Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

132. TO CAST A WIDER NET ('what a stupid boy was I') - nyc, 1968:

There's no sensation to entering and even less to leaving and I'd found that out a long time ago - once when my father was holding me high in the air as I dangled from both his hands and it felt as if I was a mile high up to the sky but in reality maybe a slim 40 inches up - maybe - from what I was used to and it made me feel weightless and without substance and almost free like a bird - had I known all that then and even at two what does anyone know of birds and their lives anyway ONE CAN ONLY SURMISE or assume to know something one knows not : simple feed all matter is : and any tomfoolery like that amounts quickly to nothing but you can't goad nothing to something NO MATTER HOW HARD ONE TRIES - and this girl came to me one day with the greatest name I'd ever heard - Alianna Adriata - and she said she was from the Balkans or something she was a Balkan or Balkanese I wasn't really listening because I firstly didn't even know she was addressing me and secondly because with my mind elsewhere I was just ever so casually looking her over top to bottom as she talked - never thinking her idea was to be talking to me - so you can imagine my chagrin when I realized she'd been speaking to me and I'd not really been listening but instead gawking and she'd probably seen my gawking to boot (which is an odd way of referring to what I was doing) but anyway she'd not seemed to mind and was very smiley and talkative and we hit it right off and she really did seem wonderful and happy and exotic to talk to and I knew right away I liked that and we found things to talk about too - like she asked about words which to her were unfamiliar or terribly hard to understand in this language like 'ladder' and 'stepladder' versus 'step' or 'stair' and then she touched my sleeve and said something about the fabric I was wearing some word I cannot recall but which somehow in her mind related to and confused her about 'stairs' or 'steps' or something like sleeve or sheer or something and no matter because all it did was lead to our talking some more about things - how hard translation is and how often between languages things get modified and mis-defined and the troubles she had with her own native tongue and her quest to master English as WE here spoke it and I said I wished I could know her language and she should be proud to be able to take on English while knowing her own language and then she said no no she already also knew Spanish and Portuguese and some French too and I was by that flabbergasted and I asked her if she knew that word 'FLABBERGASTED' and she said she hadn't heard it before nor knew what it meant but figured it meant 'big surprise' or something like that and I said no not really more like stymied or perplexed and she knew neither of those words either so we laughed at that and I asked about her name and she said it had been given to her at her father's insistence and I said it sounded more Greek to me or Albanian or something that reminded me of the Adriatic sea and she said yes well her father doted on things like that and loved the sea and boating and all things maritime and maybe thus the name which anyway I again complimented her on and said it had a magical singsong quality in English that I wasn't sure she'd be able to comprehend or appreciate because to her the 'English' of the name being spoken was not in a native tongue so she probably missed the point but it was truly a wonderfully spoken and sounding name and she did it well by using it and carrying it for her own name which was my own way of a compliment or something at least to pique her interest in my interest but nothing came of it no matter again and I was out as quickly as I was in to use a phrase which had entered my mind about her and I really did I must say at that moment think of her beneath me taking pleasure but I let that pass too and before a moment more it was all pretty much over and we'd each passed on our separate ways and gone off - as any other missed opportunity passed meeting serendipitous exchange along some cobblestoned King Street passage and I thought of my life forever alone and forlorn but figured it couldn't be and yet her eyes had reminded me of the sunlight coming down and her voice had the charm of the morning and the trill of a daytime lark and as she'd spoken to me I'd become engrossed in her smile and the movement of her complete self with every word and sentence uttered - how she gestured and moved her hands and head with each thing she said and how she'd emphasize emotion with something in her movement or face as she talked - it was all very fresh and new and mysterious too and it made me think of the world the rest of the world and how selfishly stupid we are as Americans here thinking it all revolved around us - small-town hoodlum factors of brute force and stupidity in the middle of some sagging Manhattan Island bereft of charm or grace and plundered and paved and broken and all we can think about is to dominate the world with false fields of right and righteousness and indignation about everyone else - but however that all turned out I never did see Aliana Adriata again (and what a stupid boy was I).

131. NOTHING TO PROVE / NOTHING TO GAIN:

Back in these earlier days when they were still being called 'Beatnik Days' there was a concept going about (Alan Watts) which set Zen Buddhism into three distincts parts - there was 'Square Zen' the zen of the established tradition which was still foreign and forbiddingly stern somehow and which no one really wanted to adhere to and then there was 'Beat Zen' with its digging of the universe and all that - sheer caprice which almost seemed perfect for these new masses and small coteries - and finally (my most important one this final third) there was what became 'zazen' for want of a better term : 'NOTHING TO PROVE / NOTHING TO GAIN' and that's fairly where I stopped in my pursuit of perfection my slow transformation to hip my own changing of the guard (also grateful for the established and traditional rules of the zendo unquestioned which allowed one's mind freedom within the form).
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And the first words I ever heard were an almost prison-like 'hope you like it here' - 10-inch rails and the mother of kings and worn-out parsons and what Spring brings - new growth perched in trees and shafts of life cutting through soil - the sticky bright-green of a brand new leaf and the freshly moistened smell of morning air and it seemed as if everything conspired to come together at once and move the world along : magnificent murals on the walls of the museum where small groups of curious people walked along engaged in something unknown - the patter of words there too the small steps of adhesion towards understanding and realization the unwritten stories of each of their lives while ten blocks away an old woman handles melons and vegetables at an outside cart - as intent on inspecting the wares there as were the gawkers viewing the art - somehow one day I awoke in a gutter and felt I'd hit bottom and I really wanted out but couldn't bring it forth 'why die when you still can live' an inner voice said so I got up and brushed myself off AGAIN and went forward towards another round of going round - curlicue circles on the grass at old Madison Square and that old clock-tower striking something noisy in the air - Tom Paine again and Washington Irving again and Mark Twain again and Poe once more as I walked around saddled with endless woe but managed to eke out a composure worth every bit of what the city brought forth and it all just seemed always to just go on.

