A MOMENT LASTS AS LONG as it needs to — be it seconds, hours, years, or lifetimes.
Tag: moments
All that we ever really have.
“It All Makes Work for the Working Man”
AMERICA IS A PLACE WHERE Jewish merchants sell Zen love beads to agnostics for Christmas.”
— John Burton Brimer
First Graf: The Timetables of History
AN AWE-INSPIRING WORK, The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events by Bernard Grun is one of those books that have to be seen, and leafed through, to believe. (My own copy, of the 591-page edition First Touchstone Edition which begins at 5000-4001 BCE, only goes up to 1978 CE; revised editions are available through your local independent bookstore.) As the title states, Timetables proffers to the curious what happened in each year (or, in the book’s early parts, each date1-to-date2 era) in seven categories: History and Politics, Literature and Theater, Religion and Philosophy, Visual Arts, Music, Science and Technology, and Daily Life. Continue reading “First Graf: The Timetables of History”
No Boomer I
I was born in 1962. That makes me, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, a Baby Boomer; a member of that generation born after World War II and before 1964. But I don’t feel comfortable with that identification. Not because it’s fashionable to vilify Boomers (actually, it’s always been somewhat fashionable to vilify every generation but one’s own), but because of my tastes and cultural referents. Continue reading “No Boomer I”
Life’s Little Soundtrack
Chanukah With Ramana
THE TECHNIQUE IS SIMPLE: just lay on your back, breathing evenly, and take a complete and negative bodily inventory: “I am not my legs; I am not my feet; I am not my arms;” “I am not my mind;” et al.
Now: What’s left after everything else is taken away?
This admittedly (and deceptively) simple exercise comes from Ramana Maharshi, an inadvertent Hindu holyman whose “Self-realization” technique resulted in one of the great spiritual experiences of my life.
In the early 2000s, on the sixth night of Chanukah (our Festival of Lights), my copilot and I were honored to play host to a famous “New Age” rabbi (“R”). I also invited along a filmmaker (“F”) of my acquaintance, who had long wanted me to meet R; he arrived with a Hindu friend of his (“H”), and you may imagine our delight and surprise when R told us that F was his own beloved teacher!
R and we were anticipating a small crowd in our apartment, but the only guests were the sparse handful I just described. So the session turned into a metaphysical round-robin between R, F and H of various Eastern and Western spiritual figures. When one of them mentioned Ramana’s name, the trio became very animated and described the holyman’s negation-of-thought technique which, upon my own diligent practice later that night, produced a most startling and profound awakening.
My word-busy mind dropped away to reveal a deep connection to the wordless Source of all consciousness – a perception of the unspoken silence between one thought and another – an all-encompassing peace of mind – a vision of the vast and intimate Self beyond the ego, beyond even the apparent separation of one thing from another.
Even now, years later, I still can’t adequately describe what happened. (Which is, kind of, the point.) Time’s passage has almost dulled the experience’s immediacy, but not its effect, which inspired in me a fierce non-dualism (or if you prefer, an undying all-is-One-ism) – and which makes me happy, and grounded, every time I recall it.
Thanks, Ramana. Apparently, that’s just what I needed.
Why I Love: Restaurants
IT’S THE ATMOSPHERE. IT’S THE background music of cutlery-clinked plates and conversation. It’s the initial pleasure of sitting down at “your” table. It’s having a skilled and knowledgeable waitron. It’s eating what I wouldn’t (or couldn’t) cook for myself. It’s the free iced-tea and water refills. It’s being exposed to unfamiliar food. (It’s also the first bite of said food.) It’s expanding my culinary horizons. It’s seeing and guessing what other people are eating. It’s the perfect match of expectation and fulfillment. It’s the way the aromas of the place excite your senses before (or after) you walk through the door. Continue reading “Why I Love: Restaurants”
Necessary Speech
ALTHOUGH YOU MAY BE OTHERWISE tempted, the following conversational gambits make for dodgy texts and/or tweets:
“We need to talk.”
“You’re fired.”
“Excuse me, sir or madam. Is your name…?”
“It’s over.”
“You don’t need to come in for the next few months.”
“Don’t share this with anyone, but…”
“Please — have a seat.”
“We need to talk.” Continue reading “Necessary Speech”
The Knot’s Tale
THERE I WAS, TYING AN intricate bit of decorative knotwork in the Golden Hinde II‘s hold, and feeling more than a little proud of myself. I was then just a beginner at that sort of thing, and the glow of self-regard was warming my busy hands.
Comes the captain, a grizzled veteran of a hundred-and-one voyages in a hundred-and-one vessels, to peer over my shoulder. I paused, waiting for him to tell me how grand was my creation.
“That’s what it’s supposed to look like,” he said gruffly, and walked on.
To say I was crestfallen would be an understatement. Continue reading “The Knot’s Tale”
Overheard in Sonoma, Redux
Dear Ms. Garchik,
I just overheard the following remark while sitting in my backyard adjacent to Broadway, Sonoma’s main drag: Quoth woman to dog-walking man, “I hope in my next life I can be owned by you.”
I hope in this life you can use this quote for your daily column.
Be well,
Neal
UPDATE: Ms. G. replied, “I am going to save that one for annual romantic Valentine’s Day column!” Be on the lookout.
PS:
So: We’re at CVS just now, about an hour after I wrote “And On, And On,”, waiting our turn at the pharmacy, when this woman sits down next to me and says, “I’m very sorry about what happened in Pittsburgh.” (This, after she circled around where we were sitting in what I had assumed was a somewhat suspicious manner.)
We talked a few minutes about what happened and why; she asked me about the Sonoma Jewish community, told me her feelings about the current White House occupant, and couldn’t have been nicer or more compassionate.
Sometimes, it pays to wear a yarmulke. Continue reading “PS:”
Out of the Ashes, Endlessly Turning
A YEAR AGO THIS WEEK, Ann, Geronimo and I fled the then-largest wildfire complex in California history.
We were voluntary evacuees who came home to find everything relatively intact, so our story had a happy ending. My niece and nephew-in-law weren’t so lucky; residents of Corralitos to the far south, they owned a house in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park that, like almost all the others in that neighborhood, burned to the foundation. Many people fared similarly, some worse.
“The Fires” were the second time in my life I faced a “will I die in the next five minutes?” moment. Continue reading “Out of the Ashes, Endlessly Turning”