A FOOL IN THIS WORLD

masahisa fukase

It's been a lazy day, a couple of naps, no reading, nothing. I fed the donkeys, the birds, the cat and that was it. Anything remotely productive I don't want to do today. I allow myself such days, calling them days of rest. I believe in a day of rest as simply good sense. It's not like I do a whole lot, but mind runs all the time. On a day like today, even mind is at rest. I go around feeling blank like the home movie theater is closed for the day. It has only been in the last few years I've  been able to have time without mind front and center. I like that place of no-thought. I'm recalling when Jr Maxwell was in the time after his mind shut down. One night in his wheelchair rolling about the house, he said, "I need to go to the doctor!" emphatically. I asked why, "My mind isn't working. Something is wrong with my mind." This showed me for certain we are of two minds. His mind that did the active thinking shut down, but the mind that did the observing continued. In the time his mind was slipping away, I could still communicate with him. Allowed to flow of its own, he could carry on conversation, that is do the talking. When somebody else talked, he couldn't follow it. Asked a question, his mind fell down a dark hole he couldn't find his way out of. When somebody dropped by to see him, I advised them not to ask him any questions. First thing everybody did was ask him a question and shut him down. Once asked a question, there was no getting back with him for a while. He went out like snuffing a candle. I couldn't really talk to him, but I could listen when he talked. He was in dream mind, lived in dream reality. I thought that's a good place to be and I allowed it by not saying, "You really didn't fall through a hole in the roof." I'd say something like the roof is ok now and it settled his concern. He thought his car was still on the roof, when he stepped out of it he fell through a hole and landed in his bedroom. I assured him the car is now in its parking place, no longer on the roof. That was the end of it.

 

masahisa fukase

 

He had a niece who, fortunately, did not drop by very often. "Uncle Junior! Yer losin yer mind!" I'd say, "He knows that very well." She'd cook a big meal, pile mounds of food on a plate and put it on the table in front of him. "Ya gotta eat, Uncle Junior!" He couldn't eat that much. He said he couldn't eat it. She lectured him on the body's need for nutrition. He tried to please her. In a little bit, he was running to the bathroom to throw up. He'd hang over the toilet and heave in agony a long time. Then he was ruined for the rest of the day. Had to go to bed because he was ill. I allowed him his flow and went with it. When she came in the house, she shattered his flow every time, and mine. I had to come home a couple hours in the middle of the night while he was sleeping to take care of my own home life. She said, "I wish you wouldn't go off and leave Uncle Junior alone every day." I asked if she was offering to drop by a couple hours a day to sit with him while I'm out, "I don't like leaving him alone, either." No, she wasn't offering. End of subject. At his funeral, she said to me, "I know what you been through. I know how difficult Uncle Junior is to do anything for." I told her he was not the least bit difficult, "If he had been difficult, I could not have done it." She was the one difficult. First thing she said to me after he died, "Where'd Uncle Junior hide his money?" I haven't seen her since, and every time she comes to mind, I rejoice. I knew Jr awfully well, knew the story of his whole life, knew him well enough to find the wisdom I suspected in him was indeed there. He was a wise man. He never let it show, but he lived by it, understood by it. He called himself a fool, said his life is the life of a fool. He was right. I was also right. I think of him the wise fool. Later, I came to realize a wise man could only be a fool in this world.

 

masahisa fukase

 

Now, five years after his death date, my fondest memories are from the time his mind was gone. It makes me smile to remember him rolling the wheelchair around the house, getting stuck in doorways. The adventures in that time were unpredictable, except that they would happen. Many of them were funny, like the time he went into the bathroom and never came out. Eventually, I went to look. He had sat on the toilet with the seat up and was down inside the bowl, stuck. I was unable to pull him out. I called the hospice office, a nurse was there in five minutes. She eased him up out of there, cleaning him as she went while I looked on in awe that she had raised him up out of there without any effort, and when he was out he was clean. I felt I had a front row seat to the show that is the human mind. It helped me a great deal realizing he had fallen into dream reality. I could deal with that, because I suspect dreams are the closest we are able to come to "reality." In hindsight, the only thing I can think of that I'd do differently, I'd hold his hand more. At the time, I did not realize the immense importance of that small act. In the time his mind was fading, he was self-conscious about it and did not like to be seen so vacant. I learned to cover for him. When somebody was visiting and he was talking, he'd go blank mid sentence, I'd toss him a key word the moment I saw he'd drawn a blank, and it brought him back every time. It became so automatic nobody could even see what we were doing. Toward the end I felt a great deal of stress, down to soaking a popsicle sponge in water to get water to him and to keep his mouth wet. No matter how much sorrow I was feeling, a joy accompanied the sorrow until they became one, like a two-sided coin flipping in the air, a blur.

