On Mastery

On our trip to Brooklyn, your mother and I (and you) went to a movie theater called: Nitehawks.

They were showing a film by the great director, Won Kar Wai.

There is a character in the film who made me think of you -- Gong Er (played by Ziyi Zhang), a young daughter of Kung Fu master, who watches her father train and practice in the garden of their home.

At one point in the film, she and the grandmaster, Ip Man, are discussing mastery of Kung Fun and this could be master of anything in life:

"Mastery has three stages: Being, Knowing, and Doing" I hope you will carry those thoughts into your own battles.

First you must be the type of person ready for the knowledge. You must find that inner stillness and will to truly understanding. Then you must work at knowing, at learning. And then, finally, you must do. And redo. And redo again until you find that doing and mastery are one.

Good night, little warrior.

Coming to Brooklyn

Brooklyn. Home to poet Walt Whitman. And now, more than a hundred years later, a combination of Hassidic Jews, Hipsters and Hispanics.

Your mother and I have come here on the one year anniversary of my proposing to her.

On Bedford Avenue, we found a bookstore that is my favorite kind -- full of all kinds of hard-to-find art books, monographs, poetry books and magazines. Among the books I found is a collection called: "El Libro de las Preguntas" by Pablo Neruda (a favorite poet, along with Walt Whitman): The Book of Questions.

In it, Neruda asks questions like:

Dónde está el centro del mar?
Por qué no van allí las olas?

Where is the center of the sea?
Why do waves never go there?

A whole book of these. And I then wonder all of the questions that go through my mind when I think of you, life traveler. Questions like:

Will I be a better father to you than I was a friend to myself?
When will I first disappoint both of us? How long will it take?
Will your forgive me?

From the other side of the world....

Dear Distant Traveler,

I hope we get the opportunity to come to the other side of the world together. In Buenos Aires, Argentina. We'll add that to our list, shall we?

This was a photo I took while walking through the San Telmo neighborhood. Going to other countries, you get such a rich view into how other people live.

Here, for the first time in a very long time, I have heard men whistling. People riding in elevators will suddenly start singing along unselfconsciously to the song being played. What other city has so many different places where a national DANCE is performed? Guys kiss each other on the cheek on the street.

Perhaps the word "unaffected" is the best word to describe the approach here. (If you're the person someone is pushing past, it can (at times) seem "pushy".)

I could write so much about what I saw in so few days (the blue economy where money is exchanged outside of banks; a political history that is still rich with deaths that are remembered within the last thirty years.)

It will be good to get home to your mother (and you!)  but it is always good to get a view of other places and remember both how luck we are -- and how there are ways of living a rich life that others are engaged in as well.

Ah, Dios.

Buenos dias, niña

Ah, little one. I am missing you and your mother already.

I am sitting at O'Hare airport, waiting for a flight to Miami and another that will take me to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

To prepare I am reading one of the classic books of Argentina: The Gaucho Martin Fierro.

A gaucho is a kind of cowboy, though a note tells me that the word gaucho is now often used for people who have a special skill that requires nerve.

They say that there was a time when people could recite whole sections of this book-long poem. And you can see why it was so popular when you see drawings like the one below -- in which after a long day of fighting criminals and taking care of horses, the tough guy sits down to sing on his guitar.

So I will continue to sing this song for you, niña, and look forward to a week from now when I will see you and your mother again. Adios. Ah, Dios!

Today, this photo was released of a star being born. It was captured by the ALMA telescope in Chile and shows "material streaming from the baby star at incredible speed, glowing as it plows into the surrounding gas and dust."

The glowing mass is called a Herbig-Haro object (named after the U.S. and Mexican astronomers who discovered it) and it is 1,400 light years away in the constellation Vela.

Today, your mother went in to talk to a midwife. Your heart rate is 140 beats per minute. You're sure running fast! (Typical resting rate of an adult is 60 to 80 beats; athletes can be down around 40 to 50.) Although you may seem light years away, your light is here right now. We're waiting on a miracle.

It's not easy

I wish I had a better photo to share because your mom's smile is so beautiful.... But with all the rambling I've been doing about me and you, I wanted to remind us both that she is the one doing the heavy lifting here. (Soon that will be quite literal.)

