Worst Damn Habit 2013
So from Amsterdam it has been ten days in London, Rhode Island until the summer solstice, a marvellous nine days in the Big Apple and, so far, another twelve days back on the Rhode Island coast. When I woke up in the New York doctor’s office after the procedure, Eddy told me, “While you were under, the Supreme Court announced its decision concerning DOMA and Proposition 8.” Our return from New York was booked for the following Monday, but the day before just happened to be the Pride march. It was our first in the City for it, and thanks to the judicial decision the sentiment was all the more powerful and celebratory. A wonderful evening earlier in the week with Charles whom we also managed to see in the parade as he sat in an open-air pink Cadillac representing the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art – where, earlier in the week, we caught the fascinating Paul Thek exhibition.
For the rest and for the most part, I have been working on ‘Pagan Mysticism’ along with the steady inundation of email. In the City, we enjoyed the company of Drew who set us up in the delightfully elegant Sunrise Room, Dan, Vassili, Benito, Charles, Victor, Dana, Tom and Brian Newman. There was an enjoyable lunch with Fred at the Atlantic Grille where we discussed consciousness as an a priori and as an emergent. Sadly, he told me that he had written Chickie to ask whether he could come by for tea, and she replied that that was not a good idea at this point. But further, we were able to celebrate Freeman’s 70th birthday during which I finally met Cory let alone Olga and Igor and Dinesh and Jonathan. Billy and Scot were also a part of the festivities. And, as for Rhode Island, it has been Joe, Richard, Lise, Kate, Scott, Sara and Esmerée (whose concert we attended at Java Madness). We completed our nine-day dies nefasti cleansing that began on the day we returned from Manhattan as well as a two day total fast (save for water) that has been inspired by Michael Mosley’s “Eat, Fast and Live Longer” BBC documentary (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvdbtt_eat-fast-live-longer-hd_shortfilms#.UeB3OD5ev0C) and the 5:2 programme (five days eating normal; two days fasting). We have just had the pleasure of Freeman and loverly Mark visiting. Dinner one night with Kate and Joe at the Matunuck Oyster Bar, and a fabulous luncheon at Castle Hill in Newport. The night that followed, I could not get to sleep until 04:00. Tonight is the Philharmonic on the beach, and tomorrow Gede and Austin arrive. I have spent the day itself recovering in bed. And Susan Rush also spent a night just before Freeman and Mark’s arrival.
On a more emotional political-cultural front, it has struck me as ironic that the kind of large-sale and government-changing protests such as have been occurring in Egypt are not also happening here. I guess the lethargy of entertainment-riddled and constant fast-paced distractions has successfully numbed the collective absence of brain in Amerika. The cosmos itself we can assume is moving along as it should – perhaps even racing along. Whether we like the direction or not, one might assume that we still want to come to understand it as best and as accurately as we can. Admittedly, all hubris aside, we ourselves may be a major player in determining the direction the cosmos is to take. But whether we are or are not, can we not at least seek to mesh our own direction and the cosmos’ direction as harmoniously as we can? Is that prospect even on the agenda?
Increasingly I am realising that my own mysticism is a battle mysticism in which union is sought with an emerging consciousness or at least with something positive. Is the cosmic consciousness, the cosmos itself, the ball that appears in the lap of God? Or is that ball the spontaneous cosmos that itself has come into being, while the transcendental God is the external Demiurge that thinks it was/is the creator? In this last possibility, perhaps the expanding cosmos comes steadily to crowd out or obliterate God. Or a third possibility, considering that the ball is the plaything in a countlessly different number of games, is God playing with some opponent player or team? The ball itself is the great zero, the circle, the ball of the universe, the all of the cosmos. All said and done, I often cannot help but think that it is simply what we make it to be.
Concerning my spiritual life, I have more usually tended to think of myself as a shaman rather than a mystic per se, but I recognise that these are not necessarily two different things. But when I do undergo mystical experience, I can feel that the whole cosmos is championing itself through me. I am the/a vehicle of the cosmos’ expansion and transformation – a vehicle if not *the* vehicle. This experience is, almost surprising to me, apophatic or imageless rather than the cataphatic that involves religious images and iconic forms. It is a logically rational unfolding ecstasy.
Still, what I cannot deny is that I am a visionary – one who has repeatedly seen an intensely beautiful vision of the world as an informing possibility. The starting principle of all truly valid endeavour ought to be the assumption of this possibility and the collective wish for harmonious self-determination, but upon this basis, the universal charter for our world of the future – perhaps our immediate foci for the here-and-now – is/are equal personhood rights, data protection and universal healthcare. If these could become our global priorities involving, in principle, the well-being of everyone, the world’s evolution could become a transforming reality. Data protection includes our very rights to privacy, and equal personhood is the grounding quest for equality even if and when personhood is extended to corporations as well. If corporations have rights, we do too – and these all can be negotiated and coordinated when we collectively put our minds to it.
But healthcare is utterly valid and the most obvious for a future world that is to flourish in and with honour. For starters, we can collectively seek to combat through inflammation management (http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/gut-microbiome-bacteria-weight-loss) – what I could term most succinctly: ‘junk food with orange juice’, nutritional balance – along with stopping the mad infiltration of the GMO contamination and health threat (http://www.opednews.com/articles/Unsafe-to-Eat-A-New-Repor-by-Richard-Schiffman-120705-675.html,
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/breeding-bacteria-on-factory-farms/, and http://worldnewstrust.com/food-justice-monsanto-factory-farming-and-beyond-mickey-z) and the overuse of antibiotics in food production (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/breeding-bacteria-on-factory-farms/), and protecting environmental balance (pollution elimination). As a working list for the immediate present, our global focus might begin with the issues of fracking, GMOs, surveillance, corporate personhood and the availability of universal healthcare along with the lessening of the need for healthcare.
I am still in the process of attempting to formulate a working group of foci that might shift our planet toward greater equanimity and a reduced threat to general well-being. But for now, I wish only to mention that in between the Supreme Court’s announcement and Sunday’s Pride, we attended a lovely salon at Doctor Eddy’s in the Upper Westside. We were asked at one point to introduce ourselves. I gave my name and announced that I was a hippy drop-out, am now a retired professor of religion and sociology, and I am currently working on a book on pagan mysticism. Richard, when it became his turn, went to the piano and announced his being in love with me for 40 years. He then proceeded to sing his love-song to me: “One of these days, I’m gonna give up smoking. Yes, I think I can, and I’m not joking. Cause I have been seriously thinking, that I’m going to cut down on my drinking. But the habit that’s going to drag me down and finally put me in the ground, is not as easy to quit as it might sound. I can’t stop wanting you. You’re the worst damn habit I have ever had; it’s the fact the feeling’s so good makes it bad. If I could take it or leave it I’d be so glad. But I can’t stop wanting you. I want you so; I can’t let you go.” It brought the room down and became my highlight of the visit to the Big Apple.
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