Crossroads Dispatches

willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith

"Sadly, humankind is divided by a different vision when interpreting the world, humanity, its reason for being, and its destiny. Western culture found its answer in the form of material reasoning, while the Eastern world developed based on natural thinking." - Don Isidro, Guatemalan Mayan in The Book of Destiny: Unlocking the Secrets of the Ancient Mayans and the Prophecy of 2012, by Carlos Barrios

Mai,

Precisely as you are reading The Heart of the World centering around the intrigue of utopian hidden-lands and secreted super-sanctuaries of Asia, I'm reading about the Mayan equivalent of beyuls.

I'm also reminded about the whole notion of "suspension of disbelief" which makes reading fiction like crossing a threshold to experience another's window of reality--without making a big fuss whether it's feasible, or tacitly agreeing to be sequestered "over the threshold" forever.

What if I lived my entire life suspending disbelief? What boundaries might we learn are simply arbitrary? What impossibilities might be seen as flimsy fencing? Here's a snippet of what stirred me today:

"Unlike the Western world's more linear vision, the Mayan perception of time is intertwined with space and frequency. Time, in the West consists of limits in the form of schedules and agendas. This is perfectly summed up in the expression "time is money." Space is seen as a physical, territorial manifestation in the form of possession. This division is what has given rise to conflicts and confusion.

...

"Follow the light," we've been told, as if darkness were negative. However, when Mayan sages say to follow the light, they don't mean follow behind it, but get ahead of it. The idea is to move forward and exceed the speed of light. Light and dark are merely facets of reality. Once one achieves this, one's connection with reality is no longer linear.

If we are able to manipulate the light, it means that we're able to shatter constraints inside our spirit and consciousness and go beyond it. We blaze a new trail, and everything comes into focus. This is when we acquire a sense of being. We no longer struggle with demons. We are outside the limitations of space-time; frequency is our channel to transcendence, to exceeding such limits. 

... The Mayan were obsessed with breaking through these [cosmic] borders in order to travel in space-time. Najt [space-time] is where we reside and what most people understand. More precisely, it is where most people are trapped, in what we call reality. It is also what leads us to what we call the past or future, both of which are abstractions. The past does not exist. It existed. Now it's only a memory. The future does not exist either; it's what will be. There is only this instant, this very moment, the eternal present.

Explosions in the universe can be compared to those that take place inside inside of each of us; one has to explode mentally in order to break free of the limitations of one's perceptions.

This then begs the question: are there other dimensions or realities? The answer is yes. There are other dimensions where space-time-frequency is measured or configured differently and is beyond our comprehension.

... The Popol Vuh speaks of parallel dimensions as paradise and calls them Paxil and Kayala. In Paxil our perceptions are different. Our senses sharpen, and we are surrounded by a tranquil, harmonious, peaceful energy. It's like going back to the matrix, the origin.

... Light behaves differently in these parallel dimensions. There is no sun. The light is brighter, but not warmer. It's a clear, all-encompassing light. The most exquisite fruit and the most incredible stones can be found in Paxil, but most importantly, we are accepted unconditionally there..." - The Book of Destiny, by Carlos Barrios

p.s. I gave The Heart of the World as a gift to my ex-husband, an avid river runner, as a gift when he was recovering from a serious head injury. His car accident eerily occurred roughly 10 days after the Boxing Day 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which cracked my heart wide open. I've not read the book myself.

art credits Michael Benson exhibition currently showing at Smithsonian, Beyond: Visions of Planetary Landscapes 1. Erupting into Space, by Michael Benson (Jupiter's Io) 2. Europa and the Great Red Spot, by Michael Benson (Jupiter's Europa) 3. Mars, I believe, also by Michael Benson via NY Times. Don't miss the awesome slide show.

travel beyond conventional limits--to imagine worlds, and selves, without boundaries or walls

"And to the visionary lamas of earlier centuries who entered Pemako's forbidding wilderness without fear, hope or hesitation and saw beyond the veils of common vision. These terton, or treasure revealers, discovered in the Tsangpo gorges a place of transformation and inspired others to travel beyond conventional limits--to imagine worlds, and selves, without boundaries or walls." -- Ian Baker, in his acknowledgments The Heart of the World: A Journey to the Last Secret Place

I must have fallen asleep under the catalpa tree. Leaves whorling in giants' pinwheel of chartreuse spades, named by and for a tribe of River People. All I can remember is the tail-end of the dream: I decide not to bow on stage with the others. Slink back behind the stage and exit in the rear. Someone from the performance walks up to me. Even though I have never been to China, sense that's where I am in the dream.

