wire

Just now I'm thinking back to the avant-garde French artists of the late 19th century, running off to the South Sea islands to escape the oppression of modern city life. But no matter where you go, there you are....

And here am I, having watched the film Man on Wire early this morning, and realizing that such tricks could never be accomplished in today's All-Seeing-Eye culture with surveillance cameras everywhere. The only things that can happen are things that are allowed to happen, things that are managed with a great deal of cooperation from many agencies. (Which brings into focus those planes that later flew into the towers, and how much cooperation they received from more than the rag-tag band of folks intent on their own mission, as well as the melting point of steel and.... but I digress.) How far are we from the world of Philip K. Dick's "Minority Report" when even bank robberies won't occur because surveillance will have reached its penultimate state?

My first wireless bill arrived from AT&T this morning, and while I expected it to be large because of the pro-rated service for 2/3 of a month added to the advanced monthly charge, I also got some unpleasant surprises and steeled myself for a long argument. Surprisingly, the woman on the other end, who must deal with irate callers all day long from her cell in Bangalore, was able to drop 40 dollars from the bill without batting an eye or talking to a supervisor. Just a few keystrokes and it was done. My original header for this post was "fighting with the phone company" -- but taking stock, I realized I had merely a vigorous tango with one individual, and she proved a willing partner. So much for tilting my lance at corporate giants.

After that small encouragement I took a few minutes to add up my current expenses for communicating with the world at large: for a land line, a cell phone, and broadband Internet service my total is $125 a month. Not subscribing to cable TV, and picking up my DVDs for free from the library, I suppose I should consider this outlay a good deal -- and it becomes more palatable when I realize that it constitutes only 5 percent of my modest net income. Still, it's weird to be dependent enough on such bodiless contact that I would fork over $125 a month for the privilege. I keep reminding myself that if I were in the South Sea islands today, I'd have to make the additional investment in a laptop. No matter where you go, there you are...

Wire-walker Philippe Petit, for all his living-in-the-moment following of artistic passions (a testament to the possibilities inherent in massive ego), is still a man who had to pursue his particular moment of freedom in the otherwise inaccessible point between those two towers. He was supported by friends whose emotions he found messy. Up there on the wire, he could be blissfully alone.

From Joni Mitchell's "Hejira":

You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or stick to some straighter line
[...]
We're only particles of change I know, I know
Orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I'm always bound and tied to someone


I officiated a wedding last evening, two men who already tied the knot in CA but who wanted to stand before their friends in Portland. In attendance was another couple whose wedding I officiated a year-and-a-half earlier -- and who were crediting therapy (both singly and as a couple) for their continuance. Clearly their love for one another was still present, but so was the pain that was already tearing at them, and which they were honest enough to admit. As each expressed it in a different way, marriage was the testing ground for their growth as individuals: if they didn't have the stew pot of their conflicts, how much would either of them hope to gain on their own as human beings?

Is that why so many personally wounded people still want to make a go of it together in the world? This twosome wanted to know my track record for the couples I'd married: how many of them were still together, and how many had gone their separate ways? Certainly they knew that I'd have no way of knowing.... but I did mention that my own partner (who'd been there with me during their wedding and reception) was no longer a part of my life.

Referring to this couple as "they" in conversation with me is a misnomer. Each approached me separately at last night's reception for those heart-to-heart portions. Each was in a struggle, each wanted to succeed. Each was willing to confide in someone who for all intents and purposes was a stranger to them (except for my very particular job function), to camouflage their current discontent with the memory of that happy day, on the occasion of yet another happy day. They still watch the video of their wedding, to remind themselves of their efforts and their intent. And that fact reminds me of the importance of public commitment, as well as its evanescence. Sometimes I think I'm just a sham artist, when I see all the pain that ensues, when I recall my own, when I think about where I currently reside in my psyche. No matter where you go, there you are.

My moments of true connectedness, of understanding, of high-degree epiphanies, have always been solitary. And they have been about the nature of connection itself, about love as quite literally the force of creation, about the dance of intimacy and its creation of all this maya, this illusion, this loveliness we call reality. These unitive experiences are solitary ones that I and others have been given the grace of experiencing, and they lose a lot in translation when attempting to communicate them to those who haven't been there. The rest of life happens in the long, long interstices between these moments, and includes those attempts to regain paradise in the connections we make with the faulty equipment of our bodies and the wet electrical connections between our frontal cortexes and limbic systems.

Does true freedom only come when you are alone? Or is that also a chimera, an impulse between synapses, a suspension of disbelief? What really happens when we stop paying our bills?

