THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

September 10, 2020

 

The Paradise of Books

 

Cervantes says that Don Quixote stayed up day and night reading books until he fried his brain and went completely mad. The hero of Salman Rushdie’s latest novel, Quichotte, has watched so much television that he can’t tell what’s real from what’s not.

Since June 7th, I have been hosting a Zoom gathering on Sunday afternoons at 3 pm, Bibliophiles Unanimous!

 

(https://openroadpdx.com/event/bibliophiles-unanimous/).

 

We’ve been having a lot of fun with it. It’s not like a “regular book club,” where each month everyone agrees to read the same book and then talk about it. I think the impetus for that kind of book group is that we all hunger for more connection with each other, especially a shared cultural framework that is not limited to Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. It’s why, when we’ve just read a book or seen a movie, we say to all our friends and to anyone who will listen: You must read this book! (Or see this movie!)

 

Our weekly Zoom gathering is a meandering dialogue. Topics have ranged from poetry, to books with pictures, to oddball books, to books that changed the way you see and experience the world. 

 

Our house is filled with books. The bookshelves are filled to overflowing. I’m sitting in a nest of books. I think of many of the books and their authors as my friends. Even though I’m just sitting here, I can easily imagine myself to be walking along the open road with Walt Whitman by my side. On my life journey, he has taught me so many things! Like this one: “I am not contained between my hat and boots.” And: “All truths wait in all things.” And: “Seeing, hearing, feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.” It’s good to know these things.

 

Things I read are constantly changing my inner landscape. Want to see the world in a new way? Try this:

 

In the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, it is written that animals are divided into: 

 

1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the present classification,
9. those that tremble as if they were mad,
10. innumerable ones,
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
12. others,
13. those that have just broken a flower vase,
14. those that from a long way off look like flies.

 

—from Other Inquisitions, by Jorge Luis Borges

*

 

As a young man, Jack Kerouac’s books On the Road and The Dharma Bums gave me permission to explore the big world, follow my heart’s desire, and live a life relatively free of societal constraints.

 

And then there were books that furthered my exploration of the nature and meaning of my human existence. The Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, inspired me to become a vegetarian, and to begin meditating in quest of samādhi—“the peace which passeth understanding.” J. Krishnamurti spoke of “freedom from the known,” and other radical ideas. The I Ching, Tao Te Ching, and the poems of Han Shan were a window into the ancient Chinese ways of seeing and being. More recently, I’ve added the Hsin Hsin Ming of Seng Ts’an to that list. Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind taught many hippies of my generation about Zen meditation. I’ve learned about Haiku, Zen and Japanese Culture from R. H. Blyth. My favorite books by him are Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics and Volume 1 of his four-volume series, Haiku, titled Eastern Culture.

 

I learned about Advaita Vedanta from the Bhagavad Gita, Talks With Ramana Maharshi, the Vivekachudāmani of Shankara and The Philosophy of the Upanishads by Paul Deussen. Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy shows how the world’s religions express the same fundamental truths. Joseph Campbell’s vast knowledge of world mythology also illuminates how “Elementary Ideas” are given different costumes or masks in different cultures. (I enjoy listening to talks he gave more than reading his books—they bring out his lively mind and engaging personality better.)

 

For now, I’ll mention just a few books that gave me a better understanding of the world in which we live. Woman and Nature by Susan Griffin woke me up to the centuries of oppression of women by men, and gave me a sense of the importance of listening to women’s voices and helping to co-create a more just world. Magical Child and Evolution’s End by Joseph Chilton Pearce, and For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty In Childrearing and the Roots of Violence by Alice Miller gave me unforgettable lessons in how our systematic physical, emotional and psychological abuse of children thwarts human potential and sows seeds for every kind of violence—from suicide to genocide. In my view, the one thing that the world needs most is more lovingkindness.

*

 

Some poems came my way this week. Josh Barnes sent me this sonnet:

 

Sonnet #1

 

Each snowdrift piles higher than the last,

The ground’s surface has long frozen over;

A frigid picture—Nature’s wild past

That beckons the heart—taunting, Come closer;

But as times change the beauty is melted,

Leaving a dreadful Silence in its stead,

For the ones that would’ve truly felt it

Are lying inside their graves, long dead;

But beauty shed need not mean beauty lost,

And life has many a surprise in store,

Like rivers that spring from ‘neath the frost,

Then freely flow from the glaciers to pour;

Endless the stream of life in its beauty,

The circle of life doing its duty.

 

—Joshua Barnes

*

 

Doug Marx shared some poems from his “Sheltering In Place” series. He prefaced his reading by saying that the poems are not his voice, but the voice of a persona. He said it’s as if these poems are being dictated to him. Here’s one:

 

Sheltering in Place #12  

 

The crows are freaking out about the mask.

We’re not speaking. 

 

Now they squawk

and flee me when they see me coming up the walk

in my orange and yellow

tie-dye pandemic disguise.  

 

I can’t blame them.

They can’t see what I’m hiding from

and neither can I. 

They don’t know the real me anymore

and neither do I. 

 

I don’t ask why, I just don’t want to die. 

 

How explain four million

nine hundred and eighteen thousand

four hundred and twenty 

down, 

 

or one hundred and sixty thousand

two hundred and ninety

gone. 

 

Their world isn’t falling apart right now.

The spider webs are still holding. 

 

Flashbacks of the old life come at me

like phantom reds and blues 

in the mind of a man five months blind. 

 

Some humans freak out about the mask too 

and would as soon kill you as wear one. 

 

I can’t explain anything to them either.

The death look in their eyes terrifies me. 

 

When I see one coming I squawk

and cross the street. 

 

Welcome to the masquerade.

You are on your own.

 

—Doug Marx

*

 

Dear Readers: 

 

Please send me your poems and short writings, or poems and short writings you love, and which have inspired you, that were written by somebody else.

We’ll end this issue with a poem that Nick Eldredge wrote. It hangs on his wall as a reminder…

 

¡Gracias!

 

Juanito

 

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