Except in the logic of dreams, I am speaking Spanish for the performance. This lady I assume will be re-editing the sound that walks up to me with the tape recorder. Asks me to repeat, "Hoy." (Spanish for today.) I say, "Hoy," with h intangible into the mic.

"So what did I say instead when I was on stage?" The tape recorder lady replies, "Joy. You said joy."

The security guard in his golf cart startles me. "You can lay down in the Cherry Esplanade -- not here." 

The morning glory!

It has taken the well bucket.

I must seek elsewhere for water. - Chinyo-ni

I have been thinking of water before I dosed off reading The Heart of the World. I don't want to create entertainment, entrainment--Irather something enchanted. Enchanting. Harmonizing what you've hinted about the spell-casting power of art. Yet without conniving or contriving a spell. I think it goes, again: The geese overheard have no mind to cast a reflection. The water below has no mind to hold their message/image.

Instead of focusing on seemingly dead (are they?) boddhisatvas like Guanyin or the nun-sage Chiyono, the story concept for the film morphed. It goes like this now: A modern, future Buddha combines the visionary inventions of Viktor Schauberger and Bernard Eastlund to introduce a brand-new energy source. She is hindered by the limits of her imagination, and the collective shadow of apocalypse.

"'Water is the mirror of our mind' that is what I was taught by water. - Masuro Emoto

 

"It's a bit like quantum physics," he reflected [he, speaking here is Dalai Lama], "which recognizes parallel dimensions and multiple universes." - page 14, the first page I open book

I'm still in the Borders aisle skimming,... reading. The Heart of the World is a true story of a decades-long search by the author to find a mythical waterfall. Beyond the waterfall, it is purported that if one is pure of heart a magical land lies -- a beyul, a paradise, an Eden, a Shangri-La.

I'm somewhere in the chapter The Call of Hidden Lands, when I get a text message from a 347 area code.

It reads, "bouyant fearlessness." That's it.

When Viktor Schauberger was 18 he told his father he was not going to University, and instead went to study and learn from the forest. Direct. Firsthand. I've not told my family I'm not going back to NYU... yet. 

In this way and that I have tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!

-  Chiyono

On page 432, a note falls out from the book.

art credits! Lady Pink. 1. (Images left to right: Lady Pink, Queen Matilda, 6′x4′, acrylic on canvas. Lady Pink, A Lovely Entrapment, 40″x72″, acrylic on canvas.) 2. Another brick lady... photo by c-monster.net 3. Lady Pink doing her thing... Photo by Irene Kittenclaw.

feeling for a living power infusing the work

‘I don't think about art when I'm working.
I try to think about life’ - Jean-Michel Basquiat

One day I was sitting on a stool looking out the window in a Taos coffee shop in 2009, while I was on a cross-country adventure that had started to lose its relevance. Although in sharing the trek, I was getting a lot of raw, and intimate writing done in the form of private, daily missives to my mortal muse several states away.

Nevertheless, I was a bit in a funk though as to how I could "contribute" to the world-at-large in a manner that was let's say generally "understandable", and so I asked bluntly, immediately for a sign, some sort of guidance: What do I do?

The next moment drives by a car with the license plate:

BLAZE.

That sums up what I sense when I see Jean-Michel Basquiat's art, especially in his early, blitheful years before he consumed himself fretting so much about acclaim and approval. He blazes. It blazes.

I saw the documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child last night. The first half is utterly, wholeheartedly inspiring. Basquiat lives the moment. He ran away from his Brooklyn home and lived on the streets of NYC when he was 17. He conceives of art from whatever his surroundings offer him. Walls or windows or any found object. He's doesn't wait around for any art grants, he draws $5 postcards and boldly walks up to Warhol to sell them. He keeps gushing. On and on creating.  The second half is cautionary tale. Not a good idea to expect international adulation when you're at the frontier. For instance, he's dejected because his work is refused acceptance at several museums. Today's Museum of Modern Art curator admits that new work is "uncomfortable to someone like me" as they are enveloped in trajectory of art history to date, and aren't necessarily going to see or seize what's next. Yet, daring breaks with tradition are necessary for the future of art, she continues.

