Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I just finished it, and I want to thank you, Scoop.   You speak for a
legion of us.   It is a very funny book about the very serious issues of who
we are, what we're up to, and why we act the way we do.   And I really
indentified with you stories of growing up as the only jewish kid in town.
For me, it was being one of two jewish kids in a small New England town.
Given that neither you nor I had total immersion in the traditions we wer
born into, made us both sceptical and hungry at the same time.

You included a very funny bit describing your internal dialog during an
early meditation session that had me giggling.   That was me talking, too.
I wonder if you'd be willing to talk a bit about actual technique past
breath counting.
  

    
You on the Chet Atkins diet... Let's get everyone to make a written
record of their inner dialogue (like James Joyce did) and then we would
all realize how similar our fears and desires are, and see that we are
all species mates, all together in this incarnation (the Holocene--we
are scene mates), and that if we want this particular experiment in
consciousness to continue then we've got to change our minds as well as
our way of life. 
   Rip Van. Point well taken, Rip. In fact we cannot escape our sense
of self--nature breeds it in--and every life form has it: even the
membrane around the single-celled organism creates a sense of self and
world or "other-than-self," however primitive. And each of us should
indeed revel in our uniqueness, and let it flower and reach full
expression. However, as humans, the gift of our level of consciousness
is to be able to see through the membrane that separates us, and to
understand the interconnection and "co-arising" of all beings, as the
Buddha put it. If we truly understand that condition, then our
individual expression will be more in the service of all life, and not
the kind of selfish individualism that we experience in the West at
this moment in history. 
    Meanwhile, blessings to all out there (down there) in the Well.
I'm having a good time. Tweek my theories. Slime my synapses. Make some
news of your own....
                                       Scoopji
  

    
Welcome Scoop!  I'm going to dive right in.  Toward the end of your
book you write:

"Scale Down.  Slow Down.  Democratize.  Decentralize."

How do you do this in your own life?  Most of my own attempts in this
seem to have the unwanted result of further isolation since it is so
much against the flow of the culture at large.
  

    
Dear quibble,
    Yea, it's hard to live pure. Who can be a Gandhi except Gandhi. I
think we have to be easy on ourselves and make sure we don't push to
hard to be constantly politically or environmentally correct. That's no
fun at all. People involved in Buddhist meditation can easily become
obsessed with being present and "mindful" in every moment, and it
drives them crazy. We're just not yet collectively at the place where
we can do that. Meanwhile, we can try to go lightly, and spread the
word. The main thing is to find your joy and satisfaction in living
simply. It can offer subtle but great pleasures, especially if done
with a sense of wonder and delight at being of service to the survival
of life and the healing of the planet. And every once in a while, it
feels good to go for all the gusto. As Edward Abbey once said,
regarding the eating of beef: "Cattle are destroying the ecology of the
West. Let's eat them up as fast as we can!"
                                             Scoopji
  

    

What an Abbey quote!  Speaking of funny people, I remember your radio 
work with Darryl Henriques.  What was that collaboration like?  It 
sounded awfully fun from out in radiolandia!
  

    

I just got back from the Oregon Country Fair.  I had a great time up there,
and I found some encouragement.  This is a place where the values of
hippiedom are both preserved and passed along to the next generation.  It was
a safe place to be weird, a safe place to express yourself, and a safe place
to be loudly anti-Bush.  The Big Bang, the Budddha and the Baby Boom
incarnate, plus Baby Gramps!
  

    
I'm pretty sure that Gramps is younger than I am, and I'm a bona-fide
boomer. Well, I suppose Baby Gramps is ageless, but [name witheld] is about
the same age as I am, or a few years younger. I know his real name, but I
don't think he wants it widely revealed.
  

    
Golly, BG is ubiquitous. I've been running into him for about 25 years
around the country.
  

    
Yo Gang. I'd like to meet this Baby Gramps. Maybe I should go to more
music festivals. Hi Gail. Yes it was a wonderfully wild experience to
work with Darryl Henrigues, and we are still great friends. In fact, I
just gave him the script of my comic monologue "The Big Bang, The
Buddha, and the Baby Boom," and he plans to do his version of the show.
When I got back from my first trip to India, I told Darryl about this
character that had interrupted my meditations: he was the Swami from
Miami, and he worked the boardwalk in Miami Beach, reading astrological
charts for the Jewish ladies and at night doing rope tricks in the
lobby of the Fontainbleu Hotel. Darryl immediately began channeling the
Swami which he does to this day. Quotes from the Swami: "If you are
what you eat, why be a vegetable. Why not eat people who are smarter
and more good looking than you?" "Be here now! Whoops, you missed it!"
"Meditate as though your next life depended on it. The incarnation you
save may be your own."
                                              Om Shalom...  Scoopji
  

    

And what does the Swami from Miami have to say about chads (other than that
they should all grow up to be doctors and lawyers)?
  

