The Greatest Challenge in The World

What a challenge
to be happy
in the world
this torn world of
mayhem bombs hunger madness terror hatred
heartbreak torture death happiness
is the greatest
challenge in the world
in this whole old torn howling world

"One Teacher"

From The Way to Love, by Anthony de Mello
(Doubleday, Image Books):

You can get someone to teach you things mechanical or
scientific or mathematical like algebra or English or
riding a cycle or operating a computer.

But in the things that really matter--life, love, reality,
God--no one can teach you a thing.

All they can do is teach you formulas.

As soon as you have a formula, you have reality filtered
through the mind of someone else. If you take those formulas
you will be imprisoned. You will wither and when you come to
die, you will not have known what it means to see for yourself,
to learn.

Think of the kind of feeling that came upon you when you
saw a bird fly over a lake or observed a blade of grass peeping
out of a crack in the wall or heard the cry of a baby at night
or sensed the loveliness of a naked human body or gazed at a corpse
lying cold and rigid in a coffin.

You may try to communicate the experience in music or poetry
or painting. But in your heart you know that no one will ever
comprehend exactly what it was you saw and sensed.

That is exactly how a Master feels when you ask him to teach
you about life or God or reality. All he can do is give you
a formula, a set of words strung together into a formula.

Is there any way you can know that what you are in touch with
is Reality?

Here is one sign: What you perceive does not fit into any
formula whether given by another or created by yourself. It
can not be put into words.

So what can teachers do?

They can bring to your notice what is unreal, they can destroy
your formulas, they can indicate your error. They can, at the most,
point in the direction of Reality.

You will have to walk out there all alone and discover for yourself.

To walk alone--that means to walk away from every formula--the ones
given to you by others, the ones you have learned from books, the
ones you yourself invented in the light of your own past experience.

That is possibly the most terrifying thing a human being can do--
move into the unknown, unprotected by any formula.

To walk away from the world of human beings as the prophets and
mystics did is not to walk away from their company but from their
formulas.

Then, even though you are surrounded by people, you are truly
and utterly alone.

What an awesome solitude!

That solitude, that aloneness is Silence. It is only this Silence
that you will see. And the moment you see you will abandon
every book and guide and guru.

And a strange change will come about in you, barely perceptible
at first but radically transforming.

You will feel the exhilarating freedom, the extraordinary confidence
that comes from knowing that every formula, no matter how sacred,
is worthless; and you will never again call anyone your teacher.
Then every single thing will be your teacher.

So put your books and formulas aside; dare to abandon your teacher
and see things for yourself. Dare to look at everything around you
without fear and without formula and it won't be long before you
see.

Unauthorized Interview with Sexy Whopping Apples, Part 3.

(Parts 1 and 2 may appear immediately below)

SWA: Now, the book takes place in a village called Hmmm.
Where is Hmmm located exactly?

RM: In the book. As the book is in the village.

SWA: I mean, Is there an actual place in the world
you were thinking of when you wrote about Hmmm?

RM: Oh. I was thinking of a combination of both Alaska, the Cape of
Good Hope, ancient Fresno, the Catskills, the Great Wall of China,
and primal Spain.

SWA: May I say there doesn't seem to be anybody in charge
in Hmmm?

RM: You may, but I would suggest that everybody is in charge.
Once you get a village oiled and humming along, it pretty much
runs itself, like a cactus, or a rusty can.

SWA: Now, at one point, Lemuel mentions the village computer, and
that he's 163th in line to use it. That surprised me, because
I had believed the story takes place in, oh, the 1950s perhaps?

RM: The gravity is lighter there, requiring less energy, so
the clocks run faster and don't use up as much time. Hmmm
uses the Gnelnm calendar, a more flexible sense of time
based on the Tao and the general mood of the village.

SWA: How does one measure the "general mood of the village"?

RM: It's in the Zeitschmaultz.

SWA: The what?

RM: That's German for Geistvelten.

SWA: I think you're making up words.

RM: Not on purpose. If I was going to make up words, I wouldn't make
up German words. It's enough of those already.

SWA: Lemuel, your protagonist, seems to get in a lot of conversations,
but he also becomes quite agitated when they don't go his way.

RM: I wouldn't call it agitated if your foe in the conversation keeps
ignoring the rules.

SWA: The rules of conversation?