Honestly, Basquiat stopped blazing, although I couldn't tell you the precise turning point. Myself, I stopped blazing some years ago. If I sit here, and ask WHY, it does come down to "approval" in some form or another.

Perhaps that might be so for most of us frontiersmen.

'Tis only possible to hide the light under a bushel for wee bit.... before something short-circuits. Shunting the shiny shiny voice and wavy life-force coming through us is a kind of suicide. So your babalao friend (is it Jeremie's dad that's Haitian or is he Cuban?) is right. But don't you think it's all a wake-up call?  Once you grok the symbolic message in the dis-ease, it's role is done.

Here's one muse-letter, far from the shiniest, from 2009. It just happens to be the most relevant:

your exuberance is inextricably infused in that last missive...I like witnessing people blaze

it helped me to hear about Art Tatum even if I couldn't grok all the musical technique....I could viscerally grok him and his impact on others by what you shared

and somehow I think it helped me walk through museum in different way

-- walk right to middle and stand in room and note what pulls me like filings to a magnet...(+helped me filter as too much to see... all that oil money [it was a Houston museum] sure do buy a lot of oil paintings, I reckon)

I wasn't paying attention to style or coolness or even what I thought were my preferences

what struck me with a raw force...some were obvious, like van Gogh, although being somewhat ignorant of visual art (trying to rectify) I can't always tell from a far distance whom is deemed a master

feeling for a living power infusing the work

& I wondered if the artist really left a physical imprint...that their hand stroke was the vehicle or for a singer the timbre of voice or ?....or if that feel was reproducible

three years ago "tomorrow if we abide by linear time" I was reading the prajnamarita sutra at Peet's coffeeshop in the wasteland of strip malls in San Jose...when my concept of 'my'self dissolved into Totality (I make this sound like a singular event... more nuanced... even day before I had noticed intense anguish coexisted with an undercurrent layer of sublime peace)

the sutra definitively says it is imbued with spiritual energy...

it has been copied, translated from Pali etc....not even same words as original author wrote it or in their handwriting

I don't have an answer but it keeps me wondering because that spirit is what attracts me in any thing, and art

art credits: Jean-Michel Basquiat 1. Ishtar, very close up detail 2. detail of Pollo Frito 3. detail of Zydeco

the water has no mind to receive their message

I walked to the closest cemetery yesterday right after I talked with Evelyn. Barely made it by closing time. Right by the intersection of Covert St, Joy Way and Central Avenue. (I don't need to make this stuff up!)

I thought it might be good to confront fear directly. Go to the charnal ground, so to speak. How do you step off a 100-foot pole?

There were the usual old tombs (the cemetery goes back to 1841), especially the russet rusted ones with edges of iron. I watched the sparrows rise off in unison at the rumbling approach of an L train, then gently return flittering close to the ground when the echoes fade. I thought I'd come to confront my fear. I expect death to be gorey, like a Hollywood horror movie or at least eerie like a David Lynch flick. Not this.

Not whistling birdsong. Grassy lawn. Spindly pine and shady oak.

I'm looking at one burial statue -- one of the russet iron ones that taper up to a cross. The three prongs of the cross aren't like arms stiffened straight out, they're flailed like blooming lotuses.

Everything feels like a blessing, not a death curse.

And then I get that buzz that signals a text message. Not any 212 area code number I recognize. Reads:

Does a stencil cut from spacious wholeness die?

I turn around to see who else might be around. The tomb I'm in front of, the rusty tapering towering lotus-petaled cross one, has a surname embossed: Stencel.

I'm mystified. Yeah, alright, maybe a little spooked. Not sure I want to text back (yet?).

Just head home and Google the lines to the poem that Evelyn told me awoke a Sufi master she once met. Except she couldn't really remember the exact phrase. Something about the geese that fly overhead don't mar the lake below. But that's not it.

He was 19 too, she believes. Riding on a train in England.

Finally I find the verses by Zenrin Kushu:
The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection.
The water has no mind to receive their message.

art credits! more in wispy haunting mood of New Orleans art, than Brooklyn tonight... this by Myrtle Von Damitz, and this soothing one too by Myrtle Von Damitz.

artist is in the very front rank of those who lead humanity toward better world

I went to see Mai today after her post yesterday. (Iku, the spirit of Death, is pursuing her according to her boyfriend's father, a Yoruba priest.) I'll let her tell the rest of the story when she can tomorrow. 

