| ** |
Date:
Thurs, 6 January 2000 07:32:21 -0400
|
Subject:
Re: Questions for Joe
|
From:
eringh@uw.edu
|
To:
mepstein@aol.com
|
Mime-version:
1.0
|
X-priority:
3
|
|
|
Mark,
|
I
tried writing it as fiction. It must be awful to
read, -- esp. where I tried to make it dramatic.
And these weirdos mCarthy, Carson, yuck.-- then
Jo G. Liddy, even worse = self-absorbed me-bop
gone way wrong + all my own BB-sob-bop
to make things worse!. I
certainly got bogged down in that fight with
Jo’s uncle -- Moods I was in. --
|
--and
so much of it!! of course i don't expect you to
read it. As you say, we write to understand and
be understood. To love and be loved. But -- like
the first one, -- I cannot not send it. Maybe
through all this we've invented a new form of
psychotherapy.
|
The
metaphors started driving me crazy. Thank god I
didn't think of duck tape ‘til just now. The
point is simply that Yeats was wrong. Things fall
apart but the center holds!
Or rather, it can hold if the center is knowing
and pure = empty. Too bad we didn't think of that
the day we were talking about titles..
|
I’ve been
piddling with all this for a couple of years on
weekends, whenver I got some time. I came up here
to the cabin for two weeks over the new year; and
now it is time just to mail it to you.
|
Woke
up this morning, or rather its just midnight, but
I got some good sleep -- and realized something
obvious: In the very act of writing this, I have
been going into the center of the mandala, with
confidence --combining sensuality and spiritual
obviously doesn't have to mean just sex. (but I'm
enough like Zo with her blind spots to assume
that!!) Thinking/imagining are sensual. Call it
what you want. The free play of awareness with
thoughts and images: not keeping it separate. And
in a way that sort of play is wholly appropriate
in the context of my rather abstract personal
relationships spanning space and time, I mean, in
a way not incorporated so well into the physical:
certainly not disappearing, yet not talking or
seeing you or other friends very often for the
past few years. An email now and then. Of course
that suits me all too well. I am usually alone,
even in the city, and day to day have few intense
personal relationships of any type. But up here I
have come to see that my life is absolutely rich
in an abstract way, meaning first there are many
many people in it even if at some distance. I
could name you all, and there are many to name,
including my past lovers; of course I always got
along best with lovers who were in the past. Or
in a distant city. Your message to Jo is why not
even be free enough to let the whole body in, in
a regular way, here and now. I do it in both
meditating and dancing but both can be a bit
staged in their own ways.
Anyway
I made some notes about this.
ƒ=>
/erinNotes
they
go on and on, but let me know what you think.
|
I
definitely learned this from Jo: periods of
solitude (which she thought she valued and was so
confident about) had always been cluttered and
organized by retreat type schedules and
expectations and so forth. She was never free
from them. When you wrote that intimacy and
solitude go hand in hand, I immediately assumed: look!
I don't have a problem being intimate because I
do solitude so well. Yet in
fact I often have used the intensively structured
solitude, always going straight to that, as a
shield against just being alone -- a type of
premature withdrawal from intense solitude, by
planning things so more or less I'd know what to
expect. This time I didn't even cling to that.
(The obvious next thought, which only very
faintly can I formulate in a quiet back of my
mind, is that there might be ways of relating,
also not so cluttered by thoughts ... )
|
Talked
with Joseph two nights ago. I think he'd prefer a
bigger part in the story. He made the channelling
suggestion himself. Actually I've concluded he is
Joe, it isn't really me after all, and indeed you
used the name Joe
to guarantee nobody would think you were talking
about him, esp. after mentioning him explicitly
in the book in the story about the Roshi helping
make accessible his own "childhood
emptiness" (25).. (like the Nabakovian Joe
Carson Zoe imagined, not like the one who placed
the ad: the Carson here is so dense he thinks
he's Joe because, well he is
Joe!)
