John from Cincinatti: I'm in love

Below is a comment I left on a television review blog (link), when I was hunting around for information on HBO's new David Milch show, John From Cincinatti. I think it's about the best thing I've seen on TV, the most unapologetically and mature vision of the problems and potentials of moderns as spiritual beings. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

I guess it doesn't surprise me how few people here liked the show--it's
wierd, unpredictable, a surf version of magic realism. But me, I've fallen head over heels in love. Literally, I was in tears at the end of the second episode, which probably is an idiosyncratic reaction, but there it was.

The extras on the HBO on demand that we have had the actor playing John describing his character as taking in the toxicity of the characters around him and giving back what they are really saying, without the suffering. And Milch talks about responding to what he feels are the extremely desperate times. So I think what I was responding to how Milch and this show are taking these people, this dysfunctional community on the edge of disaster, drawing off the poisons and presenting them with an odd purity. Everyone here (much more so than Deadwood) is accepted and loved for who they are. This is John's perspective on his new family; he doesn't overlook their faults, rather, he sees them as insubstantial in the face of the numinous within them.

In the third episode, after John and Kai return from their "boneing", they stand before the human zoo outside the Yost's house and he again says, "See God, Kai," meaning that here it is, right in front of us. We are It and we keep missing it until someone like John comes along and points it out. I've met monks like John and they'll shake you to the core with the way they reflect back to you who you really are at depth. And it's not just shit and pain.

I really believe that what JfC is presenting is a truer vision of life than what is typically presented in art, certainly in television. Not in the magic stuff happening in physical ways, but metaphorically, we're missing the magic ALL THE TIME. I.e., think about your capacity to read this post and then follow it's roots. What do you actually know about the brains ability to code and decode? How does it actually happen? Given that the other planets in this solar system are as far as we can tell blobs of minerals, think about the crazy magic of your ability to read.

That's what I think JfC is getting at, that we're missing the magic of common life, settling for a dumbed down version, an obsessive picking at our own scabs. It's doing it in an outrageous, inflated way, but the point is true, and the vision is actually real.

So, my two cents.

Only a mother...

In looking for an image for the last post, I came across this, which has nothing to do with the emotional tone of my day, but is just too freaking funny not to share:

(To see more ugly dogs--and oh my god, I'm writing unable to stop laughing, tears leaking out of my eyes--go to here and here.)

A Day in the Life

My reading of Dan Siegel's work on neuro-biology (site), and the way the brain drifts towards a diminution of novelty, today shows up as a slight distance from and reflecting on my standard Wednesday's events. I'll lay them out and comment:

7am: I wake to the kitchen timer's beeping (we don't have a respectable alarm clock); I meditate for the next hour, with some clarity, some sleepiness. The day looks grey but I don't experience much depressive slump, other than a typical invitation, like a well-trained butler discretely offering a morsel, but fully willing to be rebuffed.

8am: I debate not going running, and part of my brain reluctantly allows for memories of these sort of struggles in the past to arise, bringing with them recollections of feeling better, cleared out, energized, etc. Sloth grumbles off and I put on my sleek running pants, my Adidas cap and fancy running gloves and head out the door.

8:20-8:50am: I take a novel course today, not settling for the tried and true (up around Stowe Lake and back). I do some off-roading and notice the difference in tone when I'm more ensconced in the woods than near a street. (There's a UK study that shows exercising in a mall vs. natural settings actually tends to increase depression.)

8:50-9:05am: Waking Heather and having our morning shower/check-in. Given recent heaviness, there is some welcome levity.

9:10am: I stop by the cafe for a sesame bagel, toasted with creme cheese. The same people have worked them since we moved into the neighborhood. They have incredible memories. The weekend woman, who I see ever few weeks, for a few minutes max, remembers that I like the soy hot chocolate.

9:15-10:05am: Driving to work on Redwood City, I'm listening to a marketing lecture (I would NEVER have pictured myself doing this five years ago--I would have thrown up my bagel) on website copy writing, from my marketing coach (Juliet Austin, a specialist in helping healing-arts people get their heads out of their asses and learn the business side).

10:05-11:30am: Our staff meeting at work, in which we stay roughly on topic, but with lots of jokes. Over the years, I've taken on a modulating function in this weekly ritual, keeping the energy within a certain range, with humor mostly. I'll get serious and pointed at times, but mostly not. I do enjoy these people, to the person, a great deal, and it is fun getting to play with them while also getting our work done.

