In Twilight Regalia

A long time ago I read a book called “Be Here Now” and it became a good stepping stone on my way to higher thinking.

It stressed one point over and over again:
Do you know how much mental garbage is affecting you daily due to your own decision to carry it around with you, instead of actually BEING where you are, right then, right now, just where you are?

Thinking of yourself as untouched by previous flaws or disasters, unable and therefore un-needful of responding to any of those flaws or disasters, being uncaught, free, is one of the biggest challenges and most rewarding.

Thinking of yourself as only what is here, what you see is what you get, the beautiful, the unbeautiful, the raw and real and potential and freshness of your current situation being whatever you want NOW.

I could go further into the metaphysical metagalaxies of thought at that juncture, but I’d lose most of you for sure. Not for the faint of heart, or head. I am no tour-guide of it myself, although I actually tried living there for quite a while, and it was rigorous. I should probably go back for a time and try it again. Presently, I dabble about the edges, do a Bill-and-Ted “Woa!” and come back home most of the time — to my baggage.

It is a lesson we need to think of hourly, really, leaving all that stuff. I can’t hold on for longer than that. Actually, probably less if I really checked myself. But when I try it, actually try to DO that, leave all the unanswered wishes and entanglements alone, and drop all the what if-ing of the future worries (a huge task for most of us), and stop presuming assumptions about direction and purpose and the meaning of it all, and just LOOK at yourself and everything, this idea does cheer one quite a bit.

The things that are really there, you haven’t really noticed in a long while.
The obstacles that are really there are usually less than the obstacles you had in your thinking.
The things that are potentially there, you had not been looking at, being too distracted by the older version of yourself you see yourself as, the you with a history. And then, when you get this kind of great

~pause~

in your being, stuff comes out.
New stuff.

I had a drawing teacher once, who, seeing me in that state, pouring out good shapes with easy seeing, one evening said,
GO!!, DRAW ALL NIGHT. DON’T STOP!!.
I realized he was deadly serious. He really meant it; I was not to go home.
When you’re on, do as much as possible.
You have this window so seldom.

It brings one to the book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which was also popular at the same time for the same reason. In it, one of my favorite tales, is the tale of the college student who cannot write an essay. The protagonist of the book, her teacher, helps her with her writer’s block.

For some reason she cannot begin to write about anything, at all. She can’t even start. No idea. Nothing comes
out.

He tells her to start writing about something simpler than she was trying: How about the front of one of our campus buildings.
Nothing came.

Ok, how about the left-most top brick on the top of this building here?
Then talk about the next brick, and so on.
She started about the one left-most top brick.

And she began to write,
And write,
And write,
And could not stop.

A lot of my life in the recent past (I discovered after noticing this process once again) has not been dignified with the true importance of what I am. Somehow this rodent-like hiding and ducking has been going on, and the shadow of the inflated ego or deflated lack of it (usually the same thing) has been hovering like a hawk over my actual self. Somewhere in the middle of the barage of events of the years here in Los Angeles, I have been hiding from everything I had expected, or not come into it, and so been chasing my tail.

I must face that the mental me I had was a past one, and I haven’t been really looking at this current one much.

I really REALLY want some time to see myself. Not as the everyday accoutrements of someone else’s business, not as the applicant I myself would not allow to join my own club, and not as an aging physicality, or an opinion on the lips of a passerby, or a lesser child of a lesser god, or a late blooming wintered bud, but just,

as my own perfect identity,
just here.
just now.

Here is my pausing point, and here is my window to look out of, and I hope I can hold it for more than a minute or two.

Kathy Griffin is being celebrated at the the Wiltern this next weekend. I’ve caught her on HBO and some other places. If you haven’t heard her, you are missing lengthy scathing descriptions of celebrities who annoy her, situations that bore her to death or are howlingly surreal, and ways to make her laugh (generally by being as appallingly brass-balled as she is herself).

Wondering about her, I went investigating her and opinions of her.

It’s interesting to me that people evaluate Kathy by her looks (like they did Margaret Cho in the early days),
give her great opportunity (like they did Margaret in her early days),
then take it away with a WHAT THE F*(%^ WERE WE THINKING! (like they did with Margaret),
and then claim she’s not really a comedienne, but more of a raconteur (etc etc etc MARGARET).

Kathy has only gotten a bit further because she looks like the white girl next door and doesn’t embrace the gay community as openly. But she gets the same treatment. She’s called ugly, transvestite-like, obnoxious, hillarious, brazen, and merely annoying.

The formula works, and she IS hilarious, but I know where it comes from, and nearly 13 years past Margaret Cho’s formula, American TV government is proving once again that they are still preferring an ass-kissing (in more than one sense) white male instead of an empowered female (even a white one) who spits out the stinging truth and isn’t a trite trophy-hooker-icon. I know she won’t be lasting long, but it will be a fun few stories until she dampens her dry wit for the syndicated versions of herself, or falls into the ranks of the great disappeared. Why hold this dim view? Because Kathy, you are playing with a loaded gun. AND I think it’s a good idea, of course. But it doesn’t mean you’ll be all good afterward. The only reprieve may be that since it wasn’t soley your own endeavor to make that journey, the martyrdom for you will be brief. Others will be shot on the wall after you’ve dug up to the edge.

It’s good you give us an alternative. Thank god for that. In retort to what people say, what I really don’t get is how they can accept Sarah Jessica Parker’s weird horseface as a golden sex symbol, Bobby Lee’s Blind Kung Fu Master act as funny, and Dr. Phil’s guests as the great raconteurs of the day.

They just keep trashing the women who dare to be outside the box — let’s think of just a few in recent times: Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, Roseanne Barr, Rosie O’Donnell, Jeanene Garafolo, Margaret Cho, Ellen Degeneres, and there are probably plenty new ones on the way….

And now Really. Kathy. The D-List is not funny. You’ll find that out soon enough. Just you make a lot of money this weekend, now, eh?. The homeland security of Middle America will not be at stake if the public should ever support you, but that may end up being on microchip in 2025.