You can see by her smile -- even in a doctor's office -- how excited she is to hear more news about you. (Make that paper hospital gown look pretty good too, am I right?)

She is as much a miracle as you are. And it may be a few years before you appreciate this fact, but what she is going to do is not easy and yet she is so full of joy at the prospect, it's downright contagious.

Knowing when to go and when to stay....

I don't know if it was Dorothy Parker or someone else just as wise who said that there is a genius in knowing when to go and when to stay at a party.

Yesterday, a Saturday, at a coffeeshop near the office, I was sitting, reading yet another book by Clarice Lispector and scribbling notes in the margin of a script I continue to struggle with. I'll spare you the insignificant details that led a man about half my age to engage me in a conversation.

He was waiting for friends on their way to a wedding in Michigan. (Only later did I think of those Biblical stories about wedding parties.) He asked me about what I was working on and I asked him questions about his photography.

Five minutes into this conversation, I felt the uncomfortable awkwardness of wondering what we had to really talk about. Was this all just casual chit-chat? After all, he was just milling about, waiting for his ride, and I, I had things to do, dialog to write, books to read.

But here's the thing, my little Cosmic Surfer, I want you to sit with your discomfort.

I want you to look in the eye of another person and see if you recognize Christ there. Because Jesus walks up to us every day. It's just that on most days, we're too busy or perhaps nervous that this person WANTS something, that we turn away.

A wise man (he was a Catholic monk by the name of Wayne Teasdale but I've wondered whether to mention his vocation at all since what he showed me transcended that) once walked with me and we met a homeless man. He called the man who was selling books he had found in the garage from a cardboard box table he had fashioned near a train overpass. My friend asked him about the titles, thanks the man and we walked on without any money changing hands.

What he told me was that he never gave people on the street money because what the really valuable thing many of these people lacked was someone acknowledging them as people.

By the time you read this, you'll have seen it a thousand times: people dropping money into the cups of the poor on the street, but never making eye contact, never asking the name of the individual. Asking someone's name is all you need ever offer.

So this person who was waiting for his friends? Was he bored? Why me? Should I move on to my office to get my writing done?

He asked to take my picture. I let him.

Again, this was my chance to high-tail it outta there. Nice to meet you....

But instead, when he opened his bag, I asked: What are you reading?

He was more than happy to pull out a book of his favorite philosopher (G.K. Chesterton) and his favorite poet (Wendell Berry). He told me why he liked these authors and then, without my asking, flipped through the collected poems of Wendell Berry and shared this Manifesto with me.

Dear soul, my child, I hope someday you discover these riches: for the currency of poetry is priceless:

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay.

Want more of everything made.

Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery any more.

Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something they will call you.

When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something that won't compute.

Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace the flag.

Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot understand.

Praise ignorance,

for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium.

Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion--put your ear close,

and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world.

Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable.

Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap for power,

please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head in her lap.

Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and politicos can predict the motions

of your mind, lose it.

Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go.

Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

Postscript: Before I was able to finish this poem, his friends pulled up in a car. He apologized, said he had to go, told me his name, Joe Lieski, and shook my hand. Then he was gone.

Life is funny like that: you don't get to finish the poem before the person who shared it with you is gone too soon. Savor those moments with other, authentic beings. Human, ifrit, angel, animal or maple tree.

An Arabian Night

Dear Soul-just-over-the-horizon,

Last night I read your mother the Arabian Night story about The fisherman and the Ifrit.

An Ifrit is something/someone we don't hear or see too much around here. (Being in Chicago, we don't see too many fishermen either, when you get right down to it, save for the guys who stand at along the concrete shorelines of lagoons hoping to snag some bottom feeders, but I digress....)

Wikipedia defines Ifrits as:
supernatural creatures in Arabic and Islamic folklore. They are in a class of infernal Jinn noted for their strength and cunning. An ifrit is an enormous winged creature of fire, either male or female, who lives underground and frequents ruins. Ifrits live in a society structured along ancient Arab tribal lines, complete with kings, tribes and clans. They generally marry one another, but they can also marry humans. While ordinary weapons and forces have no power over them, they are susceptible to magic, which humans can use to kill them or to capture and enslave them. As with the jinn (genii), an ifrit may either be a believer or unbeliever, good or evil, but he is most often depicted as a wicked and ruthless being.

