 years!--into the gay party helmed by George Takai (nee, Sulu from Star Trek). Even he is given an opportunity to face his fears through exposure to the feared community, which presents itself as both wonderfully idiosyncratic and totally human.

I am such a sucker for such films, because I so believe in and yearn for this deep healing and recognition of connectedness. And I love the archetypal nature of pop culture, how it can express in simple terms deep longing and hope. And I really love genre literature and art, in it's both honoring the structure/tradition/community of life, as well as the joyous reinterpretation of that life by the artist, a conscious expression of what we all do all the time.

So, the reason why "you don't mess with the Zohan" is not actually that he's so tough and macho, it's because his essential nature is loving, and there's no way to fight that.

The End of an Era

I never had a name for this truck, other than, The Truck. As in, Heather, where did you park The Truck? Or recently, Where the hell did I park The Truck?

If Friday was the welcoming of a bouncing baby boy to our little SF family, Saturday was putting grandpa onto the ice flow. Yes, the 23 year old Nissan King Cab, my longtime companion since when it was sold/given to me by my parents when I moved to SF in '98, was delivered up to Pick and Pull Auto Wreckers in Hayward for--I won't say dismemberment so much as, parts reassignment.

The morning was spent with my friend Robert, out at our regular haunt at the funky Seal Rock Inn (whose claim to fame is having been one location for Hitchcock's The Birds, or maybe it was Vertigo), having mediocre slightly washed greasy spoon cafe food, but fun conversation. Especially when Robert said, "You have a way of suppressing the divine ambiance." This was following our previously favorite adage, "You are making me feel less than spirit." Yeah, goofy spiritualist rap.

Then home where I cleaned out the truck of various items acquired over the years (perhaps this would be stripping the watch and gold teeth from Grandpa's too-feeble to resist self) and Heather worked at getting us a non-outrageously priced insurance policy. Those tasks finished, we headed off to the East Bay, Heather driving The Truck in order to say her goodbyes.

We found our ways into the backwaters of Hayward, being the area between the Bay shore and Highway 880, one of those odd industrial areas that are necessary to any city, but always feel a bit odd in a region where the land is worth more in troy ounces than gold. It is one of those areas where the regular city conventions loosen a bit, and the developmental level seems to drift down into, as if space somehow warped and you've driven into a little displaced chunk of a red state.

Pick Your Part is one of those places. The parking lot was rough dirt n' gravel, and there were one of those barely-edible-food vans. Many rough looking persons dragging parts, going in to find parts to drag out, and lots of hard hats. We were directed back out to another facility down the street, to have Grandpa processed for removal. I drove into the new place, and was waved back out by a guy who said, "You can't come barreling in!" "Oh, sorry." The guy mellowed right away, and we chatted while he took all the details about the car, which sat there quietly, not protesting its fate.

Poor Heather lost it a bit when she saw another, presumably much loved, car being picked up unceremoniously by a huge fork list, and began crying when we got into Zippy. Poor girl. For me, was only a little twinge today looking at the photos. I meant what I said to my mother-in-law when I said that, for me, there is one car with many locations--my attachments don't lean much to cars, for whatever reason. But Heather, apparently she's cried whenever leaving a car.

We went back to the Pick Your Part corporate offices, which was a dingy office next to the entry chute of the yard, where a woman took my info, disappeared for some time, and returned with a cheery orange check for $300. Yes, Grandpa, nee The Truck, had been converted into three c-notes, after thousands of miles and thousands of hours. We drove home together in Maybe Zippy, nee Zippy, nee Zippy Sanguinity, and began our new life together.

May our faithful The Truck find satisfaction in knowing its parts will give new life in many older vehicles who are struggling to remain on this earth. Grandpa lives, as an organ doner. Thank you, Grandpa. Your service is honored.

Maybe Zippy

I would like to introduce to you our new used car, provisionally nicknamed "Zippy." I wanted to name it "Sanguine," but Heather shot that down (I'm going to secretly call it Zippy Sanguinity). Zippy is the name of a Nanday conjure (seen here with his nominal owner, and actual servant in the cause of the nebulous grand forces), from our beloved David Milch HBO show of last year, John From Cincinnati. Presumably we'll come up with another name...yeah, right. Like we were going to do that with Phoenix our hawkhead parrot, and he's still called Phoenix. We can check in again next year.

