The Way of the Fool

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On the Suburban Path to Enlightenment, when you meet Buddha in the road, you don’t stop, you don’t even slow down. Either he jumps out of the way or he is history.

There are many ways. You can study texts or meditate on koans. I find driving and simultaneously holding a conversation on cellphone to be a good way to achieve beginner’s mind, which is something I try for as I am following the Way of the Fool.

It is a way that stresses openness and spontaneity – something particularly difficult for me to achieve – and has the added bonus of getting you off the hook if you don’t really know anything about Buddhism. Someone calls you on a point of procedure or something, you get all beginner’s mind on them.

One thing I have realized on this path is that we do not change. Womb to grave, we are who we are. We just are. You are, you know? You know what I mean? We are constantly changing, our cells reproducing and dying, but in the midst of all this change and chaos, we are who we are. We simply are.

You cannot ask someone else to change for you. And you cannot change yourself. You are a holographic section of the world, the entire world is in you and vice versa and all you can do is accept the world as it is. All you can do is accept others, accept yourself. Look. You just are. You cannot change yourself.

But you can change what you do. You can change your practices.

Kafka said, and I paraphrase another paraphrase of a translation, You don’t have to go outside in search of life, you don’t even have to leave your room. You can just sit quietly and it will come to you and roll at your feet.

There is acceptance and freedom and decisions and you are entirely in control every second of every day even if it doesn’t seem like that when you sit down to pay the bills.

The Way of the Fool is a way without fear. This is another paradoxical bit for me, being built on a foundation of fear as I am.

I was at a school function last night and afterwards was talking to a teacher. I told her a story. I had been asked to make a speech at a concert but had begged off, saying I had no time. Then it so happened that someone caught me in the vicinity at the time of the concert, which was slightly embarassing. I decided – even before being caught – that there had been no need for me to make an excuse. I simply don’t do public speaking. I don’t have to change myself. That is simply a fact about me. I don’t do it. You want me to make a speech, sorry.

Even on a path to enlightenment, we don’t have to evolve to fit someone’s idea of the ideal person.

And she said, You know, you’re right, you don’t talk, do you? In fact, I’ve never heard you speak before this.

And I stood there and talked to her for a while. We talked about Gamma and her personality. I talked of Gamma’s social skills, and how from day one she got all the attention she needed. Her method was to enter a situation, observe shyly for a few minutes, then, having figured out what the situation demanded, take control.

And I went on to tell her the story, for example, of Alpha’s 40th birthday party, when Gamma was almost 3. “Garden party in the back yard. All attention was directed towards the guest of honor of course, until Gamma stripped naked and took a shit in the grass.” I mimed picking up a huge, firm turd with my bare hands and carrying it over to the compost heap.

The teacher nodded. We stood there for a couple seconds, then I sort of wandered over to the buffet and she went and talked to someone else.

It’s okay, I thought, it’s the Way of the Fool.

This happens every year

I thought it was the cat knocking on the door but when I checked it was a fucking L3prech4un trying to steal my hubcaps and I grabbed him before he could run away although he twisted and turned mightily and squabbled and tried to distract my attention, draw it away but I maintained eye contact and assured him that I would be insisting on my wish, that he grant my wish and that my first wish would be for an endless number of wishes so he couldn’t fuck me up by some hair-splitting L1ttle P30ple trick like, you know, you wish for a nice Yakima apple with organic peanut butter and you get it, but you didn’t say you wanted it without f3cal matter mixed in, you know?

I’m savvy to that.

“The fecking Dobl

Bedtime

Funny, isn’t it, how all kids are the same in some respects? Like how they all, without exception, negotiate with you at bedtime? Take last night:

    Gamma: Two books?
    Mig: Three books. Final offer.
    Gamma: But not the parasite book! Or I won’t be able to sleep!
    Mig: Don’t worry, honey. I’ll read it first. Then the volcano book and then Witches by Roald Dahl. That way they’ll superimpose themselves on the parasites and you’ll have nice dreams.
    Gamma: [skeptically] Well…
    Mig: Just one chapter of each. Parasites first. Listen, this is what can happen if you eat food contaminated with parasite eggs. Look at this chart. That’s the life cycle. You eat the eggs on dirty food or if you don’t wash your hands. Then they hatch in your gut, and burrow through, and migrate through your liver to your lungs. Then you cough them back out, reingest them and they lay eggs in your stomach, which you pass when you poo.
    Gamma: Yuck.
    Mig: Okay. Volcanoes.
    Gamma: Let me go wash my hands first.

