About My Japanese Neighbors

I meant this as a comic story, a fictional essay in the style of Lydia Davis, but it has turned out rather bleak, or so it seems to me.  I do not mean to complain.  I am certain that it is more difficult to be Japanese in Japan than to be a foreigner in Japan.  As for my Japanese neighbors, I mean no offense.  How could I?  I do not even know them. 

About My Japanese Neighbors

one

For many years I have lived in Tokyo with my husband.  Not exactly downtown.  Near enough.  As you can imagine, I have many Japanese neighbors.

I have one Japanese neighbor who acknowledges me, who will nod and smile and speak to me.  She lives across the street and one house to the left.  Once, when I’d been away for a long time, she brought over a small, homemade cheesecake.  The sight of this cheesecake brought tears to my eyes.  A few days later I brought her homemade turkey soup.  She seemed to find this extremely embarrassing.  Neither of us ever attempted this level of intimacy again.  She never returned my Tupperware. 

She still speaks to me sometimes if she happens to be at her door, for example while sending her two small daughters off to school, while I’m across the street tending my geraniums.  She is always smiling.  She is always a little tired.  I suspect that she is bored, home all day caring for her children, preparing meals for her husband the banker who often travels on business to Paris or Madrid, to Sao Paolo or Singapore.  She is always at home.   I have watched the first strands of gray appear in her hair.

My neighbor questions me about my work, my travel plans, my visitors.  I am not sure if she asks because she cares -- because I am her dear American friend -- or if she is simply trying to fill in whatever gaps in her knowledge she has been unable to resolve through non-stop surveillance of the neighborhood.  She never misses anything, as far as I can tell, neither the departure of a lover nor pizza delivery.

But it’s no sin to keep an eye out, is it?  In this neighborhood, only foreigners have transparent windows.  Who else is there to spy on?  Even if she is only arming herself with gossip to entertain the other neighbors, the ones who never speak to me, I do not mind.  In a way, she is my only neighbor.  She is precious to me.  Every time she greets me, I wave both hands and talk in a big excited voice as if I were a foreigner on a Japanese game show, a big dumb friendly gaijin, as if she were my very bestest friend and the whole neighborhood, one happy family.

two

I said that I only have one Japanese neighbor who acknowledges me.  But that is not exactly true.  Several of my neighbors will acknowledge me, particularly when there is no alternative. 

For example, if we have both taken out our trash at the same moment and are within two feet of each other.  Then, if I say, Ohiogozaimas! in a loud happy voice, they will also say, Ohiogozaimas!  Not that they always will, even in that situation.

In Tokyo, acknowledgement is always optional.  Even if you run smack into each other, or if blood or alcohol are involved, or if there’s just been an earthquake, or if some part of yours is significantly embedded in them, or if some part of theirs is significantly embedded in you, that’s no reason why you should therefore go so far as to acknowledge each other.  There is nothing, absolutely nothing, you can’t pretend you don’t hear, don’t see, and don’t feel. 

This is the natural result of so many people living so close together.  Or that is what everyone says.

three

Next door on the left side, an old woman lives behind a high wall.  She lives in a very large house with a traditional tile roof.  Or maybe it’s actually two houses, both regular size.  There have been rumors, but no one, as yet, has been able to verify either the ‘one house’ or the ‘two house’ theory.

Years ago an old man lived next door as well.  He would sometimes smile and wave.  He was senile presumably.  No one has seen him for years.  He must be dead. 

The old woman says Ohiogozaimas to me, once or twice a year, if I catch her at the exact moment at which she is opening the door to her garage and if I say Ohiogozaimas first.  She always seems terribly embarrassed, as if I’d caught her sitting on the toilet.

A large upper window in the old woman’s house directly faces the glass room in which I daily pursue the unseemly habit of writing.  The old woman’s window is covered by blinds, like almost every window in the neighborhood, and it is impossible to see anything through it.  Nonetheless, every night she covers this window with a metal shutter and every morning she un-shutters it.