One of the funniest parts of that definition for me is the part where it says: "They generally marry one another, but they can also marry humans." It isn't often that you hear definitions of supernatural characters defined by who they can and can't marry. Would a marriage to a human draw a larger crowd than your average Ifrit-to-Ifrit affair? Would you send out invitations by winged messenger?

Now, this particular Ifrit in the Arabian Nights is not a pleasant soul and threatens to kill the fisherman, until the fisherman figures out an ingenious way to get the Ifrit back into the bottle: by appealing to the Ifrit's pride. "Ifrit, how in the WORLD did you ever fit into that tiny bottle? You, who stand so tall? In this tiny bottle? I just can't imagine how that could be?" At which point, the Ifrit who wants to show that he can do ANYTHING becomes smoke and slips back into the bottle, which the wily fisherman then re-corks.

My main reason for mentioning this Ifrit is not to introduce you to supernatural creatures (you'll encounter many of those in the English language when you're little) but to provide a little advice, that if you ever find yourself in a tough spot, in some conflict or confrontation with a human being (or Ifrit, I suppose) -- it often makes sense to appeal to their Pride. Human beings, like Ifrits, are very fond of their pride. The Greeks called it the sin of hubris. And you will discover many stories of hubris in all kinds of myths and legends. (And there's that old saying: Pride goeth before a fall.)

In general, you'll learn (probably the hard way) that the unpleasant people of the world very often suffer from a feeling that they are really INFERIOR or that they have to put on a bit show and show how BIG they are. (I have a sneaking suspicion you may think that of me on some of my lousier days, though I'm hoping we keep that to a minimum. Both of us.)

It's good to have a healthy sense of humility. Not to the extent of putting yourself DOWN (we'll talk about being "pusillanimous" some other time), but understanding that it's an awfully big world, and there are an awful lot of pretty amazing people -- and for the most part, most of them are trying to do the best they can with what they have.

It's tricky: you really ARE a great and amazing soul. (We will tell you this often when you are not pooping and crying (and you never know, your mom may do it even then; she's like that.)) We are all great and amazing souls; but those who truly have a sense of their worth and place in the universe, they don't have to ASK for validation from anyone else. And better still, no one can take it away with stupid insults or put downs.

You need to always remember you are a holy and beautiful creation. If we were all a little more comfortable with that truth, we wouldn't go around trying to bring others down or trying so hard to impress others who have trouble believing their own divine spark.

Bottom line: watch out for Ifrits and humans. Especially at weddings.

Let me tell you a story....

Dear Falling Star,

Your mother and I have started a little ritual in preparation for your arrival. A new translation has come out of the Arabian Nights and some have called it the best translation ever. Perhaps in your lifetime an even better one will come out.... Probably. It happens. Human beings improve in some ways, stay the same in others, and seem to keep messing up in other areas like compassion and mercy.

Even though the great storyteller of the Arabian Nights is said to have told her stories over 1,001 nights, we don't really have that long to wait until you arrive (which is a little mind-blowing, truth be told.) But each evening (and I know it won't be EVERY evening), I'm going to read from the stories that Sheherazade is supposed to have told King Shahrayar.

Sheherazade begins telling her tales to try and stay alive. (King Shahrayar is a jealous king who enacts cruel revenge on the women who sleep with him.) For me, we tell stories because we are alive, to remind us of this aliveness, this spark that makes us say "Aaahhh!" in the presence of beauty (which may be why they call it "awe" [News Flash: the Oxford English Dictionary says the word is of Old Teutonic (sorta German) origin and actually refers to the feeling of "dread" or "fear".... That's not what I meant: amazement?])

Stories are about possibilities and ways that we find a path through the dark forest of the world... and all  the amazing creatures, talking animals, perfumed planets and curious people we meet along the way. The same way we're going to meet you.

