Monthly Archives: January 2016

The Truman Show

I watched The Truman Show last night.  It’s a movie in which Truman’s wife, his best friend, his neighbours … are just actors, following a script.  A film which many people see as a satire on the media’s control over human beings.  But I think it’s far more.  Truman Burbank’s story calls us to embrace freedom, with all its beauty and blemishes.  To have courage.  To step beyond the norm.  To truly live.

***

TV Announcer: 1.7 billion were there for his birth. 220 countries tuned in for his first step. The world stood still for that stolen kiss. And as he grew, so did the technology. An entire human life recorded on an intricate network of hidden cameras, and broadcast live and unedited, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to an audience around the globe. Coming to you now from Seahaven Island, enclosed in the largest studio ever constructed, and along with the Great Wall of China one of only two man-made structures visible from space, now in its 30th great year… It’s The Truman Show!

Truman’s whole life … for all to see.  A carefully controlled life – only happy stuff.  No nasty sadness, fear or loneliness.

***

Mike Michaelson: Christof, let me ask you, why do you think that Truman has never come close to discovering the true nature of his world until now?

Christof: We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented. It’s as simple as that.

And what exactly are we being presented with?  “No, Bruce.  You can’t change the world.”  Spontaneity is somehow bad.  Fit in.  Do what people are comfortable with and life will be smoother.

***

Marlon: [Emotional almost to the point of tears] The point is, I would gladly step in front of traffic for you, Truman. And the last thing I would ever do to you…

Christof: [Feeding Marlon his lines] … is lie to you.

Marlon: …is lie to you.

Oh, may I have true relationships, where people are real in their love, in their anger, in the feedback they give me.

***

Mike Michaelson: The Hague for Christof. Hello? The Hague? All right, we’ve lost that call, let’s go to Hollywood, California. You’re on Trutalk.

Sylvia: Hi, Christof, I’d just like to say one thing, you’re a liar and a manipulator and what you’ve done to Truman is sick!

Christof: Well. We remember this voice, don’t we? How could we forget?

Mike Michaelson: Uh, let’s go to another call, what do we have…

Christof: No. No, no, no, no, no, it’s fine, it’s fine, Mike. I love to reminisce with former members of the cast. Sylvia, as you announced so melodramatically to the world, do you think because you batted your eyes at Truman once, flirted with him, stole a few minutes of airtime with him to thrust yourself and your politics into the limelight, that you know him? That you know what’s right for him? You really think you’re in a position to judge him?

Sylvia: What right do you have to take a baby and turn his life into some kind of mockery? Don’t you ever feel guilty?

Christof: I have given Truman the chance to lead a normal life. The world, the place you live in, is the sick place. Seahaven is the way the world should be.

Sylvia: He’s not a performer, he’s a prisoner. Look at him, look at what you’ve done to him!

Christof: He could leave at any time. If his was more than just a vague ambition, if he was absolutely determined to discover the truth, there’s no way we could prevent him. I think what distresses you, really, caller, is that ultimately Truman prefers his cell, as you call it.

Sylvia: Well, that’s where you’re wrong. You’re so wrong! And he’ll prove you wrong!

Do we prefer our cells?  Our comfy cozy sanctuaries?  Is the world of gains and losses, pleasure and pain, praise and blame, and fame and disrepute, the sick place?  Or is that world also the home of transcendence, peace and true love?

***

Christof: We’ve become bored with watching actors give us phony emotions. We are tired of pyrotechnics and special effects. While the world he inhabits is, in some respects, counterfeit, there’s nothing fake about Truman himself. No scripts, no cue cards. It isn’t always Shakespeare, but it’s genuine. It’s a life.

May I always be genuine, and may you be as well, so we can look each other in the eyes and see ourselves.

***

Truman Burbank: Was nothing real?

Christof: You were real. That’s what made you so good to watch…

Indeed.  Give me a real person to cherish.  Whether rich or poor, pretty or plain, assertive or shy.  None of that stuff matters.

***

Christof: As Truman grew up, we were forced to manufacture ways to keep him on the island.

[flashback to Truman at school]

Young Truman: I’d like to be an explorer, like the great Magellan.