In order to do this, she must open the window which faces my glass room.  She has found a way to do this so that her face is never seen.  I only see her old white arm.  In all these years I have never once caught her glancing out.

The old woman is a piano teacher.  I often hear her playing at night.  She is uncommonly accomplished, her music is not only correct, but also rich and full and generous.  When I hear it, I always feel sad.  My husband, you see, was a teacher of vocal music.  Her colleague, so to speak.  Even though he has lived next door to her for twenty years, she has never learned that her neighbor is also a teacher of music, nor will she ever.  We are foreigners.  Foreigners is all that we are.

four

 Few of my neighbors are trees.  Nearly all my bird neighbors are crows.  My neighbor the sky is heavily cross-hatched by my neighbors the electrical wires.  Almost none of my dog neighbors run around in the street naked.  They were sweaters and raincoats and sometimes little boots.  My flower neighbors live exclusively in pots, except for one petunia, who grows from a crack in the sidewalk three houses down, between the cube house and Supermax.  Every time I walk past I check to see how she is doing.  I make sure she has enough water, that her spent blooms have been pinched off.  Even though she grows almost in the street, her condition is excellent.  I believe that I am not the only one who has chosen to look after her, my cheerful and determined purple petunia neighbor.

five

My next door neighbor on the right side lives in a house that is a nearly perfect cube, almost windowless, and surrounded by a high wall.  To an American, the place might call to mind a small exclusive museum of modern art.  To a Japanese, it is simply the kind of house that is popular nowadays, if you happen to be very rich and living in a fashionable part of town.

Many years ago, when the family next door first moved in, they rang our doorbell to introduce themselves, to apologize for the construction noise, and to present us with a giant box of shrimp-flavored crackers.

My husband and I were thrilled.  Father, mother and son were all warmly courteous.  They had spent time overseas, and were obviously relieved that my husband spoke fluent Japanese.  They mentioned that they liked pizza parties and we all enthusiastically agreed that we’d all get together for a pizza party very soon, so that we could properly get to know each other.  Everyone was delighted, or so it appeared.

Nearly ten years have passed since that day.  They’ve never spoken to us again.

My husband and I often wonder about this.  (As is not doubt already evident, when you never talk to your neighbors, you have too much time to think about them.)  We could not help but wonder if it might not be because we are homosexuals, an American gay married couple.  The family had a small boy – he’s a teenager now – perhaps they were concerned that we might be pedophiles.  It is a well-known fact that many foreigners in Asia are sex maniacs. 

Actually, this is the truth.  Many long-term foreigners in Asia are sex maniacs.  But not pedophiles.  Seriously, why else would anyone stay so long in Tokyo?  (You don’t seriously think it’s for the money.)

After all these years I admit that I still sometimes feel angry at these unfriendly neighbors, at their blank stare of a house.  I feel it especially when my husband says, “They said they loved pizza parties!” in a sad, uncomprehending voice.

six

Although the almost windowless cube house next door may seem to us oppressive, it’s Cinderella’s Castle compared to a house further down the block on this side, a house with an even higher wall, with a militaristic gate and slits of windows appropriate for bow and arrow battles with blood-thirsty Native Americans on horseback.  It appears that they went to their architect with several million dollars and said,  “Our theme is Supermax”. 

This could be the home of the richest warlord in Afghanistan, a stronghold amid anarchy, instead of a luxury home in Tokyo, a city which is still so safe you could walk almost anywhere, at 3am, alone and entirely naked, with pointy nipples, at the age of 14, without anyone laying a finger on you, until a policeman swooped upon you, with an overcoat and copious apologies, and escorted you in the direction of affordable public health care.

It is popular, among the upper class, to build oneself a fortress.  And this is not only an appearance.  Of all my neighbors, the mousy couple who live in this house appear the most afraid, if I happen to walk past while they are passing through their gate.  They appear convinced that I am going to rape, rob and disembowel them, and never mind that I have so far lived ten years in this neighborhood without so far assaulting anyone. 