Banana writing

“What’s ‘nice tits’ mean?” Gamma asks.
“Ehm,” her mother says, going outside in her bathrobe to move her car so I can leave for work.
“It means… honey, are you reading your mother’s banana? You’re not supposed to read other people’s bananas.”
“It says, Nice tits. What are tits?”
Oh the hell with it. “These are tits,” I say. I point at my chest.
“Hehe,” Gamma says.

This morning, Gamma’s banana says “nice eyes.” They’re not supposed to read their bananas until lunch, but they always get curious and read them before they even leave for school/work.

No words were substituted in the making of this post.

Plan

Upon waking from a troubling dream about cellos, Gregor Samsa sniffed and realized he had a bad case of psychetosis. Bad breath of the soul. Still, he thought, better than the bug problem back in the old days. He wrote in his journal a while and cheered himself up by making a plan to improve his life. The plan looked like this:

  1. Eat less, and better. Pack a lunch for work every day including fruit and water. Benefits: feel better, lose weight, leading to even more feeling better.

  2. Work on writing every day for at least two hours: one in the morning and one at lunch. But regularly.
  3. Pay attention to kids.
  4. Pay attention to wife.

He also decided to consider ways to earn extra money. And ways to actually submit writing for publication.

Then his wife came into the kitchen and they ate toast and with a what, he forgets, with a well-timed shrug perhaps, he made her choke on her tea, nearly spraying it out her nose. He entirely forgets the context, simply that the timing of some simple thing had been so good that she did the drink thing. He paid close attention, because he had decided to. And because his older daughter owes him a Euro if he makes his wife spit her drink, and two if it comes out her nose. But no luck that morning.

Still, it cheered him up. His plan was already working.

On buying a truss

You ever get tired of your self? Tired of your fears, your hopes, especially your sense of humor and the look of your face in the mirror in the morning and the sound of your voice?

What’s it like?

In case any of you are getting tired of hearing about my truss quest and my information-gathering process (formerly known as “dithering”), I have decided to give you a break and in this post substitute the word “truss” for “truss”. If you’re not tired of hearing the word “truss” yet, you can still mentally re-substitute “truss” for the other word, “truss”, wherever it appears.

I went to a truss dealer this morning before work. My truss teacher recommended the place, and even met me there. I had with me another truss he had borrowed previously for me to try out. It was slightly more expensive than I was looking for, and I wasn’t crazy about the way it looked. The sound was good, but it was just too precious. Since sound is the most important thing for me in a truss, and looks are way down low on my list of priorities, I figured the money would be better invested in a different truss where I would be paying for the sound quality alone, and let someone else who placed higher value on appearance buy this truss, because it was pretty, if not in a way that I especially valued.

Anyway. He was a few minutes late and so I was there in the truss shop by myself, trying out three other trusses the trussmaker unpacked for me. One was roughly the same as the one I had returned, quite pretty. Nice tone, though. Another was

Jones

I’m torn. Wood or carbon fiber?

Wood is more romantic. The wood has history. Centuries of growing and aging before it’s even made into an instrument. And the unique sound every instrument has. And the development of that sound as the instrument ages. And it retains its value, with proper care.

OTOH, sit on a wooden cello and it’s history. And I have heard the carbon fiber instruments, by that maker I linked there, sound as good as much more expensive wooden ones. And when I mailed them, on a Sunday, they mailed right back with an answer to my questions.

OTOH, I woke up at four this morning, from a nightmare: the doorbell had rung, I opened it, and there a cello was, they had fedexed it to me the same day! And it had no strings, so the only way I could try to tell whether or not it sounded any good was to rap on it with my knuckles. And it sounded dull and flat, but I didn’t know if that was because of the instrument or because I was rapping on it wrong.

My heart was beating a wicked tattoo.

I told my wife about it at breakfast. “At least you’re having cello nightmares now,” she said, “and not dreaming about murdering people anymore.”