130.THE BUTTONED-UP BOOT OF A WARRIOR (nyc, 1970):

Pulling immense hairs from the snout of a lion (or something like that) was how it had been explained to me - this philosophizing about things in the face of adversity and it was always said that detachment was the very real key to everything but how could you tell that to someone who was just gung-ho over everything around them : the seventeen-year-olds I'd see lined up to enlist in the Army knowing full-well they were sooner or later going to end up in Vietnam like some buttoned-up boot of of a warrior hanging on the wall yet they did it elatedly and busily talking to one another about what to expect and where they were going and they left behind also the most ridiculous things : 327cubic inch Chevrolets and brand new Malibus and Thunderbirds and Corvettes and slap-dash Buick Regals with performance packages and all that - they'd buy these crazy cars and end up putting them away in the garage or something for the long years of their service or you'd read in newspaper want-ads often 'must sell - going in service' and all that sort of blather and then the next thing you'd see was a picture in the newspaper of the dead Marine or Army guy killed in Vietnam 'son of Mr. and Mrs. Harlan B. Jenkins of Loganville Springs' and the story would go on with testimonials and remembrances by friends and neighbors and school-pals of the guy but no one ever connected the dots to see the real story of someone DUPED and more stupid than the guy before him : assaulted really by a complete LACK OF REFLECTION and an ignorance of matters which mattered : and that's what did them in one and all - the girlfriend left behind more confused than anything but able at least to move on and the family still reeling for years over what had occured but the overall atmosphere of supporting the troops and backing the war and supporting AMERICA first and foremost no matter what was all in all a pretty disgusting manuever no matter how you loooked at it and it still goes on I guess in the same way and the only things which have changed are the contents and the means of the communication but the communication itself is pretty much the same (after all it IS only human) and the same old shouted-out crap goes on - sentimental clap-trap soft-core pornography twisted sensationalism and out-of-bounds moralizing without any basis or foundation in morality itself or life or even ethics - all else be damned - they still die and they still babble about the death but the ghettos all are the same and the ignorant denizens of streetcorner and tavern still hobble around like the ignorant jerks they are and somewhere SOMEWHERE now at any moment are 160,000 boys and girls learning to kill and maim and even die and then preparing to bring all that twisted and morose carnage back home with them 'bringing it all back home' as would be said and it's all just as disgusting as that and as ever too.

129. YOUR 'THEN' WAS MY 'NOW', (nyc, 1967-8):

Nothing ever made sense to me and that was just fine because I wasn't really living between the lines of that notebook paper anyway - watching what transpired in the orderly rows and situations of the hourly determinants I'd see everyday : statues to Admiral Farragut and Benjamin Franklin did nothing to deter me from my errant ways because the only thing those guys did to my mind was highlight the perverse duplicity of all the lies and bullshit which had been peddled at me all the previous years : I knew there was no truth to the effect that rightness and work can make one FREE (there was none of that anyway) or any of that boilerplate stuff they'd throw out every Independence Day and Memorial Day all those sinecures for suckers I'd watch - the Veterans on parade all wizened and wobbly on their bad legs and broken frames and the ancient and pathetic charms of military suits and uniforms of death as they showed them off with medals and ribbons all made me puke and drool at the stupidity of these oldtimers who'd never gotten over anything except their own good sense and the armed elites of cops and soldiers and marine guards and political types filled with their own gut-level ranks of bullshit and squalor and all this everyday military bigwig stuff - General Hershey and Westmoreland and McNamara and Johnson and all the rest - just made me squint my eyes in hatred and wish them dead and twisted and burned over twice : bastards all : and yet the streets were rattled with both sides every day and placards were waved and people stormed and marched and walked all the while shouting their sides one way or the other - no alternative allowed thank you - and the nightly news made its mad-clamp dash for stardom by showing the names of the dead (I watched all this once twice too many times over public-space areas and large-screened enclosures set up as shanties and small towns for the indigent where harried hippies hung and hectored whomever passed) - it was a wild and weird world then so different from anything else and there were folk songs and speakers and preachers and the lost and the lame and those who'd 'been there' and seen the action as it went and they told tales of death and destruction and themselves maimed and twisted they groveled and cried before captive crowds and traffic was stopped and buses and taxis waited while cops kept steady lines or tried and the 'amalgamated fisticuffs of brotherhood workers' sometimes struggled with the crowd (union workers waging for wages the warfare they were told) - it was all dark and maddening and useless and bad but it seemed to go on for a very long time.