Too much?

The problem I am having writing these posts is that they end up being about ME. But in part that's because I don't really know that much about you yet.

Oh, I've heard your heartbeat is up around 160 beats per minute (which makes me think you're running quite the race to get here) and that you've grown to nearly be the size of a lime here near the end of the first trimester.

But I think I'll press on in the hope that you find some of this interesting or useful later in life. (Oh, maybe at 50, which would put us out around 2064 when perhaps you might be reading this on Mars.)

Why Clarice Lispector? Here is a passage from later in the book I showed last time: "The Passion According to G.H." It's a strange meditation in which a woman simply comes upon a cockroach in a room her former maid has vacated. I don't want to give anything away (it is a moving, but slightly creepy story) but in many ways it is a meditation on faith.

Because Brazil is home to one of the largest populations of Catholics and since Lispector is one of the most revered writers in Brazil, it is probably not surprising that this book is a meditation on God, faith and the Eucharist.

By the time you read this, I'm not sure if you will have taken the slightly-cardboard-tasting Host on your tongue. But it is a simple act of a very simple unleavened bread (going back to its roots in Christianity's patriarch: Judaism) that, through a ritual thousands of years old, is transformed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. An act seen as symbolic in the Protestant faiths; an act seen as transubstantiation in the Catholic faith.

The following passage from the end of Lispector's book is one of the most beautiful reflections on the simplicity and enormity of that act. I imagine Lispector having just returned from receiving communion at the altar. She sits down in the pew of whatever church she is in and has this reflection.

I hope one day you have this experience too:

I give up, and all of a sudden the world fits inside my weak hand. I give up, and onto my human poverty opens the only joy granted me human joy. I know that, and I tremble -- living strikes me so, living deprives me of sleep.

I climb high enough to be able to fall, I choose, I tremble and give up, and finally, dedicating myself to my fall, depersonal, without a voice of my own, finally without me -- then does everything I do not have become mine. I give up and the less I am the more I live, the more I lose my name the more they call me, my only secret mission is my condition, I give up and the less I know the password, the more I fulfill the secret, the less I know the more the sweetness of the abyss is my destiny. And so I adore it.

With my hands quietly clasped on my lap, I was having a feeling of tender timid joy. It was an almost nothing, like when the breeze makes a blade of grass tremble. It was almost nothing, but I could make out the miniscule movement of my timidity. I don't know, but with distressed idolatry I was approaching something, and with the delicateness of one who is afraid. I was approaching the most powerful thing that had ever happened to me.

More powerful than hope, more powerful than love?

I was approaching something I think was -- trust. Perhaps that is the name. Or it doesn't matter: I could also give it another. 

I felt that my face in modesty was smiling. Or perhaps it wasn't, I don't know. I was trusting.

Myself? the world? the God? the roach? I don't know. Perhaps trusting is not a matter of what or whom. Perhaps I now knew that I myself would never be equal to life, but that my life was equal to life. I would never reach my root, but my root existed. Timidly, I let myself be pierced by a sweetness that humbled me without restraining me.

Oh God, I was feeling baptized by the world. I had... finally performed the tiniest act.

Not the maximum act, as I had thought before, not heroism and sainthood. But at least the tiniest act that I had always been missing. I had always been incapable of the tiniest act. And with the tiniest act, I had deheroized myself. I, who had lived from the middle of the road, had finally taken the first step along its becoming.

Clarice Lispector

I worry about overwhelming you with To Do's before you're even HERE, but I don't want to forget this author: Clarice Lispector.

She is one of those writers that makes me wonder how my life would have been different if I had read her many years ago.

She's not an easy writer. Her style is something that is so overwhelming, you sit back in awe like a dessert that can knock you back with one perfect taste of: Raspberry. If Clarice Lispector wrote about Raspberry; I'm sure I would taste Raspberry.

I don't know at what point in your life you might pick up one of her books. But if you do, she may inspire you to learn Portugese to read her in the original. She may inspire you to write. She may inspire you to dance or draw or embrace the world in your own unique way. As she did. With words. Loving the world with words. Wording the world with love. Worlding words.