America

I saw this image in a magazine, or part of it. The ad in the magazine had a room full of couches, throw pillows, lamps and end tables, and behind it all was this wall. I saw the flag in it immediately. I reminded me of the encaustic white flags of Jasper Johns. I knew I wanted to paint it. I love the texture of the brick, the warmth of the ocher and sienna leaking out behind the white paint. I love how the paint attempts to "sanitize" the brick, to make it look new or renewed. But really the texture is louder than the paint. I love the wall and the window that looks out into nothing behind the wall, as if all the substance is in the wall and everything else is just window dressing. I want to paint this painting again and again, trying to recapture the different textures of each individual brick, or maybe a new painting of nothing but brick and more brick, or brick and wood panel. I want to do this partly because painting is a lot like building a brick wall, one piece at a time, slowly building up layers, layers that both reveal and conceal. I like the idea of this painting hanging on a wall somewhere, hiding the space behind it like a wall, while revealing the textures, the materials the substance of the wall that it hides, brick, mortar, paint. I call this painting America, mostly because it reminds me of how this country is built, putting up walls and tearing them down, layer after layer, century after century, one brick at a time.

The Dead

I think most of my “great thoughts” occur to me in the car. I don’t know if this is because I spend more time in the car than anywhere else, or if it is because I am usually alone in the car, or if my car, by virtue of being a piece of shit, rattles and jiggles me into an hypnotic state wherein I am one with the universe. Regardless, when I am in my car, the idea factory is open.

A great example of this happened to me the other day. It was morning, that much I can tell you. Most likely I was on my way home after having dropped the kids off at school. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful morning, when all of a sudden the idea hit me. I was dead.

Now before I go any further, I want to make sure you understand me. I don’t mean the “I am dying, we are all dying” I am dead. It reminds me of the line from the movie Fight Club. "Narrator: In the Tibetan philosophy, Sylvia Plath sense of the word. I know we're all dying. But you're not dying the way Chloe back there is dying." Also, I don’t mean the “what is the point, I am better off not having lived” kind of dead. What I in fact mean is that I am I dead, literally dead, not dead, walking on the earth like a zombie dead, but that I am dead, “walking around in the afterlife and I just became aware of it” kind of dead.

Now, like most ideas that I have in the car, this one is kind of far fetched. Probably due to road hypnosis and the like. But I have to admit that the idea was not an unpleasant one, and that having had my so-called “realization” I felt quite comfortable. In fact, I felt at peace.

If I am dead, and this is the afterlife, then really the afterlife isn’t all that bad. I mean, apart from the occasional ups and downs, the mood swings, the minor tantrums, the drama and such, for the most part, life, er... death, is good.

Aside from feeling liberated, it is a funny thing to think of yourself as dead, that life as we know it is really the afterlife. Clichés abound about how life is what you make it and the kingdom of heaven is now. It reminds me of movies like Jacob’s Ladder, where the main character is haunted throughout the movie, only to realize in the end that he is actually dead. By way of explanation of the plot, the movie quotes the German mystic Meister Eckhart "The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you; they're freeing your soul. So, if you're frightened of dying and. you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth."

I think that this is a profound way of talking about pain that has echoes in Buddhism, namely that suffering is not caused from without, but by our attachments. The big difference of course being that Eckhart is talking about the soul’s journey after death, and the Buddha is talking about the individual’s journey through life. Though truth be told, I personally see very little difference between the two. What does it matter if we think of ourselves as alive or dead? It reminds me of the exchange between Gandalf and Pippin in the Movie the Return of the King:

Pippin: I didn't think it would end this way.
Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path... One that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass... And then you see it.
Pippin: What? Gandalf?... See what?
Gandalf: White shores... and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
Pippin: [smiling] Well, that isn't so bad.
Gandalf: [softly] No... No it isn't.

I have to admit, as I was typing my blog post on the Book of Jonah, I flinched when I admitted that I sometimes despair to the point of contemplating death as an escape, but it is equally true that I harbor a fear of death and the unknown and that those two feeling are very much at odds with one another.

I was listening to a Radiolab episode on the radio the other day as the described the action of a man who made the decision to jump off a bridge; I think it was the Golden Gate Bridge, to end his own life. Mid jump, he said, he realized he had made a terrible mistake. The announced later commented that of the twenty-four or so people out of one thousand that actually survived the same fall, almost all unanimously confirmed the same experience, namely that the desire to live was rekindled in the act of falling. I wonder, of the nine hundred and seventy-six that died, how many had the same experience but we not as lucky?

Anyway, back on point. I don’t think that I obsess about death, or that my musings on it are unnatural. Quite the contrary, the more I think about it, the less power it has over me. If I imagine myself as already dead, that I am strolling though the afterlife, death no longer seems like an option, as an escape from my suffering, nor as a thing to be afraid of. As Pippin said, “that isn’t so bad.” The torments I face are really the ones of my own making, and not the unknown that looms in the future.

I kind of like this thought, as odd as it is, a kind of Egyptian "the afterlife is a parallel of this life" kind of thing. Though without Pharaohs and Sphinxes and such. I don't believe I could walk around pretending I was dead all the time, but when I think about it, and stare out my window in to the wide world beyond, it puts a little quirky smile on my face and I chuckle to myself, and then I go on about my day.

What is this thing to you?

Is there anyone that doesn’t know the story if Jonah, particularly that part in which Jonah is swallowed by a great fish? I thought that I did. I have read the story several times in the last thirty years, and yet as we talked about the story in my adult Sunday school class last week, I found myself marveling over passages that seemed entirely new to me.

At the end of the story of Jonah, the Assyrian people repent, and turn to God, who in turn forgives them. Jonah’s response? He throws a fit. “I knew you were going to do that” he says, “ I knew you were going to forgive them. What was the point of my coming here if all you were going to do was forgive them?” He sits down outside the city and fumes.

Some people might me mystified by Jonah’s behavior. I think it is interesting that I never really took great notice of it. Probably because it was too close to home as this is where many of my conversations with God begin. “What was the point of that?” Just like Jonah I become incalcitrant. I can see myself in Jonah’s shoes. Frustrated, he is so overwhelmed with emotion that he is no longer able to talk with God. JoHe goes and sits outside the city wall in the burning desert sun and prays for death.

I am no stranger to this response. It is not uncommon for me, faced with some difficulty, or having felt some offence, to shut down the rational part of my mind. I become fixated on the swelling tide of emotions that churn within my body and I am incapable of offering defense on my own behalf. Furious at my own impotence as much as any perceived offence I may find myself acting out or saying something inappropriate that only worsens my situation. I am not above praying for release, even death, in these moments.

God’s response to Jonah is equally interesting. He causes a plant to sprout and grow overnight until it is large enough to shade Jonah. I imagine this plant like one of the trees you see in a Dr. Seuss book, long and gangly and multicolored. Jonah, the passage says, likes the plant, and enjoys the shade.

In yet another twist, God kills the plant, and here is where the story ends, or almost. Jonah becomes incensed, and God, seeing Jonah’s anger says to him “what was this plant to you? You did not plant it, you did not raise it, it was not yours, and yet when it dies you are angry. How much more are the people of this city, lost and confused, than this plant to which you owe nothing?”

The book ends on the question, and does not offer an answer. It appears as though it is the reader, and not Jonah, who is asked the question and expected to make an answer. Why are you angry? What is this thing to you?

The author is silent.