"Jewish Groups Prepare for Rare Blessing of the Sun"

A quick follow-up:

No sooner did I post my first entry here and breathe a sigh of relief, than I found an article waiting in my e-mail's In box, a piece from the Jewish Forward about a 28-year cyclical ritual to honor our earthly connection with the sun:

http://forward.com/articles/103089/

From the article: “Growing up, there was almost a fear in recognizing that our holidays and calendar are indicative of an earth-based religion,” said Nati Passow, co-founder of the Jewish Farm School, one of the groups behind BlessTheSun. “That doesn’t necessarily mean idol worship or earth worship, but it means that the calendar and the cycles were a reflection of people who lived with a greater awareness of natural cycles than we have now. And so any time you can teach people about elements of our tradition that are earth-based, and especially the ones that are hidden and not as well known, it’s a way of bringing people into Judaism.”

***

Indeed, as well as reconciling it with the old religions from which Judaism sprung. To me, aboriginal Judaism is a thing of rare beauty, and nothing to fear or condemn. Such a belief structure may take the wisest and most compassionate Westerners into true communion with both G_d and the planet that sustains us.

Alternative names...

...I'm full of 'em. I've created so many mini-firewalls of identity on the Net that I wonder if I can keep up with them all. But Pagnostolic is a long-standing tried-and-true pseudonym. (Or did I just create an oxymoron? Can a pseudonym be true?)

Ram Dass once wrote that everyone should come up with a term to match their own individual expression of spirituality and belief. For example, I've met a lot of Jew-Bu folks: Judaism and Buddhism might seem at cross purposes (pardon the pun), but to me it makes perfect sense to blend the spiritual elements of detached loving-kindness with the vital emotional force of "L'Haim"!

As for myself: I was raised Catholic, and was one holy little tyke -- running off to daily Mass three blocks from home in the darkness of winter, becoming immersed in books about the lives of the saints and martyrs, falling in love with the old Latin mass and the Stabat Mater chants and the Stations of the Cross.... While I abhor the current conservatism of those Catholics who still revere the old traditional rituals while bending them to intolerant ends, I nevertheless understand the romance of incense and deep mysteries, the mythos of Mary (both the Mother and the Magdalene), and the passion of giving one's all for one's belief. And for that, I'm grateful to the religion of my upbringing. Hey, I even just remembered that today is the feast day of St. Joseph: that poor long-suffering dude who can't officially lay claim to any genetic bond with Yeshua, but who managed to be a good carpenter-father-figure. One of those quiet guys in the background who sets up the premise and then lets everyone else run with it.

After a brief spate of charismatic born-again fever in my teens, I pulled up hard against the "one-way" attitudes that shocked me into outgrowing my Christian roots. And in beginning the search for alternative expressions, I found Huston's primer The Religions of Man. Reading was good, but experience was better: when I discovered the rebirth of pagan spirituality, I was off and running with local groups who followed Starhawk and the Celtic year of seasonal celebration. And in finding Margo Adler's Drawing Down the Moon I also found those who appreciated the wonderfully messy, profuse, and profound cosmologies of ancient Egypt. The concept of a stable society over three millennia which could draw from the Nile a spirituality encompassing more than 2000 "neters" (powers, deities) as well as their ability to command their gods rather than propitiate them.... well, let's just say that I stand in awe of their methods and their divine madness. Such polytheism is in keeping with Jung's understanding that we cannot begin to comprehend the Totality, but we can easily enough find divinity in multiplicity. And when all is said and done, I like the down-home aspect of finding my religion close to the earth, of immanence as well as transcendence.

Still, in the overall scheme of things, I'm really more comfortable with the questions than needing to have answers. In the truer sense of the word, I just flat-out don't know. Nor do I need to. The love of mystery is far more compelling than the search for an ultimate Truth. Better simply to know what I know, accept what I don't know, and keep on pondering.

Thus, I welcome you to whatever I wind up writing here as my pagnostolic self. And I also welcome your feedback via e-mail. While I understand from an existential standpoint that we are all alone, there is still the serendipity of connections, shared epiphanies, and the openness to wonder that makes it all so very worthwhile.

God only knows when I'll write again. I'm a crow, picking up on shiny objects, and this is today's bauble. I have more fun on couchsurfing.com (where I have, yes, another alternative name) because lots of interactions happen there. This business of writing just to be writing, with no particular reader in mind, is unnerving. The apostle Paul may drive me nuts with some of his goofy thinking, but I sure do understand his epistolary style. May you, dear reader, be somehow enriched by this one-way correspondence -- provided I have the kishkas to stay with it...