"The artist is in the very front rank of those who lead humanity toward a better world, more beautiful, more free, more just, more brotherly." - Frans Masereel

I usually keep this private, but for the last six, maybe seven years, if I encounter anyone  with an illness, I apply a wholeness reclamation technique called Ho'oponopono. You can learn more about it online, if you will. Ultimately, it's about owning your projections, recognizing everything in the world as a self-reflection.

"When I heard you talking about 100% responsibility not just for myself, but for every situation and problem, I thought, "Whoa! This is crazy! I don't need anybody telling me to be even more responsible!" Yet the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there's a big difference between overly responsible caretaking, versus totally responsible self-care. One is about being a good little girl, and the other is about getting free." -- Cat Saunders in an interview with Ihaleakala Hew Len, Ph.D.

art credits: Pele, cannot find original credited. In the interview above, Dr. Len wears a baseball cap. "The background blue represents the Void, or Emptiness, and the red "P" represents Mother Earth, or the creative force, Pele."

until death becomes unreal

Think I caught the drift of your last post. Hope you didn't mean we have to only stick to just stories of "shineshine and rainbows," as Jeremie might put it. I detest the saccharine falsity of Belle Sara. I fret that my depiction of Guanyin will fall into a stock character of self-sacrificing martyr/mother figure that blesses boo-boos on shinned knees. Anyhow.

After my visit to grandmother's, the next day (whoa, that was Sunday and it's already Wednesday) I show up at Jeremie's father's doorstep. Of course, explicitly leaving out his name here as he is too well known in his circles.

He offered me a honeyed-tamarind drink, invited me into his homemade temple -- which is a separate room in the rowhouse.

"How is Jeremie?"

"Very good. And his mother is good too. What brings you here today?"

Now, I only went there to see if he could help interpret my dream (although I should have also asked about nai nai's dream too -- the one where I'm fighting dragons). As I've said, I don't really go for divinations, so I certainly didn't come for a divination. He suggested it, and if that was the form he wanted to use to impart his wisdom so be it.

We sit cross-legged on a tatami-like mat. In the hopes not to reveal anything forbidden (as the Yoruba Ifa divination process is somewhat secret), I'll stick to highlights, what's already written in books, and what applies directly to myself. Starting with I can't tell you how he did the blessing, exactly, but I can tell you he asked me questions like:

"Do you desire success? I am now going ask for blessings of success your behalf."

I scrunch my nose. "Not in the usual way."

"Okay, you tell me. What does success mean to you?"

"A success is if I get to do what I want, and not what other people deem successful."

He breaks into a hearty laugh. Sometimes his laughter is so raucous I can't always tell if he might not be laughing at me. "Ah, so, you're a control freak: Do what I want!" And he laughs, again.

Instead of the popular opele chain of shell pieces, he decides to use the opon Ifa for a more precise reading. He sprinkles a tray with yellow eyeroson powder and sixteen betel palm nuts are thrown like dice from the palms of his smooth cocoa hands. I think it matters that the nuts don't slip through his fingers before they land , as that's a pattern for the oracle too. In the same vein Zen rock gardens' sand is raked into patterns, the tray now reveals the trajectory of the nuts.

He studies the grooves ... or more accurately, how I've strayed from my destiny. A good babalawo, he once told me, will dispense conducting a divination if you are already living in the flow of destiny.

I hear him mutter at a low pitch "Oh, be fun." Later I would ask for the odu name to be repeated: "Ogbefun". There are 16 tetragrams for a total of 256 odus, or oracle verses, in the system. 

"You aren't feeling well." I'm not sure there's a question mark

"Not exactly." I hesitate. He's Jeremie's father. I don't want to seem too lovestruck. "I've been a little down since Jeremie left to Haiti."

"That's all?"

"I don't know really. Not feeling like myself. Kinda dejected. Disconnected. Doubtful."

"I don't intend to scare you, I hope. There is a reason you must have come today this hour. As I did have a client suddenly postpone his appointment, and the afternoon became free. So, nothing is cast in stone, you understand."

"Yes."

"Iku, the spirit of Death, is following you."

I said nothing. Perhaps I wasn't surprised. In Yoruba, I think Death means anti-life, more than the Tarot's concept of Death, which is dynamic change, transformation.

"Or, it's possible... "

My mind flashed back to about a year ago when I borrowed Jeremie's camera. I was experimenting with shadow plays--in the broadest sense.
For the initial experiment, I focused on ambient shadows. It was twilight. The shadows behind school weren't really that crisp yet.