 

masahisa fukase

 

Looking back at the time in the past and other friends in the past, I see the time of looking after Jr the very best time of my life. No close second. I did not realize it at the time. I took care of him as I would the Master, as though he were the Master himself. In that light, it became devotion. The nurses at hospice would tell me from time to time what a good job I'm doing with him, and I never said it, but would think, I'm serving my Master. This is the opportunity of my lifetime. That was how I felt about it, how I thought about it, how I believed it. And it was indeed the opportunity of my lifetime. I came home to my own momentum at home in stasis. I thought I'd relax and let things fall into place as they will. I found an inner peace afterward that I never had before. It continues. I find my mind can fall blank and I enjoy the peace. Observer mind continues. My memories of Jr in that time when his mind was going and gone have a golden glow about them. I believe he was a gift to me as much as I was a gift to him. The time he said, I wish I could pay you for what you've done for me, I could only think, money would ruin it. I had what I wanted. He wanted to die at home in his own bed and I wanted that for him. He was too honorable a man in my way of seeing to end his life treated like lumber with nothing but a television. I did not want anybody messing with him who did not understand him. He was not of media mind in any way. Not many people in this time can understand somebody who is not of media mind. It's a different world. I was about to say I prefer it, but that's not so. I appreciate media mind to some degree too. Both in moderation. The  troubles I was going through then are as nothing now. Important now is that I earned his trust unto the very most vulnerable last breath. I never call what I did selfless. Looking at how deeply I've benefitted from the experience, I call it self-centered.    

 

masahisa fukase

 

 

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OLD TIMES / NEW TIMES

jessica stockholder

I'm back from a couple hours with my friend Debi I've not seen in a few years. She's been through it and came out the other end. I've known Debi since she was sixteen, worked with her dad and her uncle on the farm putting up hay in the summers. Debi was a fire-haired hillbilly girl then, and now the fire has gone from her hair, but she's still a hillbilly and wouldn't be anything else. It's odd to see her aging. I see her taking on the look of about all her relatives past a certain age. I could have put several names to the face I saw this evening, all of them her cousins, aunts or uncles. She's a Pruitt and a Crouse by birth. Pruitts are special people to me. They are the first people I knew, the ones who taught me mountain ways and my way around. Debi is one of the last of the Pruitts I know, as the generations I have known are largely dead. The younger ones went to cities for work. She has become my thread that keeps me connected to her kin. And similarly, I am her thread to her relatives that are gone. I'd been in the hills about six months when I decided to check out a nearby church. I went a couple times. The third time, I was talking with two men out front before the meeting. One came over and one of the ones I was talking with asked him, "What was that shootin goin on up at your place yesterday?" Answer, "Aw, It was them Pruitt boys." He looked at me, turned and walked away. My thought at the moment: Anybody too good for a Pruitt is too good for me. I have carried this maxim the whole way along and it has served me well. The Pruitt boys were rowdy and I rode around with them on weekends. They were the best education I could have had for introduction to mountain culture. I worked with two of them during the week and on weekends we ran the back roads throwing beer cans out the car windows. I kept my empty cans in a paper bag on the floor. They thought that was funny. I could not toss a beer can out the window. It wasn't possible. Even if my mind wanted to do it, my arm would not allow it. A .22 rifle was always with us. Sometimes we shot at the cans I saved. Never went back to the church.