RM: Yes, Lemuel starts most conversations, and whoever starts a
conversation ought to get to decide which way it goes.

SWA: Do you happen to have any pictures of the animal?

RM: I have had some pictures of the animal, but he retains
the rights.

SWA: How does an animal retain the rights to pictures?

RM: By eating them. I suspect he heard that pictures steal
a part of his soul, and that he could get the parts back if
he ate them.

SWA: That can't be good for him.

RM: It would be worse for anybody that tried to stop him.

SWA: Who.

RM: Anybody.

SWA: You said "that tried", it should be "who tried".

RM: That who tried what?

SWA: Without giving anything away, there's a project, shall
we say, in a certain area of the cottage, and it involves stolen
items from somewhere, quite a few stolen items. Is there any kind
of moral compass that guides the, shall we say, project manager?

RM: Without giving anything away, shall we say, no. That animal
has the morals of a sack of gumballs.

SWA: Keeping that in mind, do you think this is a book for children?

RM: I wouldn't even let a impressionable adult read this book.

SWA: Who's the audience for the book, then?

RM: Underemployed 14th Century shepherds. I think it would cheer
them up, or at least confuse them for a while, and I wonder
what more you could ask for from literature.

(Part 4 may be coming soon, depending on the Weltenzeist.)

Uncorrected Transcript of Interview from Sexy Whopping Apples, Part 2.

(continuing--see just below for Part 1)

SWA: Feel better?

RM: Yes, thank you.

SWA: You have just a smush of ketchup on your nose there.

RM: Oh. I like to do that with French fries.
(discreetly wipes nose with tablecloth)

SWA: What would you compare your book to?

RM: In terms of food-wise?

SWA: In terms of other books, other authors.

RM: Well, people have compared it to Mark Twain,
Flannery O'Connor, The Little Prince, and Kafka.

SWA: My goodness. What people compared it to those?

RM: Off-hand, I don't recall at this time.

SWA: Could it have been yourself?

RM: It might have, but I'd like to doubt it.

SWA: Don't you think that's a little overreaching,
comparing youself and your little book to masters and classics?

RM: At the moment, I certainly do. I haven't read many books,
so when somebody says to compare my books to other books, I
often casually compare them to the same books over in over,
just because I don't want to look any more dumber than I might
be.

SWA: All right. Let's talk about the message of the book.

RM: OK.

SWA: What is it?

RM: Oh. I thought you were going to tell me.
Well, I think it could be that, well, go ahead and fix
things if you must, that are broken, if you can, but
remember that more things might be going on than you
know, broken or not, under the surface, and, so, you ought to
maybe meditate a little, while you're at it.

SWA: That'll be catchy on the book jacket. Personally,
I think your book is a sociological inquiry into the
lexiconography of rural myth and post-rational philosophy,
concluding that communication in the 21st Century is akin
to a variety of meta-ur-dialectics.

RM: The only thing I understood is "21st Century," but
luckily the book takes place in the 20th.

SWA: Let's talk about the animal. Buzz. How did he get
that name?

RM: Well, first, it was Oscar. Somebody asked me what his
name was, and I just said the first thing. I didn't even know
the animal at the time. But a lot of animals and people were
named Oscar, including a book with Oscar in the title
by the same publisher. Then it was Aloha somehow, but everybody
thought he was Hawaiian, and he wasn't.
So then I couldn't think of any other names. Then
I had a dream about a mysterious fellow in a t-shirt that said
"Don't Kill My Buzz" on it. And then I heard a song about
the Northern Lights by Neil Young. So, I figured out how it got
its name in the book because of Uncle Leonard and where he went
to get away and think about life and inventing and misanthrope
things.

SWA: How exactly did Uncle Leonard die, by the way?
You left that somewhat up in the air.

RM: I don't believe I do, but I don't like to think about it.
It's pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty gruesome.

SWA: What about Lemuel? Lemuel Washington. Is he as dumb as
he seems some times?

RM: It depends on who he's talking to. I notice
he gets dumber or smarter depending on who he's talking to,
and I relate to that a lot myself sometimes, such as now.

SWA: Is he happy?

RM: That's a odd question, because I never thought about it.
I think he would be happier if he didn't think so much
about things. Such as winning conversations all the time.

(Part 3 later soon.)

Preliminary Transcript of Interview from Sexy Whopping Apples, Part 1.

SWA: Why did you write this book, this Mixed Animal?