I was peering through the lens. In the back of my mind, I asked or must have asked, "Who is peering through my eyes?"

Pretty straight away, my eyes could shift from one body to another to another like the way a wrist flicks through a kaleidoscope's views. I was seeing as the tree. Then, as the rat. Then, as a shadow. Whatever passed by attention. Not even my attention, just attention.

I pulled my face off the lens. That spacelessness of perceiving through and as everything continued for a few more moments.

"Or, it's possible... someone from the other side is tracking. But your mother and father and grandparents are alive."

"I'll give you a necklace of shells that have been blessed to ward off bad spirits -- maybe all it is, elementals -- when you return."

"Shells?" were the first words I'd spoken aloud since he told me I was dying.

I don't think I'm dying. 

"Yes, if you hang them at the threshold of your apartment the sound of the shells clanking against each other will scatter them off."

I don't think I'm dying. I don't think I'm living. Is un-living death? Limbo? The other day Evelyn, you wrote, "Death will never be defeated until it becomes unreal."

art credits! Mickalene Thomas' works kinda reminds me of Jeremie's family funky sophisticate antics. NYT: “Mickalene is totally unafraid, and that is a quality I love in artists,” said Klaus Biesenbach, chief curator of the media and performance arts department at the Museum of Modern Art, who chose Ms. Thomas for the 2005 survey “Greater New York.”

1. "A Moment’s Pleasure in Black and White” 2. Installation by Mickalene 3. Don't know the name of this one by Mickalene Thomas. Pillow fight? via Art Splash 4. Jeremie's mom getting ready to boogie and sashay? via YMIB.

incantations + imagination

"i have often thought thought of my poetry in terms of incantations: spells (note: magic is done through casting spells which is the same way words are made) or prayers to be recited in the darkest caves and highest mountain tops. in writing, i often feel as if i am deciphering age-old equations and am often as baffled an audience member as any other listener or reader. i have also found numerous occasions where i have felt that i wrote or recited a situation into existence." — Saul Williams, “Saul Williams, "The Future of Language” (complete PDF), from anthology Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture

Mai,
Curious you should mention healers and artists in the same breath. I'm going to synthesize together a few pieces I've recently read that are related theme. I'm full working on the new project (I've told you, but share more soon to everyone here) and thinking about the blessing ceremony I'm leading tomorrow night at Evolver Spore's event, The Spirit of Water.

Saul Williams, once a Brooklynite too, in his "The Future of Language" essay acknowledges the lyrical revolution in hip-hop, and asserts that "vivid, descriptive narratives of ghetto life seem to have come at the cost of imaginative or psycho-spiritual exploration." He continues, "The problem is when we recite the same ol' shit into microphones which increase the sound vibration the same ol' shit continues to manifest in our daily lives, and only gets more deeply embedded. but of course employing one's imagination is problematic when the aim is to keep it real."

Who wants to send a message?

Not surprisingly perhaps, tonight I read this story from the editor of DailyOm newsletter:

"I want to share a story with you. Shortly after the spill began back in April, my husband, Scott Blum, was working on putting the finishing touches on a song he had been working on called "Fragile Day." While he was in the studio with his producer, he was asked what the lyrics meant, "Fish are dimming while they're swimming / Blackened ocean of foam", and he explained that this song, the song he had written two years ago was about an oil spill. Immediately upon hearing this I told him that he needed to release the song and give proceeds to charity."

If it were my song, I'd re-imagine the release of this song as it is written. I understand the value of journaling and expressing whatever may come through us for our own selves, yet disseminating images -- whether in the form of cinema or lyrics or video games -- far and wide is another issue. Imagination is a potent, if invisible, force.

I picked up a fictionalized version of Buddha's life story written by Deepak Chopra yesterday. Here's an example of imagination/healing. Hard to tell the difference, really. Imagination? Or healing? Or is it simply acknowledging creation as it is--Whole:

"The new Buddha arose, adjusted his saffron robe, and began walking toward the road, the same road as on a thousand other days. Once he reached the road, he found it completely empty, even though the time was early morning, when farmers' carts should have been trundling to market. . . .

Buddha could be completely alone in the world. Why not? It was his world to do with as he pleased. He was the one dreaming it. . . .