 

neil jenney

 

We did not talk about these people who have a place in my heart and a place in her heart too. They are initially our bond. For her, I'm a witness to the wonderful people they were. The Pruitts are one of the mountain families that has a reputation for being either preachers or drunks. Such families tend to have at least one bootlegger in their near past, like daddy, grandpa and greatgrandpa. Liquor makers tend to be drinkers and many of them drink all the time. Heavy drinkers tend to be terrible husbands and parents, keep dysfunctional households and raise dysfunctional kids. The boys aligned with daddy tend to be rowdy and the boys aligned with mama tend to make preachers who condemn drinking. This becomes a social dynamic. A couple of generations down the line, one will have kids that stay in trouble, and another will have kids that go to church. When I run through the names of the families known for preachers and drunks, they tend to come from bootleggers just a few generations back. Throw in good and evil and the judgment begins. It has nothing to do with good and evil except a belief system that allows only one or the other. We don't call it good and evil anymore. It is black and white now. I hear it called gray in between. It is colors in between. In pigment, all colors mixed together make black. In light, all colors make white. It is colors between black and white, not gray. Duality is the nature of this world of experience. Duality makes the colors. We meander in the color zone, not at the poles. On the earth, nobody lives at the north or south poles. We live between the poles. Who is to say a handful of brothers and buddies are evil because they like to free their minds of their frustrations periodically? And who is to say a preacher who looks down his nose at drunks is good? In the culture we have the divide, drinkers and non-drinkers. The drinkers are bad and the non-drinkers are good. I go with the company of the bad, because I have experienced the hypocrisy of the good.

 

ai wei wei

 

An old-time square-dance tune is playing in my head, Have a drink on me / Have a drink on me / Aw Lord / Have another drink on me. It's a funny song. One of the aspects of traveling my own path that I especially like is seeing how limiting either/or thinking can be, caught up in the poles, ignoring everything in between. A walk to the waterfalls for me is the whole trip there and the whole trip back, the falls the turn around point. I love being under a canopy of trees. In conversation with my old deceased preacher friend, Millard Pruitt, Debi's uncle, I said I can worship God the same in the  woods among trees as well as in the church. No you can't. I'm glad my mind is not locked down in yes and no, right and wrong, good and evil. I don't even think about good and bad anymore. I'm happy to note that kind of thinking is gone from my head. I find that I personally prefer the company of lovers of God, but they're only a part of the whole. I know and like some people whose names make about anybody around here shudder. One in particular comes to the front of my mind, whose name I'll not mention to protect the innocent. Everybody shudders when they hear her name. I don't. I like her. I'm not going to push her buttons or piss her off, which can have a way of being lethal. Pushing other people's buttons is not my style, so I'm in no danger around her. In fact, I feel safe around her. When she's not giving herself a bad name, she has a great sense of humor, and is a no bullshit kinda woman. I respect her. I respect everybody who has been to prison. I respect her for what she's been through and I respect her character. Where trust is concerned, I would trust her and not most others. Debi too. I'd trust Debi to the grave. I want to be somebody Debi can trust. If need ever arises, I pray that I have what it takes to be there for Debi. This is how I feel with the people I call my friends.

 

the chakras

 

A month or so ago, Debi had an experience with the Holy Spirit. She told me the experience and I believe her interpretation of it. It brought to mind a day I remember several years ago, a day when I was in the spirit from the moment I woke in the morning unto night. Memorable day. I listened to Debi's experience happy for her. She needed an upliftment. Like I say, she's been through it and came out the other end. This must have been the quasar at the other end of her interior black hole. She said she's happy for the first time in her life. I saw it. It was in everything about her, her movement, her attitude. She wasn't new in that it changed her away from being Debi, but took her closer to Debi. She had the misfortune of being born with an incredibly fast, retentive mind in a social situation that had no place for such a mind. She had to dumb herself way down. The dumbing down took her with it. She brings to mind a Van Halen song, "Ya know I been to the edge. There I stood and looked down." Debi would say, Amen, to that. She came home to take care of her mother unto dying, then made her way for a few years taking care of an old woman with dementia, the shit on the walls variety. Since the year 2000, if you don't have a job in Sparta, you're out. The mechanics are having a minor boom since fewer people are buying new cars. She has dental issues, Social Services issues, poverty issues. She's getting by without a car, which is mighty troublesome. She's at the bottom where poverty is concerned, yet in her heart she's the best she's ever been in her life. She has a good dog, got rid of a loser man, is losing weight by cutting out soft drinks. She's had her hard times and she's had her good times. I asked her what church she was going to. I was gladdened to hear she was not going to church. She has the real thing, I was thinking, don't spoil it. Live it, enjoy your new perspective. I don't like to advise, but took a moment when she was talking about different interpretations of the Bible, to say, The red letters is the only part that's important, the rest of it is a history book, don't worry about interpretations. If I could leave anything of value with her, I felt like that was the best value I had to offer at the beginning of her path. I allowed myself to say it because it arose spontaneously, flowed from the moment.          