But then again, perhaps they are correct.  Maybe I am dangerous.  Because sometimes when I see them, cringing at their gate, fumbling with the controls, I have to fight back the urge to let loose a booming roar, like an anguished American Grizzly Bear.

  

seven

One possibility that should never be overlooked is the possibility that we are simply atrocious people.  Indeed, there is some evidence in that direction.  I am a sex maniac -- as will become clear momentarily -- living abroad as nearly all sex maniacs yearn to do.  I am the sort of person who writes. 

My husband, on the other hand, does a mean impersonation of The Perfect Foreigner.  Speaks, reads, writes Japanese, has beautiful manners and twenty years experience in Japan.  He is as threatening as the host of a TV show for pre-schoolers.

However he receives the same treatment I do, despite drastically better behavior, despite the fact that, as surely is apparent by now, he is a sweet-natured optimist and I am a moral swamp of self-regard and petulance.  How unfortunate for my husband.  On several counts.  But in Tokyo there is no reward for being good. 

It is common for long-term foreigners in Tokyo to get twisted into some very peculiar shapes.  Tokyo Monsters, that’s what I call us.  It is ordinary for foreigners in Tokyo to act in ways that are heedless and appalling.  I am often ashamed of others’ actions.  I am often ashamed of myself.  Why can’t we just follow the rules?  Why can’t we just behave?

The truth is, it is difficult to follow the rules when you know you will never be admitted anyway.  There are rules, there are infinite rules, and after awhile it is hard to feel that they matter.  You can behave and behave and behave – Tokyo will continue to stare through you.  After awhile you think, I might as well cross my legs and drink beer on the train.

eight

Our neighbors directly across the street are accountants.  The office is below and an old man and old woman live upstairs.  The old man is the accountant, I believe, and there is also a solid-looking middle-aged man in a suit who comes each day to work for them.

The old man and old woman will not acknowledge my husband and I under any circumstances.  They stare through us even when we stand directly in front of them.  Attempts to appear cheerful and harmless avail us nothing.  We are ghosts.

For a long time it seemed that, every time I looked across the street, the old woman was standing on her balcony or at her window, peering over at us.  Any time we played music or danced or had guests or embraced, there was the old woman, staring at us.  It got so that I grinned and waved frantically at her, with both hands, like a Japanese Junior High School girl ecstatically greeting teammates at the airport.  Recently I have not seen her spying on us, which does not mean of course that she isn’t spying.

I wonder what she could possibly see that would make us so wholly unacceptable.  I wonder if she ever thinks, They look lonely.

nine

I had an embarrassing encounter with the accountant who works downstairs across the street, a nice-looking middle-aged businessman.  Well, not exactly an encounter.

It was a stormy afternoon.  Actually it was raining quite heavily.  And there is something about pounding rain which produces in me heated expressions of universal friendliness, which regrettably I am often compelled to take care of by myself.

Anyway, during the pounding rainstorm, during an escalating crisis of extreme friendliness, there was a very large flash and a very large boom.  Startled, I jumped to the sliding glass door to look out, at exactly the same moment at which the accountant looked out, and saw me, in an all-too-evident state of total and urgent good will. 

The look he gave me was, in my opinion, a very thorough and appraising look, as you’d expect from a professional accountant.  A downright neighborly look.

Of course I could be mistaken.  The look, long though it seemed, lasted hardly longer than the flash of light.  Even among straight men there is of course. . .  a certain curiosity about cultural differences.  Naturally I felt profoundly ashamed.  Mortified.  And also somewhat hopeful.

I hold out hope for this gentleman.  What a boon it would be to have a friendly neighbor!

Please do not imagine that I am some kind of hedonist.  Heavens, no!  My husband is innately conservative, from a first-rate Iowan family.  Like all gay married couples, our only aspiration is to live in a way that will allow us to fulfill all the dumb assumptions about marriage that straight people see fit to hoist upon us.  Monogamy is the cornerstone of this.

Nonetheless, I am certain my husband would excuse me if I seduced the accountant across the way.