11:30am-12pm: Alan has set up a fire extinguisher demonstration. The rough and ready looking good-ol-boy fire extinguisher guy thinks the front driveway is too exposed, so we set up in the back alley. He lights fires in a tub of water and we take turns dousing it, sending huge plumes of what is in effect baking soda wafting over the house and down the alley. I insist each person gets applause for their work at not burning down the house. A client occasionally peeks out the gate to see what their guardians are doing.

12:20-1pm: I need new glasses, and check out the place with half-off frames only to find that I'm still going to be paying some money, despite the insurance. Ah well.

1pm-2pm: Settling into the shift, reading emails, getting situated and working on some med issues.

2pm-2:05pm: I talk Karen, the program director, into allowing me to buy some power tools for the house.

2:05-2:15pm: I need to change my time with Kasha for Friday (there's a self-hypnosis class Heather and I are going to attend in the afternoon), so I call her and chat about her illnesses. If she didn't have her humor, she'd be in bad shape. I've known her for six or so years now; she read the metta sutta in Pali at our wedding (am I remembering that right?).

2:15-3pm: I decide to get the drill--having a conversations about amperage with the Depot dude--and pass on the skill saw, with is much more expensive than I expected. And then I found that my main reason for going, to pick up more bark, is for naught: the bark has been absconded with in a 4 for $10 sale over the weekend. Apparently, people were memorializing the soldiers by smothering weeds in their yards.

3pm-3:10pm: A former private practice client called, so I return her call when driving back to work and we chat about life and movies. I wag my finger at her to get back in with her Buddhist community. A sweet little check in.

3:20pm-3:30pm: Working on meds.

3:30-3:40pm: A former client comes over from our sister house and wants to check in with me like she did a week ago. But since last week, I've been told that we're not doing these check ins--which makes sense as she tends to soak up time if you let her. So I told her and she went up like a martyr tied to a rocket. I would have just let her storm off--I wasn't in the mood to hold her hand--but she made a "I'm going to kill myself by cutting my wrist" gesture that she knows I'm obliged to follow up on. So I do my suicide assessment on the front driveway, in this common little suburban neighborhood as people walk by, and then shoo her away and walk back to my station with her hurled hurts at my back.

3:40-3:40pm: Alan and I schlep a garbage can back to the back alley to clean up detritus which has collected in the corner behind the garage: an office chair, some dresser drawers, dead leaves, and a poster of two vapid teenagers I don't recognize. We comment on how broad our job descriptions must be if we could remember what they actually were.

My ex-client, recently angry, calls back to apologize. I forgive her.

3:40-5pm: The cooks don't show up, so I recruit a resident and we prepare what I describe to the residents as a traditional dish of Scandinavian pasta. It's spaghetti with Ragu mushroom sauce and crunched up veggie burgers (I refuse to cook meat), probably not very Scandinavian, but the idea tickles me and I get to joke around with a couple of the more irony-appreciating of the residents. One fellow applies a heaping of Parmesan, and I tell him that it's in keeping with an appreciation of the huge waves of Italian immigrants who came to the North countries. He grins.

5pm-5:30pm: Eating and more joking with the folks.

5:30pm-6pm: Some computer stuff, and preparing for the evening logistics meeting.

6pm-6:30pm: The Resident Council meeting, where the whole community (on a good day) comes together to do menu planning and problem solve issues from the group or house. It goes pretty easily. They used to be much more raucous in the past, longer and with more rancor. I'm not sure why, but they are really smooth and fairly quick these days. Well, having done it for five years, I suppose I've learned the ropes, like any very specific task you are charged to do for a long time. You can learn a certain elegance in the repetition.

6:30-7pm: I'm moved to garden. The jasmine has turned into a bush in the corner, so I find a piece of cord (which, hanging around my neck as I walk through the smoking patio, one client says with concern, "Someone could choke themselves on that!" I respond, "Do you think I'm going to eat it?") and tie the ungainly but nicely smelling critter up to the trellis I bought a few weeks ago. Then I spend time pulling weeds and sweeping up plant waste while a silent resident sits at the front patio table quietly getting dusted.

7-8pm: My evening meditation. Even though I'm tired, and drank more coffee than I should have (it's creeping back into my life like a black mold into the walls of a house), some interesting things happened. Each sitting gives something, at some level.

8-8:40pm: I'm not happy with the ezine web software I've signed onto, so I checked out some others and found one with a better graphics editor (online), that I might go with. The only concern is how long they'll stay around.