 

 

sol lewitt

 

 

 

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WANDERERS: A POEM BY TJ WORTHINGTON

alex katz

          WANDERERS
 

There is an old pecan tree by my door.

Three grackles are standing in its dried branches.

One is chirping to a grackle in the oak nearby.

The three change positions stretching wings between limbs.

One probes its beak through ruffled neck feathers.

A yellow flicker flaps around the trunk

chased by a mockingbird. The grackles fly.

The flicker digs for ants. It flies.

The mockingbird stands a moment on some leaves.

Root-tips are cracking rocks below in silence.

                            ---TJ Worthington, 1972

 

 

 

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CHANGING FOCUS OF ATTENTION

 

nude descending a staircase

marcel Duchamp

A picture book, large paperback, good quality paper and printing, has been staring at me for some time wanting to spend time on my lap. It is the works of Marcel Duchamp with text by Pierre Cabanne, whose book of interviews with Duchamp has a place in my house about like the Tao Te Ching, though not for the same reasons. Picking a random page in the Duchamp interviews is something like reading a few small verses by a Japanese monk, Ryokan, Basho. Duchamp does not wax Nineteenth Century deep about Truth and Beauty. Duchamp's art was of the mind. It takes the eyes for the mind to see it. In his found art series, "readymades," the object is divorced from its associations, like a bottle rack, a bicycle wheel, a snow shovel, basic shapes, and most famous, the urinal with its story, designs associated with function. Take away the function and see IT, the thing itself, separate from considerations of taste. This is such an over-simplification I beg you not to mistake it for information. I bought the book at a very reasonable price several years ago, had it down from the shelf recently looking at some of the images, reminding self Cabanne wrote the text. It is a book-length essay illustrated with the body of work. I picked it up today with intent to read the text. Very readable and insightful. I've been looking for something to read lately that will make me turn the pages. Thought I'd try a Tom Clancy. His stories have the reputation of page turners. The first page was enough for me. Never turned to see what page two said. Did not want to know. I could not read 700 pages of that prose. I tried a John LeCarre. Again, did not care what page two said. Cabanne has pulled me in like I hoped he would. Cabanne has studied Duchamp all along his way, knew Duchamp, his world and his language.

 

readymade

marcel duchamp

 

Julio Cortazar has found his way off the shelf again. Haven't read his beautiful writing in way too long, long enough that I've forgotten the stories and can read them freshly now as new. The first story I went to was, End of the Game. I will go back and read it again. It was like seeing a fabulous movie and wanting to see it again right away. Three young girls strike poses of well-known statues, and an attitude at the same time. Two of them dress one of them who strikes a pose in some spontaneous outfit beside the railroad track when the passenger train goes by at a certain time each day. May dive next into The Gates of Heaven, a tango dance parlor in Buenos Aires. It has a good chance of being next. I discovered Cortazar's stories after seeing Antonioni's film, Blow-Up. The film was an Antonioni remake of the story his way. It is one of the few films I must see every now and again to keep it fresh in memory. It never grows old. I had the good fortune to see it in a theater when it was making the "art house" circuit. I like Cortazar's story too. The film is not telling the story the same way. They are two entirely different versions of the same brief outline of a story. Both tell the story beautifully. Cortazar's original title for the collection was End of the Game and Other Stories. The movie created the market for a paperback, which the publisher changed to Blow-Up and Other Stories. The film has kept the volume of short stories in print. Reading today, I was getting frequent reminders of why I love his stories so much. I've taken another volume by him off the shelf, 62: A Model Kit. It is a "novel" composed of 62 unnumbered sections, stories, chapters? He recommends they be read in any order the reader chooses. Thought I'd read a few of these stories too, just read them as independent short stories. Mainly for the joy of reading his writing. I'm not going to get into it's better if you know Spanish and translations miss everything important. I'm all with translations. How else could I read Pierre Cabanne and much of the most beautiful writing I've read along the way?