He knows that good behavior, however laudable, is no way to meet people in Tokyo.  Bad behavior is the only way.

ten

 If you want to get along with your Japanese neighbors, garbage is an essential consideration.  And, in Tokyo, garbage is highly complicated.  After all, there are 37 million people in the metro area.  We can’t all just throw out our trash willy-nilly.

There are burnable days and non-burnable days.  (I like to say this aloud.  It’s a burnable day, I proclaim, and feel myself ready for the pyre.)  There is a special way to cut milk cartons.  Cardboard boxes must be flattened and secured.  There’s a special place for cans and bottles; all plastics must be pristine.  There’s a schedule for large items, which require special stickers and an additional fee.

Although garbage is somewhat complicated, the situation with garbage and neighbors is clear-cut.  If you do the garbage wrong, your neighbors will hate you.  Forever.  OK, maybe not forever.  Three generations minimum.  Their resentment is unburnable. There is no special sticker, there is no special fee.  It can never be taken away.

Naturally we are extremely careful about garbage.  We double-check the days.  We study our neighbors’ garbage to make sure our garbage matches.  We even arranged for a special tutorial with our friendliest neighbor, in order to learn the correct way to cut and bundle milk cartons.

Nonetheless, over the part decade, we have been wrong several times.  Once we even put out our burnables on a non-burnable day.  The crows scattered them all over the street. 

So that’s it.  We’re finished.  Of course we still try to be good.  Just the same we can’t help but feel that, good intentions aside, it’s simply too late for us.  We did our garbage wrong.

conclusion

Secretly we wish for our neighbors to love us.  Not only because we are sex maniacs, but also because we have been saddled with ardent hearts, hearts hungry as a pack of wild dogs.  Our neighbors’ attempts to keep a distance only cause us to clutch them more tightly.  We love them all so exceedingly much.  We resent them as much as if we’d given birth to them. 

We would like nothing more than to have the neighbors over, now and then. For rice crackers, green tea, and hard liquor.  For orgies and high tea.  So that we could feed them and grin helplessly.  And beg their forgiveness.  And forgive them everything. 

Surely it is no wonder that there are sometimes misunderstandings.  Knowing each other so little, and needing each other so much.  Living as closely as we do, here in Tokyo, the city ranked highest for convenience.  And lowest for sexual satisfaction.  Tokyo, the loneliest city in the world.

The Lost Speech

The speech made Lincoln the acknowledged leader of the Republican Party in Illinois and set him on the path to the presidency.  At the time it was said to be “the greatest speech ever made in Illinois”. 

Though many of Lincoln’s speeches have come down to us, this one, perhaps the most important, has been lost.  It was lost despite the presence of hundreds of witnesses, including a large number of newspapermen.  As Kearns Goodwin explains, “So enthralled were those in the audience that reporters cast aside their pens to concentrate on what Lincoln said.”

From contemplation of the loss, a number of conclusions are possible.  These include:

The devotion of the note-taker is blemished by greed.

The greatest devotion is silent.  Its form is pure attention.

The desire to rescue is a distraction.

Loss is an attribute of greatness. 

The Copyist

A man in New York has nearly finished copying out the Bible by hand.  He wrote the Bible in cursive, with a felt-tip pen, on watercolor paper.  “I hadn’t counted on the fact that it would end up being beautiful, “ he says.  More than five years were required for the task.

A retired interior designer, he got the idea when his partner Mohamed mentioned that Muslims copied out the Koran by hand.  He insists he has never been particularly religious.

Working up to fourteen hours a day, his work was interrupted by hospitalizations for anemia and AIDS, as well as by the death of Mohamed.

The Book of Ruth was his favorite.  He admires the message of the Gospels but finds Jesus glib and condescending.  The sheer amount of violence was appalling.  He tired of plagues. 

Along the way, he acquired a photographer, who has taken 4000 photographs – a small task perhaps, in comparison to copying out the Bible.  The photographer told the newspaper, “He’s not a martyr or a saint.  That’s what’s so nice.  It’s just what he does.  He’s not trying to prove anything to anyone.  He’s making something beautiful.”