His powers flowed from the other side of silence, where the mind can make anything happen. For a little while the new Buddha enjoyed himself, pulling the sun through the sky like a toy cart, swirling the winds around on the poles, shedding rain on a parched desert. This private diversion didn't last long. Buddha's world should have people in it whom he could care for. He recalled what Canki had said about a Golden Age--an age without suffering, where abundance was normal and scarcity forgotten in the dim past.

At that moment his vision was shattered by a scream. He saw a woman running toward him, her sari torn to shreds, her arms bleeding. In her panic the woman was blind to Buddha's existence until she was nearly upon him. Then her eyes registered him standing there, still and calm.

With a cry she rushed to throw herself into his arms, overwhelmed with relief. When she was two steps away, he held his hand up in blessing. The woman stopped in her tracks. She quivered with terror, her breast heaving.

"No more fear," Buddha whispered. "Give it to me."

She dropped to the road as if her body had melted and began to weep.

"All," said Buddha. "Give it all to me."

The woman became very still, the crying had stopped. Buddha erased the images of terror from her mind. He saw a knife. Teeth like fangs. A necklace made of severed fingers. The images were nightmarish. With the slightest touch, he made them go vanish. But one image wouldn't melt away--the body of her dead husband. He lay in the dust of the road, his throat slashed.

The woman was touching Buddha's feet now in supplication. Something inside of her knew who he was. She gazed at him through her eyes and said, "Please."

Buddha stopped himself from consoling her. He lifted the woman's head and met her gaze. "It is done," he said. She shuddered and fainted. After a moment, as Buddha stood motionless, a man rounded the corner driving an ox cart. Her husband. Buddha gestured for him to approach, and he sped up. Seeing his wife on the ground, the husband jumped down in alarm.

"What happened?" he cried.

"It will be alright. Let's put her in the cart." The two of them gently laid her in the straw behind the driver's seat. The husband had some fresh water in a goatskin bag; he wanted to splash it on her to reassure himself that she was all right. Buddha stopped his hand. "Let her wake up on her own. She may be surprised to see you, but calm her with loving words. You understand?"

The farmer nodded. By imagining the farmer alive and well again, he had erased the whole attack."

Hope and fear are both phantoms 
that arise from thinking of the self. 
When we don't see the self as self, 
what do we have to fear? See the world as your self. 
Have faith in the way things are. 
Love the world as your self; 
then you can care for all things. - Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

p.s. Did you notice in Persepolis they play "Eye of the Tiger" when Marjane starts to reverse the downward spiral of depression?

art credits: 1. Roughly 15 feet in length, the narrative scroll "Upper River During Qing Ming Festival" resides at the National Palace Museum in Taipei (via The History of the Discovery of Cinematography). 2. Siddhartha (name before he was a Buddha) by the river (via dhammajak.net).

observing the sounds of the world

"We were so eager for happiness, we forgot we weren't free." - Persepolis

My grandmother explained why she was so drowsy the other day when I went to visit her again this weekend. But first she shared a Guan Yin story.

The Precious Scroll of Fragrant Mountain describes Guan Yin's incarnated as the daughter of a heartless king who wants her to marry a wealthy man. The royal selection for Maio Shan - as she's named that lifetime - was a cold man very much in her own father's likeness. 

"I no doubt will do as you request, father, however the spirits of the four directions and the pivot point of Earth itself stated as I gazed into our lake that I marry a one whom eases the three misfortunes, or that the union itself alleviate these three misfortunes."

"Which three misfortunes do you speak of, child?"

"The first misfortune is the suffering that people endure as they age." Her father shifted his weight, hardly hearing her as his ears caught the melody of the pet cricket in its bamboo cage and his eyes feasted on the jade dragon behind her shoulder.

Maio Shan continued, "The second misfortune to be eased is the suffering people endure when they entertain illness." The king was the youngest and most robust of the rulers in that region, so these words also rang on deaf ears.

"The third misfortune it should ease is the suffering of death."

"How dare you mock me, child. Your request is stated precisely to be impossible. Why even the celestial heavens and the Yellow Emperor would have difficulty finding one whom could ease all three."

Maio Shan did not balk, and said: "There is a one. For instance, can not a doctor ease all three misfortunes?"

Her father's pale face grew as red as dragonfruit. "What -- a simple healer. You are to marry a person of power and wealth befitting your lineage, not cast shame to all corners of the kingdom."

Maio Shan's eyes lowered briefly, then met his, "If my marriage does not ease suffering, I humbly beg to retire to life in the temple."