 

fountain

marcel duchamp

 

Another one that found its way to the reading stack is volume one of the discourses of Upasni Maharaj. He is an enlightened master from the western part of India, inland a ways from Bombay, a place called Sakori. I'm looking for a place on the wall for a painting I made of him for myself. I think I know where I want it to go. It's just a matter of doing it. I like his discourses. He defines words breaking them down to their simplest parts. He says rock and wood are the most intelligent beings. Everything we know, we learned from rock and wood. He wore a sack-cloth draped around himself like a small toga (1870-1941). I wanted to read one of the discourses again about the City of the Dead. He talked about the spirits of the dead being among us. We don't see them. I'm wondering if these are different dimensions he is talking about. It mystifies me. Makes me think of Apollinaire's poem, La maison des morts, The House of the Dead. It's too much to even start attempting to give a brief. Mannequins step out of their showroom windows and join people passing by. I'm making a logjam for myself. Back to Maharaj, I like his perspective. It's straight-forward and clear. I'm in a time now of wanting to spend less time reading TruthOut articles online and seeing clips of Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart and Bill Maher. They are funny and I like the way they approach current events as comedy, but I'd rather read Julio Cortazar. First I let go of paying attention to the glorification of ignorance, and now want to let go of the parts I like as well as the parts I don't like. I like facebook for the personal interactions with others, friends, and don't want to give up facebook. Not that I'm a facebook junkie. I find it a fun way to keep in touch with the people I keep in touch with there. It is the political I want out of my mind. I'd rather read good writing for the sake of good writing. It will give me a change of perspective for the better.

the large glass

marcel duchamp

I'm in the middle of a Japanese film that is four fairy tales, Kwaidan, 1964, almost three hours long. I watched the first two and took a break. Will see the other two tomorrow. They are ghost stories. I was a little hesitant to put it on. The hesitation did not last. Right away I saw this is going to be something special. I flowed in the beauty of it. The visuals are constantly stunning. The scenes are like stage sets, Japanese style. The stories are tales of karma. Do somebody wrong and they come back to haunt you. Each story is uniquely itself. One of them, The Woman In The Snow, stays with me and will. They are stories of karmic self-creation. Classic old stories that director Masaki Kobayashi made into exquisite film. 1964 is half a century ago, but it is not dated. It seemed as contemporary as if made in the last decade. I cut it in half to savor it, enjoy some one day, and some more the next. It is too beautiful to watch without full attention and Caterpillar on my lap. I was wasting too much time and mind on people not worth a second's thought, even the ones I think I like. There comes a time I want less Rachel Maddow and more Julio Cortazar, less Jon Stewart and more Apollinaire. Makes me think of the UNCF ad slogan, A mind is a terrible thing to waste. It sure enough is on people like in the media spotlights. Al Sharpton is even taken seriously now. I think of a sign I saw on facebook, Stop making stupid people famous. Then I ask myself, has it ever been otherwise? Just reading what little bit I read today about Duchamp inspired something within. Reading the Cortazar story excited something within that reminded me I have several of his books I can read in any time I want. John Kerry in Ukraine telling Russia, Don't do as I do, do as I say, makes me laugh with derision. Why pay attention? I have a choice. I can flow in the story-telling mind of Julio Cortazar and I can see what Pierre Cabanne has to say about Marcel Duchamp. I don't have to worry my mind with the Koch brothers and the rule of mthe rich. I want to do like a tortoise and pull my head back closer to home.    

marcel duchamp himself

 

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