Teacher: [rolling down a map of the world] Oh, you’re too late. There’s really nothing left to explore.

This is not about teachers … in fact, I’m a retired one.  But some folks in our lives don’t want us to stretch, to go outside of the nine dots, to become something new.

***

Truman: I figure we can scrape together $8,000…

Meryl: Every time you and Marlon get together…

Truman: We can bum around the world for a year on that!

Meryl: And then what, Truman? We’d be where we were five years ago. You’re talking like a teenager.

Truman: Well, maybe I feel like a teenager.

Meryl: We have mortgage payments, Truman.

[He sighs]

Meryl: We have car payments. What, we’re going to just walk away from our financial obligations?

Truman: [He stands, whirls around, bends pleadingly, his hands reaching as though to grab the world] It would be an adventure!

Meryl: I thought we were gonna try for a baby.

[He turns away and rubs the back of his neck]

Meryl: Isn’t that enough of an adventure?

Truman: [Truman turns back, waves his arms dramatically] That can wait. I want to get away, see some of the world! Explore!

Meryl: [teasing him] Honey, you wanna be an explorer.

[She rises, goes to him, strokes his cheek]

Meryl: This’ll pass. We all think like this now and then.

***

May the deepest urges of our humanity never pass
May we explore the infinities of life
May we heed the call of adventure
May we not regress to the mean

Horse Tragedy

I saw in The London Free Press this morning that a fire near Guelph, Ontario killed 43 horses.  Before I started reading, I stopped.  “May this article focus on the loss of life, and the sadness that creates, rather than on the economic impact of this loss to the horse racing industry.”

I know that the financial ramifications are a legitimate cause for concern.  After all, many families probably have been hit hard.  Dreams may have been shattered.  All this is important.  But I think everything pales before the sanctity of life and the love of one being for another.

Here are some words from the story, in chronological order:

“We have no idea yet” what caused the fire.

The blaze was described as a multimillion-dollar loss.

The operation near Guelph will continue despite the blow.

“We are thinking of the horses that lost their lives, but also those people who relied on those horses for their jobs.”

He called the blaze “devastating” to the tight-knit racing community, which others noted has been rocked by the closing of smaller tracks and the loss of provincial slot machine revenue to fund racing purses.

“It’s almost like losing a child.  These horses, they’re every part of your life … On Christmas morning, when other people are opening gifts with their kids and stuff like that, we’re out at the farm making sure they’re (the horses) taken care of first.”

The most prominent horse lost was Apprentice Hanover, who won about $1 million in purses over his career.

The horses lost were likely trapped in their stalls and couldn’t flee.

“We are all emotionally attached to these animals.”

***

All very human responses
All to be honoured
God bless us, every one

Sending Love Out Into The Universe

Sharon Salzberg is a Buddhist teacher, and also a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts.

“Whenever I teach lovingkindness retreats in an urban setting,” Sharon explains, “I ask students to do their walking meditation out on the streets. I suggest they choose individuals they see and, with care and awareness, wish them well by silently repeating the traditional phrases of the lovingkindness practice, ‘May you be happy.  May you be peaceful.’  I tell them that even if they don’t feel loving, the power of their intention to offer love is not diminished.  On this day our retreat took place a few blocks from downtown Oakland.  Since we were directly across the street from the Amtrak station, several people chose to do their practice on the train platform.”

“When a train pulled in, one woman from the class noticed a man disembark and decided to make him the recipient of her lovingkindness meditation. Silently she began reciting the phrases for him.  Almost immediately she began judging herself: I must not be doing it right because I feel so distant.  I don’t feel a great wash of warm feeling coming over me.  Nonetheless, reaffirming her intention to look on all beings with kindness instead of estrangement, she continued thinking, ‘May you be happy.  May you be peaceful.’  Taking another look at the man, who was dressed in a suit and tie and seemed nervous, she began judging him: He looks so rigid and uptight.  Judging herself, she thought, Here I am trying to send lovingkindness to someone and instead I’m disparaging him.  Still, she continued repeating the phrases, aligning her energy with her deep intention: to be a force of love in the world.  At that moment the man walked over to her and said, ‘I’ve never done anything like this before in my life, but I’d like to ask you to pray for me.  I am about to face a very difficult situation in my life.  Somehow, you seem to have a really loving heart, and I’d just like to know that you’re praying for me.’”