|
I
realize I never did get to the questions you gave
me. well, I do digress -- do I not? .. though I
thought Carson did pretty well with #1. :) I've
just kept waiting until I was more clear or
whatever. To some extent I am copping out. Yet I
recall your story that ends
|
Like a child
whose mind is free to roam because he is
secure in his mother's presence, I completely
let down my guard. I had the awareness of
just how unimportant my efforts to understand
myself were. (172)
|
And
anyway me-bop
gets boring fast!-- and then other things, like
the kids, kept seeming more important and more
interesting than figuring it all out. And Erin,
me -- Erin, who .. as time went by, this didn't
come out in the story, but I was worried about
this... got more and more like the woman weeping
in Zoe's arms: lets suppose she didn't get her
act together really. Daily life swept her away.
Life is too amazing to let slip away, even when
what we are doing is trying to be helpful.
Slowing the flood isn't a matter of analysis or
figuring things out. Much simpler than that.
There is so much beauty within us and around us.
The key is renunciation (not = self denial!!!).
Anyway I want
you to know that I still do not buy your
stay-at-home complacency. You and Jack
Kornfield and others sketch a beautiful
magnificent vision of integrated
spirituality and sensuality and family
life and etc etc. I agree it is
beautiful.
|
But, Mark,
real life has such jagged edges. More
fundamental than the details what happens
or not in my life is that it appears as
if out of nowhere, and it ends. Quickly
enough, I will be just plain dead and
gone.
Meanwhile
there are millions and millions of people
and other beings struggling in the most
basic ways, for food, for a tiny measure
of security, for freedom. My own
happiness or not is connectd to those
struggles, --because
I am aware. This is
not something to start feeling guilty
about.
If I pretend
my life is not connected, that I somehow
am exempt and separate --and how
desparately I would like
that to be so, but
it cannot be so, to suppose it is so is
only pretense-- & then I get dull,
stuck. Whether blissful romance and
stimulating conversation, nourishing food
and aromatic massage oils, not to mention
all the positions etc --whether I wake up
in the morning to a nice day filled up
with stuff like that or --on the other
extreme, if I wake up to another dirty
day of being tortured, say, for speaking
against an oppressive government, --the
challenge either way is not to hold on to
it. --Of course I can’t really speak
about being tortured. But I know that
torture is happening, right now
somewhere, and that fact is part of my
life. And it is being endured or not.
That person is part of my life. And of
course there are shades and shades of
suffering. nobody turns out exempt at
all, in the least. We might have a vision
of life getting easier as we mature, as
we pay our dues --but that is fantasy
too.
--Do I embrace
these facts then?
--Yes?
--If so, then that means renunciation,
cold and hard; for I just can’t
cling to the situation of comfort,
security, bliss, etc. which, I know,
gives me the time right now to sit here
looking out the window. --And so? So:
--not to hold on, then. It will change
quickly enough on its own, anyway, and
even not having been tortured myself, and
having lived in comfort and security,
nonetheless quite very soon my head will
rot.
|
In my opinion,
the whole image and
idea of wholeness
works against actually
being whole. Going
to pieces=falling apart= being whole. I
must say, Mark, the more I think about it
the more irritated I get with your hype,
the way you’re preaching to me about
getting married etc as if the the model
of romantic love is somehow etched into
the fabric of human happiness.-- No,
baby, not quite. Renunciation is way way
more central than romance.
|
|
--And
it seems to me I’m not saying all this
merely because I can’t get through the
mandala doorways to cozy up with the Goddess and
Her Consort. Indeed, Sir, I would like to draw
your attention to the campsite in the Cascade
Mountains, on the 3d night
when I did it.
I crawled right into the tent with The Goddess
and Her inimitable extraterrestrial consort Joe
Carson.!!!!
|
True,
he fell asleep and snored while we just talked. I
couldn’t quite ge3t it on. So--uh, now wait
a minute --you say that Joe
can’t get past the half
animal half female figures? He can’t get to
that place where the couple is lovingly entwined
in the center of the mandala. --Mark, you were
saying he needs to get in
there with them, right??