He will finish copying the Book of Revelations at a special service given at his church, to whom the Bible will be given, once it is bound.

“Every day as I write, I discover something new and it expands my mind more and more”.  No doubt the Bible, too, is greatly improved for having passed through his hand.

Phase Out

Latino Stroking His Big Uncut Dick          4 minutes, 8 seconds

Afterwards, when he’s ready to shower, get dressed, get the money, when he’s done what’s usual here at BiLatinoMen, pulled off his shirt and explained his tattoos, tugged down his pants and accepted compliments, explained how he lost his virginity at the age of ten (he got scared ‘cause the girl was bleeding), and how he once fucked a girl hanging over a rooftop, and how his number one fantasy is to have sex at a water park (which seems kind of innocent, but then he’s only 20) and, yeah, he just moved to Los Angeles and he’s lovin’ it, lovin’ the sun, and he lets the cameraman feel him up and he wears his rosary even while he showers, and when the camera finally pulls back, we see on his left inner thigh several dozen long intersecting slash marks.

So what were you saying happened there on your leg?  Ha, ha, I got mad.  I started cutting myself.  You cut yourself when you’re mad?  Sometimes, yeah.  How often do you do that?  Rarely, but when I get mad I get mad.  And it doesn’t hurt or what?  Yeah it hurts.  I’m so mad I block out the pain.  And at what point do you know to stop?  No, I just keep going.  But I mean, there’s like, let’s say there’s twenty marks.  Why didn’t you do forty or fifty?  What calms you down?  Nothing.  I just phase out.  I phase out and then when I come back to the real world, I’m just, like, Oh what I do?  And it’s all bloody or what?  Yeah.  So you go, like, momentary insanity?  Yeah.  Does it look like a fog or what does it feel like when you’re in a phase?  It’s like nothing else matters, not even you.  Poor guy.  Don’t be doing that.  You like my free therapy sessions?  Just kidding.  All right.  Say bye to your fans out there.  See you later guys.

I now address an appeal to the healthy: don't persist in reading nothing but healthy books, acquaint yourself also with so-called pathological literature, from which you may derive considerable edification.  Healthy people should always, so to speak, take certain risks.

Robert Walser, The Robber (59)
Translated by Susan Bernofsky

Gentle, the Verb

A man needs a hobby, he knew.  Especially at his age and while underemployed.  Otherwise his small well-tended garden of perversities was bound to send out tendrils – tendrils, runners and feelers.  He needed a hobby that did not require money or electricity, that could be practiced anywhere, at any time.  He did not wish to knit. 

He decided to gentle his eyes.  (How could he have forgotten that gentle can also be a verb?  What an awful thing to forget.  What an essential thing to recall.  Gentle is a verb.) 

Like many persons found to be ineffectual in both the short and long term, he had eyes like an attack dog or a prisoner starving in protest, like a poisoned dart or an embittered theater critic.  He wished to have eyes like an overcast morning, eyes to illuminate objects without even the hint of a glare.  Eyes to impart tenderness to what is seen.  To refresh and not disturb –  eyes like a small, nearly unnoticeable breeze.  Eyes entirely gentle.

After he succeeded at that – see, he was already running ahead – he thought he’d like to learn how to make small comments that were both timely and appropriate.  Other people did that -- why not him?  People who made timely and appropriate comments were invited to highly appropriate parties, where people wore clothes.

He knew this would require attention to subjects he had heretofore neglected, such as weather and sports and other people.  He was willing to try.  He wished to embark upon gentleness.

Timely and appropriate comments.  He thought about adding and helpful.  Helpful comments.  But attempting to be helpful was no doubt somewhat grandiose.  And grandiosity, he knew, was part of his problem. 

The Need for New Tavolette

For 500 years in Europe, there was a brotherhood that sought out those condemned to death.  While spectators jeered or mourned, members of the brotherhood joined the crowds and aimed to catch the eyes of prisoners as they walked to the hangman or the guillotine.  They held tavolette, which were wooden panels, mounted on a long post, depicting scenes from the Bible, most commonly the Holy Virgin or Christ Crucified.

