2006-11-25 - 2:35 p.m.
I feel like here I am again, wasting most of the time I have off being stuck in whatever it is that I have been stuck in for so long. When I am busy working, I am focused on whatever I need to do there, so I don't think about the rest of my life. But when I am off, then I keep having to see it for what it is, or isn't.
Actually the best part of Thanksgiving this time really wasn't "officially" part of it. On Tuesday, for right after work, I invited my friend Kate to join me for dinner at a place we both enjoy and, as usual for us, we ended up staying there up until the manager begged us to leave because they now were closed. He was cool about it, not upset, glad that we felt so comfortable with staying. He said, "I hope to see you here again tomorrow so that you can continue where you left off." Tuesday before a Thanksgiving wasn't such a busy time, so nobody was stressed. (Thanksgiving, itself, will be a very busy time for them, because this is one of those restaurants that a famly might choose to go out to instead of cooking their own dinner. It's a place that has popular Sunday brunches, and the like, and is also a place for weddings.)
Kate and I talked about hopes, dangers, uncertainty, aging, freedom, dreams, courage, and faith. Big topics, right? Well, what else is going to keep us up earnestly talking while the floors are being vaccuumed all around us and the table-top candles are all being burned out, Brad and Angelina and Tom and Katie? Yeah, right, cough, neither one of us cares much about all that celebrity idol love-hate worship bullshit (Kate doesn't even go to movies and I don't watch television). We want our own lives, not suck off the lives of others as fantasy substitutes (even when our own lives are little more than Thoreau's "lives of quiet desperation").
Thanksgiving was a time for being thankful for all that we have, even if we feel that we don't have much of what we really want. Why are so many people trying to impose guilt on us as a people or nation for that? It seems that suddenly, Thanksgiving has become politically incorrect, just like Christmas. I don't know a single person who eterminated an Indian, do you? What land did we steal? Hell, I don't have ANY land, just 500 square feet of rented space three stories above the asphalt-covered adobe soil in the middle of a semi-desert. The poorest Indian "on the res" in South Dakota has more land than I do, not that they are doing anything with it or on it except watching the 1960s cars up on blocks rust and the skinny dogs running around looking for a bone, bitching about how wrong they were done to by the white man.
But yeah, I should relate because they're just stuck, and so am I. And in my case, it truly is my own damned fault. As for the Indian on the res, it's not really my place to say. And I've met some pretty incredible Indians, too, like the Chief of the small tribe up in Northern Wisconsin whose reservation is on the shore of Lake Superior, who invited a class I was in to visit him. He taught us (a class of writers in a summer-long nature-writing workshop) their tribal origin mythology and also about how they keep their youth on the straight and narrow instead of getting involved with alcohol, drugs, and shiftlessness. I wondered what the tribe had had to do long ago in order to keep (or get) this land, which really was in an extremely beautiful location, not waste land at all...although it IS in a VERY cold climate, so that might have had something to do with it. Still, I wouldn't kvetch if that were MY land. I happen to really love the Great Lakes region, and, honestly, the only aspect that keeps me from living there is the cold. But otherwise, it is truly wonderful. So these Indians were doing well.
But the ever-constant big conversation that continues among all of us in L.A. who own no real estate is the "what do we do what do we do what do we do?" (Didn't Frank Sinatra sing a song about that?) It's an unescapeable conclusion we seem to keep coming to, that, unless there is some hidden magic that so far none of us has uncovered, one can't live in California no matter what. NOT if you want this or this or this.
When I was younger, more adventurous, and perhaps foolish (but so far the jury is out on that one), I'd drop everything and move somewhere else. I've quit some pretty wonderful and amazing jobs, left some marvelous friends, basically burned my fields to charcoal stubbins and started over again and again and again. But suddenly, I just can't do that any more. Now I'm afraid. Now I'm hanging on to cautionary aphorisms, such as "from the frying pan to the fire" or "the solution is worse than the problem," or, the very worst one of all, what I call my "Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz" syndrome, which is "oh, there isn't anything in that black bag for me." I bet only one in a hundred thousand people even know what I am talking about, but whenever I heard that statement in the movie, it rang almost the loudest of all the personal chimes in the movie.