:) So I did understand you correctly, then, to be
suggesting a threesome!!??
That
finally is the answer??! ==Do
you have pictures?
|
:)
|
Oh
well.-- I know about two cents worth about all
this.--
|
It’s
love’s illusions I recall.
|
--I
must admit the idea of being alone
in the tent with Carson is
still quite scary
!!
|
--So
in any case it has been an interesting week,
after a week of intensive retreat here at the
cabin. I took this second week to look at what I
wrote last fall and the questions you sent me.
During the retreat no writing, no books--only one
evening a litchfield tape picked at random. The
talk was somewhat muffled so I could not get many
words but every now and then I could hear Danny
and Sharon laughing, which helped a lot.
|
I
just have to stop now. I mean really
stop, this time, --and go. Miles to go before I
sleep. should have left four days ago. have been
most derelict. Kept snowing deeper every day.
i'll have to dig my car out. assuming i can find
it. I will look forward to seeing you some time
this year, not sure when. Its going to be a busy
one.
|
with
love and gratitude,
|
E.
|
p.s.
happy new year!!!!! by the way. Jeff and Beverly
stopped by on New Year’s eve and dragged me
over to their house. They have electricity and a
tv and it stayed on so we knew everything was
going ok into 2K. I felt relieved even thought I
had not even realzized I had been a littled
worried about a Y2K meltdown. The Eiffel Tower
fireworks were magnificnet-- best thing ever seen
on tv except, of course, for McGwire’s 62d
home run.--
|
The
sparkly Eiffel Tower reminded me of nothing less
than the body of a sitting meditator at certain
times, central nervous system crackling and
firing all over!
|
Their
13-year old daughter Emily made a strange orange
dessert out of orange sherbert and orange jello
and mandarin oranges and other orange substances.
-- brought to mind the first time I realized that
things have
names,
the difference between thoughts and things --was
when, as a 5-year old girl, I encountered that
strange word = orange.
|
We
ate it after midnight. Unlike sherbert it
doesn’t melt on your tongue, but unlike
jello it doesn’t slide down your throat
either. So it just sits there petulantly, calling
for your attention until you chew it for awhile.
So you chew it for awhile but the more you chew
it the less it changes!!!--
|
--
Looks like it could be an interesting
millenium!!--
|
:)
|
p.p.s.
later. This will amuse you. My car is quite
absolutely stuck. I thought i was just making
that up.. I'm trying to get a tow truck. So how
do tow trucks fit in?? = You are stuck and
someone comes along and helps -- helps pull you
out. People like you. -- Like R.
|
--The
End.--
|
|
**
|
Dr. Mark
Epstein
|
Psychiatrist
and Author
|
of Going
to Pieces without Falling Apart
|
(the book
about Joe)
|
|
Dear Helen:
|
I Have to
tuype, can't write, sprained my hand -- sporry
about hte typs -- swing dancing!. Yes we decided
to try it out. more dangerous than I thought..
|
This ists from
a friend of mine. thought she would give fiction
a trythis time. If you like it, please help us
get it published. If not just return the
manuscript to me. Might boost the sales of my
book. publicity migght help Tricycle too.
|
Either way I'm
sure I can rely on you to keep this confidential.
Edit it or have it edited any way you wish. Kate
Wheeler would be perfect/ she is familiar with
this territory.. I have no interest in working on
it further. And would be interested in seeing
what a talented writer might do with it. Maybe
call it something like
Channelling
Made Easy
by Joe
Goldstein
[better get
his permission :)
|
I might write
a forward for it. In any case Zoe will be the
topic of my twenty-third book, and if this comes
out it might help sell that book too.
|
Please set up
an account with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship if
the book succeeds.
|
how do you
like my new stationery? got a new printer too.
|
Mark
|
Continue with Violet (Shantila's letter to Z. Mulder) next>>>
|