***

For the last week, I haven’t felt loving.  My whole focus has been on me being sick.  Sometimes, when I’m composing a post, the old Bruce makes himself known.  But it feels like I’m a far cry from the human being who wished others well throughout my three-month meditation retreat.  Perhaps I’m wrong.  Maybe you can’t go back to a less inclusive form of consciousness.  It could be that the physical symptoms are merely masking the essence of Bruce.

Tonight I choose to meditate.  I don’t imagine that tomorrow a guy in a suit is going to say “I’ve never done anything like this before.” and that’s fine.  In Massachusetts, I was clear that my love was reaching people.  I’m somewhat less clear right now … but actually it still touches others, whether I’m feeling euphoric, sublime or flat.

So … I will do what I’m meant to do, through the good times and bad.

Size Matters … Or Does It?

My head is swimming within the illness of the day.  So perhaps you can forgive me for the comment I’m about to make.  Or not.

Part of my sexual apparatus is larger than just about every male on the planet.

If you’re a woman, how does that make you feel?  I imagine most of you would be thinking “What a loser.”  And that very few of you would be panting in anticipation.

At the risk of diving into the world of TMI, I can say that sometime on the weekend, as I got weaker, more disoriented at times, and was wracked by coughing spells, my testicles started swelling.  At this moment, they’re at least twice their normal size.  My very unerect penis is merely a bump amid this mass of flesh.

I went to see my doctor Julie today and received antibiotics for whatever virus I’m living with.  She looked at my testicles and declared “They’re much worse”, compared to her last examination in September.  “It’s not cancer, Bruce.”  (Whew)  She referred me to a urologist who may suggest surgery to remove the five centimetre cyst atop one testicle and a smaller one on the other.  “To deal with the discomfort.”

Sounds good to me.

So here I sit in my man chair, squirming a bit.  It is uncomfortable, especially when I turn over in bed.  More importantly, thoughts of diminished manhood fall over me.  Images of the V-shaped body, the Hollywood smile, the sweaty runner breaking the tape at the finish line, come calling.  None of those are me.  What’s true is that there’s no lessening of maleness, and certainly no sense of being deficient as a human being.  My body is a really cool vehicle that continues to serve me well.  It’s just that right now it’s sick, and bloated in one strategic spot.  Oh well.

Here’s a reminder of everpresent wholeness, whether experienced through a Christian context, or another:

Just as I am, tho’ tossed about,
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings within and fears without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

 

 

Distant At Starbucks

I hadn’t seen my friend Karina for ten days or so and I was missing her.  For the last four days, the only person I’ve seen is Renato, the Italian chef who’s staying at my place for awhile.  That’s because I’ve been sick.  Haven’t left the house.

Karina and I exchanged e-mails this morning and agreed to meet at Starbucks at 1:30.  How I wanted some more human companionship!  As I drove north towards London, however, I realized this was a big mistake.  I was dizzy.  So what exactly was I doing driving a car?  Where’s the compassion for innocent folks on the road who could be killed by my wandering mind?

I was coughing.  So what exactly was I doing, planning to sit down with a dear friend and thereby share my germs with her?  A couple of days ago I was talking to my friend Cathy on the phone.  She’s a pharmacist.  Cathy thought it possible that I’d contracted a virus that some people have seen stretch on for six weeks.  Did I want Karina to experience that unsavory result while I got to meet my face-to-face conversational needs?  No!

I’ve been lonely the past few days … but so what?  We all go through this.  Do no harm, Bruce.

I got to Starbucks, opened the door and saw Karina getting her drink at the counter.  I walked sort of up to her (six feet away) and said:

“This was a bad idea.  I’m sick.  I don’t want you to get sick.  I’m going home.  I love you.”  We smiled.  And out of the corner of my eye, I saw a woman look up from her laptop, perhaps fascinated by the dialogue that unfolded.

Karina and I waved to each other.  No hugging.  No lingering conversation.