But Zippy For Now, or perhaps "Maybe Zippy" (a la our friend who had a bird called Jake, before Jake was DNA sexed and found to be a female, thus making the bird "Maybe Jake"), is our 10 year old Subaru Forester, bought from a used car dealership in Fremont. We found the place through Craigslist, of course, and spent most of Friday testing different cars, debating among ourselves, selecting Zippy out of his sad-pound-puppy lot friends, getting Zippy checked out by a randomly selected auto shop a few doors down (Puurfect Auto, natch, who were very nice folk), and then doing the paperwork, and finally driving what seemed like an inordinately long path back from the Fremont hinterlands to our little burg. Really, that was 8 solid hours.

Chris, he was our nice young entrepreneur at Auto World Fremont, having carved his little piece of business heaven from the space behind a house converted into a palm reading establishment, and some other house advertising itself as Aljf Enterprises, or some series of letters that was either a foreigner's name (SCARE-eeeee!), or an acronym (BOOR-ingggg!). There were about 30 cars, none younger than perhaps 2002, and a fair amount of dust. Christ pulled out another Forester that we did not choose to go with, and gave it a substantial washing which he announced as only going to take a few minutes, which stretched out under the pressure of his washing diligence to about 10 minutes...the first clue of Chris' genial but distorted time sense.

He was his only employee, we found out later, accounting for some of the, um, multitasking that he was doing. He wore a blue-tooth ear piece for the entire time we were with him, and took maybe 20 calls over the course of the day, while talking with us or other customers. We took that car out and then Soon To Be Zippy, which I liked more for some reason I can't remember. When we went to take the first car, I asked if Chris needed a driver's license, and he motioned to the foreigner's house and said, "Smile for the camera." I took that at face value, but we looked later and I don't think there were any cameras. So we thought it was pretty strange and loose that he'd just prep a car and off we go.

And then third, we drove an Outback, probably the more commonly seen Subaru, which Heather's mother has owned for a long time. I wanted to like it, really. But I didn't. Partially because it felt too heavy, with a slow acceleration from a stop, but mostly because of the smell of oil that, after a 10 minute test drive, had worked its way into my system and showing up as a taste/smell on my tongue. (Cigarettes and pot smoke do this too, very noxious, bleagh.) Plus it was $1500 more than the other cars, way beyond what we'd planned. Heather was trying hard to like it, too, but we came to agreement that Zippy was the likely candidate. (We told Chris about the oil smell, and he said, "Yeah, I'm waiting for someone without a sense of smell to come along," and then told the sad story of a brother-in-law who had some gear box thingy full of oil, putting it in the back of the car, and then spilling it while driving the car somewhere. Apparently, it's nearly impossible to get that smell out of the carpet. That said, why he then pulled the sullied part and trying to wash it with soap and a brush while Heather and I parlayed.)

So next step, take the car to Puurfect Automotive to do a safety check (a shop we found through the magic of Google's mapping system, that can show businesses by proximity). We left it with them and walked (I limped, as I banged the hell out of my foot last week, through a combination of dancing and surfing...not at the same time, wise ass) down to the corner strip malls and found an Indian cafe near the Barnes and Nobles.

Now, Fremont. What an odd town. First of all, it's no further from the water than we are in the Inner Richmond of San Francisco, and yet it was humid! Not South Carolina humid, not rivulets of sweat down your back humid, but nonetheless, humid. And then, even though in the middle of the East Bay, between Oakland and San Jose, it's got all the trappings of a typical American suburb--the sorta-grid wide streets, the miles of small houses, the strip malls--but there are Indian establishments everywhere. I suppose the proximity of Silicon Valley, who has hired many Indian computer folk over the years, explains this (?), but there ya go.