RM: I thought the world could use it.

SWA: How?

RM: Well, that's up to the world. I just thought it
would make the world a little more of a better place
to be alive in somehow.

SWA: That's quite an ambition.

RM: Thank you. I didn't really ever think why I
wrote it before just now. But I think I believe myself.
Also, though, I couldn't really help it. It was like
I got a cut somehow and started bleeding happiness.

SWA: All right. Now, I notice it takes place in a village.
Did you do a lot of research on villages?

RM: No.

SWA: How did you know what you were doing?

RM: I never said I did. In fact, I would say I didn't.

SWA: Did you do research on anything in your book?

RM: It depends what you mean by "research".

SWA: What do you mean by it?

RM: I don't mean anything by it. I did look at a bunch
of pictures of different stuff.

SWA: Villages? Animals?

RM: Clouds. Barns. Different types of potato meals. Gals.

SWA: Why would you look at pictures of gals as
research for this book?

RM: Why wouldn't I? There's gals in it.

SWA: Yes, there are. Speaking of which, is this fellow,
this Lemuel, is he and his sister Shane's relationship
supposed to be like a real-life village noir version
of Hansel and Gretel, by any chance?

RM: I never thought of that. I would say no, but
it would had been interesting if I did.

SWA: Well, you even have somebody fiddling with a
Hansel and Gretel doodad in there, figurine.

RM: I have a lot of people fiddling with a lot of
things. I wouldn't draw any conclusions unless I
had to, if I were you.

SWA: You have bread crumbs.

RM: I have a Helms truck, too, but that doesn't
mean somebody is a donut, or a symbolic donut.

SWA: By the way, how did she get the name Shane?
Was she named after the enigmatic cowboy hero?

RM: Yes. I was watching Shane the movie when I
thought it would be a good name for her. I always
like to think of her as an enigmatic cowgirl who
is always causing trouble, fighting for justice for
herself, and riding out of town in a cloud of
mysterious fortune-telling dust.

SWA: What about the animal? Where did that come from?

RM: The Unconscious Forest.

SWA: Where did the Unconscious Forest come from?

RM: Well, it was already there. Somebody just named
it that. There's a discussion in the book about it.

SWA: Yes, I know. What is this about Lemuel always
trying to win every conversation he's in?

RM: He's just that way. I don't believe he's that
unusual in this day in age.

SWA: I think you go to extremes in this case.

RM: I couldn't go to them if they weren't already
there.

SWA: Oh, I think you could.

RM: I wouldn't know how.

SWA: I think you could figure it out.

RM: I doubt that I could.

SWA: Have you tried?

RM: I certainly have. I'm trying right now.

SWA: And how are you doing?

RM: I'm a little hungry. Could we brake for lunch?

(Part 2 later)

What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night,

cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible perfectly innocent speech,
the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes
by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses
everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going
to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as
it talks I am going to listen.
--Thomas Merton

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
--T.S. Eliot

More wonderful, inspiring, tuning-fork, centering words
on gardening & sitting & working in gardens...
.
Quotes for Gardeners
.

One foot in this strange world, one foot in another even stranger world.

Isn't that a mysterious, unsettling place to live?

Although it's possible to find a wild serenity
in the most insecure of circumstances.

For example, I've been reading Kafka again lately,
which can be a dangerous thing to do
because it causes me to see things in a way
that doesn't help me fit in at all.

Have you read "Bartleby the Scrivener,"
a story by Melville? It's about a man who
suddenly "prefers" to not do anything. Why
is such a small quiet story so compelling, so
haunting?

Or "The Hunger Artist," a story by
Kafka, about a man who dies unnoticed
next to a caged & prowling panther that
captivates the crowd.

Those are not happy stories, but they awaken
something in me that knows this world is
incurably strange. Knowing that others
(others as finely tuned as Kafka & Melville)
see a similarly odd world is itself is a kind of
happiness, oddly.

The way most people view this world and our place in it is
not quite right, not quite true. Something's
missing. Many people leave something out,
or won't or can't take that one step back and one step
to the side
which changes everything, brings everything
into vivid focus, but more mysterious than ever.

I went through a lot of relationships
until I stumbled miraculously into the one I'm in now.
I could say all those other relationships
crashed and burned, or fizzled, but
I believe that nothing in love is wasted.
Graduated from the University of Broken Hearts
& Bungled Opportunities. I wouldn't have been ready
for this if I hadn't been squeezed through the eyes of the needles
of the others first, painful and maddening and shameful
as they felt when they went bad,
when I did my large part to make them go bad.