8:40-10pm: Clients come and get meds. One client complains loudly to me her rap of oppression by the system, the same speech she gave at length on Sunday, when I set her off on her meteor-through-the-atmosphere course by asking how her family visit went. Also, I'm working between med offerings on my day's notes, those useless ritual appeasements of the medical auditor gods. I have a nice little conversation with a resident about her going vegetarian after reading a vegan cookbook the other day. We talk about how awfulness comes out of humans thinking other bits of Spirit are actually bits of rock, and that it's her empathy and identifying with animals that allows her to change. She says that reading the book reminded her that she was treated by her father as these animals are treated by us.

While I work, I'm listening to two snippets from presentations/seminars at the Integral Institute, one by Ken Wilber on the nature of the integral level of development, and one by a marketing person who was describing a "values based" marketing strategy. Wilber's model is so incredibly useful across the board, because it's infinitely researched and founded in huge amounts of data; it applies to spiritual work as well as marketing. There's a deeply satisfying elegance in it.

10pm-11pm: Clients have mostly gone off to bed, so I check a few websites, mostly blogs I want to review (a great blog consolidator is bloglines.com), and have the urge to do a personal post.

11-11:10pm: I speak with an old client of ours and help her calm down from a fight with her parents, and focus on the present, giving her a little speech about not filling her backpack up with stuff that isn't needed for the trip at hand (the visual was Heather's bag that she heaves on her back each morning--her real bag, filled with books and paper and electronics and...what, freeze dried rations and core samples and a parachute).

11:20pm: My post is finished. Now I'll check in with Heather and go to bed.

So that's a typical day, typical in that it's texture is so variegated. This is what most of my days feel like, but it's not jagged or jarring. There's a deeper logic under all of it that allows for a flow, rather than a bumpy rapids ride. I'm ending the day feeling a little tired but having had a pretty good day because of the varieties of stimulation.

Like I was describing to Heather the other day, encountering and relating all the different parts, integrating them and surrendering to their natural rhythms--that's what really makes my life feel meaningful.

Addendum: 12:30am, and I should have been in bed. I checked in with Heather, and have just now come off of a giddy hunt across the internet for "Ugliest Dog" information.

Bougainvillea triumphant!

It's Memorial Day at work, and I've finished my week's post at my clinical blog. I just tried to write the part 2, intending to describe the relationship of awe and depression treatment, but it sort of fizzled in my brain. Like you started into the city thinking you knew the route, and then, less sure, started guessing about the roads, then stopped perplexed in front of a taco store that sells stun guns. It's best in such circumstance to admit defeat, so I gave up and reflected on the view out the sliding glass window. And again, I am heartened by the resurgence of the bougainvillea, nearly killed by the frost.

This is the B in March:And the B in late May:

Apparently, because its roots were in the ground and not in a pot (i.e., exposed to all sides), it survived, though it looked dicey.

But life comes around.

I've been doing these weekly walks with residents here, the "Discovering the Community" group, and I've noticed myself being an advocate for awe. And I'm really feeling it, how amazingly complex and diverse the life is even this little funky neighborhood in the South Bay. If you carry the image of Mars (not even the Mojave, which is bursting with life in comparison) as you go through your common day, the astounding quality of richness really pops out of what is otherwise a "typical day."

Like with this bougainvillea bush. It's probably one of a thousand in this area, common in these terms. But as far as we know, there's no B bush for a million miles around this little planet, not on all the solar planets, not in the space between or the floating rock belt, just here. And it's taken, what, a billion years to rise up from a few sticky amino acids to even challenge the late winter frost of the Peninsula for it's chance to keep living.

It sort of reminds me of great athletes, or musicians, or therapists for that matter. You watch them perform, and their greatness is not presented, it just emerges from their ground of being. A tremendous amount of effort, energy, and work has gone into structuring that ground, but the expression does not have a self-consciousness about it. It sort of just happens.

Like my B-friend out there. It's accomplishing something--surviving the frost, and merely being alive--that given the forces arrayed against it, and the opportunities to die from one thing or another, is quietly astounding. It's as if the universe juggles fifteen balls with its feet just as a matter of course, with the simplicity of walking, and just gives a little frown and shrug when you point it out. "Well, ok, but what else am I going to be doing?"

So give it up for the bougainvillea!

Fetchez la vache!