The sentence had already been pronounced: death was at hand.  This bitter time of total loss, of grief and terror, was the territory of the brotherhood.  It was on this moment that they positioned themselves and aimed to catch eyes of the condemned.  To catch their eyes and, in that flash, transform their minds.

The tradition ended in the 19^th century, which seems to me most unfortunate, as we are now in  most desperate need of it. 

Thus, we move swiftly now to re-establish the tradition.  In urgent need, we set to work.  To renew and reinvigorate the tavolette, using images which will extend beyond the Christian fold.  The public is hereby heartily beseeched to submit new images for the construction of new tavolette, new mental sparks for last minute transformation.    

Traditional religious images are inescapably divisive.  What is heartwarming to one person – rainbows, baby animals and broad smiles – is purgative and emetic to another.

One suggestion is that we greet each other with images of all else that is condemned, with images of the ibis and the manatee, the Yamada River, the Arctic glacier, the ladyslipper.  Because there is no longer any meaningful differentiation between the spectators and the condemned.  The sentence has been pronounced on us all.  Upon our species.  Upon many other species as well. 

Thus do we greet each other, with our new tavolette, emblazoned with images of the Xerces Blue Butterfly, the Black Rhino, the Georgia Aster, as well as the Great Barrier Reef and the atomic structure of Antimony or Tungsten, all of which we are losing or have lost already, on all of which we depend.  Reminded thus that our peril is shared with every living thing.  Reminded that, at this time in history, it is in the very nature of life and beauty to be in peril.   

Call For Submissions

Call For Submissions

My second foray into literary publishing, following the remarkable success of BIG DEAL: A Quarterly Review of Envy and Resentment in the Arts, will be an annual journal known as UNREAD, which will provide a forum for one of the fast-growing and prolific populations worldwide: writers who read almost nothing.  Writers who read almost nothing are heartily welcome!

UNREAD:

The Literary Journal for Writers

 Who Don’t Read Literary Journals.

Or Anything Else.

Although all writers who don’t read are welcome, preference will be given to those with MFA degrees in Writing and most especially to teachers of literature who once read a few books and now teach those same books, over and over again.  We wish to honor those who have overcome challenges to non-reading, who have acquired laurels and advanced degrees, while persisting to read almost nothing.

Please note: UNREAD is highly competitive literary journal.  That means that less than 1% of all submissions are accepted.  Please send us your very best work!  The lucky 0.2% who are accepted are accepted entirely at random.  (We only open our email account once a year.) 

We are not concerned with the fairness of this system.  As for the integrity of the journal, we know all too well that literary magazines are only read by their contributors; that’s why we can guarantee we will remain UNREAD.

For our annual contest, please send postal coupons and a $35 money order.  Thanks for supporting UNREAD!

Submissions are open now for UNREAD: The Literary Journal for Writers Who Don’t Read.  Please, shower us with your own wholly original inspiration!  You have already proven you don’t need anyone.  

The Directions

He was the sort of person who writes directions to himself.  The sort of person who writes everything down.  It was some kind of worship, or else some kind of disease.  Besides each direction, he wrote the letter D, and drew a square around it.  Like many directionless persons, he was obsessed with the idea of directions, that such a thing might exist.

D  Practice being silent, open and available.

D  You may wish to be happy.  But for the practice of kindness it is best to remain sad. 

D  Experiment with NOT following that impulse.  For once.  Seriously. 

Needless to say, if he had a dollar for every D with a square around it, he’d have drastically more money than he’d made in his unprofitable and not particularly short life.

He had a favorite writer, whom he considered his role model.  Not surprisingly, this gentleman had spent twenty-six years in the madhouse, where he was reported to be “perfectly lucid and ready to converse on a wide variety of literary and political topics.”  He’d been found dead in a snow bank on Christmas Day. 

Every word his favorite writer had written seemed to apply directly to him.  Most especially when he wrote: His effect on the world was potentially astonishing. 