Do you know the scene? Dorothy has spent the whole adventure bringing together with her people who need help...the Scarecrow, who needs a brain, the Tin Woodman who needs a heart, and the Cowardly Lion who needs courage. She, herself, needs to find her way back home again (don't we all!), but she has stepped back from her own need to help these others, all of whom believe that there is this "Wizard" who might be able to give them what they want.
Of course, the Wizard is just a "sham", and yet, he really does have "magic" after all, and that is that he knows that the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion already have (or are) what they are looking for (the seeds were always inside of them, but grew into fruition due to their mutually-altruistic struggles in the world) and ALL they needed were external recognition of it (such as a Diploma for the Scarecrow and a Testimonial for the Tin Woodman and a Medal for the Cowardly Lion), which is, really, very heavy spirituality, because the Hindus say that the entire Universe was a creation to be a mirror of God so that God's goodness, love, abundance, creativity, and all the rest, could be EXTERNALLY seen and recognized and understood. As Alice Walker so wisely wrote, "I think it pisses God off if you see the color purple in a field and don't notice it." I think it also pisses God off if you have Thanksgiving Day and all you say is "oh gee, we have nothing to celebrate because we are just horrible people who took the land away from the Indians."
So Dorthy is genuinely as thrilled as punch that her friends are getting from the Wizard exactly what they wanted, these objects of external recognition just being pulled up out of the Wizard's black bag. But when the three now all turn to the Wizard and say, "Hey, what about Dorothy, yes, it's Dorothy's turn, now", Dorothy sadly shakes her head and says, "Oh, there is nothing in that black bag for me."
Wow, what a moment, so sad really, and yet, stupid...why isn't there something in there for her, this generous spirit who gave so much of herself to helping the others?
But I UNDERSTAND it, because I am that way too--maybe everybody is. There is something for everybody else in the entire world, but ME? No, there is nothing in that black bag for me.
What attitude could be worse?
Of course, we all know that Dorothy's needs were even beyond the Wizard, there really WAS nothing in that black bag for her (her need wasn't just something that could be dispensed by an earth-based committee--so winning a million dollars on a "reality" show isn't going to cut it), but that doesn't mean that she can't have what she wants. She, like all the others, DID always have it the whole time, it's just that she didn't BELEIVE it! The "there's nothing in that black bag for me" attitude is the outpicturing of that lack of belief.
Fortunately, Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, comes, and explains to Dorothy the power of the Ruby Slippers. Do we all have Ruby Slippers? I don't know...you have to drop a house on a Wicked Witch and go on a long, dangerous, benevolent journey, i.e., what Joseph Campbell called "the Hero's Journey"--which is really our life, if we live it with awareness and altruism.
Have I done those steps? Regarding dropping a house on the Wicked Witch of the East, "I didn't mean to," said Dorothy, "it was an accident!" So intention isn't required, apparently. What Dorothy did was, in the middle of the storm, forget about herself for a moment and run off to rescue her dog, Toto (so, the selfless instinct seems to be the animator), so she got caught in the storm and taken to a new place where her arrival caused the liberation of an enslaved people (death of the Wicked Witch freed the Munchkins). Since all of these symbols are always aspects of our own psyche, small, helpless, forgotten aspects of ourselves need to be rescued from the despotic shadows and paid attention to. Ah ha, I see that task is something I can do, what ARE those "Munchkins" I've got enslaved inside of me? What unsatisfied yearnings clamoring for attention? I'm sure they don't feel like much, not compared to the BIG TASK, yet obviously they must point the way. Aren't those little Munchkins like purple-colored flowers in the field that God gets pissed off if you don't notice?
Ah ha, now I'm beginning to get it. I keep distracting my attention away from the God-given little things and gazing out into the great big dark. That's no way to take steps (one brick at a time), and so that's why I don't make any progress. Thanksgiving time, if at no other time, is the time to take notice and get moving forward.
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