Maio Shan eventually gets to go to the temple, however, her father does not completely relent by allowing her to go. He has arranged with the head nuns to make sure that it's not exactly an idyllic sojourn.

"There is more. That is good ending point for today," my grandmother says. Abruptly, I'm cast both out of the kingdom and the temple and into her second floor apartment on Hester again. I can't tell if she is purposefully, like Scheherazade, prolonging the tale. Truth be told, I hadn't seen nai nai in over a month. 

"I was so sleepy at park. Night before, I had such a dream intricate. You could touch it almost. All Qi alert while unfolds. So no good for rest."

"What was your dream?"

I watched my grandmother revolve her fake jade bangle around the wisp of her wrist. "I only tell you part of it."

"Okay."

"You fought with dragons."

"That's it?"

"Yes. No. The battle exhausted your balance. I think you won, but so weak. I thought you dying. I tried to wake up."

I decided not to tell nai nai my dream. It would only cause further consternation.

"Daughter," she said almost in a whisper, "I need to tell you about our ancestors, but can wait for best timing." 

I nod.

"Things I have not spoken. Not just your father is a herbalist. We come from long line of healers. You are ready."

"Okay," I answer. I didn't really do drama, even in my films. However, between her dream and mine I was more than curious. And there are not many people to talk to about this stuff.

The rest of the visit was spent drinking jasmine tea, eating buns filled with azuki bean paste, and we watched Persepolis. (Subtitles, no prob. Her English comprehension, if not her conversation, is practically fluent. People often found that out the hard way when they foolishly believed they were speaking behind her back.)

Anyhow, this is getting long. Fast forward. Next day, Sunday, I went to see Jeremie's father. And that is its own story. (Jeremie's my boyfriend. Usually my cinematographer. Sorta. Now I'm really onto too many tangents I'll fill in later.) 

All a long winded way of saying, there comes a time you can't resist destiny anymore. And I don't think destiny is a capital D, Destiny, like my mom thinks.

"For me, the choice to lead an ordinary life is no longer an option." - Peter Parker

I'd been wondering how to tell stories "responsibly" now that it feels like storytelling isn't simply a telling, rather it's a spelling. A spell-casting, via suspended disbelief enchantment. It's starting not to scare me so much.

After this weekend, I'm beginning to sense that an artist can ease all three misfortunes. But what kind of artist can transcend, not simply ease, all misfortunes?

credits! 1. "not sure which deity" photo by Phoonaz (yeah it's Guan Yin), and to me not exactly a deity, per se. 2. Since translation of Guan Yin is "s/he who observes/witnesses the sounds of the world" this Guan Yin rendition by tsukumogami rocks. She exists right now on this Brooklyn street gutter gushing with the man-made stream fire hydrants let loose, not only sutras. 3rdly. a cell from animated Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi where Marjane and her nai nai chat over Persian tea.

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality - Plutarch

Dear Mai,

I recall when we met that you seem conflicted whether your next project ought to revolve around female sages, goddesses-in-training, etc of Asia, or if you should somehow "respond" to the Gulf oil spill by focusing your creative energy on that subject matter.

That inner conflict may be interfering with enjoying the creative process. Rather than creating a film, you're creating stress. Wherever you are, be there totally. Anyhow, see for yourself it that feels so.

After you told me the backstory of the making of "The Fountain", I went to see what Ari Handel was doing now. You're right -- nope, not a neuroscientist. His latest project in production now is "The Tiger," based on the nonfiction book of the same title to be released this August 24th.

"The Tiger" starts when "a poacher in a remote forest in Russia’s Far East sets out to snare one of the world’s most extraordinary animals—the Siberian tiger." And it's the villagers that have hired the poacher to kill the tiger.

"We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshiped and lived alongside tigers—even sharing their kills with them—and the impoverished Russians of today whose poaching has upset this natural balance. We learn about surprising theories of how humans and tigers may have evolved to coexist, how we may have developed as scavengers rather than hunters, and how our prehistoric ancestors may have fit seamlessly into their ecosystems." - publisher statement on "The Tiger" by John Vaillant

Reading the description of the true story that inspired the author, a few Chinese symbols popped vivid for me: Far East = yang at extremes and tiger = yin. My interpretation: yang (Far East) is out of whack in trying to decimate yin (tiger). FYI, symbolically, west = yin and dragon = yang.