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Samuel Beckett

Molloy

Samuel Beckett

Published in French 1947

English translation by Patrick Bowles, in collaboration with the author 1955

I have a theory that people label books “difficult” primarily so that they can feel special for having read them.  We want to feel proud of ourselves.  Understandable, I suppose, but the shame  is that other people believe us -- and then are afraid to take down the books we’ve put on the lofty pedestal marked “difficult books”. 

That’s terrible, especially since many of the books labeled “difficult” just require a little more time, a change of perspective or attention – they are not as much “difficult” as they are “different”.  Molloy, for example.

I’ll let everyone else rhapsodize brilliantly on Beckett.  You can.  My humble intention is to is entice a few more people to read this book, a few people who might otherwise feel intimidated.  C’mon.  Give it a try.  Risk it.  Don’t surrender Beckett to the sole custody of the beautiful people.

A little advice, if you decide to read Molloy, despite feeling somewhat in over your head.

First, and perhaps most importantly: you must ignore the slight panic that arises the moment you notice that the second paragraph is 84 pages long and proceeds without a break.  Ignore the voice (if it is present) that say that you by no means have brain power sufficient to the task, that books of this sort are only for persons who have doctorates in literature and wear all black and subsist on thin cigarettes and espresso, and are unbearable.

The reason to read Beckett isn’t  because he’s the chief exhibit in the museum of existentialism.  Molloy is fun, and above all funny, and, if it is the very blackest humor – well, what could be better suited to the times?

As you proceed, you will find that there are clear breaks in the monologue, clearly expressed in the thought if not in the typography.  Beckett rambles in only the most precise way and, even when lost in the forest, the next step is clear.  I suggest that you not be shy either to reread or to proceed without full comprehension.  You’ll get the hang of it.  For me it took rereading the first ten pages three times – by then I’d found my way into reading Beckett and was having an excellent time.

I admit that, when my husband heard me laugh, and asked what I was laughing about, and I read a few lines aloud to him, he did look at me as if he were reconsidering his relationship choices.

This love scene, for example: “She bent over the couch, because of her rheumatism, and in I went from behind.  It was the only position she could bear, because of her lumbago.  It seemed all right to me, for I had seen dogs, and I was astonished when she confided that you could go about it differently.  I wonder what she meant exactly.  Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum.  A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn’t tell you.  But is it true love, in the rectum?”   

Or perhaps you’d rather consider “certain questions of a theological nature”.

“1. What value is attached to the theory that Eve sprang, not from Adam’s rib, but from a turour in the fat of his leg (arse?)?

2. Did the serpent crawl or, as Comestor affirms, walk upright?

3. Did Mary conceive through the ear, as Augustine and Adobard assert?

4. How much longer are we to hang about waiting for the antichrist?”

And so on. 

See what fun the so-called intellectuals are having, as they blow smoke into Beckett while maintaining a serious expression?  These are human truths, stripped down to the skin, to the bone, to the grave.  But please read Molloy and see for yourself.

About Deserving

Some people attract help, others repel it.  Some people, no matter how much help they receive, everyone cheers and assures, You deserve it.  Other people, it is offensive if they receive so much as a bologna sandwich.  With or without mayonnaise.  With or without American cheese.  They’re just using the system, those people.  (The system is not for them.)

It is unknown how it’s determined, who deserves and who does not deserve.  It is not necessarily race, age or veteran status.  I have noticed that deserving often skips a generation.  Although it is unknown, one thing is clear: everyone knows who deserves and who does not deserve.  Everyone knows, absolutely everyone, except for the person concerned, who may or may not think that he or she deserves, and who may or may not be mistaken.

How delighted they will be, if they discover that they are eligible for everything, that they are richly deserving.  If their faith flags for even a moment, people will leap forward to remind them how very deserving they are, and that for them nothing whatsoever is too much.

Some people cannot receive enough.  Everyone agrees.  To see them receive less than the entire earth is upsetting, very upsetting to everyone, let’s roast a duck to make up for it, it’s so upsetting, it’s nearly as upsetting as the possibility that the undeserving might receive, let’s say, free return postage.