That's what I gather, that in the midst of the alien
world a natural
process is gliding & grinding away--in relationships,
work, writing, learning to
love, simplifying, dying--sometimes with the horrible things
that happen in nature, and behind the scenes
the supernatural story rolling along
whether I know it or like it or believe it or not.

Not a good written word is wasted either.
This is how foolish I am--
I believe, for example, that the plays I've written
that haven't been performed
will be performed in Heaven,
and I'll cast every part just the way I
want for once.

Oh, reason is a wonderful thing,
like an ocean liner,
but when you get to the shore, it can make locomotion
very clumsy if you try to take the ocean liner with you
as you navigate the new medium, land.

After a certain point, there more reasonable
means of mindfulness than reason, more
perceptive, flexible, trustworthy, lighter
to take with me in that little rucksack as the road
on the shore begins rolling inland.

So, all I am saying is, tonight I met a man
who has been in 20 mental hospitals.
He was very hard to talk to
because he was all over the lot. I couldn't
get my bearings, because if things had gone just a
degree different here or there I could have easily been him.
When he twice started to talk about shame the tears
just rolled down
his face both times and he started to walk away
but I wouldn't let him,
because that was all I could do.
I asked him if he could pray, and he said
he was too ashamed. He was ashamed because he
had done many awful things
that were bad for himself and others, and the
thought of facing God in prayer shone a light on his shame
and he couldn't
stand it.

I remember reading in a gnostic gospel (Thomas?) something
about how when I feel that I'm farthest
from God, that that is when I'm
most near God of all.
How when I feel that God could not possibly want
anything to do with me because I am
a loser & a liar & a fraud & mean & a failure
& I feel I've wasted my talent, my love
& my life & there is not
a selfless cell or thought in my body, and I could not
possibly pray or have hope
because of my shame--it's then that I'm primed for God
& all I have to do is let my soul lead me for one moment & I'm
there & I know we're all in the same boat, headed
for shore.

The Only Expert There Is

From the Essay "Soul Food"
by William Stafford
in "Crossing Unmarked Snow:
Further Views on the Writer's Vocation"
(University of Michigan Press)

"We writers try to help each other, sometimes.
But there is a catch in this generosity:
if you begin to rely only on what others say
about your work, you may become like a compass
that listens to the hunches of the pilot.
You may be good company, but you are useless
as a compass--a writer, I mean.

So, when we meet, say at a conference or workshop,
we look each other in the eye with an estimate
hovering between us. We know that our kind of
activity has some complexities not evident to others,
and we wonder if those complexities will be recognized
in any interchanges about our craft.

We know that our work is insufficiently judged
if much time is given over to assessing the topics
of our work. We know that a critic who discusses
whether we talk enough about Nicaragua or not,
or human rights or not, or the general topic of enlightenment
or not, is missing the mark.

We know that there is something supremely important
in the creating of a story or poem that all too often
will escape the attention of an outsider trying to assess it.

We must have an inner guide that allows us to rove forward
throughout the most immediate impulses that come our way.

For us, our whole lives are our research; and caught up
by our best subjects we become not just an expert,
but the only expert there is.

We have to be the sole authority for what comes toward us,
where we are, with our unique angle of seeing.

If the most significant writing comes from this inner guidance,
who will help you find it? Would it be someone who interposes
the considerations of the marketplace
while the delicate time of discovery is going on?

Would it be the person who puts primary emphasis
on your imitation of forms and strategies?

Let me plead, not for ignoring advice
from wherever it comes, but for allowing in your own life
the freedom to pay attention to your feelings
while finding your way through language.

Besides that audience out there in the world,
there is some kind of ideal audience
that you have accumulated within your individual
consciousness--within your conscience!--
and abiding guidance is your compass,
one that constitutes what you have to contribute
to discourse with others.

Moving back and forth from the inner to the outer world
(it feels good)
might be the way to your best writing.

Into the unknown you must plunge, carrying your compass.
It points at something more distant than any local guidance.

You must make "mistakes"; that is, you must explore
what has not been mapped out for you.
Those mistakes come from somewhere; they are
disguised reports from a country so real
that no one has found it.
When you study that country, shivers
run down your back--what a wilderness out there!
What splendid stories flicker among those shadows!
You could wander forever.