And the very personal effect? We had about the best Indian food I've had in years, at the Chaat Cafe. The malai kofta was really amazing, compared with the usual Tasty Curry or Naan and Curry of the city. And so we chatted it up there for an hour and a half, continuing an as-yet-to-be concluded discussion of identity and the solidity or abstractness of boundaries (the central question is, "When does an ingested carrot stop being a carrot and start being a person." I think it points to the basic constructed quality of boundaries; Heather thinks it points to a basic silliness.)

We hobbled back to Puurfect and they gave a clean bill of health--even the head gasket!--and then back to Chris' shop au naturale. We told him it looked good, and if he could get us out of there for under $5000 (the amount available on our new credit card), then boom, it's a deal. So we got it for about $4500, plus the various taxes (he handles all the DMV paperwork). But he had to deal with a client who just purchased an older outback: "I need to give him a ride a few blocks to his house. I'll only be 5-7 minutes.") About thirty minutes later he came back with a different car, a new purchase presumably, and brought us a little sheepishly into the office for the paperwork, I guess justifying his time-warping by saying that he can keep his prices low because he is the only worker. Sigh, OK.

He balked a bit when I pulled out the credit card, and we did agree to pay the other $50 (he had been pricing out at $4950), if he would pull the damn stereo out of the truck. We did the paperwork, lots of signatures and dating, and then sat in the car while he worked on the stereo, exhausted and about ready to chew our own legs off to get out of there. But all things come to an end, and with a little mechanical advice about not needing to do the timing chain service, we got the stereo with its sliced, dangling wires, mounted up, shook hands with our diligent young entrepreneur, and took off for the hour long (objectively, because subjectively it felt twice as long, perhaps some chemical change from breathing car fumes and jasmine scent all day, apparently the patron smells of Fremont) drive back to SF.

Success!

Indy!

Well, pretty flaccid and tired. I said to James, it was like after making Schlindler's List, how can you get that impassioned about another rehash of trashy early-century serial dramas? I hope the filmmakers and actors had fun with each other, because I came out feeling battered and without memories of anything...memorable.

Here's Fresh Air's spot-on take on the movie, here.

More thoughts

At the end of the MBCT group this morning, someone asked what my experience was, and since she was a doctor and the other student was a yoga instructor, we had something in common to talk about. We addressed that guilt suffered by teachers and therapists that they are not as perfect as their teachings, but agreed that people get into these roles partially to serve, and largely to learn.

I'm constantly astounded at the wise things I say to clients that I don't apply to my own life. Or at just what they are teaching me if I can listen. For instance, the yoga teacher talked about managing her mood by asanas that opened up the chest, and as I got lost in the back streets trying to find a way through the Bay to Breakers street closures, I realized, hey, that might work for me too! And sure enough, just pulling back my shoulders started shifting my mood towards something lighter and more open.

It's funny how our basic needs can elude us. What I often come back to is my need--I should stress that, my need, is to feel that I'm serving and that I'm productive. Whether under that is a need to feel connected, that's probably there with service and productivity being the vehicles for that relationship. I don't feel fully alive without that, and I certainly don't function very well without them. Whether it's because of something everyone needs, or just my idiosyncratic needs, I feel like the best way of relating to this is in a real functional mode: without these relations in my life, I don't function, so I do them in the same way I eat my greens. Maybe something sacred should be there too, but it seems most important to me to orient myself in these ways is just necessary, period.

For me--I'm seeing this today at work, which on the weekend can often feel like a little island floating in the middle of an ocean--I'm really seeing how I need to feel in motion in order not to start a depressive reaction. But the trick here is not to fall into the compulsive thrashing in order to feel energy, but to look for the motion that is already in my experience. And it's there, even in the gray-sky days of my life. But it requires faith and look/feeling carefully into what's in front of me. It means taking a deep breath and observing, and not allowing myself to panic. It also means holding a vision/belief/image of motion to counter the inner vision/belief/image of stagnation that can be triggered.