OK, so at the very end of my life, regardless of whatever I've done wrong, of how many hurts I've inflicted, of however many screw ups I've made--well, to put it this way, regardless of the sum total of my inflictions, afflictions, derelictions, righteous convictions about my multitudinous crucifixions, and even, and finally, my stingy refusals to offer benedictions...truly, no can take away the fact that I ran a 12K race in a cow suit. And that regardless of how the Grand Assessor might tally up my qualities and find me utterly common, he cannot say that many can claim such a laurel. In fact, if you put it context of the span of all of human history, back to when the human brain was a walnut of fatty-tissue sitting on top of an engorged reptile brain stem, then the number is so close to zero as to effectively be zero, and therefore, statistically, impossible to do. Yet, as you can see in the photos, I did it! Which inevitably leads us to the reality that, by running as a Guernsey cow, I have, undoubtedly, achieved the impossible. Wow.

So, I just checked the results, and I posted at 1:15:02, which shaves off 1 minute and 36 seconds from my first 12k race (Link to blog entry)! Out of about 35,000 registered participants (there were 25,000 unregistered freeloaders), my placement was 5010 overall, 3787 for men, and 1081 for my division (not sure which that was, perhaps "gradually aging dudes"?). Age grade was 45%...email me if you know what that means.

(And I just read that a 53 year old man collapsed and died at the finish line, the 5th death in 12 years--rather morbid statistics. A young man in 2003 died of dehydration, which just seems stupid considering that there were water stations every 1/2 mile or more.)

I had a very fun time, and a pretty good race. My knees are not doing as badly as after the last one, I think because the new shoes are better and I'm more aware of running heal-to-toe. The race itself was perhaps to running what miniature golf is to golf, a lot of running around furry animals, naked people and miscellaneous slow-moving detritus from the cultural semi-conscious. One found themself running on sidewalks a lot, as for some reason the main street was sluggish except off to the left side. If you wanted to actually run, you had to go off roading.

Really, the race is something to make you proud of the Bay Area and San Francisco in particular. All freaks welcome, very mellow, supportive, appreciative of each other. There were live bands all along the way and many impromptu DJs, in houses along the routes, in the back of cars, and in rolling wagon thingys. My favorite was in GG Park, a group of 5 musicians dressed as Hassidic Jews, called Mushugga Beach Party (website), playing traditional Jewish tunes with a surfer bent. And they were all, including the woman, wearing long black beards. As always, I only had eyes for the drummer...

We had lunch at our favorite crepe house. No one commented on the cow in the corner.(All photos courtesy of my lovely wife, Heather Ussery-Knight. Contact me if you are interested in art-rock events, bar mitzvahs, or farm portraiture.)

Un Nuevo Papa

Benjamin Alexander was born at 12:40 pm, Pacific Time, in San Francisco, with Mama Robin pushing for a record mere 30 minutes. This picture of the proud and tired Papa James with a totally zonked out Benjamin was taken about 3 hours later. Apparently B-dude got a bath, a bit of sunbathing under the heat lamp, and then figured he'd had enough of the wide world and promptly konked out. He didn't wake the whole time we Heather and I were there.

As with all great events, it had an utter commonness to it. But there are two kinds of the mundane, the one where what you are relating to is felt as an object denuded of the sacred, and the one where your experience is so deeply saturated with the sacred that there's just a big sense of connection. All the hype about birth and life and etc., well, being there with James and Robin and B-dude and Rainie and Heather and Carrie and the hospital staff, it seemed so obvious and so wonderfully un-cut off from life. Like, oh, here life has done it's thing again, without effort, without specialness (in that first sense of the mundane), with an unostentatious depth.

And for me, having know James for so long and through so many phases and changes, that depth had a personal dimension that felt, again, not special, but connective. In seeing him in all these changes, and knowing many more will come, there was a sense of communion with that which was flowing through him and us and the whole scene. Quite beautiful in its commonness.

My prayers and deep best wishes go out to one of the planet's newer occupants. May all his challenges give him soil to grow in, may he learn the value of giving, may he understand his lack of specialness in a way that brings deep joy and security.

Scuba!

In about January, Randy, my old buddy from high school and junior college, contacted me out of the blue through a clinical ad I have posted on the web. Having last seen me in would-be film maker and would-be writer modes, he was surprised to find me a psychotherapist. Me too. We had dinner, after 15 years of being out of contact, and made a date to go scuba diving, which he's been doing for years. (Heather and I were certified during our honeymoon in Hawaii about two years ago.)