On the other hand, a person may discover that he or she deserves nothing.  Everyone agrees.  In fact it’s totally obvious.  Even the idea that he or she might receive something is repugnant.

These undeserving persons may weep and moan, they may protest.  But, to tell the truth, this is exceedingly rare.  More often than not the undeserving accept the news without a word, when they learn that they have been specially selected to receive nothing, that nothing is what he or she deserves, and that absolutely everyone agrees.

It is highly unlikely she will protest.  She will not cry or complain or write her senator.  She may sit for some time in a plastic chair.  Then she will let herself out without saying a word.  She assumes that, since it is so obvious to everyone else, there must be some good reason.

Idols

Lost in the woods, he made idols.  From pine cones and pine needles, from white birch bark and moss, from fiddleheads and what might have been the skull of a raccoon.  He ought to have eaten the peanut butter (the fiddleheads, too) but instead he used it to hold God together.  If you could have asked him, he likely would have admitted, “What I’d really like is to be found.”  But, if that was not feasible, he was glad to have the company of God, whom now the ants, too, had found.

Lost in the forest, he took stock of his provisions.  Three granola bars, one half liter of water, a handful of raisins, six small gods. 

Was he only playing?  Maybe he was only playing.  But in any case, it was now God’s turn.

Guttersnipe Bookshelf: Nisargadatta Maharaj

I AM THAT, Talks with Nisargadatta Maharaj

Translated by Maurice Frydman

Revised and edited by Sudhakar S. Dikshit

I was 18 the first time I bought I AM THAT, but I was 39 before I was able to read it.  For this reason, I thought I might give a little advice about how to keep company with this book, a very beautiful and peculiar one, and unlike any other.

You will find your own way, as many others have before you.  After all, this is the favorite book of many of the strangest people you will ever meet.  In fact, there appear to be a significant number of people who do nothing, except read this book, and then accost strangers in cafés to tell them about it.

If you are new to this way of thinking, and you wish to read I AM THAT, or are struggling to read it now, it would help tremendously to first read a friendly introduction to Advaita Vedanta.  Nothing too ethereal, steer clear of the Neo-Advaitins for now, perhaps Arthur Osbourne’s Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self-Knowledge , or any basic text on the life and teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi.  Sri Ramanasramam publishes a great number of useful books.  Aim for something rooted in the life of a person, preferably someone long-dead, and not a rarefied philosophical summary. 

If you seek a living teacher, please be wary.  These teachings have been commodified to a degree difficult to believe.  Advaita is now big business.  Genuine teachers are available, but you’ll need your wits about you!   

Above all, if you are struggling to read I AM THAT, I suggest abandoning a front-to-back reading for hopscotch.  (I do not doubt some people have attained enlightenment while hopscotching around this book.)

Where to begin?  I suggest Chapter 48: Awareness is Free.  Then turn to the chapters which focus on Sri Nisargadatta’s own experience, such as chapters 57 and 78.  Then you could turn to chapters which address essential matters in the clearest possible way, such as Chapter 25: Hold on to ‘I AM’, or Chapter 70, renouncing desire, or Chapters 95 and 8 on inner peace and cultivating acceptance.

Besides this, I found it very useful to create, among the end pages of the book, a personal index of what I found most useful and most inspiring.  A combination of reading and rereading is very well-suited to I AM THAT. 

At some point in the process, you may find your sense of life and yourself and the world disintegrating.  This is normal.  Just take it easy, OK?  Take long walks and, for goodness sake, keep your mouth shut!  Otherwise you’ll soon be cornering strangers in cafés.  “I read the most mind-blowing amazing book.  It’s called I AM THAT.  All the mysteries of life are in it!  I think I might be enlightened.  Shouldn’t we be sleeping together?”

The crazy people are not wrong about this book.  The mysteries are indeed here, with stunning clarity and endless determined good humor.  It’s an adventure to read I AM THAT.  But if you get stuck, don’t feel you have to read it back to front, play hopscotch.