"The Queen Mother of the West, called Xi Wangmu in Chinese is regarded as the highest goddess and the ruler of female Transcendents. Originally, from the earliest known depictions of her in the “Guideways of Mountains and Seas” during the Zhou Dynasty, she was a ferocious goddess with the teeth of a tiger, who sent plagues down upon the world." - Ancient Chinese Literature, "the Queen of the Female Immortals"

So, it's not like you were set to make a (re)action-packed-thriller superwomen tale (yang), when you spoke of your film (or whatever form the final story shapes out to be), you expressed to me a harmony of yin and yang.

I saw a billboard the other day too, it said: Believe. Trust your instincts.

Bonus:

"Although [Carl] Jung found that the archetype of the Self could appear in dreams as a circular diagram [mandala], a rock, a giant figure, the center of a landscape, or other things, perhaps one of its most useful appearances was as a wise teacher. Jung discovered this in his own dreams in 1914 when a wise teacher in the form of an old man with a beard and large wings like a kingfisher bird flew into his dream. Jung named him Philemon, and he became a regular figure in his dreams and fantasies, one he was able to talk with and learn things from. What clued Jung in as to why this Philemon would be important to him was a synchronistic event [Jung coined the term synchronicity] connected with the first dream. 

After Jung first dreamed of Philemon he realized he was onto something, and over the next few days he painted Philemon's picture with a white beard, a long, colorful sort of ancient robe, a golden halo, and large green, red, and black kingfisher wings. While Jung was working on the painting, he decided to take a break and walked out into his garden to the shore of the lake where he lived. On the shore he found a dead kingfisher. Now, these birds are rare where he Jung lived, he had never seen one on his property before, and he never saw one again. As you can imagine, he was blown away. Jung realized that this was an example of synchronicity. He further realized that there was a connection between synchronicity and the archetypes and that this showed that there was a connection between our inner mental world and the outer physical world." - Mysteries, Legends, and Unexplained Phenomena: Astrology and Divination, by Robert M. Place

art credits: 1. Queen of Wands in the Tarot of the Pomegranate by An-Magrith Erlandsen 2. The Taoist classic Zhuang Ze says of Xi Wang Mu: “Nobody knows her beginning, nobody knows her end.” Illustration via Ancient Chinese Literature blog. 3. Alcyone, in Greek myth changed to a kingfisher. Painting detail of Herbert James Draper's Halcyone, (1915) via Inky Fool, who explains the metamorphosis.

because it was so much fun

Dear Evelyn,

I know you said you might be too busy today to correspond. I went into Chinatown today to visit my grandmother. Caught her snoozing at Columbus Park while her friends played 13-card poker. I waited. Listened to some Shuochang with accompanying clacking instrument (can't ever remember its name) and erhu in the pavillion. Admired the dappled bark of lanky trees.  I waited until I could wait no more. She was wearing her peony shirt, slouched over cane-handled umbrella with one hand, the other hand intricately balancing her head in her palm. I wanted to ask her more about Chan Buddhism, since I was a tad disappointed with my own trek into the gold and flaming red palatial temples, but she was droopy-eyed the whole visit to delve into the subject at all. Dredging up all this "research" on Chiyono (and Bukko her teacher), Guān yīn and other females sages and goddesses for the movie concept seems to be getting away from "naturalness" (aka Hexagram 25). I mean it's not seeming like... fun! capital F-Fun.Anyhow, so you saw "The Fountain" for the 3rd time last night? You know the director went to high school in Brooklyn? And the story behind the story? Pulling it from Wikipedia:

In 1999, when [Darren] Aronofsky became 30 years old, his parents were diagnosed with cancer. He began reflecting on human mortality... While his parents overcame cancer, he began focusing on the concept of a young man saving a loved one from a life-threatening disease. He shared the concept with [Ari] Handel, who was his roommate during undergraduate school at Harvard University. Handel earned a Ph.D in neuroscience from New York University but was uncertain about a future in neuroscience. He recalled the discussion, "Darren and I just started talking about the story. We kept wanting to talk more about it as the story kept getting bigger. I decided to make some life choices to continue working with Darren, because it was so much fun." - Wikipedia on The Fountain

Because it was so much fun.... Maybe you (and not just Evelyn -- I mean YOU) have suggestions???

Oh, by the way, on the way to subway, I saw a billboard that read: "Only 4% of American films are made by women. In Iran, it's 25%."

postscript! Ari Handel is not a neuroscientist today. He's a movie producer.

credits! photo of Yuyao, China graffiti girl by bess byers