The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands. –Robert M. Pirsig
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When are my Zen moments? When I stare at a blank page and make words suddenly appear. When I explode in traffic and imagine strangling the man who cut me off. When I smoke a blunt and feel my mind finally clearing. I can finally hear my own thoughts. They were garbled for so long. I had huge gumball size marbles in my psychic mouth.
Everything I wrote was unfocused and trying too hard. I was trying to be a writer. I was trying to sound like a poet. It was all so fucking false. I wanted to find beauty in all of my ugliness. I denied my darker impulses. I never wrote about anger or the violence I’ve seen. I never fucked a single woman in my journals. I never described my sexuality, my childhood, or my losses.
I was metaphysically talking about the universe and the stars. I was obsessed with the invisible forces of nature. The things we take for granted. The vital moments that hold the world together. I wanted to study those moments. I wanted to see them from all angles. I wanted to freeze that moment and write a portrait of its emotions. I wanted to put my readers there in their guts.
So now my Zen moments are syntactical and built with visceral word choices. I want you to feel my pain for a moment. I want you to understand my loss. I want you to identify with me because you have the same pains and your own vicious losses. I want that connection with as many human beings as possible.
We have a lot to grieve for together. We have all suffered so many losses: pride, and self-respect, love, hope, and employment. We should all be weeping in the streets. This country hurts so much! Why can’t it be better than this? Such loss. Such loss. We should all be sobbing—from my grandmother to all my old bosses. Come on! Let it out! We can all heal each other.
That would be my Zen moment: a collective grieving for the losses of our world. Everyone is weeping. Every human soul mourns. And maybe there would be a lot of sex—and a ton of marijuana—because, come on, that would just be awesome. I’m just saying.
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By the time a man is 35 he knows that the images of the right man, the tough man, the true man which he received in high school do not work in life.
GUBBINAL
That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.
The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.
That tuft of jungle feathers,
That animal eye,
Is just what you say.
That savage of fire,
That seed,
Have it your way.
The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.
–Wallace Stevens