Odd words keep occurring to you, pauses, side glances--
mysterious signals. What hidden prejudice
brought that next word into your mind?
If you hastily retreat to an expected progression,
what shadowy terrain might you be neglecting?

What revelations might you miss by any "expert" weaving
of another well-crafted story or poem?

Like Don Quixote on his unorthodox steed
you must loosen the reins and go blundering into adventures
that await any traveler in this multilevel world
that we too often make familiar by our careful threading
of its marked routes between accustomed places.

And like Don Quixote you must expect some disasters.
You must write your bad poems and stories;
for to write carefully as you rove forward is to
guarantee that you will not find the unknown,
the risky, the surprising.

Art is an activity in which the actual feel of doing it
must be your guide; hence the need for confidence, courage,
independence. And hence the need for guardedness
about learning too well the craft of doing it.

By following after money, publication, and recognition,
you might risk what happened to the John Cheever character
who in like manner "damaged, you might say,
the ear's innermost chamber where we hear the heavy noise
of the dragon's tail moving over the dead leaves."

A Friend Axed Me If I Researched the Science Part of Mixed Animal.

I said that I researched diligently
to make sure nothing in the novel was scientifically
accurate or provable. As a matter of fact, this unruly book
attempts to defy the laws of imagination.
The Amazon description does what it can, but it can't.
I could have gone mad proofing it, for it's beyond proofing.
Both science-wise & language-wise, it's proof-proof,
for all errors in it may appear more intentional
than they are. In other words, no, I wouldn't know a clone from a splice,
but my characters refused to be limited by my ignorance.

Riled Up & Dylan's Nihilism.

After being mistookenedly accused (along with Bob
Dylan) of something by somebody, neither of which
I remember, but this was our defense, not that we
needed it:

Riled up to me doesn't mean passionate.
To me riled up means fussin' & fightin'
Trying to win converts to a point of view.
The way I feel, it usually does more damage than
good.

I enjoy Dylan's music for the feelings
it gives me, and it doesn't give me a nihilist's
feeling. Like he said about Things Have Changed,
it's a song. Did you see him accept the Grammy
for that song? That wasn't a man who didn't care.
I don't think that's all he's been
saying for years--that he doesn't care.

I feel like I care more about what I care about
than I did earlier on. I care about the same
things mostly, but I don't have to dress it
up as much as I used to to hide & defend the
vulnerability in the caring.

All I "don't care" about is changing other
peoples' minds about things big or small,
at least anywhere near like I used to.
It's a matter of pleasure. I don't enjoy it.
It's not "fun" to me. And usually
it has the opposite effect of how I intended.
It brings me feelings I don't care to have,
feelings they say more & more can downright
kill you, in fact, maybe even those around you.

The passion I have nowadays runs slower
& deeper & easier & truer & maybe
lazier than when I was younger. It's just
nature, plus being sober for many years for
sure.

I don't have that urge to prove things
like I did, that used to run my life, or rather
when I find myself starting to get in that
place, it's a pleasure to remember I don't
have to. The switch from aggression to
perception. It feels fake to argue any more.
I'm not arguing that anybody else ought to
stop arguing, exactly.

I have irrational connections
to people and songs and ideas, and arguing
about them just doesn't make sense to me anymore.
It's like arguing about who I am. I feel those
feelings that people arguing at me gives me,
so at my best I guess I don't want to do that
to somebody else.

But mainly it's selfish, or centered in wanting some
semblance of peace of mind in this world above all.
For sure a part of it is I did so much riling up
& being riled up younger that I don't feel I'm missing much
now to not do it. A lot of other people are riled up
and riling up, I guess I wont be missed if I opt out.
If writing stories is arguing, then it's the only kind
of arguing I'd like to do, but I don't feel it really
is. It's more like just ... writing a story.

But the main thing is, gee, I don't equate getting
riled up and passion, or riled up and connected,
or not getting riled up and detached. Like most
things, it's a matter of perception & perspective.
"We just saw things from a different point of view..."
The hardest thing for me is to remember the other person
has many reasons, powerful and good and right to them,
for feeling what they feel and thinking like they do,
and loving what they love and hating what they
hate. Just like me. Gee, didn't mean to go on so.
Didn't mean to get all riled up.