That last bit is a fascinating piece for me, how important the use of imagery is in managing mood. Maybe in the ultimate sense it's unnecessary, when you're grounded in mindfulness to the degree that you are never seeing life from thought, but only from experience. Till then, though, images are a huge determinant in our lives, whether you're aware of them or not. And so telling yourself a good story, with enough evidence not to make it a delusion, is really really important. It is the undergirding that supports you when you lose your direct exposure to reality. Stories are not true, but they are very very useful at times. They can be traps, but they can also be very good friends, when they are resonant with reality. Saying, "All things are impermanent" is not the reality or experience of impermanence, but it is a languaged expression of something that is true, which makes it a very good story.

And again, until the story function of our brain collapses, it's going to be telling a narrative, and it behooves us to have a good one.

Check in

I finished up with my first Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression group, which had been running 8 weeks on Sunday mornings. We started with five and two dropped out, and then today were just two as the third was on vacation. It was a stressful run, overall, though seemingly it went well and people got benefits from the class. I'll probably run it again but I need a breather for a while.

Ironically, the group brought 3 or 4 clients, and then several others came from elsewhere, but the sudden jump in numbers within 3 weeks, along with the nascent group, kind of floored me with energy output. My Tuesdays used to end about noon, but now I go from 9am to 10pm, with a break in the middle. Plus my half-way house job, it adds up to a lot of hours a week. The nice part is I'm making some change to put towards paying off bills, and the downside is I've less time to market and build up my practice to leave the half-way house job, or get one of the other projects up and running to allow that transition.

So I've been fairly tired recently, not so much on the physical front as what happens when I've got a few too many irons in the fire. My system starts flinching at new outputs of energy and there's a drag towards depression as a sort of systematic closing down. Which takes more energy to fight, or just more rest. Da da da.

So I'm trying to adjust to my recent success, and as a few clients attrition out (after solid and productive work), and the group ends, I'm actually taking a deep breath and looking towards the next marketing push, which will be offering free, hour-long workshops on an EMDR-related technique called "resource tapping."

And at HH, the work is about what it's always been, and I'm pretty ready to leave, but finances are such that until the income switches over to my practice and other projects, I'll need to stay just for body and soul. So I continue to try to make use of it, and it still has things to teach me.

For instance, today I noticed, driving through the maze that's created every Bay to Breakers day, each year (because they block off the streets leading from the Embarcadero to GG Park, and then through the park down to the ocean), that I was feeling a sinking, stagnating feeling heading down to work. When I checked in to see what I was lacking, it was a sense of continuity and "flow-through" to my experience down on the Peninsula. There's a sense of stasis down at the house that sets in, which I think was compensated for during school and internship by the inevitable flow towards either graduation or licensure. Now that I've "made it," the flow needs to be a more internal sense, and sometimes it just fails me. That's when I have to be careful not to drift down into a depression.

I think there are associations that arise to hot, seemingly empty and endless summer days in Sacramento. School was out, and I'd often be at home along, drifting. So these hot suburban days seem to conjure that same feeling, and it's difficult sometimes to be in the present and realize that all those days are long gone. Truly, some days I long to be on the proverbial pig farm.

What helps, and what's helping today, is to remember why I'm here and why I'm doing the therapeutic work I'm doing in general: which is, to serve growth, in people, in this culture, in spirit. I was telling Heather over the weekend that what I notice myself losing my cool about most often is exposure to people or opinions which seem to be stultifying. Not just coasting, or fixed, but actually anti-growth. That's where I lose it and start into fighting mode, probably because I feel the sense of being threatened by being caged, or worse, trussed up like a bonsai tree, i.e., intentionally stunted. The sense of nausea that arises from that is so palpable, and so motivating to fight back.

But the probably here is the fighting part. I love that Zen story about the bull in the village. Basically, a bull gets loose in a village and is blocking the main road, keeping villagers from moving through. They are very upset, but don't know what to do as the bull isn't calming down. So they see the Master walking down the hill from his hermitage and think, oh good, he'll know what to do. As he gets close, he looks up from his mediation and sees the bull, sees the upset and expectant villagers, sees the bottleneck in the road...and walks down another road.

That's where I'd like to go, to not get so freaked by the sense of stagnation that I actually get into a death lock with the experience. All I need to do is acknowledge it and then walk another direction. I'm only in danger if I grab it.