So finally, after we settled on a date (Cinco de Mayo) and he booked us at Point Lobos just south of Monterey. The site is a state preserve, so they only allow a handful of divers in each day. We piled everything into Randy's truck and headed south from our house, on one of those San Francisco days that make the Minnesotans weep. We had some serious chatting, and a remarkably amount of memory cells were pushed into activity--old men suddenly tasered out of their lawn chairs--giving forth details gone unthought for decades. For instance, we came up with the reading list for a science fiction literature class we'd taken together at junior college, a class I not only didn't remember, but didn't remember I'd taken with Randy. In fact, I'd forgotten that we were at JC together at all. It's amazing what's tucked in the folds and fat of the human brain. After some navigational problems, we arrived in Monterey, and collected our rental equipment at a dive shop on a pier. It's where many of the scuba shops do certification dives with students, so the calm water was littered with clumps of bobbing heads, like sea weed with snorkels. (I'm glad we finished our certification in Hawaii, where there were actually fish to see.) Randy's been diving for years, so he knew all the lingo, what to get, what sizes, etc. I stood by trying not to look too newbie-ish, and then got distracted by Maggie the dwarf Australian Sheppard, who rolled over and let me scratch her belly. Aww, dogs...

Point Lobos is a little cove with several reefs buffering it from the main part of Monterey bay. There's patches of kelp all around it, but not as thick as I'd feared. We spent at least 45 minutes suiting up, checking the tanks. Randy had brought along several other wet suits, and Heather's was a bit tight (if sexy), which was manageable until she got in the water. Apparently the suit, in that cold Pacific water, got even tighter, such that she was having trouble breathing. She decided to sit out the first dive, and then swap my suit and go back in with Randy.

So, after switching fins (broke mine), and adding more sandbag weights (too light to actually sink in the water), Randy and I set off, swimming quickly down to the bottom and out towards the reef. It struck me that I had no fear of big scary animals, and the same was true in Hawaii. It's simply not the creepy feeling that is conveyed in movies; there's nothing at all creepy about being underwater. Whatever archetypes exist out of water, when staring off from the shore, dissolve once you go under. Just more critters living out their lives, pretty simple and explicit.
That's something that had deepened from my first non-shore contact with the ocean, being a kayaking trip on Richardson Bay (Marin County). Then the diving certification in Hawaii, and two weeks ago whale watching, all of it has shown me that the world doesn't just stop at waters edge. I'm not really sure how to say it, and I suppose there's a bit of embarrassment at realizing and admitting that I thought the oceans were somehow a totally different world from the air-breathing realms. When you're underwater, it's just more life. And in fact, except for the coasts and reefs of the world, apparently not actually a lot of life. The image of the oceans teaming with all colors and shapes does not seem to be true; much of it, on top and below, appears to be desert. And according to Randy, down past about 100 feet, there's not a lot of life either. So life is only teaming in small and narrowly banded sections of the ocean. Otherwise, it's wet earth.

But we saw a bit more than wet earth. In the cove, there were orange starfish all over, and pale purple coral, frondy like certain ferns. Randy showed me a sea slug the size of a small bread loaf. Otherwise it was rocks and sand, and you could only see maybe 10 feet in front of you. He navigated in front and I trailed along behind, trying to manage my buoyancy correctly so I wouldn't crash down on the plants. He said the seals came and played with them last week, but today, they stayed up on the shore.

Apparently with the cold water and the exertion of getting into the water, we both were breathing heavily, sucking up the oxygen such that we only had 20 minutes total in the water. And at that, on the way back to the entry point, when we entered shallower water (about 17 feet), I began ascending and couldn't stop it. I saw him down below me and tried to descend, but a few feet later he was gone in the mucky water. I popped up on the surface, and began swimming the couple hundred yards to the shore, thinking I saw him come up a ways a way. Turns out he was freaking out on the bottom, thinking they were going to have to drag the cove for my body. I didn't see him till I reached the boat launch and could tell that he was back where I popped out of the water, looking and diving until he saw me waving to him.

He later explained that under about 20 feet, the water density and pressure increases so that buoyancy is easier to handle, but above that, you become more bubble-like, and without enough weight to compensate, up you go. I was able to manage initially because we swam straight down and stayed below the 20 foot mark as we swam out to the reef. It was hopeless on the way back. An interesting note is that on the Hawaii dives, I wore only 14 pounds. Here I could have worn another 10 pounds, up from the 30 pounds I was wearing.

When we got out, Heather had decided she was too tired to go back in, so we commenced to rinse all the equipment and change clothes for the trip back. It was a lot of work for a short dive, but Randy said he thought it was going to be a learning dive anyway, and that this sort of stuff just happens from time to time. I was happy with it. Enjoyable company and getting to do something, and see a part of the world that an incredibly small percentage of the population has experienced.

We ate at a grungy Chinese restaurant in Monterrey, then headed back to SF, continuing the chatting and reminiscing while Heather dozed in the back of the cab.