    
Hi Scoopji,

From your personal chronology, I feel like we were living in a
parallel universe. After reading Sartre’s Nausea, I woke up from the
Orange County suburban nightmare remembering Eric Burdon sing, “We
Gotta Get Out of This Place.” After moving to San Francisco in the mid
seventies, I too discovered the Ma-Roller. That little rolling device
has been by constant companion as I continue to self administer my own
personally developed Ma-Roller routines to keep my aging body of 55
inhabitable.

I can tell you had more fun, or access, to the sixties and seventies
reclamation of our personal destinies. I joined a group called the
Family that had the building on the corner of Haight and Cole, once
known as the Crystal Palace. I missed the good old days that other
members talked about. We eventually opened a Vegan Health food store in
1978, but the world was changing so fast then we missed our window of
opportunity when the world was still open to experiencing new things.
The eighties, which I noticed you avoided discussing in your book until
the end, symbolized the end, 1984.

Many people I know want to discount the sixties and seventies as an
era of escapism and the proliferation of Herpes ala Free Love. I felt
this period was like entering into a wormhole, a passage into a
plurality of universes, reversing the fifties political trend of
politicizing religion and government as one and the same. Cal
Berkeley’s expert on being (dasein), Professor Hubert Dreyfus, believed
we came very close to a whole new understanding of being during this
era as Marxist politics simmered on the back burner. Of course, you had
to be there (in Berkeley), to know how this period of history affected
everyone. However Scoop, much like you, being there versus hearing
about what went down, is the difference between organic and synthesized
food. The vibe in synthesized food isn’t there. As Jimmy Hendrix once
sang, “Are you experienced?” A doctor acquaintance of mine was doing a
study in the seventies on why welfare mothers’ children suffered from a
high incidence of mental retardation after a steady diet of chemically
created food supplied by Uncle Sam, free to the underprivileged.
Meanwhile, Camarillo State Mental Hospital was filling up exponentially
with severely mentally retarded children whose parents couldn’t deal
with the horror of their creation. This was followed by a slew of
eminent psychiatrists creating falsified studies that they had
successfully treated mental retardation, raising maturation levels five
to ten years through behavior modification. Today, those lost souls
are just as retarded as they were when their treatment began. 

Having said my piece, I would appreciate your response as to whether
the sixties and seventies was nothing more than looking at reality
through rose colored glasses, or are we only now coming back to our
senses, waiting to reelect Bush? It feels like we have come full
circle; the fifties are back and technology is beckoning us into a
virtual black hole of anxiety and paranoia. The media tells us to seek
guidance from the church to avoid the perils of that sinister
marijuana. Meanwhile, Iraq is quickly becoming the new Viet Nam.
Artists are free falling into the wasteland of the Beat generation. 
With AIDS whipping our morality into shape, do I dare leave the last
Hippie Haven in Fairfax, California, the bedroom community of terrorist
John Walker Lindt--a cause-oriented Aquarian born on February 9, 1981,
named after Beatle John Lennon who was shot only two months earlier?
  

    
Re the question (chris) aked in <28.>

>"Scale Down.  Slow Down.  Democratize.  Decentralize."
>
>How do you do this in your own life?  

Maybe with hope and perseverence?
Decentralize!  Support small farms:

 http://www.csacenter.org 

Buy a cow:

http://www.heifer.org 

Study about:

http://www.webofcreation.org/index.html 

Contribute consciously:

http://www.coopamerica.org/

Yet, money can still be made:

http://www.ecomall.com/

Love the Earth:

http://www.spiritearthnet.org/index2.htm 

A job for everyone:

http://www.lafsonline.org/OneHeartSong_index.htm 

{I'm almost finished your book--one more chapter. ;-)}
  

    
Hi Bart,
   I'm getting a lot of questions about whether or not the
countercultures of the past few decades have any relevance or not. That
is one of the themes of my book, and the answer is...nobody knows. But
my own sense of the answer--which is no doubt partly a wish for my own
worldview and ideals to be realized--is that our contribution is
significant, and that we are on the cutting edge of something new,
slouching toward Washington to be born. Meanwhile, right now it looks
as though the new spirituality, ecological consciousness, non-violence,
socialism (sharing)--all seem to be losing ground in the zeitgeist of
the nation and the world. But we have to remember to be patient.
Paradigm shifts take many generations. My sense of the religious
fundamentalism and tribalism that we see everywhere in the world
represents a last gasp of old traditions, a fearful retreat into
stories that are losing their hold on humanity. We are creating new
ways and means here in the countercultures, perhaps in less visible
ways than we did in the 60's, but I believe that our contribution will
be of great value in the near future, when the inevitable
corporate-capitalist trainwreck happens. (Sooner the better!) Of
course, in the end I have to admit that I don't know what's going to
happen. History has its own karma to work out (let alone biology), and
I am just a pawn in the larger games of the cosmos. The main thing for
me is to keep an attitude of gratitude and work with joy and love for
my vision of how things might be. Blessings to all...   Scoopji
  

    
I hope you're right in your long-term optimism.
  

    
(nothing to add, just waving at Scoop and enjoying the discussion
immensely!)
  

    

I'd like to talk some more about maintaining inner peace while the world it
driving our blood to a boil.
  

    
I'd like to talk about what David wants to talk about. 
  

    
I'm listening.
  

    
Well, as Scoop says, "Paradigm shifts take many generations."  But we
seem to be saddled with riding the wheel of karma on the lower half of
its ride.  And frankly, it is getting difficult to imagine it is going
to take that upswing. And I'm beginning to doubt it is a wheel at all.
  

    
Well, I think that there are a lot of us who are thinking in more or
less the same direction.  I plan on keeping on the road I'm traveling,
speaking the truth and trust that the truth will do its work, albeit
s-l-o-w-l-y.  Hard power is the old way --- soft power will work more
slowly ... but more surely.
  

    
I agree with an aspiration for hope.  Political bullies may succeed
but if humbly keeping the head/profile low maybe such success may go
unnoticed and subsequently unopposed. ;~)
  

    
I'm a bit less hopeful.   I don't think we're ever going to fix it.
(whatever "it" is).   But I think it is very important to make an effort to
discern the truth about what is true and good, and to fight for it, even
though the fight will never end.   It may not be about winning as much as it
is about how we fight.
  

    
Yo gang! Hi Angie C.! A little earlier I wrote a long involved message
and then it suddenly disappeared into webozone. I suppose you folks
who do a lot of this webbing stuff are used to losing your words. But
I'll start again (Sisyphus was happy to start again!) with an attempted
answer to David's question about how to keep your cool in these times,
which is a perfect invitation for me to do my Buddhist rant. And it
does work, folks! You have to practice, and train your mind to let go
of its own drama and habitual darkness and worry, but it does work. Get
familiar with your breath, and you can go there for refuge, dropping
out of your psychological stuff and into your basic aliveness. You can
get in touch with these larger forces moving through you, the
biological and cosmic realm, and then your heart becomes more peaceful
and then you can be peace (Thich Nhat Hanh) as you try to make peace.
As Robert Thurman (Uma's dad and a Buddhist scholar) says, "Buddhist
meditation is an evolutionary sport!" I'm playing, and the game is open
to all. It is fascinating to observe yourself with some objectivity,
and come to recognize that you are perfectly human. That, in turn,
allows you to forgive yourself and everybody else. Meanwhile, Quibble,
according to the Hindus we are living in the Kali Yuga, ruled over by
that goddess with the necklace of skulls (all male) and blood dripping
from her fangs, and since we don't get to chose the historical moment
we will live through, it looks like we're stuck with Kali. But let's be
real here. Most of us are living "like kings," as my Polish immigrant
father always used to say. We live in a time of unprecedented abundance
and freedom, with access to all of the worlds wisdom, cuisines,
musics. Wow! What riches! And it has given many of us the leisure to
study  and learn what will truly make us happy, which is the opening
our hearts to ourselves and the human condition and all beings. Along
with that comes the desire for all to be happy, and to share our
wealth. (Everybody goes about that their own way, some through
political activism, others by going off to sit quietly in caves.) As
the Dalai Lama said a few years ago, speaking at U.C. Berkeley,
"Sometimes I describe myself as half Marxist and half Buddhist." Wow!
The audience gasped, because marxism socialism are all dirty words in
America today. But I bow to His Holiness for that statement because it
brings together the personal and political. There will be a new world
in time, and in the meantime we do what we can with joy. I bow to all
and have one great wish for you all...love yourself.                   
            Blessings...  Scoopji,
  

    

Scoop, dalling, I have one word to say before I actually read your last post.

Okay, two words: PARAGRAPH BREAKS!
  

    

Otherwise, a BEAUTIFUL post.  Thank you.