“Make sure you text me that you got home safe.”

“I will.”

And I did.

 

Books

The boy, too, had his book, and he had tried to read it during the first few days of the journey.  But he found it much more interesting to observe the caravan and listen to the wind.  As soon as he had learned to know his camel better, and to establish a relationship with him, he threw the book away.

from The Alchemist (a book!) by Paulo Coelho

I own hundreds of them, accumulated over the last forty years.  So many about spiritual matters, lately focused on Buddhism.  So many novels, lately focused on Stephen King.  I do believe I have every book he’s published.

I’ve been more of a collector than a reader.  It’s somehow comforting to see them sitting on the shelves of my bookcases.  But sometimes I reflect on the fact that I’m 66 and that I’ll never read them all before I die.

I’ve taken thousands of quotations from the ones I have read, trying to hang on to the essence of what the author was telling me.  I’ve created “Categories” of topics and have started arranging all the words into them, to create a power not possible from just a few isolated quotes.  Trouble is, I virtually never wrote down who said what, so my ambition to publish all of this wisdom in several volumes seems thwarted by the illegality of it all.  Guess I would be sued left, right and centre.

My latest plan is to complete the sorting into topics before I die, have the books published through Blurb, find 500 organizations that might find my work valuable, put the books in bubble wrappers, each addressed to one of those places, pay for all that postage … and put them in the basement.  When I die, my executor would mail them all away, adding extra postage as needed.

I need to consult with a lawyer to see if my estate could be sued after the books are received.  Oh my.  I appear to be a very strange duck.  But I don’t want decades of quotations that resonate with my Spirit to crumble into dust.

Still .. wait a minute.  Wouldn’t it be a pretty major letting go if I dumped all my recipe cards of quotes and just trusted that the wisdom therein would reach humanity via another route?  In the movie The Razor’s Edge, the character played by Bill Murray ends up at a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas.  The lama instructs him to walk up to a little hut amid the snows and to meditate there for some time.  Our American friend takes a few of his treasured books, a couple of blankets and not much else.  After a day or two, he’s getting pretty cold, and the scarce wood is all gone.  In a moment of realization, he takes out one of the books and rips off page after page, dropping them into his little fire.  Oh my again.

Now what, Bruce?  I don’t know.  There may be delivered books, a world of insights, and a world of lawsuits.  Or perhaps all will be silence.

 

 

The Machinery Of The Universe

I was afraid.  I felt, I still feel, as if on that island there’s a hatch that comes ajar.  On this side is what we’re pleased to call “the real world”.  On the other is all the machinery of the universe, running at top speed.  Only a fool would stick his hand into such machinery in an attempt to stop it.

Stephen King

Wow.  I don’t know what to say but I want to say something.  How about that?  Is it the nature of the machinery that my rational mind can’t comprehend it?  Do I just need to get out of the way to allow unknown forces to flow through?

In the conventional world, I’m sick – dizzy and weak.  I’m afraid of not getting fit enough in time for my crossing of Canada this summer.  I worry about whether person A loves me anymore and wonder why person B hasn’t contacted me in awhile.  Except I’m often the one who lapses in the contacting department.

My long meditation retreat allowed me to see some of that machinery beyond the day-to-day.  A sense of being present as everything keeps changing.  Feeling peace flow over me.  Glimpsing that one moment is no better than any other one.  When I’m feeling well, these often show up unbidden.

What will happen if I let it all go and just let the wheels turn? I don’t know.  I still have to function in the “real” world.  My bathtub has backed up –lots of standing water.  I tried using the submersible punk to drain the water.  But I plugged the pump into the outlet beside the sink – designed for shavers and such – and now there are no lights in the bathroom.  The bulbs are fine.  The breaker downstairs wasn’t tripped.  So I need an electrician.  That’s fine.  I’ll call one tomorrow.

But what’s beyond all those strategies to have light, a clear drain, and the end of illness? What exactly is down that hatch?  Maybe saying “I don’t know” and keeping my hands away is the ultimate path to the unknown.  Something is calling me.  Even through my coughing.  There is a wellness past illness, a grace beyond thought, a being beyond doing.

I await